Chapter 4
"I have a real surprise for you," Richard said, as they were dressing for dinner.
She glanced at his reflection standing behind her. "What is it, darling? You know I hate surprises."
"How about a trip to Europe? Now that the house is finished, and you were so blue this morning, for no reason ... well, I just decided it was high time. I've booked the flight already, so there's no use arguing. We leave in two weeks."
Before Catharine had a chance to answer, there was a knock on their door, and it opened. It was Jennifer, poking her enchanting face into the room.
"Can I come in and watch you dress?"
Richard was in his shorts and undershirt. His hairy legs were bare and there was the faint beginning of a bulge in his gut that strained the open placket of his fly so that the dark hairs of his underbelly could be seen poking through. But he showed no sign of embarrassment. "Sure, Princess, come on in."
"Richard, don't you think Jennifer is getting a bit too old for that now?"
The lithe twelve-year-old ran to Richard and hugged him around the waist, ignoring her mother's words. She bounced her slim bottom onto the satin coverlet of the huge bed, and settled herself to watch them with serious attention.
"Jennifer will never be too old for anything," Richard said. "Why, she's an enchanted fairy princess." He pulled on a clean shirt and began to button it. He stood with his muscular thighs and bony knees wide apart, in the center of the bright red and yellow and blue Rya rug, which was designed in a free-form target pattern. He was just to the left of the bull's-eye.
Catharine turned her attention back to the jewelry box on the dressing table in front of her. She held one earring up, tilted her head critically to examine the effect against her new hairdo, shook her head slightly and picked another.
"Can I wear your diamond necklace, just for dinner, just this once?" Jennifer asked.
"Certainly not. Whatever gave you an idea like that? You're much too young for diamonds."
"Just pretend, Mommy. There's no one coming to dinner. There's just us. Please, just pretend."
"Oh, let her," Richard said impatiently. "She's got to learn how to be an elegant lady sometime."
"My daddy never would have allowed me to do such a thing at her age. You're much too indulgent with her, Richard. She won't learn to be anything but spoiled if you let her have anything she wants all the time."
As Catharine spoke, she heard dim echoes back in her memory, of someone saying similar things about her ... her mother, of course. Funny, she had never thought about her mother much, even when she was still there. But as her own daughter grew more and more like herself, her mother's faded image seemed to reappear, unexpected and unwanted, in Catharine's own words and gestures. It was uncomfortable and even a bit frightening. But she put the thought out of her mind. Instinctively, her eyes went back to the mirror and she was reassured.
Jennifer was pouting. Richard bent down to look at her, lifting her little chin with his hand. The gap in his shorts opened wide.
"Your mother is right," he said thoughtfully to the little girl. "I don't like the looks of that pout."
Instantly, Jennifer's face burst into a bright smile. It's as phony as ... mine, Catharine thought with a cold shock. She's not an innocent any more. What's happened to my sweet beautiful baby?
"Jennifer," she said, turning around on her chair, "Daddy and I have something exciting to tell you. We're going on a trip!"
"We are?" Jennifer said.
"No," Catharine answered, smiling. "We are."
Richard began to pull on his trousers, finally. Catharine watched in the mirror, and Jennifer watched directly, as he tucked in his shirt-tails and leisurely zipped himself shut.
They all went down the stairs together, holding hands, with Jennifer in the middle, and they talked about the trip to Europe all through dinner. Catharine found herself unexpectedly eager to get away, alone with Richard. Maybe, if they had a new honeymoon, they could start on a different path this time. Maybe, in the depths of Paris and Tangiers and Rome, they could discover new ways of thinking. New ways of fucking, she admitted to herself, that's what we really need. Travel broadens your horizons. God knows ours could use a lot of broadening. Maybe I can get him to take me to some of the low dives where women make love to giants, and get mounted by horses and do terrible-delicious-things to each other ... maybe But the thought of Richard allowing himself or her to see such things was impossible.
Why was she always thinking about it? Did everybody else in the world think about it all the time-except Richard, of course-did Jennifer think about it? No, of course not. Not yet.
"Can't we leave sooner?" she heard herself saying.
"What? Is this my stay-at-home princess in the ivory tower speaking?"
"I'm your princess," Jennifer said. "Mommy's the queen. I'm the princess."
"I'm not a queen, nor a princess either. I'm a normal woman, and as you said, Richard, it's high time we had a trip."
"I can't get away that soon, but there's no reason why you couldn't go on ahead of me, and I'll meet you there. You could leave whenever you're ready, if you want to."
Jennifer looked at her mother with huge solemn eyes. Richard waited, too.
Their stares made her uncomfortable. For some crazy reason she felt suddenly close to the edge again, where something infinite and undefinable lurked in wait for her. She actually felt queasy, and gripped the edge of her chair for support. It's the prospect of actually going away, off and on my own. That's what is frightening me. But I want to do it. I will.
"Yes," she said firmly. She looked over at her daughter's face, rosily cherubic in the soft glow of the candles. Odd how Jennifer's hair hung straight, instead of curling like her own. Straight hair was the style now, of course, and her little girl was as stylish as she herself had been in her time. Was still. "I'll go on ahead, and we can meet in Paris. Won't that be romantic? You're sure you won't mind, Jennifer darling?"
