'I wondered. I saw the light in your house. You've been putting in
long hours.'
'You too, it seems like. How is it going?'
'I'm making good progress.'
'Are you happy with it?'
'I think it's better than the others. What about your painting?'
'Why don't you come and look for yourself?'
'All right. I'll stop by when I get a chance.'
His enthusiasm was touching. Linden stood up, her drink barely
touched. 'I'll see you then. Good night, Justin.'
'Good night, Linden.' He didn't try to detain her.
Depressed, she walked home in the warm, starry night. It was New
Year's Eve and she was spending it alone in a small fisherman's
house on a tiny tropical island in the Indian Ocean.
'Happy New Year,' she said to her reflection in the mirror the next
morning. She stared at the bright yellow bikini, feeling anything but
bright, anything but happy. Then she grimaced and shrugged, turning
away.
Why did she have to wake up so early, this day of all days? Why was
she feeling so depressed?
She took a walk along the beach, sat down on a big rock and stared
out over the ocean. Nothing but endless miles of water—nothing
between here and India. What would it be like to travel by boat and
not see land for days and weeks? Such a strange idea. But travelling
by boat was a luxury these days, reserved for tourists who wanted
fancy cruises with stopovers in exotic places along the way. Not like
the old days when colonials would spend weeks on a ship to go from
Europe to India or the Far East.
The sea was strangely quiet, almost eerie. As she walked back along
the wet sand she noticed how still the water was, like a placid lake
with no waves. It floated gently up to the beach, making hardly a
sound.
She threw off the sarong and waded into the water. It felt wonderful.
The sun was white with heat, no clouds in the sky. For a while she
swam, floating on her back now and then, trying to empty her mind
of thought. Her stomach growled. She was hungry. Except for a cup
of coffee she'd had no breakfast. What time was it? She must have
been out for an hour or so. She began to swim back. When the water
was waist-high, she began to wade.
Something brushed her leg. A piece of seaweed? She wiped her leg.
It was slimy, yuk. She tried to wash it off, rubbing and rubbing it, but
it was hard to get rid of it. Out of the water she examined her thigh,
but saw nothing, but she could feel a faint, stinging sensation. She
shrugged and lay down on her mat to dry off. Soon the stinging
became a burning and when she looked again there was a long white
streak along her thigh.
The pain was suddenly very bad, a fierce burning as if she'd come
into contact with fire, and she jumped up, suddenly alarmed. What
was this? What had touched her in the water? She began to run,
leaving her things behind. She needed something on her leg,
something cool and soothing. She clenched her teeth. God, it hurt!
Reaching the path, she saw Justin coming down the steps of his
house.
'Justin!' she called at the top of her voice. He stopped, saw her
coming, and waved. She raised her hand. 'Justin!' She ran, tears of
pain blinding her eyes. She stepped on something sharp and it went
right into her bare foot. She bit her lip. Damn, oh, damn, she thought.
He was coming towards her fast.
'What's wrong?'
She stopped, breathing fast, and pointed at her thigh. 'I ... don't
know.' Her voice squeaked. 'Something in the water ... it hurts, it
burns, I can't stand it.'
He took one look and swore under his breath. 'Jelly fish,' he said.
'What the hell were you doing out there in the water?'
The tone of his voice made her forget the pain for a moment. 'What
do you mean what was I doing in the water? What do you think I was
doing? I was swimming!'
'Didn't you see?' he said with obvious exasperation. He gestured
impatiently at the sea. 'Have a look at the bloody ocean!'
Involuntarily she looked. It was just as she had left it. Smooth and
quiet.
'No waves,' Justin continued. 'Don't you know the jelly fish come in
close when there are no waves? It throws off their sensory system.'
She turned in anger. 'No, I didn't know that! And stop shouting at
me!' She began to walk towards her house, limping on her sore foot,
and he took her arm.
'I'll take you to Doctor Chew.'
'What for?'
'It's a big patch. You may need an anti-allergy shot.'
'I'm not allergic to anything and I'm not going to start now!'
'Don't be a damn fool.' He propelled her up the stairs to his house and
pushed her down into a chair. 'Sit. I'll get something to put on it for
right now.' He produced a tube of cream and gently rubbed it on the
patch of white skin. 'It's a tropical anaesthetic. It'll have to do for
now.'
'I washed it off as well as I could,' she muttered miserably. 'It
wouldn't come off.'
'You ended up rubbing it in more. It's going to be nasty, I'm afraid.
What you really needed was something to deactivate the poison.
Bicarbonate of soda or something.'
'Yeah,' she said sarcastically. 'I always carry baking soda, just in
case.'
.He didn't reply, but straightened and drew her up out of the chair.
