Objects of Desire (24 page)

These last years of privilege in such luxurious surroundings were a reward from the church for the years spent in remote parishes in Africa and South and Central America before the world and its theological scholars, a clever publisher and readers the world over, gave him the success he so richly deserved.

It was a strange sensation to see all that at one glance and have it recede from his mind in very nearly the same instant, consigned to the past. Oscar felt
himself stepping out of his skin and observing himself. He liked what he saw, loved himself for who and what he was. He was centred on life and in this moment of truth was content and at peace with himself and the world.

The car sped away from the palazzo. At the end of the drive massive ornamental iron gates hung from stone pilasters topped by charging lions carved from shiny black marble. Each lion held a cross in one paw, standing guard as if keeping the world out and the church in. Unusually, not one of the thirty gardeners who tended the grounds was to be seen. Unbelievably, the gates had been left open and unattended by the gatekeeper.

They went through the gates and turned on to the paved road. Several hundred yards and another turn and they began to descend the mountain. They wound their way for nearly two miles before they went through the hamlet of Monte Goldolfo Navarone, owned by the church and where most of the staff who worked at the palazzo lived. The street that ran through the hamlet, the only street, was deserted, every door and shutter closed, not a face to be seen. Even the chairs and a table that always stood in front of the bakery had been removed. Not a sign of life to bid him farewell.

The road twisted and turned precariously through olive groves. Now they were winding their way up another mountain, then through a decent-sized village that was just coming to life. Oscar had the driver stop
at the café and invited him to breakfast. At a small table on the street they ate fried eggs and thick slabs of bacon and drank hot black coffee. Oscar made an arrangement to be driven on to Rome. He was taking no chance of missing his flight to Athens.

The plane had been in descent for some time and at last broke through the cloud. There it was below, sparkling blue in the late-afternoon sun: the Aegean Sea. No matter how many times Oscar saw that first glimpse of the Aegean, or that special light that is Greece, an artist’s agony and ecstasy, he always thrilled to it. Home. He was coming home.

The first time he had flown over the sea he had been nine years old, a child on holiday with his parents. He’d thought it was magic because his mother had told him, ‘This is a sea made by a god for all the gods. One day this great god thought the people occupying the land that is now Greece needed a jewel to make them proud and wealthy for all time. So he lay on his tummy on a great white cloud and he huffed and he puffed and blew a wind. It swirled round and round and turned the most beautiful blue and formed a great ball. The god grabbed it with his hand and he threw it down from the sky to the earth. When it landed it made a huge hole and changed from wind to water and flooded the land and became the Aegean Sea.’

Oscar smiled. He had thought the story his mother told him then to be true and that the Aegean Sea was the home of gods. Now the tale came back to him and
he wanted to believe it. Looking down, he still thought it was magic: the sun on the sea and a craggy coastline with a white city rolling back from its edges.

The plane swooped in low over Athens, a concrete jungle crawling with motor cars of all shapes and sizes, that could still sparkle white in its bath of sunshine. Greece with its history, its mythology, still crawled into Oscar’s heart no less than it had done when he had been a boy. With every return to the country since that first holiday with his parents he had left something behind, some useless piece of excess baggage that made his life lighter and which he never looked back on.

The plane was in a holding pattern over Athens airport and kept circling the city. There, out of the mayhem of traffic and surrounded by buildings, could be seen enclaves of beauty, reasons to visit Athens: the cemetery of Pangrati, the Acropolis with the Odeion of Herodes Atticus. He strained his neck and just caught a glimpse of the Agora with the Byzantine church and Hephaisteion, just a flash of the small exquisite temple, as the plane flew above it and out over the sea again. It circled the city once more, then made its final approach for a landing.

It was hot, the air chokingly polluted. Oscar wanted to cover his mouth and nose with his hand, but braved the air for the scent of the city was still there to be savoured: heat and dust, a hint of pine and wild rosemary blown down from the hills of the surrounding countryside, the smell of the sea.

The usual chaos of the airport was easier for Oscar than the other passengers. He had nothing but hand luggage to open at customs control. And then there was a taxi. He sat in the front seat with the driver who shot, as if he were a Formula One driver, into the afternoon stream of traffic inching its way back into the city after the afternoon siesta.

Oscar felt a surge of excitement: the traffic, the people, the hustle and bustle, he even felt some affection for the ugly concrete apartment buildings they passed, if only from imagining the teeming life going on inside them. The talk, the idle chatter of the taxi driver. Oscar hung on his every word, laughed at his every joke.

