The Pleasure Seekers (3 page)

The sound of the church bells of Livakia was one of the
joys of living there. It had a special ethereal quality about it that had to do with the acoustics, the topography of the place. There was something unworldly, almost mythic, about the sound of those bells and the way it echoed over the village, resounded off the cliffs. Also the sound of the sea and the wind in Livakia had a deep and spiritual quality, as dramatic and eerie as the sound of the bells.

There were no hotels. There were however a few rooms to be had in the village. The mayor rented three above his shop, there were two over the taverna on the port, and several of the villagers rented rooms in their houses if a stranger was lucky enough to find that house and knock at the door. One such house was far less humble than the others. Very large and beautiful, it stood proudly against the hill and was the first house visible from the sea as one rounded the point and sailed into the port. That was Elefherakis Khalkiadakis’s house where he took in the rich and the famous from all walks of life. A poet, a prince, a writer, painter, or any sort of scholar who found their way to Livakia, either by chance or at the recommendation of one of the residents, always stayed there. He or she had only to be one of those and a pleasure seeker, though it helped too if they were also a fantasist in search of the mythology of the place and had a love of the ancient Greek world. Elefherakis was passionate about his country and its mythology.

At Greek Easter and Christmas there was not a bed to be had in Livakia. Then Cretans who had moved away from the island returned from the mainland for a taste of home and the celebrations. In summer they came for their holidays, but only on short visits. Livakia was not a place
for droves of foreign tourists – too quiet and unspoilt. The action was elsewhere on the island. Most of the time if tourists did come they were staying with friends and became briefly part of the community. At this time of year most of the rented rooms in Livakia were empty and the foreigners that were there were accommodated at Elefherakis Khalkiadakis’s house. Everyone adored staying there. He was grand and generous, a charming and amusing host.

Elefherakis was one of the people sitting in Katzakis’s store drinking ouzo and waiting for his order to be filled when Arnold Topper arrived looking just as he always did, neat and well pressed in his stone-coloured chinos and thin blue Brooks Brothers shirt, sleeves rolled up, collar open, a small red scarf tied round his neck, his shopping basket on his arm.

Elefherakis watched with wonder as Arnold greeted the grocer and gave his order in atrocious Greek with a Harvard accent. The wonder was how he could be so well put together so early in the day, having had to be picked up off the ground after slipping slowly from his chair in a drunken stupor at the Kavouria the night before. Elefherakis knew, as did everyone else in Livakia, that Arnold would not remember that or who had brought him home and put him to bed. Everyone had been caring for Arnold in that way for as long as he had been living in Livakia; few said anything about it. No one liked to embarrass Arnold because he was the nicest of men, sober or drunk, intelligent and very good company when sober. Few people except Mark Obermann that is. Arnold’s bad Greek, even after living in Crete for
more than ten years, and his drunkenness were bones of contention between the two men whose friendship had become uneasy. Mark found Arnold’s weaknesses a burden on him and the community, and took every opportunity to embarrass the American about them with clever innuendoes, pointed remarks, even outright verbal attacks on Arnold’s worthlessness.

People came to Arnold’s defence but it was difficult. To shut Mark up was not easy. His command of English as well as Greek and German was impressive. There were few who could use language as he did; he was a joy to listen to, as natural an orator as he was a writer, knowing the power and pleasure of words and how to use them. But Mark Obermann was a Fascist in the worst sense of the word. One always had the feeling that he actually believed there was no room for the weak, that the world would be a better place without the crippled, only he was too clever to come straight out and say that.

‘There’s a boat coming in, I saw it from my house. May I join you?’ Arnold politely asked Elefherakis. Then came his measure of Retsina. It slopped over the rim of the copper measure cup when placed on the table and slopped again as Arnold raised it with a trembling hand to pour some into his glass.

The Greeks were forever nibbling when they drank. They had the unshakeable belief that to eat while drinking would save the liver, the sanity, and the health. Mr Katzakis placed a chipped white plate covered with chunks of white feta cheese with dribbles of olive oil over them on the table in front of Arnold. ‘You drink, you eat, Mr Arnold,’ he emphasised.

