Secret Souls (6 page)

The people sitting round that table were intrigued by the sight of the
Black Narcissus
sailing into port in all her glory. This was
the quiet, lazy time of year when the more interesting travellers en route to Egypt and North Africa arrived for brief visits. And if the grand sight of her coming in was not enough to stir their hearts, the thought of someone new on board, put a sparkle in their eyes.

Mark Obermann was the first to speak up. ‘Expecting guests, Elefherakis?’

Elefherakis told them, ‘Not that I know of. One of your millionaire patrons or some art dealer on the hunt for a painting?’ he asked Tom Plum.

‘No, but you never can tell, only refuse the visit,’ answered Tom, who was famed for guarding his privacy, receiving visitors on his terms only.

‘It must be a friend of D’Arcy’s or Max’s. Damn, and they’re not here, vanished as soon as they arrived the day before yesterday,’ said Rachel, who immediately took out her compact and began repairing her face. New men were always desirable to the French coquette-cum-poetess.

Manoussos, who was sitting with them and whose eyes had not left the sight of the magnificent yacht tacking across the harbour, relit his cigar and listened with amusement to his friends. He too would have liked D’Arcy and Max to have been here for Chadwick’s arrival.

People began to rise from their chairs and walk the few feet to the edge of the quay the better to see the
Black Narcissus,
still under full sail, make another impressive tack across the water. He rose from his chair and went to the cook Despina to order food for the lunch he had offered to buy Chadwick, captain and crew in celebration of their arrival. Then he went to stand next to Elefherakis and Mark.

‘She’s still coming in fast – impressive. That has to be Dimitri Cronos captaining. It’s his style. I know, I’ve sailed with him several times.’

‘It is,’ Manoussos offered.

The two men turned to look at him. ‘You’ve been expecting this yacht and you know who’s on board?’ said a surprised Mark.

Manoussos remained silent, his gaze still fixed on the yacht, now searching for his first sight of Chadwick. He was feeling
incredibly happy but calm, in control in spite of his racing heart and lustful mind. She was here and she was his as she would never be any other man’s again. The sex, the glorious sex they had revelled in! How well matched he and Chadwick were to make the erotic part of their life an adventure to love by. And then he saw her and his heart raced that little bit faster. How was it possible that she was even more ravishingly beautiful than he had remembered? It was then that he turned his gaze to the two men and told them, ‘Yes, I have been expecting the
Black Narcissus,
and yes, I do know who is on board. She’s called Chadwick Chase, come and meet her. And the captain? You were of course right, Eleflherakis. Dimitri Cronos is the man bringing in the yacht. I’m giving Chadwick, Dimitri and the crew lunch at the Kavouria.’

‘You’re in love!’ piped up an astounded Rachel who had overheard the men.

Manoussos smiled at Rachel who had not the least idea what love was. For her it began and ended with every glance at herself in the mirror. She was, of all his foreign friends in residence in Livakia, the least talented and most self-involved. She had raised her admiration of herself to such an art form that everyone accepted it and loved her for it. For Rachel, Rachel was as important as the very air she breathed. She was
the
flirt personified, who played the vestal virgin but had had every eligible man in Livakia and any other man she wanted a sexual liaison with. Rachel’s idea of discretion in such matters was to plot and create elaborate charades where everyone had to play their part to sustain the illusion that she was hard to get. Petite and very pretty, she proffered a tiny waist and a large and luscious bosom, remarkable for its perfect, more often than not displayed cleavage, which she wore as if she were showing off the
croix de guerre.
Rachel was like a little doll one won as a prize at some game of skill at a country fair. Her saving grace was that her passion for herself was so amusing even she could laugh at it.

‘Why don’t you come too, Rachel? Actually I’d like you all to come and join us, pass the word around,’ was his answer to her.

Manoussos gave nothing more away. He bent down and kissed
Rachel on her pursed red lips and then started walking towards D’Arcy’s garden and where he knew the boat would dock. By now people were lining the quay and edging the paths around the cliffs, watching the yacht criss-cross the harbour. Several joined him and jabbered in awe of the captain’s courage in bringing in the yacht, when he should unfurl his sails, taking bets among themselves as to whether he would crash before he dropped anchor and set her dead still where he wanted her to be. Manoussos had no doubts Dimitri would dock the schooner exactly when and where he wanted her.

