Secret Souls (16 page)

‘I couldn’t allow that,’ said the deputy.

‘Oh, yes, you can – so long as you give your winnings to the church.’

Dimitrios could not help but smile. A deal had been struck, and he had saved face. His admiration for his superior rose higher. A nod signalled his agreement and a much relieved deputy turned to go inside while he was already talking to Athens.

Manoussos tapped him on the shoulder and the deputy turned around. ‘Dimitrios, don’t do it again!’ There was a harshness in Manoussos’s voice, a firmness in his expression, and his eyes were as cold as stone. That was not a warning, it was an order.

That small, insignificant incident was a very good example of how Manoussos Stavrolakis, the chief of police of Livakia and its environs, the best art-theft detective in Greece, commanded order and respect from his men, his superiors, thieves, smugglers, murderers, and the more law-abiding citizens of his country. He could be as hard or as soft as a piece of jade, and with the same lustre. Yet another lesson on how to govern and keep the peace was learned by Dimitrios.

Once more Manoussos turned to gaze through the binoculars at Chadwick. The sun was playing on her dark hair, a warm breeze was blowing it away from her face and her red silk dress against her body. The jumper she had tied around her shoulders by its arms was flapping behind her. She looked like a free spirit, a voluptuous goddess, but somehow young, almost child-like, a quality in her that manifested itself in so many ways and enchanted him. This woman-child he loved, who was anything but child-like in her lust for sex and him, remained still, after so many months of their being together, a mystery to the police chief.

How he would have loved to have known her for all of her life: as the spoiled and privileged child she had been, with marvellous parents who had pampered and watched over her. And in her adolescent life, and through her marriage, had she been as mysterious and as enigmatic a creature then as she was now, a widow in Livakia? The little he knew of his lover’s past had not been
because she had sat down and said, ‘Now here is my life, past tense,’ and told her story to him. He had never asked questions, she had never volunteered a biography. Her life unfolded as bits and pieces of information gleaned from a word said here, another there, an anecdote told
en passant
at the long table after too much wine or when they were alone and being very much together.

Chadwick had taken to Livakia and his friends and settled in to the lifestyle as if here was the home, the paradise, the way of life she had been searching for all of her life. And his friends, those who were not in love or infatuated with her, as were Elefherakis, Mark, and Laurence, took to her. As did the locals, both men and women. They enjoyed her in the same way as they enjoyed D’Arcy; the only difference was they had known D’Arcy all her life, she having been brought up since a baby in the village and her mother being, even now, one of their heroines. Chadwick’s beauty, her stillness, her generosity of spirit, their being able to communicate because of her skill in speaking their language, all the things they admired about her, did not stop them from whispering among themselves: ‘Chadwick, she is deep, a woman with a secret, many secrets. Who knows her?’

Manoussos was thinking about these whispers; a whisper in Livakia was always loud enough for him to hear. He took one last look at Chadwick’s progress before he walked from the balcony pulling the fax sheet sent by Colin Tempelton from his pocket. Placing the binoculars on his paper-strewn desk, he sat down and read it several times. Then he wrote the name ‘Larry Snell’ on a pad and, turning round to the computer, fired off a fax: ‘Colin Tempelton from Manoussos Stavrolakis. Fax understood, will be delighted to receive your friend and give him whatever he needs … Manoussos.’

Chadwick was already sitting at the table with Rachel and Mark when Manoussos and Dimitrios arrived. Mark and Rachel were bickering friends. He wrote exquisite prose, she wrote flowery,
bad
poetry; the one thing they had in common was their self-centredness. They each suffered from a pathological case of it. Rachel was
petite
in every sense of the word: short, tiny waist,
every feature on her face small except for her eyes which were enormous and beautiful and always made up, and her bosom which, for its size and weight, was a wonder in the face of gravity. She used her eyes and her breasts in the same way as she used her French accent and her sexuality: to flirt, to seduce, to pave her way.

