The Pleasure Seekers (10 page)

When he could stop laughing at the idea of tossing the 2CV on to a boat, he continued, ‘He’s delivering my meat and supplies, and his next stop is Livakia.’

While it was very tempting, it was an impossible idea. To get the Citroën on the boat was one thing; to get it from the port in Livakia to the cave where D’Arcy kept the car was another. There were no roads in Livakia that could accommodate anything more than a man and a donkey. They all had a laugh and then once the boat delivery had been made to the taverna Sotiri joined them for a drink. It was he who suggested that they leave the car under the lean-to and take the boat with him to Livakia. In a few days he would be making his return trip. He offered to pick up D’Arcy in Livakia and drop her off to collect the car then. It began to seem like a good idea and after several more glasses of wine, a brilliant one. They pulled up the roof of the 2CV and locked the car. The taverna keeper appeared with a huge tarpaulin which they draped over it and tied down, and with no more fuss than that they boarded Sotiri’s boat and sailed for home.

It was one of those magical boat rides that can happen on that coast. They sailed not too far out to sea and parallel to the rugged coastline, always a glorious sight to see but especially with the afternoon sunlight playing on the cliffs and along the deserted coves and beaches or on the occasional village. The landscape changed colour from beige and stone to lavender and pink, even a quite bright yellow, and then back to its original colour and all its hues and variations: cliffs of toffee and hills of gold.
‘God’s palate,’ said Sotiri as he handed them huge slices of warm watermelon. He smiled at them and D’Arcy thought she had yet to meet a Cretan who, when it came to his island, did not have a little poetry in his heart.

They were sitting in the prow of the boat on packing cases due for delivery in a port further on from Livakia, D’Arcy in a wide-brimmed straw hat that had seen better days, Laurence wearing his grandfather’s Panama that had yellowed with age. With eyes trained on the coastline and apropos of nothing he said, ‘It’s so difficult for me to think of you as having been born and brought up in this magically beautiful but in many ways unreal place. I can’t even imagine how it could have happened to you.’

‘Well, you’d have to have known my mother, Brett, to understand it. She was a pleasure seeker, who loved men and life and freedom. That was why she lived in Crete, and bore four children, had lovers, and gave us several men for father figures. Men who loved us and her all the more for her having not trapped them into a conventional married life she knew she could never sustain. Everything I am and do is coloured by my unusual upbringing here on this island.’

‘You’ve told me that before and still it amazes me.’

‘What amazes you?’

‘The way you turned out without the trappings of the establishment. I think I envy you.’

‘I know you do, darling. You must try and get over that.’

‘You envy no one?’

‘I don’t even understand envy.’

‘You can honestly say that you have no desire to know who your biological father is, as I do?’

‘It never crosses my mind. All my life I’ve known he’s one of two of the best men any girl could ever want for a father. That’s always been good enough for me – for all concerned as a matter of fact. They don’t know which one is my dad any more than my mom does. She loved them both, they both loved her. I’m a love child and so are my brothers and sister. Brett always made sure we understood that and appreciated it. We did and it made us happy.

‘Happy, and wildly free and romantic was the way she brought us up. As a very young child I had a lifestyle which was materially poor, at times even desperately so. Sometimes we lived on credit from Mr Katzakis for months and months and were fed by some of our Cretan friends.

‘Mother had a small trust fund and when money came in the first thing she did was pay her bills and take us for a treat, an excursion somewhere. We were all right without electricity and central heating and money, but then nearly everyone else in Livakia was really poor except for Elefherakis. Brett had many friends who would arrive and stay, and the fathers would come for long periods of time. It was all part of our rich life of fun and looking for fun. It helped that everyone admired my mother – they were dazzled by her beauty and respected her independence and her love of Crete, and the way she was bringing us up. In a strange way we had the most privileged life any child could want. Being brought up by a beautiful, eccentric mother, an incurable romantic who
named her children after heroes of literature, has been no hindrance in my life.

