The Pleasure Seekers (5 page)

She was living a more independent life but still under Mark’s roof, following him like a shadow whenever he allowed it, aping his every word, every mannerism, his arrogance. Mark’s opinions were now her opinions. When he was away she boasted to several of the delinquent boys she hung out with about her life with Mark. How he confided in her and she held this foreign genius’s life together. And strangely she did have an influence on Mark, hard to define and which confused everyone who knew him.

D’Arcy was indifferent to Melina. She greeted her whenever their paths crossed and was always civil to
the girl but never got involved with her, hired her for the odd job or offered her help in any form. There was no particular reason for that, and it was certainly not because D’Arcy had seen the sexual side of Melina’s life and how much the girl enjoyed it. It was not in D’Arcy’s character to be judgemental, and certainly never about another person’s sex life. If anything she appreciated that the girl realised she had to be extremely discreet in her lust. And it had been lust that was going on in that cave. Melina may have taken money for her favours but she was not merely a whore, because she liked the sex and the power it gave her. The money was necessary; the sex probably gave her the only moments of happiness in a miserable life.

D’Arcy looked at the girl walking next to her and was grateful that Melina had no idea that she had been seen. Then the humiliation would have had to be dealt with, and such a humiliation in Crete could be dangerous. D’Arcy’s silence had been instinctive and so was her behaviour towards the girl.

They had only gone a short distance from Aliki’s house when Melina got directly to the point. ‘Can I work for you?’

‘But I have no work for you, Melina.’

‘Mr Laurence, I could work for him?’

‘You would have to ask him. But you already work for him when he needs the odd job done.’

‘Mark says I need to have a steady job, he doesn’t like to see me hanging round with my friends all day, but I like having fun all day. You do, and Rachel does, and Kiria Plum too.’

‘We’re in different circumstances from you.’

‘That’s it?’

D’Arcy did not like the look that quite suddenly appeared on the girl’s face. Anger, the girl was brimming with it. But that didn’t faze D’Arcy in the least, she put it down to Cretan temperament and she had been dealing with that all her life. ‘That’s it,’ she repeated.

‘I thought you would help me because your mother was a whore like mine was and you’re a bastard like me.’

D’Arcy could not stop herself from laughing.

‘Are you laughing at me?’ asked an angry Melina.

‘No! Oh, no, not at you. At my mother being called a whore, and me a bastard. You would have to know my mother to know how wrong you are about that, and meet my fathers to appreciate how much more than that my mother is, that I am. Though, mind you, I don’t think she would be as offended as you think she or I should be at your calling us those names. Think, Melina, if we were no more than those things, would we have the affection and respect of the people here?’

D’Arcy walked away from the girl only to be chased after. Melina fell into step with her. ‘Please, you won’t tell Mark I called you those names?’ she begged, genuine panic in her voice.

‘Of course not, I’ve already forgotten it.’

‘Really?’

‘You have my word on that.’ It was a little thing but D’Arcy noted that the girl did not apologise for the slurs.

They continued to walk in silence, several people stopping to speak to them. At the end of the corniche,
before D’Arcy started the climb to her house, she turned to Melina and dismissed her with, ‘I turn off here, see you around.’ Thirty yards away she had already forgotten the girl and the incident.

The following morning was yet another glorious day of sun and sea and a leisurely breakfast on the terrace with Laurence. Arnold stopped by for a coffee and to pick up the things D’Arcy had brought for him from Chania, and to leave a loaf of bread, hot from the baker’s oven. Edgar and Bill arrived for their parcels, bickering as usual, and Rachel for her ink. No one seemed anxious to leave and so the morning slipped away in laughter and amusing conversation. Coffee was exchanged for white wine and fried haloumi cheese produced to go with the fresh bread.

D’Arcy was sitting on the terrace wall looking down past the romantic gardens she had created in the old ruins separating her from the path that ran along the edge of the cliffs, plunging into the sea below her house. Year by year she had bought every parcel of land and crumbling ruin in the vicinity of her house, thereby managing to become one of the largest landowners in Livakia. Most everyone in the village guessed it was she who owned the land but she had been discreet when making her purchases and so few really knew the true extent of her holdings. The gardens were open to the public when she was not wanting to be alone or entertaining in them. The villagers were more proud than envious of what she owned because they knew she had not bought the land for greed or mere privacy, but to conserve it, restore it, make it a place of
beauty for them all to appreciate. They had seen too much of their rugged and wild island eaten up by the disease of tourism: concrete hotels, busloads of transient drunks who never really saw the island or its people for what and who they were. If there was any envy it was among the foreign colony residing in Livakia and those who wanted to make their home there but had to leave. It was such a struggle to buy and restore anything in Greece that many who wanted to do so gave up in despair.