'We'll go to your house first so you can put on some clothes. Doctor
Chew is close to seventy. I'm not sure his heart is up to seeing you in
a bikini.'
'Oh, just shut up, Justin!'
He grinned crookedly. 'And a Happy New Year to you.'
For a moment she stared at him silently. She swallowed. 'Happy New
Year.'
Linden got her injection, some cream to put on the affected area, and
a warning from the wizened Dr Chew, a minute Chinese with round
metal-framed glasses. He was the only doctor on the island and ran
his own small, spotless clinic and dispensary, doing everything from
delivering babies to emergency appendectomies.
By the end of the afternoon, the white streaky spot on her thigh had
turned a pale red. It still hurt considerably, although the cream did
give some relief.
Her foot was troubling her too. Something sharp had embedded itself
in the sole and she hadn't been able to get it out. She was soaking her
foot in hot soapy water when Justin came to the door.
'There's a big jelly fish on the beach,' he announced, then stopped and
frowned. 'Why are you sitting with your foot in a bucket of water?'
'It's nothing. Just a little piece of glass or shell, and I can't get it out.'
'You have more trouble than ...'
'Oh, for heaven's sake, Justin! It's nothing. Don't make a big deal out
of it.'
'You're in a fine mood today.'
'And you're not helping. What were you saying about a jelly fish?'
'There's one on the beach, in case you care to have a look at it.'
'On the beach? How did it get there?'
He shrugged. 'Somebody may have dragged him ashore, or maybe it
washed up by itself.
Now let me have a look at your foot.'
He might as well, she thought. It would save her from contorting
herself into more impossible positions. She dried her foot with a
towel and deposited it on his knee as he instructed. He picked up the
tweezers from the table and took hold of her foot. After the hot water,
his hands felt cool.
For not being lovers, she thought out of the blue, he has sure touched
and seen a lot of me. Sunbathing in the nude at the waterfalls. In the
bathroom after he'd dragged her naked from the mud to his house in
the rainstorm. He'd dried and brushed her hair, put cream on her
thigh, and was handling her foot right now.
'Ouch!' He was poking around with the tweezers and she gritted her
teeth.
'I've got it,' he said, showing her the small piece of shell he'd
extracted.
She let out a sigh. 'Thanks. Is it bleeding?'
'Just a little.'
'I'll put a Band Aid on it and then I'll go to the beach to have a look at
the monster.'
She'd never seen a jelly fish before, but the size of the thing amazed
her. It was a roundish blob of more than a foot in diameter with no
discernible head or limbs or tail. It lay in the sand, greyish white, soft
and gelatinous, with the sun beating down on it.
'If it belongs in the water, cooking here in the hot sun is a pretty cruel
form of torture,' she said.
Justin shrugged. 'I wouldn't worry about it. It's a pretty low form of
life. It has no brain and no nervous system. It feels no pain.'
'It sure knows how to inflict it.'
Justin looked at her thigh. She was wearing shorts to keep it out of
contact with cloth. 'It's changed colour,' he observed.
Over the next several days, the spot changed from pale red to pale
purple to darker purple. It was ugly and vicious looking and she
wondered how long it would take to heal. There was no pain at all
anymore, not even when she rubbed across it with her hand. It was
numb. Dead. Maybe the poison had killed a whole piece, of her thigh.
She kept it covered up most of the time and tried not to look at it too
much.
Justin had buried himself in his work again. Whenever she passed his
house, she could hear the rattle of his typewriter. She seldom saw
him, except at a distance. She missed him more than she wanted to
admit to herself. So many times she wished she could talk to him, or
show him what she had done, or just have a leisurely drink with him.
She wanted to know about his new book, but there were no
opportunities to ask.
I should go home, she kept thinking. I can't hide forever. I've got to
get back and start over. Find a job, face Waite again. Going back to
the small town, it was inevitable that she should see him again. She
wondered if she could get her old job back. Or maybe she could teach
at the high school. Maybe she should move to another town.
Philadelphia, or New Orleans, where her sister lived.
But she liked her town, her college, her apartment. She resented the
idea of having to give it all up for Waite. But the only other choice
was to learn to live with Waite's presence.
As it turned out, the confrontation came sooner than expected. Early
one evening she came back from the village and found Waite
standing in front of her easel, examining her painting of the kite
birds.
CHAPTER SEVEN
TIME froze. Immobilised she stood in the door, clutching the
shopping basket, unable to utter a sound. He looked at her silently,
standing in the middle of the small room, filling it with his presence.
He was still the same man—tall and broad shouldered with the deep
inky blue eyes and the untidy curly brown hair. But he looked thinner
than she remembered and he looked hollow-eyed and hungry. She
realised that she had stopped breathing and she took in air with an
audible gasp. His eyes widened and he wiped a hand over his
forehead.
