The Folks at Fifty-Eight (21 page)

Six months had passed since she’d left her husband and moved into the Georgetown apartment. In all that time the helter-skelter of a recklessly promiscuous life had lost none of its excitement or appeal.

She angled one of the dressing-table mirrors and studied her latest beau as he slept. He was strikingly good-looking, and deliciously young; so young that, even to Emma Radcliffe-Hammond’s esoteric moral standards, his seduction had seemed almost an act of devilment.

Her mind drifted back to the previous evening and that ostentatious dinner table.

It had been a mind-numbing evening, as Washington dinner parties so often were. Emma had sat in the thick of it, smiling occasionally and politely listening to the mindless small talk on either side. Until that point the only remotely risqué entertainment had been a few wide-eyed stares, responding to glances of vampish promise. Then someone began tapping a crystal goblet with the back of a silver teaspoon.

“Ladies. Excuse me, ladies! I think now would be a suitable time to leave the gentlemen to their brandy and cigars. Gentlemen, if you will excuse us? Ladies, shall we?”

The matriarchal Alicia Travers herded the ladies away to liqueurs in an adjoining room, looking for all the world like a clucking mother hen gathering her brood before waddling back to the hen house, with old and young, fat and thin, seductive and odious, all clucking and tripping along in her considerable wake.

Emma had been the last female to leave; she’d made sure of it. She’d waited for the precise moment to make her provocatively-choreographed exit before rising from her chair. Scarlet-tipped fingers smoothed non-existent creases from the tightest of satin gowns. A sigh of feigned boredom dragged any remaining eyes to the cleavage that spilled from a plunging neckline.

With provocation complete, and masculine breath collectively held, a jubilant temptress strutted from the room. She kept the head high and the breasts proud, and smiled a smile of mischief as she moved, treating masculine imaginations to a glimpse of private feminine thoughts, and mesmerized stares to the erotic promise of sashaying hips and undulating buttocks.

But for the click of stiletto heels on woodblock flooring and the seductive rustle of satin against silk, you could have heard a pin drop.

She reached the hallway and glanced around, looking for the mother hen and her chattering brood. She spied them, clucking and gossiping, in a drawing-room to the side. In the dining-room behind her, a booming masculine voice offered some wonderfully chauvinistic advice.

“Gentlemen, I must caution you. . . That is a coronary just waiting to happen.”

A babble of sycophantic laughter and chuckling profanity followed, but then the dining-room doors closed. Reluctantly, Emma made her way to the waiting boredom, selected a glass of yellow chartreuse from a tray of garish-looking liqueurs, and retreated to a corner.

“My dear, he’s had them all. Half the women in this room, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“Two and three at a time, I hear. I just don’t understand what they see in him. He’s drunk half the time, he’s not exactly handsome, and he’s anything but discreet.”

“Poor Martha Saunders can’t leave the house for the stares and the gossip.”

Sipping politely and studying a cross-section of Washington’s most pampered, Emma privately cursed the dictates of etiquette and listened to the unceasing vitriol.

“Given all the promiscuous little sluts up and down Penn’ he’s supposed to have bedded, it wouldn’t surprise me if she’s picked up a contagious disease or something.”

“Ugh, poor Martha! Oh no, don’t say that.”

“Ugh, no! It makes me shudder to think of it.”

One of the gossiping women suddenly noticed Emma sitting quietly in the corner.

“And on the subject of promiscuous little sluts, have you seen who’s finally deigned to join us?”

The obvious cause of resentment glanced contemptuously and purred a warning.

“What’s the matter, Angela? Same old problem with the haemorrhoids, or are we still not getting enough?”

According to Emma, Angela Carlisle’s antipathy toward her was due solely to jealousy. Emma claimed the woman had married too young, and bred too young, and now felt deprived at missing out on so much youth and fun. The fact that Emma had slept with Angela Carlisle’s husband had nothing to do with it.

Not that Angela Carlisle was unattractive. Still in her mid-thirties, she was tall and curvaceous, with long black hair framing a classic bone-structure and pouting lips that spoke of hidden passion. Sadly, she invariably pinned the hair high to complete a façade of austerity, and rarely relaxed the pout into a smile. She mockingly responded to the barb.