They were remarkable gardens that would never have thrived at all in that dry and stony terrain except that D’Arcy, against all odds, had drilled for a well and found water. Beautiful and in keeping with the terrain, there were architectural and walled gardens, within walled gardens, set one above the other on tiers of rock climbing both along and up the cliff. Hanging gardens, mysterious for their timelessness and the ethereal, indefinable aura they created that wrapped itself around a visitor walking through them.

The ground was mostly stony with a few patches of grass and wild flowers. Large fragments of mosaics from antique times, and dull and worn marble paving slabs, stood within the ruined, free-standing walls of roofless houses, cleaned down and looking like mystifying sculptures in the sun, caressed by the wind as they stared out across the sea.

Hundreds of terracotta pots of flowering shrubs indigenous to Crete and two palm trees of considerable height and age vied with a few cypress and fig, several olive trees, lemons, and a peach tree. Antique amphorae fished from the sea and encrusted with fossilised marine life
stood on pedestals, and there were besides marvellous life-size sculptures from the Classical period, whole or fragmentary for the loss of a limb or a head, a face worn away by the centuries, wind and the rain. The huge stone head of a lion with a curly mane set in the cliffside gushed water which cascaded over rocks into a pool. There were marble chairs more like thrones for the gods, stone benches and the odd table of white marble, dulled from the sea spray and occasional mists. And above all, the glorious sun and light of Greece.

What work, what passion, what love of place it had taken to create such gardens. What madness, thought D’Arcy, as her mind drifted away from her friends and the sound of their laughter. A fishing boat in full sail rounded the point and she watched it lazily sail into the bay. The luxury of living in a timeless place, that was her life and had always been her life. Even during the years she had been away from Livakia, she had found ways to live for pleasure and play. People said of her that she was not her mother’s child for nothing, but they said that about her sister and two brothers as well.

She saw him far below her on the path before he saw her. As D’Arcy watched him, he walked as if he owned not just the earth beneath his feet, which he did not, but the world. It was a walk with a swagger in it, a special kind of big man’s walk, fearful of nothing. There was arrogance in his stride, the way he moved his limbs, used his whole body, even his shoulders when he walked. His walk was like that of the Cretan shepherds when they came down from the mountains into the villages and cities. Rugged men used to dealing with real life,
ready if they must to cut down anything that crossed their path.

D’Arcy had always liked Max’s walk. Her eyes following him, she smiled while remembering a ravishingly beautiful and amusing Italian girl who had been brought to the island by him. Max was addicted to adventures, most especially sexual ones with women he had never had before. After several weeks their scene was over. Sitting in the port having a coffee with D’Arcy one day and watching Max approaching their table, Gabriella had sighed, ‘Ah, Max. He walks like he fucks.’

D’Arcy had always felt sexually attracted to Max, but was determined not to be another notch on his belt. They had always wanted each other; he never stopped asking, D’Arcy never stopped rejecting. These two very sexual beings, close friends for years, danced round each other with their sexuality. D’Arcy had always wondered about sex with him and what she was afraid of.

At last he looked up to see if anyone was on the terrace of her house. He always did when he passed her way. He waved and gave her one of his dazzling smiles. He had the looks of any and all of the great sculptures of the god Zeus with his shock of thick curly golden-brown hair, a magnificent well-cut beard framing a big and gloriously handsome face, sensuous lips, fantastic bone structure, a large and beautifully chiselled nose, and eyes of a dark, dark blue with fire and passion in them.

