OOOO
See part 1 for disclaimer…
Part 8
Mac nodded in agreement and Cate led her over to a sheltered canteen that served as a communal gathering place amongst the locals. Cate ordered them both a coke, while Mac stayed seated at a small, round table. As she came back with the drinks, Cate saw Mac notice some of the local school children sipping drinks through straws out of clear plastic bags.
"That's something that Harm couldn't get over when he first got here. I think it's quite a quaint local custom."
"Yeah, it is," Mac agreed, smiling.
For a few minutes, they simply watched the children play some kind of local game, where a small disc of rubber with what looked a bundle of feathers fixed through the middle of it was kicked up into the air, going around to each person in the circle.
Cate explained that the game was known as capteh-capteh and that the aim was to keep it in the air for a long as possible, using just the sides of the feet. Mac noted that it resembled a game of keepy-uppy only with the strange looking shuttlecock instead of a hackie-sack. While the game was going on, Cate would count aloud in Malay along with the children, until someone would aim and miss, clapping in encouragement as the count got higher and higher.
"Satu, dua, tiga, empat, lima, enam, tujuh, lapan, sembilan, sepuluh…oh, bagus, Zubin."
After a while, she turned back to Mac, suddenly noticing something.
"So where is Harm?" Cate questioned, "Didn't he feel like getting a drink?"
"No," Mac dismissed, "He was going to finish loading up a brick cart. I don't know when he'll be along."
"How long did you know Harm, back in Washington?"
"Over seven years, now."
"Wow, that's a long time. I thought that the military over there would move you around quite a bit?'
"Yeah, they did, before now. After leaving college in Minnesota, I was stationed in Japan, got my law degree from Duke, back in the US, before serving in Bosnia."
"Wow," Cate exclaimed again, "That was some moving around! Before I left Glasgow, the furthest afield I'd ever gone was to the Lake District on a school field-trip!"
"It must have been hard coming here, to a whole new country," Mac sympathised.
"No, the thought of leaving Glasgow didn't worry me a bit," Cate told Mac, "The prospect of staying where I was scared me more. I didn't exactly live in a great area, one of the roughest council estates in Scotland."
Cate stayed silent for a minute or so and Mac noticed the haunted look that she saw in the young woman's eyes. It was one that she recognised from her own youth.
They were interrupted by Harm, who had finished loading bricks into the cart for transportation to building sites around the village.
"Hi Cate," he greeted the young woman, "How's your day been? How come you've been teaching on a Sunday?"
Mac hadn't even thought about it being a Sunday, because her body clock had been totally turned around with the jet lag and the time difference between KL and DC.
"There's only a half day on a Wednesday at the school," Cate told Harm, "It just means that the kids get a mid-week break and do a half-day on a Sunday instead."
At that moment, they heard a bell tolling and the children playing in the dust scattered and ran off home. All of the local villagers got up from where they were sitting and shuffled off home as well.
"At eleven, that bell tolls to let everyone know that daily prayers begin in an hour." Cate informed Harm and Mac, "They'll all go home to get ready, then everyone will make their way to the mosque."
Harm had noticed the small mosque only a few times in his trips to Sepadan, but his thought every time was that the old building, which was probably as old as this village, could probably do with a major face-lift.
"It's quite small and cramped in there," Cate commented, "But we were hoping to get construction of a new mosque started once the next monsoon season is over."
"Does the whole village squeeze into that one?" Harm questioned in surprise.
Cate nodded and lifted her glass, swallowing the rest of her drink.
"I'd better get back to work," she told Harm and Mac, "I've got a market trip to make before everyone there disappears for daily prayers."
She bid them goodbye and walked off towards the aid-worker's accommodation in the village.
Harm and Mac sat with their drinks in silence, eventually listening to sound of chanted prayer, that came drifting out of the mosque on the thick, humid air.
After a while, they went back to accomplishing all of the small tasks that needed doing around the village. They got chatting to the other aid-workers from Delaney, Chung and Bell. Mac found that she didn't get much opportunity to talk to Harm. She was quite thankful, not exactly over his earlier barbed comment. Instead, she chatted to a woman called Sheila who was from New Jersey. Harm talked to a man whom Sheila introduced to them as Eric, her husband who came from Amsterdam.
