Objects of Desire

by Roberta Latow

  He raised her arm, the one that was holding the umbrella, until it was high up over her head and then, moving out from under his, he dropped his umbrella and took shelter under hers. They watched the umbrella roll several feet away from them. From his pocket, he removed a ring and took her hand in his. ‘It was my great-grandmother’s. I did promise you a ring.’ Then he slipped it on her finger.

  It was a large square-cut diamond set in a single row of emeralds and then a row of dark blue sapphires. Sally dropped the umbrella. Jahangir swung her up off the tarmac and into his arms. They kissed amidst a confusion of tumbling umbrellas, rain drenching them, Anoushka and Page trying to cover them with their own umbrellas. Jahangir slid Sally slowly down his body and away from him and placed her, as if she was a delicate piece of porcelain, on the rain-swept tarmac.

  ‘You see, the party’s never over. If you’re clever you just move the venue. I have to go.’

  ‘You have the instructions, how to reach me on board?’

  ‘Have no fear, I have the instructions, I’ll call you every day.’

  Jahangir led a by now drenched Sally to the several steps leading up and into the six-seater Lear jet. Anoushka and Page followed. As soon as the three women were aboard and the door securely closed, he picked up one umbrella, shook the rain from it and held it over his head. The other he closed and tucked under his arm, then he walked away from the plane across the tarmac towards a waiting car.

  The plane spluttered to life and after a short warming up period took off almost immediately. By the time the pilot told his passengers it was safe to remove their seat belts the sun was shining in a blue sky. Rainy Paris was left behind. After some fussing to dry Sally’s hair and clothes with a hair dryer supplied from the luxurious bathroom, the three settled into their deep comfortable chairs and swivelled them round to face each other.

  ‘This is some life for a middle-aged, middle-class housewife …’

  But before Anoushka could finish her sentence Page interrupted. ‘Has-been middle-aged, middle-class housewife. You can hardly call yourself that now.’

  ‘You’re right, Page. I don’t much feel like that has-been middle-aged, middle-class housewife anymore. That’s what I was when I met you, what I have been for thirteen years. The memory bank has to catch up with the emotions and deposit the changes so I don’t slip back into the past. I stand corrected. What I was going to say was, I’ve learned so much about myself and life through this friendship with you two, and now Jahangir. How could I not think like you, Sally, like Jahangir? Why didn’t I realise that life can be a party and you just keep it going. You take the bumps, the tragedies, all with the good, ride them out as life just doing its business. I have never felt that way, ever. Suddenly after this weekend that could have been so hideous for me, I realise what I have been missing. That bell that has tolled for Jahangir, Sally, did you really hear it?’

  ‘Yes, I did. That very first night we met at the Taj Mahal when he chose me and neither of you. It was more a click in the head for me. All the pieces of my life seemed to come together. The moment he took me by the hand and looked into my eyes, I was in step with him, and myself, and the world. He heard a bell, I heard a click. I was suddenly aware of life and all things beyond. It was kind of like an instant Nirvana. Buddhist monks say you can enter that moment of truth and awareness at any time, in any place. For some it happens when you give yourself up to love. A click in my head, the bell tolled for Jahangir. A slap in the face, the sight of an incredible sunrise, a great painting, a single poppy in a field of high yellow grass … it can be anything. I suppose all you have to be is open and ready to hear it, receptive enough to accept it. Did you hear it with Robert?’

  ‘No. I know now that I never heard that click, nor Robert that bell. There was never that moment of awareness of being one with each other and the world you talk about. I understand what you’re saying, but I can hardly conceive it. It was passion, enormous lust, admiration, aspiration, that was what governed my love for Robert from the very first time I saw him and until he left me. Survival through love, the erotic. I was constantly manufacturing happiness and living in a state of bliss and in a secure world in order not to die or just fade away, exactly as most people do. And I did find happiness, and haven’t as yet known any better than that which I had with Robert even though I am out here, alone, and working on it.’

