When the World Was Steady Page 4

  ‘I don’t know if I can make it,’ she said. And by way of explanation, ruefully, ‘No breakfast.’

  ‘No worries. I’ll wait.’ He seemed ready to go, though, pacing across the ledge, eyeing the backsides of the climbers. Emmy, embarrassed, waited for the weakness to pass, looking neither up nor down as that could only make it worse.

  ‘Go ahead.’

  He hesitated. ‘You gonna wait here? The whole time?’

  Emmy thought of the eternity since they left the bus. The miles between her and K’tut in the car-park. The crawlies and the silence. Alone, here, she might start to scream and be unable to stop. She might roll down the mud and break her neck. Sacred Abang made her wary. It gave her the willies. The boy was impatient, fidgeting, curious about the others.

  ‘I guess not. I’d like to go … but I can’t go very fast.’

  ‘That’s OK.’ He sounded doubtful.

  ‘I also can’t do it alone. I’d have to ask you to wait for me.’ Emmy was humbled. She didn’t like to ask for help, especially not from a child. But it had an unexpectedly good effect.

  ‘No worries. I’d just as soon go with you. Otherwise, I’m alone. I’m not with them.’

  ‘Your dad?’

  He shrugged, dismissive.

  ‘I’m Emmy.’

  ‘I know. The way Gdé was calling you …’ He sniggered.

  ‘Junior?’

  ‘That’s not my name. My dad calls me that. Ego gratification. But at least I was spared his name!’

  ‘Buddy?’

  ‘That’s his nickname. No, Horace.’

  ‘Horace?’ Emmy laughed. The little man was much less daunting as Horace. ‘So what are you?’

  He grinned. He had a crooked front tooth that gave him an impish aspect. It was endearing. ‘I’m Max.’

  ‘Who thought of that?’

  ‘I did. I was actually christened Christopher. But I prefer Max. Please call me Max.’

  ‘My daughter’s done that.’ Emmy tried not to sound annoyed.

  ‘What was she? What is she?’

  ‘Portia. Pod.’

  ‘Not much to choose between, eh?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Do you know,’ said Max, ‘In Bali there used to be only four names? It didn’t matter what sex the kids were: first child, Wayan or Gdé; second child Madé; third, Nyoman; fourth, K’tut.’

  ‘And then? Fifth child?’

  ‘Begin again. So my new secret name is Madé. What about you?’

  ‘Is that the second one? Then that’s me, too. Madé.’

  The next section of the climb was much easier, both because Max was with her, and waiting, and because some earlier travellers had left a braided rope of vines attached to a boulder at the next ledge. Emmy clambered only a few feet upwards before reaching the vine and then it was simple, fun even. Max let her go first, waited till she tossed the rope back to him from above.

  Gdé, Wayan, Buddy, Sasha and Sylvia (as Max told her they were called, Sasha being the blonde one) disappeared not only from sight but from earshot. Occasionally Emmy thought she caught strains of Gdé’s flute, but Max did not hear them, didn’t believe that was what she heard. ‘They wouldn’t stop long enough; Dad’s in too much of a hurry to get to the top. For him, it’s not worth it till he gets to the top.’ He made an exasperated face. ‘I think you’re hearing the spirits.’

  Emmy blushed. The thought had occurred to her but she wouldn’t have said so.

  ‘Honest. This island is teeming with them. Even Buddy believes.’

  ‘Horace, you mean?’

  They giggled.

  Not all the way was so steep and treacherous. There were passages of mild slope where they could walk upright, the damp cloud kissing their faces, leaving their hair limp. At one moment, on such an easy stretch, the mist cleared around their feet and they could see the brilliant lake miles below. Emmy almost fell to her knees to cling to the earth, to hold on for dear life. It was like the childhood sensation, when lying flat in a field gazing at the night sky, that one might fall off the earth into the void; only now, with the void in the direction that gravity was pulling her, Emmy felt the alarm was more immediate. But the white blanket of air closed around them again, fast and comforting.

  The fog was at its thickest when they came across the shrine. They were almost in the middle of it before they realized. Carved stone huts on pedestals loomed on either side of the path, their shelves scattered with offerings in various stages of decay. Some had been upset, by wind or birds or spirits, and had shed their petals and sculpted bits of fruit underfoot. Gdé’s two banana leaves, with their colourful treasure, glowed among the rest, as yet untasted by the gods.

