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adored him as a good neighbour, one of them, who had been educated abroad and returned. Both men and women were admiring of his good looks and the many foreign women who fell in love with him. They had seen so many beauties come and go that his prowess as a lover was, as base as it seemed, a matter of village pride. As was his discretion
vis à vis
his promiscuity, the libertine private life he led. He had his reputation as police chief to maintain and so never flaunted his liaisons, in fact worked at playing them down, which only enhanced his fame. For years many a blind eye had been turned to his womanising together with that of his partner in this pastime, his best friend Max.
    And Manoussos and D’Arcy? The Livakians loved D’Arcy, the foreigner they considered a Livakian, as Cretan as she was American. They had known her from the time she was a baby and living here with her mother and her mother’s lovers. They had seen her and Manoussos as childhood friends, as adolescents in love, as on again, off again lovers in their adult life, and were romantic about them. They liked and respected Manoussos for loving her in a romance they could only dream about. They were proud, so very proud, of their police chief’s virility, something Cretans set great store by. It was exhibited to them by those many women who came and went, and they believed would always come and go in his life, until one day he would find a Cretan girl to settle down with and marry.
    The men and boys standing close to Manoussos as Chadwick walked from the stern of the schooner grew suddenly silent. It was not her beauty alone that caught their interest but the look she had for no one, nothing at all, but Manoussos. They could sense the power and passion of this stranger who had made such animpressive arrival. Did they sense danger? Or could it be merely the overpowering sense of respect she seemed to inspire? Whatever it was, the moment she hopped on to the stony ground they stepped back and away, made a path for her, and she walked directly into Manoussos’s arms.
    They watched with awe as the lovers kissed and caressed each other, Manoussos opening her jacket and sliding it off her shoulders and arms until it fell to the ground. Now rid of the encumbrance he was closer to her flesh and he pressed her hard against his body, his hands fondling. They had never seen Manoussos so obviously seduced by a woman, so openly displaying his emotions, his lust for this stranger who had arrived from the sea. Still on board, taking some time to regain their energies, the crew watched with the same envy and appreciation as the Livakians what was happening to Chadwick and Manoussos, wrapped in a splendid, all-consuming embrace. It was one of the Livakian fisherman who finally broke the silence with an admiring and amusing remark about Aphrodite and how she had at last arrived in Livakia. It gave everyone a chance to laugh and dispel their amazement.
    Manoussos regained himself and began to laugh too. Still holding her to him with an arm around her waist, he introduced by name everyone standing around them. The couple’s happiness was infectious and very quickly a party atmosphere erupted followed by a good deal of affectionate teasing.
    For them both there was a sense of ease and rightness to this reunion, and as they walked from the mooring along the path towards the port Chadwick volunteered, ‘When the
Black Narcissus
rounded the headland and Livakia slowly came into view, something happened to me, Manoussos, something inexplicable. It was more than just seeing an amphitheatre of white houses basking in an afternoon sun. There was an aura of magic hovering over Livakia, a sense of time standing still, a place of no beginnings and no endings, just being. How much one has to live through to find this place! I don’t intend to analyse what is happening to me, I don’t care. Can you understand that?’
    She stopped and stepped in front of him so he could go nofurther