High Island Blues Read Online Free PDF Page B

a plane in Bombay in the middle of the day. He walked over the coarse grass to the trees which marked the boundary of the hotel’s land. He was listening to the unfamiliar bird calls, trying to get his ear in. Behind him he heard the murmuring of English voices, distracting and intrusive, and he wished that he’d been able to afford to take this as a real holiday. It would have been better if it could have been just him and Oliver and Mick. Like in the old days. But he supposed it could never be like that now. There were Julia and Laurie to consider.
    Mary Ann came up behind him, startling him. He stood awkwardly for a moment. He was never sure how to greet her, whether she expected him to kiss her or if she would think that was too forward. In the end he held out his hand, and she kissed him lightly on either cheek.
    ‘Your English friends have arrived,’ she said.
    ‘The Adamsons? Did you recognize Oliver? I’m not sure I would have done.’
    ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I remember you all.’
    ‘What about Mick and Laurie? Have you heard from them?’
    He was still holding her hand and she withdrew it.
    ‘No,’ she said flatly. ‘ Not yet.’
    ‘I think I explained when I booked. This is special. A kind of reunion. Twenty years after that first time. Though I’m not sure exactly what we’re celebrating.’
    ‘I know,’ she said. ‘ I was expecting it almost. I was there. I heard you plan it.’
    He looked at her.
    ‘I don’t remember that.’
    ‘Well you wouldn’t, would you? I was only a kid. Sitting outside an open door, listening to the grown-ups talking.’
    He stood for a moment in silence then gave her one of his smiles.
    ‘There you are then,’ he said easily. ‘It’ll be a real reunion of everyone there. Just as it should be.’
    But as she walked back to the hotel and her guests, he was frowning.

Chapter Five
    Julia was feeling excluded and she thought, really, it was the height of rudeness. All the in-jokes. All that talk about twenty years ago. All the smutty laughter. It made one wonder what had gone on in that dreadful hire car, in this house. Having met Laurie at last she wouldn’t have put it past her to have had sex with all three of them as a sort of dare. And they wouldn’t have minded sharing. Not those three. One never expected men to be that close, Julia decided petulantly. They weren’t supposed to be friends in the way women were. They were supposed to be more restrained.
    Of course she had asked Oliver what had gone on in High Island that week before he had flown home to make an honest woman of her. She had brought up the subject again on the plane. What, she had demanded as he pretended to watch the movie, had been so important that they needed to get together to remember it?
    But he had been as evasive as only Oliver could.
    ‘Nothing,’ he said in his best solicitor’s voice. ‘We were young and we were friends. That was all.’
    It was too vexing. Julia sulked.
    Laurie had made her appearance just before lunch, when most of the bird watching party had gone to their rooms. Rob and Oliver were chatting and Julia was wondering whether she should risk pulling a lounger into the sun. She had recently read an article on UV light and the premature ageing of the skin. She thought that Laurie couldn’t have timed her arrival better if she’d tried. She was obviously a woman who needed an audience.
    The Brownscombes had driven up in a big, boxy car like a Range Rover and Laurie had leapt out at once. She’d been wearing a denim skirt, calf length, but only half buttoned up the front. Then she’d put her arms around Oliver’s neck and started kissing him! Not in a friendly, continental way, as even Julia was accustomed to do now that it had become fashionable. More like a long-lost lover, which perhaps she was. Then she had turned her attentions to Rob and if anything that embrace was even more pornographic. Julia had been forced to turn away through