The Pleasure Seekers
Read The Pleasure Seekers Online
Authors: Roberta Latow
The Pleasure
Seekers
Roberta Latow
Copyright © 1996 Roberta Latow
All rights reserved.
For
the friends we have all made
on the islands of our dreams
Roberta Latow has been an art dealer with galleries in Springfield, Massachussetts and New York City. She has also been an international interior designer in the USA, Europe, Africa and the Middle East, travelling extensively to acquire arts, artefacts and handicrafts. Her sense of adventure and her experiences on her travels have enriched her writing; her fascination with heroic men and women; how and why they create the lives they do for themselves; the romantic and erotic core within – all these themes are endlessly interesting to her, and form the subjects and backgrounds of her novels.
‘Latow’s writing is vibrant and vital. Her characters are much more than caricatures and she describes them in such a distinctive, dynamic way that you can’t help but be swept along by them. Latow is a pleasure to read . . . she’s a popular writer for the Nineties’
Books
magazine
Neptune’s song, his perfume,
I am seduced, enthralled.
The sea, the sea,
How bright the sun,
its heat, it burns my flesh,
sears my heart, and melts my soul.
I sat and waited for him in the sun.
–
The Epic of Artimadon
LIVAKIA, CRETE
Chapter 1
The comments were always the same when D’Arcy was driving in a cloud of heat and dust through the mountain villages in her cherished 2CV: ‘Here comes the ugliest car on the road. A sardine tin on wheels. My donkey goes faster, Kiria D’Arcy.’ Only some of the teasing was accompanied by broad Cretan smiles and enthusiastic arm waving from the tall, handsome men sitting on stone walls under the hot morning sun. She always waved back, often shouting out a cheeky reply in perfect Greek and giving one of her dazzling smiles. Sometimes she would stop and have a coffee and a chat with the men; at other times they would wave down the Deux Chevaux to hitch a ride.
Laugh as they might at the beautiful American’s small bright aquamarine-coloured car with its fold-down coral canvas roof, they had the greatest respect for the way it took the twisting and turning narrow dirt roads and climbed the tracks carved out of the mountains. The way it clung to the stony ground on the breathtakingly steep descents never ceased to impress either.
D’Arcy Montesque and her car were a familiar sight to most in this still remote area of Crete. She smiled as she saw an old man dressed in traditional male dress: white
leather boots, black embroidered vest, billowing trousers and a fringed black sash. He raised his arm and rotated his wrist. She could almost hear the clicking of his tongue: a Greek expression of wonderment, and admiration, especially when accompanied by a near toothless smile.
D’Arcy was on her way to her village, Livakia, ten miles on at the end of this sometimes impassable road. It was somewhat like going through a pass. The car clattered round a tight bend and the terrain opened up into a spectacular vista: rugged, arid and stony mountains on either side of a crescent-shaped valley that crashed steeply down to a bay of luscious blue sea, rolling out to meet the sky on the horizon. The beauty of the place took D’Arcy’s breath away, as always. The light like no other, the heat, the sea an eternity sparkling silver under the sun. It was a place of magic – where the ancient gods might have lived; where D’Arcy did live.
She sat in a clearing next to the road with the motor still running, looking straight out across the Aegean. Taking a deep breath, she was filled with wonder and joy. She never took Livakia for granted. A sigh, a smile for the gods, and D’Arcy pulled up the handbrake, cut the motor, and hopped from the car. It had been a bone-rattling ride once she had left the main road but she never tired of the drive, respected it. It did after all afford her and everyone else living in Livakia privacy, kept it a kind of Shangri-La. D’Arcy pulled off her hat, slapped it against her thigh to loosen the dust, and tossed it on to the seat before she walked several yards to the edge of the clearing and looked down: Livakia, an amphitheatre of houses, whiter than white,
hugged the side of the mountain and its small natural harbour.
There had always been a village there, even in ancient times. It was not unusual to find fragments from different civilisations when rebuilding an old ruin as most everyone who lived there had to have done at one time or another. Livakia was one of those island villages that had flourished and then died several times throughout its history. The last forty years had seen the near abandoned and crumbling village rise slowly to flourish again. D’Arcy felt very much a part of its recent history.
She saw the donkeys and the donkey boys making the steep zigzag climb up through the village towards the clearing. The clip-clop of hooves on stones and the nagging of the animals’ handlers prodding them on – familiar sounds of home. She smiled, called down to them and waved. Donkeys were the primary mode of transportation in Livakia, their handlers a Mafia all their own who were treated with respect and care. Everything that came into Livakia, either by boat or overland through the Lefka Ori range, had to be manhandled for the last stage and loaded on to paniers. Transport was by foot, water or beast in Livakia.
D’Arcy returned to the car and began unloading it. She had been to Chania and the post office to pick up parcels from London: books from Heywood Hill for Laurence, tea and coffee from Fortnum’s, chocolates from Rococo for her. Cheese and olive oil for Arnold, figs and peaches for Edgar and Bill, ink for Rachel purchased in Chania. A shopping trip out of Livakia was never for oneself alone.
By the time the donkeys had arrived she had pulled up the roof of the 2CV, locked it in place, and backed the car several hundred yards round a bend and into the cave where she kept it.
