Objects of Desire

  ‘I won’t, you know.’

  “How can you be so sure?’

  ‘Because, like you, I don’t want to be married.’

  ‘Then shall we settle for being in love with each other and live with that?’

  She began to laugh. ‘Is this the same man who told me on the QE2 we would never see each other again?’

  ‘Can you honestly say this is the same woman?’

  ‘Yes, the same woman. But with a difference.’

  ‘A big difference, Anoushka. Liberated ladies, ones with courage and adventure in their hearts, have always excited my interest, in and out of bed. Especially ones who keep surprising me as you do.

  ‘I see in you now something I never saw that first time we met. You want to eat up the world as if it were a cup cake. You’re a lady ready, able, and willing to live. Someone who has taken control of her life. You have no idea how appealing that is to me. I’m a selfish bastard, I don’t want the responsibility of your life on my hands. Can you live with that?’

  ‘I don’t want to live without it,’ she replied.

  ‘Come here.’ He scraped his chair back from the table and patted his knee. Anoushka sat on his lap, taking her coffee cup with her. He placed an arm round her neck and watched her sip hot coffee from the cup. He broke off a piece of croissant and buttered it, draped a piece of near transparent Parma ham on it and fed it to her. Then he gave her an affectionate peck on the cheek.

  ‘I can be hard and ruthless.’

  ‘I’ve seen that side of you.’

  ‘Good, then you know what I can be like.’

  ‘But I have seen the other side of you too, the tender lover, the passionate sexual being. You don’t coddle me, you’re straight with me. I could love you for that alone.’

  Anoushka placed her cup and saucer on the table and this time it was she who fed him with croissant and peach preserve, trying to hide the overwhelming feelings she had for Hadon Calder. She was struggling to keep a tight hold on herself and remain calm when she told him, ‘I do love you, Hadon Calder.’

  ‘Good. That’s settled. We have to go. I promised to get you back on board for two o’clock and I have to get back to work. You’re the only woman I have ever broken my schedule for. For the sex, yes, but for more than that. That inexplicable, elusive something that can happen between two people.’

  He kissed her, this time because they understood each other, and eased her off his lap. ‘We have to go,’ he told her.

  Only minutes later they were in the power boat and he was taking her back to Black Orchid. ‘Hang on to me,’ he told her.

  She clung to him with one arm round his waist, a hand holding tight to a chrome grip attached just above the dash board. He threw a throttle full forward and the bow of the boat rose from the water. They sped towards Black Orchid, lying majestically in the bay.

  Anoushka turned to look over her shoulder at Hadon’s cliffside estate, in time to see Akito waving farewell. He knew that she would be back, that she was already a part of their lives. She had a sense of home and, realising how much she had missed that, felt suddenly choked with emotion. How grateful she was to feel so alive again, to have survived the ordeal of utter rejection, the death of life as she had known it.

  She took a deep breath, sighed, and looked at Hadon. Instinct made her throw both her arms round him and give him an enormous hug. He looked away from the sea to her and smiled. Understanding was in his eyes. The wind was blowing her hair back off her face. Anoushka felt giddy. She threw her head back and laughed, feeling as if she had beat the devil. ‘I love your home,’ she shouted above the roar of the turbo jet motors.

  ‘Good,’ he shouted back at her. It seemed only seconds before they pulled alongside Black Orchid. Their arrival brought Rab and the crew to the rail.

  ‘Permission to board, Captain?’ called out Hadon, unable to keep a smile from his face, so amused was he by the reception he and Anoushka were receiving.

  ‘Permission granted,’ replied Rab, and sent down one of the crew to sit in the power boat, another to keep a line on it.

  Anoushka and Hadon boarded and Sally went to her and placed an arm round her shoulder. They had big grins on their faces. Rab and Hadon shook hands and Anoushka introduced Hadon to Sally.

  ‘Hadon, I’d like you to meet one of my two best friends.’

