‘Goodness,’ said Emma. ‘What an odd, beautiful idea! But where did you find out about it, Richard? I didn’t remember hearing it last time we were here.’
He gave her a strange look. Long, hard, penetrating. ‘No, we didn’t. But I’ve been coming back to Bali once a year since then.’
She felt shocked and somehow violated, as if he had just told her that he had been breaking into her house and searching it once a year. For some unfathomable reason she had felt that their past was safely locked up, untouchable. And for her the memories of Bali were so closely linked with Richard that she could never have borne the pain of returning alone year after year merely for carefree holidays. So why had Richard come? Was it because he was too insensitive to remember her at all? Or…her breath began to come in fast, uneven gulps…or was it a kind of pilgrimage? Were the memories of their time together too precious for Richard to give them up? Suddenly she felt she had to know. Yet embarrassment made her voice come out unnaturally shrill and mocking.
‘Why did you come? I would have thought our honeymoon was enough to put you off the place for life!’
His blue eyes met hers as coldly as twin laser beams. Shrugging slightly, he picked up a bottle of Indonesian beer and prised off the lid with an opener. Then he took a couple of leisurely gulps before replying.
‘True,’ he said indifferently. ‘But Bali is a beautiful place. It would have been plain stupid to let one set of bad memories spoil it for me forever. After all, our honeymoon wasn’t all that important, was it? Not when you weigh it against the rest of our lives.’
‘No,’ she retorted with a nonchalance that was totally counterfeit. ‘No, I suppose it wasn’t all that important. Look, how about passing me a drink too?’
She drank a bottle of fizzy lemon squash and ate two chicken sandwiches and a banana in a valiant attempt not to seem upset. Yet inside her an aching misery was settling like lead in the pit of her stomach. Not important? Until now she had always believed that marrying Richard was the most important thing she had done in her life. Even after all the anger and pain he had brought her, it made her feel hurt and belittled to have their honeymoon brushed aside as meaningless. Not important, she thought bitterly. Right. Thank you, Richard, for reminding me of how insensitive you are. It’ll make it easier for me to close my heart to you.
‘There’s not much point in stopping for lunch at Penelokan, is there?’ she demanded coolly. ‘I seem to remember that it was a bit dull apart from the view. Anyway those sandwiches have taken the edge off my appetite.’
‘Just as you like,’ shrugged Richard. ‘But let’s push on anyway.’
The road wound up through Bangli and the thick vegetation shut off the view so that they saw nothing of the country they were approaching until they suddenly drove through a ceremonial gateway and found it laid out beneath them like a contoured map. What they were seeing was a large caldera ten or eleven kilometres across, filled with an improbably vivid blue lake and rimmed by rugged hills carpeted with lush green vegetation. Penelokan and, below it, Lake Batur.
‘Well, even if you don’t want lunch, at the very least I need a cup of coffee,’ announced Richard, turning off the road into the car park of a cafe. ‘Are you going to join me or not?’
As they walked across from the car to the building, he draped his arm casually round her shoulders and she stiffened, hoping that he could not feel the violent beating of her heart. It was over there, there on that very outcrop of hillside with the trees plummeting down to the blue lake below, that he had kissed her! Back when
life was simple and she believed in happy endings. Biting her lip, she allowed him to steer her to a table on the deck with a panoramic view of the haunting landscape below.
‘Two coffees, please—one black with two sugars, one white, without.’
He gazed calmly out over the blue expanse of water beneath them and smiled at her.
‘Nice view, isn’t it?’ he commented pleasantly.
Emma stared at him in stupefaction as the truth slowly dawned on her. He hadn’t brought her through some extreme refinement of cruelty at all. No! Richard wasn’t planning to watch with amusement as she agonised over old memories. Nothing so subtle. He had simply forgotten the entire incident. Forgotten…how he had kissed her…what he had said to her…how they had felt… The swine! The heartless, callous, unfeeling, disloyal swine!
‘Yes, it’s lovely,’ she said drily. ‘Do you think I could have my coffee extra strong?’
