Objects of Desire (20 page)

‘You’re very quiet,’ said Piers.

‘So are you,’ she answered.

‘I understand, Anoushka.’

‘You do, don’t you? Thank the lord for that. This is the most important time of my life, Piers.’

‘You’re the most important woman who has ever entered mine. I want to live with you, and love you, and die in your arms. But we’ll not have any more lovemaking again, not until you’re ready to make a commitment to me. Don’t keep me dangling, Anoushka. Not if you love me as I love you.’

They remained silent while they both absorbed the importance of what Piers was saying and then Anoushka spoke.

‘I want to make the Atlantic crossing with the girls on board the
Black Orchid
. Be there for me in the
Caribbean when the boat docks. It’s a long time to ask you to wait, so please don’t. Get on with your life, and I’ll get on with mine. If we still, each of us, feel the same about each other as we do now, then ask me to marry you again. I promise you’ll have your answer then and there. Until then, think about us, Piers, take your time, look for someone else, make certain that you and I together forever is what you really want. I’ll do the same. There can be no second mistake for me. Will you do that for me? No, for us?’

He hesitated. It was a great deal to ask of him; they both knew it. ‘Please, promise me?’ she added, a tremor of emotion in her voice.

He smiled at her, reluctantly, and said, ‘You don’t make it easy. I promise.’

She took his hand in hers and squeezed it.

He looked up at the sky. It was still bright but a moon was rising. ‘I have to go before dark.’

‘How did you get here?’

‘A helicopter. It landed in Kamini.’ Anoushka tried to rise from her chair. He stopped her.

‘Piers, please.’

‘No, don’t come with me. No goodbyes. I’m too happy for farewells. Do what you have to to love me.’ He rose from his chair and leaned over to kiss her lightly on the lips. Leaving some banknotes on the table, he walked away, never looking back.

Long after Piers had disappeared from her view, Anoushka thought about him and the life that they could build together. She had no doubt that the boys
would like him, he was after all a real adventurer, not forced by circumstances to become one as she was.

Life was easy for Piers. He had no dilemmas, no past to overcome. When had he been a failure? He had never had his world torn away from him. He carried no baggage from the past to weigh him down as she did. She had no intention of carrying the burden of her failures and mistakes on her back like so much luggage into a new life with him. That would be too unfair on both of them. Anoushka loved him and knew that he was the right man for her, there was no doubt in her mind about that. But she could not bring herself to throw caution to the wind and run off with him. Not yet anyway.

She walked from the port through the darkened streets and up the many stairs to Page’s large multi-level house, white against the blackness of night. It was in darkness and Anoushka fumbled her way through the gate in the wall and up more stairs on to the terrace. It was a marvellous night, still very warm, and the sky was peppered with stars. There was magic in the air, as there had been magic in her coming together with Piers. She felt as if she were going to burst with happiness.

Anoushka had not seen the ghost that haunted the house. Page believed that she had, many years ago, and Sally claimed that it was a man and that he had awakened her from a deep sleep, caressing her cheek. Though she could not remember what he looked like she did remember that as the dawn light slid into her
room, he slipped away through the open window overlooking the sea. The locals all knew a ghost lived in Page’s house, and that he was a good ghost, an old and wealthy sea captain who had owned many sponge boats at the turn of the century. He had built the house for the woman he loved, a young Egyptian beauty whom he wanted to marry. She led him on, promising she would give him her answer when the house was completed, and then kept asking for more rooms to be added, more terraces, more land, until even she had been satisfied by the house, then as now the grandest on the island, built in the most perfect setting. When the house was completed she refused him.

Heartbroken, he retired and lived in the house and waited for her to change her mind. She never did, and even after he was dead he refused to leave his house, or to stop loving her, and roamed through the rooms looking for her, waiting.

Anoushka thought about the sea captain and his love and was pleased that he was still there if in spirit only, though she wished his spirit would find rest eventually. That a great love would come his way and live with him there. He had waited so long.