  ‘I think they’ll wait,’ Max said. ‘Until we’ve gone back down. I don’t think they’re far, I mean, they’re watching …’

  ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘Oh, I think they’re benevolent enough. But I wish we had an offering; I don’t like riding through on Gdé’s, you know what I mean? Have you got anything? A button, a bead? In your pockets?’

  In her pockets, Emmy found the mottled leaves, many-shaped, that she had plucked in the foothills. Max took them from her and arranged them in a fan shape on one of the platforms. She watched while he shut his eyes and appeared to pray.

  ‘Is that how a Balinese would do it?’ she asked when he was done.

  ‘I don’t know.’ He laughed. ‘I’ve never really watched. I’ve been to a couple of ceremonies, tooth filing, cremation … But I’ve never watched people really praying. Worshipping, I mean. Whatever.’

  ‘Me neither.’

  They resumed their climb, almost swimming through the chill air. Emmy, overheated from exertion, was grateful for the cold. It kept her from feeling faint. Max explained himself, his father, his life, as they walked.

  Horace ‘Buddy’ Sparke was, in fact, the owner of a sheep station near Canberra. Until recently he had lived mostly on the estate, overseen it, and then spent part of the year travelling and part in a house in Queensland. Max was sure that, had Emmy’s family—her ex-family—maintained its connections to the land, they would, by necessity, have come across Buddy Sparke.

  A year previously Buddy had, after some thought but not, Max assured Emmy, too much, put the station in the hands of his trusted manager, set about building himself a house in Bali and moved full-time into the import-export business which had, until then, been a hobby. There had been complications, because Indonesian law did not allow a foreigner to own land, but somehow, ever the businessman, he had built a house overlooking the gorge just to the north of Ubud, facing a sacred ridge on which nobody would ever raise so much as a hut.

  Buddy’s life was not without difficulties: he was a man of many women wherever he went—although, according to Max, neither Sasha nor Sylvia was of his harem—and recently there had been feuding among certain of these lovers, accusations flying, harsh words, a slap. Buddy had informed his son that in the matters of the fair sex, ‘East and West, like oil and water, don’t mix.’

  Max, formerly Christopher, had grown up in Sydney with his mother and older brother, his parents having divorced when he was still a baby. Now eighteen, just out of school, he was uncertain of his next move. He knew he was looking, he was just not sure what for. Since his arrival in Bali a month before, he had spent more time with his father than ever in the course of his remembered life. It wasn’t getting easier, he told Emmy; what he had seen as freedoms in his father’s lifestyle proved, unsurprisingly, to be just another set of rules, another game.

  ‘We had a fight last night,’ he explained. ‘He came close to bashing me one. I still don’t know if we’re speaking. In private, I mean.’

  ‘What was it about?’ Emmy wanted to know.

  Max didn’t want to tell her. Instead, he explained about Sasha and Sylvia, university students from England, travelling. They, like many others, had met Buddy in a restaurant in Ubud only a few days before and, recognizing a good thing when they s
aw it, had moved their luggage at once from their losmen to the house on the hilltop.

  ‘Nothing sexual yet,’ said Max, ‘but it won’t be much longer. Not if they stay in the house. Which one do you think? I bet you think Sasha, because she’s so … you know. But it’ll be the mousy one. Ten to one. I’m getting pretty good at telling.’

  Most of this conversation went on while Emmy was either above Max or below him, engaged in physical exertions that had her complexion turning purple, so he remained unaware of the extent of her discomfort. She was quite sure, by now, that William would not have crossed paths with Buddy Sparke. The parameters of Sydney society were such that they couldn’t seem comfortably to hold Emmy as a divorcee, let alone someone like Buddy, a loose and selfish man who took advantage of women his son’s age and … and yet, Emmy had to concede, whose luck seemed to be holding out pretty well.

  ‘He’s riding for a fall,’ she said sagely, panting as she rested for a moment against the mountain face.

  ‘D’ya think?’ Max squinted. He was standing, slipping his heels backwards in the mud, ready to fall off Abang, and unconcerned. ‘Ruby was a blow, but not a fall, exactly.’

