A wave of hot, wet tropical air slaps us as we step off the plane in Tahiti. The first hint of our honeymoon. We don’t see much of Tahiti itself, just a runway, landing lights, an almost empty airport concourse, another departure gate, and then we’re airborne again.
Our flight to Bora Bora is via a small plane with brightly dressed hostesses. Somehow Mark sleeps on the short, bumpy flight. I manage to finish reading the magazine I picked up from the Concorde lounge at Heathrow; it’s an extremely niche quarterly dressage publication titled Piaffe. I know nothing about dressage—my teenage girl’s basic riding knowledge doesn’t quite stretch to advanced equine showing—but the magazine looked so far removed from anything I’d ever seen before that I had to pick it up. Turns out that “piaffe” is when the horse stands in the middle of the arena and trots up and down on the spot. So there you go. Bet you’re glad we found that out. I do like things like that, though; I’ve always been into reading whatever is lying about, the less I know about it the better. I remember someone at film school suggesting developing that habit: always read outside your comfort zone. That’s where stories come from. That’s where ideas come from. Anyway, I can highly recommend Piaffe. It lost me slightly in the horse-feed section, but, overall, interesting stuff. If not directly for its content, then definitely to wonder at the lifestyles, and habits, of its average reader.
Bora Bora Airport is tiny. Two beaming women garland us upon arrival. The white flowers hang sweet and musky around our necks as a porter leads us toward a jetty in the water outside the terminal. The airport and its runway take up one entire island of their own on the atoll of Bora Bora. The whole airport island is just a long stretch of tarmac, edged with balding dry grass and a terminal building afloat in the blue of the South Pacific. A real-world visual representation of man’s dominance over nature.
A speedboat waits for us, beautiful in understated varnished wood, at the end of the jetty, like a Venetian water taxi. Our water taxi driver takes my hand and helps me down into the deck seating. He offers me a warm blanket for my knees.
“It can get pretty breezy when we get going.” He smiles. He’s got a kind face, like the women in the airport. I suppose there’s not that much to worry about out here, no city life to harden you.
Mark passes our bags down and hops on himself and then we’re off. It’s dark as we speed around the coves and bays. I wish we’d arranged the flights so we could see this in daylight. I bet it’s breathtaking, but right now in the darkness I see only the twinkling lights along the shoreline and the huge moon hanging across the water. The brilliant white moon. I’m certain the moon’s not this bright back in England. But it must be. Maybe we just can’t see how bright it is through all the light pollution back there.
England seems so far away now. Those hedged lanes, the frosty grass. I feel a brief pang for it, nine thousand miles away, misty and cold. My hair whips around my face in the perfumed breeze. We’re slowing down now. Nearly there. I turn back to look at the mainland, the shoreline, and the lights of the Four Seasons. And there it is.
The water all around glows emerald, up-lit through the green lagoon water. Soft candlelight bathes the thatched buildings, the communal areas, restaurants, and bars. Flaming torches flicker along the beachfront. Huts on stilts spill their orange warmth out into the thick darkness of the South Pacific Ocean. And that moon. That moon, shining as bright as a high beam on a country road, shining out from behind the sharp towering silhouette of Mount Otemanu, the extinct volcano at the center of Bora Bora’s atoll. We’re here.
The water laps placidly around us as we slowly put-put in. Candles light up the jetty and a welcome party ties us off and pulls us in. More garlands. Sweetly scented, spicy. Water. Cool towels. A slice of orange. And a golf buggy whisks us along the stilted walkways toward our new home.
We’ve got a fantastic room, Mark made sure of that. The best they have. An overwater lagoon bungalow at the end of the pier. Private plunge pool, private lagoon access, glass-floored bathroom. We pull up to the door and there’s a welcome talk but we’re tired now. I can see through Mark’s smiles to his tired eyes, and the hotel staff must see it too. We’re exhausted. The intro is blessedly brief.
The buggy buzzes away from us back down the walkway, leaving us alone outside our suite. Mark looks at me as the sound of the buggy recedes. He drops his bags and lunges toward me, grabbing my waist with one arm and my thighs with the other and I’m up in the air, cradled in his arms. I kiss the end of his nose. He grins and fumbles us over the threshold.
Four days of the holiday go by. A dream. A turquoise, warm-sanded dream.
Breakfasts canoed across the rippling green of the lagoon to us. Juicy ripe fruits that I don’t even know the names of. Padding barefoot across cool-tiled floors and hot decking. Slipping into clear pool water. Letting the sun soak deep into my tired English skin right down into my damp British bones.
Mark in the sunlight. Mark’s glistening body through the water. My fingers running through his wet hair, across his browning skin. Damp sex tangled up in sheets. The soft hum of air conditioning. I model a flipbook of delicate, beautiful underwear every day. Cobweb-thin black lace with glinting crystals, fuchsia blooms, brassy red, cheap white, rich cream, silk, satin. Long, easy conversations across paddleboards and bars. As we decided, I stopped taking the pill seven weeks ago. We make plans.
A helicopter tour of the surrounding islands. The thick thudding of rotor blades through cushioned headsets. Endless blue in every direction, above and below. Forests seemingly growing clean out of the ocean. A heaven on earth.
The pilot tells us that, out past the reefs, the waves tower so high that seaplanes can’t even land on the water. This is the second-most-remote island chain in the world. The waves here are the largest waves on the planet. We see them breaking, rolling, through the Perspex floor of the helicopter, through its windows. We are thousands of miles from mainland, from the nearest continent.
Desert islands crest up out of the ocean. Cartoon drawings made real. The smallest circles of sand to the craggiest peaks, all with at least one palm tree. Why do desert islands always have palm trees? Because coconuts float. They float across the ocean, they float alone for thousands of miles, until they beach and plant themselves in the hot sand. Their roots sink deep, right down into the earth until they hit the rock-filtered fresh water far under the ground. Like swimmers finally making it to shore.
A day spent snorkeling in the soft water of the lagoon. I think of the cold weather back at home as I float quietly, surrounded by great gliding manta rays, like gray ghosts made flesh, rippling muscular through the pristine silence.
Mark books out the scuba-training pool for us, just me and him. A session to ease me back in. The bad experience, the one before I met Mark, shall be forgotten, he promises. I was only twenty-one when it happened, but I remember it with crystal clarity. I panicked at eighteen meters under. I don’t know why but I suddenly became certain that I was going to die. I thought of my mum. I thought of the fear she must have felt, trapped in that car. I let my thoughts take over and I panicked. I remember people saying at the time I was lucky it worked out the way it did because it might not have. I could have easily taken a great gasping breath of seawater. But I don’t panic these days. I don’t let my thoughts take over. At least I haven’t since then.