  Sally wanted to ask, ‘And what about Piers?’ But she couldn’t bring herself to, and was somewhat relieved when Page spoke up and she missed her opportunity.

  ‘It rang for me.’

  Neither Anoushka nor Sally spoke. Page smiled at them. ‘What, no questions, no curiosity?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I’ve always been curious about you, Page,’ Sally admitted. ‘Always thought there might have been someone. But you’re such a private person, you never gave us the merest hint the man in your life might exist or had existed.’

  ‘I suspected,’ said Anoushka. ‘I’ve met two men who know you, Hervé and François, but it was Hervé who told me there had to be a secret love, a great love or a great disaster that made you cast off any man who became too deeply involved with you. He claims you are a legendary femme fatale for the many suitors who couldn’t capture your heart. He says that you use men as most men use women. I never believed it to be quite true.’

  ‘But it was, it is. There have been many men. I’ve had a wonderful, full and rich sexual life with them, and romance, and yes, even love, but they could never be the man. You see, I’m one of the lucky women of this world for whom the bell did toll, like it has for Sally now. I see it in you and Jahangir, that same commitment that I have to one man, one love. I’ve found my life-mate. Until I met Oscar and it happened for us, I never believed that kind of love existed. Never dreamed that I could look at one person and fall deeply in love, that a life could come together just as Sally has described, and there could be for eternity peace and contentment.’

  ‘But where is he?’ asked Anoushka.

  ‘He left me, abandoned me for what may be a greater love.’

  ‘So that’s what we three have in common? We’re women who have been discarded by men. Until now, I thought Sally and I were the only ones,’ said Anoushka.

  ‘But you’re the only one of the three of us waiting for him to return,’ said Sally.

  ‘Well, not exactly waiting. If you mean that all life is suspended, that my heart is broken, that I’m pining and in despair, that time might heal a broken heart, no, it’s nothing at all like that. My heart never broke. I wait for him alone in the house in Hydra for three weeks every year. During those three weeks he is in the forefront of my mind, my dreams, every minute of the day and night. The rest of the year I just carry him in my heart and get on with life without him, which includes other romances, other men, great sex, my work, friends, and now best friends. Till you two came along, I never did have any women best friends.’

  ‘Will he come back?’ asked Anoushka.

  ‘I don’t know, not for certain I don’t.’

  ‘But in your heart you think he will?’

  ‘No, not in my heart, in my total being. I have utter and complete faith in what I have with Oscar. You see, I think, for special reasons, that our love has been blessed by God, all the gods. As ridiculous as this may sound to you both, it’s almost irrelevant whether he does or does not come back to me. You see, we’re apart, out of communication, but we never really left each other. It’s more that circumstances … well, it’s difficult to explain. It’s an impossible love, let me put it that way. Impossible unless Oscar comes to terms with it. The sacrifice he has to make to return to me is tremendous. He’s a man torn between two great loves, for a woman and for the Holy Roman Church. He needed time to resolve his conflict.’

  ‘Oh my god, he’s a priest, a man of the cloth!’ said Anoushka, looking very shocked at this news.

  ‘Yes.’

  An awkward silence settled over them, then Anoushka said: ‘Needed? You said needed, past t
ense. Does that mean that he has come to a decision?’

  ‘How strange that I should have said that. Almost as strange as my speaking so openly about him to you girls. Something has happened, I feel sure of that now. The idea is so thrilling it’s making me feel quite queasy.’ Page took a few deep breaths.

  ‘Are you all right?’ asked Anoushka.

  She was smiling again. ‘Yes, it’s passed. It was rather as if someone was walking over my grave. I’m fine now, feel wonderful.’

  ‘I don’t quite understand, Page. He’s considering giving up the church?’