  Ruby, now three, was the product of a holiday in Thailand; Aimée, her mother, drifted in and out of Buddy’s life, but they weren’t still together. Another child was on the way, to Suchi, an Ubud widow. For her it was Wayan, for Buddy, K’tut, so they hadn’t yet decided on a name.

  ‘I don’t know what they’ll call it,’ Max said, ‘But the older he gets, the more exotic Buddy likes things. Everything, from what I understand.’

  Emmy ignored this last comment. The vines and trees around them were thinning. Still they could see nothing above. Emmy crawled ahead in terror that the mists would part, even for a moment, to show the distance they had come. Max, foolhardy, made his way as upright as he could. He was ahead of her, suddenly enfolded in the whiteness.

  ‘Max, wait! How much further do you think?’

  ‘Dunno.’

  ‘I’m not feeling too good. Can you hang on?’

  ‘Come on, Emmy!’ He sounded like his father. ‘Don’t give up now. If you want to stop, well—’

  ‘OK, you go ahead.’ Her buttocks, her thighs, her shoulders aching; the cut hand filthy and stinging; her hair clutching stringily at her forehead, her neck: the tears were inevitable. Of course he would leave. Of course she couldn’t do it. Of course she had deluded herself and was now a nuisance. The tears were hot amid the cold sweat on her skin. They were salty. One dropped between her legs to water the dirt.

  ‘Emmy! Hey, Emmy! Em-my!’ Max sounded far away. ‘Emmy, listen!’

  She heard nothing but her breathing. Then the flute. Indisputably the flute.

  ‘I’ll wait. I’m waiting up here. Come on. It’s not far, it can’t be!’

  It wasn’t. The last ten or fifteen yards were the worst, though; the only vegetation was spidery tufts of grass amid the rubble and dirt. When she reached for them, they snapped off, handfuls of something like desert spinifex burning her hands. Emmy, with Max behind her now, looked upwards, only upwards. She whimpered, did not even care that she might be heard. She had forgotten her size; she felt very tiny, a pebble in the vast ether, trying to hold on. No past, no future, just a strong sense of her grave mistakes, the certainty that she could roll backwards and down, as far as the lake. And the flute ahead. The flute and the sound of voices.

  ‘Welcome to the heavens.’ Gdé grinned as he hauled her over the last hump, on to the flat ground of the temple. Sasha, Sylvia and Buddy slouched around the temple’s ruined inner sanctum, peeling rambutans and bananas. Buddy called out to her. It seemed a blasphemous thing to do.

  ‘Good on ya. We’d given up. Gdé here was upset, kept insisting he’d have to go get you. Offerings for seven and all that. Junior with you?’

  ‘Right behind.’

  ‘Happy now, eh Gdé?’

  ‘Yes, Buddy. I told you, it’s auspicious day.’

  ‘Suspicious day, eh?’ Buddy laughed, his mouth full of banana.

  ‘Been here long?’ Max asked, swinging a leg on to the remains of the temple’s stone floor.

  ‘Oh, twenty minutes, not long,’ Gdé said, rushing with his pack to offer Max fruit. He didn’t give a banana to Emmy until Buddy’s son had been served.

  ‘Is it disrespectful to eat in the temple, Gdé?’ she asked.

  He looked puzzled, then amused. ‘Everything is OK. I make offerings before we came.’

  As if in protest, it started to rain. Buddy had young Wayan take their picture, all of them including Emmy, on the temple steps; Gdé with his flute, Buddy with an arm around Sasha and the other around Emmy, oddly not touching her, Max squatting at the front, brow furrowed, lower lip sagging sulkily. Everyone but Max was smiling.

  Emmy felt strangely pleased that Buddy had an arm around her shoulder. She didn’t like the schoolgirl leap her stomach took, but his unwillingness to speak to her earlier, and her new knowledge that he was a womanizer, made his most minute attentions seem flattering. Max’s thwack on her back was less rewarding, although given his help it should have been more.

  They set off back down the mountain almost at once, everyone but Emmy and Max having rested. Emmy couldn’t help feeling disappointed even in her triumph. A veil of soggy cloud, some tumbled stones, a snack: was this all? Or had the others experienced something she had not, in those precious minutes before she reached the summit? Why would the spirits, or luck, or whatever there was, not speak to her? For a time, Emmy, who had sweated so much of herself away in this climb, felt diminished, but in the course of the descent, the feeling was put aside and forgotten.