After a while, Cate returned from yet another trip to the market and Mac marvelled at the huge load of purchases that she had in the basket, perched Malay-style, on top of her head. Cate's neck and back looked to be strong but elegant and she seemed to glide along the dirt road, her hands above her head, keeping the basket balanced properly. Her slim build was accentuated by her long, flowing batik sarong and, as her linen blouse had ridden up, Mac noted that the navel of her flat stomach was pierced with a jewelled ring. Cate gave a small smile in reply to the greetings from all of the aid-workers, her blue eyes glittering vibrantly but still kept herself carefully focussed on her task.
Soon, the heat of the day began to fade and evening approached. Harm and Mac finished up what they were doing, then started to make their way back towards the canteen with the rest of the aid-workers. Along the way, they were distracted by a rush of excited children, running towards the jetty, stirring up an enormous amount of dust in their wake.
"Whoa!" Harm exclaimed, stopping a passing little girl. She only looked to be four or five and wasn't running quite as fast as the other, older children.
"What is it, Teja?" he asked the excited child.
"Chigu Cate!" she exclaimed, "Chigu Cate!"
Neither Harm nor Mac knew exactly what that meant, only that it involved Cate in some way.
"Chigu is the Malay word for 'teacher'," Barry Delaney told them, "It's what all the kids here call Cate."
They set off for the jetty, suddenly curious about why Cate was attracting the village children like the pied piper.
When they got nearer, they heard the screams and laughter of excited children. It seemed that Cate, on the muddy banks of the river, had incited an all-out mud fight.
The children were simply loving it!
"This must be their own version of a snowball fight," Mac thought to herself, fighting to contain her amusement as Cate got totally pasted with mud, as the children all decided to gang up on her. Dodging a mudball to the face, Cate turned her head, catching sight of the audience up on the mainland. She beckoned to Harm, mouthing, "Help me out here!"
Harm just shook his head, smiling.
Cate gave him a sly look, then bent to scoop some more mud from in front of her. Harm noted that she had sunk up to her shins in the mud. Because he was momentarily distracted, he didn't move quickly enough to dodge the sudden mudball that Cate fired in his direction. It hit him squarely in the chest. Harm's mouth formed an 'o' of surprise, as he fought to regain his composure.
"Caitlin Alexandra Anderson !" he exclaimed, "I can't believe you just did that."
He used the force of her full name, which she had only confided in him about only a few weeks previously. Her mother, she had explained, had wanted to call her after her biological father, who had skipped out on them before Cate was born. Her maternal grandmother had refused to acknowledge this and had forced Cate's young mother to put 'Caitlin' on the birth certificate, although her mother had added 'Alexandra' as a second name. Cate, however, preferred to go by her grandmother's choice of name, not her mother's, although Harm couldn't figure out exactly why this was. Perhaps it was anger directed towards her father? However, when Harm had asked her about the man, Cate said she knew nothing about him, although her grandmother had always described him as being 'good-for-nothing' and 'about as much use as a chocolate fireguard.'
Down on the muddy bank, Cate remained extremely amused, grinning like a naughty child. All of the children were laughing hysterically and the adults on the mainland weren't much better. Lots of them shouted encouragement to Harm to go and get his own back on Cate. She looked at Harm challengingly, beckoning to him in a 'bring it on!' manner.
Harm took a deep breath, countering Cate's look with one of foreboding. Cate simply laughed, holding her ground as he made his way down the hill and through the unstable, sticky mud between them. Once he got a bit closer, they both attempted to run, though it was a lot more difficult in the unstable, grasping mud. They sprinted half-speed around the stilted posts of the jetty, before Cate slipped and Harm managed to get hold of her. Both laughing hysterically, Harm pinned her down in the mud with one hand and plastered mud over her with another. Then, Cate got in a leg swipe, knocking Harm onto his butt in the mud and she managed to get some more mud on him before he easily grabbed both of her arms and pinned them with one hand at the wrists. Grabbing her around the waist, he hauled Cate under one arm and wrestled her over to a big watery mud-hole that the children had been looking in for fish. With one last half-laugh, half-scream, Cate was dropped in with a big, muddy splash.