“Don’t tell me you’ve finally run out of husbands to bed. Or are we simply in here looking to convince little miss bored and beautiful to make up the three?”

An unfazed Emma answered matter-of-factly.

“I’ll never run out of husbands, Angela; not as long as they have wives like you at home. As for having to talk little miss bored and beautiful into a three, I find if they’re that bored they’re usually boring, and if they’re that beautiful I’ve probably had them already.”

“You’re disgusting.”

“Oh, and in my experience, which is considerable, I’ve found it’s often those who scream the loudest and protest the most who have the most to hide. . . And who eventually turn out to be the horniest dykes and the biggest hypocrites.”

Angela Carlisle considered the inference and fumed.

“And just what are you implying?”

“I was about to say don’t knock it until you’ve tried it, but maybe you already have? I always say, there’s a slut and a lesbian in every one of us.”

Angela Carlisle was no match for this. She blushed. She swallowed. She looked uncomfortable. Emma moved to press an unexpected advantage, but a timid-looking woman interrupted.

“We were just wondering how well you know Morton Simmonds? You hear such shameful stories.”

Emma answered the woman’s impertinence with a smile.

“I know him well. He’s a friend.”

“And we all know what that means.”

Angela Carlisle had obviously recovered her composure. Emma snapped back.

“I doubt you do, Angela, but I happen to think Morton Simmonds is a charming man. An excellent friend of your husband’s, I understand. Like two peas in a pod, they say. I couldn’t, because I never saw them both naked. Well maybe I did, but not at the same time.”

“You’re a slut.”

She ignored the insult and continued goading.

“They say, if you want to tell the difference, Morton’s the one with some modicum of technique.” She shrugged, and maliciously added, “I guess you chose to bed the wrong buddy.”

Somebody sniggered. Angela Carlisle’s glare turned to one of open hostility.

“And so whose husband will you be having tonight, or haven’t you made up your mind yet? You will let the poor woman know when you finally decide, won’t you?”

“All I can tell you, dear, is that it won’t be yours.”

Emma turned and spoke to a group of women who had been enjoying the confrontation.

“To tell you the truth, I had him last month. It was in a moment of weakness, and I swear I’m not exaggerating when I tell you he was just about the lousiest fuck ever.” Amid maidenly gasps of shock and sniggers of feminine delight, she ruthlessly added, “If that’s all the poor bitch is getting once a week, it’s no wonder she never smiles.”

“You promiscuous little slut!”

Suddenly it was open warfare and Emma was angry.

“So who came first, Angela, the frustrated bitch or the lousy lay? Mind you, knowing Alan Carlisle as we unfortunately do, maybe I should be asking if anybody came at all.”

“Right, that’s it, you bitch!”

“And that’s enough from the pair of you.”

Moments from the snarling cat-fight that would have sent the chattering ladies who lunch into verbal orgasm, the bustling authority of Alicia Travers made a timely intervention.

“Did you hear me, Angela? I said, that’s enough. You’re not turning my home into a cathouse. Go and cool down on the terrace. Go on, out you go. Emma, I think you’d better come with me.”

The two snarling women reluctantly separated. Emma followed her generously-proportioned hostess across the hallway and into another drawing-room.

“Scotch?”

Alicia Travis smiled knowingly as she held out the tumbler. Emma snatched at it.

“Oh God, yes please. I could do with a sensible drink.”

The knowing smile turned to one of benevolence as Alicia Travers ushered Emma on to a settee and sat down alongside her.

“Try to be a little kinder to Angela. She’s not having an easy time of it at the moment.”

Alicia Travers was a close friend, and a lady in every sense of the word. When Emma began to protest, she shook her head and smiled warmly.

“And don’t you dare say that she started into you first. From what I could see, you must have vamped just about every man at that dinner table tonight, including my Benjamin, I might add, and he’s got a weak heart. You’re just lucky he’s too short-sighted to notice.”

“Oh come on, Licie, you know I like to flirt. It’s fun, and what’s the harm?”

Alicia Travers favoured her with an old-fashioned look.