'Hello Linden.'
Slowly, very, slowly, she lowered the basket to the floor. There was
something very unreal about this scene. It was like watching herself
and him as the characters in a movie. She was a doll, a puppet. She
didn't feel anything. Except the pounding of her heart and the shaking
of her legs.
He took a step towards her and she took a step back. She saw him
flinch. Her throat was dry.
'How did you find me?' The words squeezed from her throat in a
miserable squeak.
'I was lucky.'
'I can't believe Liz gave you my address,' she whispered.
'She didn't. I went to see her. There was a letter from you on the
coffee table. I recognised your handwriting. I wrote down the return
address.
'I see.' Why wasn't she feeling anything? Anger, happiness, anything .
.. She bent to pick up the basket and carried it to the kitchen. She
leaned against the counter and closed her eyes.
This is not happening, she said to herself. I'm imagining it. Waite is
not in this house, on this island. I'm suffering from delusions. It's the
climate. My brain is growing mildew.
She heard footsteps entering the kitchen. When she opened her eyes
he was standing next to her. She stared at his shirt—white with a fine
green line. He wore lightweight green slacks. No tie, no jacket.
'Linden . ..' There was a tormented tone in his voice and then her face
was against the green-lined shirt, his arms around her. 'Oh, God,
Linden, I have missed you so.'
He bent his head and searched for her mouth, kissing her with a
desperate passion. For a fraction of a moment she stood motionless,
then her senses reeled and emotion washed over her in a wave of
memory, filling the frozen void. The feel of him and the smell of him
and the familiarity of his body and his touch flooded her awareness.
There was nothing but the old sweetness and the loving they had
shared and she wanted to hold on to him for ever and ever.
She was crying, tears of some strange emotion rushing down her face
and it was all unreal. He kissed her eyes.
'Don't cry,' he said hoarsely, 'please don't cry. I'll make it up to you. I
love you, I love you . . .'
But she could not stop crying. The sobbing wracked her body and it
frightened even herself. He lifted her in his arms and carried her to
the couch, where he put her on his knees and held her to him. She
didn't know why she was crying, didn't understand the emotions
whirling through her—love and relief and fear and anger in
overwhelming strength.
'You hit me!' she sobbed. 'How could you! How could you ever do
that to me!' The memory was back, vivid, painful. Again she was
lying on the floor, her mouth bruised, her leg hurting, hearing the
closing of the door. And suddenly she couldn't stand sitting on his
knees any longer. She struggled out of his arms, moved away from
him to the other side of the couch and looked at him through tear-
blurred eyes. 'How could you?' she whispered.
He shook his head helplessly. 'Linden, I don't know,' he said softly. 'I
/>
don't know what happened to me. I've agonised over it, but I don't
have an answer. But it won't happen again. I promise. It won't ever
happen again.' He reached for her, but she shifted away, shaking her
head.
'Don't, Waite. Please don't.'
His hands fell by his side. 'Linden, I want to make things right. I love
you. I've gone through hell not knowing where you were, not being
able to apologise. I wanted to tell you how much I hated myself for
doing what I did. All this time I've thought of nothing else. Please
Linden, believe me.' There was so much pain in his voice that she felt
her heart contract.
'I believe you.'
Again he wiped his hand over his forehead. 'I know you've put up
with a lot from me. I know how difficult it has been for you, and I
can't blame you, but please Linden, let's try again. I want to make it
up to you. I want to make you happy again.'
For three months he had searched for her, had travelled half around
the world to find her, while at home he could have had any number
of willing, adoring females. The college was full of them, pretty
young girls idolising him. But he didn't want them. He wanted her.
He loved her.
She stared at her hands, not knowing what to answer. There was blue
paint under her finger nails. On the back of her hand there were pale
freckles.
'Say something, Linden.'
She didn't look at him. 'It won't work.'
'We don't know that. We've got to try!'
She shook her head. 'I can't go through it all again.' She stood up, too
restless to sit there next to him. It all came back to her, the other side
of their relationship. His moods, his depressions, his violent tempers.
'I just can't.' She felt the constriction in her throat. 'I went away as far
as I could, because if I didn't, I knew I'd go back to you. And . .. and I
just couldn't take any more. You hurt me too badly.'
'I love you, Linden.' He lowered his face in his hands. 'I love you.'
'I know. I don't doubt it, Waite. But it's over now.' She looked away.
Darkness was creeping into the room. 'It's better if you go now.
You'd better go back to Penang.'
'I'm not giving up that easily, Linden. I can't just go back. I'm going
to stay for a while.'
'You can't stay here.' She clasped and unclasped her hands, trying to
keep calm.
He stood up, tall and big and overpowering, but the sadness was still
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