After twenty minutes they continued on their way down the road which zigzagged until it reached the lake’s edge, then hugged the shoreline, bumping along until they reached Air Panas. Here Richard parked the car outside the same hotel they had stayed in nine years before, but by now Emma was awake to his tactics and had her reactions firmly under control. No way would she let the faintest flicker of nostalgia or regret appear in her face. Instead she wore only a look of mild interest as they went into the hotel and signed the register. A smiling teenage girl led them to a simple room with rattan walls and nothing but the most basic furniture. Emma’s faint aura of boredom supped slightly when she realised there was only one bed but she knew it was useless to make a fuss. At least the room was clean and had a proper en-suite bathroom. And if Richard was really intent on ravishing her like some medieval villain, presumably he could have done it just as well in the luxury hotel back at Sanur.
Fortunately Richard’s mind seemed to be on other things than medieval ravishment. Tossing the two overnight bags on the floor, he walked over to the window and looked out at the view which it framed—an attractive, gentle vista of flowering trees, green grass and the blue waters of the lake.
‘How about a walk round the foreshore?’ he suggested. ‘And then we could have a swim in the hot-springs pool before dinner.’
‘All right,’ agreed Emma.
It was very pleasant walking along the shore of the lake and her pretence of composure gave way to genuine enjoyment. Because of the hot springs the water in this area was quite warm and Emma took off her sandals and paddled for a while, frisking like a child, kicking up arcs of water just for the pleasure of watching the rainbow droplets sparkle in the sun. Richard didn’t join her, but stood smiling indulgently and shaking his head. When she emerged, she felt almost as if she had come here simply for fun. They must have walked ten or twelve kilometres, most of the time in companionable silence, but occasionally breaking into speech to discuss what they saw around them. A small group of Balinese cows, as pretty and graceful as deer with their caramel-coloured coats and liquid brown eyes, standing in the shallows being washed by a small boy. A toothless old lady with a face as brown and wrinkled as a walnut carrying a pyramid of offerings on her head to lay in front of a wayside shrine. A couple of fishermen out on the water in shallow canoes who waved a greeting at them. By the time they headed back for the hotel, Emma felt comfortably relaxed and weary.
‘And now for our evening bath,’ announced Richard, with a hint of laughter in his voice.
She understood the laughter when they arrived at the hot springs to find fifty or sixty of the local villagers already companionably stretched out in the water, gossiping and laughing. Some of them had brought along packets of soap powder and dirty clothes and were pounding their washing in the shallows while they chattered to their friends. In the west, the flaming red ball of the sun was preparing to sink behind the mountain. Emma stared in disbelief at the scene before her and started to giggle.
‘I just don’t believe it,’ she said. ‘It’s so strange, so unexpected, somehow. Like having a party in your laundry.’
‘I know,’ agreed Richard with a chuckle. ‘It’s one of the things I love about Bali, the way the people do everything with such gusto. Life, death, art, work, play, they throw themselves into everything with this amazing energy and humour and goodwill. And although they don’t have a quarter of our possessions they seem to have the happiness that eludes so many of us.’<
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His face was sombre for an instant, then he gripped her hand and led her down to the pool.
‘Come on,’ he urged. ‘The water’s fine.’
It was fine. In fact it was an amazingly peaceful and relaxing experience to lie there in the warm water, surrounded by the musical rise and fall of voices, watching the sky change from a blazing crimson to a deep purple velvet and occasionally casting a shy, darting glance at Richard by her side. However much she might try to tell herself that she hated him, she could not suppress a thrill of pride at the powerful, tanned, masculine body that lurked beside her in the water. To her surprise, Richard seemed to understand quite a lot of the language and he chatted fluently to the villagers, his white teeth gleaming in the gathering darkness and his deep baritone laugh ringing out over the silent water. At last Emma rose to her feet and gazed regretfully down at herself.
‘I have to get out,’ she announced. ‘I’m turning into a prune.’
Richard too surged out of the water, a bronzed god from the deep, and took her hand.
‘An albino prune,’ he commented, lifting her hand to his eyes in the uncertain light. ‘You’re awfully pale, Emma. Haven’t you been out in the sun at all this summer?’