  Going down, it was not difficult to keep together. In the steepest places, either Buddy or Gdé helped Emmy, holding her by the hand. Max and Wayan crouched and slid on their heels, leaving everyone behind them and the river bed more slippery in their wake. There wasn’t much conversation, although Sasha and Sylvia sometimes whispered to each other. There was something about the way Gdé and Buddy took her arm, something about the certainty with which Emmy placed her feet, that made her feel regal.

  When they came to the end of the river bed, she thought the car-park could not be far. But the path through the bottle-green woods went on forever, and the gentle slope was more difficult for Emmy’s exhausted body to negotiate than the sheer drops had been. Her knees buckled at every step. Her trousers caked to her legs with drying mud and sweat. And back in the sunlight, it was hot.

  As they neared the car-park, Buddy picked a small, velvet blue flower. ‘Your reward,’ he said, pressing it on Emmy.

  Instead of the agitation his attentions had provoked on the mountaintop, Emmy now felt like slapping him. When he turned away, she crushed the flower underfoot.

  Max was in the car-park before them, gulping Fanta. He was talking to K’tut the driver, who blew smoke rings into the noon air.

  ‘Emmy, you’ll have lunch, yeah?’ Max asked.

  ‘I don’t know. I guess.’

  ‘You don’t have anywhere to be this arvo?’

  ‘Not unless I want to.’

  ‘Great. Buddy, Emmy’s coming with.’

  His overtures to Emmy clearly at an end, Buddy twitched in barely perceptible assent, and climbed on to the bus without a word.

  On the road, everyone slept. K’tut steered the rolling, lumbering bus like a glass ship, careful not to disrupt slumber. Emmy dreamed she was still climbing, but not afraid; the lake, instead of far below her, was all around. She was climbing through a silent azure sea and she was at peace.

  Only K’tut and Wayan were awake when she opened her eyes. Even Gdé was dozing, bolt upright, his head snapping with the bumps in the road. She did not know how long she had been asleep but she could see clearly that they were no longer near Penelokan or Kintamani. Everything was different; richer, greener. The dirt was black. There were paddies in the distance, and sometimes right next to the road. She made her way to the front of the bus.
/>   ‘Excuse me, K’tut, but where are we?’

  He chewed on an unlit cigarette. ‘Almost home. Almost at the Monkey Forest. We stop for lunch in the Monkey Forest, Buddy says.’

  Ubud, then. She could have smacked Max: he must have known. Spoilt child. Spoilt children, father and son both. Even as Pod, her daughter wouldn’t have behaved this way. Or maybe she would; Emmy couldn’t be sure any more.

  She sat back down and watched the forest grow up around the bus and heard the screaming, chattering of the monkeys’ assault coming from all sides, and then the thud of one landing on the roof. It wasn’t, perhaps, so bad. It wasn’t, perhaps, wrong just to let things happen.

  The sun was already casting long shadows: it was well into the afternoon. All her muscles tingled and some twitched of their own accord. She was famished. She shut her eyes and imagined all the things she would like to eat for lunch, starting with saté.

  LONDON

  WHEN VIRGINIA ROUNDED the corner on to her street, she saw her mother hoisting the evening paper up to their second-floor window in a basket on a rope. A young man stood on the pavement, awaiting payment, or thanks, or something; but as soon as Mrs Simpson had the basket in hand, she flipped it inside, withdrew her grey head and slammed the sash.

  Virginia didn’t like it when her mother imposed on neighbours, but foisting errands on to unsuspecting strangers was beyond the pale. And then not paying for her paper! Besides, Virginia had a copy of the Evening Standard in her bag, a little oily, perhaps, with the remains of her lunch, but perfectly readable.

  By the time Virginia got upstairs, Mrs Simpson was settled at the kitchen table with a cup of tea and the tabloid spread in front of her. She didn’t look up as she said, ‘You’re late tonight.’

  ‘I walked.’

  ‘Your ankles will swell, with this heat.’

  Virginia looked down at her thin stovepipe calves. She didn’t really have ankles. Never had. Couldn’t matter if they swelled.

  ‘Busy day, Mum?’

  ‘Are they ever?’

  ‘I bought some haddock.’