The other people on the tour had all been younger than her and Wade, and she’d wondered how it was that young people these days seemed able to travel anywhere in the world that took their fancy. This was just one holiday among many for them, and the ones who didn’t know each other already were asking about it; none of them saying where you from?, she noticed, but rather where you been? and where you headed? One of them, a tall American girl in a sleeveless top and a pair of sensible walking shorts, all long brown limbs and neat blonde hair, had turned to Wade and said hey how’s it going, as the tour guide led them through the garden to the next talking point, and Wade had said hey, good, thanks in reply. Leaving Elizabeth a bit stranded as they started a conversation of their own.
It was a beautiful garden. There was a lake, a large pond really, with a low arched bridge at one end, and a pebbled shore, and a stream winding down towards it from a stand of bamboo. There were the usual clipped and twisted trees, and carefully placed rocks, and mossy seating areas. The whole garden felt natural and artificial at the same time, and she wondered if there were hidden meanings to the arrangement which you were meant to decode. She’d wanted to say something to Wade about it, but he’d still been talking to that girl, asking her where the best temples in Cambodia were – the girl had been to Cambodia, of course – and she couldn’t catch his eye. She’d waited for them to finish their conversation, and when she’d realised she’d been standing there too long she’d moved away a little, looking at the bridge on the far side of the lake, looking at the tour guide, looking at the palace buildings and the other people in the group. Because it didn’t matter if he wanted to talk to someone else. Because why would that matter to her. She stood off to one side, holding his camera, waiting. Like some sort of she didn’t know what. Spear-carrier. Spare part.
That girl though. It must be sunny all the time where she was from, judging by how tanned those long slim limbs were, the carefree freckles on he
r face. She must have never lost a night’s sleep over anything, she’d thought, and been surprised by her own bitterness. Because was this who she’d become, already. She tried to remember, and she couldn’t, when she’d last been able to wear shorts, or anything without sleeves.
What sort of a name was Wade anyway, she’d found herself thinking.
So, please, the guide had said then; please, this is Oh-ga-ku-mon-jo. In festival times poetry recitals would be held here, she’d said, and gestured towards a painted silk screen in an open room behind her. The painting showed a group of finely dressed courtiers sitting cross-legged in a garden, and the guide had explained that this was the garden they were standing in now. If you look, these courtiers are sitting beside stream, she’d said; and this is same stream here, with same group of three rocks also.
She just didn’t know her way around this sort of thing, was the problem. She wasn’t familiar with the territory. She couldn’t read the situation, if there was ever a situation to read. Patricia had told her once that she was better off without a man, that she couldn’t imagine the trouble they caused. Elizabeth assumed she’d meant well, but she really hadn’t appreciated it. She’d said, Patricia, if I want your opinion on my private life I’ll ask and until then I’d rather not have that sort of comment thank you. Which Patricia hadn’t responded to, but when she’d refilled the paper tray on the photocopier she’d slammed it so hard that Elizabeth had been surprised it didn’t break.
At these poetry recitals there was a particular tradition, the guide had continued, gesturing towards the painted screen again; there would be small cups of sake in folded paper boats floating down from the top of the stream. And aim was to invent short poem on given subject before boat reaches you, she said; if you could not think of poem quickly enough then you were not permitted to drink sake, you must allow boat to pass by.
Which would be enough to make you never want to go to a garden party again, she’d thought. Being put on the spot like that. Watching the little paper boat wobble past you and not being able to think of a thing to say. Because it would feel sort of exposed, something like that.
The tour guide had smiled then, and asked if there were any questions, and led the group off towards the last point of the tour. Elizabeth had hung back for a moment, looking at the painted screen, the four figures seated on the moss around the stream. They were so plump it was difficult to see if they were men or women: their long black hair coiled around their heads, their kimonos folded richly around them. They didn’t look nervous. They didn’t look as if they’d have trouble thinking of something witty and poetic in the short time they had, reciting their lines, reaching out to take the cup before the paper boat had passed them, before it folded and crumpled into the water and the sake spilt away downstream.
Wade had been waiting for her at the exit, smiling. I was starting to worry about you, he said. Which, she hadn’t known what to say to that. And then he’d said, so, I guess that’s us, isn’t it?
Yes, she said. I suppose it is.
He’d lowered his head to take her camera from round his neck, and for a moment she’d thought he was bowing in the traditional Japanese style, and she’d started to bow in return before she’d realised he wasn’t at all. And she was sure he’d noticed, but he didn’t say anything. Which stuck in her mind, because some people would have laughed at her right there. But he didn’t laugh. He shook her hand again, and said goodbye, and see you around, and take care, and then he kept talking. He asked if she was going straight back to work when she got home, what she wanted to do if she didn’t want to be a secretary for ever, and she said I don’t know, teach? Which had been funny somehow. She asked him how long he thought he’d be between jobs for, if he was planning to stay in Minnesota. I think I will, he said, I feel like it’s where I belong now. It’s beautiful country round there, he said, and she’d been surprised by the feeling with which he’d said it; had tried to imagine ever feeling that way about Gainsborough or Lincolnshire or anywhere she lived. You ever been? he asked. To the States? she said. No, to Minnesota, he said, to Duluth, and she smiled and said, well anyway no, neither. You should come over sometime, he said. You’d like it.