  It was she who brought up the subject of the work Anoushka was doing translating his novel, something that had been completely forgotten in their preoccupation with the carnal side of their natures, trying to cope with the shock of falling in love.

  ‘She’s so clever and works so hard on every word, and she’s always saying she couldn’t bear it if she were to lose one iota of the passion and beauty of your writing.’

  ‘I’ll send you your copy of the translation when I’ve completed the work, in about five weeks’ time,’ Anoushka told him.

  ‘No. Don’t. I’ll come and get it. I finish my book in two weeks’ time. You get on with your schedule and I’ll get on with mine. Afterwards I’ll take you to Japan for a holiday, in celebration of the completion of your first translation.’

  ‘When?’

  The light in her eyes made him feel good. ‘Well, we’ll have to work out dates. I’ll be in touch.’

  Hadon left Anoushka with Sally. No great goodbye or kiss, a mere squeeze of her hand and he walked to the rail to descend the ladder. Rab was waiting there for him.

  ‘You old devil! Can still pull the best birds, I see. But what about that little blonde? Isn’t she a doll? And if you think these two are special, wait till you meet the third one of the trio. We’re picking her up in Hydra. A honey to look at – very seductive stuff.’

  ‘Will they make the crossing?’

  ‘Let me put it this way – I wouldn’t bet that they won’t but don’t tell them that. These two have got guts and determination, and Anoushka has a real feel for the sea. Page, the one yet to come on board, I have no doubts about. Beauty and guts, adventure in their hearts, and me training them … have you any?’

  ‘Not a one, except love might step in and bust up the trio.’

  ‘You don’t know these women if you think that. They’re not making this crossing to forget a broken heart. They’re making it because they want an ocean adventure. These ladies are buddies who have put together a dream, and no man’s going to bust that up for them. I hope you’re not thinking of trying?’

  ‘Me? Not me, old buddy. I like their spirit, real-life heroines. I’m rooting for them.’

  ‘Me too, but don’t tell them that either.’

  The two men laughed. ‘I’ll be calling you, Rab, might be joining you for a few days when your schedule permits.’

  Hadon was over the side and down the ladder. As soon as he had cleared the schooner it was all hands on deck, sails unfurled, and Black Orchid the training ship was on her way to Greece.

  Piers Hazlit was on a river expedition in Guyana. They were charting rivers, estuaries, waterfalls, following a course down the Essequibo from the North Atlantic Ocean across the length of the country into Brazil and the Jauaperi River. The Jauaperi flowed into the Negro and that flowed into the Amazon, the end of their journey, across relatively undiscovered land and water ways. They were also recording flora and fauna. The expedition had been in the planning for three years, and was his kind of adventure. Interesting, undisturbed places and people, uncharted territory, with competent, experienced colleagues including a doctor who had taken leave from Guy’s Hospital, and serious documentary film makers in tow. They were a party of nine.

  At night, exhausted from the heat and the humidity and a day’s hard travel by motor boats, one of which carried a dismantled microlight plane, sitting round a camp fire with a gin in his hand, Piers’s mind would sometimes stray from the jungle and wander back over other adventures, other expeditions. His findings safely recorded at the Royal Geographical Society were always an anti-climax for him. Adventure, discovery, that was the real reason for makin
g his expeditions; that and to write his always anxiously awaited travel books. This journey was no different than any other, with the exception of one thing.

  During his previous travels he had always known that there was someone at home waiting for his return: Sally. He had not realised until this expedition how much he’d enjoyed having the security of someone keeping the home fires burning, or at least the illusion of Sally doing that. How important it had been to know that Sally was sleeping in the bed at Chalfont or in the house in Hays Mews. That life had been going on in his absence: civilised, normal, boring even.

  For all her silly parties and girlie lunches, the gossipy, frivolous and endless phone conversations, Sally had at least always been there for him when he wanted her. He thought of her now and how she would jump at his bidding, meet him wherever he wanted her to be.

