Free Black Water by Louise Doughty Page A

some of the Chinese families fleeing the capital had come here, she would know what the talk was amongst her students – she could be a useful source of information. Stop it , he said to himself then.
     
    Once in Sanur, they went straight to the hotel and parked in the car park at the entrance to the gardens and walked down a pretty lane to reception and Rita laughed at his irritation that there was no valet parking. He resisted her attempts to show him round the grounds; they headed straight to the beachside bar.
    Two perfect seats were waiting for them, low and comfy, facing the sea, with a small table between. As they settled into them, Rita leaned forward for the cocktail menu, making a small noise of satisfaction. It was a cloudy day. Down by the water, a row of red, blue and yellow jukung boats were ranged in a row, painted in bright colours, with outrigger legs, raised and bent like spiders, for decorative purposes only, he presumed: the fishing and the coral harvesting on this stretch of beach must have ended many years ago. On a neighbouring terrace, a group of small boys were having their dance practice, the warrior dance – whatever it’s called, nothing to do with battle, these days, he thought.
    Rita lifted a hand. ‘Across the bay, there, you know that’s where they built the Bali Beach Hotel in the sixties, first of many, Western triumph or monstrosity depending on your point of view.’
    I know , he thought, I watched it being built .
    A waiter had materialised at his shoulder and Rita sat upright in her seat, holding the cocktail menu sideways so that he could see.
    ‘Choose for us,’ he said. Before she even spoke, he knew she would order something that included fruit.
    After taking their order up to the bar, the waiter returned with some tiny glass bowls containing toasted biscuits. Rita picked up a bowl and tipped some into her hand. ‘Want some?’
    He shook his head, staring out at the beach where, between them and the fake fishing boats, three young women in bikinis were lying very close together on a large grass mat, like sausages in a pan. Wandering past them was a young white couple in patterned baggy trousers, the man bearded and tall, the woman skinny and short; hand-woven bags slung over their shoulders, bracelets on their wrists. They would not be sunning themselves all day long, nor would they buy cigarettes or alcohol in Duty Free on the way home. They would go home with luggage full of sarongs and woodcarvings. They would learn please and thank you in Indonesian and use them on every possible occasion, whether it was appropriate or not. They would tip as generously as their backpacking budget allowed and they would always, always, behave respectfully in temples.
    But when they got home, the young couple would do exactly what the three young women would do. They would buy houses, cook food, drive cars. The fuel for those cars would come from somewhere and it would come via the pipes built by the sort of company that employed companies like his in order to ensure the safety of their investments and their staff.
     
    He remembered first arriving on the island, November ’65. It had been a relief to get off Java, the Jakarta job done. At Tuban airport, as it was called back then, he had handed over an extortionate bribe to a man in a suit and sunglasses in order to evade a queue that had built up in front of a group of soldiers whose purpose in questioning passengers disembarking from the domestic flight was unclear.
    The operative doing his handover was waiting for him outside the low building, his car parked at an angle halfway up the kerb. He shook Harper’s hand, said, ‘Welcome to Bali. Call me Abang. You got through quickly.’
    ‘It wasn’t easy,’ said Harper, pushing his glasses back up his sweating nose.
    The area around the airport was surrounded by construction in the shimmering heat. No amount of political chaos ever stopped the building works. The new regime would be