"No, Mommy. I want you to go. I want you to have a good time. Really, I do."
"You'll be fine here with Lisa and Abel to take care of you, and the other servants."
Jennifer sniggered and made a little face, but whatever she was thinking was quickly suppressed in an amiable smile. "Sure I will," she agreed.
"What was that noise about?" Richard asked.
"What noise?"
"That 'ho-ho-humph' noise you just made."
"Oh..." Jennifer toyed with her fork. "It's just that Lisa and Abel are kind of ... you know, weird."
"What?" Catharine was so used to having the old couple (actually, they were brother and sister) around that she couldn't think for a moment whom Jennifer was talking about. "What on earth do you mean?"
"I don't know ... just weird, that's all. It's just an expression, Mommy."
"It's an unkind one," Catharine said.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean anything. All the kids say 'weird'. "
"But you should not." Richard smiled at his daughter.
"Why do I have to be special?"
"Because you are, that's all. It's wonderful to be special," Richard assured her seriously.
Jennifer lit up the room with her laugh. After a moment, Catharine and Richard laughed too. Jennifer's young joyousness at being alive and being special was infectious.
After dinner, Jennifer and Richard played backgammon in the library, and Catharine went up to masturbate in a warm oiled bath. She thought about swarthy Italians with uncircumcised cocks seizing her on the streets of some seething waterfront town, forcing her to the rank-smelling deck of a fishing boat where live wriggling eels would slither all over and under and around her body while they penetrated her with loud cries of hot Mediterranean passion. She thought about suave, perfumed Frenchmen, wooing her with the finest champagnes and lighting up the Eiffel Tower for her pleasure, kissing her fingertips, her wrists, the insides of her elbows, her soft smooth shoulders, her pulsating throat, her open mouth, her breasts, her belly, her cunt. She thought about Arabs sweeping over her on their enormous and fierce white stallions, kidnapping her off the streets of the Casbah and riding with the sirocco winds to their decadent carpeted tents, where slave girls would anoint her body and prepare her for the sheik's pleasure, because she, and only she, was beautiful enough to deserve his love. She stepped out of the bathtub exhausted and sated, and by the time Richard came upstairs she was fast asleep.
In the morning, she was sad again, for no apparent reason. I'm going away. Far away, she repeated to herself. In a sudden panic, she ran out of her room and up the attic stairs. She thrust out her arms and ran to her old familiar things. I mustn't cry, I mustn't, she told herself as the tears welled up helplessly. She found herself clinging to the old beloved gilt-framed mirror from her own room, hugging herself against the glass and clutching with both hands to the worn rounded carvings along the oval edge.
When her sobs subsided, she looked at herself, nose to nose.
"Ugly," she whispered. "Old and ugly."
"No!" She seemed to hear the mirror itself answering her fiercely, in a kind of unhuman whisper that came from nowhere but the mirror itself. "No, you are beautiful, beautiful, the most beautiful creature in the whole wide world. Catharine..."
"Yes," she admitted, stepping back and wiping her nose with a lace handkerchief from her dressing-robe pocket. "I'm still beautiful. I am."
There, that was better. The reflection smiled back at her and it was true. She was incredibly lovely, especially in this place.
"It's all right," she whispered aloud. Her words echoed back from the flat cool glass. She ran her finger against the outline of her face. The mirror warmed under her touch.
She looked at her daddy's big chair, pulled up before her, facing the glass. No, not today. Too many things to do. She looked back at her reflection. It almost seemed to have a life of its own, a reassuring forever-life that comforted her and drew her in.
"I have to get ready," she whispered to herself. "I have to go away."
"No," the mirror whispered back. "Don't go. You're so beautiful."
She laughed at herself and blew a kiss to her reflection. The sun glinted on her hair as she turned away and went downstairs to begin her preparations for the trip.
First, she phoned Eugene and told him she would be leaving in a week or so, and he promised to give her extra time, or last-minute time-anything she wanted. Then she called Boston and made appointments for viewing the latest clothes from her favorite designers.
Within fifteen minutes of her first call, the phone rang. It was Karen Makepeace, already full of the news.
"How thrilling, Catharine. How perfectly divine, to go off like that on your own! However in the world does Richard dare to let you go?"
"Why shouldn't he?" Catharine asked, puzzled.
"With your looks-and all those European men with their famous hands and ... well, you know what they say about European men. My God, I envy you. Mort thinks I'm being unfaithful to him if I step into the kitchen at a party to get ice-cubes. He follows me."
"I'd never be unfaithful to Richard," Catharine said, laughing at the very idea.
"Wait till you get over there," Karen advised.
"Don't be silly," Catharine said.
"Come on, Catharine, don't you ever even dream about other guys? Come on, admit it. With all the attention you get...."
"I get quite enough from Richard to satisfy me," Catharine lied coolly.
"Okay, okay. How about lunch at the club before you go?"
"I'll try," Catharine promised.
"Call me," Karen said.
"Yes, of course."
She hung up and started to wonder. Would the men in Europe really be any different from the bores and boors, all with the same line, that she knew in Placid? Was there a man, anywhere in the world, who could satisfy her deep and terrible needs ... she put the thought resolutely out of her mind. What to take, which shoes, what jewelry to select, she'd have to buy a makeup case, could she ever find a hairdresser or cosmetician to equal Eugene's intimate knowledge of her face and hair...
