As she spoke, I was taken in by her manner. It was bewitching in a way I hadn’t encountered before. She had a way of speaking through her eyelashes whereby she would tilt her head slightly downwards while glancing up through her long lashes, as if gauging my response. She spoke softly in good, yet not perfect, English with a rising intonation, which made each sentence sound like a question, and weirdly I found myself feeling drawn in by this funny, articulate and friendly young lady.
She asked me what I thought of her country, and rather than reply in the glib non-committal manner I had employed with most others who’d asked me that, I actually told her what I really thought.
‘It seems nice, but I don’t really understand the people,’ I said.
‘How so?’ she enquired.
I told her that although everybody seemed to be forever smiling, it was hard to know if they were being genuine or if they just wanted something from me.
She smiled and said: ‘Most of them probably do want something, you know.’
Yossy then explained how her country was still very poor and a lot of people just lived day-to-day if not quite hand-to-mouth.
‘We see someone and we make friends easily, then we move on easily too,’ she explained. ‘We are friendly but we don’t let anyone too close to us, and when we meet new people, especially bule, we kind of see if there is any benefit or advantage we can get from them.’
‘That’s awful,’ I countered. Yossy looked up through her eyelashes at me and continued.
‘No, not really. We don’t try and rob or steal or cheat, we just believe that people come into our lives for a purpose. There is a reason for everything that happens.’
Whilst I was not exactly convinced of her philosophy, I found it to be an interesting one; the concept that we go through life taking what we can from each person and then moving on to the next one as if we are nothing more than glorified worker bees perhaps sounds a bit cynical, but probably does contain more than a grain of truth.
We were so engrossed in our conversation we almost missed the world-famous Kuta Beach sunset. It really is a sight to behold with a glorious array of colours producing both a hue and shifting shadows that transports you into Beatles’ Yellow Submarine animation. In fact, Yossy told me the whole purpose of her group’s afternoon excursion to the beach was to experience the sunset and instead she had ‘wasted her time’ talking to me.
Charming, I thought.
Then I saw her grinning through her eyelashes again, and I realized she’d been having me on.
‘Ha, I think you are a mysterious boy,’ she mocked.
‘Mysterious? In what way?’ I queried.
‘Ah, I dunno, kok. Just mysterious. Come on, we have to go back to our hotel now. You can walk back with us if you like.’
As twilight fell on Kuta Beach, Yossy and I rejoined her friends, who were hovering at the entrance to the beach waiting for us, and who subjected Yossy to some good-natured teasing. Yossy affected to be faux-angry at something one of her friends said to her and pretended to storm off for a minute or two before coming back to the group.
We stopped at the small place she and her friends were staying at. I remarked that it didn’t look much like a hotel to me and she explained it was a kost, or boarding house. As her friends finished saying their goodbyes to me and drifted inside, Yossy and I continued to chat outside.
I knew the time for us to part was fast approaching, and I actually found myself starting to develop a bit of a lump in the throat. I had found this small, friendly girl very beguiling and I didn’t want to say goodbye just yet. We stood there and kind of looked at each other and although it would have sounded crazy had either one of us said it out loud, I think we both knew that this was the start of something and not the end.
As I walked back to my own hotel a few minutes later, all thoughts of watching the FIFA World Cup final had evaporated. I dug my fingers into my pocket and wrapped them round the piece of paper on which Yossy had written her name and address. This was all I could think about now.
* * *
Jakarta, 2006
Back in the café my new date listens to me, never interrupting, never judging, just listening. I unburden myself and for the first time in many years I begin to feel liberated: I begin to believe I am alive again. I speak honestly and openly and without embarrassment. When, after two hours, I finally come to the end of the story of my life in Indonesia, she leans over to me.
‘Until now? That’s how things are at present?’ she asks.
‘Yes,’ I reply. ‘Pretty much. But I don’t care anymore.’
She takes my hands again and looks directly into my eyes. Her stare penetrates deep into my soul and she waits for an age before saying, ‘Yes, you do. You do care, but don’t worry.’
‘Why not?’ I say, almost in a whisper, my voice choking and tears not far away.
She holds my hands, eyes and heart all at the same time.
‘Because I will save you.’
And I believe her.
My name is Neil and this is my story.
1
Neil's Story
Surabaya, 1995
Those were the happiest days of my life, and, what’s more, I knew it at the time.
Usually people look back on certain periods in their life and think, yep, those were the best days of my life. Not me. I was aware that I was living them right there and then.
The year was 1995 and I was living in Surabaya, on the island of Java in Indonesia. Yossy and I had been married for a couple of years and I was madly, swimmingly, incredibly and, no doubt very