  ‘We agreed to part but never to stop loving each other or wanting to be together. He’s a famous theologian who has always had a great many conflicts about the church and where it’s going, celibacy, the human factor between doctrine and believers. He’s always been a renegade priest who challenged the church, but a believer who loves Christianity. By the time I came along he was a powerful voice for reforms in the church and a redefining of Catholic philosophy. You have all at some time or other read him, heard him, or at least his name: Oscar Kroner.’

  The look on Sally and Anoushka’s faces told Page all she needed to know, they had indeed heard of him.

  ‘And you’ve carried this tragic love around for how long?’ asked Anoushka.

  ‘No, Anoushka. Not tragic, and it’s carried me – us. We made a calculated decision to give each other our freedom to have other loves, other passions and interests, to put ourselves and our faith to the test. I really should explain, but where to begin? The house in Hydra, I’ll start there because you both love it and understand the magic of the place. It’s not mine. It’s ours. He bought it for himself and then gave it to me.’

  There was no cabin attendant on the plane but before they had taken off the co-pilot had shown them the coffeemaker and microwave. Page rose from her chair and went to the small kitchen. There she placed a jug of coffee and warmed croissants for them on a tray and returned to her still stunned friends.

  The women drank their coffee and looked at each other reassuringly. Finally, it was Sally who spoke. ‘You’re not going to leave us dangling. Surely there’s more that you can share with us. We’re your friends, we would like to know.’

  ‘I would, in fact, like to tell you about Oscar and me.’

  ‘You’re still in love with him?’

  ‘Oh, yes, and I have no doubt that he’s still in love with me. I think I would like to start at the end. It was always a bit unfair not to tell you the truth about the house in Hydra. It might end up being a house just for me, but like the captain who haunts it, Oscar is always there and always will be in spirit if not in the flesh.’

  ‘Did you live there together?’

  ‘Yes, soon after he had bought it. When it was mostly a wreck.’

  ‘Then you rebuilt it together?’

  ‘No. We designed it together, spent months and months working out how to restore it, and then he went away, left me, and I have been for the last five years carrying out our plans. I said I’d start at the end to tell you about Oscar and me, but maybe I had better start at the beginning.

  ‘It seems so strange to be talking to you about him, to anyone for that matter. I never have, you see. I never had best friends to confide in before. I’ve held him and our story close to me because ours is an impossible love, a secret love, sinful. And we are talking sin on a big scale. But not in our eyes. What we are together has never been that to us. Now that I want to talk about it, I don’t actually know where to begin. First I was going to start at the end, then at the beginning, and now I think I should start even further back before that and tell you a little about me, before Oscar and I ever happened. Maybe you’ll understand me better and our love story even more.’

  Anoushka stood up and refilled their coffee cups. Sally said, ‘Hold it, don’t begin yet!’ and rushed off to return with more croissants.

  ‘As delicious as these are, my mother would have disapproved,’ said Page. ‘She used to make the most mouthwatering croissants ever. My mother was a cook, and my father head gardener on a Long Island estate. The north shore. I was the only child born below stairs in that household, and so was spoiled rotten by the servants and the owners as well. The Van Meers were real Long Island high society. Old, old money, one of the first Dutch burgher families to settle in New York. Conservative.

  ‘Mrs Van Meer was a wonderful woman, extremely nice to me. She was a keen gardener with a passion for flowers, and it’s really thanks to her and my father that I have the same love. When I was no more than five years old she had me helping her with her flower arrangements which were always spectacular. Of course then it was holding a flower at a time while she talked out how she was going to use them. I adored her. She was an absolute beauty and so sweet, she drew everyone to her, had a power over people. I wanted to enchant, as she did, and followed her about everywhere, and at any time I could.

  ‘She had five children of her own. They were my playmates. I grew up with them. I had the run of this marvellous estate and not quite the run of the house. It was an idyllic childhood. She saw a kind of beauty in me that she was always wanting me to make the most of. My mother and father, the other staff in the house and on the estate, tended not to know quite what to do to add to my life, they just let her bring me up.