In front of the Hotel Grande Bretagne the two men spoke for several minutes. Oscar greeted the doorman with a handshake and a smile. They were old friends from years of comings and goings. A pat on the back from Oscar for the driver and a deal had been made. He would wait.

Oscar took the stairs two at a time and in the lobby was greeted by a porter, with more hand shaking, and Oscar’s literary agent, Michael Benson. The two men also shook hands. Oscar waved the small leather case at him, a tease.

‘Finished?’ asked Michael.

‘Finished,’ he answered.

‘That’s great. Can’t wait to read it.’ A moment of silence passed between agent and writer, two old friends who had been together for a very long time.
And then Mike spoke. ‘I almost don’t know what to say.’

‘That’s impossible,’ said a smiling Oscar.

‘Oscar, we’re not going to be coy about this.’

‘Of course not. Don’t look so embarrassed. I’m not the first priest to take this step.’

‘No, but you’re one who’s going to get a lot of media coverage from it. Are you all right about it?’

‘I’m just great about it.’

Together they walked over to the desk. Hotel staff converged on Oscar to greet him, old faces who had grown older together. It was just like coming home. At the desk yet another hand to shake before he signed the register. There was no embarrassment from the hotel staff, who were used to seeing Oscar in and out of his priestly robes. He signed the register Oscar Kroner rather than Father Oscar Kroner.

‘Your key, Father.’

For a moment he thought to correct the man then changed his mind. What could he say? ‘I’m a defrocked priest now. Call me Mr.’ No, he thought not.

He did not correct the concierge. Soon enough the man would get the message and act accordingly. It was then that Oscar realised it was going to be just as hard for strangers and acquaintances, even close friends like Mike, to come to terms with the change he had made in his life. More civilised, gentler on them, to let them find out in their own way. That would cause the least embarrassment for them. They were, after all, used maybe not to defrocked priests but certainly to
Greek Orthodox priests who did marry and have children. The Greeks, a most tolerant, humane and generous people, would understand and be charmingly accepting of such a life change.

‘Let’s go,’ he said to Michael, as he turned from the concierge, rejecting the key and handing over his case for safe keeping. ‘I’ve kept the taxi.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘To the Acropolis. I have this tremendous longing to stand among its stones. Then down to the Agora to walk past the giants at the Odeion of Agrippa.’

‘How about a drink first?’ invited Mike.

‘Later, if you don’t mind. Right now I yearn for the white marble stones of ancient Greece. To stand before the Parthenon, the Temple of Athena Nike; to return to the Erechtheion and blow a kiss to the Caryatids.’

He smiled at Mike who smiled back at him. ‘I’ll buy that. I’ve never seen you like this. It’s great to see this new, happier Oscar Kroner.’

Amazingly there were few people on the Acropolis so late in the afternoon, the bus tours had long since gone and the crowds of tourists: too much to see, too late to do it all before closing time. Perfect for Oscar and Mike. The two men were swept up by the power and beauty, the timelessness of the place. They scrambled over the stones that seemed always to speak to Oscar. Mike followed him, swept up in his storm of enthusiasm.

Oscar had about him something mesmerising. It was in his writing, teaching and lecturing. In his own quiet
way he was able to transform his audiences’ thinking, raise them to a higher level.

He was physically more than just attractive: tall and slender, broad-shouldered, he was handsome but not at all in a movie-star fashion. Instead his face was sensually and ruggedly handsome: his nose was crooked; clever, hooded dark blue eyes smiled seductively, with lines at the sides that signalled that here was a face that lived with passion. The slight furrows in his brow added character. A not very good skin, pitted in places, but a mouth and lips that would have been beautiful on a woman. The reddish-blond hair fell boyishly to one side over his forehead and he had a habit of flicking it away with a slight movement of his head.

That was it, he had a boyish look about him for a man his age, and a boyish charm that was both endearing and mesmerising. As was his voice, one of his many assets: husky, slightly raspy from cigars and whisky, ardent and earthy, a voice that could make the smallest statement seem important, urgent, unforgettable. With its almost cut-glass vowels and New England twang, he used it adroitly, playing on certain words and every pause. As a man, a romantic, a poet, he could melt the hardest of hearts with that voice, his looks and seductive soul, as he had done to so many women who had loved and lost him, to Page Cooper who had loved him and loved him still, and never lost him.

The two men were standing together looking up at
the Erechteion, Caryatid Porch. There was a relaxed, almost sentimental beauty about it and the four Caryatids, ladies with marvellously dressed hair of stone and faces worn away by the centuries, still statuesque and voluptuous in their gowns of draped stone, capitals balanced on their heads, holding up the roof. They were bathed in a rich golden light from a sun now turning pink against a bright blue cloudless sky. They were overwhelmingly beautiful and seemed to speak to anyone with the will to hear their words.