‘Brett was a product of the sixties, a mature beautiful woman who had been a chic, sophisticated deb and model. Then she saw an alternative way to live and love and be happy. Men always fell in love with her. It was a millionaire Greek ship owner who brought her to Crete. She fell in love with it rather than him. Periodically he used to return and fill the house with food and wine and we would party on his yacht. Then one day, when I was fourteen years old, my mother gave birth to her fourth child. A week later one of my fathers arrived on a lovely black schooner. We watched it sail into Livakia as my mother, with the baby swathed in a white silk shawl in her arms, walked round the port to meet him trailed by her three other children. He kissed her and helped her aboard, then he kissed each of us and swung us on to the deck. He had inherited one of the finest vineyards in France, carrying one of the oldest and best labels. He wanted to show us the world.

‘The harsh years of near penury and then the influence of that particular father of ours did not so much change all our family’s life as expand it with his wealth and generosity. It was through him that I learned the advantages of being independently wealthy enough to be able to seek out and enjoy my pleasures and satisfy my heart’s desires. So you must see why I can’t understand how you can be amazed by me. I’m just living my life the best I can on my terms, in my time. It’s nothing more than the way I was brought up to live, the way I’ve always lived.’

Laurence pulled D’Arcy off the packing case and on
to his lap. He removed her hat and her lovely auburn hair tumbled down round her shoulders. He tilted up her chin and kissed her full on the lips, then again. They smiled at each other, and she leaned her head against his chest. He rocked her in his arms while slipping a hand beneath her blouse to caress her breast. His caressing was sweet and sensual and it stirred her soul. She felt her flesh, her bones, melt away into sweet bliss and she reached out to him to caress his lips and slip her hands beneath his shirt. She liked the feel of his firm, warm flesh and, unbuttoning his shirt, she kissed his nipples and licked them and then his lips. D’Arcy sighed and smiled at Laurence, they kissed once more before she closed his shirt and reached for her hat, replacing it on her head They remained like that, watching the coastline of Crete slip by and listened to the sounds: the chatter of Sotiri and his crew from somewhere in the stern of the boat rising above the chugging and spluttering noise of the working wooden boat as it headed towards home.

Laurence was too moved by this woman he loved to challenge her about several things she said. She was a sophisticated, well-educated and talented woman, a Yale arts graduate who in her chosen field of industrial design had been clever enough to win contracts for work and patent several innovative designs for the motor industry that had made her a millionaire by the age of twenty-eight, at which time she retired to Livakia to live for her pleasures.

She wore her successes as if they were not successes at all, but as she herself might have put it, ‘just life’. Was this innocence? Naïveté? Or was it a grand case
of inverted snobbery? Was what she told him, and the giving of herself to him so totally in sex and every other way, genuine? He demanded complete possession of her and she gave it to him and he was trapped by her gift. She
was
amazing. No other woman had managed to capture him in love and keep him as she had.

D’Arcy and Laurence were standing with Sotiri at the boat’s rail when they rounded a cliff that plunged dramatically straight down to the bottom of the sea. The port of Livakia slowly unfolded before their eyes. It was dusk and the night was coming down fast. People would be sitting in the coffee shops, walking down from their houses for a stroll along the port and the corniche, lights would just be being switched on, and Livakia would soon be looking from the water as if a handful of stars had been thrown down by a benevolent god enchanted by all things rare and beautiful. It was the perfect time to sail into the small but deep natural harbour and a perfect way to end their excursion.

Livakia inched into view. The only twinkling lights to be seen were those in the houses on the hill. The port itself seemed deserted; the Kavouria, though open, had only a dim light showing from inside. The cafe tables were out but where were the people? Something was going on, but what? D’Arcy checked the time by her watch, and then scanned the port. Not a foreign resident was in sight. Was there a party somewhere? But the foreign colony didn’t party much in each other’s houses. The church . . . there was a function in the church. But there were no lights on in the church. She spotted a light in Manoussos’s office and felt inexplicably relieved.

Chapter 5

At last two people appeared, Manoussos and his deputy. D’Arcy watched them walking along the crescent-shaped port to where the boat was coming in. She took off her hat and waved it at Manoussos. Normally she would have called out to him but somehow there was a hush about the evening and the port, and she was reluctant to do so. Instead, she raised her arms and turned her hands palms up, shrugged her shoulders, as if to ask, ‘What’s going on here?’