  He thought of Anoushka, her homely qualities and new adventurous spirit, her children whom he would take to his heart as he had taken her. He knew that he could give her the home she yearned for, an even better lifestyle than she had lost.

  He met her, fell in love with her, felt compassion for what she had been through, and bedded her. The sex had been better than good, they had had sex on a grand scale, but that had come after he had fallen in love with her and had decided what a good life they could have together.

  He had wooed her as best he could in the short time they had been together and it was a great affair, but that was not what he wanted from Anoushka Rivers. He wanted marriage or nothing. In her, he sensed the things, he had missed all those years with Sally: love for him, not love for what he could give her. A wife, the mother of his children, his hostess, his best friend to travel with. Those same things Sally had wanted from him, he now wanted from Anoushka. He had to be strong with her. He would have marriage or he would have nothing.

  Piers, a man whose life was always full, rich and rewarding, was not a man who pined for anyone or anything. That was how he assured himself of never getting hurt. He only really wanted what he could get on his terms. It had been easy enough for him to leave Anoushka behind emotionally. He had no problem with waiting for an answer as some men in love might. He would be there on the dock waiting for Anoushka’s answer as to whether or not she wanted him when Black Orchid completed her crossing at Mustique. But in the meantime he would contact her and say that if she wanted to be with him, she must agree to marry him. It was as simple, as cut and dried as that. On many levels he wanted Anoushka, she satisfied his needs, his passion, but he wanted a wife more. He could appreciate that she had a great deal of past to be finished with before she could give him an answer, and she was right to hesitate. He travelled light emotionally, she had to be the same. At least Sally had been right about that.

  Whereas Anoushka and Hadon had little to say to each other about their pasts, and Jahangir and Sally were only living in the immediate present every day for fun and each other, Page and Oscar spent their first three weeks together after years of separation making love, having long and exciting sexual trysts, and talking.

  In Page’s arms one night, after a particularly erotic night of lovemaking, Oscar told her, ‘The priesthood was an unnatural place for me. The mind wanted to be there, the heart believed that it belonged there. Uncertainty had always been my nature: love for women and freedom, a voracious libido, pride and belief in myself as an individual … I met you, and in your arms I found my true nature could be denied no longer. There’s nothing unnatural about my life now.’

  They spent time talking about their lives during their years of separation. It was a way for each of them to bring the other into those years, a way of dissolving the time lost between them. They hardly left the house, wandering from room to room, touching every window, every wall, opening every door, every cupboard. Making their mark on their house together.

  ‘It’s beyond my wildest dreams, beyond anything I imagined it would be. And you did it all by yourself without me, for us.’

  She could see how moved he was, and he was right to be moved. Now that he was here with her, she could view the house from a new perspective, through his eyes, and afresh for herself. She too was moved, could understand even more why Anoushka and Sally had been so drawn to the place, how it had wrapped itself round them and enchanted them. It had, besides simplicity and majesty, beauty and an incredible peace, an other-worldly feel. It had always been a house built on a foundation of romance and love. First the sea captain, who still walked as a ghost through the rooms, then Oscar and Page.

  ‘I’ll make it up to you. For the rest of my life I’ll make it up to us. It’s marvellous, it’s wonderful. You’re marvellous, we’re wonderful. It’s just as we planned it, but the reality is far better.’

  Like almost everyone else when Page had said she was sailing the Atlantic with two girlfriends, Oscar told her, ‘You’re an outstanding woman.’

  ‘I know!’

  ‘And Anoushka and Sally sound terrific.’

  ‘Oscar, you’ll be surprised by this friendship. We’re all so completely different from each other but somehow we came together and have become best friends, closer than sisters. When we sail into Mustique, it will be very nearly a year since the first time we met. Almost to the day, come to think of it. A year, Oscar, and we will have been through a lifetime of changes in ourselves and our lifestyles. We will have been through things together that none of us could have faced alone.’

