A Woman of Courage

by J. H. Fletcher

  She had promised herself that being out meant precisely that, but promises were one thing, keeping them something else.

  Increasing tension and lack of sleep took their toll. One day, without warning, she found herself sitting in the living room, shaking uncontrollably, tears streaming down her face.

  There Craig found her.

  He did not try to jolly her out of it; mercifully, he did not tell soothing lies about how it would just take patience.

  ‘I am taking you away,’ he said.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘To an island I know.’

  ‘What’s there?’

  ‘Nothing and nobody but there is a small house owned by someone I know. I’ll borrow it from him. You will be able to sleep and be at peace.’

  ‘And forget?’

  ‘Pulau Chantek is the best place I know for that.’

  ‘Is that the island’s name? What does it mean?’ Because he had told her that all Malay names meant something.

  ‘It means Isle of Beauty,’ he said.

  ‘A good name.’

  ‘And well deserved,’ he said.

  They left that afternoon; she had noticed in the past how quickly Craig could get things organised when he wanted.

  He packed for them both, permitting her to do nothing. He went to the shops, came back with enough supplies to last a week. He arranged with a fisherman to take them to the island. He helped Hilary climb aboard the high-prowed vessel with the eye painted on the bow to guide the boat through seas both fair and foul. He did everything he could to look after her.

  ‘I feel truly cosseted,’ she said but was still shaking uncontrollably, as he saw.

  ‘We’ll soon have you there,’ he said. ‘Then all will be well.’

  It was a new experience to be so helpless. She nodded but did not speak.

  3

  Hilary thought afterwards that Pulau Chantek, the Isle of Beauty, must have been conjured by magic out of the sea. The water was so clear it seemed she had only to reach over the side to pick pebbles off the sand yet Craig told her the sea was five fathoms deep at this point.

  The deceptive depth was a fitting introduction to the island.

  ‘Poseidon’s palace,’ she said.

  Craig shook his head. ‘Here it’s more likely to be Sultan Mahmud or even Kala, although we would hope not Kala.’

  It was the first time Hilary had smiled all day. ‘It would help if I knew what you were talking about.’

  ‘Sultan Mahmud was one of the ancient Malay deities associated with the sea,’ Craig said. ‘Kala was the goddess of shipwreck.’

  ‘Definitely not Kala, then,’ she said. ‘We want nothing to do with Kala.’

  Whether ruled by Mahmud or Poseidon, the Isle of Beauty was indeed a magical place, emerald green and steep-sided yet with beaches of golden sand against which the seas lulled quietly and a bay with a narrow entrance through which the kolek nosed its way, and at the end of it a sharp-roofed wooden house raised on stilts above the sand.

  The fisherman cut the engine. In a silence so profound that it seemed to take over the world the kolek drifted forward until its prow rested gently against the beach. All was still.

  Round-eyed, Hilary turned to Craig. ‘I didn’t know such peace existed in the world.’

  ‘Of the world yet apart from it,’ he said. ‘Bowery hollows crowned with summer sea.’

  ‘Tennyson’s island of Avilion,’ she said. ‘You could be right. Maybe it will heal me, at that. Although what King Arthur’s got to do with Sultan Mahmud I am not sure.’

  ‘Argumentative,’ he said. ‘I like that. It means you’re getting better already.’

  They carried the stores across the beach to the house. Like Rumah Kelapa, this was based on the typical Malay design, with a flight of steps leading up to a narrow deck with a padlocked door into the house.

  Hilary rested her arms on the guard rail and watched as the kolek negotiated its way out through the entrance. After it had gone and the sound of its engine had died the returning silence was so profound it seemed to cradle her in its arms.

  Yes, she thought, there is healing here. How clever of Craig to bring me to this place. But clever was too superficial a word; rather he had shown a profound sensitivity for which she would always be grateful. I love him, she thought. How I love him. She had believed herself in love before but never with the intensity she felt now.

  This isle of beauty, she thought. This place of peace will make me whole.

