Free The Pleasure Seekers by Roberta Latow Page B

criss-crossed it thousands of times from its narrowest stretch of 6 miles to its widest of 35 miles. She loved every inch of it. The other foreigners living in Livakia had that same passion for Crete. They knew it – maybe not as well, except for Max, but enough to want to know it as she and Max did. Except for D’Arcy, Manoussos and Max, few of the Livakians took the road over the Levka Ori range of mountains as D’Arcy had a few days before. There were easier, less dramatic routes from Livakia, by boat up or down the coast to villages and towns where one could catch a bus, or else keep a car and then drive anywhere on the island. Only Max had the advantage of a sea plane as well as his jeep and a boat.
    Laurence had no car, the hassle was too much, he used public transport and lifts from people. Arnold kept his convertible Volkswagen in a cave above a village several miles down the coast. Mark was too poor to have a car and didn’t know how to drive anyway. The Plums had a car; Jane did the driving but wasn’t very good at it so they rarely used their own but hired a taxi. All inall the foreign community had enough transport to keep them far from isolated unless they wanted to be. There was even a bus that did make the road twice a week to Livakia. Mark had dubbed it the Kamikaze Express. Only strangers and the desperate took their chances on its arriving anywhere at all.
    Laurence and D’Arcy had been invited to dinner by friends of his who lived in a marvellous house in Rethymnon. Dinner meant staying overnight because it was on the opposite side of the mountain range from Livakia. D’Arcy had no problem with that, Rethymnon was her favourite town on Crete. It was on the north coast between Chania and Iraklion, smaller than those towns and filled with charm, a sleepy little place, looking very Eastern with its many minarets and wooden houses. Its buildings, like the great mosque in the fortress with its three domes and slender minaret, added yet another flavour. They seemed almost African. The ancient port, once made famous by the Venetians, and the early-seventeenth-century Loggia were always, for some reason, instant visual reminders of the history of Crete to D’Arcy.
    ‘Sure we’ll go. I always like going to Rethymnon,’ D’Arcy told Laurence, looking very happy.
    ‘But I thought you disliked the Chumleys?’
    ‘I do, but you don’t.’
    ‘So this is a sacrifice?’
    ‘Hardly a sacrifice. You get to be with your stuffy insular friends, I get a great dinner in a lovely house and to wander around town, saying hello to a few old faces I know they would never bother to speak to.’
    ‘I don’t know why you dislike them so. I’ve known Jeremy Chumley my whole life and no one I know dislikes him, or Celine for that matter.’
    ‘Have you ever listened to their conversation? I don’t think you have. You just accept what they have to say as interesting. It’s not, you know. It’s stultifyingly boring. When the four of us are together, the three of you talk in the past tense. “Do you remember when we were in India together? Saw Benjy the other day, remember when . . . Boo is divorcing, Tiggy is marrying. Bunny still asks after you. Are you going to the Chenedges’ party. Oh, do you know Phizzy, D’Arcy? What is D’Arcy a nickname for, D’Arcy? Ha, ha, ha.” Oh, really, Laurence, you left those sort of people behind when you left Eton and Cambridge.’
    ‘D’Arcy, one never leaves Eton and Cambridge behind.’
    Peals of laughter from D’Arcy, and Laurence joining her. It was late-morning and they were still in D’Arcy’s bed. Having given up dinner in favour of lust, they had had a dawn breakfast on the terrace in the sun: fried eggs and bacon, slabs of cheese, toast, and English rough cut marmalade. They drank Fortnum’s Royal Blend tea laced with sugar and a splash of Scotch whisky, a restorative after-sex drink, or so Laurence claimed. Exhausted from their romp through a landscape of