Chapter 2
Arthur Hadley couldn't help being grateful to golden-haired young Betty for having misjudged her throw of the beachball. After what had started out to be a dreary and lonely vacation, in which even the sunlight and the scenic beauty hadn't stopped him from thinking about how much he missed Sonya, he now found himself part of a laughing, carefree trio tossing the ball to mother and then daughter, calling upon his own somewhat out-out-practice athletic ability to catch it and throw it within range of his two partners. It was certainly exhilarating, and after about half an hour when Eleanor Stanfield laughingly called a halt on the grounds that she and her daughter had best go back to their rooms and dress for dinner, he felt genuinely sorry that so pleasant an interlude should come to such an abrupt end.
During the game, he hadn't been able to take his eyes off either Eleanor or her daughter, and the latter had certainly come from good stock and inherited a fine legacy of tempting, healthy young physique. Still, the marks on Betty's upper thighs puzzled him again, and when she bent to catch a low throw from her mother, the hems of her bathing suit crept up just enough to indicate that there were quite a few of these inexplicable marks.
But what entranced him most of all was the voluptuous figure of Eleanor Stanfield herself. Even though he had been a faithfully married husband during the eighteen years with Sonya, Arthur Hadley had always had an eye for an attractive woman. In fact, he had had to do a good deal of sublimation, for he had occasionally procured stag films and erotic books and magazines during the course of his travels, many of them foisted on him by well meaning business associates which had stirred unholy desires in his body. Since his firm was a highly ethical and quite famous one, he didn't dare risk any scandal that could be traced back either to his employers or himself, and he knew that Sonya would certainly never forgive him if he cheated on her in a way that brought notoriety. This wasn't to say that he hadn't many times lusted for a different girl in bed with him, especially when he was on one of his trips, but he invariably had had to close his eyes, pretend that such a girl was beside him, and then sublimate by relieving himself with the age-old way that Onan had discovered.
In fact, so delicious did Eleanor Stanfield's body appear to him that Arthur Hadley several times had to admonish himself for thinking lustful thoughts, which certainly wasn't in keeping with the period of mourning he had been observing since Sonya's tragically unexpected demise. Her flesh wasn't at all flabby or fat, and when she ran after a ball or flung it, the magnificent jiggling of her bottom and titties and highs began to make him experience an agonizing itch in his loins.
As Eleanor and Betty picked up their robes and started back to the hotel, he felt himself tongue tied and at the same time desperate at the notion that this delightful and enjoyable experience might not be repeated. "I-I want to thank you for letting me share your fun, Eleanor," he blurted.
"How very nice of you, Arthur! I enjoyed it too, and I'm sure Betty did. Didn't you, darling?"
"Oh yes! And I hope Mr. Hadley isn't mad at me because I hit him with the ball," the charming golden-haired teenager pertly retorted.
"Isn't angry with you, dear, not mad at you," her mother gently but firmly corrected. "I'm sure he's forgiven you by now."
"The fact is," Arthur Hadley plunged, "I'm really glad she did hit me. If she hadn't, I wouldn't have had the pleasure of meeting both of you."
"Why, what a nice compliment!" Eleanor Stanfield smilingly acknowledged his words with a cordial little nod.
"I was wondering, if it isn't too presumptuous of me, if perhaps we might have a drink or even dinner together at your convenience."
Eleanor Stanfield seemed to frown as if pondering the advisability of accepting an invitation after so short an acquaintanceship. Then she looked at him and smiled. "Why, as a matter of fact, I do think I'd like a cocktail before dinner. Betty, dear, suppose you run along and change. Then you can meet me down in the lobby by quarter of six, and we'll go into dinner."
"All right, Mother. Glad to have met you, Mr. Hadley," Betty said in her clear sweet voice. Then she turned and hurried away.
"Don't run, dear," her mother called after her, and Betty immediately slackened to a moderate jog.
Arthur Hadley looked after the lovely young girl, and he was thinking about his own recalcitrant and moody daughter Hester. "She really minds you, doesn't she, Eleanor? In this day and age, I think it's amazing. And it does you a great deal of credit," he remarked.