  There was no power and therefore no fans but on its knoll the little house caught the night time breeze and was cool enough. She had assumed they would make love but at first they did not; Craig left her to sleep and she did so for two days and two nights. He told her later that three times a day he had brought her papaya or pisang mas, the small sweet bananas of Malaysia, but she had no recollection of it. She had no awareness of anything at all but on the third night she woke before dawn and knew she was over it. She was alone; she got up and went bare-footed on to the deck of the house. The breeze blew from the east to keep the mosquitoes away, the night was ablaze with stars and the softly turning waves were bright with phosphorescence.

  ‘If this be not paradise,’ she said, ‘then I know not what paradise is.’

  She did not know whether anyone had ever said that but if they hadn’t they should have done. ‘And I have said it for them,’ she informed the night. ‘So there.’

  ‘Is that right?’ a voice said behind her.

  She turned. ‘Are you spying on me?’

  ‘All the time. To make sure you’re OK. To make sure you are really here and I am not dreaming.’

  ‘I am here all right,’ she said. ‘And I am OK. Very OK. In fact…’

  They looked at each other.

  ‘It is not only food I am hungry for,’ she said.

  He smiled and stretched out his hand. ‘Come,’ he said.

  4

  They stayed on Pulau Chantek a week. It was a time of beauty and of peace. They explored the patch of jungle in the middle of the island. They swam. They walked naked on the beach. They made love: in the house, on the deck, on the warm yellow sand.

  ‘Pulau Chantek,’ Hilary said with pleasure. ‘A place where we can be young again.’

  ‘Pulau Aman,’ Craig said. ‘Island of Peace.’

  ‘I must learn Malay,’ she said.

  He nodded. ‘I’ll teach you. Awak sangat chantek.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘You are very beautiful.’

  ‘Thank you. How do I say that in Malay?’

  ‘Terimah kaseh.’

  She shaped her lips around the words. ‘Terimah kaseh. Why didn’t you ever bring me here before?’

  ‘It was a secret place for us to come when we were truly together.’

  ‘As we are,’ she said. ‘I am here. I am with you. I am truly happy and we shall live forever.’

  5

  It was a new life and she a new woman. They went home to Rumah Kelapa – the house amid the coconuts was truly home now, as it had never been in the old days – and the tranquillity of Pulau Chantek went with her. Craig had a fortune in books, many of which she had promised herself she would read but never had. Now she did: the plays of Shakespeare, Ibsen and O’Casey; Don Quixote and The Tale of Genji; the novels of Dickens and Dostoevsky, Steinbeck, Faulkner and Greene; the poetry of Eliot and Thomas and Ferlinghetti.

  In the evenings they listened to music together. At first she was hesitant.

  ‘I know nothing about music.’

  ‘Then now is the time to start,’ Craig said.

  LOVE AFFAIR WITH A DEAF MAN

  1

  Hilary had learnt over the years that Craig meant what he said. Rumah Kelapa had state-of-the-art hi-fi equipment. He sat her down and selected a CD from his massive collection.

  ‘We’ll start with something easy,’ he said.

  She listened with some apprehension but it was pleasant enough, which was a relief. S
he thought: I am sixty-three years old. It’s probably fair to say I have made some small mark on the world yet this is the first time I have ever sat down to listen to serious music.

  It was like seeing the sea for the first time.

  ‘What is it?’ she said.

  ‘Mozart,’ Craig said. ‘“Eine kleine Nachtmusik”. A little night music. Mozart wrote it to accompany people eating their dinner.’

  She was disappointed; she felt classical music should be more momentous than an accompaniment to clattering knives and forks.

  ‘How do you like it?’

  ‘It’s OK, I guess.’

  She didn’t know what she had expected. Perhaps she had thought it might make her feel like Cortez in Keats’s poem, gazing out at the Pacific Ocean; if so, she was disappointed.

  ‘Tomorrow we’ll try something a little more demanding,’ Craig said.

  The following evening they repeated the process but demanding was right; if the previous evening she had been disappointed by the music’s easy accessibility this time it was a nightmare, her ears rejecting a cacophony without form or meaning.