Everyone knew how drink had taken over from food in Arnold’s life, and both the Cretans and his fellow expatriates tried at every chance they were given to tempt his palate. But there was an unwritten law in the community: freedom was all. A man had the right to live his life as he wanted it, and that was respected.

Elefherakis and Arnold were laughing when Rachel al Hacq entered the grocer’s. Arnold was being extremely amusing about the tourists invading Crete who never saw or understood the island or its people. The two men stopped talking to watch and listen to Rachel. She was an act: the perfect little flirt, the coquette supreme, who spoke with pursed lips and fluttering eyelashes, slinked like a cat, and dressed to accentuate her impressive cleavage, tiny waist, and provocative bottom. All five feet of her was packaged like a sex kitten and finished with the thickest, most sexy French accent whether she was speaking English or Greek.

And she was pretty, very pretty and very feminine, with short dark hair that framed an oval-shaped face with all the right features in the right places. Her act was the same whether it was with Mr Katzakis to wheedle down the price of a peach and get an extra lemon for nothing, or the butcher for a little less fat on her one lamb chop, or trying to seduce a man whom she wanted for a night of sex or to pay for her dinner, or just to secure an audience to listen to her bemoan the trials and tribulations of being a poet.

Over the years she had had a sex scene with most every available man in Livakia though she denied this to be true. She had an image of herself as the worldly virgin and wanted everyone else to have that same picture of her.
She had it in her mind that it was her unavailability that excited men’s interest, that brought her the attention she sought, and the power to seduce and twist men round her little finger. Everyone rather liked playing her little game with her. The fact was that the men enjoyed her flirting; it did excite them into wanting her. They would gladly succumb to her charms and go along with the elaborate plans she would make to meet them for sex. She liked sneaking into their houses under cover of darkness, or if it were to be a daylight liaison, to walk boldly with them to their houses or a secluded beach, her books under her arm, issuing declarations to all she passed that she was going for a poetry reading, a lesson in Greek, to cook a French dish for the man in question.

Second only to her flirting was her passion for herself and her good looks; she worked on them both endlessly and with zeal. After that came her pride in being a Sephardic Jewess whose family had for centuries been Iraqi Jews of wealth and culture before her father had fled with his family from Baghdad. She had a conviction she was born to be beautiful and a poet, and flitted back and forth from Paris to Livakia to prove it. She was part of the Livakia scene, the entertainment and the fun.

The two men watching her now had both had her: Arnold a long time ago and never a second time, Elefherakis long ago and forever it seemed – or at least whenever the moment was right. They had an understanding. Periodically when her money had run out she would go to him and he would bankroll her until her mother sent money from France, when she would make an elaborate play of trying to repay him
which he would gallantly refuse. Elefherakis was a very wealthy man and his generosity would never allow him to be a loan shark, he would much rather be a friend.

Finished with Mr Katzakis she turned to the two men and joined them. It was time to move to the taverna and a table under an awning in the sun.

Chapter 2

Laurence never threw anything away, and rarely bought anything. He disliked spending money on things, with the exception of books and recordings. He could not be bothered with the hassle of bringing anything into Greece and was too lazy to fetch and carry anything except the. necessities of life: food, lou paper, malt whisky and wine, and then no further than from the port to his house. He was a man who liked to keep his life pared down to the essentials.

He disapproved of waste, his or anyone else’s, so Laurence lived with the flotsam and jetsam of other people’s lives. He was the only foreigner in Livakia who had furnished a house to overflowing by making no more of an effort than saying yes to every gift offered, to every bargain offered, anything being disposed of for one reason or another – someone’s need for money, the closing of a house, a divorce, an exit when the dream of living on a Greek Island went bad or an even better life presented itself elsewhere. He was not a discriminating householder – in fact, he was a magpie, and his house a hodgepodge of things piled upon things.