There was something otherworldly about the place. More than once the women had spoken about the magic of the house, the spirit that lived in it. When Page had bought it some ten years before it had been empty, derelict, and it was to her credit that she had painstakingly restored it and kept it very nearly as the
captain had built it so as not to spoil what he had given his heart to. That was it, the house had real heart. How Anoushka wished that Page and Sally were there with her to share this night and the magic of Hydra and Page’s house perched high above the port.

But Sally and Page were not there. They were in Athens for a few days. Page to see an architect and go to the bank, and Sally shopping. Both planned to do the museums and go on an excursion to Delphi. It was hot and sticky and a dreadful smog hung over the city, the exhaust fumes of Athens traffic trapped in a cloud of unhealthy air. Page couldn’t wait to leave this place she had once loved so much. This was certainly not the Athens of her youth with bright blue skies, a sun you could see clearly shining over the city. Athens at that time was a crossroads not for package tourists but for real travellers: poets and writers, painters and sculptors, philosophers and dreamers, romantics from every walk of life, in search of the Greek experience.

At the very same time of year, to the very day in fact, for very nearly seven years now Page would stop for one afternoon and one night in Athens before she took the ferry boat to Hydra. This was not that time of year but when Sally and Anoushka had both said they wanted to visit Greece, she had thought, Why not? They were a part of her life now, so she told them about her house in Hydra. They had been her first and only guests in the house, this most personal and private place. It had been a major step for her to open
the doors of the Hydra house to them, and one she did not regret.

And now here she sat in her favourite café, at her favourite table, and watched the world go by over a cappuccino and a sticky pastry. Nearly every time she sat here she would meet someone she knew passing through the city, just as she was. Invariably she saw faces she recognised: Greeks and expatriates who made Athens their home.

She bathed now as she always did in the warmth and generosity of the Greek people. Did any other love living in the street as the Greeks did? She doubted it. It had become just another cosmopolitan city when once it had been much more than that, the most charming, least sophisticated, largest village in the world. It was via Athena to Hydra every year that Page returned to fulfil a pact with destiny.

She saw Sally weaving her way through the lunchtime crowds. She was late as usual, but that no longer mattered to Page. She and Anoushka had got used to Sally’s inability to take time seriously and she in turn had learned to accept the flaw of punctuality her two friends suffered from.

Sally, looking tanned and pretty as a glossy poster, was loaded down with shiny, brightly coloured shopping bags. Athens was a city not of a thousand and one nights but a thousand and one boutiques. You would have thought the Greeks had invented the word, the very idea.

Page laughed aloud when she saw an animated
Sally in a white linen mini skirt and a thin silk blouse that left an inch of midriff showing, swing wide with a black and pink Yves St Laurent shopping bag and hit on the shoulder a middle-aged hairy and grossly unattractive man who was obviously failing to keep his pinching fingers to himself. Sally pressed on through the crowd towards Zonar’s and her meeting with Page.

The man stopped in his tracks and loudly bellowed obscenities in Greek at her, while at the same time looking stunned. He had his rights. Some people laughed, others cursed him for his rudeness as they passed him by. And Sally left a trail of admirers turning their heads, stopping to watch her walk with head held high away from the scene. The Greeks are not the most subtle of men. But she had mastered the art of dealing with their attentions within a few days of being in Greece. She was adroit in her own special way.

But who was she jabbering away to? Who did she have with her? Page couldn’t quite see the face of the person Sally was with, obscured as it was by the crowd of people on the pavement. As Sally reached the corner she had to wait for a traffic light to change. The jaywalkers marched against the red light, the crowd thinned out and at last the mystery was revealed. It was Cally.

However had she found Cally? Well, that was Athens, and that was Sally. There were very few places where Page and Anoushka and Sally had been in the last few months where one or another of Sally’s friends hadn’t
popped up from nowhere. She attracted friends and good times. She liked the sweet life and the sweet life liked Sally. It was to her credit that she knew what she wanted, what made her happy, and wanted nothing more. Indeed would settle for nothing less.

Page marvelled at how lucky she had been with her two companions. She had learned much from travelling with these two women so different from herself. They had become friends without even trying. They had been compatible when none of them had really thought they would be. Without any effort at all they became something important, very important, in each other’s lives. Each had respect and admiration for the other’s qualities and a courteous disregard for their faults.