And then she remembered. She went into her bathroom and turned on the full power of the stark "truth lights." She examined her mouth and her eyes with the care of a surgeon exploring inside a brain for signs of cancer. She twisted her lips and squinted her eyes. And there it was. A definite crease on either side of her mouth. The line from her left eye had deepened, too.
Determined not to make it worse by crying, she spent the next two hours applying the makeup as Eugene had taught her to do. Finally, she was ready to leave the house.
She was half an hour late for their lunch date, and Richard was obviously angry, although he said nothing about it. He took her to Chez Vous for escargots and squab, and they talked about the trip. After lunch, they went to the bank and Richard arranged for her traveler's checks and letter of credit. Just before he handed her into the car, he said, "Oh, I almost forgot to tell you-Arthur and Janet Manchester are coming to dinner tonight."
"Who in the world are they?" Catharine asked. She was standing with one foot inside the car, bent in an awkward position half in and half out. Abel stood politely holding the car door open, trying not to stare at her thigh where the skirt was hiked up.
"I'm doing business with him," Richard explained. "He's visiting Placid to meet with me and I just found out before I left the office that he brought his wife along. So I asked them both to dinner tonight. I told Lisa, so there's nothing for you to do, except be on time. Seven sharp."
"But-"
Abel couldn't help it, he had to look somewhere. Unconsciously aware of eyes on her, Catharine stepped back onto the sidewalk. The skirt fell back over her tanned thigh.
"But what?" Richard said impatiently.
"Nothing," Catharine said. "What business are you doing with him? Just so I'll know."
"We're going to open up the old mine," Richard said. "If he wants to put capital into it..."
"Daddy's old mine? The one in Stover Hills?"
"That's it. Come on now, I'm late for a meeting."
Catharine got into the car, and Abel shut the door. Richard stuck his head inside the window to repeat, "Seven o'clock, try to be on hand to greet them when they get there, will you, darling?"
"Of course," Catharine said politely. Abel started the car's silent motor and they slipped into the afternoon traffic.
"Miss Jennifer's in a tournament at the country club," Abel said over his shoulder. "She asked me to remind you, Miss Catharine."
"Oh, my gosh. What time is it?"
"It's ten past three," he answered.
"Please take me to the club, then," Catharine said, dismayed. She would be late for Jennifer's tennis match, and the poor child would really feel abandoned. Where did the time go...
"Don't worry, Miss Catharine," Abel said. He seemed to be observing her all the time through that damned rear-view mirror, she thought irritably. She wondered if she should order curtains for the glass divider between the front and rear seats, or would that be an insult to poor old Abel-she hated ever to hurt anyone's feelings. She'd have to go on putting up with it, the sensation that Abel's eyes were always on her. "Miss Jennifer's in the finals," he was saying, "so her match won't be coming up right away. We'll be in time."
"Would I have time to change clothes?" Catharine wondered aloud. "I'm dressed for lunch in town, not for watching tennis at the club."
Abel looked at her in his little four-by-eight inch viewer. How odd, she thought. He sees so much of my life through that little mirror. like it's an aperture, an observation window he sees the world through. My personal and private world. And he sees it backwards ... the idle thought made her smile, and Abel thought she was smiling at him. His underwear started to grab at him and he kicked down on the brake with a spastic gesture, shaking his right leg to ease the pressure. He saw, however, that his mistress was looking out of the window and not at him. She had asked him a question-what was it? Oh, yah, would she have time to dress-that was a hot one, the time she always took to get herself got up.
"No, ma'am, I don't think you better take time to go all the way home and change, not if you want to see Miss Jenny play."
"All right, Abel," she agreed, and kept on gazing out at the shops and bars along Main Street. Damn, she thought, if Jennifer plays last, I won't be home until after five, and I'll never be ready on time for Richard's guests. And now I'm going to appear at the club dressed all wrong. People will stare-they always do, though, the hell with them. I know how to walk and how to hold my head; I know how to make them feel that they're the ones who must be dressed wrong.
Her blood actually started racing to the challenge. She took out her hand mirror and began to repair the damage to her mouth from Richard's quick good-bye kiss.
They stopped at a light. A heavy-set man with a two-day growth of beard, dressed in grimy work clothes, leaned against the wall near a corner bar. He saw the huge sleek Lincoln and the knock-out blonde staring out at him. He stared at her and she stared right back.
He grinned and made an obscene gesture. Catharine turned her head away.
Watching her, Abel thought that it really did serve her right, the way she looked at men without even realizing it. He felt a strongly protective attitude toward Catharine that went way beyond a servant-mistress loyalty. He figured that he understood her better than anyone else in the whole world, including her husband. He had watched her grow up. Literally watched her, he thought, with a little smile. Then he was angry again. That drunk had no business looking back at her like that. I ought to get out of the car and knock that guy into the gutter where he belongs. Would she be pleased? His thoughts were rudely interrupted by impatient horns behind him, and he stepped on the accelerator with a sigh.