With no effort at all in a Cretan setting he had managed
to create a ‘1930s English cottage in the Cotswolds’ look that rambled on from room to room. Contributing factors were visits from his mother who had arrived with bolts of English flower-patterned fabric, mistakes she had made and stored away since the beginning of the Second World War; wild flowers, some near dead and dried out, others fresh, displayed among the bits and bobs he never looked at or cared anything about; books stacked high on every surface, even the floor; his snorkelling, fishing and climbing equipment; baskets and boxes of things shifted with the tide of his needs. Yet, amazingly, amid the clutter he could find within seconds anything he wanted.

The interior of the house was eccentric; it had great style without even trying, just like its owner, and seemed even more so because it was so incongruous with the two-hundred-year-old Cretan ruin he had haphazardly restored with the help of a Greek architect friend. Laurence loved his house, it was the centre of his life and he thrived there. D’Arcy did not. She only liked it for a few hours and then had the overwhelming desire to open all the windows and throw everything out. Laurence would sacrifice nothing for the woman he loved, least of all anything he thought of as part of himself. That was why they lived in his and her houses.

Yet in his own strange way he could be the most generous of men to his friends and neighbours, as long as they did not infringe on his privacy. He was reticent, even secretive, about the manner in which he lived, worked and loved. People respected that and him as a man and a
scholar. One of the joys of living in a small community in a foreign country, and especially in a remote village on an island, was that the inhabitants did not pry into other people’s lives. They might gossip about the way they lived, but they rarely interfered. They needed each other too much for the fun of life: good company, great banter, sex, pure pleasure.

One only had casually to say over lunch or dinner at the taverna where the foreign colony all gathered at least once a day, ‘I wish I had brought a . . . back with me.’ Or, ‘Does anyone know where I can find a . . .?’ and Laurence or someone else was there with the suggestion that they pay a visit to his house where they could root it out for themselves. Invariably people would find what they were looking for or needed: a length of rope, a spool of the right coloured thread, tools, a piece of chain, a table, a lamp, a bulb or a chair. Lawrence would happily hand over said object, refusing to take any money.

His cluttered kitchen looked like every other room in the house but with a cooker, a wall oven, and an enormous stainless steel sink. His cooking was somewhat like his house. It had been Arnold who had labelled him one evening at the Kavouria when a dozen or so of the foreign colony and several of the local Greeks were dining together. He had come to Laurence’s defence when Rachel had commented, ‘Laurence, I love you, but please, never cook for me again. They would hang you in France for your cooking.’

Mark, who thought himself a gourmet and a great chef, picked up on it, declaring Rachel was being generous. It had been then that an already drunk Arnold had stuttered
and slurred, ‘Eccentric. Laurence is an eccentric cook.’ And the label had stuck.

Now D’Arcy, replete with sex and love, was feeling pangs of hunger – even an eccentric meal created by her lover would do – but there was no scent of cooking in the house. It was dusk and the heat of the day was at last subsiding. She had come out of a deep dreamless sleep and felt as fresh and happy as she did hungry. Opening her eyes, she saw a naked Laurence sitting on the window ledge, his back against the jamb, one knee on the floor, the other bent and resting on the sill. How handsome he looked, and how much she liked his long slim body, his phallus flaccid and draped on his thigh, the bush of dark pubic hair, the muscles in his thighs. Even his feet and his toes, long and slender, were without a blemish and very sexy, like his long arms and legs, the way he moved and used them. The shock of thick hair he wore on the long side, just touching the collar of his shirts, framing an open face with lazy dark blue eyes and sensuous lips, was sexy because it sent out signals that beneath that cool English reserve was sexual fire ready to flare up. He was smoking a cigar – his guests always brought Havana cigars or malt whisky – and looking out across the roof tops to the sea.

D’Arcy forgot about her hunger, too busy revelling in the handsomeness of her man. Very quietly she raised herself a little higher against the bed pillows and thought: This is a man to have babies with. That was not something that pleasure seekers such as D’Arcy often thought about, and it took her rather by surprise. Especially since she was aware that Laurence never gave himself wholly to her. He
was holding back on love. Strangely this was the very first time she realised just how much. The great sex, the love he did afford her, and all his other admirable qualities, had clouded her vision about that.