Page had had no idea what her life was going to be when she had walked away from her work and the lifestyle she had been leading for so many years, and placed that ad in the
International Herald Tribune
. Change her whole life? Could it be done? Would she really do it? Others who knew her well doubted that she would. Page never thought about such things, merely got on with doing them. In fact it was far easier than people had told her it would be. Her timing had been right. Could that be it? Was everything in life a matter of timing?

Why did it suddenly seem so easy to do all the things you wanted to do? Have all the things you wanted to have? And with very little effort. Page watched Sally and her friend Cally scan the sea of faces outside the
café looking for her. She raised an arm and waved.

‘Hi. Look who I bumped into,’ was Sally’s greeting.

It was an amusing lunch, not much different than any other they had had with Sally’s friends. But there was an appointment to go to for Page, and a Greek ship owner’s yacht to board for a cruise round the islands for Cally. So there were hurried farewells and, ‘See you in London. Or come and stay with us in St Tropez,’ from Cally.

Sally divided the shopping bags between them and the two women went together to keep Page’s appointment at the bank where she transferred a large sum of money into Greece. Some from the women’s mutual account, some from Page’s own. Sally watched and listened, and when they left the bank, she said, ‘Then you’ve decided to build your greenhouse in Hydra and raise rare, exotic orchids?’

‘Yes.’

‘I think the sea captain would like that.’

Page looked at her. ‘Funny you should say that. I think so too.’

‘Jahangir wants to come to Hydra and stay with us in the house.’

The look on Page’s face was one of sheer terror. The two women stopped on the pavement. Sally shifted all her shopping bags to one hand and with the other reached out and touched Page. ‘It’s all right, Page. I’ve told him he can’t.’

‘I’m sorry, Sally.’

‘No need to be. I don’t want him to come, he doesn’t
belong there. We’re not insensitive, Anoushka and I. We know that Hydra is more than a house to you. Something very special and private in your life that until we came along you shared with no one. We feel very privileged that you allow us to stay there with you.’

The two women resumed their walk back to their hotel. Sally continued, ‘I don’t really want Jahangir there. I’ve become strangely possessive about your house, wanting to protect it and keep it safe for you and the captain. I know Anoushka feels the same way, just like Marika and Sotiri. You’re lucky to have them watch over it when you’re not there. It’s the house, and the way you relate to it. It casts a powerful spell.’

‘I’m so glad that I opened it to you and Anoushka. So pleased that you love it and the Greek islands the way I do. That you girls weren’t disappointed in them.’

‘I don’t think I will ever forget Hydra as the ferry rounded the point of the island and I saw it for the first time. Magic, sheer magic! The crescent of houses, bright white under a burning sun, meandering lazily up and up, higher and higher, from the harbour to the top of the island. It took my breath away then and it does every time I see it. No wonder the captain loved it and built his house there. No wonder he won’t leave it. Nor will you, I think.’

‘No, I don’t suppose I ever will.’

‘Now that I know your house, Page, and I’ve met the captain – well, sort of met the captain – I somehow feel
wherever I go, wherever I end up, I will have lived in paradise for a short time and on the edge of something miraculous. When we make one of our island jaunts and return to Hydra and that ferry boat blasts its horn and rounds the point and sails into port, I look up the side of the hill and feel the magic, the specialness of your house. The long elegant stone staircase rising from the terrace to the loggia, the tiled roofs as it rises tier above tier up the side of the hill.

‘I’m a funny old thing you know. I loved Chalfont, Piers’s country seat. I always knew I never belonged there. Too common, the Lancashire lass living with the toff and all that. I was never really part of it, it could never be mine. But none of it mattered to me. I loved being whatever I was there, waiting for Piers to come home to Chalfont and me. The house in Hays Mews – well, I loved living there too, felt it to be my home at least as much as Chalfont was. I’ve been privileged to live in those places, and now in Hydra, in your house. I don’t mind that sense of belonging in someone else’s place, someone else’s house.’