Objects of Desire

by Roberta Latow

  Anoushka shouted above the din of the motors, the wind and the spray coming off the sea, ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’

  The three women began to laugh, forgot safety and let go of the cross bar to hug each other, almost immediately losing their balance and falling all over each other. Hands went instantly back on to the cross bar. Page shouted above the noise, ‘We’ll make it! We’ll do it! Oh, she’s such a beauty lying there in the sun just waiting for us. Sally, we owe thanks to you for this. I wouldn’t miss sailing her across the Atlantic for anything. Watch out world, the adventure is on!’

  Sally shouted back, ‘Piers’s guilt, that’s what we can thank!’ And all three laughed again. Anoushka for once not taking the remark, as she took any remark about Piers, as personal, since his declaration of love for her.

  On board they were greeted by the captain and his crew. The skipper of the schooner was straight with them. ‘You do realise, ladies, you will have to be very good – better than good – top-notch sailors before I will turn this boat over to you for the crossing? You will have to know every inch of her, every instrument and how it works, the feel of every rope, how to handle every sail. This boat will have to be part of you, your very heart and soul. And what about the ocean and the winds? You have to have a feel for them. To master the boat is one thing, but master the ocean? The Atlantic is its own master, it would be good to remember that. In fact, you might take that as your first lesson.’

  ‘You don’t think we can do it,’ said Page.

  ‘I didn’t say that, ma’am.’

  ‘But you’re thinking it. I can assure you, we will. We three women will sail Black Orchid across the Atlantic and into the Caribbean Sea.’

  The look she received from the captain and his crew made her smile. She told them, ‘We may look like cream puffs to you at the moment, and not at all the part, but we will. And not only that, we’ll be the part.’

  It was true they hardly looked like young salts in training to challenge the Atlantic in the same chic clothes they had left Lakeside in, and bare feet. Each of them holding a pair of Maude Frizon shoes in their hands, Hermès handbags slung over their shoulders, Sally with a massive gem on her finger. The captain smiled. Page could do that to a man, make him melt, look beyond reason. She charmed him into an admission.

  ‘I can assure you, Miss Cooper —’

  ‘Page,’ she insisted with a smile.

  ‘— Page, with character and a will of steel, hard work as a priority, a quick mind and better than good reflexes, all of which I am guessing you have in abundance, you will be drinking champagne in the Caribbean.’

  Smiles appeared on everyone’s faces. Arms shot out and hands were now shaking others in a real welcome on board. The air had been cleared, everyone understood each other.

  Clothes that were appropriate for crewing were already below in the ladies’ cabins, having been sent ahead before they left for the States. Sally and Anoushka went below to change. Page remained with the captain and crew above, walking the deck, admiring the beauty and condition of Black Orchid.

  ‘It will be difficult for you and your crew, going as ballast instead of sailing her across the Atlantic, Captain. We don’t need resentment with all we have to learn,’ she said.

  ‘I hope that I’m right in thinking that’s more a plea for help rather than an insinuation that we’ll not do our best for you all, Page?’

  ‘Yes, I think you could say that. Now let’s presume you find us as seaworthy as your boat. Up to taking over Black Orchid and sailing her, three women, across the Atlantic. The real challenge for us would be if you let us make this voyage on our own, and you and the crew flew over to the Caribbean and met us there.’

  The men standing round her looked appalled. ‘No way, Page, no way. Don’t even think it. It would be foolhardy. To sail the Atlantic a crew needs years of experience. She’s a lot of boat to handle, and she’s not yours. Remember your arrangement with Piers. You sail her, we watch. No interference, ballast you may call us, but we’re there. And if at any time I think lives or the boat are in danger you can’t handle, I take over. I hope that settles it?’

  ‘Those are your only criteria?’

  ‘You have my word.’

  Page stuck out her hand and shook the captain’s. ‘You can’t blame a girl for trying. Under the same circumstances you would have done the same, now wouldn’t you? All of you?’

