The Pleasure Seekers (20 page)

Rachel stood on the tips of her toes and looking up at D’Arcy discreetly whispered, ‘Tonight’s the night. At last he’s interested! In the church he all but asked me to his house, and I intend to go and to sleep in Jimmy Jardine’s spiritual bed.’

She beamed at D’Arcy and was already batting her eyelashes before she even left her friend’s side. It brought back something deeply silly that seemed to have vanished when the mystery of Arnold’s death had taken over their lives. D’Arcy couldn’t have held back the laughter even if she had wanted to. It came from deep within, peals of it, until there were tears in her eyes. Her laughter released the tension that had become part of everyone’s lives.
The group looked at her, smiles on their faces. Rachel slipped her arm through Jimmy Jardine’s and twinkled up at him.

‘That’s beautiful, D’Arcy. You’re washing away grief, like peeling off a heavy coat of the stuff. You’re healing yourself, healing us all. The last time I heard laughter like that and saw happening what I see happening to you now was in a monastery in Tibet when a Buddhist monk, a master, was chanting to some children. Their laughter echoed through the cavernous halls of the monastery and I began to laugh with them. All the years and tragedies of my life fell away. I felt like a child. The master was a man of ninety-two and those years just seemed to slip away. He looked like a young man, he too was a child again. We were all happiness and freedom. Something I had probably never truly felt since I was four years old. He taught me that chant. It’s used to release the true soul, get you in touch with your total being, the path to awareness.

‘D’Arcy, I don’t know how much you’ve studied, how many lives you’ve lived to get where you are, but that chant – you know it without knowing it, it’s in your soul and you pull it out when you need it. You’re blessed, one of the luckiest women in the world,’ Jimmy Jardine told her.

‘Make me one of the luckiest women in the world, teach me that chant, Jimmy,’ pleaded Rachel, very nearly panting in her breathlessly sexy little voice.

Rachel was definitely on form, giving the best in her repertoire of seduction performances. Not one person in the group dared to look at another for fear of bursting into
frivolous laughter and blowing Rachel’s game as well as Jimmy’s belief that D’Arcy was the aware human being, the spiritual soul incarnate he believed her to be, and which he had spent endless years trying to be.

Obviously inspired by D’Arcy and aware that life in Livakia was rapidly healing from a dark moment in its history, he dropped his guard and let Rachel into his life. ‘I never thought of you as wanting to learn the Buddhist ways, Rachel?’

‘Oh, I do. I do, Jimmy.’ She saw her opening and was quick to jump in.

‘Then why don’t you come to my house tonight for supper and we’ll talk?’

D’Arcy half expected to hear a burst of applause. Rachel had made it, she was in the door, but was she in his bed? The look of satisfaction on her face was one no one had ever seen before. Jimmy said goodbye to everyone and they watched him walk away, wondering whether he did or did not know what he was in for. D’Arcy imagined that he would be talking enlightenment, Rachel sex.

Looking smug she told them, ‘I won’t be joining you for lunch. I have to wash my hair, do my legs, give myself a facial – and don’t worry if you don’t see me for a few days. One of his ex-wives told me he’s an animal in bed, a poetic animal but a very sexual one. Likes to go on long orgies of sex and poetry once he really gets going, and I intend for him to
really
get going.’

‘Then you’re not going to go into denial on
this
sexual romp?’ quipped Laurence.

‘Not on your life! I’m going to wear this encounter on my sleeve like a badge. You know, like something
you win in the girl guides. I will have earned it.’ Now everyone did burst into laughter. And Rachel walked away, eyes sparkling as if they had stars in them.

Walking to the Kavouria, Laurence and D’Arcy slipped back from the group. ‘Now that this ghastly affair is over and we can put it behind us, I think we should talk. I miss you, and I know you still miss me. That’s true, isn’t it?’ he asked her.

‘Yes.’

‘I knew it!’

‘What should we talk about, Laurence?’

‘Staying in each other’s lives, both of us behaving in a civilised way when we have other lovers around, the possibility that one day we may get back to having more than the odd one-night stand together.’

‘You assume a lot, Laurence.’

‘Surely we still want each other that way, you can’t deny it?’

D’Arcy ignored that. Yet again, she recognised something in Laurence she had never liked: his constantly trying to manipulate her. ‘You have a lady arriving,’ she told him in a matter-of-fact manner.