There are always moments of magic while sailing large schooners. Those who love the sea and the mastery of sailing, as did most of the people watching the
Black Narcissus,
were waiting for that moment. It came in a flash. In what seemed like a single instant all the sails plummeted to the deck. The three-masted schooner lost all its speed and seemed to stop dead in the water. The
Black Narcissus
was no more than fifteen feet from its mooring, just exactly where the captain wanted her to be. Admiring sounds rose all around the harbour.

Chadwick and Manoussos saw each other almost at the same time. They smiled and their lives linked together. With all the commotion of crew gathering up canvas, Dimitri guiding the
Black Narcissus
alongside the natural dock carved out of the cliffside, several Livakian men and boys calling for the mooring lines to be thrown to them, she seemed more goddess-like than ever in her stillness and beauty. Manoussos, who had only seen it before now, accepted that this solitary figure standing amidst all the chaos, this woman who had captured his heart, was an enigma. Instinct told him Chadwick was a woman who lived in a good deal of mystery. She had mysteries the way other people had family, friends and lovers. He was infatuated with a woman with a guarded personality who could never truly reveal herself, any more than she would easily give up her secrets.

It was here, in this place, at this time, that he realised their happiness was dependent on their living their love from moment to moment. He was not a man to question the gods or fate. He blew her a kiss from his hand, and their destiny was sealed.

Livakians loved their police chief in and out of uniform. They took pride in him as a law enforcer: his international fame as art detective supreme who made smuggling antique treasures out of Greece hazardous for thieves, his easygoing nature yet the ease with which he caught a murderer in their midst, and the manner in which he could defuse vendettas and potential crimes, demanded and received their respect.

Out of uniform, as he was now, they adored him as a good neighbour, one of them, who had been educated abroad and returned. Both men and women were admiring of his good looks and the many foreign women who fell in love with him. They had seen so many beauties come and go that his prowess as a lover was, as base as it seemed, a matter of village pride. As was his discretion
vis à vis
his promiscuity, the libertine private life he led. He had his reputation as police chief to maintain and so never flaunted his liaisons, in fact worked at playing them down, which only enhanced his fame. For years many a blind eye had been turned to his womanising together with that of his partner in this pastime, his best friend Max.

And Manoussos and D’Arcy? The Livakians loved D’Arcy, the foreigner they considered a Livakian, as Cretan as she was American. They had known her from the time she was a baby and living here with her mother and her mother’s lovers. They had seen her and Manoussos as childhood friends, as adolescents in love, as on again, off again lovers in their adult life, and were romantic about them. They liked and respected Manoussos for loving her in a romance they could only dream about. They were proud, so very proud, of their police chief’s virility, something Cretans set great store by. It was exhibited to them by those many women who came and went, and they believed would always come and go in his life, until one day he would find a Cretan girl to settle down with and marry.

The men and boys standing close to Manoussos as Chadwick walked from the stern of the schooner grew suddenly silent. It was not her beauty alone that caught their interest but the look she had for no one, nothing at all, but Manoussos. They could sense the power and passion of this stranger who had made such an
impressive arrival. Did they sense danger? Or could it be merely the overpowering sense of respect she seemed to inspire? Whatever it was, the moment she hopped on to the stony ground they stepped back and away, made a path for her, and she walked directly into Manoussos’s arms.

They watched with awe as the lovers kissed and caressed each other, Manoussos opening her jacket and sliding it off her shoulders and arms until it fell to the ground. Now rid of the encumbrance he was closer to her flesh and he pressed her hard against his body, his hands fondling. They had never seen Manoussos so obviously seduced by a woman, so openly displaying his emotions, his lust for this stranger who had arrived from the sea. Still on board, taking some time to regain their energies, the crew watched with the same envy and appreciation as the Livakians what was happening to Chadwick and Manoussos, wrapped in a splendid, all-consuming embrace. It was one of the Livakian fisherman who finally broke the silence with an admiring and amusing remark about Aphrodite and how she had at last arrived in Livakia. It gave everyone a chance to laugh and dispel their amazement.