  The captain was once more charmed by her. A hint of a smile crossed his lips. Fortunately Anoushka and Sally were back on deck and joining them in time for him to escape having to answer Page.

  It was another celebration and all Anoushka kept thinking of was how right Jahangir had been. The party does go on. Lunch, as ordered by Piers over the telephone from wherever he was, was smoked salmon sandwiches and champagne, served on deck with his compliments. There had been no other word for Anoushka. Piers was holding to his resolve. For that she was relieved, having still not sorted out her guilt about Sally’s feelings via-à-vis Anoushka and Piers being together.

  ‘I understand that you have to go, Page, But I wish you could stay. That we were all starting off together.’

  ‘There’s so much to learn, Anoushka, I know that. But I’ll catch up with you once I’m on board. We’ll still have nearly four months to sail together, to get it right. I won’t let you down.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking that you would. You have to go, I understand that, but I wish you could stay or I wish we could go with you. Now that we know the facts, I can’t help but think, as Sally does, that it’s a lonely vigil you’ll be keeping.’

  The plane buzzed the schooner and all faces turned up towards the sky, hands shading eyes. It circled once more and then landed on the water and taxied towards Black Orchid. All joy and excitement vanished from Sally and Anoushka’s faces as the pilot cut his motors and the crew caught the plane’s tow line and held it fast. Everyone was at the rail watching the plane bobbing up and down in the water, the waves slapping hard against the pontoons. The women hadn’t spoken for some time, having been distracted by the business of holding the sea plane in tow for Page to board.

  She turned to face her girlfriends. ‘What, sad faces? Now, now, what’s this?’

  ‘I can’t bear it if he’s not there,’ said Anoushka.

  ‘I never think that way. I’m not a woman who tortures herself over a man, no matter how much I love him and want him. I never have been, never will.’

  ‘Then why are you going back alone?’

  ‘Probably because I never had friends like you before to come with me. Because I made a vow to myself and to a man I love that I would be there during these next three weeks. And mostly because I want to. I have faith, complete and utter faith in myself, in Oscar, in what is right and what is wrong for us. Ever since I met him, he has done nothing but add to my life. So, please, no sad faces for me. You two work hard and learn well, and I’ll join you when you sail into Hydra and begin my tuition then. We have an ocean to cross, a great adventure, and we all three of us are going to be ready for it.’

  She made haste to kiss Anoushka and Sally. Then she turned to speak to the captain, who had with his crew heard most of what had been said between the women. Rather than looking embarrassed, he looked admiringly at her.

  ‘Thank you, Captain, for your hospitality. Take care of my friends for me. Not the best of jobs, training three ambitious ladies with a quest to fulfil. I’m sure that’s what you’re thinking. But we won’t let you down. Why, you might even get to like the job! I look forward to coming on board for my training when you arrive in Hydra.’

  One of the crew went ahead, descending the ladder followed by Page and then another crewman. The first sailor jumped on to the pontoon, opened the plane’s door, and then held out a hand for Page, who stepped gingerly from the boat ladder to join him. The water was choppy. The sailor held her steady with an arm round her waist, the co-pilot appeared at the open door and extended a hand. Page grabbed it and found the foot hole on the si
de, stepped into it, and was helped up into the plane that was to fly her directly to Hydra.

  Seconds later the plane was drifting away from Black Orchid even before its door was closed. The tow lines having been pulled on board by the co-pilot, the plane’s motors sputtered to life. It taxied bumpily through the waves to clear the boat before it picked up speed. Sally and Anoushka stood at the rail watching the plane shimmy and shake as it cut through the sea and then slowly achieve lift off and a climb at a gentle angle into the sky.

  ‘Impossible love, impossible choices for both of them. How could they have concocted such a heart-breaking plan? How could our sensible, lovely Page have become involved with that? From where does she gather her strength for such an unachievable love?’ asked Anoushka of Sally.