  ‘It’s like being run over by a tractor,’ she said when the music – music? – finished at last. ‘You’re telling me people listen to that for pleasure?’

  ‘Ever since 1808,’ he said.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.’

  She shook her head. ‘I guess I don’t have the ear for it.’

  Craig was untroubled. ‘Of course you don’t. But it will come. When your ear gets used to it.’

  She didn’t believe it and felt much the same when he played it for her again the next evening. ‘This is a waste of time.’

  But the third night…

  He had been watching her. ‘Are you getting the hang of it now?’

  She was cautious. ‘Maybe a bit.’

  She thought afterwards that had been the start of what she later decided was her love affair with Beethoven. Other composers too but Beethoven first of all. She found it barely credible that a deaf man could have created such huge, majestic, orgasmic sounds.

  2

  ‘The vocal parts of the Ninth Symphony. What do the words say?’

  ‘They’re taken from “Ode to Joy”, a poem by the German poet Schiller. What Beethoven has done is combine the secular with the religious.’

  ‘Explain.’

  ‘He is saying that true joy is only possible through union with God.’

  ‘Are you a believer?’

  ‘I believe in Beethoven,’ Craig said.

  ‘So do I. Therefore I suppose one must believe to some extent. In any case it shows what a human being is capable of achieving,’ she said.

  ‘With genius,’ Craig said.

  Which was true.

  ‘You haven’t done too badly yourself,’ Craig said. ‘You know what Beethoven said? “I will seize fate by the throat.”’

  ‘Seize fate by the throat?’ Hilary said. ‘I like that.’

  ‘Given your beginnings I would say you’ve done that.’

  All her life she had been wary of praise. ‘It seemed the logical thing to do at the time. Any number of people could have done it.’

  ‘Could have. But you did it.’

  ‘Not exactly the Ninth Symphony,’ she said.

  ‘Probably Beethoven thought that was the logical thing to do.’

  ‘Another step along the highway?’ Hilary said.

  ‘Like his Great Fugue: a vision of music’s future.’

  He had introduced it to her the previous evening.

  ‘I’m not sure about this business of looking into the future. I’ve always felt if we could see the future we would do nothing.’

  Craig smiled. ‘Not long ago you prophesied we would both live forever.’

  ‘But we both know that isn’t true. All we can do is live each day as it comes. Treat every minute as a bonus.’

  ‘Live life to the full?’ he said.

  ‘Another way of saying the same thing.’

  ‘I wonder where we’ll be this time next year,’ he said.

  ‘Living life to the full,’ she said.

  ‘Let’s hope,’ he said. ‘But in the meantime…’

  She knew that look. ‘Living life to the full?’

  ‘I thought you’d never mention it.’

  Later:

  ‘You reckon Beethoven did this?’

  ‘Do you care?’

  ‘Probably not.’

  There were other ways to the sublime.

  TOGETHER AT LAST

  1

  With music and reading, with long walks along the sandy beaches and a trip to the Cameron Highlands, where they rediscovered the delights of sleeping under blankets and, victims of the advancing years, chose only the less ambitious hills to climb before returning ravenous to the hotel, the weeks and months passed.

  They spent a lot of time at the children’s home in the hills. There were over a hundred residents now, with a permanent staff and full-time manager, but Hilary, being Hilary, liked to keep her eye on things.

  Hilary stayed in touch with her daughters. At first, like an alcoholic sampling a cautious glass of wine, she had been nervous about making the calls: control was an addiction not easily broken and she wasn’t sure how things would go, but they worked out well enough.

  Jennifer sounded a different woman from the one she had always known: happy as the grass was green, as Dylan Thomas had said in one of his poems, and by now heavily pregnant.

  ‘It’s a boy,’ Jennifer said.

  ‘About time we had a male in this family,’ Hilary said. ‘When’s it due?’

  ‘Early January.’

  ‘I’ll fly down, like I said,’ Hilary told her.

  ‘That will be nice.’

  ‘No trouble from Davis?’

  ‘Not a word.’

