The Pleasure Seekers (27 page)

‘But not enough,’ had been her reply.

‘I can’t let it end like this. Please can we be friends?’

‘I think that’s about all we ever were, erotic friends. Now I suppose we’ll be platonic friends.’ She offered him her hand and he kissed it and then kissed her on the cheek and turned away.

What she had wanted to do was hit him over the head with her shopping basket but they lived in a small community that had seen enough violence and
bad behaviour among the foreigners. She had no desire to add to it.

It had been clouding over for several days now and people were spending more time in their houses, inviting others home for a meal more in the evening. D’Arcy was enjoying some solitude, catching up on her reading, going out for the odd dinner at someone’s house or eating alone. She didn’t much feel like entertaining. The days passed and life was full, peaceful and contented.

Several times while she was working in her garden she saw Max walking below on the way to the cove where he kept his plane. Most of the time there was someone with him. He always called to her and waved and invited her to go along with them. D’Arcy realised that there was something constant in their friendship and that she would have been the poorer for not having Max in her life. A day passed and she didn’t see him and suddenly she realised that she missed him. She had somehow never missed him before and D’Arcy understood that she had always taken Max very much for granted.

The next time he came by, she called down to him, ‘Hi there, handsome.’

His smile warmed her, his laughing eyes teased her. ‘Hi D’Arcy, want to come with me?’

There was always a sexual innuendo in his every greeting or look. His asking, her rejecting sex. It had been going on for years, this flirtation that was almost but not quite a joke between them. She answered him with a question of her own. ‘Want to come to dinner this evening?’

‘What are you cooking?’

‘I’m not going to tell you, let me surprise you?’

‘Dinner
à deux?
’

‘Maybe, maybe not.’

‘No sex?’ he teased.

‘No, no sex, Max. God, you never do give up.’

‘Well, so long as there’s no sex involved, I’ll come.’ And he laughed and waved, calling out, ‘Nine o’clock. Thanks, see you then.’

D’Arcy felt really pleased at having asked him. She called Manoussos and invited him to dinner as well. She thought of asking Rachel to make up the numbers but then thought better of it. She decided to indulge herself with the company of these two very attractive men. It somehow seemed right that it should be just the three of them.

After she finished her work in the garden she went into the house and sat down with her housekeeper, Poppy. Going through menus with her, D’Arcy decided to do the cooking herself. Poppy was surprised and so was she but D’Arcy really wanted to cook for Max, who was himself a marvellous cook and gourmet. Food, like sex, was written in bold letters at the top of his life’s priority list.

D’Arcy had a large and well-stocked larder, a room constructed from a small cave on one of the upper levels of her property behind the house. One entered it through a four-inch thick wooden door and was taken over by the luscious smells: drying herbs hung in bunches from hooks fixed in the stone ceiling along with Italian and French cheeses, and cured meats. The air was dry and always cool, perfect for keeping them. There were shelves upon shelves of peaches and pears and cherries, lemons
and oranges, olives of several varieties, dried tomatoes in olive oil, and artichokes. A variety of pickles and radishes preserved in Kilner jars. Large clay storage pots of foodstuffs and under a brightly coloured kilim carpet, a large and deep freezer chest. D’Arcy’s larder was the envy of everyone in Livakia, most of whom had been there at one time or another to borrow something, or begging space for something special of their own for a short period of time.

D’Arcy made her selection, placed it in her basket, retreated back to the kitchen and went to work preparing the meal for her guests: fresh pasta tossed in double cream with long slivers of smoked salmon, for a first course, followed by four-inch thick charcoal grilled fillet steaks, which she had brought back from Allen the butcher’s in Mount Street in London and had had stored in her freezer. To go with them a sauce bearnaise, courgettes stir fried in the finest cold pressed extra virgin oil, potatoes done in the oven in oil, fresh rosemary and turmeric until they were crisp and a bright yellow brown. For pudding a tarte tartin which always looked with its caramelised apples as delicious as it tasted, and which she planned to serve with clotted cream.

When the men arrived D’Arcy’s cooking was under control but she was not yet down. Poppy let them in and served them American martinis. ‘Oh, it’s going to be this kind of evening, is it?’ D’Arcy heard Max remark as she looked down into the hall from the gallery.