She sexually teased and primped from the moment she opened her eyes, usually around eleven in the morning, until they closed – and that could be any time. She had had sex and shunned love with every eligible man in Livakia, and denied it, and then when caught out, denied that she’d enjoyed it. She played the reluctant sex kitten, protested constantly that she was not beautiful but was forever moving her chair out of the sun for fear of wrinkles or spots. She made such an extraordinary fuss about insisting on paying her share at the long table that most always someone jumped up from their chair on her arrival and invited her as their guest before she sat down. Rachel found that acceptable if the invitation came before her bottom hit the chair. Her bargaining for a single drachma off a peach at Katzakis’s was enough to turn the grocer into a babbling wreck. He preferred to give her the peach. She was one of the first to befriend Chadwick who had never met anyone like her and was naively amused by Rachel and her quest to suffer for her art’s sake.

Chadwick, like everyone else who could afford to be, was generous to Rachel. For she did have to count her pennies, she was dependent on a monthly cheque from Mama in Paris, and borrowing from Elefherakis when she ran short of money. Chadwick learned after only a short period of time that in Livakia, and most particularly in the expatriate community, in one way or another everyone cared for everyone else; not much, just enough for it not to become burdensome.

From fifty feet away Manoussos could see that Rachel was flirting with both Chadwick and Mark, and Mark was flirting with Chadwick. He smiled to himself. It was going to be an amusing lunch. He almost laughed aloud when he glanced at his deputy. Dimitrios always went squiffy-eyed when he was near Rachel. Like most of the local Greek men, he found her the most
glamorous and beautiful of creatures, a doll-like foreign girl, sexuality personified. She raised hackles at the back of their necks and invariably a hand would fly to their crotch for a quick hitch of their trousers. He could almost hear Dimitrios’s heart beating faster.

The two men joined the others at the table. Rachel was in top form, exclaiming about poetry, art, Crete, which she always got quite wrong and was screamingly mundane about, discussing her love life, attacking Mark for being a truly talented writer, and simultaneously seducing Dimitrios.

Manoussos was sitting across the table from Chadwick. She said so little. She was a woman who knew how to sit still, exude quietness in an intriguing, goddess-like way, yet her contribution seemed so large. What little she said was right and she was always amusing without ever trying. There was too that tremendous aura of sensuality that emanated from her and constantly drew everyone at the table to pay her attention, include her, seek her viewpoint.

During this lunch it was Mark on his soap box about the good side of Hitler and how it all went wrong. Rachel, a Parisian whose background made her a French-Iraqi Jewess, was jumping up and down from her chair, challenging Mark’s dissertation. It was Frances Pendenis, who had only just joined the diners, a seventy-six-year-old English composer of classical music who had written but one opus in her life, and that in 1934, who finally changed the subject when she smacked Mark on the head with her handbag and said, ‘Oh, dear boy, do give it a rest. You’re sounding pathetic, very neo-Nazi, and impressing no one with your clap trap.’ She poured him a glass of wine and started talking opera. The opera that she had been collaborating on with Mark for eleven years.

Rachel rolled her eyes. If they could have spoken they would have screamed, ‘Not again,’ when Mark and Frances suggested yet another evening at Chadwick’s house where they would give a performance of the work in progress. Manoussos knew that Chadwick would say yes, from kindness, but he also knew that no one really wanted to hear it again. For Chadwick it was still
something new and exciting, a creation in the making. For everyone else it was a ten-year-old bore which they tolerated.

Chadwick had kept the
Black Narcissus
moored in Livakia for two months after her arrival in the village. She and Manoussos had lived between the boat and Manoussos’s house, and now they lived between his house and hers. They had always been utterly discreet when she was staying in Manoussos’s place. His position in the community and as one of the more important law enforcers on the island demanded it. The Cretans were proud of their famous police chief, not only for his authority and his successes but for a certain morality which he possessed. It did also very much extend to his being a handsome, virile man known for his promiscuity, his love affairs with beautiful foreign women. But pride and whispers of admiration would not preclude criticism of a man in his position living in sin. And for Cretans, even in the nineties, living with a foreigner without a marriage blessed by the church was living in sin.

Always mindful of his position, though he travelled openly all over the island with Chadwick, they continued to keep separate his and hers houses which was somehow considered respectable among the Cretans because whispers had it that the police chief’s position was no more than that of a man in love, having an affair – until the next beauty came along.