They drove along the beach road. Catharine stared out at the sea, her thoughts miles away. I'll bet I know what she's thinking about, the same thing I am, Abel mused, glancing at her profile in the rear-view mirror. Nice Richard can't do the job for her, I know that much. I could. I know what she wants. He sighed again and shifted in his seat as he demonstrated his skill with the wheel on the narrow curves of the road.
He reminded me of that fisherman in my dream, Catharine was thinking. That filthy man on the street, and I looked at him and wondered what it would be like to take his greasy balls in my mouth and make him scream with loving me. It was Karen who put those thoughts in my mind. I never thought about other men before. Not real men, not a ass standing on a street corner. Not that way. Would he have coarse black hairs all over his shoulders and back, and his belly and his ass? Would he smell like beer and sweat and unspeakable things? Would he have a huge red cock with warm ale spurting out of it? Could I take it all in my mouth, would it taste good ... better than champagne...
They pulled up in front of the country club, and Abel came round to open the door for her.
Jennifer ran to them from the far court where she had been warming up. She threw her sweaty little arms around her mother.
"Oh, Mommy, I'm so glad you got here in time to watch me play!" she said excitedly.
Catharine tried not to move away from her little girl, but her silk dress was in danger of getting stained and wrinkled. "Let me watch you work out," she smiled, disengaging Jennifer's hands.
"Is Daddy coming too?"
"No, I don't think so, darling. He's very, very busy today," Catharine said as they walked back to the court.
"Watch me, Mommy. I've improved my serve!" Jennifer ran off, and Catharine admired her long straight legs, just beginning to fill out in the faint hint of curves she would have one day. Her little white tennis dress skimmed her body and the skirt flirted up over her slightly rounding rump as she ran.
Jennifer won her match, against a plain, earnest child with large ears. There followed a long and tedious trophy-awarding ceremony in which every child won something, if only a consolation prize. Catharine privately thought it quite unfair. Only the winners should receive trophies. But Jennifer was thrilled with her silver cup proclaiming her the best girl singles player under fourteen. She chattered happily all the way home.
They were very late. Catharine had insisted on Jennifer showering and changing from her stained tennis clothes before getting into the car. Jennifer had taken a long time in the dressing room, and finally Catharine had to go in there to announce that her daddy would be waiting, so she'd better leave off chattering with her friends and fussing before the mirror. The obedient little girl came right away then, but still it was nearly six by the time Abel dropped them off at the front door.
"Daddy! Daddy! I won, I won the tournament!" Jennifer cried, running up the stairs.
Catharine couldn't wait to get out of the clinging dress she had been wearing since noon. She went directly to her dressing room from the hall, and was ready to step into her deliciously tempting bath when Jennifer knocked on the door from inside her parents' bedroom.
She's in there with him alone, Catharine thought. Is Richard parading around in his shorts again, for her benefit? Disgusting.
"Mommy," Jennifer called. "Can I come in and show you something?"
Catharine poured from a flagon some raspberry-scented moisturizer slowly over her shoulders. It was thick and creamy, and it ran down her back into the water in lazy rivulets, like fingers caressing and teasing and moving down, down into the almost invisible downy hairs, sensitive beyond belief. She squatted in the water, buoyed up on her toes, her bent knees just barely under the surface, and the water lapping at her crotch, skimming in and out, around and behind, teasing and soothing, washing and tickling.
"Not now, Jennifer," she called out dreamily.
"It's a present. Daddy gave it to me," Jennifer called to her through the door. " 'Cause he couldn't come to the match."
"That's nice, darling," Catharine said. She rubbed the moisturizer around her breasts, massaging the soft nipples so they would stay supple and sweet. They stood erect, creamy and raspberry-scented. She wished she could taste them.
"Don't you want to see it?"
"Of course I do, darling, but not right now. I must dress for dinner."
"It's a gold locket," Jennifer said in a forlorn-sounding voice.
"I'll see it when I come out, darling."
"It's real gold."
"That's lovely, darling."
After a few moments of silence, she concluded that Jennifer had gone, and hoped she hadn't hurt the child's feelings. But Richard would be so angry if she was late again ... then he knocked on the door himself.
"I'm going downstairs, Catharine. Please don't be late."
"What time is it?"
"Is the clock in there on the blink again?" he said, annoyed.
She looked up at it, guiltily. Richard had been the one to insist on a clock in her bathroom. She hated the idea. She had deliberately reset the clock several times, so that the fanciful mermaids who wound around the great figure of Poseidon, pointing to the minutes and hours with their tails, would never, never be able to remind her of time passing. They swam happily in their illusionary underwater pool of deepest turquoise, and she liked them better because they pointed no warnings, no morals. As far as they were concerned, it was twenty minutes to three, and it didn't matter whether that was a.m. or p.m., either.
She slid off her haunches to settle down into the water, and continued her bath games as if it really were twenty minutes to three.
"I thought you'd surely be dressed by now," Richard said an hour or so later, when she was sitting at her dressing table. He had come into the bedroom without knocking. Unconsciously, she pulled her dressing-gown up to cover her breasts. He frowned. "The guests have been here for over half an hour," he said.
"I'm sorry, Richard," she answered contritely. She had noticed his reflex of suppressed anger. Was it because she was late or because she had covered herself when he walked in? She wasn't doing anything to be ashamed of. Just trying on different gold necklaces. She turned to smile at him. "What dress should I wear, darling?"
