The women often sat and made extravagant plans for shopping trips, telling the Sakai women they must come to Rinsey after the troubles and they would give them pretty materials and cooking pots. Lee always became quite animated as she talked of things she would buy — but first she was going to the cinema at Ipoh. ‘I’d like find boyfriend go with,’ she confided. ‘Then a trip to the shops of Kuala Lumpur.’

Liz proposed they should all go to Singapore for a holiday. ‘We’ll shop until we just can’t carry another thing and our feet are ready to drop off.’

‘Then we go eat fancy cakes in restaurant,’ Ch’ing had said, and a whole new topic opened up.

Alan stirred on the bed and she wondered how long it would be before they were all plunged back into their own lives. She realised that she had to treasure this time. What a place for a honeymoon! she thought.

Alan was still distressingly skinny, but already it was possible to see a difference. The bones in his shoulders no longer looked as if you could grasp them like handles.

The following morning she asked Sardin to come to help Alan down so he might walk about outside.

Alan hesitated at the top of the house ladder. As an interested crowd gathered, Bras and Sardin took his hesitation as an invitation to help and practically carried him down to ground level.

‘Terra firma — I think,’ Alan said, moving cautiously for the first time on real ground. ‘Though it still feels as if it has a spring in it, like the house floor.’

‘Afraid it’s your knees.’ Lee laughed.

‘I should have done more exercise, some knee bends,’ he said as he made a brave if unsteady attempt at just that.

‘You need swimming,’ Bras informed him.

The remark was greeted by the women putting their hands over their mouths to hide their smiles and Pa Kasut clearing his throat in the manner of all fathers mildly censoring their sons.

Alan thought of the last swim he’d had — in a river battling with a lethal packing case with Danny on the bank — and found nothing to laugh at.

‘Is there a swimming place?’ Liz asked.

‘Oh, yes.’ Bras pointed up between two high peaks of rock, then swooped his hand over and down.

‘Between those peaks? she asked. ‘It looks a long walk.’

‘No so far,’ Bras said. Again the Sakais, male and female, seemed to find it a big joke.

‘Is there something wrong with the place?’ Liz demanded of Pa Kasut.

‘No,’ he replied at once and with complete conviction, ‘very good place.’

‘Then why is everyone grinning? Does everyone come to watch or something?’

Bras looked very solemn. ‘No, very private.’

‘Lee and I will go and look,’ Liz decided. ‘While Alan builds up his walking strength around the village.’

‘Perhaps they’re just pleased for us,’ Liz pondered that afternoon as she and Lee headed up between the two sugar-cone peaks of rock.

‘They do have a right to be,’ Lee said, but then burst into laughter, ‘and ... ’

Liz stopped. ‘And what? Now you’re doing it.’

Lee ran on ahead. ‘I’ll tell you when we get there. I want to see it.’

It really wasn’t far. The path twisted almost back on itself and there between the high rocky peaks was a deep green miniature valley and in the middle a serene mountain pool. Its unruffled surface contained a perfect reproduction of the surrounding trees, the overhanging branches, the hills beyond.

The two young women walked towards the water feeling as if entranced. When they reached its edge, Liz turned to Lee for explanation.

‘This pool has a legend,’ she told her. ‘Many, many years ago a beautiful Kedan princess ran away with her lover. They were chased by her father’s men and he was killed. She escaped to this place but was so lonely and when she found she was with child she drowned herself in this pool. The folk story says that if any woman wants a child she has only to bathe in the waters, or just sip them.’

‘So that’s why they were all laughing.’

‘That Bras is a bit of lad, I think.’

Liz looked out across the pool and felt even the legend was no match for the beauty of the place. Then she realised that Lee was stripping off her sarong. ‘You’re going to — ’ She stopped; what a stupid question! She began to pull off her own slacks and shirt.

She launched herself into the cool, deep waters, swimming slowly, almost reverently. She felt as if the grime and the cares of all the world were washed away by the balminess of the water, by the green hills, the blue bowl of the sky tipped over and balanced on the tops of the peaks. She was indeed a stranger in paradise, she thought, and felt that tranquillity and insight were fleetingly hers. The whole mystic East held her thralled in its mountainous cup.

Turning on her back, she floated as high on the water as she could, so that she could feel the heat of the sun on her face, her breasts, her thighs, but could not look up into it because of its power. No wonder, she thought, the pool had a legend.

The next moment she gasped as a great smashing shower of water made her splutter. Lee had swum gently round and was now splashing her with her feet as hard as she could. Liz retaliated and the two played like the children they had been together. They thrashed around in the water as if suddenly making up for all the lost years during the war.

Once exhaustion had been reached, the two swam away from each other. The waves they had created became ripples and, as they finally climbed out and up to where they had left their clothes, they watched the waters become quite calm, and again reflect in stillness and serenity the surrounding scene: the near branches dipping in places to the surface; the green hills; the far peaks. ‘As if we never were,’ Liz whispered.

‘You must bring Alan here soon,’ Lee said equally quietly. There was a note in her voice that echoed Liz’s knowledge that their time at this place was growing short.

‘I will,’ she said with meaningful certainty, then, catching her friend’s hand the way they had done as children when either needed to elicit a favour from the other, ‘but promise me you’ll let me tell him the legend.’

The next day Liz persuaded Alan to walk towards the pool. Her enthusiasm for the place made him curious, yet disinclined to think he’d ever swim there.

‘Why,’ he asked, ‘do I have the feeling that this place is ... different? I keep thinking of those boys’ adventure stories where such places are either kept for human sacrifice — or you come back married!’

‘What a terrible idea!’ She led him on slowly until they reached the mountain pool, then she sat down on the mound where she and Lee had undressed before and let him walk on alone, as enchanted as she had been with the first sighting.

Standing by the edge of the water, he felt the strangest sense of recognition for the place. Déjà vu? he wondered. Was this the very lagoon of peace he had been promised after death? He thought if his soul had left his body, as they say sometimes happens, then it had hovered above this place and now he saw it again.

Unlike all the churning brown rivers he had seen, this was clear, clearer even than the falls at Rinsey. Here the water had collected straight from the mountain rock.

Liz came quietly up behind him and slipped her arms around his waist. His hands came down over hers and held them there. Both kept their eyes on the view as she told him the legend.

‘It’s true, of course,’ he said simply. Then he turned and took her into his arms. This was their first real embrace since his slow recovery had begun. Liz closed her eyes and felt she had come home.

He stooped to kiss her brow. ‘You have a swim. I’ll wait until I can walk the whole distance here without a stop, then I’ll go in.’

She undressed before him, using none of the provocative movements that any woman is capable of, but taking care to expose herself gracefully. She walked to the edge, stooped down and pushed off into the water, smoothly without a splash, so the ripples made even circles from her, out and out to the very edges.