The reality was quite the opposite, Manoussos was as much in love with Chadwick as he had been from the moment of first seeing her. He knew that there would never be any other woman for him but Chadwick Chase. It was lust, there was no question about that, but it was more than that too. It was love as he had never known it before. It was two souls, two hearts that beat as one. It was something more than words could describe or even feelings express, and it was at that moment, when Chadwick was about to say yes to the table about a performance of the Frances-Mark opera at her house, that he spoke up.

He reached across the table, took Chadwick’s hand in his and, smiling, said, ‘No.’

All eyes were on Manoussos. It was unlike him to speak for Chadwick. Not at all in his character to do a take-over on the
women in his life or anyone else for that manner. The surprise silenced everyone. Chadwick, her hands still in his, applied a little pressure in reassurance. ‘Some other time. I have plans for us, Chadwick and I, they are undefined so its best we keep our time-table loose, last-minute, go on as we have been, taking each day at a time.’

‘What a good idea, what a relief!’ said Rachel.

‘Thanks, Rachel, you’re such a little pig, so ungracious. If you didn’t want to hear it you only had to say so, not be a bitch about it. I’ll remember this attitude of yours when next you knock on my door looking for a sounding board for your latest poems.’

And Mark and Rachel were off again, bickering back and forth, until D’Arcy and Max arrived at the table and joined the group. They were still for Chadwick the most glamorous and adventurous couple, and so very nice and amusing with it. She had never met people like them before, such pleasure seekers, vital, so much fun to be with, so sensual – and their love story was so special. They were
the
beautiful people she had only read about: erotic libertines out in the world and for all the world to see, with no guilt. They were a constant reminder of what Chadwick’s life with Hannibal had not been. Every day with Manoussos she was learning to love, lust, in a new and different way from any she had ever known. She felt the luckiest woman in the world to have had her life with Hannibal and to have found as thrilling but very different a love and life a second time around with Manoussos.

Ever since Chadwick’s arrival in Manoussos’s life he had been taking, every few weeks, his accumulated holiday time, and it was then that they had made use of the
Black Narcissus.
They had sailed to Alexandria and up the Nile to the ancient temples, to Turkey and followed its coastline as far as Syria, making excursions inland to see the ruins of ancient Greek cities. These had been luxurious house-party cruises and Chadwick had invited several of the expatriate community and Cretans as her guests. It was during those cruises when Max and D’Arcy were on board that Chadwick learned of the deep love and regard, the longtime, on again, off again affair that Manoussos had had with D’Arcy until she fell in love with Max and they declared
themselves to each other. She quite liked the fact that Manoussos would always love D’Arcy in just the same way as she would always love Hannibal: love that would never go away but had run its course.

Now the
Black Narcissus
was no longer a part of their lives and Chadwick lived in a house at the top of the village overlooking the harbour. She had rented it from Edgar Marion and Bill Withers who were on a round-the-world cruise, and it was here that she and Manoussos were able to get away from everyone and live in their very own private world.

The house had a certain seclusion as its closest neighbours were empty houses, romantic ruins. And it was perched in such a way against the cliffside as to give the most spectacular views. Chadwick and Manoussos were not quiet or sedate lovers; the seclusion of the Marion-Withers house suited their nights of adventurous sex. Often they would spend days together there doing nothing more than making love, stretching their erotic life to the farthest limits of ecstasy.

Lunch lingered on until most of Livakia was already home having a siesta. The laughter and arrival of more people including Elefherakis, who invited everyone from the table to his house for coffee and sweets before they dispersed, could do nothing to arrest Manoussos’s urge to take Chadwick home for violent, passionate sex. However, though sex for Chadwick and Manoussos could be at times spontaneous or even instantaneous, anywhere, any place sort of sex, what was called for now was the other sort of erotic world they dwelt in: time-consuming, thrilling, dangerous sex. And they had left it too late. Manoussos was due back at the police station. He urged Chadwick to go with the others and said he would call for her at Elefherakis’s house as soon as he was free. The gaze that passed between them confirmed to each of them that this evening it was to be home for them, lost in lust, giving themselves over to the god Eros.