Which was when Patricia would say she should have said something, just then. When she got home and told her about it. But she said nothing, only goodbye and take care and see you around.
And she decided, as she stood in the deep green shade of a cypress tree and listened to his footsteps crunch away along the gravelled path, to go back and have another look at the palace garden. She wanted to get a picture of the stream, and the rocks, and the small stand of bamboo trees. If she was quick she could get back in before the palace guides closed up, before they locked the gates and put out the No Entry signs and asked her to come back and try again another day.
We Wave And Call
Wainfleet
And sometimes it happens like this: a young man lying face down in the ocean, his limbs hanging loosely beneath him, a motorboat droning slowly across the bay, his body moving in long, slow ripples with each passing shallow wave, the water moving softly across his skin, muffled shouts carrying out across the water, and the electric crackle of waves sliding up against the rocks and birds in the trees and the body of a young man lying in the ocean, face down and breathlessly still.
*
You open your eyes, blinking against the light which pulses through the water. You look down at the sea floor, hearing only the hollow suck and sigh of your own breath through the snorkel, seeing the broken shells, the rusting beer cans, the polished pieces of broken glass. Black-spiked sea-urchins clinging to the rocks. Tiny black fish moving through the sea-grass. A carrier-bag tumbling in tight circles at the foot of the shoreline rocks. You hold out your hands, seeing how pale they look in the water, the skin of your fingers beginning to pucker a little. The sea feels as warm as bath-water, and you’re almost drifting off to sleep when you hear the sudden smack and plunge of something hitting the water nearby.
You turn your head, and see a young boy sinking through the water, his knees to his chest and his eyes squeezed shut. Above, way up in the air, another three boys are falling from a high rocky outcrop, their shorts ballooning out around their hips, their hair rising, their mouths held open in anticipatory cries. One of them flaps his hands, trying to slow his fall. The other two reach out and touch the tips of their fingers together. All three of them look down at the water with something like fear and joy.
Your friends are watching as well, sprawled across a wide concrete ledge jutting out over the sea. Claire turns and looks for you, waving, brushing the knots from her wet tangled hair. Her pale skin is shiny with sun-cream and seawater.
‘We’re making a move now,’ she calls; ‘you coming?’
The others are already standing up, brushing bits of dirt from their skin and shaking out their towels. You lift the mask from your face and take the snorkel from your mouth and tell her you’re staying in a bit longer. You’ll catch them up in a minute, you say.
They pick up the sun-cream and water bottles, the paperback books, the leaflets from the tourist information office in town. The girls lift up their damp hair, squeezing out the water and letting it run down their backs. Andy buttons his shirt and steps into his unlaced trainers.
‘We’re not waiting for you,’ Claire says. You wave her off and say that’s fine. You’ll be out in a minute or two.
The night before, sitting at a table outside one of the cafés in the old town, the girls had got up to go to the toilet together, leaving their tall glasses of beer on the table and tugging at their skirts. Andy had caught your eye, and lifted his drink in salute, and you’d both smiled broadly at your good fortune. Nothing had needed to be said. You’d left behind long months of exams and anxieties in the flat grey east of England and landed suddenly in this new world of cheap beer and sunshine, of clear blue seas and girls who wore bikinis and short skirts and slept in the room next door. It felt like something you’d both been waiting years for; something you’ve long been promised. It felt like adulthood. The girls have already made it clear, by their pointing out of waiters and boys on scooters, that they’re more interested in the locals than in the two of you. But there’s still a chance. A feeling that something could happen; that anything could happen. It seems worth thinking about, at least.
You put the mask over your eyes and lie back in the water for a while, looking up at the steep sides of the bay, kicking your legs to send yourself drifting away from the rocks. You’re not sure you ever want to get out. At home, the beach is a few minutes away, and you’ve grown up running in and out of the sea. But you’ve never really swum; there, you run in, shouting against the shock of the cold, and run out again as soon as you can. Here, you could sleep in the clear warm water. You watch the others making their way up the path between the pine trees and oleander bushes. A bus drives along the road at the top of the hillside, stops near the gap in the railings, and moves off. A young couple on a scooter overtake it, the boy riding without a shirt or a helmet, the girl wearing a knee-length wraparound skirt and a bikini top, her hair flowing out behind her. Birds hang still in the warm currents of air drifting up the side of the hill. The grasshoppers sound out their steady scraping shriek. The air is thick with the scent of crushed pine needles and scorched rosemary, heavy with heat.
Along the bay, at the bottom of a steep flight of steps cut straight from the rock, there’s another s
mall bathing jetty. A girl in a black swimming costume sits on the edge, her feet in the water, a white towel hanging over her head, reading a book.