With the sun already high, the day gave early promise of oppressive heat when Louise awoke for the second time.
Luxuriously she stretched her naked body into the sheets as her mind whirled through the pleasure of the previous evening. How wonderful Andrew had been! Not in all the world such another lover, she thought. Virile, exquisite in bed, gracious and attentive in company, so utterly understanding and undemanding.
And then she thought of Hector and the reason, after all, for her being in Athens at all.
She picked up a bedside telephone and asked for his hotel. But she was told that Hector was already out for the morning. She asked to be put through to Lambrakis' office.
"Hector!" she cried, as he answered the phone. "Louise! Late last night. I'm at the hotel. Came over with Andrew. Can you see me? Now? Fine. I'll expect you. Hurry, darling!"
Within five minutes, Hector burst into her bedroom. In one fluent bound, he was at the bedside of his wife.
"What a lovely surprise!" he cried as he scooped her warm naked body into his embrace. And when his kiss of welcome had ended, he held her at arm's length to admire the beauty of her torso where the covers had fallen back to reveal her nudity.
"Thanks to Andrew. He suggested it. Wangled a week's leave, and sent me a gorgeous bunch of flowers to tell me about it. He wanted us all to come for a cruise with him and then, when I told him you wouldn't be back for some time, he came up at once with the idea of flying over here, with me of course. Said it'd be a surprise to you, and a fine vacation for him. He's a wonderful fellow, Hector."
"Yeah. I like him. You picked a winner there, darling."
"So here I am. Really glad to see me, honey?"
"Glad? Come here!"
And Hector embraced the familiar and beloved curves again, burying his face between her enormous, firm fleshed breasts in reckless abandon. Louise yielded to her husband. Devotedly, she loved him, whatever her conduct in life. And she felt the familiar pulsation as desire surged within her, and she melted into the dominance of his embrace, his persuasive lips at her rising nipples, and her body enclosed in the fluent strength of his arms.
For long moments their sexy kiss lasted, and Louise could feel the love of this man for her, and she reveled, as she always did, in the knowledge of it. She would do anything for him. He could make no demands upon her which she would repulse. She was his, to do with what he liked. And she felt a curious pride in this feeling.
When they drew apart, Louise shivered in a spasm of randiness. But that, she knew, was due to her nakedness and the fact that she was still in bed whereas Hector, clad in business suit, could hardly be in the same desirous frame of mind. Nevertheless, she was content. Andrew had been eminently satisfactory during the previous night. She could wait.
As if melting into her thoughts, Hector answered as he straightened his suit: "And where's Andrew?"
"At his hotel. We arrived terribly late, so he put me off here, then took the taxi on to his own hotel." It was an explanation given so plausibly that she could sense the relief, deep down, in her husband. And she found the cause of that relief – a controlled jealousy – subtly complimentary to herself.
"Now," she said. "Tell me, what's the program? Still terribly tied up in this coffee deal?"
"Negative. Not much, anyway. Look, get up. I'll talk to you while you bathe and get dressed. It's just a waiting game now."
"So you will have time for me, for this week?"
"Time? Every minute of it'll be yours!" Eventually, bathed, perfumed and impeccably cool in cotton, she was ready for Hector. It was noon when he took her out to his waiting car. They drove around to Andrew's hotel, found him sitting, cool in silk shirts and flannel, on the outside terrace, casually lazing in the sun.
Andrew gave them a genial, smiling greeting.
"I see you two have found each other," he grinned. "A drink? Lunch, perhaps, here with me?"
With ice tinkling pleasantly against tall glasses, the three of them relaxed in the midday shade. Small talk went on, desultorily, as it does amid friends.
Over lunch, however, a passing mention of Claudine drew into focus Louise's theories once more.
"Did you know," she asked, "that Claudine is quite a lesbian?"
"No!" said Andrew, in genuine disbelief. "At least I'd never have thought so, not after our last orgy!"
"But she is, you know!"
And Louise went into lurid detail as she told about the evening she had spent at the villa a fortnight ago.
"It doesn't surprise me, really," confessed Hector. "There are people like that, like Claudine. AC-DC, they call them. Work on both currents. I suspected Claudine, but I must confess she never showed that aspect of herself to me. Quite the most remarkable woman I've ever known, that one. I'm really quite fond of her, but don't take that the wrong way darling. It's fond in the most impersonal way. She just lives for sex. With her, it's her philosophy of life; what beauty is to aesthetes, sex is to her. Even her men; I should imagine they're like antiques to a collector. To men she can be utterly feminine and so devastatingly satisfactory. And now you tell me she can be just as satisfactory to women. A fantastic person!"