  ‘Not strength, faith. She’s solid with faith is our Page. It’s her belief in something more than life itself that gives her the strength to love like that. When I lived with Piers I never had it. I wouldn’t have understood it even if I had had it, but now that I’m with Jahangir, I do.’

  She looked at her ring sparkling in the sunlight. Anoushka could not help but smile. She patted Sally on the shoulder and took her hand and held it up to have a better look at the ring.

  ‘He’s done you proud there, Sally.’

  ‘He always does us proud, doesn’t he?’

  The two women looked again across the water and then scanned the sky for any sign of the plane and Page. Nothing.

  ‘We’ll call her tonight,’ suggested Anoushka.

  ‘No. If she wants us she knows how to reach us,’ said Sally.

  ‘Do you think he’ll show up?’

  ‘Does it matter? She’s living her life the way she wants to, and he’s there in it, the only way he can be. That’s good enough for Page, and so it has to be good enough for us. I wouldn’t venture a guess. If Page is happy with what she has of him, then what does it matter if he shows up or not? Now we’d better start learning how to sail this tub,’ said Sally, punching Anoushka playfully on her arm.

  Long after she flew away from the schooner, Page kept thinking about Anoushka, Sally and herself. They had come a long way together. Had she understood when the three had first met how serious their emotional troubles had been? Only now in retrospect could she really understand the despair that had taken over each of their lives. All because of men who were through with them.

  It was not returning to Hydra and the house, the waiting for Oscar, that made her think about women cast off like worn-out clothes by their great loves, who could, for whatever the reason, no longer sustain a life with them. It was Dr Robert Rivers that made Page think of them. Dr Robert Rivers and his cruelty to Anoushka because he loved another woman and had been unable to make a life with her. Page had gone along to support her and was not in the least sorry for having done so. She could see the positive effect confronting a return had had on Anoushka, but there had also been something haunting, a kind of ugly aura that had hovered over that unhappy triangle of Robert, Rosamond and Anoushka that Page found disturbing. The only really negative factor in Anoushka’s return.

  Page sighed. Relief? Yes, that she had escaped anything as soul-destroying as the past Anoushka was still and probably would always be living with. Page had no doubts that Anoushka would carry the scars of Robert’s cruelty, the sexual manipulation-cum-love she had been indoctrinated in by Serge, forever.

  To see Sally and Jahangir was a joy, but would the scars inflicted by a man who threw her out vanish for good? When Page had first met Sally, she too had been cast off by someone she loved and had built an entire existence around. She had done nothing to deserve having her lifestyle torn away from her. To have been a convenience rather than a man’s love – how humiliating. Needing to have a man who is through with you pick up the pieces of your life and find a way for your survival because you are too beaten up to construct anything for yourself. Serious abuse, utter defeat.

  Page covered her face with her hands in despair for what her friends had been through, and for the millions of other women much less fortunate even than Anoushka and Sally who had suffered the same humiliations, defeats, destruction of self-esteem, in the name of love or worse, just to keep a man tied to them.

  And what of herself? She had placed that ad in the International Herald Tribune, not because she was so wounded by a man but because she was so loved by one. Impossible love does not necessarily mean pain. No, she had not suffered pain as her friends had, merely a deep loneliness that none of the men she had been with since Oscar had been able to assuage, no matter how much they had tried, what good times she had had with them. A lady alone who needed adventure and the companionship of other women of like mind was what she had become so she could leave behind those that filled her life but were not love, just men.

  Anoushka, Page and Sally pulled each other up by the boot straps from where they had been, strangers who had become best friends and somehow through each other learned about love, the good kind and the bad. Love slipped into proper perspective with the rest of their lives now. They had a new viewpoint on themselves and men and loving them. They owed each other a great deal, their new lives. That was Page’s last thought as the drone of the plane’s motors hummed her into a deep, dreamless sleep. The sleep of a baby. Contentment.

  It was dusk when she saw the coastline of Greece, the port of Piraeus, and Athens crawling across the landscape like a white amoeba. They skirted the bay, clogged up with ships in transit, huge oil tankers side by side, rusting in the afternoon sun. A graveyard of ships.

