Body and Soul Read Online Free PDF Page B

resembled Marshall Greenspan in his good looks and self-assurance.
    Max was in love with Eden. He knew it and had declared it nearly twenty years before. And Eden loved Max. The tragedy or success of their love affair, depending on how one looked at it, was that they loved each other in different ways. Max had declared once and never again that he would marry no woman except her, and he never had. Instead he had mistresses and three children to whom he was a great father but remained besotted by Eden.
    Walking across the crowded terminal towards him now she was reminded of how much discipline it had taken not to have a sexual relationship with Max. The desire had been there for both of them but set aside from year to year, not the thing to indulge themselves in when business was and would always be the lion’s share of their affair.
    So many times they had come close to consummating their love-business affair with sex: one moonlit night in Sorrento, after a concert in Paris, on a yacht sailing up the Nile. But always Eden had pulled back. Now decades had passed as had other lovers and they were still together in all but lust. She sensed once more she had been right. Their relationship was the sweeter and the more exciting, always fresh, for the way they had dealt with it.
    Max was looking in the opposite direction when she approached him. Eden touched his cheek with the back of her hand, they smiled and kissed, and with Max slipping his arm through hers they walked to the check-in desk followed by a porter with her cello.
    ‘Everything is arranged,’ Max told her, showing his VIP visitor’s pass as they walked to the first-class lounge where they had a glass of champagne. ‘Don’t do anything foolish.’
    ‘Have you ever known me to be?’ she asked.
    ‘Never,’ he told her, admiration in his voice.
    ‘It’s because I am not a foolish woman that I am making this odyssey. Surely you can understand that?’
    He walked her to the departure gate and superintended the transfer of her cello which would travel in the seat next to her. They kissed goodbye and he was gone without another word. Max had been paving an easy way for Eden for so long they both took it for granted. These were the roles they played in each other’s lives and things would never change. What was so incredible was that at no time did either of them ever abuse the situation.
    Once he was gone Eden put him thoroughly out of her mind, still preoccupied with her own invisibility. The incident in Frog’s Hollow had badly undermined her confidence and goaded her into action. She felt she had no option but to begin again. Invisibility was too unrewarding.
    As the plane circled Athens Eden’s heart skipped a beat: the sprawling white of the houses covered the landscape as far as the blue of the Aegean, the winter sun beating down giving an added sparkle to the sight. No matter how often Eden flew over the city it always remained something marvellous in her heart and mind. A unique place with heart and soul that no matter how it grew remained always charmingly provincial for all its attempted sophistication.
    Now, with the descent of the plane, she understood how right she was to have made this trip, to see once again the beauty of the places she had experienced in her youth and remember her lovers there. It was a validation of the thrilling and adventurous life lived. By no means was she in search of another man nor the return of a sexual life to make herself feel complete, desirable. She was looking for something more than that.
    As she descended the stairs to walk across the tarmac to the terminal Eden realised that she was about to have a very good time. A fun time. Something she had not been having for many years because she had, for whatever reason, abandoned her will to do so. Almost aloud she muttered, ‘Fuck that woman’s plague of growing invisible with age,’ and wondered how she had ever allowed herself to fall into the middle-age