The Pleasure Seekers (26 page)

He was in uniform and Manoussos always knew how to use that to best advantage. ‘Well, I’ve got to get back to the station. See you.’ He kissed D’Arcy on the cheek and patted Laurence on the shoulder as he passed by him. ‘Maybe see you guys later at the Kavouria, or the garden restaurant. And then again, maybe not.’

‘Yes, maybe,’ answered Laurence, and shot a friendly punch at Manoussos’s arm.

That was it. It was just as simple as that. They were back together, even Manoussos had seen that. Laurence felt joyous, he wanted to shout the news to the whole world. D’Arcy felt the same way, her every gesture told him that. And then she said, ‘And so it begins, the second time around. They always say that it’s better the second time around.’ There was a softness in her voice, a lovingness, a sensuality. He felt no hesitation in going to her, giving himself up to her.

He had her in his arms before they even heard the door shut behind Manoussos. He licked her lips with his tongue. He kissed her eyes and the tip of her nose and chin, and then he kissed her full on the lips – a kiss that was deep and searching and full of lust. They were here, wanting each other in a celebration of reunion and love. ‘Tell me you love me, you’ve missed me?’ he begged her in between kisses.

‘I love you, I did miss you, and, oh, does it feel good to be back in your arms,’ she told him in a voice husky with desire.

He had her blouse off and his hands fondled her breasts. He wanted her as he always wanted her, giving herself up to him in uncontrolled carnal lust. The sun was going down and there was a cool breeze coming off the sea. They walked from the terrace into the house leaving a trail of clothes as they disrobed. He sensed in D’Arcy a new kind of eroticism, and that was before she slipped away from him into the bathroom and reappeared as she had before Elefherakis.

She did it again, that same thing she could always do for Laurence – break through any last vestige of sexual inhibition he might have. He had never seen her as she appeared to him now, the ultimate seductress, a magnificent sexual goddess in her golden earrings and rouged nipples, the henna-decorated mound, golden bracelets on her wrists. Walking towards him, even her long and shapely legs were another erotic image of sensual excitement. They were both aware that they had come together for a night of sex where they would, each of them, pare themselves down to the basics of sexual
desire, where they could put aside their egos and the outside world, any moment but the very moment they were living in, and take each other over for the sake of erotic passion, sexual oblivion.

He was sitting on the end of the bed. She went up to him, straddled him and sat on his lap. In the hope of composing himself, he closed his eyes for a moment, but there was no hope of accomplishing that. She had already seduced him, and his mind was racing over all the many different ways he would have sex with her, how he would master this depraved woman he loved, how he would like to tame her, no matter how harsh the method, but tame her for being the sexual animal who had her sexual teeth into him and would never let him go.

D’Arcy placed her arms round his neck. She rubbed her breasts up against him, and kissed him full on the mouth. His lips parted and their kiss deepened: the warmth and smoothness inside their mouths, tongues licking, mouths sucking – they each of them felt themself drowning in sensuous kissing. She ran her fingers through his hair and pulled tight on it. She was brimming, on the very edge of orgasm. Not yet, not yet, she told herself, and so pulled back from the kiss, put her hands on his shoulders and leaned away from him.

Laurence no longer saw her as the woman he loved, but as a woman who wanted to go on an erotic journey with him as captain of their destiny. He knew what took her over the edge, every erogenous zone that could make her his sexual slave, how she lived to give herself up to sex. He took her raunchy rouged nipples one at a
time in his mouth and sucked deeply on them until he heard her sighs of pleasure, felt the sexual tension in her become very nearly uncontainable, and it was then that he raised her up to sit her hard down on his fully erect and pulsating penis. So harsh was his thrust that she cried out, lost control of herself, and came in a long and thrilling orgasm. He pulled back her head by a handful of her hair and before he ravaged her with another kiss, told her, ‘I love you, I have always loved you from that first time I saw you, and I want you as I have never wanted any other woman I’ve ever known. I give you my life.’

LIVAKIA and IRAKLION

Chapter 12

For several days, sex and togetherness took over D’Arcy’s and Laurence’s lives. Happiness, and especially a new kind of happiness with someone you believe yourself to be in love with, can be like an aphrodisiac: you always want more of it and to fill your life with such a profound feeling. Well, at least D’Arcy did.