"Wear something red. We could use a little color."
He left the room abruptly, without smiling back at her.
Catharine turned back to the vanity, and opened the top drawer. She took out the little bottle of pills and unscrewed the cap with a nervous movement, shook out a tranquilizer and swallowed it without water. She hurried to dress, and was downstairs in another twenty minutes.
"I'm sorry to be late," she said with her most enchanting company smile.
"Not at all," murmured the rather dowdy Mrs. Manchester.
"Well, it certainly was worth waiting for!" said her hearty, overweight, half-bombed husband.
It was all so predictable. Arthur Manchester's remark, and the quick look his wife darted at him ... the usual reactions that greeted Catharine when people met her for the first time. She knew exactly how to handle it. Ignoring the husband's stares, she turned her full attention to Janet Manchester.
"Have you had a chance to see anything of our little town yet, Mrs. Manchester? I hope you'll be here long enough to lunch with me at our club," she smiled.
Her guest leaned back in her chair, visibly relaxed. She opened her tight little mouth to answer, but her bluff husband cut her off.
"We were talking about gold mines, Mrs. Burgess," he said. "But now it seems to me your lucky husband's got himself a nice little treasure right here at home!"
Gales of laughter from Richard, followed politely by both women, greeted this rude and inane comment. It was clear that his boorishness would pass for flattery because Richard needed him for business reasons. Catharine felt a genuine stab of pity for his wife. Who would want to be married to that gross man ... he had a small nose, turned up. He probably had a small dick, hanging down.
Her daddy never would have allowed such talk to be directed at her.
"It really is a shame to hide your wife all the way out here in the provinces," Janet Manchester said. Catharine recognized the direction the wife had decided to take. A bit of condescension, to salve her own jealous feelings.
"Dinner is served," Abel announced.
Expertly concealing her distaste, Catharine took Arthur Manchester's arm and led the way into the dining room. She managed deftly to keep his arm from rubbing against her breast, although he was almost walking in a crouch trying to reach for it.
"My daddy found that coal deposit up in the Stover Hills when I was very little," she said conversationally. "We used to ride up there all the time, just the two of us. We both rode stallions. Big ones." Now, why had she said that?
"I'll bet you sit a horse beautifully," Arthur Manchester leered.
Catharine ignored that. She allowed him to seat her, and waited for Richard and Janet Manchester to settle themselves at the long formal table. She caught her reflection in the polished silver of the serving plate before her. This was her milieu, this beautiful room with the white linen cloth and gleaming heavy silver, the shining crystal and gentle candlelight. It was the only room where she still felt truly at home since they had moved all the old familiar things upstairs. Her daddy's portrait, full-length in his riding coat, still smiled down at her.
"We used to pretend there was gold in the mine," she said, taking up the thread of the conversation where they had left it, "but of course that was only a family joke. 'Coal is as good as gold,' my daddy used to say, 'and there's a lot more of it.' He was planning to take it out of the ground, just before he died."
"I knew you'd have to mention that, Catharine," Richard said. She looked across the table at him in surprise.
"What the hell's the difference who found the stuff?" Arthur Manchester said. "If it's there, you and I have a deal, that's what matters now."
"Oh, how nice," Catharine said. She stole a tentative glance at Richard, who did not look up from his soup.
"Yes," Janet Manchester said, leaning forward eagerly. "Then we would be spending a great deal of time here. We'd become really good friends. I'm so tired of New York, honestly. We could build a beach house . . , "
Arthur raised his wine glass toward Catharine as soon as Abel had finished pouring. Janet immediately raised hers toward Richard. He reciprocated, and after a second's hesitation, Catharine saluted the beady eyes and tiny nose of the man on her left.
Keeping control of the conversation, she asked, "Do you like to ride?" Her question was clearly directed to Janet Manchester.
But Arthur Manchester answered. "Yes," he said. "I would just love to ride with you, Catharine."
"Do you ride, Mrs. Manchester?" Catharine asked, pointedly.
"Oh ... please, call me Janet. No ... I never have, but I'd just love to learn."
By the time they got to the brandy and coffee, the talk was becoming more and more difficult to steer. Arthur Manchester was unable to take his eyes off Catharine, his wife looked on the verge of tears, and Richard was showing the effects of too many martinis before dinner by either ignoring everything Catharine said or countering her with little sarcastic jabs. It was almost as though he was trying to show his guests that he, at least, was not affected by his wife's extraordinary beauty.
She didn't know what had gone wrong, but she was immensely relieved when Jennifer came into the room.
"Hello, darling! May I see your new locket now?" Catharine said, holding out her arms to her bouncy daughter.
"I left it upstairs."
"Look who's here!" Richard boomed out cheerfully, his good humor restored at last. "Come to say good night?"
"No, I didn't. I came to show Mr. Manchester pictures of me." She stepped into the circle of light from the table, and they all saw that she was wearing a very short white party dress, and carrying a photograph album under her bare arm.
"What a beautiful child!" Janet Manchester gasped involuntarily.
"Thank you," Jennifer said, pretending a shyness Catharine knew damn well she didn't feel.