One of the five donkeys was loaded with her things. A donkey handler was sitting on the stone wall that ran along the edge of the clearing, smoking a cigarette, while another was squatting with his back against the wall, running a string of worry beads through his fingers. D’Arcy exchanged pleasantries with the donkey men and delivered a carton of cigarettes and a pair of sunglasses they had asked for. She declined the offer of a ride down the hill in favour of a leisurely walk down the cobblestone paths. It would be several hours before she would see her parcels again; the donkeys were waiting for a delivery of period roof tiles for Mark. One of the donkey men, a strapping, handsome and proud-looking hunk with a reputation for womanising and for prowess in sex with the young and beautiful foreigners who found their way to Livakia, could not resist a clicking of his tongue, a husky whisper of admiration in Greek and the announcement: ‘All the girls want to fuck with me, D’Arcy. You are missing something special. I really want you, Kiria D’Arcy. Give in. I can make you very happy.’
‘And I want you so much, Petros, but I want you more as a friend. We can’t be both. Once I had had you, to see you with another woman would make me crazy with jealousy.’
One never hurt the pride of a Cretan man. This was an island famous for its vendettas. D’Arcy spoke with a straight face and a hurt expression, and watched him
pull himself up with pride, lust still simmering in his eyes. He rubbed the swell in his trousers, and shrugged his shoulders. That was D’Arcy’s cue. She smiled and shrugged hers, and started down the steep path. They played this scene about twice a year. He never gave up.
D’Arcy had to go all the way down to the port and walk around one side of it before she started climbing up again to her house. She always marvelled at the peace and quiet of Livakia. One hardly ever heard a sound coming from the houses and that was something because there was a great deal of living going on behind those walls: couples and families, children, and lovers, passion and love. But there were unwritten laws here: a respect for privacy, the Livakians as well as the foreign colony in residence supporting each other. That did not, of course, stop the petty jealousies nor the Cretans’ favourite pastime, gossip.
D’Arcy was smiling to herself, thinking about the gossip. How no one minded it, how everyone looked forward to it. It was one of the pleasures of life in Livakia, like the sun and the sea, time, sex and love. It made everyone’s life seem in some remote way a part of one’s own, and most especially so between the foreign residents. There was an undeclared co-dependence upon one another, like a group of castaways. Only they had not arrived by chance. Each of them had come to settle in Livakia because he or she was a pleasure seeker who had found paradise.
She was thinking that as she passed one of the ruined houses – no roof, just crumbling walls on several levels, with a very old fig tree in what must once have been its
courtyard. There was a splendid view down across the white houses and other walled courtyards, other ruins yet to be restored. Splashes of magenta and coral and bright yellow: flowering potted plants and climbing Bougainvillaea, the odd weather-beaten palm tree poking high above the white walls and stony ground. It was a different view than the one from her house but one that afforded a clear impression of the magnificent amphitheatre of the village with the Aegean Sea as its stage, just as hers did. There was the scent of wild thyme, the heat of the sun, ripe fruit on the fig tree, and Mark Obermann sitting on a broken stone bench in the shade of its branches. D’Arcy felt compelled to pick her way over the ruins and join him.
He seemed lost in thought and unaware of her approach. There was something irresistible about Mark’s boyish looks: the slender but strong body, the sandy-coloured hair and piercing blue eyes, lips that should have been sensuous but were not. A charisma of intelligence and suffering, depths yet to be discovered. Women didn’t so much fall in love with Mark as want to rub up against him, excite him into making love to them. It was his promise of genius, his vulnerability, the way he made you feel you were missing something by not being an essential part of his life. He made you believe he was the writer, the poet of genius everyone would have liked to have been – and he was, and that was his power. He was what other people aspired to be, and men and women, the famous and the infamous, his peers and the most simple of Cretans, respected him for that. Everyone liked him, some even loved him, though most saw his flaws and ignored them. That was the way in Livakia.
Their affair had been brief and intense and for a short time D’Arcy had actually thought she might be in love with him. That had been more a passion of the head than the heart or the loins, she realised. In fact it had been the sex that had made her understand there was something fundamental missing in Mark. He calculated all, every emotion of his life. He fucked the way he wrote a book, and had no idea what love was really about. Although he talked a good game of it, he was not a player. D’Arcy could afford to like him because she understood him now. Their affair had ended just as it should have, with no drama, just a running out of steam. They were friends, though they often sparred and disagreed about most things with the exception of their mutual passion for Crete, the Cretan people, and Livakia in particular.
She sat down on the bench next to Mark. He did not turn his head to greet her, merely placed an arm round her shoulders. They remained that way in silence for some time, enjoying the shade, just taking in the view. Mark finally rose from the bench to stand on it and reach into the leaves to pluck from the tree two purple figs bursting through their skin. He hopped down and offered one to D’Arcy.
‘You didn’t happen to see a van loaded with roof tiles on the road, did you?’ he asked as he sat down and split open the fruit to suck out its succulent flesh.
‘No, but I did see the donkeys up in the clearing waiting for it.’
‘Come to dinner tonight, it’s a long time since we’ve had a quiet evening together. I’d like to read you something from my new book. I’ll cook for you the
way I used to – your favourite fish stew if the men come in with a catch.’
‘It’s a long time since you’ve asked me.’
‘But it’s thanks but no thanks, is that it?’ he asked before she could continue.
‘Another time. Laurence is cooking.’
‘His cooking’s a joke.’
‘Well, I know it, and you know it, even Laurence knows it. But he’s cooking for me tonight.’
Conversation between them was over. They returned silently to enjoying the view. Periodically when they were alone D’Arcy sensed there was unfinished sex between them and that always made her feel uneasy. Since their brief affair there had been many women who had come and gone in Mark’s life. He made each one of them believe she was the woman he wanted to settle down with. It was all stars in the eyes and gallant gestures, open affection and declaring the woman in question beautiful and clever and talented, the most amorous and sweet in the world. All his friends would believe it, even D’Arcy for a short time, until he would flaunt the chosen lady just that little too much in front of her.