The Pleasure Seekers (13 page)

Ever since Arnold’s body was found that was the one question no one had uttered, hadn’t dared to think, except possibly Manoussos or Dimitrios. And here it was out in the open, what they all feared the most. The silence continued. Someone poured wine, someone else passed the basket of bread, everyone looked uncomfortable. Several minutes went by and then it was Mark who spoke up.

‘Arnold was a man who never changed. That was probably what killed him.’

‘Men don’t die from not changing, and certainly not from lying down fully dressed on a beautiful beach. It is more likely that change
did
kill him. The changes you didn’t see. People deliberately blind themselves to the changes in other people because it’s so much easier to deal with the known,’ said the doctor.

‘I tell you, you are wrong about this man. Most of us here knew him for more than ten years and he never changed. He did the same things day in and day out, year in and year out. He ate the same things – just enough to survive in order to drink – year in and year out. He re ad the same literature, lived on the same amount of money
sent him by his family to stay away from Boston, year in and year out. He had the odd infatuation, sex in rare moments of need, year in and year out.

‘No, he never changed. He was, till his death, the same Harvard man he was on his graduation day. He made the same trip every year for a week to the family in Boston to let them know that he was still able to stand on his own two feet and still relatively coherent. Then the Algonquin for one week where he would look up every old New York acquaintance who was a successful writer, painter, museum director, or art historian, whom he would invite for one drink. Arnold would listen to them tell him how lucky he was to have got out of the rat race he had never entered in the first place and to have made a life for himself here in Crete. He had his fix: he could think of himself as in control of his life, sober and superior, and that too was part of the sameness.

‘Even his clothes – never a change there either. From the Algonquin to Brooks Brothers to buy two new button-down shirts, a pair of trousers, and discuss with the same salesman the pros and cons of turning the collars and cuffs of his old shirts. Walking away, he saw himself as complete, the perfect Harvard gentleman aesthete. Another year done in New York then on to Paris to do it all again.

‘Everyone at this table knows what I tell you to be true, Pierre. They have heard it all year in and year out: the Deux Magots, the expatriate friends, the grand dinner parties in his honour – we were never spared the details or the name dropping of the famous who adored him. Nor were we spared anything in his accounts of Rome.
He probably suffocated on the sameness of his life, its changelessness.’

For the first time since Arnold’s death all those at the table were hearing an analysis of his life and his death, granted, in an abstract way, but an analysis nevertheless. D’Arcy was acutely aware that Pierre’s question and Mark’s response had just revealed that no matter what, Arnold’s death was no straightforward one, and if it was murder, no straightforward murder either.

It was after midnight when the party broke up and Laurence and D’Arcy walked home to his house. They had hardly said a word to each other all the way home, but there was a sexual tension building between them that D’Arcy was quite enjoying. Though Arnold’s absence and the underlying strain on the community was a constant reminder that all in Livakia was not quite right and things would never quite be the same, the pleasure seekers and the Cretans had resumed their old lifestyles as if nothing had happened – and that included the sex between Laurence and D’Arcy.

This evening had planted a seed in D’Arcy’s mind, a question. This death, this tragedy, that in some way was touching them all, had she been in her own way responsible for some part of it? Had any of them been?

Those thoughts were swept somewhere into the recesses of her mind when Laurence led her through the darkness of his small garden to an old-fashioned swing, a wooden settee covered with floral chintz cushions and hung from rusted chains on a chipped metal frame painted several different shades of green. Laurence’s junk was not confined to the inside of the house.

D’Arcy was wearing a white halter top and a short cotton sarong skirt with large white roses printed on a black background, and antique ivory bracelets, one thick one on each wrist. Laurence was carrying the jacket of tiny black and white checks that completed the ensemble, and of which she had had no need because the night had remained hot and humid. All evening long he had kept stealing glances down the table at her. She had been seated between one of the French visitors, not the doctor, and one of the boys who had come down from the mountains and was staying at Brett’s house. She had looked every inch the great beauty, a seductress with her long auburn hair and provocative violet eyes, flanked by the two handsome men who were clearly making advances to her. She had flirted, had laughed as only D’Arcy could laugh, with bells in the sound, a smile in her eyes, and a gleeful heart. At times a serene look would come over her and her beauty became even more perfect, with a depth to it Laurence had yet to fathom.