"You're much too flattering, Arthur. Besides, I can't take all the credit at all. I'd rather give it to the method I use. But we'll discuss that over cocktails. Let's see--give me about fifteen min-cuts, and I'll meet you down in the lobby."
"Say, that's right," he chuckled, flushing hotly, "I forgot I was wearing my bathing suit. I guess it would never do to go in there for a drink. I'll meet you there in the lobby, then. And-and thanks for being so nice, Eleanor."
When he came down to the lobby in the new white linen suit he'd bought for the vacation to Malibu, his eyes widened with pleasure to see Eleanor Stanfield seated in a thickly upholstered armchair wearing a perfectly ravishing blue rayon frock which hugged her luscious curves almost like a second skin. The hemline was classic, neither too short nor too long, just to the tops of her knees. And since she had crossed them, he could observe the flawless symmetry of her magnificently rounded, beautifully muscled calves sheathed in beige nylons, and her dainty feet shod in trim black leather pumps with three-inch heels. He approached smilingly, and somehow, ridiculously, he felt like a schoolboy on his first date as he greeted her: "You're certainly punctual, Eleanor! That's another admirable thing about you."
"My, Arthur, I've never met a man who's as full of compliments as you are at first meeting. Shall we have our cocktail now?"
"Nothing would suit me better. But what about dinner this evening?'
"Oh, I am sorry. I'd promised Mrs. Thompson --she's a friend I met on my first day here and the invitation is of two days' standing. Otherwise, I'd certainly say yes."
"Well, perhaps tomorrow night, then? I'd like it very much if you'd bring Betty, too. I think she's a wonderful girl."
"You know, Arthur," she said archly as she rose with a sinuous elegance from the chair that left him tingling with excitement and the awareness that he was being sensually roused as he hadn't been in years, "you know all the right things to say to a woman. Now complimenting me is fine, but my weak spot is Betty, because I'm very proud of her. And it hasn't been easy, being a widow bringing up a little girl and trying to teach her how to behave properly and eventually assume her role in the world. Not when you think of all the delinquents and the vandalism and the wrong influences that are being aimed at kids these days."
The attractive cocktail room hostess seated Arthur Hadley and Eleanor Stanfield at a quiet little table in a corner, for which he was extremely grateful. He ordered sherry after learning that Betty's mother preferred gin and tonic. He was bursting with questions, but he knew that it would be a tactless mistake to hurry this relationship. Psychologically, he would be on the defensive if he tried to press and to go too quickly. It was only, he told himself, that he was so starved for affection since Sonya's death and because he found this mature and beautiful woman so fascinating, so sympathetic. So he wisely waited till the drinks had been served, and then he lifted his sherry and proposed a toast, "To our getting to know each other better and my thanks for making this vacation memorable."
"That's very sweet, Arthur." Eleanor Stanfield raised her glass and clinked it with his. "You're really a very gracious man. And you know, I'll bet you're thinking that I'm thinking that you're trying to pick me up."
Arthur Hadley's face went red and he shifted nervously in his seat, looked down at his glass. "Well, I certainly didn't want you to get that impression," he finally stammered.
"It's perfectly all right. As soon as you told me you had a daughter and were a widower, I realized that you were bound to be lonely. And then of course when I noticed that your daughter wasn't with you--and isn't with you now--, I was convinced of it. No, Arthur, I'm not afraid that you're just a masher. I can see the signs of good domestic training in a man, and you evidently loved your wife very much."
"That's very true, Eleanor. And perhaps because I did, I find myself now at loose ends after all this time and my vacation was really going to be rather boring. Hester doesn't much care for swimming, though she does play a little tennis and will on occasion go horseback riding. I guess I came to Malibu because Sonya and I used to come here so often when she was alive."
"I understand." Eleanor Stanfield gave him a gentle smile and put out her hand to touch his. It was only a brief contact, but it sent a shiver through him and he quickly took a sip of his drink to calm his exacerbated nerves. "Tell me about your daughter, Arthur," she went on.