  She told him all about Sally and Anoushka, the most intimate things she knew about them. He listened and understood the bond that tied them together. Was not such friendships, such togetherness, what the human condition should be? He had had friendships, still did, and was close to his male friends, but there were no bonds nearly as strong as he was hearing about from Page.

  She said, ‘It’s not disloyal of me to tell you these intimate details of Anoushka and Sally’s lives, because I want you to know them and what we have been through together. Soon, in a matter of months now, our voyage across the Atlantic will be over. But not our friendship.

  ‘It’s already happening, our separation. Each of us is going our own way, entering a new phase of our life with a new companion of the heart. Sally will marry Jahangir and return to the world she loved, waiting for her man, having fun and parties and playing with life, having the grand lifestyle. Anoushka has Piers if she wants him, and can be a wife and mother again. And I have you.

  ‘I’ve no doubt that Anoushka and Sally feel as I do, that no matter how much I love you, or they love their men, no matter if we will be living very different lives and probably separated not by miles but continents, we will always be there for each other as friends. We would not want to let that go.’

  ‘I wouldn’t want you to. They’re an essential part of your life, and as such will now be part of mine. They’ll always be welcome with us, wherever we are, and surely you must understand that I would appreciate your going to them whenever you like, for fun, or need, or even for no reason at all. I understand what you have going with your best friends. Because we’re making a life together, doesn’t mean you have to give up a life of your own.’

  ‘I knew you’d feel that way but it makes me even more happy to hear you say it. Any day now they will be sailing into harbour and then I’ll be joining them for training here in the Aegean.’

  ‘Do they know about us?’

  ‘That you’ve returned? No.’

  ‘Don’t you think we should tell them? A call, make contact in some way.’

  ‘No. We’ll surprise them.’

  ‘Surprise? Am I right in thinking that they knew you were waiting for my return but had doubts that it would happen?’

  ‘Something like that. I’m afraid neither one of them is very strong on faith. They saw our love as impossible.’

  ‘Page, say it. They didn’t think I would give up the church for you. In time they’ll understand. I gave it up for you, and for me, and for love. Because I believe I can serve us and humanity and God out of the cloth better than
I can in it. I wouldn’t want you, or them, to think you have to carry the burden of such a monumental decision. That, my dear heart, is all mine, and in fact no burden at all, only a merciful release.’

  ‘We won’t have to tell them that, Oscar. They’ll only have to meet you, see how we are together, and know you for a few hours to realise all that.’

  ‘OK, we’ll surprise them,’ he told her. ‘And Anoushka?’ he asked.

  ‘What about Anoushka?’

  ‘Will she marry Piers? Or is she still not over her husband?’

  ‘I don’t know. Piers is a very interesting man, and Anoushka is beautiful, complex, much more than she seems. She has a great deal going for her but I’m not sure what she wants. Piers wants marriage, but can he pin her down?’

  ‘Can I pin you down?’

  ‘Is that a proposal?’

  ‘It is if you say, “yes, Oscar, I’m pinned”.’

  Page gave a sexy toss of her head, her shoulder came forward just enough to tease. His already melting heart dissolved. She gave him a throaty, breezy, laugh and, throwing her arms round his neck, she told him, ‘Yes, yes, yes, Oscar, I’m pinned, I’m pinned, I’m pinned.’

  She ceased covering him with kisses only long enough to lead him to the bedroom. They sated themselves with sex in the delicious knowledge that what they had together was going to be forever.

  Afterwards Oscar said, ‘When you sail off on your training cruise, I’ll go into Athens, and get the details worked out so we can be married here in Greece. Would you like that, or would you prefer to be married in the States, China, Timbuctoo, anywhere? It’s our first and last wedding.’

  ‘I’ll marry you wherever you choose. I don’t care. You work it out, and tell me where and when. Surprise me. I did the house, you do the wedding.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Very sure. Only one thing – I’ll do the flowers!’

  ‘I’ll talk to the captain of Black Orchid and find out his schedule, where you’ll be moored and for what length of time.’