Objects of Desire

by Roberta Latow

  They never mentioned the other man who had vanished as silently as he had arrived.

  It was there in that beautiful room with her young lover that Anoushka came to terms with her real self, not the woman she had created for Robert, her sexuality, her struggle between the spirit and the flesh. After several days in Agra, she rediscovered the joys of her sexuality with several other men and enjoyed, as she once had before Robert, the desire they felt for her.

  The next few months travelling with Page and Sally: in the Himalayas, Tibet, Ceylon, were a learning process for Anoushka which allowed her to realise how she had been deprived of attention, love and sexual passion without artifice or ulterior motive, and above all without deceit. She found a lost part of herself and her confidence in who and what she was kept building. Anoushka found she could respect herself again and there was no longer any doubt in her mind that she would find a love, rich and sensuous, loyal and true. But this time it would not govern her life, merely add to it.

  The three women joined the schooner Black Orchid in Sicily. Piers Hazlit had allowed them to make the Atlantic crossing and was there to introduce them to the crew and instruct the captain. He had been swept up by the adventurous spirit of the three women. He, like them, found it thrilling that they should learn to sail for no other reason than wanting to crew Black Orchid across the Atlantic. How could he not give them his three-masted yacht as their training vessel?

  Piers and Anoushka spent a night and a day together. They talked to each other, bared their souls, and found themselves slipping into love. An accident? Fate? Who knew? But Anoushka did not feel ready for anything as important as love with Piers. Oh, yes, she knew immediately that he was a man she could build the rest of her life with, share the good and the bad and the beautiful with. Here was a man she wanted her sons to know and love. A man she wanted to be part of her life for as long as she lived. But there were Sally’s feelings to be considered. Loving Piers presented a dilemma for Anoushka, so she did what she always did, blanked it out of her mind, and placed Piers and her ultimate happiness on the back burner of her life.

  Once the arrangements for their training had been worked out between the captain of Black Orchid and the women, Piers left for an expedition in Ethiopia. Anoushka, Page and Sally, enchanted by Italy, toured Sicily and Calabria. From there they journeyed to Greece to make Page’s house in Hydra their base. The plan was for Anoushka to work on her translation for Hadon Calder, and for them to island hop as and when they liked.

  For months, the flowers, the gifts and the love letters from Piers to Anoushka kept coming. No man, save for the poet Alexander Maar, had ever written verses for her or sent her love letters. They reached her wherever she was, and slowly Piers won her over until she was helpless to resist.

  Chapter 12

  Anoushka was sitting in the sun on the terrace of Page’s house high above Hydra’s port and looking down over the tiled roofs and terraces, the lime-washed island houses and narrow cobbled streets where donkeys were still the only mode of transport. She shielded her eyes against the sun and gazed across the Aegean sea of dark rich blue, its waves silver-capped by the sun playing on the water.

  She was thinking about the Taj Mahal and how she had seen it for the first time, by the light of a full moon. How they had picnicked in the garden by candlelight, an Indian feast, with Page and Sally, Jahangir and Alexander, the sitar player, a dancing girl, and white-turbanned servants. The scene was still vivid in her mind.

  Church bells were ringing from the many little white-washed churches dotted round the rocky landscape of Hydra. They echoed over the island, some from far off, others from close by, and Anoushka closed her eyes and thought of that night in Agra. Despite being on a Greek island she decided one more time to relive that afternoon, the night, and the sunrise as it rose over the sugary white edifice dedicated to love. The same love she had once believed Robert had for her. What an ego!

  Anoushka rose from her chair, poured herself another cup of coffee and walked with it to the end of the terrace where she sat down on the wall. Dressed in nothing but a near-transparent sarong made from a sari of royal blue silk, bordered with small hand-made cream-coloured silk flowers, that had been a gift from Jahangir, she placed her cup and saucer on the wall. Taking some of the fabric in her hands, she held it in front of her and looked at the view through it. She played with it, made sweeping movements of her arm. The flimsy silk danced on the soft hot breeze coming off the sea. It was reminiscent of the way the Indian dancing girl had moved seductively with her cream-coloured transparent silk scarf.

  Seductive was surely the operative word for that entire magical night: indeed for the whole bewitching time with Jahangir in Agra.

  That night had added much to Anoushka, who felt quite different from the Anoushka who had sailed out of New York on board the QE2. Sometimes, when she spoke to her sons, the old Anoushka slipped back but more often than not the new one was listening to her sons, getting to know them. Every day something new was happening to her and as her confidence built, and she was able to deal with life on her own, she was more grateful for the company of Sally and Page. Together they had somehow managed to brave the past and leave it behind and each in their own way was working on their present as if there was no tomorrow.

  One thing, however, never did change for Anoushka. Every night when she went to bed she missed the company of a man next to her. The warmth of a body, someone to share sexual passions with, someone to love and be loved by. Many hours passed, as they did now as she sat on the terrace wall in the sunshine, when her voracious libido wept for a mate. At those times, as now, she relived her time of sex and love with Alexander Maar on the night of their visit to the Taj Mahal.