Laurence was less sensitive. He called out, ‘I didn’t expect a band or a welcome committee, but where is everybody?’

Manoussos helped D’Arcy off the boat and shook hands with Laurence and Sotiri. He placed an arm round D’Arcy’s shoulders and smiled at her. ‘Good trip?’

‘Great,’ she told him, feeling less concerned about the strange quiet that seemed to lie like a blanket over everything in Livakia.

But that was before she realised the usual warmth of his smile was somehow not there, that there was a stiffness in his walk. His deputy, Dimitrios, had not looked her in the eye when he had greeted her nor had he looked
Laurence or Sotiri in the face when he had shaken their hands. D’Arcy began to stride along with a spring in her step, talking about their boat trip. They were passing the barber’s shop. There was no one waiting in a queue to use the telephone, no one sitting in the chairs being worked on, not a soul lolling around waiting for his turn in the chair or merely there for a gossip. Nothing but the glow from a small naked light bulb, the shop’s night-light, and the barber-cum-mayor leaning against the door jamb. On seeing them, he turned his back on them and walked to the rear of his minute shop.

D’Arcy stopped walking and stepped in front of Manoussos. She could not help but notice the flush of colour that had come into his deputy Dimitrios’s face. ‘OK, our mayor can sometimes be Mr Grumpy, but he is never rude. Or let me put it this way, I’ve known him my whole life and he has never been rude to me. Now
that
was rude. What’s going on here, Manoussos?’

They were only a few steps away from some small tables set out on the cobblestones. Manoussos took D’Arcy firmly by the hand and led her over to one. The others followed and pulled up chairs. The coffee house keeper vanished into his shop. Manoussos snapped his fingers and a little boy came running with glasses of water which he nervously plonked on the table, slopping water everywhere. D’Arcy just as nervously began mopping the water up with Kleenex from her basket while Laurence gave orders for the boy to bring coffee for them all.

D’Arcy watched Dimitrios remove his policeman’s hat and mop his brow and the palms of his hands with a neatly folded white handkerchief. Once more she gazed along
the port, and then looking directly into Manoussos’s eyes told him, ‘Well, whatever has happened here since we’ve been away it must be bad because not even Arnold is here, having his first drink of the evening while waiting for a game of chess with you. Or has he gone off on his trip to Skafidia Padromi? He did mention something about wanting to visit someone there, or was it Kastelli Kissamu? I can’t remember.’

Dimitrios put his hat back on and actually rose and left the table. The boy returned with a copper swing tray of demi-tasse cups of Greek coffee, hot and sweet. Manoussos raised his hand to stop the boy from banging them down on the table and himself removed each from the tray. He placed a cup in front of Laurence, D’Arcy, and himself. Even one on the table in front of Dimitrios’s empty chair. He instructed the boy to go and tell Dimitrios, who was standing by the water, to return to the table.

Silence settled on them. Their eyes were fixed on Dimitrios as he returned to the table to sit down and pick up his coffee cup. Like robots they followed suit, placed the rim of the chipped white cups to their lips and sipped the hot black liquid.

Manoussos stroked his moustache several times, as if it were ruffled and he had to smooth it down, then he spoke. ‘There is no easy way to tell you this. Arnold’s not missing, he’s dead.’

Dimitrios lowered his eyes. D’Arcy couldn’t somehow grasp what Manoussos was saying. Her eyes were fixed on Dimitrios, who was clearly upset. She remembered that he always watched out for Arnold, made sure no
harm came to him. They were friends, he often helped Arnold on his days off, liked the American and his little projects. She reached across the table and grasped the sleeve of his jacket in her hand and began tugging at it. A profound sadness was pulling her down, disbelief, hysteria . . . she could feel those things taking her over.

‘You were his friend, Dimitrios, took care of him. We all did. Wasn’t anyone watching him? Oh, don’t tell me no one was there to help him?’

Laurence removed her hand from Dimitrios’s sleeve. He had actually to prise her fingers open. He was harsh with her when he demanded, ‘Stop this,
now.
Pull yourself together, D’Arcy. We’re all upset. Handle it better.’