‘Yes, Max, it is going to be that kind of an evening,’ she called down, and quickly descended the stairs to meet her guests.

D’Arcy had taken special care to dress for her evening at home. Several times she told herself, ‘This is not like you, D’Arcy Montesque,’ and it wasn’t. She rarely dressed to impress but found she was doing that this evening, and was surprised to realise that it was Max she was dressing for, Max she wanted to please. What a curious thing, she thought, since she knew that there was no need to impress Max. They were close friends after all.

There was no missing the look on Max’s face when he saw D’Arcy. He was quite dazzled. Not that Manoussos wasn’t. He had rarely, if ever, seen D’Arcy as elegantly put together as she was for her two men that evening.

She wore her hair long and loose as she always did, but on her ears the Byzantine earrings and around her neck a collection of Byzantine gold necklaces and several strands of oriental pearls. There were ivory bracelets on her wrists and between them gold bangles. Her collection of Byzantine jewellery was set off by the simplicity of her clothes: a low-necked white silk blouse with huge balloon sleeves that were tight to the wrist, which fitted loosely but seductively, revealing a hint of nipple and the distinct shape of her breasts. Around her waist an emerald green belt of heavy silk satin shone like a jewel and below that a full-length skirt of deep purple velvet. She wore crimson silk slippers on her feet.

‘You look like a royal celebration, I’m duly dazzled,’ said Max.

‘Well, it’s about time,’ she answered, a smile on her lips. She kissed first Manoussos and then Max. Oh, how
good it was to have such men as friends and lovers. Well, one as a lover.

They spoke of many things which included her final break-up with Laurence. It hardly bothered her at all. They laughed a great deal. D’Arcy was up and down from the table to the kitchen to do the cooking and Poppy did the serving.

It was inevitable that the conversation should come round to Melina. D’Arcy was surprised when Max told them, ‘I never felt good about my part in trapping that girl the way I did, but it had to be done. And, as usual, Manoussos, you were right to have handled the capture of her in the way we did. I cannot, however, say that the experience of being there has not affected me. It has, quite deeply. Kind of a life lesson you can live without, but once having lived it, I find it has in some strange way changed my perception of things.’

‘I wasn’t there but I know what you mean, Max. I feel exactly the same way. I think for me it was the untimely death of a friend, having to face my own mortality, and she was the instrument that made me do that. In a strange way I feel indebted to her. Melina was one of the reasons for my final break-up with Laurence.’

D’Arcy then told them what had happened, and asked the men, ‘Do you think there’d be any advantage to the girl if I did go and see her? If there isn’t I have no need to go.’

They discussed it and yet again D’Arcy was surprised at the degree of understanding Max showed about her wanting to do something constructive for the girl and yet still remain in the background. It was he who came
up with the suggestion that D’Arcy should find one of her many Cretan friends who might have the time and the compassion to deal with it, his point being that Melina would be less resentful towards a fellow Greek than she might be to a foreigner and especially one who had been as close to Arnold as D’Arcy had been.

She felt it was a brilliant solution, Manoussos agreed, and they dropped the subject for more amusing ones and gossip. The evening went on until three in the morning. The men left together. That surprised D’Arcy because she’d thought that Manoussos might stay over. The signals for a sexual tryst had been there, or so she had thought.

It was late afternoon the following day. D’Arcy was in the drawing room reading when she heard a knock at her door. She opened it to a stream of giggling young boys, arms full of flowers, pushing past her to stand around her room. Dozens of red roses, white roses, arum lilies and her most favourite flower in the lily family, Casablanca, large and white, a mass of them. There were white daisies with egg yolk yellow centres, and sunflowers with huge black faces made up a glorious cut flower garden. She walked around the room of boys pretending to be vases, laughing and clapping her hands. There were more hothouse cut flowers in that room than she had ever seen in Livakia in all her life. Where did they come from? Who could have sent them? She touched them, bent her head to take in their scent, gloried in their beauty, and when she stopped in front of one of the smallest of the boys carrying sprays of perfect white moth orchids, she said,
‘Yorgos, who gave you these flowers to bring to me?’ He refused to answer, merely turned to face the still open door they had all filed through. And there framed in it was Max, leaning against the door jamb, his smile as bright as the sun, a twinkle in his eyes.

