And Nan was alone.
The boys were sleeping. Nan ate in front of the television set, which was not even turned on, and felt lonely. Lonely and wretched and unhappy. And, at the same time, alive.
Ted Carr.
Ted Carr, and the sordid and cheap affair in which he was her partner, was making a monumental difference in her life. Already, after one horrible and yet somehow wonderful love-bout in the middle of her own living room floor in the middle of the afternoon, the monotony had fled from her existence like bugs from a room sprayed with DDT. She was not just a wife, not just a mother.
She was a mistress.
A mistress. The word had a strange and unfamiliar ring to it. It didn’t seem possible that such a word could be properly applied to solid citizen Nan Haskell, mother of two, pillar of Cheshire Point. And yet it was true. She had given herself to Ted, had begged him on her knees to take her, had asked for him in vulgar words, had made a slave out of herself, a slave to his whims and passions.
And it was not a one-shot arrangement. She knew this, knew it for a fact, knew it as well as she knew her own name. It was autumn in Cheshire Point and she was somewhere in the middle of an illicit affair. In the fall a young wife’s fancies lightly turn to thoughts of sex, she thought. In the fall a young wife starts putting out for a neighbor.
In the fall—
It might have been different if Howard had not had a satchel full of work that night. Maybe that was just an excuse, maybe the affair with Ted was destined to run its course no matter what, but she somehow could not help feeling that if Howard had been able to spend time with her that very evening, if he had been more talkative and more... loving, she might have been able to get back on the right track.
It was a moot point now. She who had been so one-hundred per cent faithful was now unfaithful, and the act of infidelity would be repeated as long as it was valuable to her. She had been bored; she was bored no longer. She had been in a rut; the rut had now turned into a groove. She had been tired, miserable, plodding along without any interruption of what had developed into a less-than-bear-able routine.
Now all that was changed.
Ted Carr, sandy-haired, smiling, determined. Not so handsome as Howard, not at all as nice as Howard, not as desirable a mate as Howard, but somehow far more important than Howard could ever be, far more essential to her well-being.
And she would let the affair run its course. In time it would burn itself out, and she would be Howard Haskell’s faithful wife once more, and everything would be hunky-dory again. But for the time being she would be everything Ted Carr wanted her to be, would do everything he wanted her to do, would lower herself into muck and make herself worse than a whore if he ordered her to do so. He was her excitement, her dynamism, almost her whole life.
This is wrong, she thought. This is all very wrong, and I should be heartily ashamed of myself. I should hate myself.
I do hate myself.
But that was immaterial. She had a need for Ted which she could not deny. She was in a flimsy canoe in rocky waters, but she was also on one hell of a wild boatride.
17
They found the old-fashioned cab at 59th Street and Fifth Avenue, at the eastern foot of Central Park. The driver, all decked out in livery, spoke softly and charmingly in a mild British accent. His horse was something of a glue factory candidate, but in the moon and star light he was magically transformed into something dashing, into a sleek black stallion with hooves of steel and fiery eyes.
The same black stallion, Elly thought fleetingly, on which her phantom lover always rode.
She put the thought out of her mind. The night was young and she felt very beautiful, and now she was sitting beside Maggie Whitcomb in the old hansom while the horse was clip-clopping through pathways in Central Park, while the old liveried driver dozed with the reins in his hands. She smelled the good healthy horse smell, inhaled with it the country fragrance of Central Park. She heard muted traffic sounds in the distance, the sounds of New York by night, sounds which suggested home to her much more strongly and much more convincingly than the cricket chirping you heard in bed at Cheshire Point.
“Happy, Ell?”
“Completely happy.”
“I like Central Park, Ell. An oasis in the middle of the Manhattan desert. It’s peaceful.”
“Uh-huh.” She leaned back, closing her eyes. Maggie was wearing perfume and the smell was strong now, strong but subtle. She let her head loll back on Maggie’s shoulder. “I lived near the park,” she said. “When I was a kid we lived in the West Seventies just a block from the park. I used to play here all the time.”
“It must have been fun.”
“It was.”
Silence, broken by traffic in the distance, horse hooves in front. Maggie’s arm went around her shoulder, holding her.
“We’re on a heavy date,” Maggie whispered. “Now we have to neck.”
“I almost forgot.”
“Kiss me, Ell.”
“I’ve never kissed a girl before.”
“Then let me be the first.”
Maggie’s lips were wonderfully soft. The kiss started as a peck but grew into something a little more. Elly felt Maggie’s arms around her, holding her close. She tasted the incomparable sweetness of Maggie’s warm mouth.
“That was... nice, Maggie.”
“You must have been a wonderful date. I bet all the boys liked to neck with you, Ell.”
“They did more than that. I was a very easy lay.”
“You were?”
Something made her go on. “I would put out for any boy who asked me. I was a tramp, I guess.”
“Boys take advantage of a girl, Ell.”
“I know. Oh, I’m tipsy, Maggie. I’m drunk.”
“You won’t be sick, will you?”
“No, but I’m drunk. Why don’t you kiss me again, Maggie? I want to be kissed now. I feel all funny inside. Please kiss me.”
Maggie’s mouth came to hers. Maggie’s arms were firmer around her now, and she felt Maggie’s breasts press in close against her own breasts. She opened her mouth automatically and Maggie’s warm tongue stole inside, caressing her lips, making her whole mouth tingle. She suddenly remembered the way Maggie’s bare breasts had looked Friday afternoon, remembered the way the two of them had sat around drinking Scotch with their bosoms showing.
The memory sent a jolt of inexplicable passion racing through her. She was warm all over, her cheeks warm from all the drinks and her loins warm with rising lust. She tightened her own grip around Maggie, ran her fingers through Maggie’s long red hair. The hair was the texture of spun silk, good to touch, good to run your fingers through. Her own tongue darted forward to meet Maggie’s tongue and the contact was purely electric in its intensity. She was charged up now, stimulated.
“Maggie—”
“Hold me, Ell. Hold me close.”
“This is silly, isn’t it? We’re both girls and we’re necking and kissing and hugging. I like this, though, even if we are silly. I like the way you feel, Maggie. You have the most wonderful breasts.”
“Do you like them?”
“I’m going to touch them to show you how much I love them, Maggie. Oh, God, they feel so nice! Is it wrong to touch another woman’s breasts? I never did anything like this before.”
“It’s not wrong.”
“Because they feel so nice! I wish I had breasts like yours, Maggie. Big and firm.”
“Yours are lovely, Ell.”
“Do you think so?”
She felt Maggie’s hands moving, finding her own breasts and holding them tenderly. The touch excited Elly. She began to tremble. She did not know what was happening to her but it was something phenomenal, something wonderful. Her body was on fire.