The Plantation - Di Morrissey [29]
‘Roland! I understand that,’ said Margaret lightly. ‘Which is why I want to make the most of our honeymoon. While I have you all to myself,’ she added coquettishly.
He gave a big smile. ‘Is that an invitation?’ He kissed her hand. ‘Tonight. A romantic dinner and time to ourselves in our room, in front of the fire, a bottle of MacAllister’s best champagne. How does that sound?’
‘Lovely.’
‘Right. I’d better get going and find the set of clubs MacAllister promised me. Are you coming or do you want something else?’
‘I might have another pot of tea,’ said Margaret. Roland signalled to the waiter, who hurried to the table. ‘Another tea for memsahib.’
Then he was gone and Margaret was left alone feeling faintly irritated.
‘Earl Grey?’ enquired the waiter.
‘No, English Breakfast,’ said Margaret, sounding quite waspish.
Shortly afterwards, Margaret received a message from the two wives of Roland’s golfing partners to say that they would like her to join them for luncheon at the Broadstairs’ bungalow. A driver would be sent to fetch her from the Smokehouse at noon.
Before getting ready for lunch and with time to kill, Margaret decided to go for a walk by herself in the woods surrounding the nearby golf course. Armed with Roland’s binoculars and a walking stick she borrowed from the hotel, she set out. It was a longish walk but she found a small trail and saw it heading up toward a peak that she thought would give her an expansive view of the area.
As she wandered along the path, the trees became denser, blocking the sunlight. An occasional side trail led away from the track she was on. She assumed they led to private bungalows or were short cuts used by the hotel staff. Everything was quiet, save for the swishing flight of an occasional bird.
She stopped to gaze up into the trees when she heard a rustling in the treetops and to her surprise saw through the binoculars, a round-faced monkey staring at her as curiously as she was looking at it. As she put the binoculars down, the monkey swung away with a high-pitched shriek that startled dozens of other monkeys, and all of them raced and called through the trees.
Margaret was quite elated by the sight, and continued on along the path, which was now less well marked as it dipped down before curving upwards again, towards the peak.
It was like being in a dark-green cavern, and she was glad when she found herself in a small clearing where a break in the trees gave a full vista of the hills on the other side. This seemed to be far more rugged country and, while she assumed there must be some small villages hidden away somewhere, she could see nothing but jungle. These were not the benign slopes accommodating the bungalows, hotels, shops and landscaped gardens planted with familiar trees, where she and Roland had walked. Through the binoculars she could see, stretched out before her, an endless tangle of tall trees, choked with vines and ferns. Suddenly the talk she had heard about tigers and wild animals became very real. Here was a different part of the country. It was untamed and appeared suddenly threatening. She felt a long way from the suburbs of Brisbane.
She turned and walked back the way she’d come, hurrying slightly. But as she came to where a small track branched away from the main one, she stopped in shock. Straddling her path was a giant lizard, scaly, prehistoric, stone-cold eyes observing her, tongue flicking. Margaret’s hand flew to her mouth. She’d seen small lizards in her mother’s garden, but this was a monster and it did not appear to want to move. It continued to block her way.
Margaret was not going to go near the creature. Its claws splayed from it’s gnarled feet making it look dangerous. Swiftly she glanced around and took another side path, thinking that it would either join the main trail or end up at someone’s bungalow, or at one of the scattered clusters of houses where the locals lived. But after following this narrow track for