Colleen McCullough - Sins of the Flesh

“This sucks,” said Tony to Abe.

“It’s here somewhere,” Abe said stubbornly.

“Needles in haystacks,” said Liam, as disgruntled as Tony.

“Paint on, Hank Jones,” said Abe under his breath.

Ivy Ramsbottom had invited Delia to “a late afternoon and entire evening of entertainment” at Busquash Manor, and Delia was bewildered. The invitation had come out of the blue last Thursday, which didn’t give a girl much time to sort out what to wear when the hosts were Rha Tanais and Rufus Ingham. Oddly, it had been Jess Wainfleet who explained it yesterday over lunch at the Lobster Pot.

“No, Delia, you mustn’t decline,” Jess had said.

“I think I must. I don’t know Ivy’s brother and his friend from a bar of soap—if I came, it would look as if my reason for doing so was vulgar curiosity.”

“Believe me, it wouldn’t. The short notice is unusual, except that Ivy tells me the new musical Rha’s designing is hopeless. As they’re party animals, Rha and Rufus throw a party on the slightest of excuses, and they like to mix and match their invitation list,” Jess said, sipping sparkling mineral water. “I met them first at one of their parties, and Rufus, honoring my profession, I suppose, told me that every social get-together needed a certain amount of abrasion to go well. The recipe called for one stranger and several guests who set people’s backs up a little. Drop them into the mixture, said Rufus, and you were guaranteed to have a memorable party.” Jess grimaced. “My senior staff almost inevitably form the several guests who set people’s backs up—they’re a serious bunch who only attend to please me.”

“How extraordinary!” Delia stared at her friend, intrigued. “If you know all that, why oblige your hosts?”

“Because they’re two of the sweetest guys in the world, I love them dearly, and I love Ivy most of all.” The big dark eyes held a softer look than Delia was used to seeing; clearly it mattered to Jess that her motives be understood. “I’m very aware of my less admirable personality traits, the worst of them being an abnormal degree of emotional detachment—common in obsessive-compulsives of my kind. My affection for Ivy, Rha and Rufus is important to me, I’d rather make them happy than please myself. So I push my senior staff to attend Busquash Manor festivities, even if they dislike it.”

“It rather sounds to me,” said Delia shrewdly, “as if you dislike your senior staff.”

Jess’s laugh was a gurgle, the eyes brimmed with mirth. “Oh, bravo, Delia! You’re absolutely right. Besides, a Rha-Rufus party is a joy, and once they’re here, my HI bunch wallow in them. What they hate is being yanked out of their routines.”

“Then they’re obsessive-compulsives too.”

“They sure are! But please come, Delia.”

“What should I wear?”

“Whatever you like. Ivy and I will wear eveningified things—Busquash Manor is fully air-conditioned. Rha and Rufus will be in black trousers and sweaters, but Nicolas Greco will look like an advertisement for Savile Row and Bob Tierney will be in black tie. My bunch will dress down rather than up, and favor white—a mute protest at being pressured into attending.”

As a result of this lunch, Delia’s curiosity was so stimulated that she phoned an acceptance taken by a secretary, and ransacked her several wardrobes for something interesting to wear to what sounded like a sartorial free-for-all. She needed a diversion.

The Shadow Women had repaid the strenuous efforts of her last few days with absolutely nothing. The photographer responsible for the portraits hadn’t come to light, a sign of the times: the days when such a person had a shop kind of studio were gone save for an established very few. Nowadays prosperity was so widespread that any would-be artist could buy an excellent single lens reflex camera and advertise in the Yellow Pages. The difference in cost for wedding photos between one of these enterprising photographers and an established professional was slowly forcing the latter out of the market. So most of Delia’s time had been frittered away in phoning the would-be photographers of the Yellow Pages. Some had come into County Services to look at the portraits, but none had admitted to creating them.

Driving up in her own red Mustang, Delia found that parking space was available within the imposing mansion’s grounds, an expanse of tar marked with white lines and conveniently hidden by a tall hedge from the kind of landscaped garden that required no specialist attention or concentrated work: lawns, shrubs, an occasional tree. Once Busquash Manor had stood in ten acres on the peak ridge of the peninsula between Busquash Inlet and Millstone Beach, but at the turn of the nineteenth into the twentieth century it had been subdivided, and four acres sold off in acre-lot parcels. The house itself was enormous, though the attic windows of its third storey suggested this had been a servants’ domain, leaving the family with two flights of stairs to climb at most. Excluding the third floor, Delia guessed there might originally have been as many as fifteen bedrooms.

She was more used to looking at the rear end of Busquash Manor, as this faced Millstone, where her condo sat at beachfront. A far less pleasing view, incorporating as it did an ugly acreage of sloping roofs that reminded her of a movie-theater complex in an outdoor shopping mall. From Ivy she had learned that the enormity of the roofs came from a genuine theater inside, mostly a gigantic stage. The house itself was built of limestone blocks and was plentifully endowed with tall, broad windows; where it really belonged, she decided, was at Newport, Rhode Island.

Inside, it revealed the unique eye and taste of its owners, though what in a lesser eye and taste would have been vulgarity here was lifted to a splendor that took the breath away. Had she known it, every piece of furniture and every drape had once adorned a Broadway stage in days when props had been custom-made by true artisans, and only the finest materials had been used. The colors were rich, sumptuous, and always uncannily right; there were chairs shaped like sphinxes, like lions or winged Assyrian bulls; walls turned out to be vast mirrors that reflected on and on into a near-infinity; one room was completely lined in roseate, beaten copper. Mouth agape, Delia trod across marble or mosaic floors, gazed at priceless Persian carpets, and wondered if she had gone through the looking glass into a different universe. No stranger to the trappings of wealth or to palatial houses, Delia still felt that Busquash Manor was an impossible fantasy.

Her nose was about level with Rha Tanais’s navel; she had to tilt her head far back to see his face, lit from within by what she sensed were warmly positive emotions. He gave her a delicate crystal glass of white wine; one sip told her it was superb.

“Darling, you are magnificent!” he cried. “How dare Ivy hide you? Come and meet Rufus.”

Who was already watching her, a stunned look on his handsome face. Organza frills upon frills in magenta, acid-yellow, orange and rose-pink. In shock, he stumbled to his feet.