The Pleasure Seekers (25 page)

D’Arcy came down to the port and sat at a table near the water. She opened the cardigan she was wearing. There
was still heat in the sun, more than she had realised when she had dressed that morning. Plates of ripe purple figs, slices of ham, and a bottle of Domestica white wine were set before her. She ignored them all. She could not seem to get Melina and her life story out of her mind. She might have had she not continually received calls from Mark, still in Athens, reminding her of the girl’s isolation. He displayed a decidedly strange sense of guilt one minute, complete lack of remorse for his part in the disastrous farrago the next.

The call she had had from him this morning, just before she left her house, had been pathetic, and when she had tried to put Mark out of his misery by telling him that Melina had been born a damaged child, and briefly discussed her history, she was shocked to find that he knew nothing about it, nor did he want to. ‘Once this damned trial is over, I’m through with this dreadful mess that Arnold has caused and I’ll be able to put it behind me and get on with my writing,’ he had exclaimed quite sharply before hanging up on her. Could he be so blind? Or was it a matter of, had he to be so blind?

A shadow crossed her table and the warmth of the sun disappeared. It brought her out of her thoughts and she looked up. Laurence loomed above her.

‘May I sit down?’

She was actually relieved at the distraction. ‘Sure, why not?’

He took a seat next to her and the sun came back to warm her face. She plucked a fig from the chipped white plate. ‘Have one, they’ll be the last before winter.’

She watched him split open the fig and suck out the
sensuous pink flesh of the fruit. How she liked his looks, how she had liked sex with him, his intelligence, wit and laughter. D’Arcy missed him. She took a slice of the pink ham and an already peeled fig and rolled them together, taking a bite.

‘You seemed very far away.’

‘Only as far as the courtroom and Melina.’

‘They expect a quick verdict and then we can put her in the past tense.’

‘Can we as easily as that? I wonder. What about Arnold? A quiet, unassuming, considerate human being in spite of his minor defects and overpowering weaknesses – will he be relegated to the past tense so easily? I somehow don’t think that such a shocking end is easily forgotten, any more than his killer will be. Do you really think it can be, Laurence?’

‘Life goes on, D’Arcy. We live, we make mistakes, we suffer for others’ mistakes – but life does go on. That’s what I want to talk to you about . . . us. My having made a grave mistake about us, and how I had to lose you to understand how much I love you, how much more of myself I want to give you, and without reservation. If you will give me another chance?’

D’Arcy was silent for several minutes. She looked away from him and out over the water. It was ten in the morning and the port was busy with people arriving to do their morning chores, or having a coffee while waiting for the boat to bring the morning post. She was acutely aware of her friends’ and neighbours’ lives going on all round her, so much so that she turned in her chair to look away from the sea and at them.

‘Why don’t you say something, D’Arcy?’

She turned her attention back to him, and gazing straight into his eyes answered, ‘Because I don’t know what to say.’

‘You still love me, you still want me and for us to be together, that’s what you could say. That’s what would make me happy, put me out of my misery.’

‘What if that’s true, Laurence? It doesn’t mean that either of us has changed, that we can give each other what was missing in our relationship before.’

‘We can try, work at it.’

‘We did try, we did work at it, for two years. A fundamental change will have had to have taken place in each of us if we’re to be happy together. I don’t know that that’s happened. I don’t want to live with a man who has to work at loving me, who is always trying to give of himself as much as I need from him. That’s too much like hard work and only breeds resentment. I don’t want a man who resents loving me. I didn’t realise that when I left you, but I do now.’

‘You left me too hastily. We should have talked this out.’

‘That’s true, we should have. So what? We’re doing it now, and does it change anything? I don’t think so. And how genuine are your feelings now? We have to ask that, not only you of yourself, but me of myself. Arnold’s death has reminded us of our own mortality, not just you and me but everyone here in Livakia, and that’s affected us all in one way or another. The details of his life and his weaknesses have been set out to be scrutinised, and along with looking over his we’ve all had a good look
at our own. Maybe that’s what’s brought on this change of heart of yours and no more than that. And if that’s the case it’s not enough to build a life on.’