No one seemed to be surprised that Caroline had vanished from Livakia and Laurence and D’Arcy were together again. It hardly caused any comment at all, any more than Mark Obermann’s return had. He arrived with yet another pretty young thing who was dazzled by the idea of being the life and love of a possibly great literary figure who lived a romantic life on a Greek island. He settled into the community as if the tragedy had never occurred and was once again accepted by everybody. Arnold’s death was never mentioned, not even in passing. If Mark and Arnold’s other friends, who had for so many years shared the life of the expatriate with them, were sad that Arnold was no longer among them, there was no hint of it.

The boyish good looks, the Mark Obermann charm, and a love light in his eyes for the new girlfriend, gave
the Cretans a basis to think of Melina’s relationship with Mark as one based on charitable, brotherly love – that is if they even thought of it at all. They felt now as they always did, close to him because of the unswerving love and loyalty he showed to Greece, the Greek people, and in particular Crete.

D’Arcy, when she could for a second step back from her own happiness and observe Mark’s return and everyone’s reaction to it, could see that Laurence was right: life does go on. Except for the absence of Arnold, the laughter and wit, the minute trials and tribulations of living in paradise were very much the same. Mark drank more, much more, but he spouted the same old rhetoric and was still the great orator and brilliant intelligent mind, still the enchanter, the seducer of women promising sex and love in every glance. She wanted to enjoy him as she once had but the memory of their last telephone conversation before his return kept putting her off.

He had told her, ‘It’s all right for you, you who have everything. Oh, how I would like it to be all right for me. Of course I’m in love with Melina, of course I hated Arnold, despised him actually. Yes, I did poison Melina’s mind with my detestation of Arnold. I have never stopped wanting Melina, never for a day will I stop wanting her. I love everything about her – her body, her illiteracy, the fact that she was orphaned from birth, her poverty, her cunning, her dishonesty, her sexual depravity, all that’s dark and evil in her nature. Yes, I have enjoyed and loved it all. She loves me, had often told me she would sacrifice anything for me, and she proved it. She killed Arnold, as
much for me as she did for herself. I thrill to her adoration of me. The fact that I returned her love, embraced the dark side of her soul, was enough for her to get rid of the one thorn in my side. The living ugliness, weakness, failure, most especially failure. All that I despise was there in Arnold. Did she not do us all a favour by ridding us of such a drag on our society?

‘I would not have chosen for her to murder Arnold but she did, and I have no intention of suffering his death as I suffered his life. If that means deserting Melina, believe me she will understand it. Her kind of love would.’

D’Arcy and Laurence were walking to his house after having lunch with half a dozen others in the garden restaurant. She was taken aback when he commented,‘You don’t seem to find Mark as amusing as you used to, and he was very amusing at lunch today. Have you lost your sense of humour?’

They were in a narrow lane, climbing steps walled in by high white walls. D’Arcy stopped. She had been amused, very much so, but then she had remembered that last conversation and it was true, she had been distracted from her amusement for a few seconds. Had it been so obvious that Laurence should have picked it up? Well, obviously it had. She had never mentioned that conversation to anyone and somehow she couldn’t bring herself to mention it now to Laurence. ‘No, I don’t think I’ve lost my sense of humour. I actually found him extremely amusing, except for a few moments when my mind wandered away.’

He slipped his arm through hers and they continued their climb in silence. When they arrived home they opened a bottle of wine and took it to the bedroom,
undressed and slipped between the sheets. It was siesta time but neither of them felt much like sleep. Laurence slipped an arm round her shoulders and she leaned in to him and rested her head against his chest. He kissed her several times and removed the book she had planned to read from her hands. She didn’t mind. She kissed him lightly on the lips, caressed him. She felt easy and comfortable with him.

He stroked her hair and commented, ‘It never ceases to amaze me how you can be so lovely and sweet, and at the same time such a whore in bed.’

D’Arcy’s first reaction was to pull away from him in disbelief at what she was hearing. They gazed at each other. There was a look in his eyes that told her she had not misheard him.