Today he wore no shirt, displaying a body he loved to show off for its perfect male figure of long shapely legs, muscular thighs, narrow hips and muscular rounded bottom. It was impossible not to admire the rock hard
stomach, powerful arms, wide shoulders, broad chest; even his neck was thick with muscle. Strength and power seemed to emanate from him. To see him walk from the sea was to imagine Poseidon had come up from the depths to breathe life into the modern world. The Cretans adored Max, he made friends of them all over the island. They called him Max-Zeus. Men and women alike admired him for his looks and legendary sexual prowess. He was the epitome of courage and male virility, much admired traits to the Greeks and most particularly the Cretans.

‘I’m going fishing, want to come?’ he called up.

‘Where?’

‘Karinios.’

Karinios was a small rugged cove a forty-minute walk away. It boasted three small period houses, one abandoned, one where a ninety-year-old woman and her son lived, and Brett’s house – the simple structure where D’Arcy was born. It was still owned by her mother though she had not returned to it or Crete for many years. Karinios was quiet, the water deep and clear off a stony beach. D’Arcy often went there to open the house and air it out. She kept it in repair but nothing else; it was just as Brett had left it.

Fishing with Max meant deep diving with a spear, and no one was better at it. D’Arcy liked to swim with him because he explored as well as fished, but she was better with a hook and a line than a spear.

‘Come up for a drink. Laurence and Arnold are here – maybe they would like to go.’

Max waved and turned back towards her gate. She slid off the wall and went down to let him in. He was already
there framed in the doorway when she pulled the wooden door back.

‘You were quick,’ she told him with a smile. He always made her smile; it was his virility and handsomeness, the aura of pulsating life emanating from him. She had never seen him down or depressed, not even during winter when it was cold and grey and some of the foreign residents became nervy with a need for a trip to Paris, London or New York. He just held more poker games in his house, went hunting in the mountains with his Cretan friends, kept the woman of the moment that little bit longer, or flew off in the four-seater sea plane he kept in a sheltered cove.

He would take parties of people in his old wooden sailing boat, weather permitting, for a day that might run into three or four. They might go to Sfakia where there was more action and he had friends, or else to Chania where he would stay and party with some of the foreigners living there. Or he might just vanish for a couple of months to play on some other island in the sun. His casual hold on life was stronger than that of men who held on to theirs with both fists clenched tight. D’Arcy understood that part of him so well because she too enjoyed life with a light touch. That similarity created an unspoken bond between them.

He bent forward, kissed her on the lips and told her, ‘I’d like to fuck you out of your brains, D’Arcy Montesque.’

Her smile broadened and then she laughed. ‘And what about Laurence?’

‘Cards on the table?’

She nodded her head. ‘A poker player plays his hand. Go on then,’ she told him.

‘He’s my friend, but he’s not strong enough to hold you. And he’s an English gent, takes the measure of things. Deep down he doesn’t understand where people like you and I are coming from. He’s a man who still believes in approval and disapproval. I can wait. You’re worth waiting for, D’Arcy. But do I really have to? Laurence and I have shared women before and never had a problem with it.’

‘But this is love, Max, a little more than sex.’

He laughed, an uproarious sound, and grabbed her hand to run with her up several stairs to the terrace.

Chapter 3

Manoussos Stavrolakis was standing at the window of his office looking down. The heat of the day was just lifting and a light warm breeze was coming off the water. The port looked quiet and lazy and was cast in hues of pink-gold from the sun slipping slowly out of the sky.

Arnold was sitting alone at a small table drinking white wine and reading his
New Yorker
magazine, a familiar scene for this time of day. D’Arcy would be having her last swim. A luscious-looking girl with long blonde hair and legs that seemed to go on forever appeared. He had not seen her before. She would be staying with Max. He smiled. How did Max do it? He watched Rachel al Hacq – such tiny mincing steps. A wiggle to fuck by, they seemed to say with every click of her heels on the cobblestones. She sat at a table in a different cafe from Arnold and opened her notebook. She was a better poser than she was a poet. It was always good to be home. Manoussos had just returned from a tour of some of the more remote villages in his district. There was nothing unusual about that. He had been away for four days, and there was nothing unusual about that either. He had left his jeep in the cave, next to D’Arcy’s 2CV, the Second World
War American jeep he had won from Max in a poker game one Christmas. Now there were two on the island, his and Max’s. He was usually off duty, bathed and out of his uniform by this time of day and ready to play a game of chess with Arnold, but now he was being held up waiting for a fax to come through from Athens.