"Why, I'd love to see your pictures, little girl," Arthur Manchester leered.
"I think you ought to say good night and go to bed, darling," Catharine said.
Richard grinned at Jennifer. "You tell your mother I think it's all right to show your beautiful pictures to our guests," he said.
Catharine's fingers tightened on the stem of her brandy glass. She lifted it and drank. Abel was standing behind Richard, and Catharine signaled him to pour her another.
Jennifer was sidling up to Manchester, her book in his lap. He had pushed himself slightly away from the table and casually put his arm around the little girl as he clucked admiringly at her pictures. Jennifer leaned into him as she turned the pages.
"And this was when I was Snow White, the Fairest of Them All," she was saying. Catharine looked at herself in the shimmering amber liquid before draining the brandy glass again.
"My mother promised she would show me how to put on makeup like she does, for the new play I'm going to be in. Didn't you, Mommy?"
"You don't need makeup, Jenny," Janet Manchester said.
Catharine's throat burned from the brandy. She forced herself to speak. "My daughter is going to be playing the same role I did when I was her age, isn't that fun? They still have my picture up in the school. I wore a-"
"After twenty years, Catharine still thinks she's playing the fairy princess," Richard cut in cruelly.
Janet Manchester filled the awkward moment with admirable social grace. "Catharine, I called you when we arrived in town yesterday. I thought we should get to know each other."
"I was ... I was here all day."
"That's odd. Your maid said she couldn't find you."
"Mommy plays in the attic sometimes," Jennifer giggled.
"Not exactly, darling. I still have things up there. All our old things. My whole life..." she trailed off, wondering at her own words, wondering what it was she was trying to say. "Sometimes I have to spend hours looking for something I need," she finished lamely.
Jennifer pressed herself against Arthur Manchester's chest and turned another page impatiently. "This was my first tennis tournament. I won the girls' singles today," she said. She looked at him, waiting for praise.
Arthur looked into the child's huge innocent eyes, only inches away from his own. "Jennifer," he said, "you're sensational."
"I hope you're here when we do our play," she flirted. "I would like you to come and see me in it."
"I'm sure they will if they can, Jennifer," Catharine said firmly. "Now I think you can go up, don't you, Richard?" Her eyes locked with her husband's down the length of the table, and sparked dangerously in the flame from the low-burning candles.
"Come here, honey," Richard said agreeably, but to Jennifer, not to his wife. "Let's have a good-night hug."
Jennifer gathered her album from Manchester's lap, which he instantly covered with his napkin. The lithe little legs skipped around the table to Richard. Jennifer threw herself into his open arms, and Richard's hand slid down her slim back to rest cupped over her buttocks for a tender open-handed caress.
Catharine tapped her empty brandy glass, but Abel either didn't notice or decided to ignore her.
Jennifer, finally letting go of Richard, came round to her mother. "Good night, Mommy."
" 'Night, darling," Catharine said.
" 'Night, Mrs. Manchester."
Janet waved her diamond-covered fingers and Jennifer moved toward the door.
" 'Night, everybody," she said, milking the attention, and then she danced out of the room.
"She's going to be one hell of a man-killer," Arthur Manchester said fervidly.
"Yes," Richard answered with pride. "Ah, but you should have seen her mother when I met her. She was even more beautiful than Jennifer."
Arthur smiled at Catharine. There was a very tiny speck of food lodged between his two front teeth. "I'd say she's still not hard to look at," he said.
"It's so nice having you both here," said Catharine. "Do you travel a lot?"
"We get around," Janet said in a bored voice. "I've never left this town, except to go to Boston, of course, and when we went to Bermuda on our honeymoon. And that was only two weeks...."
"And whose fault was that?" Richard murmured.
"But we're planning a glorious vacation now, aren't we, darling?" Catharine continued, seemingly unruffled, although her head had started to ache. "We're off for Europe very soon. I'm ... I'm looking forward to it."
"Yes, Catharine needs to get away," Richard said to the guests.
Why was he looking away from her? He had said that she didn't look the way she had when he met her. He made her feel like a stranger, an intruder. "This is my house," she blurted suddenly. The other three stared at her. "I mean, I've lived right here, in this very house, all my life. I love it here. I've never had any need to get away, before..."
"Catharine keeps her childhood safely locked away up in the attic. I finally got her to redecorate the house, but she wouldn't throw away or allow me to sell a single thing. All her father's furniture-you wouldn't believe some of the heavy old Victorian furniture and bric-a-brac. A lot of very fine and valuable antiques, of course, but a lot of junk, too."
"There was a time when this house was the show-place of the state," Catharine said dreamily. The brandy had made her reflection in the silver platter kind of soft around the edges, not an unpleasant effect. "My daddy-"
"Yes," Richard cut in. "Catharine's father was the great lord around here. He could get away with anything in this town ... but those days are over, aren't they, dear? Would you like a cigar, Arthur?"
Abel passed around the open humidor to the men. Catharine held up her glass, and noted with some surprise that Abel looked at Richard before coming over with the brandy to pour her another. Richard nodded, and her glass was replenished.
"Shall we drink to days gone by?" Arthur said, looking at Catharine.
"No," Richard answered. "Let's drink to the future, to our partnership, to the mine."