‘Don’t glare at me like that, it was meant as a compliment.’ He smiled at her, even gave her a little laugh.

‘A compliment! You can’t tell the difference between a woman who is steeped in sexuality, enjoys every aspect of the erotic and wants to share it with the man of her choice, and a woman who is paid for sex, who derives no personal pleasure from it? Are you mad?’

‘Let’s put it down to a bad choice of word and leave it at that.’ And he pulled her back into his arms.

‘I should think so, unless you do think that all women are whores?’

‘Well, they are to a certain degree, even you must admit that.’

‘Laurence!’

He laughed again, clearly enjoying this conversation with D’Arcy. ‘You all use sex to hold a man, your
mother being a case in point. Like mother like daughter, you might say.’

‘How did my mother come into this, Laurence?’

‘Well, she’s a good example, isn’t she? She’s managed to keep two men for decades.’

‘And you think she kept my fathers for all these years by sex and sex alone? Not only are you insulting Brett, you’re blind. You’ve spent time with her and you didn’t see what an unusual and special person she is? She has many more qualities than sex appeal and they have kept two extra special men constant in her life for all these years. Unless, of course, as I suggested before, you see all women as whores, and if that’s true it must include me.’

‘Look, if we’re going to talk about this, darling, let’s be frank. Can you honestly say that you’ve not cultivated the sexual side of your nature to capture a man and keep him? You’ve been doing it your whole life only you’re a hopeless romantic like Brett, and dress it up as something more than that.’

‘Max was right about you, you don’t deserve me, and let me tell you why. Though you appreciate me, I’m really more than you want to take on. This stupid conversation, why are we having it? Because these last days together we’ve come closer than we have ever been, you’ve let go of your emotions and you want that to stop. You have a pattern, have worked it out, the very same way you worked it out before. You figure you’ve given me enough to live and be happy on, and I’m dizzy in love and I’ll accept that it’s better to have you and what I’ve got than not to have you at all. Hence your pulling back,
putting me in a position where you leave me little to do but retreat, and all because you can’t bear showing emotion. How very English of you, but not very English gentlemanly.’

‘You are only partially right. You forgot to take into account our conversation of last night. I don’t think I want a woman and certainly not a wife of mine chasing after lost causes. I’ve never asked you for much, D’Arcy, probably the only thing I have ever asked you to do for me was to give up this notion of yours to go to Iraklion to visit Melina and befriend her. I detest this idea of taking on the responsibility of helping her to make her years in prison constructive. The girl doesn’t even like you and you never liked her. Are you playing the lady bountiful or is it moral guilt for having never done anything for her before she became a murderess? I would guess it is neither, just a romantic idea that you can contribute something to a wasted life.’

‘Is that why you’re so angry with me, why you feel you have to call me a whore, because I insist on doing something you disapprove of, getting involved where you would not?’

‘It’s an indication.’

‘Of what, Laurence? That you can’t control me, my heart? In that you are damned right!’

‘You’re no social worker, D’Arcy.’

‘Nor do I intend to be. I’m just a whore with a heart.’

‘Now you’re being facetious.’

‘Now you’d better go and call Caroline, and never expect me to return to you again. I told you before I wasn’t sure about us. Now I am. We may have
been good lovers, you and I, but we’ve missed out on love.’

D’Arcy was far more upset at this break-up with Laurence than she was the first time around. Upset with herself for having given him the benefit of the doubt, and by the downfall of love. If she had learned nothing else in those first days when she and Laurence had come together again it was how good it was to be in love, to have a romantic feeling for another human being. That was what she had been looking for and the only real reason for her return to Laurence.

One day they were inseparable and with eyes for no one else; the next they were estranged, civil but at a distance from each other. In a matter of days everyone realised that it was over for them and this time it was final. Several days later, D’Arcy watched him board the boat that would take him down the coast where he was going overland to the airport and back to England to give a series of lectures at Oxford. But not before he approached her and took her aside from the people she had been talking with to tell her, ‘I’m sorry it didn’t work out for us. You may not believe this but I will always love you and want you.’