by Simon Hasleton

There are two beaches at Kolymbythres. Between them, a narrow peninsula juts into the sea. At its very tip the little church of Agios Nikolaos stands white, entire-to-itself, and perfect against the deep blue of the Aegean Sea and the dome of the answering sky. A path winds from the village to the taverna, where it divides, the "family" beach to the left, the beach of the shameless visitors to the right.

Stasia is a shameless visitor.

Inside the taverna two tables are set, each with a bowl of salad, some fresh green oil, bread, tzatziki, cold white wine. The music wanders among ancient scratchy tapes of the mid-seventies. Where did he get them? Procul Harum, would you believe. Cat Stevens. Carly Simon. The Eagles. Dark Side of the Moon.

She thinks, "It must be the heat. I am looking at his body, and he sees me and I do not care. I am looking at his small neat head and I can feel him licking my nipples and they jump beneath my blouse and I don't care. It must be the heat. I am looking at his legs, which are brown, and lightly haired, and slim and as he came in and looked around, and pretended that he had not noticed me, I knew how I would hold him and stroke the tight brown skin, the tight smooth skin between his legs, and hold him, make love to him. He carries a book of poetry. I think the title is in English. He is a shameless visitor. I lay my hands on the table."

Oliver thinks, "It must be the heat. I want her to look at me. I want to stand naked before her and show her what she will get when she gets me. Gets me, yeah, takes me. Why do I look at her hands? Will she hold me in her hands? Cup my balls, hold my prick to her lips? Her hands are long, incredibly long and strong. She turns them now on the table, runs the tips of her fingers first up one palm then up the other. Christ, it must be the heat. I've got a hard on. I want to show her. I want to go right up to her stand in front of her while she unzips my pants I want to pull her blouse up above her breasts I want to press my prick between her breasts I want her to take those long hands and press her breasts about my prick...it must be the heat..."

Carly Simon sings "You're so vain / You prob'ly think this song is about you/ 'Bout you..."

Suddenly they look at each other and laugh. The proprietor sees them laugh, and scowls. They are shameless, the visitors. But even he, a married man, would not resist such a one. He slaps a dirty cloth at the flies. Fool!

They are overcome by the speed with which this thing is moving, and look away, pick at their food, drink the cold resinous white wine. He sees that a drop of the green olive oil, the fragrant virgin olive oil, has escaped her lips, run down her chin. She notices that he is watching her (they watch each other constantly now, but pretend not to. When she catches him, he looks beyond her, out through the open door). She wipes her chin on the back of a long slender hand, then licks at the glistening smear. She knows that his prick has twitched as he thinks of other glistenings, other licks. Her cunt is hot, wet for him. There is a hollow tunnel within her. Christ, let him fill it soon.

A trickle of sweat runs down his chest. He knows that their chests and bellies will be wet, make a sucking noise as they fuck. They will fuck like animals. The sweat glistens on her arms. She lifts one arm, exposes to him the damp curl of dark hair. She touches her fingers to her armpit, then draws her fingers to her nose, smiles at him over them. Smiles politely, as though to smell one's own heat were the most acceptable of table gestures.

They are shameless. It must be the heat. The proprietor has seen every move. The hard centre of his fat body is pressed against the bar. Soon, he thinks, the woman will come from the village to cook and wipe the tables. He will endure her contempt as he turns her bottom up on the sacks of beans and pasta in the rat-dirt of the lean-to shed, but it will be this foreign bitch's smooth rump he drags against his belly as he plunges himself between old Sofia's sagging buttocks. This one, this one. He thrusts himself uselessly against the bar.

The records of the foreigners have finished. Well, let them listen to some real music as they make their lewd plans. He drops in a cassette of rebetika, the music of the old Levant: of Jaffa and Trabzon, of Thessaloniki and the sailors' hashish bars in the back street stews of the port of Piraeus. Unselfconsciously, he raises his arms above his head and dances a little to the music. He sings: Ayiye, Ayiye, La, La-a-a.

Oliver stands, lets her see him rearrange his prick under the waistband of his shorts. Why not? She will see him naked soon enough. He feels strong; he knows that she will howl like a cat before the night is out. He leans across her table, leans half across her. She glances, despite herself, down his half open shirt, sees the strong muscles of his chest and belly. Despite herself -- no, rather because of the strongest instinct of her truest self -- she feels her thighs begin to part for him. Her lips pout invitingly, her body jerks momentarily toward him.

"Dance?" he asks.

She breaks the impossibility of this moment, shakes her head, glances back toward the sweating proprietor's greedy stare. "Not here. Swim?"

Neither has a costume or towel. The beach frequented by the visitors (the shameless visitors) is naked and unpoliced. By agreement, the gay men will be at one end, the hetero couples and the prowling singles at the other. As the explicit guidebooks will tell you, lesbians have their own beach, on the other side of the island. But relaxed as it is on the visitors' beach, he has no wish to display his almost painfully throbbing erection to a wider audience. Just to her.