D’Arcy Montesque was an enchantress whom many people wanted in their lives, and the reason he had kept stealing those glances at her was because he was suddenly aware that she was free to be in theirs and would always want to be. No matter that he knew it was only for a few minutes, for fun, that it would not be for sex since she had committed herself to him alone in that.

How had it happened that they should have done that? It had never been his intention. He liked having many women. He thought about having sex with every attractive woman he saw. He used to, would still have been doing so, had D’Arcy and he not happened. And what was all
this monogamy and love about when the heart was really not in it? It was all over so fast, this life, all one’s dreams and loves. Arnold being the most recent case in point.

He dropped her jacket on a three-legged wooden table near the swing and took D’Arcy in his arms, holding her in a long and sensuous hug as he stroked her hair, her naked back, and undid the two buttons that held the halter top in place. Laurence had a way of caressing her breasts, as if he was taking the measure of them, the weight and firmness, rendering them sensitive to his every touch and caress. He could torment her with desire for sex with no more than his hands on her breasts, could tease her and hold back on her until she begged him for more of himself, a kiss, and then more, and then all things sexual, and after that, anything sexual, everything, no matter how adventurous, how depraved.

He loved the warmth of her lips on his, the sweetness of her tongue in his mouth. His kisses were taking her over and he felt her giving in to him as she unbuttoned his shirt, slipped her hands beneath it to caress him, pinch his nipples, dig her long oval-shaped nails into the flesh on his back. He opened the hook that held the sarong round her hips and it parted and fluttered to the ground. He became even more excited, wanted actually to beat her for her lewdness – she had worn nothing under her skirt except her sex. All evening she had been open, ready and waiting to be taken had the right moment arrived and the right man.

D’Arcy was a sexual opportunist. He had always known that, had had her enough times on the spur of the moment in the most unexpected places to prove it.
She was courageous in her sex, for sex’s sake, for sexual fun. How many times had he had a quickie with her when people were only feet away and had never known? They had been wicked in their lust many times, instigated, as it was now, by her wearing no undergarments. To know that he had only to lift her skirt at any time, anywhere, and she was ready to receive him with no questions asked was for him complete sexual control of this independent and vibrant woman. It brought out certain lusts and fantasies that he, like most men, usually kept buried deep for fear of revealing who and what they really were.

D’Arcy was well advanced in lust, he could tell that by the way she kissed him, her hands moving over his body, the way she was undressing him. She gathered his erection and his scrotum into her cupped hands and, lowering her face, buried it in his genital flesh, breathing in the scent. She understood his hunger for her to take him into another world of erotic bliss. He could tell by the way she licked him, covered him with her saliva, and then so gently fed him slowly into her mouth; the way she made love to him with that mouth. She gave everything. That was her secret weapon: to be able to give herself wholly to another human being without fear of losing herself. It was what he sensed she was demanding of him, although she had never overtly done so. It was something he simply did not want to do.

They lay side by side, facing each other on the swing, each of them resting on a hip, jack-knifed, her leg draped over his hip, one of their best positions because penetration was exquisitely deep and he could use his pelvis with ease and finesse to create a beat, a rhythm
for fucking them into an erotic world where they could feel each other to the marrow of their bones, where their comings were long and luscious, and for a few seconds they could experience the bliss of the ‘little death’, that place of no return that could only be found again in a new coupling, another orgasm.

D’Arcy’s heart was racing. These were her best moments with Laurence, when all reserve was abandoned, and he was on the edge of giving himself up to her as she did every moment they were together, whether in sex or otherwise. She experienced infinite joy in that giving, in making her partner happy. Would he ever take the chance to do the same? she wondered. Did he love her enough, trust her enough, trust himself enough?