They sipped at the brandy.
"Catharine, you ought to come and spend some time with us in New York before you leave for Europe."
"Well, thank you. That's very nice of you."
Arthur's loud laughter at that could only be interpreted as lewd. His wife smiled all too warmly at Richard. Catharine felt the table and its occupants diminishing in size, moving away from her. She stared down the length of the receding, endless whirl of white and gold and silver, sputtering candles, and the remains of their meal, trying to find Richard's steady eyes. He looked at her from a great distance.
"I think my wife is at her most desirable when she is flushed and warmed from the brandy," he observed.
"Richard!"
"You know, she hardly took a sip until her father died, six years ago."
"I don't blame you for wanting to hold onto your childhood memories," Janet Manchester said tactfully. "They must have been wonderful times."
"Yes. Oh, my, yes," Richard agreed. "The beautiful and cultivated Catharine Johnston, still trying-after thirteen years-to be an everyday, matter-of-fact wife." He raised his glass. "But she is still quite beautiful."
"I'll drink to that," Arthur said, and drained his brandy in one gulp.
Catharine's hand, usually so graceful, knocked her glass over. The amber liquid spread slowly over the white linen and she stared at it, horrified.
"Come on, honey, pour yourself another. Abel, give Miss Catharine-they still call her Miss Catharine around here-give my wife the bottle. Just leave it there in front of her."
"No ... I ... I..." Catharine rose from the table. Her face was as pale as the napkin she clutched in her hand. Everyone stared at her, not in admiration but in distorted masks of hostility that she could not bear to see. "Please forgive me," she managed to say. "I'm so glad you were able to come tonight. Would you please forgive me, excuse me ... I'm not feeling well..." She moved, a bit unsteadily, away from the table.
Richard stood up quickly. He reached the door before she did and blocked her way. "What is it, Catharine? A moment ago you were..."
She smiled weakly and took his hand in a gesture meant to reassure him. Then she turned and went past him through the door and into the large center hall. Richard stood for a moment looking after her, and then he turned and shut the door. He had an apology in his smile for them.
Catharine locked the door of her bathroom and turned on the gold dolphin faucets. She slid out of the red dress while the tub was filling, but her impatience was too great to bother with her slip or pantyhose. She poured the oil from the first flask her hand touched, and grabbed the douche bag and jar of cream with a haste unlike anything she had experienced before. In a moment, she was rubbing herself with the creamy cock, against the stockings that clung to her legs, and the full shot of the ejaculation penetrated through the panties to fill her with messy but instant relief. Then she stood up, reached down to close the tub's faucets and slowly peeled the soaked and stained pantyhose from her waist, down over her sodden hips, past the wet thighs and calves of her legs, over her tingling toes. She looked at herself, standing in a damp and cream-stained pink satin slip. "Dirty," she whispered. "Dirty. I'll wash you, you'll be perfect again."
She let the slip straps slide down from her shoulders and wriggled her rump over the satin until she was free of it. With both hands, she ripped off the ruined panties and reached down to touch herself with patting, caressing, rubbing, exploring fingers. She opened her lips and ran the side of her thumb gently along the inside, wiping away some of the moisture that came as much from inside her as from the contents of the rubber bag.
Her sweet little clit throbbed shyly as she touched it with a gentle fingertip, promises for later. Lazily, the tiny bud retreated beneath the delicate petaled opening, only to peek out again as Catharine's hands soothed and excited the soft curling hairs where all was hidden.
Catharine stepped down into the sunken marble tub for a long and private cleansing of her body and her mind. "Daddy," she whispered aloud, but she was not aware of it. She sank blissfully into the brief deep moment of orgasmic oblivion.
Much, much later, she looked at the bathroom clock. The swimming laughing mermaids seemed to have stopped moving around the giant Poseidon entirely. They were just suspended there, playing happily with his enormous trident and balls. Their tails pointed to noon, or midnight, or half-past, or something like that. Catharine's indolent gaze didn't bother to focus on that.
Finally, she stepped from the tub. She looked radiant again, self-assured and ivory-pink all over. She selected lotion from a cut-glass decanter, and began spreading it on her throat, shoulders and arms, the swell of her breasts, her belly, ass, and long lazy legs. From a neatly folded stack in the closet, she selected a deep rose gown and let it slide over her head and down her body till its hem touched the floor. The low bodice emphasized her body in a manner that would tempt the saints, and she arranged her hair to flow down her bare back as innocently as an angel's.
When she entered their bedroom, she caught Richard standing before his own mirror, bare-chested, running his fingers over the edges of his receding hairline, staring closely at his reflection to check for lines in his own face. He smiled at himself wistfully and then turned toward the big double bed. He saw Catharine standing in the halo of light from the open bathroom door, but he said nothing to her. He crawled under the covers on his side of the bed and watched her without any expression as she reached behind her to turn off the bathroom light, and came toward him. Before getting into bed, she looked around the room, and saw that the roses on her dressing table were drooping. She lifted them from their vase, cut the stems with a scissors from the drawer, and replaced them in their water. Then she turned to him and smiled her most seductive smile.
"Are you feeling all right now?" he asked.
"Fine," she answered in a husky voice.
"I don't understand you, Catharine."