‘Well, yes. From London. Caroline Finch.’

‘That’s what this is all about. This has nothing to do with
us.
Anything to avoid the direct route, always the devious but dressed up as diplomatic, whatever it takes to bypass a confrontation. Have your Caroline Finch, and a Mary and a Columbine. Have all the women in the world. You can parade them in front of me, I don’t mind. Be assured I would never embarrass myself by making a scene over you and your inability
to give yourself in love. Now, shall we join the others for lunch?’

D’Arcy rose early the following morning, dressed and went down to the port. Only Katzakis’s grocery shop was open. The other traders were sitting around tables having their coffee and discussing politics. D’Arcy greeted them and after ordering eggs and a mound of bacon, bread, honey and coffee, took a table apart from theirs where she sat with her face turned up to the sun. The hum of voices and the sound of the sea lapping against the few boats still left in the port, the sound of a single bell being rung in the church high above the village resounding off the cliffs – the morning music of Livakia. The glory days were back. She let it seep into her soul and felt the power and the excitement of just being alive. It was enough for her, it would always be enough for her, life and love and living in Livakia.

D’Arcy was not concerned that love came and went in her life. For her it was just a cycle. She had no doubt that love would come to her again. Maybe it would be another love that was born, would develop and die. She was a woman who understood love can do that if it fulfils itself and has nowhere else to go, when the adventure goes out of a relationship, and eternal love is some far off dream. And then again maybe a new love would come along and be a greater love than she had ever had. Love eternal. If that were to happen it would come as all her other loves had: naturally, without artifice, both for her and the other person involved. Love, passion, sex, they had always come to her in the past, and she had no doubt
that they would come again because she was receptive to those things if the chemistry was right. Time and chance were two things she believed in and never forced. She could wait. If it was to be, it would be.

The sun felt good on her face, it relaxed every nerve in her body. She gave herself up to it and sighed. She smiled when she felt his hands over her eyes and he kissed the top of her head. She knew it was Max by his scent. She had always found that light aroma of sandalwood and pine he wore very exotic and sexy. It went with the heat and the sun and the sea. She didn’t move, said not a word. Not even when she felt his beard brush against her ear and he whispered, ‘I’ll have you yet, and I’ll caress you better than the sun you’re basking in now, and I’ll eat into your flesh better than the sun’s heat, and when that happens you’ll never send me away again.’

Max bit her ear lobe, very hard, and D’Arcy squirmed in her chair. He removed his hands from her eyes, stepped in front of her and smiled. ‘Good morning, D’Arcy.’

‘Good morning, Max.’ She found it difficult to hold back her smile.

‘Dare I dream it might happen tonight?’

‘You’re incorrigible.’

‘Well, at least you recognise that.’ He touched the tip of her nose with his finger, and then her lips, and then he was gone. D’Arcy closed her eyes again, tilting her face back up to the sun.

It was just barely seven o’clock when D’Arcy was woken out of her reverie for the second time by the arrival of breakfast. She was ravenous and ate her meal with gusto. She left not a morsel of food on the plate and
was having her third cup of coffee when she saw Rachel appear from a side street. D’Arcy had to check her watch for the time. Rachel never appeared in sunlight before ten or preferably eleven in the morning.

On seeing D’Arcy she rushed over to her and plopped into a chair. She looked quite worn out, dizzy with tiredness. ‘I’m famished, I must have some food. God, you’ve left nothing on your plate. Don’t go away, I’ll be right back. The bastard never fed me!’ With that she rushed into the coffee shop and came out seconds later pulling apart half a loaf of bread and stuffing the pieces in her mouth. Once more in the chair, she closed her eyes and sighed.

‘You’ve just come from Jimmy Jardine’s house. Well, was it everything you dreamed it was going to be?’ asked D’Arcy, a smile on her lips and laughter in her voice.

‘You can laugh! You haven’t just spent the most boring night of your life and then not even been fucked.’

‘I don’t believe it!’