  Flying low, the sea plane followed the coastline: the island of Aegina came into view. It was a mysterious and bewitching time of day to fly low over the water between the mainland and the islands of the Aegean. Dusk was coming down fast, they were racing against nightfall. They were flying in daytime, night descending from above, the sea below them like a voluptuous woman, beautiful and powerful, unfathomable, their haven, spread out ready to receive them. Ahead of them they had a clear view of both night and day as they flew towards Hydra. It was an eerie, seductive sight, and strangely erotic, something like being swallowed up by the elements.

  The island of Poros, its small white church on the edge of the port, came into view, another island of white-washed houses. This one was famous for its pistachio trees and the vendors down on the docks selling them freshly roasted to the ferry-boat passengers. It was short flying time now to her island, the race against nightfall still on. Suddenly there it was, Hydra, barren rock, some scrubby wind-swept green, rising high and magnificent out of the sea. Her heart began to race.

  She told the pilot, ‘Make your landing just this side of that promontory,’ and pointed the area out for him.

  ‘No problem,’ he told her.

  ‘If we could cruise round the point and into port that would be great. I’d like to make the least dramatic entrance possible, otherwise we’ll have the whole island down in the port to see who’s arrived. The water’s somewhat rough this side of that rock face but it becomes calm the moment you make that turn into the harbour. We can taxi in then without too much of a fuss.’

  The pilot signalled thumbs up. He knew very well what excitement a sea plane causes. The landing was a good one but, as Page had predicted, on a rough and choppy sea before they made the turn into the harbour and the town came into view.

  It was as calm as a lake, the caiques were already in for the night and bobbing lazily up and down in the water. The crescent-shaped port and town rose dramatically like the most perfectly shaped amphitheatre to the top of the island. White house upon house, upward and upward, shimmering in the heat, with a hint of pink from a sun en route to setting.

  The motors were cut to slow cruise, and they made their entrance into the harbour just as lights began to appear in the windows of the houses: the glowing light of candles or of stars. The port was quiet at this hour, a few drinkers trading the day life of the port for the night life or making ready for it; the cooking smells wafting from the
restaurants, tables being laid, waiters sweeping.

  Page had eyes only for her house. Whenever she came home and had that first glimpse, she thought, ‘There’s the captain’s house, he’s on watch for me.’ Strange for a woman who could hardly be considered fanciful.

  It looked glorious in the evening light. The way the building broke for a courtyard here, a terrace there, for a flight of steps to yet another level. The old fig tree, the ancient date palm. The perfect marriage of architecture and natural terrain. The house was closed up but still had tremendous presence as it always had whether inhabited or not. It was much admired and sometimes envied by all who were lucky enough to sail into the harbour.

  It felt good to be back, and on the day she had set for her return. It hadn’t been all that easy to manage it. Black Orchid, being stateside, Groton, the school shenanigans, Lakeside and all that went with that trip had been fun, thanks to the effort everyone made, but somewhat exhausting. It had only been five days since the three women had left Hydra.

  Children were shouting at the sea plane as they ran along the quay, curious Hydriots having their early ouzos abandoned them to have a closer look at the white and silver sea plane. Who was arriving on the island in such style? was the question on everyone’s lips. All along the port where the caiques were secured, people were lining up to have a guess and a gossip. The tables of expatriates living on the island stopped drinking, some stood up for a better look.

  The plane was secured at the very end of the quay with the help of the two port authority people. The co-pilot was the first out of the plane, Page followed and then the pilot. The onlookers were both impressed and disappointed. They wanted to see Sophia Loren, Tom Cruise and his wife, Sylvester Stallone. The ultimate for them would have been Clint Eastwood, a big movie star. Any movie star would do. But a sometime resident? Impressive to come home in a sea plane, yes, but a let down too. Some of the locals did shake her hand and remark about her mode of transportation: where had she come from, how long had it taken, when would the plane take off again, was a ride possible?