‘But how will we know unless we give each other another chance?’

D’Arcy finished her ham and fig titbit, and had a drink from her glass of wine. Then she spoke. ‘I don’t suppose we will.’

‘I love you, D’Arcy.’

‘And Caroline?’

‘I never loved her as I love you. I’ve never loved any woman as I love you.’

‘Does she understand that?’

‘No, but she will. I’ll tell her that I loved her on the rebound and she’ll understand that. She’s sensible, and very English. Pride and good breeding will demand that she leave me with a stiff upper lip and no scenes.’

D’Arcy, as sorry as she felt for Caroline, could not keep herself from bursting into laughter. Laurence couldn’t help but laugh himself.

‘We’re wicked to laugh,’ D’Arcy told him.

‘Yes, we are, but it’s true. You know how we English hate to show our feelings.’

‘And you do love her?’

‘Yes, I do, but not as much as I love you. I love her for all the things you are not and never can be, things I know now I can live without.’

‘I wonder.’

‘You haven’t said you love me.’

‘I’m not sure that I do anymore. Maybe it’s a love hangover and nothing more than that.’

‘I’ve never known you to be so blunt, so questioning of your feelings.’

D’Arcy stood up and he followed. They gazed across the table at each other. ‘Laurence, I want to believe you love me, that you’ve changed and are willing to share a life with me, not just looking for another game of love-lend-lease. You do what you have to about Caroline and I’ll do what I have to about you.’

She began to walk away. He reached out and grabbed her by the arm. She gazed down at his hand and then at him and he released her. He made no apology, merely asked, ‘That’s it?’

‘I think that’s quite a lot, Laurence. The ball’s in your court,’ were her last words to him before she walked away.

D’Arcy did want to believe she had acted hastily in leaving Laurence but if that was true only his actions, his behaviour, could make her believe it. She was still attracted to him sexually, emotionally; even now his intelligence and dry English sense of humour were something she enjoyed enormously and liked having in her life. And there was also something essential and not to be forgotten – he did love her, she was certain that he did, as much as he could love anyone other than himself.

The following day she made a trip to Chania and when she returned three days later stopped briefly in the port and then went directly home. D’Arcy was quite exhausted. She had taken the mountain route home and it had been an arduous journey: two small landslides and one puncture which, thanks to two hunters to whom she
had given a lift, she had got over without too much difficulty. The 2CV had as usual behaved admirably.

It was late afternoon and she was lying on the chaise on the terrace of her house. She heard someone below in one of the lower walled gardens. She knew it had to be Manoussos, he was the only one who visited her via the gardens. She rose to sit on the wall overlooking them and called down to him, ‘You’re home then.’

‘Yesterday,’ he called up to her, and took the steps two at a time.

Tired as she was, seeing him somehow gave her new energy. She remained seated on the wall and waited for him to arrive. When he did, he kissed her and stroked her hair and sat down on the wall next to her.

‘I saw you from my office window, that’s how I knew you were home. Max and I came over the same road you took to come home. He was with me in my office when one of my men called in his report and said he had seen you on the road heading for home. Max is worried about you and the 2CV. He says I’m to talk you into accepting a gift he wants to make to you, a four-wheel-drive jeep like the ones we have. It might be a good idea, D’Arcy, if you’re going to continue taking the remote mountain roads.’

‘Oh, never mind all that. Melina? She was convicted, of course?’

‘Yes.’

‘What was her sentence?’

D’Arcy could not understand it. She thought she had emotionally distanced herself from the tragedy of Melina’s life and yet when she was waiting to hear the
girl’s fate, she felt her blood run cold. She knew that all colour had drained from her face and that Manoussos was seeing her as pale as a ghost. She placed her hand over her mouth as she felt the nausea rise. She held it there, hoping to hold back the sickness she was feeling in the pit of her stomach. Tears filled her eyes.

Manoussos placed an arm around her shoulders, took a handkerchief from his pocket and put it in her hand. Then he walked her to the chaise where she had been resting and from the table next to it took the jug and poured her a glass of sweet iced mint tea. He held it to her lips and she drank the glass nearly empty. A sigh that seemed to come from the depths of her soul and she was right again, very much in control of herself.