‘No, I’ve been too busy. What with this threatened collapse of Pero’s and everything, I’ve hardly even been outside of my office.’
His hand tightened on hers but he said nothing until half an hour later when they had showered and changed and were sitting outside waiting for their dinner. Brightly coloured lamps were strung along the edges of the deck and a moon the size and colour of a pumpkin had risen over the lake. Somewhere in the background a gamelan orchestra could be heard tuning up for the night’s session of traditional dancing, which Richard and Emma had decided not to attend. The air was cool and still and filled with the scent of flowers. Richard had ordered a bottle of champagne and, to Emma’s surprise, he raised the first glass in a solemn toast to her.
‘Well, here’s to you, Emma,’ he said. ‘And to Prero’s.’
‘To Prero’s,’ agreed Emma in a subdued voice.
But the foolish thought rose in her mind that she would much rather have been drinking a toast to the pair of them. She sipped slowly at the prickly, bubbling liquid and eyed him thoughtfully.
‘You don’t seem too enthused about it,’ commented Richard drily. ‘Is it the champagne itself or Prero’s that you’re not keen on?’
‘The champagne’s fine.’ she said hastily. ‘And I’m very grateful that Prero’s is going to continue trading too. I would have hated to think of all those people being put out of work. But sometimes, Richard, I wish I’d never inherited the damned business. You can’t imagine what a burden it’s been.’
‘Oh, yes, I can,’ retorted Richard grimly. ‘I’ve been in business for myself nearly twenty years now, remember, and I know it isn’t a piece of cake. But I’ve got to hand it to you, Emma, you did a damn fine job with Prero’s. It can’t have been easy for you, taking over when you were only twenty-one.’
‘No, it wasn’t,’ agreed Emma, grateful for his understanding. ‘I’d had an expensive and largely useless education and I knew more about flower-arranging than I did about balance sheets, so suddenly being thrown into being a major property developer was the most terrifying thing that had ever happened in my life. And some of those construction crews weren’t too keen on having a woman as boss, I can tell you. It was pretty alarming to deal with all those rough, macho men.’
Richard gave a sudden growl of laughter.
‘Well, you didn’t seem to have any trouble dealing with rough, macho men when you met me,’ he pointed out. ‘Heavens, I can remember you coming out on the back terrace at your father’s house carrying a tray of cold beer cans as if you’d been a barmaid for the last twenty years. I remember thinking to myself, That’s a girl in a million. Not only does she look terrific, but she reads minds. You didn’t seem at all alarmed then.’
Emma gave a splutter of laughter at the memory.
‘That’s all you know!’ she replied. ‘I really had to work up my courage to go out and confront you all. But I felt so sorry for you, working in that heat. Besides, you and your crew were different from a lot of the men I’ve met since. You were really polite to me.’
Her thoughts strayed back and she remembered Richard, a tall, blond giant, naked to the waist, tanned and sweaty and incredibly handsome, directing a crew of workers who were building an extension on to her father’s house. Taking pity on them in the fierce heat, Emma had carried drinks to them and later Richard had returned to the kitchen door with the empty tray. Her heart had done back-flips at the sight of him and she hadn’t known where to look in her embarrassment. As if he was sharing the memory, Richard smiled too, an odd, brooding smile.
‘Well, my politeness didn’t do you much good with your father, did it?’ he demanded. ‘I seem to remember that when he found out you’d been soiling your fair hands giving drinks to the labourers he went right off his head.’
‘No, he wasn’t too pleased,’ she admitted, even though it made her flinch to remember how her father had stormed around the house, slamming his fist on furniture, shouting at her about her position and prospects and badmouthing the workmen outside. All because she had offered them drinks on a hot day. ‘Did you hear all that?’
‘Yes, I did,’ said Richard grimly. ‘And it was a tossup whether I’d finish laying the ridge-pole, or go inside and punch him in the jaw for speaking to you like that. My God, he was an old devil! But he didn’t manage to stop you sneaking out to the rock concert with me the following week, did he?’