She stands, brushes past him, allows her hand to touch him, linger there. Her long, slender, brown hand.

"Embarrassed?"

She has a neat ironic grin, and a dimple in her chin. She is slightly cross-eyed, he realises, and shortsighted too, as she fishes a pair of glasses from her bag and looks closely at his face. Oliver can see her breasts, full and taut within her blouse. He is standing close to her, almost over her. She could lie back for him now, across the table, part her thighs for him. His hands anticipate the cupping of her, anticipate the smooth curve, the warm fullness, the slide to the discovery of her. Her heat, her wetness.

There is a pause between them, like a small island of safety. A place from which they could pull back. But a decision is made here. She smiles up at him, smiles an assent. Yes, yes she will. Yes.

"OK?"

"OK."

Each wonders for a moment, to what, precisely, have they agreed? A casual fuck? A holiday affaire? An extended relationship? Children? Marriage? Death-do-us-part? Both are curiously aware that they stand on the edge of unlimited possibilities, although neither would admit as much. Only that they have recognised each other. Now standing side by side at the head of the path that leads to the beach, looking beyond the small white church to the wide blue horizon, their hands find each other, and as their fingers interlock, Oliver and Stasia pledge to each other a small, limited, provisional and unspoken troth. So be it.

Stasia utters a rather stagy cough.

Oliver: "Oh yes. Sorry. Oliver Sedgewick. English. Twenty-eight. Systems Engineer."

Stasia: "And?"

Oliver: "Happy. And Happy."

Stasia: "And?"

Oliver: "Single. Previous girlfriend just married a very wealthy wine merchant. And?"

Stasia: "Stasia Sokolova. Australian, but born in Kiev. Thirty-two, divorced, one nice daughter at home with my mother. Musician and teacher of piano. And also, happy."

She dips a slight curtsy to him. "And now Oliver, may we swim?"

Suddenly she is bounding ahead of him down the steep path. She jumps from step to step, her light brown hair bouncing on her shoulders. She feels exhilarated, light, joyful. A quarter-hour ago she was a bitch, shameless in heat. Now she is a child again, leaping effortlessly toward the sea. Filled with the infectious rapture of her mood, a similar transformation has overcome Oliver. Somewhere at the back of his mind is the sense that he is whole, and free, and that a peculiar joy is his for the asking; heaped up, running over, permitted and without stint.

Before him, she stops, holds out both her arms behind her to keep him here in this moment. Beneath, no more than a few steps away in a blinding arc of reflected sunlight, is the sea.

He is naked before she is. She hesitates. He undoes her blouse, parts it to expose her breasts, traces with one finger the silvery stretch marks. He pushes her knickers down, strokes her, draws her hands to his penis. Those beautiful, sensitive hands touch him as lightly as feathers, as gently as the down of an infant bird, stroke him as she opens her mouth, draws his kiss to her open mouth, allows her tongue to beg permission to part his lips, allows his tongue to entwine with hers as she holds, so firmly now, the instrument with which he will explore her entirely. It weeps a salt tear for her, but will console her.

To swim in that sea is the closest available experience to pure, unaided flight. The water is as clear as the air itself; the bottom, far below, seems so close one might reach out a hand and touch it. The small creatures of the sea swim incuriously past; small octopuses peer from beneath their stone houses, slide to safety. She swims beneath him, breaks the surface with her arms around him. Clean sand is beneath their feet. She lies back in the water, wraps her thighs around him, allows him to draw her onto him. But then she breaks free, She has spied a tiny cove, no more than a sandy cleft in the rocks at the edge of the beach. The sand is covered to a hand's depth by each gentle advance of the waves.

"Make love to me Oliver."

But it must be her way. She arranges him with her long, lovely hands. He must lie so, the water lapping about him. She must straddle his body, but facing away from him, so that the light of the sea fills her eyes, as his prick fills her cunt. She rises on him with the lap of each wave, lowers herself as it recedes. Her hands reach between his legs, caress his balls. Sometimes she leans forward, examines him, strokes the smooth tight skin, scoops the water toward them, allows the sea itself to play about her. Sometimes she lies back on his chest, draws his hands to cup her breasts, draws them down to explore the tight demanding bud of the flower of her. Then she is riding him, hard now, riding him into the sea, into the light, into the sun.

He follows blindly where she leads. He would follow her anywhere, to the ends of the earth. But the light of the sea is filling them both; filling, filling...

Until the light and the sea claim them.

She collapses upon him. "Oh God, oh God..."

This cleft in the rocks at Kolymbythres, beside the beach of the shameless visitors, has heard that prayer before. It is a very ancient place.