  ‘Though I was an only child, I was never lonely, I had the Van Meer children to play with. They learned tennis, I learned tennis. They learned to sail, I learned to sail, swim, and so on and so on. One of the boys was called Bradley and was four years older than I was. He had known me ever since I was born. He was my god, my best friend, and we fell in love. I was five years old, he was nine.

  ‘We were inseparable, growing up together running wild and free until he was sent away to school. That made little difference to me, I had the other four for friends. Though I missed him, so did they. We kept him with us by talking about him all the time, and reading his letters over and over again. He would write to us about the world outside the Van Meers’ estate, every letter for us was an adventure story. The moment he came home, he was in the kitchens looking for me and off we would go together as if he had never been away.

  ‘We took a great deal of teasing from everyone, but never minded, we were one big happy family. I learned what it was to be adored, to be loved, to have a man passionate over me from Brad Van Meer. It was he who made me understand how my body could excite a man. He liked to make love to it. It was so innocent and natural, this craving for each other’s flesh, discovering our sensual natures. We used to take all our clothes off and I used to lie back in the long grass in the south field and he used to caress me, kiss me, lick my little budding titties, suck on my nipples. We thought it very adventurous when he discovered my cunt and licked and kissed it. The excitement I felt made me squirm with pleasure, his made him erect. We woke each other up to the sensual and sexy. I was nine years old. It got better at ten, and at eleven years old I knew how to use my body to excite him and keep him enthralled.

  ‘I suppose something of the sensual, like a strong perfume, told people not what we were doing but that we were passionate children just waiting to grow up. Everyone teased us for our togetherness, above stairs and below, and were charmed by our children’s love story. We didn’t care, it was true and we were all children together having fun.

  ‘But his mother, Beatrice Van Meer, and her flowers and fondness for me, were more important to me than puppy love and sex. I used to work with her in the garden whenever she had the time, and fetched and carried for her all over the house while she worked on her arrangements. She taught me everything about flowers and arranging them, about how to dress, manners and how important they were, what was beautiful and what was vulgar. She loved me.

  ‘When other girls came into Brad’s life it never worried us. We knew we were drifting apart and accepted that one day other men would take his place in my life, other women mine in his. Though we still had erotic passion for each other and had sex together
at every opportunity, which by the time I was seventeen had taken on adventurous and experimental overtones, it was love and respect for me that held him to me. It took a long time, that drifting away from each other, until only sexual togetherness remained. He was sexually possessive about me, wanting always for me to have nothing to do with any sexual encounter that was anything less than what I had known. It was he who produced my first dates, my first lover, other than himself.

  ‘ “You don’t take the cook’s daughter out unless she’s something special, ravishingly beautiful, interesting and sexually exciting,” he kept telling me, and so I went out into the world of men and sex with great self-assurance, knowing very well how to enthrall men. I liked beautiful young men, and when they professed love, life became even sweeter than it had always been. Suitors were plentiful, romances came and went. After university, where I read English Literature, I opened my first designer flower shop and started to travel. Life was unconfined and exciting.

  ‘I had an education and a talent with flowers, a relatively good head for business but no real money behind me. I was interested in success and money but soon realised that one is easier to achieve than the other when you are out there all alone. I was not averse to taking advice. Early on I realised the sort of men who could further a girl like me, and those who were attracted to me, were one and the same type: educated, successful, well on the way to their Swiss bank accounts. Money makes money. I listened and learned and acted on tips adoring swains were happy to give me. The wealthy always like their friends to have their own wealth, it makes them secure. And frankly, I found these men romantic and just as easy to date as poor ones.

  ‘By that time I understood my looks and sexual charisma, and that those two things could probably get me anything I wanted, and so using them became part of my psyche, as I suppose it always had been ever since I was that little tot who could charm the Van Meers. I always felt quite whole and secure in myself and so, not so strangely, I never needed to look for the great love, never really quite believing that it did exist. Nor did I have that urge most women have to find a fabulous catch for a husband. Love and romance just happened for me, I never had to make an effort.’