“Emma Radcliff-Hammond, I’ve known you all your life, and you’re a charming girl with a kind heart and the face of an angel. Unfortunately, you also have the mind of a harlot and a body that most men would sell their souls for. If that weren’t enough, you have disgracefully catholic tastes and an appetite for sex that I frankly find staggering. So don’t play the innocent with me. I know you far too well.”

They paused to drink their whiskies. Alicia Travers broached a sensitive issue.

“How’s Gerald? Seen much of him recently?”

“No, not much. I think he’s still upset.”

“Well, you can’t blame him for that. He loves you, Emma. He always has. In my book, you don’t deserve him.”

“I know. He’s a kind and decent man. He just picked the wrong woman to fall in love with.”

“If I remember rightly, you loved him once.”

“I still do, but I’m having fun, and he can be so interminably bloody boring.”

“Yes, that’s so often the trouble with kind and decent men.”

Emma felt the sadness suddenly and briefly overwhelm her as she considered her estranged husband. She dismissed it with a change of subject.

“So what’s up with that miserable bitch Carlisle this time?”

“It’s Mathew. He’s not going back to Princeton, or joining Alan at the State Department. He wants to work his way around Europe. She’s beside herself.”

“Mathew?” The name was familiar. “Do I know him?”

“Angela’s son. He’s turned out to be a nice young man. She dotes on him.”

“Oh, you mean that Mathew. God! It only seems like yesterday he was still at school.”

Alicia Travers nodded knowingly and grinned.

“Careful, dear, or you’ll be giving away your age. Well, anyway, he’s here tonight. You must have seen him. He was sitting next to her at the dinner table.”

“So that’s who it was, I did wonder. Mmm, good-looking boy, but maybe on the youngish side of beddable, even for me. I did wonder if she’d finally. . .”

A glare accompanied the interruption.

“Well, I’ve had her here all day, pouring her heart out. She doesn’t want to let go of him.”

“She never did know when to let go of anything. I don’t know why she doesn’t get out of that mausoleum of a house occasionally and get herself laid. Do herself and the rest of the world a favour. She’s an attractive woman, or she would be if she ever smiled or made an effort.”

Alicia Travers nodded.

“Yes, that’s what everyone says, but I’m not sure everything’s as it should be in that household, what with her and that boy being so touchy-feely, and Alan so often away. It’s all too intense, almost bordering on, how shall I say it, the intimately unhealthy.”

“How wonderfully incestuous! Do tell me more.”

Alicia Travers frowned and wagged a matriarchal finger.

“No, Emma. I know what you’re thinking, and I’m telling you no. This is all far too sensitive to have you causing your usual mayhem. You’re to say nothing and keep away. Now you promise?”

A mischievous smile met the caution, but then she relented.

“All right, Licie, I promise, but hadn’t we better be getting back?”

“Oh yes, I’d almost forgotten.” Alicia Travers leaned forward to plant a maternal kiss on Emma’s cheek and then got to her feet, before matter-of-factly asking, “So was it true; that bit you said earlier, about you and Alan Carlisle?”

Emma put down the glass and got to her feet.

“Yes. I met him at a White House reception. He came straight out with it.”

“Came straight out with what?”

“Said he’d always wanted to fuck me.”

“Emma, you know I don’t care for that word.”

“Sorry, Licie. Anyway, I had nothing better to do and he’s not bad looking.”

Alicia Travers gave her another old-fashioned look.

“Now count to ten, and tell the whole truth.”

“Well, maybe I did also think it would be fun to get one over on that miserable bitch.”

“Emma Radcliff-Hammond, you are thoroughly disreputable. And. . . ?”

“And what?”

“Stop playing games. You know precisely what.”

She saw the earnestness in Alicia Travers and laughed wickedly.

“Licie, you have to be the most incorrigible of all my friends. And I know you don’t like the word, but there’s no other way to describe it. Alan Carlisle really was the most god-awful fuck.”

Alicia Travers seemed intrigued.

“I take it by that you mean he couldn’t. . . I don’t know how to put this delicately. You mean, he wasn’t able to, uh, to perform, as it were?”