Louise Doughty - Black Water

Blood sinks into sand really fast. The waiter arrived with their cocktails, some large red fruit-filled thing. He wished he had asked for something short and whisky-based instead of telling Rita to choose. He looked at the young women in bikinis lying just a few feet in front of them, then stared out beyond them at the sea. He could tell that Rita was watching him and sensing he had sunk into silence and after a moment or two of watchfulness, concluding it was best to leave him to it. She leaned forward for the cigarette packet that he had dropped onto the table as they sat down and he reached out and grabbed her hand, grasping it in his, pressing her soft fingers. They both looked at the hands.

‘Can we get a room?’ He could hear, in his own voice, a different tone from their previous encounters, something else mixed with the desire, a kind of need. He heard it without understanding it.

‘No,’ she said, ‘I said, remember, I need to be back tonight.’

He released her hand. She shook it a little then reached for the packet and withdrew a cigarette but then sat holding it, as if she had thought better of lighting it. Her fingers were trembling. She hadn’t smoked in front of him before.

He stood, took his lighter from his pocket and tossed it onto the table. ‘Why don’t you order some food?’ he said. The cocktails were strong and they would be drinking several.

‘Where are you going?’

‘To talk to the concierge.’

He turned and walked back down the path to the main building. She had been right about one thing, it was a beautiful hotel. He couldn’t remember it from before. It was a low, discreet collection of Balinese bungalows set amidst gardens. You could come here as a wealthy Westerner and hide in decorous seclusion from whatever was going on in the outside world.

He could have asked the waiter in the bar about what was happening on Java but the waiter would only have given him a polite answer, ‘Everything is fine, sir.’ The concierge would be a much better source of information.

The deputy manager was on the desk. Harper straightened himself as he approached and spoke in English.

‘Can you help me? My company has closed our Jakarta office and I can’t get through. What’s the latest?’

The concierge turned to the pile of newspapers on his desk and reached out a hand but Harper said, ‘I’ve got yesterday’s news. Put a call through to the concierge at the Mandarin or the Four Seasons, or the Grand Hyatt, any of them.’

It took the man six calls to get through to someone he could talk to and at first, he only got bland answers: order would soon return, the army was in control, there was no need for anxiety.

After a polite interval, Harper intervened. ‘Ask him if any more shopping precincts have been set on fire.’

The man spoke into the phone, returned the answer, ‘No sir, no more commercial premises have been attacked.’

‘Are the Americans and Europeans still evacuating their nationals?’

‘I believe so, yes.’

‘And what about elsewhere, Surakarta and Medan?’ The conversation following this question took a little longer.

‘There are no further incidents, the army is in control, sir, there is no need for alarm.’

‘Ask him if there are still tanks parked on the Hotel Indonesia roundabout or Merdeka Square?’

‘My friend does not have that information, sir. The streets are clear. The banks and schools are closed only as a precaution.’

‘Is there a phone in the lobby I can use to make an international call?’

The deputy manager took him over to a booth with a small stool in it and a wall phone.

‘Shall we charge this call to your room, sir?’

‘I’ll pay cash.’

It was Hannah who picked up the phone, that was good. Hannah was his boss’s secretary and had worked for the company for years. Every now and then, they had a beer and exchanged notes on Jan’s peculiarities. Unlike some of their colleagues, they would never use this information against each other. ‘Good morning, Institute of International Economics.’ Hannah wasn’t particularly attractive but he loved her voice, slow and low, gravelly.

‘Hannah, lieveling, it’s your favourite brown guy. Ninety kilos of sheer muscle.’

There was a slight delay on the line. ‘Well, hello stranger.’

‘Is Jan in?’

After a pause, ‘No, I’ve only just got in, haven’t taken my coat off. How’s Jakarta? Sounds pretty bad.’

‘I’m not there any more, I’m on leave, enforced leave. Henrikson is running the show.’

‘Oh, I see.’

‘Hasn’t there been talk?’

‘News to me, my friend. Why haven’t you been recalled?’

It was exactly the same question he had asked himself.

The pause before each of her answers implied she was being careful in what she said but he was fairly certain she wasn’t. All the same, it was odd that his predicament had not been discussed. Hannah knew everything that happened in the Asia Department and normally Jan would be sure everyone in the company knew it too. That was what the partners did if you messed up.

‘Are you sure? He hasn’t said anything?’

‘Not a word. I was wondering why I hadn’t heard from you though. The office is still closed, Henrikson’s calling in from Le Méridien. I thought you were with him. I was wondering why you hadn’t called. The news reports, it’s calmer, but. .’

‘I know, still in the balance, looks like. What’s the word your end?’ The pause this time was a little longer than the mechanical one on the line. Hannah was hesitating about how much to tell him. ‘C’mon, I’m going crazy stuck on an island, being kept out of the loop. You’ve no idea how hard it is to get news here.’

The pause shortened again. ‘More of the same. The Americans have got all non-essential personnel out but they’ve left staff in place. British the same. Things are much calmer on the streets but nobody’s taking chances. Most of our existing clients are out now but we’ve got a whole load of new ones, people still panicking. Chinese families still fleeing in droves. Everyone’s waiting to see if Habibie can stabilise things but who knows.’ So Hannah’s opinion on the way things could be heading wasn’t so different from his own.

‘Beijing made any pronouncements?’

‘No, they’re sitting on the fence. There’s demonstrations outside the Indonesian Embassy there, though.’

He emerged from the booth and pulled his wallet from his pocket as he went over to the reception desk. The deputy manager had gone but a young woman took payment for the call.

As he turned back to walk through the gardens, he stopped, patted his pockets and regretted that his cigarettes were sitting on the low table next to Rita. He was right, he knew it: things could go either way, but the oddest thing of all was that his suspension wasn’t official. As far as his colleagues were concerned, he was still out in the field.

As he walked back along the tiled path, back to the beach, Harper thought, the rest of the day is spoiled now. He had brought the real world into the bubble he and Rita had been in during their encounters so far. He had liked the bubble: the enclosed space of a room in a guesthouse, the car — they could exist as long as they had a wall of some sort around them. They existed best of all beneath the fine gauze of a mosquito net.

As he sat down next to her, she said, ‘I’ve ordered.’

Summoned by her words, a plate of satay with a sticky coating arrived, some rice cakes and a bowl of water spinach.

They ate in silence. ‘This satay is really good, spicy,’ he said at one point but it was such an obviously small-talk remark, she ignored him. She ate the satay and the spinach but only picked at the rice.