  ‘You planning on getting married?’

  ‘Probably not.’

  Living in sin, as the old-timers would say. Just like her mother.

  The conversation with Sara was more businesslike, as Hilary had expected. Yes, things were going well. Yes, she and Vivienne were getting on fine. Martha was doing splendidly in Hong Kong. The new genetics laboratory was being set up under William Gainsborough’s supervision on the outskirts of Shanghai. Profits looked like being ten per cent up for the year.

  ‘That should keep the shareholders happy,’ Hilary said.

  ‘Why should you care?’

  ‘Because I’m one of them.’

  Sara made no mention of any love life nor did Hilary enquire; it was natural for a mother to be interested but when Sara wanted her to know she would tell her. They had always been a family for secrets. Probably most families were.

  2

  It was night and they were lying in bed before sleep.

  ‘I want to do something special for my birthday,’ Hilary said.

  ‘Like what?’ Craig asked.

  ‘In all the years you’ve lived here you’ve never explored the hongs of South Thailand, have you?’

  ‘I don’t even know what they are,’ he said.

  ‘Of course you do. I mentioned them to you before.’

  ‘You must make allowances for my great age,’ Craig said.

  ‘You are only six years older than I am so spare me your nonsense.’

  ‘Tell me again.’

  ‘They are sea caves on the islands and coast of the Andaman Sea. They are open to the sky, no way in or out on the landward side, and very beautiful. Mysterious too, some of them.’

  ‘How do you get into them?’

  ‘By kayak, from the sea. Some of the entrances are so low you have to duck your head and so dark it feels like burrowing into the earth. Once you’re inside it’s different. It’s light and there are mangroves. Even monkeys in some of them.’

  ‘If I want to see monkeys I can go to the zoo. Less trouble.’

  ‘Don’t be a spoilsport. They are romantic. I thought you’d
like that.’

  ‘I am all in favour of romance in the right place.’ With one arm around her, his free hand gentling her breast.

  ‘Given the great age you mentioned just now I thought that sort of romance might be beyond you.’

  ‘If you insist on sleeping naked at my side…’

  ‘I am a shameless hussy.’

  ‘And all the better for it.’

  A little later she said: ‘You’re pretty shameless yourself.’

  ‘I thought you’d never notice.’

  Dear God, she thought, I love this man more than I believed it was possible to love anyone.

  Sleep then, fathoms deep. When she woke they shared a tray of coffee and biscuits in bed while they admired the golden morning light beyond the window.

  ‘Lazy slut,’ she said.

  ‘Thank you very much.’

  ‘I am talking about myself. It’s my job to make the coffee.’

  ‘You can make the next lot.’

  She nibbled a biscuit, making it last. ‘Shall we do it, then?’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Shall we pay a visit to the hongs of the Andaman Sea?’

  ‘Would you like to?’

  ‘Christmas in Krabi,’ she said. ‘What could be nicer? And then my birthday afterwards.’

  ‘You’ll be sixty-four,’ he said. ‘Too old to go exploring caves. By rights it should then be a case of an armchair in front of the fire.’

  ‘In the tropics? That would be smart, wouldn’t it? In any case it’s not relevant. The way you misused me last night, I doubt I’d have survived had I been a day over twenty.’

  ‘Misused?’

  ‘Manhandled, rather.’

  ‘That’s better. It seemed to suit you at the time,’ he said.

  ‘I heard no complaints from you either.’

  The funny thing was she did feel young again. In the shower she thought: Christmas in Thailand. What could be nicer?

  SEASON’S GREETINGS FROM HASKINS GOULD

  1

  It was the middle of a hot Sydney afternoon, fifteen days before Christmas. The season of festive lunches was in full swing but Sara was no more a fan of the business lunch than Hilary had been and never went near Cavaliers if she could help it.

  She was in a session with one of the accountants when Desmond Bragg threw open her office door and barged in. No knock, no apology: his indifference to basic courtesies had always exasperated her; she thought sometimes that was why he did it. She looked up from the spreadsheets plastered across her desk.