‘This time you can believe it, it’s God’s truth. He did exactly what he said he was going to do: talked Zen and Zen and more Zen. He’s been on a retreat so it was leftover macrobiotic food – disgusting! Eating that stuff can’t be a way of getting to Nirvana, wherever that is. The poetry, his poetry, Zen poetry, we went through all that . . . interesting but too wise, when you could understand it, and far too worthy. Boring, boring. But still he was wooing me and he has that sexy look about him and, well, frankly, I remembered what his wife said so I tried every ploy to get him to crash out of Zen and slip between the sheets. Would he have it? Not on your life. He was a
pig,
not at all a gentleman. He accepted my sitting in his lap, my kisses and caresses, sat there like one of those precious stone Buddhas he reveres and let me make love to him. And all I got in return – not sex but more Zen. Oh, please!’

Rachel’s food arrived and she ate while rolling her eyes in delight. In between mouthfuls she asked, ‘D’Arcy, what do you think he does with all of those gorgeous, brainless beauties he brings here when he’s not on a retreat?’ Then, before D’Arcy could answer, she said with eyes flashing danger signals, ‘Don’t you dare tell me he beds them, fucks them silly and makes love to them. You do and I’ll be very angry.’ Then she paused and looked up from her plate. ‘You’ll tell me he wanted my mind not my body, and I’ll tell you he was a schmuck – he could have had my mind
after
my body.’ A smile slowly appeared at the corners of her mouth and then she broke into a grin and then both women had a good laugh over Rachel al Hacq’s failed seduction of Jeremy Jardine. Her last words on the subject were, ‘The man is too self-involved.’

The last days of September were still hot, the nights warm, but there was that end-of-summer feeling. With the end of the tourist season and the arrival of the more interesting travellers, the island was coming back into its own. Livakia was settling down again; it had weathered the tragedy, the divisions that had split the community, and then the media. The inhabitants had been so difficult with journalists and TV people that the media soon vanished, either because of the blackout on
all information relating to the murder or just plain fear of stepping on too many Cretan toes.

Manoussos had called in some favours and a dozen big, strong, rugged-looking young men came down from the surrounding mountain villages to stay in Livakia and see off media intruders who might be disturbing the peace by re-hashing the sad story. A grateful Livakia took them into their homes, Rachel secretly into her bed, and all in all it worked. The unpleasant scandal that they could not wholly forget was at least fading from their minds, and life as they had known and enjoyed it slowly returned.

His name was Brandon Ketheridge and he was staying with Elefherakis, and had been there several days before D’Arcy met him. He was tall and broad-shouldered and slim, a man in his fifties with greying hair and dark sexy eyes. He was English, living in London, a writer of some renown, his name instantly familiar to anyone who read good literature. It was instant sexual rapport. There was about him that same erotic quality that most libertines have, a certain danger and excitement, mystery, the promise of sex unbounded, a habit of sensual indulgence – those same qualities that Max had and D’Arcy had always shied away from.

She had not the least intention of running away from Brandon Ketheridge. She could accept a short-lived, intensely sexual and satisfying liaison with him. He didn’t live in Livakia, he wouldn’t wear her as a notch on his belt the way Max would. There was no possibility of losing him as a long-standing close friend as there might be if she succumbed to Max’s seductive sexual charms,
and so when they met at the Kavouria a delicious sense of romance flared between them.

It began with a look across the table before they were even properly introduced. A sexual attraction so strong, so sure, that it left neither of them in any doubt that they would have each other, that this was the right time, the right place, for a romantic sexual adventure, the kind that flares up and burns bright before burning itself out. The kind that has nothing to do with love. The atmosphere their flirtation created left no one else in any doubt about that either. In fact, it made most everyone there hungry for an erotic experience in any form they could get it.

Once introductions were made across the table Brandon wasted little time. Not half an hour later he had managed to change seats with Elefherakis and was seated next to D’Arcy.

Half an hour after that, he said, lowering his voice, ‘This meal is going to go on for eternity. Do we have to be deplorably discreet and remain?’

‘I don’t see why. I think we’ve already blown discretion.’

He smiled at her. ‘I thought we might have.’ With that he pushed back his chair and, very tall and very obvious, stood behind D’Arcy’s and helped her up. He knew the form. In lunches and dinners at the Kavouria where there were gatherings of people who chose to sit together at one long table, people always paid an equal share of the bill unless specifically invited by someone. Brandon walked round the table to Elefherakis and, slipping money into his hand, said, ‘For D’Arcy’s and my share of the bill.’