Emma smiled guiltily.
‘No,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I remember now. You heard me playing that Nec Plus Ultra tape and asked me if I knew that they were doing a live concert the following week at the big cricket ground. I couldn’t believe it when you invited me to go with you.’
Richard leaned back in his chair and a reminiscent smile spread over his face.
‘Yes, I guess that was the start of it,’ he mused. ‘Or maybe it was the picnic at Manly the week after. That’s right! I kissed you under the Norfolk pines on the esplanade. There’s no need to blush like that, Emma. My intentions were honourable and I kept myself under very strict control whenever I was with you, remember?’
Emma flushed. Yes, it was true. In fact, she had actually been a virgin when she married, although certainly not through her own choice. It was Richard who had put the brakes on as their relationship had grown more heated. Richard who, with an unexpected streak of puritanism, had insisted on marriage before consummating their relationship. Although, heaven knew, they had more than made up for lost time after the wedding… Blushing even more deeply, Emma gave him a quick, shy glance.
‘Why did you insist on waiting?’ she demanded. ‘You know I would have gone to bed with you if you’d given me the slightest encouragement.’
Richard’s eyebrows drew together in a stormy frown and he gazed at her with piercing blue eyes.
‘I know that,’ he growled. ‘And don’t think I wasn’t tempted. But I didn’t want to take advantage of you, Emma. You were so young, so totally inexperienced.’
Emma tossed her head rebelliously, sending her long hair swinging over her shoulders.
‘Not totally!’ she protested. ‘There was a Swiss ski instructor who kissed me at an aprbs-ski party behind the chalet when I was seventeen.’
‘I’d rather not hear about that,’ said Richard in a dangerous voice. ‘Although I can well imagine that you were a handful even before I met you. But however passionate your nature, you were still so innocent, so incredibly vulnerable. And I didn’t want to be the one to hurt you. God knows, I felt guilty enough marrying you when you were so young. I couldn’t have lived with myself if I’d urged you into a sexual relationship without marriage. I wanted you to know that I was committed, that I really cared, took you seriously.’
It was absurd
, sentimental, ridiculous. The kind of thing that men must have said to women back before the First World War. And yet his words made her feel like marshmallow inside. Smiling mistily, she reached out and laid her fingers over his.
‘Thank you,’ she said softly.
Richard drew his hand away from hers as if he had been stung and his fingers drummed threateningly on the edge of the table.
‘Well, it just shows you what a fool I was, doesn’t it?’ he rasped. ‘Putting you on a pedestal was the worst mistake I’ve ever made in my life. But it’s not one I’ll repeat. I should have had enough sense to realise that all you wanted from me was sex and a way of escaping from under your father’s thumb. Well, I’ve learnt my lesson. This time I’ll handle things the way I should have done in the first place. I’ll have a short, passionate affair with you and then it will be goodbye.’
Emma stared at him aghast, feeling as hurt as if he had leaned forward and slapped her face. Heaven knew she didn’t want him to put her on a pedestal! But she didn’t want him treating her with this cold, scornful disdain either. And, as for his scathing assessment of her motives for marrying him, it made her so furious that she longed to reach forward and slap him in the face. Instead she replied in a cool, brittle voice, ‘Suits me, darling. Except that I could do without the affair. Personally, I never go back to a discarded lover. Once the magic is over, what’s the point?’
Richard gritted his teeth with an audible grinding sound and his blue eyes smouldered at her. For a moment she thought she had gone too far and felt a delicious, quaking feeling of terror as to what he might do, but fortunately the waitress chose that moment to arrive with the dinner.
The food was good. Savoury chicken in creamy coconut sauce with noodles and steamed vegetables, followed by crisp banana fritters. Yet there was little scintillating dinner-party conversation to go with it. Richard ate in murderous silence, handling his knife and fork as if they were dangerous weapons. When they had finished the meal, instead of escorting her back to their room, he rose to his feet and announced abruptly that he was going for a walk. Without a backward glance he strode off towards the lakeside, his long, athletic stride eating up the ground.
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