Oscar looked at Mike and smiled then looked back at his ladies once more before they walked away from them across the marble stones of the Acropolis for yet another view of this wonder of the world. Oscar stopped. Looking from the Acropolis out across the city to the sea, a ribbon of blue in the distance, he recited: ‘Deprived, not I, blessed, The God Eros, then Page, lust and love, I kiss your eyes, lick your lips and remember.’ It took some time for his emotions to settle and when they did he said to Mike, ‘I have a woman to meet, a destiny to fulfil. Let’s go.’

Chapter 15

‘Nothing flash, nothing conservative. Right down the middle. Young and glamorous, but not too obvious.’

Sally, Page, Anoushka and Jahangir were sitting in the back seat of a large Mercedes on their way into Paris from Charles De Gaulle airport, the women having travelled by ferry boat from Hydra to Athens, and from Athens by plane to Paris. Anoushka appeared to the other two women as calm and collected in herself about this traumatic return to her sons and the States for the first time since her unhappy departure. On their arrival at Charles De Gaulle Jahangir had been waiting for them. He had greeted each of them by pinning a white camellia to her jacket and giving her a kiss on the cheek.

‘What are you talking about?’ asked Sally.

He raised her hand to his lips, kissed it and said, ‘You have no idea how traumatic it is for the boys when the parents come to visit for a day, never mind a weekend at school. The mothers are always a problem. I know, I and one of my brothers went to Eton. My
father felt that two of us should be educated in England, hence Eton and Cambridge for Rangi and myself. His younger sons were educated in the States, by coincidence Groton for prep school, then Harvard.

‘We boys were far better equipped than our parents or the school to know what the right form should be in dress and behaviour so as to make ourselves acceptable to our school chums, because that is after all what we cared about. Unfortunately parents don’t listen to their children, but act on the premise that they know best. Their knowing best has made many a boy miserable, I can attest to that. Now here I must be brutal …’

The women looked at each other. Anoushka remarked, ‘You, brutal, Jahangir? You’re a pussy cat.’

Everyone began to laugh. ‘Isn’t he wonderful?’ asked Sally, looking terribly starry-eyed.

‘I am serious about this, ladies. You women can laugh, but for a boy at school, the kudos he has with his classmates depends a great deal on how his parents look and behave, and especially the mother. Boys can be cruel. A flowered hat with too big a brim could break him.’

The women did not laugh this time but were not, however, able to keep a smile from their lips, thinking him ridiculous.

‘Boys don’t want a mother their friends can hold up to ridicule. Twinsets and pearls are out. Hats are always an embarrassment. If a mother fawns and dotes, dares to kiss her son or hug him in public – all
black marks. That sort of thing has to be done strictly in private. No, Jahangir knows best. No cashmere jumpers or tweed suits, no pearls, very discreet with the jewellery, and most definitely no hats. So we’re going shopping.’

Shopping. A magic word for Sally. ‘Isn’t he wonderful?’ she asked again. And again Jahangir kissed her hand.

He turned from her to face Anoushka who was sitting opposite him in one of the small jump seats. ‘I can be brutal, ruthless even. Anoushka, you don’t want to embarrass your boys, do you?’

‘Well, of course not.’

‘You want to return in triumph and win them over to you again, don’t you? That is the object of this exercise in this visit we’re all making, isn’t it?’

‘A little subtlety wouldn’t go amiss here,’ warned Page.

‘Well, we don’t have much time, so we must face things the way they are. Well, Anoushka?’

‘That’s true.’

‘Good, then I’ve got it right. Some ground rules then. The dress code for us all has to be right. Then transportation. Boys at school are seriously interested in what parents drive or fly. The right car can make or break a boy in school society.’

Sally tugged at his arm. ‘You’re doing a takeover, Jaha, we
are
capable. We could have made this trip without you. Instead we’re making it
together
.’

‘Yes, well, I do have that tendency. But on the other
hand did you go to Eton or Groton? Are you an adolescent, young man? Have you ever been adolescent? Well, I have.’

‘He’s got a point,’ said Page who knew from past experience how sensitive and intelligent and clever Jahangir was.

‘Yes, I suppose you have, darling,’ conceded Sally. ‘I just don’t want you to think we’re not capable of doing this trip together, just two friends helping another out.’

‘Believe me, Sally, I know your strengths. Remember who’s been doing the chasing these last months. I just want to make it easier for Anoushka and her boys. We’re family, aren’t we? Or will be after the wedding.’

