Free The Pleasure Seekers by Roberta Latow

of their minds.
    Now someone new had come into his life; he knew it wasn’t love but a bizarre sexual attachment he was too weak to resist, a complex relationship he had been seduced into. Outwardly he had it firmly under control, but, like the tiny red ants, it was eating away at his emotions. Yet, in spite of that, he felt strong enough to deal with it, keep it under control. He believed he was master of the situation, that goodness, intelligence and kind gestures will always win out over the dark and cruel. It was the philosophy he believed in and lived by. The positive aspects of Arnold Topper that all who knew him loved him for.
    There were few people on the beach and none of them from the crowd of the night before. D’Arcy held up her hand to shade her eyes as she looked out over the water. Arnold was doing knee bends. D’Arcy turned her attention to him. He looked happy. Mercifully after a certain amount of drink he never remembered anything, or so he claimed. She often wondered just how true that was. Clearly the humiliating incident between him and Mark had vanished from his mind, if indeed it had ever been there at all.
    They spread their towels out on the sand. D’Arcyremoved the straw hat from her head and the full-length sarong from round her body. Arnold pulled off his tattered straw hat and shoved it in his basket, stripped down to his black silk knit bikini, removed his round horn-rimmed eye-glasses and carefully put them in the basket as well. They slipped their feet from their sandals. The burning hot sand made them hop from one foot to the other several times before they joined hands and ran to the water, waded in a short distance and dived into the sea.
    The water was instantly refreshing. Nine times out of ten when they dived into the water together and finally surfaced Arnold would tell D’Arcy, as he did now, ‘I miss that wonderful shock and shiver one gets diving into the ice cold Atlantic at Truro on the Cape. Now
that
was something!’
    D’Arcy laughed, and scooping up water with both her hands she splashed it at him. Then side by side they began their swim. They were both excellent swimmers and loved the sea, any sea, so long as it was relatively clean. They swam a good distance and then floated on their backs for some time, eyes closed under the grilling sun.
    Suddenly Arnold was pulled under. The commotion shook D’Arcy from her reverie and she was immediately at his side. It was unnecessary. With arms flailing, he shook himself free. A head bobbed up from the depths. It was Melina. She made another attempt to grab Arnold. She was a silly young girl, frolicking in the water, no more than that. The three swam round and teased each other for several minutes before embarking on a race back to the beach.
    Still some distance from the shore, Mark joined them.There was a glint in his eyes, a knowing smirk on his lips. D’Arcy picked it up at once. Melina would never have thought to join them or attempt to pull Arnold under the water and snatch his bikini had it not been instigated by Mark. She never socialised with the foreigners; sat in on the fringes of their evenings in the port maybe, and that only if Mark was there, but never more than that. This was a bold act. Oh, yes, Mark had set the girl up to inflict a little humiliation on Arnold. Had he thought that if he had Arnold unnerved, Mark himself could win the race, beat them to the beach? Not this time, Mark Obermann, D’Arcy told herself, determined that either she or Arnold would leave Mark trailing in the water behind them. She reached down and found added strength, swimming harder and faster. Arnold, who was swimming next to her, must have picked up on her determination that one of them should win: he was going all out for the shore.
    Arnold won, to the applause of Laurence and Max who were standing on the beach. He walked through the surf and collapsed at their feet. D’Arcy had no problem coming in second. She collapsed against