‘I don’t know what came over me. It was as if someone had walked over my grave.’

‘Are you all right now?’ There was serious concern in his voice. This was unlike D’Arcy, a side of her he had never seen before.

‘Yes, quite all right. I promise you I am.’ And she smiled at him. ‘Was her sentence fair? Has justice been done?’

‘Can justice ever be done for the crime of taking another man’s life? That’s real sin, real evil. That being said, she was given a fair trial, and I do believe, with certain reservations, her sentence was a just one. Fifteen years. Melina will still be a young woman when she is set free, but what kind of a woman?’

D’Arcy had no idea what she had expected. Life in prison? Thirty, forty years? Fifteen years didn’t seem much for Arnold’s life. Yet fifteen years in a Cretan
prison with hardened criminals: never to wander under a blue sky and a hot sun, to swim in the sea, to smell the wild rosemary and basil in the hills, never to see the stars and the moon. Locked doors for fifteen years. For a gypsy like Melina, that was a life sentence. She didn’t read or write, had no friends, no family, not even a bad lover like Mark to help her through the years. All these things raced through D’Arcy’s mind even though she felt no distress about the sentence, felt nothing except the consequences of it.

Manoussos had said it all when he had asked if justice is ever done in cases like this. Even if Melina had been given a death sentence, a life for a life, would justice have been done? D’Arcy didn’t know and probably never would.

‘Manoussos, you said you have reservations about the sentence?’

‘Melina needs more than punishment, she needs serious help. Fifteen years for a fourteen-year-old girl to make herself ready to step back into society, with no one to help change the direction of her life? She is a hardened criminal, but a very young one. Society helped to create this monster. Should it not at least take on the responsibility of teaching her a better way to live, give her twisted and abused mind some attention, a chance of healing in these years she’s to be locked away? I don’t want a killer with no remorse for her crime roaming free on Crete in fifteen years’ time, or anywhere else for that matter. These are big reservations, and ones I intend to do something about. A psychiatrist, a social worker, whatever and whoever I can find who will be a constructive and healing element during her years in
prison – that’s all I can do for Melina Philopopolos and my law-enforcing job, maybe even for myself.

‘Now enough about Melina. Let’s talk about Max, and a new jeep. In fact, I think I want to break a confidence and tell you something that Max told me, only because I think it’s something you should know. Something he blurted out one night in Iraklion, when we had had a little too much wine and were under some emotional pressure during the trial. You know Max, as soon as he realises he has placed himself in a corner, he cleverly wriggles his way out of it. But it was too late. I pretended I didn’t take it all in but I did and . . .’

Manoussos was interrupted first by the opening of a door and then the sound of Laurence calling, ‘D’Arcy, it’s me.’

It would be unfair to say that she had not thought about Laurence and their conversation in the port during the days she had been away. She had. She had wanted to believe that he loved her and in those days away had come a long way towards believing that they might indeed have another chance for a good life together. She was therefore not surprised by his visit, more delighted. Presumably it meant he had sent Caroline away.

It was Laurence who was surprised. He had not expected to find D’Arcy with Manoussos, or anyone else for that matter. Manoussos was his friend, but more than once when he’d seen him with D’Arcy Laurence had wished his friend was a little less handsome, a little less attractive to women, that the long-standing friendship and erotic past he had had with D’Arcy did not exist, that they didn’t love each other nor were as close as they were to
each other. Everyone in Livakia knew that whatever they were or were not to each other that was the way it was always going to be for them. Laurence stood there, not knowing quite what he wanted to say.

Manoussos might have been surprised to see him there a week ago, but not now. He had seen Caroline and her luggage stowed on board the boat that would take her down the coast to catch the aeroplane for London. He had only to look at D’Arcy’s face to see the happiness in her eyes, a certain lustful cheekiness in the way she moved, the way she held her head. She was interested once again in Laurence, and that was enough to send Manoussos away. He always wanted for D’Arcy what D’Arcy wanted.