There could be no answer to that. Each of the women in her own way was quite overwhelmed that he was taking them all on, and each knew that he meant it. Anoushka recovered herself enough to reach out and take his hand in hers and give it a squeeze of gratitude. He smiled at her and patted her hand. All was going to go well.

‘None of you is able to judge the right thing to wear so I’m going to choose for you.’

‘But none of that’s necessary,’ said Anoushka. ‘We have a change of clothes in our bags. We’re trying to keep it easy, so we can travel fast and light and not get caught up waiting at airports for luggage.’

‘Not to worry your head about that. I have it all well in hand.’

‘Isn’t he wonderful?’ repeated Sally.

He kissed her hand again. With all that kissing it was obvious to the other two that not only was he besotted with Sally but was deeply in love with her, unable to keep his hands off her, much as he was trying. ‘Yes, he’s wonderful,’ said Page.

‘I’m being repetitive, aren’t I?’ asked Sally, and all the other three people in the back of the Mercedes said in unison: ‘Yes.’ She removed her hand from Jahangir’s and looked quite embarrassed. ‘Look like Barbie is OK, act like a Barbie not on,’ she said aloud. And then everyone broke into peals of laughter.

‘I’m serious about this. We simply can’t walk in looking in anyway embarrassing for Mishka and Alexis. I can’t stress enough what this means to boys at school.

‘So let me tell you what I’ve done. I’ve called my brother, a Groton old boy, and he’s called the headmaster and we now have official invitations from the school for Sally, Page, and me. You, Anoushka, have one automatically. I then called the headmaster and we had a long talk but I’ll tell you about that later. Now, back to our shopping. As we don’t have much time, remember the criteria: whatever you buy must look pretty, sexy in the eyes of young teenage boys who are horny, fantasising and frustrated, without being vulgar. What your boys want to hear from their school mates is, “Wow, your mom and her friends are terrific. I wish my mom looked like that. I don’t remember your mom being so terrific, you’re a lucky one Rivers.” That is, Anoushka, how you’ll win your boys back.’

‘You’re assuming that I’ve lost them.’

‘You have. To a husband who is there, and to his new wife, who’s trying to take your place.’

Sally, who felt very protective towards Anoushka, broke the silence that followed. ‘You really can be harsh, Jaha, I don’t think Anoushka needs you to spell it out.’

‘Yes, dear, she does. But I’m not just thinking of Anoushka, I’m identifying with Mishka and Alexis, and remembering what it was like to be at school when I was a boy.

‘At Eton, no matter how clever I was, how good at sports, how popular, I was still a wog and my friends wanted desperately to forget that. It was not a problem for me, I had no insecurities about who or what I was, but the torture over how my parents behaved towards me when they visited was no different than the other boys’. When my parents came it was always an embarrassment for my brother and me.

‘The first time my mother visited she was wearing a very elegant sari and over it a full-length sable coat. That was very bad form. The next time she came dressed in Balmain, that wasn’t much better, too grand, too elegant, too sophisticated for the tweeds and the twin sets of cashmere and the obligatory pearls, that were just as much an embarrassment to the other boys. The next time she came, she wore the tweeds and that was worse. Then, finally, she just stopped coming and it was a relief. We all wanted our mothers to look
like Bridget Bardot or Jane Fonda and dress like Marilyn Monroe.

‘Dad had it worked out. He always came in the right car with a huge hamper from Harrod’s and another from Fortnum’s, for my brother and me; we were told that they were from our mother for us and our friends. You see, any form of food was acceptable.’

‘What was the car?’ asked Page.

‘A Rolls driven by his chauffeur when my mother was with him, a vintage Mercedes Benz with a soft top when he drove alone.’

‘I get your message, Jahangir.’

‘Good,’ he said with a smile.

The grounds were teeming with people: schoolboys and parents, sisters and brothers, teachers and caterers. It had that strange atmosphere of being a festive occasion, a family reunion, a country fête, with all the anxiety and fun that comes with any and all of those occasions.

Anoushka and Page were walking together, followed by Jahangir and Sally. They were on the path heading for the headmaster’s office. Anoushka looked round and smiled at them, then turned to Page. ‘He’s so clever, I’m so happy for Sally.’

‘I suppose what you’re referring to are those admiring looks we’re getting from the boys?’

It was true. There were groups of them standing together, some with parents, some without. Anoushka had even heard a loud whisper from one boy to
another, ‘Who do you think they belong to? Wow!’

