Free The Life and Loves of Lena Gaunt by Tracy Farr Page A

thundered, the noise of it drowning the grind of the Koolinda ’s engines. Half speed and siren hooting, we steamed through the pouring, pelting rain. Then, just as suddenly as the rain had started, we steamed out into the bright daylight again, everything dripping wet and glistening with water for as long as it took the sun to raise the steam. Steam rose from the deckhouse, from the lifeboats, decks and winches; even the passengers steamed happily in the sun. Everything in sight was washed clean; even the surface of the sea seemed brighter.
    I stood with Uncle Valentine on the deck. And as we stood there, out of the cloud appeared mountain peaks to starboard. Bali lay ahead of us, high and magical, like a fat woman squatting on the sea, her buttocks and hipsobscured in cloud, her head rising high, held proud in the dazzling blue sky. All on board stopped to stare at her, transfixed; Uncle Valentine and I stayed and stared as the afternoon lingered then left. As night fell we saw lights on the shoreline ahead, then here and there twinkling lights higher up the slopes. Strange metallic music drifted across the water, bell-like over the sounds of voices, of shouting and calling and selling, from the night market.
    ‘That’s gamelan, that strange music,’ Uncle Valentine told me.
    Such words! Gamelan, junks, sampans, flying fish; and Bali. I felt as far from dry old Lesmurdie and the Misses Murray as it was possible to get.
    Night fell while we made for port. Uncle Valentine and I persuaded the steward to bring us our evening meal on the deck, and so we sat, we two, eating our meal and watching the land grow nearer. The sound and smell of the land seemed to come to us over the sea. We stayed on deck, smoking and watching the lights, until the captain called the watch.
    I awoke early. I could see the cone of the island’s peak, a faint breath of steaming, lazy smoke curling up from the crater. Boats came out to meet the Koolinda , poled out from the shore at first, then a hoisted sail caught the breeze and they scraped alongside our ship. They were laden with pretty, small Balinese cattle, the colour of strong milky tea, destined for the Singapore market, so the steward told us. We gulped our breakfast in a flash, eager to get ashore.
    We were paddled towards a white beach, long andsmooth as the eye could see, with small boats just above the high-water mark and coconut palms leaning their heads down towards the sea, listening to it as a mother leans forward to catch her baby’s whisper. The sea beneath the prahu that carried us to shore was a clear, transparent jade green. We touched a small jetty and scrambled ashore.
    Up the gently rising slope of the road from the jetty of the little town we walked. Gaudy fabrics were everywhere, scarlet jackets, bright batik, and brown women in semi-nudity, for they wore only a sarong from waist to calf. The Koolinda ’s stewardess and I were the only women among our small party, and she slipped her arm through mine and walked with me, said I might feel more comfortable in the company of a married woman and mother such as herself in the presence of the naked native bodies all around us. But I was too thrilled to feel a blush even had I been guilty of one, and the beauty and naturalness of the Balinese women made their state seem not bold nor brazen, but perfect, natural. I heated and sweated under my heavy Australian clothing, yearning to shed my blouse and feel the cooling breeze against my own white skin.
    As we came upon the marketplace, the pasar , I put my hand to the notebook in my skirt pocket. On the way north from Fremantle to Broome, Uncle Valentine had written in the small notebook phrases of Malay vocabulary, that I might gain some familiarity with the language, and quite a deal of my time on the Koolinda between Broome and Bali had been spent poring over the words which, written, were so strange to me. As the sounds of the market reached my ears though, and I matched them