By the time that everyone staggered back up the embankment, they were tired out and caked in mud. Still laughing, they all made their way up into the village, the aid workers going into the canteen to eat, the muddy children and Harm, Cate and Mac heading off towards the mosque. Mac soon saw that, not far past the mosque were what looked like two large, man-made pools. There was a wall between the two and Harm explained to her that they were communal bathing-pools and that the men and women's were separate. As Harm and all of the village boys went around the wall to one, Mac followed Cate and the girls over to the other. All of the older girls jumped in without hesitation, but the little girl who had been stopped by Harm earlier stayed glued to Cate's side.
"Teja's not allowed to go in without an adult," Cate explained to Mac, "She's only five. She's not a strong swimmer. You want to come in?"
Mac hesitated and Cate persuaded, "It's not deep or anything. There's no running water in most of the houses, yet, so the villagers bathe here. It's good enough to get some of the grime washed off."
At this, she grinned, pulling at her mud-caked clothes.
Mac laughed and nodded in agreement. She had been soaked through with the hot weather that afternoon and a cooling swim didn't sound like such a bad idea. They entered the water fully clothed and joined the rest of the children, the little girl, Teja, ensconced carefully in Cate's arms. After washing Teja off and rising her hair through, Cate passed her to Mac to hold while she washed herself off. After attending to her clothes, she untied her sticky, muddy hair and leaned backwards, rinsing it out. She left her long, dark-blonde hair down and held her arms out to Teja, who left Mac's arms and doggie-paddled across to her. The little girl demonstrated her swimming skills a couple more times, swimming back and forth between the two of them in turn. Mac clapped her hands when she got back to Cate again, approving, "Bagus!"
After a while, they looked over to see Harm sitting beside the water's edge, watching Cate with Teja, smiling.
"Hey!" Cate exclaimed, joking, "What are you doing peeping in here? This pool is girls-only!"
Mac headed out of the water towards him, trying to ignore the look on Harm's face. It seemed to have burnt itself into the inside of her eyelids, for some strange reason. Once Cate had disappeared home with Teja, Harm and Mac made their way back to the jetty, to board the speedboat waiting to take them back to KL city.
OOOO
Harm and Mac were sitting out on the Veranda of Harm's apartment, later that night, when Mac's insecurities from that day returned. Harm had been talking about his feelings of when he had first arrived in KL.
"It was as hot as hell that day and I'd just endured a 24 hour trip with three stops. The index used to measure haze pollution caused by forest fires over here, was especially high too, so I was feeling like I should just get on the next flight home and forget about this whole idea of starting out afresh…Luckily, things started picking up from there, or I probably would have done," Harm confided in Mac, "Victor told me all about Sepadan and the firm's involvement in lifting the village up off its knees and I just found myself thinking, 'Yeah, this is gonna be okay,' you know? Hell, I didn't think twice about just diving into work there. Cate was the one who first showed me around and explained how things worked there. Without her, I probably wouldn't have had the guts to mix with all the local residents. But, everyone there is just so friendly, you know?"
"Yeah," Mac found herself thinking, "They sure are…and I know of one person in particular."
"Cate was an enormous help, she's the one taught me the smattering of Malay that I know," Harm continued, clueless of Mac's thoughts.
"She seems to be quite comfortable speaking the language," Mac commented, thinking at the same time, "Yeah and very comfortable around you…"
"Believe it or not, she was as nervous as hell about starting teaching in the village school," Harm told Mac, "She thought that she might come out with some wrong words, or some bad ones! There's this guy in the village, Ridwan, who teaches the aid workers all of the curse words in Malay! Cate was sure that she'd come out with some before her first day was out!"
Mac found herself smiling, despite the insecurities bouncing about in her head. It wasn't that she didn't like Cate, she really felt that she had connected with the young woman over the course of the day. She could see a lot of her young self in Cate, funnily enough…She just didn't like the thought of anyone else being with Harm. She had always felt the same with Renee and Jordan, even with Annie Pendry, on a subconscious level. Besides, Cate was twenty-two and although she was a fully-grown woman, Harm was forty. Hell, Harm's little brother Sergei was the same age as Cate…Would she be the only one to think that was a bit strange? He was nearly double Cate's age…
Harm had noticed Mac looking thoughtful, since they had returned home that evening. He decided to ignore it for the time being, to see if she would come out with what was bothering her on her own.
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