She turned back to the roses, to breathe deeply of their perfume and to catch one last glimpse of herself in the vanity mirror. Then she walked slowly toward the bed. Richard did not take his eyes from her. She turned off the lamp on her side of the bed and lay back, smiling at him.
"It was a very nice evening," she said.
Richard turned off his own lamp and, in the dark, he pulled the satin comforter down from his wife's body. Catharine closed her eyes and waited for his kiss.
But her half-open mouth, a juicy peach waiting to be licked, tasted, savored, waited in vain. Richard's hand covered her breast, pushing aside the satin bodice to squeeze her flesh. His other hand went immediately to her crotch, impatiently bunching up the long yards of nightgown to get at it. With his knee, he pushed her thighs apart, and he took his hand from her breast to fumble with his pajamas. Tears sprang to Catharine's tightly shut eyes. She threw her hands over her face to hide it from the moonlight that filtered through the open window.
"What the hell is wrong?" Richard panted.
"Can't you ... I'm sorry."
Catharine let her hands fall back onto the pillow. Automatically, she spread her thighs. Richard looked down at her averted face, and felt her body arch beneath him, an offering. His burning erection melted as if it had been hit with a shovelful of snow. He turned away from her and settled back, burrowing his head into his own pillow, his back to her.
She opened her eyes and lay without moving, staring at the mountain of his shoulder, and up at the ceiling where pale shadows danced. The moon was shining on them through the wind-tossed branches of the oak tree her daddy had taught her how to climb.
It was a long time before she heard his breathing become the deep regular rhythm of sleep. She slipped from the bed without disturbing him. She stood at the window for a little while, her arms wrapped around herself, shivering slightly and staring down at the driveway.
When she left the room, the clock in the hallway downstairs was just beginning to chime. One. Two. Silence.
She tiptoed down the thickly carpeted hall on her bare feet. She stopped in front of Jennifer's door, but did not open it. She went on, to the end of the hall and the little door leading to the attic steps.
The moonlight did not penetrate the attic windows. It was impenetrably dark, but Catharine stepped inside with sure feet. She turned the key in the lock and maneuvered her way unhesitatingly through the complex of heavy furniture. In her own little space, she reached her hand out and unerringly found the box of matches on the table next to her mirror. One by one, she lit the candles on the ornate five-pronged bronze candelabra her daddy had brought from a deconsecrated church in Egypt long before she was born.
The ticking of the old grandfather clock was loud and comforting. In the dim light, she opened its etched glass door and turned the huge brass key to wind it. 2:03, it said. Catharine walked lovingly around her daddy's things, touching the sturdy surfaces: the huge polished old desk with the leather top and her daddy's favorite green-shaded lamp still in its proper place; the old wooden steamer trunk whose fittings still gleamed in the shadowy light; many baroque frames holding mirrors and dark, somber paintings stacked carefully in rows. In her own corner, her little white four-poster bed, and next to it her doll's carriage with its handmade lace spread and high shiny wheels.
Her beloved mirror, huge when she was a tiny child primping and prancing before it, now only slightly taller than she was, standing on its own carved easel frame, delicately curved in a tall thin oval. Her daddy's chair had been pulled up before it, like a throne.
Teasing herself, Catharine refused to look into her mirror. Not yet, even though it seemed to reach out to her, seductive, promising the affirmation she so desperately needed. Not yet.
She went to the old white oak cupboard that used to stand in her room, and opened its doors. An array of costumes hung there, fit for a young girl with many fantasies. Gauzy, filmy silken gowns and trousers and blouses and capes, and shawls made of lace, floppy hats with orange flowers and trailing white ribbons, skirts of organdy and satin and sheerest chiffon, and all her proper little party dresses that were the demure costumes she wore in public. A souvenir from every trip her daddy ever took, memories of him dashing up the wide circular staircase with boxes under his arm, waking her in the middle of the night sometimes, to shout "Princess, I'm home! Look what Daddy has brought you this time!" and her mother's protests lost in the excitement, as she tore open the wrappings and dressed up for her daddy-his little Scheherazade, or a Cossack princess or a great lady at a ball, or even a little matador in tight-fitting trousers made for a boy.
She ran her hand slowly over the hanging costumes, touching each fabric in turn, allowing the sensual touch of the material to flood her memory with pleasure.
She chose a simple white party dress, after all, and pressed it to her cheek as she took it carefully from its hanger. It was the one she had worn the night ... but she would not think, she would only feel, tonight.
She laid the dress on her daddy's worn leather chair and reached into a drawer of the oak cupboard. From the neatly folded rows of hand-made panties and camisoles and stockings and slips, she chose a pair of filmy milk-white stockings. Nothing else.
In a moment, her satin nightgown was in a heap on the attic floor. The white dress was pulled over her head, and the ripely lovely woman was transformed into a virginal schoolgirl. She had to strain to get the row of tiny bodice buttons fastened, but when she did, her full breasts enhanced the little-girl look of the simple dress to a degree that went beyond lasciviousness to something more scintillating, more sinful, more sinister.
She moved toward her mirror slowly, almost coyly. At last she stood in front of her reflection, and she was pleased with what she saw.
"There you are," she whispered. "Have you been waiting for me?"