Catherine Steadman - Something in the Water - A Novel

She smiles and hands me the small navy pajama set wrapped in white ribbons, a white BA logo emblazoned on the left breast. Soft. Snug.

“Just let me know if you fancy a nap later,” she trills, “and I’ll make up your bed for you, okay?” And she’s gone from view.

I’ve always had a bit of a problem with free champagne. Lovely, lovely free champagne. I find it very hard to turn down. If the glass gets topped up, it gets drunk. It’s the one time that the phrase “You’ll regret not finishing that” actually resonates with me. So three glasses in, and one in-flight movie down, the stewardess and I are having a nap-related chat.

My bed is made up by the time I’m back from brushing my teeth in the cavernous washroom, the basin being a good three-stride walk from the toilet. The bed looks pretty inviting: thick duvet, plump pillow, all made up on the flat cabin bed. Mark laughs at me through the partition wall as I clamber in.

“I can’t believe you’re drunk already. We haven’t even been married a full day yet.”

“I got excited. Now shush, you, I’m going to sleep it off,” I say as the electric divider slowly blocks out his grinning face.

“Night, you old alkie.” He laughs again.

I smile to myself. All tucked up cozy in my nook, I close my eyes.

I manage a fairly impressive seven hours’ sleep on the first flight. And when we land in LAX I’m feeling relatively well rested and thankfully fully sober. I’ve never been a big drinker. A few of glasses of anything and I’m knocked out. Mark stayed up the whole flight watching movies and reading.

At LAX we find our way to the first-class lounge of American Airlines. It’s not quite as impressive as Heathrow, but we’ve got only thirty minutes to kill now until our flight to Tahiti boards. This is the tricky part of the trip. The midway point. The eleven-hour flight to LAX done. The eight-hour flight to Tahiti about to start, followed by a forty-five-minute flight to Bora Bora and then a private boat trip around the atoll to the Four Seasons hotel.

We get an email from Mark’s parents. Family photos they took at the wedding yesterday. There we all are—at least I think it’s us, we’re pretty blurry and we all have red eyes, but it’s definitely us. I suddenly realize I’ve never felt happier than I do at this very moment.

—

Mark manages six hours’ sleep on the next flight. This time I stay awake, gazing out of my oval window, transfixed by the pinks and purples of the setting sun reflecting off the vast Pacific Ocean beneath us. The clouds: miles and miles of mountainous white, turning peachy in the fading sunlight. And then just blueness, rich, dark velvet blue. And stars.

A wave of hot, wet tropical air slaps us as we step off the plane in Tahiti. The first hint of our honeymoon. We don’t see much of Tahiti itself, just a runway, landing lights, an almost empty airport concourse, another departure gate, and then we’re airborne again.

Our flight to Bora Bora is via a small plane with brightly dressed hostesses. Somehow Mark sleeps on the short, bumpy flight. I manage to finish reading the magazine I picked up from the Concorde lounge at Heathrow; it’s an extremely niche quarterly dressage publication titled Piaffe . I know nothing about dressage—my teenage girl’s basic riding knowledge doesn’t quite stretch to advanced equine showing—but the magazine looked so far removed from anything I’d ever seen before that I had to pick it up. Turns out that “piaffe” is when the horse stands in the middle of the arena and trots up and down on the spot. So there you go. Bet you’re glad we found that out. I do like things like that, though; I’ve always been into reading whatever is lying about, the less I know about it the better. I remember someone at film school suggesting developing that habit: always read outside your comfort zone. That’s where stories come from. That’s where ideas come from. Anyway, I can highly recommend Piaffe . It lost me slightly in the horse-feed section, but, overall, interesting stuff. If not directly for its content, then definitely to wonder at the lifestyles, and habits, of its average reader.

Bora Bora Airport is tiny. Two beaming women garland us upon arrival. The white flowers hang sweet and musky around our necks as a porter leads us toward a jetty in the water outside the terminal. The airport and its runway take up one entire island of their own on the atoll of Bora Bora. The whole airport island is just a long stretch of tarmac, edged with balding dry grass and a terminal building afloat in the blue of the South Pacific. A real-world visual representation of man’s dominance over nature.

A speedboat waits for us, beautiful in understated varnished wood, at the end of the jetty, like a Venetian water taxi. Our water taxi driver takes my hand and helps me down into the deck seating. He offers me a warm blanket for my knees.

“It can get pretty breezy when we get going.” He smiles. He’s got a kind face, like the women in the airport. I suppose there’s not that much to worry about out here, no city life to harden you.

Mark passes our bags down and hops on himself and then we’re off. It’s dark as we speed around the coves and bays. I wish we’d arranged the flights so we could see this in daylight. I bet it’s breathtaking, but right now in the darkness I see only the twinkling lights along the shoreline and the huge moon hanging across the water. The brilliant white moon. I’m certain the moon’s not this bright back in England. But it must be. Maybe we just can’t see how bright it is through all the light pollution back there.

England seems so far away now. Those hedged lanes, the frosty grass. I feel a brief pang for it, nine thousand miles away, misty and cold. My hair whips around my face in the perfumed breeze. We’re slowing down now. Nearly there. I turn back to look at the mainland, the shoreline, and the lights of the Four Seasons. And there it is.

The water all around glows emerald, up-lit through the green lagoon water. Soft candlelight bathes the thatched buildings, the communal areas, restaurants, and bars. Flaming torches flicker along the beachfront. Huts on stilts spill their orange warmth out into the thick darkness of the South Pacific Ocean. And that moon. That moon, shining as bright as a high beam on a country road, shining out from behind the sharp towering silhouette of Mount Otemanu, the extinct volcano at the center of Bora Bora’s atoll. We’re here.

The water laps placidly around us as we slowly put-put in. Candles light up the jetty and a welcome party ties us off and pulls us in. More garlands. Sweetly scented, spicy. Water. Cool towels. A slice of orange. And a golf buggy whisks us along the stilted walkways toward our new home.

We’ve got a fantastic room, Mark made sure of that. The best they have. An overwater lagoon bungalow at the end of the pier. Private plunge pool, private lagoon access, glass-floored bathroom. We pull up to the door and there’s a welcome talk but we’re tired now. I can see through Mark’s smiles to his tired eyes, and the hotel staff must see it too. We’re exhausted. The intro is blessedly brief.

The buggy buzzes away from us back down the walkway, leaving us alone outside our suite. Mark looks at me as the sound of the buggy recedes. He drops his bags and lunges toward me, grabbing my waist with one arm and my thighs with the other and I’m up in the air, cradled in his arms. I kiss the end of his nose. He grins and fumbles us over the threshold.

Four days of the holiday go by. A dream. A turquoise, warm-sanded dream.