"Well, she certainly cured me of my craving for sex," laughed Louise. "Do you know, I feel I've matured more in the past month than I ever did in any other five-year period in my whole life?"
She paused a while.
"Look," she went on, "for years, for the longest time, I was quite satisfied to live as I'd been living. Meeting Hector and then retiring into long separations. Satisfied, I mean, until I began to get dissatisfied. I began to ask myself whether that was all that life could offer me."
"And I knew it wasn't. There must he more to it, I thought. That's when I began to think about this infidelity business. And that's when it began to seem quite clear to me that there wasn't the enormous wrong in it, the wrong that silly convention would have us believe. Kept within its bounds, there is nothing at all wrong in it. On the contrary, it can be so utterly, so perfectly, right. Not wrong at all…"
"I just had to be allowed my infidelity, that's all. I was going through a phase, and that phase demanded infidelity. But infidelity, pure and simple sexual infidelity, that was one thing. Deception and duplicity were two other things altogether. They were the two things I could not condone. To avoid those things, I just had to confess to Hector what I was doing. I wanted you, Andrew, but I didn't want us to carry on in a criminal, underground fashion. If I was to have you, I wanted you openly."
"I wanted Hector to know about it. I wanted him even to approve of it. That way, it was exquisite, beautiful and even wonderful. Any other way and it'd have, been cheap, picayune hole-in-the corner stuff. And, as such, ugly and quite abhorrent!"
There was a long pause after Louise had finished talking. In silence, the three of them pondered her remark.
"But now," she continued, after a while, "I think I'm cured. I've had the whole gamut of sex – from you, Andrew, and from Claudine. I think I am satiated. I feel I've nothing more to learn, nothing more to want. Just Hector. I'm entirely happy just to be with Hector, to be what Hector wants me to be, to do what he wants me to do. If it was all curiosity in the first place, then my curiosity is satisfied. I'm so utterly, delightfully satisfied! This is it!"
"I see," said Hector, eventually. "But I wonder…"
"Wonder what?" asked Louise.
"Whether you are so utterly content yet. You've had the most splendid of tutors, I concede, in Andrew and Claudine. That whole demi-monde of hers, that theatrical crew. And yet, I don't know. Maybe you still need the stimulus of some polysexual experience."
"I don't think so," cut in Andrew. "I think Louise is cured. Her word: cured. If anything was ailing her before, then she's cured now. I don't think she needs anything more."
"Perhaps I'm wrong," Hector conceded.
"Had you anything in mind?" asked Louise.
Hector thought a long time before answering: "Yes. I had. I may be off the beam, but way back in Nice I had this idea. It could be that it's too late, now that Louise is cured, and if she is, she doesn't need what I've got in mind."
"So? Don't go on so! What are you trying to say?" asked Louise.
"Just – well, you know that there's a girl here, in Athens, whom I visit occasionally. Her name is Riva Bera. I've known her a couple of years now. When I came here from Nice, I phoned her. She's quite delightful, but also quite different. To begin with, she's a Turk. But she's cultured and lovely, for all that, though – basically and always – a Turk."
"Well, I was chatting with her last week and I got drawn into a discussion of Louise's theories. At first, Riva didn't agree. Did I say, didn't agree? Hell, she was plain condemnatory! And that was a laugh in itself, because Riva's a bit like Claudine in some ways. She numbers her lovers in three figures, but what a selectivity she maintains! Finally, she grew a trifle thoughtful, and I could see all her earlier conviction was being undermined."
"At all events, I wound up promising to take Riva back to Nice for a while, when I left. I promised to introduce her into our circle, so to speak. She wanted to discover what it was all about. She seemed genuinely interested."
"And now, of course, now that Nice has come to Athens, so to speak, well I still think I'd like us, to get together. It's a pity about Claudine. I'd like to have thrown Claudine at Riva. I wonder what power of catalytic attraction, or even repulsion for that matter, would have gone on between those two?"
"Well," said Louise. "I don't mind meeting Riva. I don't say I've learned everything. But of what I've learned, I feel I've had enough. In my life, however, there's always going to be room for a new experience. When, then?"
"You, Andrew?" asked Hector.
"Me? I'm like Louise, I think. This past month's been the most fantastic in my life. I'll never cease thanking God for you two Hendersons. I didn't know people could be like you, and that's a fact. But I suppose because I'm a man, I don't think I'll ever get to Louise's stage of satiation."
He crushed out a cigarette, and went on: "Make no mistake, there have been women in my life. Wonderful women they were, too. A man is what he is. But never such breadth of mind, of sheer scientific taste for novelty, for sheer breadth of experiences, as I've found with you two people! So, with this Riva person – count me in."
The meeting was fixed for the following evening.