"Well, she's eighteen, and of course an only child. This fall she's going to start at Pomona College this September, and I brought her down here because I'd hoped she'd get outdoors and take some interest in something else besides her books."
"Then she doesn't have too many friends of her own age, I take it?"
He shook his head. "No, and it's worrying me. Oh, her grades are fine, she's always been in the upper third of her class throughout high school. That's not what I'm worried about. Of course, she was that way even when Sonya was alive, but she was my wife's pet and--"
"And you respected your wife and therefore you didn't try to maintain any discipline with your daughter," Eleanor Stanfield finished for him.
"That's just about it. That's why I suppose I admired your daughter so very much this afternoon when I saw how obedient and polite and just naturally sweet she was. She doesn't seem to have a worry in the world."
"Yes, she was a happy child almost from birth, it's true, Arthur," she told him. "But I can assure you that what you see now took some trying and not a little unpleasantness for Betty herself before it was achieved. And she still is by no means perfect. No sixteen-year-old girl could be, after all."
"I suppose not. Just the same, although I've only known her for a little while, I can go so far as to say that I wish Hester had some of her qualities."
"Thank you. But as I said, Arthur, Betty, just like any other young girl, was self willed, selfish and thoughtless when we started out together. By that, I mean after my husband died. She was ten years old then, and she was the apple of her father's eye, to use a trite phrase. What you see today is the result of six years of methodical and, I hope, judicious discipline."
"You mean you've taught her to acquire the politeness and the sweetness that she has?"
"Yes, you might say that. But not by talking entirely, believe me. No, Arthur, it was done by means of the elementary laws of cause and effect."
"I don't quite understand you, Eleanor."
"Very well, let me put it this way," she leaned back and smiled at him. "As I told you, Betty's father idolized her and of course he spoiled her. She was used to having her own way, she interrupted, she wanted things to revolve around her entirely, and she was certainly very sloppy when it came to taking care of her room and her own things. She also had the habit of fibbing, nothing ever very serious, but there were tendencies which indicated that if she wasn't curbed, she might well develop into a very cunning little liar. At first, when my husband died, Arthur, I felt just as helpless as I'm sure you felt when your Sonya passed away. Fortunately, so far as economics were concerned, my husband had a great deal of insurance and had purchased our house and left no debts, so that I didn't have to worry about the future. That meant I could devote myself entirely to bringing Betty up as I believed she should be. And so, to make a long story short, it wasn't long before I had the full authority of her supervision that I employed discipline with her. And I don't mean talking. In a word, Arthur, when she was naughty, I spanked her."
"You spanked her?" he echoed. "I didn't think that any modern mother resorted to that these days, not with all the books I've read by Dr. Spock."
"Yes, I know. The business that Junior will have a trauma, if his parents say no to him or hold him back from his natural instincts. I consider that hogwash, pure and simple. Forgive me for speaking so plainly, but it's a subject on which I'm quite opinionated, Arthur. So you see, at the very outset, Betty, who had never had so much as a slap, suddenly found that with me as her only parent, she would be punished each time she did something that I believed to be out of line with good behavior. And at first, I can assure you, I sometimes felt that I was being much too severe. But gradually it bore fruit. Which is not to say, to be sure, that I have given up this discipline even at her age today. Yes," she paused a moment and regarded him levelly, "whenever Betty disobeys me or does something that I consider entirely out of character, she is punished for it. And by punishment I mean a spanking."
Arthur Hadley stared at the beautiful mature widow across the table from him. The most singular emotions were beginning to take subtle possession of him. In his mind's eye, he saw that delicious golden-haired young girl, smiling and carefree, her lovely blue eyes shining with happiness, lying across this handsome woman's lap, her bottom upturned, being spanked. It was a picture which was unique to him and also singularly disturbing. A kind of sensual titillation had begun to permeate his mind, aroused entirely by the eloquent and direct speech his lovely companion had just made.