Jon Cleary
THE BEAUFORTSISTERS
Harper
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First published by William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1979
Copyright © Jon Cleary 1979
Jon Cleary asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780002220378
Ebook Edition © JULY 2015 ISBN: 9780008139339
Version: 2015-05-19
To
Shelagh
and Freddie
Contents
Chapter Thirteen: Tim and Lucas
1
‘Why are so many tennis players pigeon-toed?’ said Prue. ‘They’re very sexy-looking till you get to their feet.’
‘Why don’t we just watch the tennis?’ said Margaret. ‘We’ve paid for that, not conversation we could have at home.’
‘Oh my God,’ said Sally and half-raised her walking stick as if she might thump her sister with it. ‘Is this another tax deductible expense?’
Prue put on her glasses, looked out at the four men on the court, frowned, pursed her lips, then took off the glasses. ‘What was I about to say? Something about sexiness in sport.’
‘Is sex a sport?’ said Nina. ‘All the manuals I’ve seen advertised, I thought it was a course in bedroom engineering.’
The Beaufort sisters were sitting in the gold boxes, the most expensive, in the Kansas City municipal auditorium watching the World Professional Tennis Doubles championship. Collectively they were always known by their maiden name, even though all of them were married and all four had been married more than once. Sixteen years separated them from youngest to oldest: Prue was thirty-seven, Sally forty-one, Margaret forty-eight and Nina fifty-three. None of them had lost her beauty and together they attracted the eye of any man not suffering from cataracts or a lack of hormones; even college youths had been known to remark that maybe there was something to be said for older women if they all looked as good as the Beaufort sisters. Of course, for those who knew how much they were worth, their wealth added lustre to their beauty and not just because of all the creams, massage and hair styling it could buy for them. A woman is never better framed than when in the doorway of a bank in which she is a major stockholder.
The tennis tournament was still in its early stages and the local citizens had not yet rushed to fill the huge indoor stadium. Only avid tennis fans and the country club set, and the Beauforts belonged, between them, to one or the other or both, had shown up this afternoon. The sound of racquets meeting ball echoed in the cavernous auditorium