  She heard the sound of the ferry boat’s horn, three blasts just before it rounded the corner and came into sight. It broke the excitement of erotic memory, mental masturbation, that had taken possession of her. Anoushka opened her eyes for only a second and then closed them again and sighed, a deep sigh of satisfaction. She had come several times while drawing that night of sex with Alexander from the recesses of her mind. She always did when she relived it. She bit into the flesh covering the knuckle of her hand and felt once more a strong orgasm. Her release complete, she called out, a little cry of pleasure, and opened her eyes.

  Piers walked towards her. ‘There’s no running away this time, Anoushka.’ Then taking her hands in his, he raised her from the wall where she was still sitting and took her in his arms. He held her close.

  ‘How long have you been standing there watching me?’ she asked.

  ‘Long enough. Do you often come by yourself?’

  She flushed pink with embarrassment and he smiled and kissed her on the lips, then the tip of her nose.

  ‘What are you doing here, Piers? Why have you come?’ she asked, trying to conceal her sense of joy at seeing him again.

  ‘I love you, Anoushka, I came to tell you that. I’m here because I’m lonely without you, and needed to see you. Don’t protest, I know you love me. I knew it that second time we met, and so did you.’

  ‘Oh please, Piers, don’t say any more. We promised each other time.’

  ‘I’ll give you time, the rest of my life. Is anyone in the house?’

  ‘No. Sally and Page are spending a few days on the mainland. I stayed behind to work. But what if they had been? I told you, I will never hurt Sally.’

  ‘Neither will I. Say you love me?’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘You will.’

  He took her by the hands and then stepped back a pace to look at her. ‘You’re so changed. I hardly recognise you as the woman I met at the Connaught.’ He raised her arm high above her head and had her do a turn and when she was face to face with him again, he pulled on the sarong. It parted and like a massive, exotic butterfly crumpled to the terrace floor. Then he grasped her in his arms and kissed her passionately.

  She knew she loved him. Sally and Page had known it even before s
he did. It had been Sally who had said, ‘If he has to love anyone more than me, I would rather it be you than any other woman, then I can keep you both as friends.’ She was being courted by Jahangir at the time, but had given no indication as to whether she was serious about him. Under the circumstances, it was magnanimous of her to have said that. Too magnanimous for Anoushka to accept it as truthful. Her own experience of Rosamond stealing Robert from her was still vivid in her memory and she simply could not bear to inflict that pain on Sally, on any woman for that matter. Yet she found herself falling helplessly in love with Piers. And now he was here in Hydra.

  Without a word, she took his hand and kissed it and led him to her room. And there she kissed him on his lips, again and again, as she undressed him. This was their first carnal encounter. In whispers they spoke of love and lay down together on her bed.

  ‘Anoushka, I love you.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I want you to be a part of my life. I can’t imagine making a life with any other woman. We’ll see the world together, create great adventures for ourselves. And we’ll live in the most wonderful house: Chalfont.’

  ‘Piers, I like having the same man in bed next to me every night. I thrill anew every time I give myself to the man I’m committed to. But you had better know, I wasn’t very good at being the perfect housewife. I’m sloppy in the kitchen, and I’m too lax with my children. I would have brought them up in an even more haphazard fashion than I have had it not been for my husband.’

  Piers began to laugh but she stopped him, saying, ‘It’s not funny, you have to know the bad side of me, and there is one. I let things slide by, just happen. And I was smug, oh, so smug about having a handsome, famous, and successful husband. I liked his fame, his fortune, and loved him for his sexual soul and intelligence, the cool, orderly life style he demanded for himself and rarely got by being married to me. I had all that and loved it and lost it. And I’m still in shock, still smarting from my failure to keep a relationship together. I have a great many ghosts to lay because I tried to be the woman he wanted.

  ‘Piers, never again will I pretend to be other than I am, no matter how much I may want to make you happy. I’ve done that, been there. Nor will I sit home and wait for you as if my world revolved round you. I’ve done that too.’

  ‘Have I asked you for that? How can you think I would cheat you like that? I’m not Robert, Anoushka. Nor are you Sally. A marriage of convenience is not what I’m looking for. If it was I would have married her. Love, romance, passion, the chemistry that has happened between us, that’s what I’ve been looking for in various ways all my life. It happened to us both and we are damned well not going to lose it.’

  Anoushka kissed him. There were tears of joy in her eyes. She loved him for so many reasons, not least of all the genuine sweetness that combined with the virility of the man.

  ‘Be patient with me. I have wounds that are still not healed. I want my life to be as valid as yours, and to be a whole person, respected for myself. I want to share my life with you just as much as I want you to share yours with me. Does that make sense?’

  ‘A great deal of sense. What more can a man want from the woman he loves? Marry me. Say you will.’

  ‘I need time.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘To be sure. Not of you, but of myself. There are things to be done, people to confront, situations to be addressed, ghosts to be laid.’

  ‘Do you love me?’

  She smiled at him and confessed, ‘Since that very first time we met. For just a few seconds the world stopped still for me. We linked and the pain of the past fell away. We were together and it was finite. Then Sally arrived and I knew that I had to put you out of my mind. I did, but you never left my heart. Weeks later when we met again on board the Black Orchid, I told myself: Hold back, hold back. But love was there and overwhelmed me. We talked away those twenty-four hours we had together and fixed ourselves in each other’s lives. In that short time we got to know each other better than Robert and I ever did, and I was married to him for thirteen years. Of course I love you, with all my heart.’