She tilted back her head and laughed because he had caught her completely off guard, had surprised and delighted her as she had never been before, and because he knew it. She could see it in his face, his own delight at having done it. Finally she composed herself enough to ask, ‘Max, however did you manage this?’

‘I flew to Athens early this morning, raided the best flower shops in Kolonaki, had lunch with a friend, loaded the plane, and flew home. Just like anything else in life, it’s all quite simple when you really want to do something.’

‘They’re absolutely gorgeous, spectacular! I’m overwhelmed by their beauty and their being here at all, and of course by your gesture. Thank you, thank you. But why would you do such an unbelievably touching thing for me?’

‘The word’s romantic, D’Arcy, a romantic thing. Because it’s the best way I could think of to come courting.’ He gave her one of his sexy smiles then added, ‘I think this might be the right moment for an exit. I’ll call you later.’

When he turned to leave she saw Omboie and Ainsasha, Max’s two African housemen, faithful servants and friends who had been with him ever since she first met him. They were carrying large cardboard boxes containing beautiful pottery vases she recognised as being
from Max’s house. Since no one would have had enough containers for a planeload of fresh flowers, Max had thought of everything. The little boys left and Ainsasha and Omboie remained to help Poppy and D’Arcy arrange the flowers throughout the house.

The last vase was barely in place when the telephone rang. The telephone rarely rang in D’Arcy’s house, few people had the number. She had no thoughts about who it might be, too dazzled by the Garden of Eden that Max had created for her and still too stunned by his announcement to think of anything else except being in a paradise, within a paradise: this floral garden, in her house, in Livakia.

She heard his voice and it brought an instant smile to her lips. ‘What do you think, D’Arcy? Well, say something. Something like: “Well, it’s about time you made up your mind to do something about me, Max.”’

D’Arcy hesitated for a moment, sat down, then said,‘Max, are you sure that this is not just an extravagant thank-you note for dinner last night?’

‘It was a very good dinner, I’ll grant you that. And a great evening, I’ll grant you that too, and it does deserve a thank-you note. I’ll send one, if that’ll make you understand that I’ve been blind to the fact I’ve been in love with you for a long time and have only come to that realisation in the last few months. Come and have dinner in my house tonight. I’ll cook for you and we’ll talk about it.’

‘I don’t know what to say, Max.’

‘Yes will do.’

‘Max, maybe it’s just sex?’

‘Well, we know that it’s certainly that, sex has always
been something I’ve wanted with you, but now it’s sex and more than that, those same things that you wanted from me and were afraid I couldn’t give you. You were right to turn me down for all those years. I couldn’t give you love with the sex then. Now I feel I can, and I want to.’

D’Arcy had felt her heart softening towards Max lately. She had always valued his honesty, and had been undeniably attracted to him, if wary of this in the past. Could it be true, were they falling in love? Were they in love? Had he too faced his own mortality and seen what was missing in his life, wondered what his legacy would be? She felt suddenly thrilled at the prospect of seeing him, loving him, having a sex life with him. She felt a great relief. If this were true, that Max was in love with her, that she might be in love with him after all these years of loving each other as friends, then the sexual attraction she had always felt towards him would no longer have to be put aside.

There was a great deal of cloud moving fast across the night sky and a huge white moon, very nearly full, kept playing hide and seek as did the millions of bright stars that also appeared and disappeared to lend the night mystery and romance – just what Max and D’Arcy needed as a backdrop to this special something that was happening to them.

She had given him the yes he so fervently wanted but asked him to pick her up so he could see the flowers arranged throughout the house. She was dressed and ready for him and standing by the window. For the moment the
clouds were acting as a curtain to the heavens and it was pitch black outside. She saw the beam of a torch weaving its way up through the narrow lane to her property. Quite suddenly D’Arcy was overwhelmed by deeper feelings for Max, this new Max who was in love with her. She wanted him, it was as simple as that, she wanted him and no longer need hide that fact from herself, or him, or anyone else. She was not going to be a notch on his belt. There would never again be notches carved on his belt.