Ever since their return to Livakia, Laurence had been obsessive in their love making, wanting her and the experience of orgasm all the time. Arnold’s death had something to do with it, they were both aware of that. To see a friend’s life snuffed out was a reminder of how short a time a man has for his pleasures, his heart’s desires, and that was affecting everyone, not only Laurence. But it was Laurence that D’Arcy was living with and it was difficult not to see that he was changing in his attitude towards her and had been for some time. Only since their return had she become so certain of that, and it had everything to do with sex and little to do with love. That, alas, was their problem. The more sexually tuned they became to each other, the more thrilling their sexual life, the further he was retreating from loving her.

They spent hours on the swing under the spell of thrilling sex and when it became too cold they retreated
into the house where lust and depravity took them over anew. There is no possible way that a woman can explain to herself or anyone else what great sex can mean in her life, how it can liberate her, set her free, and for a woman like D’Arcy who was born and bred to live as a free spirit it was like breathing or taking an elixir. A woman can stand a great deal from a man for a sip of such a drink. D’Arcy had been sipping from such a cup offered by Laurence because as time had passed and they had grown closer together outside the confines of sex, she believed that a mutual love was binding them together. She believed that whatever of himself Laurence felt he must hold back from her would one day be hers and they would at last come together, all barriers down. Love would win out.

The theory was right but was the man wrong? Lying in bed close against her lover’s body while he contentedly smoked a cigar, she eating melting chocolate ice cream from a carton and on occasion feeding him a spoonful, both replete with great sex, D’Arcy knew that for most women such a question would never even arise. But D’Arcy was no ordinary woman.

It was about half-past five in the morning, she could guess that by the quality of the light. The sky seen through the window was cloudless and blue, there was a light warm breeze, the sea looked serene, the village still, a crowing cock somewhere far off in the distance all there was to break the silence. The question did arise, and another: what was she doing here in this mess of a room when a rich, ripe, beautiful day was rising? She wanted to take deep breaths of it, feel raw unadulterated
nature all around her, before man and living took a hold on it.

She fed Laurence yet another spoonful of the delicious ice cream. A little dripped on to his lip and he licked it into his mouth. He wore the same expression of delight for the taste of the ice cream as he had when she had watched him lick her come off his lips. She asked no silly questions as some women might have: Was that what she was to him, another kind of ice cream to savour? Had she been fooling herself that they were something special together? Why wasn’t she getting back at least what she was putting into their love affair? She merely kept looking at him and thinking how handsome and sexy he was – but who was he?

She scooped out several more spoonfuls of the ice cream for herself, then stuck the slightly bent out of shape and tarnished silver soup spoon into what was left and handed it to Laurence, announcing, ‘I’m going home.’

‘At this hour?’

‘Yes,’ she said cheerily, and was surprised by the lilt of happiness in her voice.

‘Why?’

‘Great love affair, wrong man.’

With that she unwound herself from him, but not before she had caressed his cheek and kissed him on it. He plunged his cigar out in the glass ashtray sitting on the bed next to him and put the carton of ice cream down. The weight of the spoon toppled it over and a brown stain spread in a small pool on the sheet. ‘
Merde!’
he said and moved away from it, picking up the carton and bending over the side of the bed to place it squarely
on the floor. His attention went directly back to D’Arcy who was by now out of the bed and standing opposite him separating the clothes they had so hurriedly gathered up from the garden before leaving it to carry on their sexcapade in bed.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘You know very well what I’m talking about, and we are not going to hash it over. “You want more of me than I’m prepared to give,” and all that crap, coming from you. And me making demands: “I want you to be free enough, to love me enough, to submit totally to me.” I find having to make such a demand as that on a man a loathsome and denigrating thing for a woman. Ours is an uneven relationship. I don’t know how to give less than I do and I don’t want to anyway, while you don’t know how to give more than you do and clearly don’t want to. You demanded everything from me, total submission in sex and love, and got it. Let’s just say I’ve waited patiently for the returns and they didn’t come. So what? So nothing. We leave it like that, set ourselves free. Be grateful I’ve made it easy for us. I didn’t say this is the end of us, I didn’t say I no longer love you, all I said was, I’m going home and you’re free to go on a sexual spree with other women.’