A Travel Memoir - In Memoriam

My dear friend Elizabeth died in October 1994, alone in a car on the
Yorkshire Moors. That was, for me, an unbearable finality. She had a
very difficult childhood and after a period of mental illness she took
her own life on the anniversary of her mother's own suicide. She talked
with me about her fear of 'doing something stupid'. She had been
provided with a precedent by a parent. We spent hours trying to resolve
her mental torture but she kept repeating her plea 'what shall I do?'
She was a remarkable human being, gifted, passionate, desperate and
finally defeated in her quest for inner peace. The great contradiction
I see in her story is that in life she was an amazing survivor,
resilient, knowing the joy of self-renewal and taking pleasure in
observing the complex nature of human existence.
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Elizabeth's decision to spend a year in Bali studying a special aspect
of Balinese music came as a surprise to those of us who had seen her
grow up in established Western musical circles. She said I had been an
influence in her decision to go, though I don't remember any
conversation regarding the idea. I couldn't say, therefore, what she
had absorbed about my travelling experience there which made her
resolve to go, but with only a suitcase-worth of comfort, she went. She
was twenty-one years old, and her only close family was an octogenarian
father and an estranged brother. There were, however, many apprehensive
friends. I was the only one of those friends who would have the
opportunity to meet with her in this far-flung destination.

During her time there I made my second visit to the island. My parents,
who had worked in Singapore for fifteen years, were regular visitors,
and had a special relationship with a Mrs Oka who still runs a Gandhi
inspired Ashram on the south-eastern coast in a small village called
Candi Dasa. This time my travelling companion was my cousin, Neil, who
was a novice to foreign travel at that time, though since has gone
considerably further, having been bitten by the travel bug.

Despite the deep difficulties of communications on the island in those
days Neil and I managed to arrange a meeting with Elizabeth and plan an
adventure together. I was to meet her from a bus on the road beside the
Ashram.

I remember being very excited as I stood waiting. My spirits were
elevated by the amazing circumstances of meeting up with one of my
closest school friends in this magical place. The expression on
Elizabeth's face, as she stepped down from the bus, I can still recall.
She too was thrilled and exhilarated, but more than this, she was
anchored again in the security of our loving friendship - she had not
had contact with anyone from home for a long time and her experiences
were not all comfortable.

I have to say that she bore the marks of those experiences. She was
covered from top to toe in mosquito bites. I was horrified at their
size and soreness. At the coast, where we were, the insect life was
less intolerable, and we were lavishly kitted-out with anti-mosquito
paraphernalia. Elizabeth had obviously not been taking enough care of
herself, a legacy of her difficult upbringing I feel. Rather than being
golden brown (which she could be in a good English summer) she had
acquired 'stripes' and was considerably loose at the seams. On taking a
look around the Ashram, and our accommodation, she envied the 'luxury'
we were enjoying - the terracotta tiled floors of the rattan huts, the
ensuite toilets with their 'mandi' (tanks filled with water piped in
from a neighbouring freshwater lake) which provided washing facilities.
She explained that she was sharing a bed with the musician's daughter.
She and a Balinese musician friend were taking occasional advantage of
access to warm showers in hotels in which they were giving performances
- this she told me with relish.

The three of us arranged for an overnight trip recommended by a
Balinese guide who chose to go by the name of 'Agung', which was in
fact the name of the highest volcanic peak in Bali and translates as
'great'. We were therefore in no doubt as to his abilities. He was a
reformed gang member and bore the characteristic tattooed chest. The
trip was to incorporate a climb; not of the highest peak, which was
beyond us, but of Batur, Bali's second highest live volcano. Agung
hired a jeep to take us to the village of Hot Springs at the foot of
Batur.

The landscape which radiated out from the volcano was unlike any we had
seen before. It was a moonscape created by ash and contrasted
unexpectedly with the more famous lush rice terraces, fruit and palm
trees of the majority of the island. Arriving in the late evening we
had a most memorable experience - bathing in the hot spring waters
which were the focal point of the community. Children offered the
service of a soapy back scrub to entice us into buying primitive sweets
or sachets of shampoo. Elizabeth was enraptured by the feeling of the
permanent supply of hot water - a bath that never goes cold! (I always
have, in the back of my mind, the memory of staying overnight at her
English 'home' - at least her father's house. It was so utterly cold in
winter, you could lie in bed and watch your breath appear briefly in
the dim light and see it condense onto the quilt drawn up around your
neck.) The hot bathe was a perfect preparation for our dawn
climb.

It was to be a pre-dawn, torch-lit ascent, because Agung insisted one
should be at the top to watch the sun rise. I don't think we slept a
great deal and rose around four in the morning. Neil and I were
equipped with substantial footwear, but Elizabeth was wearing something
far flimsier, but this did not deter her. Accompanied further by a
Balinese carrying a crate of soft drinks he was hoping to sell to us on
the journey, we started the climb. Elizabeth's strength was at a low
ebb, and Agung nobly gave considerable assistance.

To watch the sun rising from behind a far-away ridge with the village
formless beneath us was worth all the exertion. We had an unexpected
bonus in the form of another entrepreneurial Balinese camped at the
summit with a fire, brewing coffee. It was bitterly cold at the top,
and we hadn't anticipated this. We did the best we could by putting on
our nightwear over our clothes and going in and out of the little tent
for as long as we could stand the stifling wood smoke.

A motley crew we were, wrapped in whatever we had to hand, the
photographs show our faces lit by the pink of the sunrise.

In better light we traversed quite a precarious ridge looking down at
the larger of Batur's craters. We hard-boiled an egg in the steam plume
from a small fissure in the crater's crust. After walking around the
second, smaller crater, we were on our way down. The descent was, in
places, like wading through deep sand dunes (the accumulated ash) and
in our exhaustion we almost tumbled through this soft terrain.
Elizabeth's shoes were really no longer wearable, but in those she made
her way back to the place she was temporarily living. I wouldn't see
her again until she returned to London a few months later.

The difficulties Elizabeth had in transporting home her Balinese
instruments (specially made for her) seemed an apt metaphor for the
difficulty she had in transferring her Balinese experience into a
Western context. It was months later before they arrived in this
country and even then she didn't really know how or where to store
them. It had been, essentially, another lonely, isolating experience
and not without its ordeals.

I have a deeper understanding now of how powerful an experience of
belonging Elizabeth must have felt on seeing me as she stepped down
from that bus in Bali, a familiar and loved friend. Perhaps this was
one of the few moments of certainty she ever had. I now hope that she
smiled that same smile when she arrived at her final destination.