Manoussos regained himself and began to laugh too. Still holding her to him with an arm around her waist, he introduced by name everyone standing around them. The couple’s happiness was infectious and very quickly a party atmosphere erupted followed by a good deal of affectionate teasing.

For them both there was a sense of ease and rightness to this reunion, and as they walked from the mooring along the path towards the port Chadwick volunteered, ‘When the
Black Narcissus
rounded the headland and Livakia slowly came into view, something happened to me, Manoussos, something inexplicable. It was more than just seeing an amphitheatre of white houses basking in an afternoon sun. There was an aura of magic hovering over Livakia, a sense of time standing still, a place of no beginnings and no endings, just being. How much one has to live through to find this place! I don’t intend to analyse what is happening to me, I don’t care. Can you understand that?’

She stopped and stepped in front of him so he could go no
further on the path. His answer was to take her in his arms and kiss her. They resumed their walk into the port, Manoussos telling her about the houses they passed and the people who lived in them, and Chadwick wondering where she had been and what she had done her whole life.

It was getting dark and the lights of Livakia were being turned on. Chadwick was seeing the old port transform itself. Siesta long since over, the shops were open again and the villagers were dressed for their evening walk, drifting into the coffee shops and the restaurants, gossiping in small groups near the water’s edge about the arrival of the schooner, so majestic and intriguing. The sound of the water lapping against the
caiques,
the marvellous wooden boats undulating in a sea now dark and nearly vanishing in the dusky light; men playing backgammon, some drinking ouzo at small wooden tables set out on the cobblestoned quay, others smoking and talking of politics, the Greek national pastime.

The Cretans, always curious and anything but shy, sauntered past the long table to greet Manoussos, their way of begging an introduction to the stranger, the beauty, who had cast a spell on their chief of police.

The late lunch party was finally making ready to disperse, but not for long. They had agreed to meet again at ten o’clock, those who could sober up enough from the laughter and the wine, for dinner in the other restaurant in Livakia: Pasiphae’s. That was at Elefherakis’s invitation. He was completely intrigued by Chadwick.

A small boy was sent running to the restaurant set back from the port among a maze of narrow cobblestone lanes and white-washed walls, ruined houses and lost gardens. It had a pretty enclosed courtyard to dine in, though all agreed there was now too much of a nip in the air so they would dine inside. Andoni’s task was to see if the temperamental chef was cooking that night, and if so to say that a dozen or more people would be arriving at ten. The boy’s next stop was the musician’s house with an invitation to join the dinner table. All were delighted when Andoni returned to the table unscathed and with a smile on his
face. It had been more than likely he might have returned with a bruise from a flying pot. The Pasiphae’s chef was not above such behaviour.

The news delighted everyone. Now they did begin to leave: the residents to do their evening errands or else return home to bathe and change, the crew to the
Black Narcissus
to secure their boat for the night and get ready for night life Livakian-style, and Manoussos and Chadwick to Manoussos’s house to make love.

On the way home they were stopped every few paces by someone new to meet, and Chadwick was enchanted by it all. Arms round each other, she and Manoussos started their climb through the lanes up towards his house. They passed a string of donkeys, their bells echoing between the white-washed walls, their hooves clip-clopping on the cobblestones. They were coming down from the cliff top where there was a large terrace where the only road into Livakia ended. A mountain road that was hard core and dirt and rough riding, and the sea, were the only ways in and out of Livakia.

‘They’re marvellous, your friends, the Livakians and the foreigners. They’re all so interesting, lead lives one only reads about. This is still the Greece of Katzanzakis novels and the music of Theodorakis. They seem to have got their lives right – well, their priorities anyway. They’ve left the rat race, whether social or work, behind them in order to live and laugh and pursue their pleasures. I’m as fascinated by them as much as I like them. Do I sound naive? Am I being naive?’