Body and Soul by Roberta Latow Read Free Book Online Page A

on each. They were in perfect tune. A piano tuner from Athens arrived twice a year, yearin and year out, to see that they remained so.
    She was reminded of the excitement and drama of getting these pianos into her house. The entire island had turned out for the event. They had been manhandled up here under the direction of Petros the donkey man, a dozen of his friends and workers. Garfield had organised it. No matter that her Greek was better than his, and her anxiety over the instruments more acute, he had taken charge as the men would listen to him. That was something she as a woman could not achieve. The islanders, like everyone else, adored Garfield. He had been one of the first foreigners to buy a house here. The short dark Greeks were in awe of the tall handsome wide-shouldered American with his sandy blond hair. Even more so of the stream of important visitors who arrived on their island to stay with him.
    They respected his being a painter, living on little money while awaiting fame and fortune. Then when Eden arrived on the island and was swept off her feet by the charm and sexuality of Garfield Barton, the islanders took the romance to their own hearts and thought the more of him for having captured such a beauty, so glamorous and famous. Eden’s and Garfield’s had been a romance that everyone admired, envied. They had been the beautiful people, worldly, who came and went from the island in dramatic romantic meetings and partings: Eden sailing away leaving her love behind to paint and enjoy the seclusion and simplicity of life on Hydra while she toured the world dazzling audiences with her brilliance on the cello.
    Occasionally their paths would cross elsewhere when Garfield would leave the island to hustle the art dealers of Paris, London and New York. In New York together, they frequented the cultured circles that appreciated great musicians and painters on the make for stardom. They were creative celebrities with an instant entrée to any party where art met fun head on and the exchange of ideas was heady as the strongest perfume. Adrenaline was in the air and one breathed deep of it to stay alive and in tune with the whirl of New York on the make.
    Garfield was the love of Eden’s life. She was flattered by his attentions, his love, their sex life together. She believed totally hissad tales of how he had been taken advantage of by a crippled wife, a French countess with a famous bitch of a mother who had promised the young couple the world and had delivered a great deal less than Garfield expected. The so-called crippled wife (nothing more than a rheumatic heart) had turned out to be as strong a character as the mother and completely in love with Garfield whom she turned into nothing less than a servant to any and all of her needs. It had been said he used her title as entrée to the rich and famous of European aristocracy while she used him as a decorative crutch and her introduction to the Bohemian world of artists and writers.
    By the time Eden had met Garfield he had dumped his first wife but only after having received a substantial settlement, a small flat in Paris and the huge and magnificent house in Hydra. The scandalmongers claimed he was able to get such a settlement because he’d threatened to expose publicly what everyone gossiped about: the mother had been enchanted with Garfield, had had him first for a lover and then married him off to the daughter to keep him in the family.
    Eden made herself deaf to such gossip, blind to any aspects of his character that were less than admirable. In New York she watched him hustle the rich ladies who collect paintings, watched him play the role of single, eligible, handsome painter. He put up a great front, saying that he was staying with an old friend and not Eden who was just a passing fancy. Yet everyone knew she was something important in his life.
    Garfield Barton was a high-society American gigolo who painted fashionable subjects. He labelled himself