Page, of course, was the most dazzling with her green eyes and auburn hair worn long and nearly straight for the occasion. She was dressed in a leather suit of dove grey, the skirt tight to her body and hanging to just below her knee. The short jacket finished snugly at the waist and was the same shade of grey in suede, trimmed in the polished leather of her skirt. It looked like the most refined biker’s jacket with its large revers and two rows of silver studs round the waist band. Her long shapely legs were in cream-coloured stockings and her flat-heeled shoes were grey snakeskin trimmed in black crocodile. Jahangir had declared mothers tottering on the grass in high heels, even worse if they were stuck into the grass lawns and had to be yanked out, a most serious embarrassment for a boy. Immediate laughter on sight. She carried under her arm an envelope bag of black crocodile. Glamorous but not flash, young but not ridiculously so. Perfect had been Jahangir’s opinion, thinking of himself as a young teenager starved for a woman.

Anoushka was looking ravishingly attractive. Her silvery-blonde hair shimmered in the sunlight. In Paris they had cut it short and it was wavy and worn off her face to show off better her high cheekbones and classical aristocratic Russian good looks. The silk and linen jacket of tiny checks in black and white hugged her body. It had great charm with its slightly puffed sleeves at the shoulder that fitted snugly to her arms and its short peplum that fish-tailed provocatively just
above her bottom. The form-fitting skirt only accentuated the cut and dash of the suit that was more like a two-piece dress since she wore no blouse beneath. Her cream-coloured calfskin shoes and handbag matched. Page’s comment on seeing Anoushka had been, ‘Oh, you must have it. It’s Lauren Bacall’s suit when she met Bogart in their first movie. Well, almost.’

Of course heads turned for Anoushka and Page, but eyes lingered longest on Sally. She was every boy’s dream, petite, provocatively pretty, a doll of a girl. She, like Page, had chosen leather. Her suit was a polished coral colour, a hip-length jacket over a skirt finishing a few inches above her knees.

Jahangir too drew the attention of the boys as being very smart. He had chosen cream-coloured flannel trousers with turn-ups, a rich blue Turnbull & Asser shirt, a red and white polka dot tie, and a navy blue linen jacket, worn with its sleeves pushed up and open to show a tobacco-coloured herringbone waistcoat of linen.

Was it Anoushka’s imagination that everyone looked frightfully dull? No, not so much dull, there were a great many well-dressed and pretty women, handsome and well-turned out men, just an air of people taking themselves, and the event, and their children, too seriously.

About a hundred yards from the entrance of the building was the headmaster’s office. She had made arrangements to meet Robert and her boys there. Anoushka felt suddenly strange. Not at all the
Anoushka Rivers she had been, her children had known, her husband expected. She had lost some of her insecurities about being anything other than the Mrs Rivers Robert had wanted. She was being reunited with her sons and that was what they expected, who they loved and wanted to see, but she was no longer that woman, only a fraction of her was left. Yes, she felt decidedly strange.

Mishka and Alexis saw her before she saw them. They were cutting across the lawn heading for the headmaster’s office, and not knowing why they had been summoned. At Anoushka’s request, her arrival had been kept as a birthday surprise. It was Alexis who recognised Page first from photographs Anoushka had been sending them of herself and her friends.

‘Mishk, I think that’s Mom’s friend, Page Cooper. What a knock out! It does look like her. Fancy Mom having a friend like that …’ He stopped in mid-sentence.

‘Alexis, that’s Mom with her.’

‘I thought it was, but she looks so different. Boy, she sure looks good.’

They broke into a run across the lawn and rushed up to Anoushka and Page. ‘Mom, what are you doing here?’

‘I’m a surprise for your birthday. And I brought my friends.’ It was difficult for her to hold back tears of joy but she managed it. ‘Don’t suppose you could manage a hug for your mom?’

‘Not here, not in public!’

That wise Jahangir, she thought, before saying, ‘Well, I can at least shake your hand. That is permissible?’ Finally Alexis gave her a hug, but it was quick and afterwards he looked round in the hope of not being discovered.

‘Mom, this is a great surprise.’

The boys looked so happy to see her, it gave Anoushka all the courage she needed to get through the weekend. ‘This is Page.’ They shook hands with her and were quick to thank her for the birthday gift she had sent. ‘And this is Jahangir.’ The boys immediately launched endless questions at him about the polo equipment he had sent them, and when Jahangir interrupted them to introduce Sally they suddenly became dumbstruck and fell in love. Every schoolboy’s dream to have a Sally to prance round with at an open day at school. She charmed them with more than her looks, and asked all the right questions about the events of the day. They made up a jolly and attractive party and every few minutes one of Anoushka’s sons would remark how different she seemed to them or how different she looked. Of course they were right, she was different, she’d been through hell and back again and you don’t make that trip without changing.