  All the while she spoke Piers and Anoushka had been caressing each other. Now he lowered his lips to her breasts and kissed them. She kissed the knob of his penis, then continued fondling his erect phallus, his scrotum and the balls within the sac. There was no urgency in their lovemaking, it was as if they had been making sweet love to each other all of their lives.

  He ran his fingers through her hair, and she said, ‘There’s Sally to think about. She’s my friend. I can’t betray her.’

  ‘It was Sally who told me you were here.’

  ‘She knows how we feel about each other?’

  ‘She knows I’m in love with you.’

  Anoushka’s voice trembled. She fought back tears of shame and asked him, ‘How could you do that? Tell her?’

  ‘I didn’t. She told me over lunch a few weeks ago. Sally is a remarkable girl, much wiser and more self-sufficient than you might think.’

  ‘Was she upset?’

  ‘No. She’s in love with Jahangir and that’s made her more sympathetic to what was missing from the life we had together. She’s not stupid. Far from it. She always understood what was missing from our relationship, but was happy in it so didn’t care. As she said over lunch, “What you’ve never had, you never miss, so I got on with being happy with what I did have with you”.’

  Anoushka felt relief at what she heard. But still something held her heart in check. The past? Other people’s pasts and how they had affected her life? Could she believe that with her loving and being loved by Piers, Sally would feel none of the pain Anoushka still felt every time she thought of Rosamond and Robert? Deceit cuts deep. The circumstances were different, yes, but the pain of loss … that had to be the same for Sally as it was for Anoushka. That sense of worthlessness, the failure of being thrown over by a man, it had to be the same for Sally, for most women who had been tossed out of a man’s life, been replaced by another woman.

  She looked deep into Pier’s eyes and saw his love for her there. It was unmistakable. When had she seen love like that? Maybe a hint of it once, and it had touched her heart then as Piers’s love did now, but that had been so many years ago when she had been a mere child. Anoushka was overwhelmed by such love. She took Piers’s hands, one at a time, and raised them to her lips. She kissed them, once, twice. A sigh came from the depths of her soul and she told him, ‘There’s so much you don’t know about me.’

  ‘Tell me?’

  ‘Not now, not yet. Give me time, Piers.’

  ‘And if I don’t?’

  ‘You will if you love me.’

  He adjusted the pillows on the bed so that she was comfortable and then slid on top of her. He kissed her face, and then raising her arm kissed it from the fingertips to her shoulder. He continued his kisses over her breasts. Sucking Anoushka’s nipples made her squirm with pleasure. With one powerful and deep thrust, for the first time Piers entered the woman he knew he would love as no other in his life ever again. She came immediately, a long and luscious, powerful orgasm. She screamed passionately. ‘God, yes. Yes, help me!’

  Anoushka felt herself slipping away, dying, in ecstasy. She tried several times to hold her breath, stem the feeling flowing out of her. Impossible. It was fucking as exquisite as she had ever had, thrusts filled with passion and love while they devoured each other’s flesh with hungry mouths. Piers came and was no less vocal than Anoushka had been. There was something primeval in their howls to heaven. The sap of their souls flowing together was more sweet, more enriching than life itself. Together they were something special and very private, a force all their own that they had never experienced with any other person.

  In the next few hours they lost themselves in each other. They covered each other with their come, tasted it in their mouths. Anoushka wanted to suck every drop of his seed into her womb. To hold it there forever. This was fucking governed by love, passion,
yes, but respect and adoration too. When they lost themselves so completely in the erotic world they created for themselves, they became nothing more than pure sexual bliss.

  Anoushka had never felt so complete in herself, so full of love and passion. She had it all. Pure happiness, sacred love, contentment.

  All day they shared themselves with each other until they bathed and dressed and, hand in hand, walked down the steep cobbled street and twisting stone stairs flanked by the high white-washed walls of other island houses. They went to the port for some supper. Over grilled barbounia fresh from the sea only hours before and a bottle of retsina, the resinated white wine Anoushka had at last acquired a taste for, there seemed little to say. Instead they watched the drama of the port coming alive in the early hours of the evening. Pure Greek theatre. The fishing boats bobbed up and down. People passed them by, smiled, greeted them, Anoushka being by now known on the island, as were Page and Sally. The scent of lamb and rosemary on charcoal, perfume to the hungry.

  ‘You’re very quiet,’ said Piers.

  ‘So are you,’ she answered.

  ‘I understand, Anoushka.’

  ‘You do, don’t you? Thank the lord for that. This is the most important time of my life, Piers.’

  ‘You’re the most important woman who has ever entered mine. I want to live with you, and love you, and die in your arms. But we’ll not have any more lovemaking again, not until you’re ready to make a commitment to me. Don’t keep me dangling, Anoushka. Not if you love me as I love you.’

  They remained silent while they both absorbed the importance of what Piers was saying and then Anoushka spoke.