style="font-size:15px;"> Angela and Rayner were conferring over the schedule of the day’s shots.
‘I’ll just get some breakfast,’ Connie murmured.
Two Balinese men in white jackets were clearing plates. Connie followed them out of the back of the tent. Behind the scenes, enclosed by canvas screens, Kadek Wuruk, who was moonlighting from Le Gong Restaurant (‘Don’t Go Before You Come’), was frying eggs on a two-ring gas burner. He beamed at Connie and waved his spatula at her.
‘Hello! Welcome, Ibu. Egg for you? Very good, you know. My own chickens.’
‘Yes, but no thanks. It’s a bit early for me. I’ll have some coffee, though. Everything okay, Kadek?’ There was quite a limited range of Balinese first names.
‘Everything fine, great.’
His assistant was chopping onions, three women were peeling vegetables, two young girls were washing up, and a line of boys processed by with cases of bottled water. Connie was reluctant to pass back through the canvas flap that separated kitchen from tent. It was more comfortable out here, with the women laughing and chattering and the shy girls with their bare lovely feet planted in front of the portable sink unit. She poured coffee into a Styrofoam cup, and watched Kadek Wuruk and his assistants at work as she drank. There would be nasi goreng for lunch.
She heard a crackle of walkie-talkies.
‘We’re in,’ the first assistant called to the crew. It was the signal for work to begin on the other side of the canvas. People began shifting towards the set, but there would be several hours of waiting and watching while the rest of the gear was brought in and lights and cameras were set up. If everything went really well the camera would be turning over before the lunch break was called. Connie’s gamelan orchestra was listed as the first shot.
When she had first arrived in Bali, Connie had been intending to make a short stopover on her way to London from Sydney. The plan had been to keep still, to take stock of what was left of her life, and let her bewilderment subside a little. It was only a few weeks since Seb had told her that he was in love with a Chinese violinist, and intended to marry her.
At that time Sébastian Bourret was becoming a soughtafter conductor. When he made the announcement, sitting on the balcony of their rented flat overlooking Sydney Harbour, Connie had been his lover and partner for more than six years. Their home was nominally in London but Seb travelled so much that they were away more than they were there, and this had suited Connie well. Their peripatetic life together had been comfortable and civilised, and she had been sure that it was what they both wanted and needed. She had her own work, composing music for television and commercials, and as technology developed it was becoming increasingly easy to do that work anywhere in the world.
She wasn’t under the illusion that Seb was wildly in love with her, at least after their first year together, any more than she was with him. But they had much in common, and they were considerate and mutually respectful and deeply fond of one another.
Then Sebastian really had fallen in love, with the gifted Sung Mae Lin who was no bigger and looked hardly older than a child, even though she was almost thirty. Unwittingly Mae Lin made Connie feel too big and the wrong age, and unwanted, and unhappy in a way that was too familiar, however hard she fought against that and the memories that were stirred by it.
None of it was Mae Lin’s fault, or Seb’s, really, or her own for that matter. It was just one of those things that happened. There had been no alternative for Connie but to withdraw from her own life, as quickly and as gracefully as she could manage it.
Seb and Connie had said goodbye to each other gently, and with regret, but there had been no question that he might change his mind. Connie had seen him only once since then, when he was conducting a Beethoven Festival concert series in London. He and Mae Lin had two children now. Twin girls.
Connie’s London home was still the apartment that she had shared with Seb. He had made his share of it over to her and she had kept the place, although it was bare of most of the furniture they had chosen and there were few of her possessions set out in it. She liked it better that way; it was easier to slip in and out of an almost empty space. Minimalism was closer to invisibility.
When she’d arrived in Bali, she had had no plans and no expectations of the place. It had simply been somewhere to put herself that felt like nowhere in particular.
In her raw state she had fled from the big hotels and beaches and cocktail bars of the coastal strip close to Denpasar and headed inland. It was here in the village that she first heard gamelan music played live, by solemn musicians, not for tourists but for the musicians themselves and their knowledgeable friends. This was temple music, and music for festivals and processions and weddings. She had loved the sonorous gongs, and the shimmering notes of metal that fell through the air like drops of clear water.
Angela peered from between the flaps of canvas.
‘I’m here,’ Connie said, rapidly gathering her thoughts. She drank the last mouthful of her coffee and stood upright.
‘I’ll be on set.’
The day’s set was the temple at the edge of the rice paddy – permit to use for filming applied for and finally granted by the authorities in the nick of time – over which the set dressers were swarming.
Constance consulted her watch, having already looked at it more times this morning than she would normally do in a week. ‘The musicians will be here in fifteen minutes or so.’
‘Right. Straight to costume and make-up, then.’
The bus carrying the musicians arrived punctually and Connie hurried forward to meet them. Battling with their instruments, a line of six men spilled down the steps. They were not much bigger than their metallophones, big xylophones with keys made of bronze, and considerably smaller than the great gong. They were her friends.
‘I am very, very nervous,’ Ketut called as soon as he saw her.
Connie held out her hands to him. ‘Don’t tell me you don’t want to do it?’
There were beads of sweat on his forehead and above his long-lipped mouth. Ketut had smooth skin and it gleamed in the bright sunlight like oiled wood. ‘Oh, no. We are film stars already in Seminugul, let me make clear. There is no going back. But I am afraid of letting you down, Connie.’
Ketut was one of the most talented musicians she had ever worked with. She had been recording some of his performances with the big ensemble of fifty musicians called the gamelan gong, and she counted herself lucky to be able to play percussion with this smaller, less perfectionist group. Connie knew that she was not the best drummer in the world, but she loved the sessions when they played together. Sometimes, during the rainy season, they could make music for hours under a roof of palm thatch while water dripped from soaking leaves.
The musicians clustered around her.
‘You won’t, Ketut. You don’t even have to play if you don’t want to, just look as though you are for the camera.’
The actual music track would be laid down in postproduction. This was the music that Connie had been commissioned to produce. She found herself blushing in retrospect at the memory of the demo disc she had supplied.
‘Light and poppy, but unmistakeably tropical-island exotic,’ was the agency’s brief.
Confronted
