Jon Cleary - The Beaufort Sisters

Jon Cleary

THE BEAUFORTSISTERS

Harper

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

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.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

HarperCollins Publishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

Source ISBN: 9780002220378

Ebook Edition © JULY 2015 ISBN: 9780008139339

Version: 2015-05-19

To

Shelagh

and Freddie

Cover

Title Page Jon Cleary THE BEAUFORTSISTERS

Copyright Copyright Copyright Dedication Chapter One: The Sisters Chapter Two: Nina Chapter Three: Nina Chapter Four: Nina Chapter Five: Margaret Chapter Six: Margaret Chapter Seven: Margaret Chapter Eight: Sally Chapter Nine: Sally Chapter Ten: Sally Chapter Eleven: Prue Chapter Twelve: Prue Chapter Thirteen: Tim and Lucas Chapter Fourteen: The Sisters Keep Reading About the Author Also by the Author About the Publisher Harper An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk 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. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books. HarperCollins Publishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication. Source ISBN: 9780002220378 Ebook Edition © JULY 2015 ISBN: 9780008139339 Version: 2015-05-19

Dedication Dedication Dedication Chapter One: The Sisters Chapter Two: Nina Chapter Three: Nina Chapter Four: Nina Chapter Five: Margaret Chapter Six: Margaret Chapter Seven: Margaret Chapter Eight: Sally Chapter Nine: Sally Chapter Ten: Sally Chapter Eleven: Prue Chapter Twelve: Prue Chapter Thirteen: Tim and Lucas Chapter Fourteen: The Sisters Keep Reading About the Author Also by the Author About the Publisher To Shelagh and Freddie

Chapter One: The Sisters

Chapter Two: Nina

Chapter Three: Nina

Chapter Four: Nina

Chapter Five: Margaret

Chapter Six: Margaret

Chapter Seven: Margaret

Chapter Eight: Sally

Chapter Nine: Sally

Chapter Ten: Sally

Chapter Eleven: Prue

Chapter Twelve: Prue

Chapter Thirteen: Tim and Lucas

Chapter Fourteen: The Sisters

Keep Reading

About the Author

Also by the Author

About the Publisher

‘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 like the amplified sound of an accountant’s gut-string being torn apart. It was obvious that the players now on court were disturbed by the mocking acoustics of the near-empty galleries. None seemed more upset than Clive Harvest, one of the two Australians playing a South American pair.