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‘It’s so busy,’ she said. ‘It’s hard to believe that this is an island. I don’t know how you can bear to drive through these streets. I’ve never seen anything like it, honestly.’

‘You will remember it well when you get back to Australia, I should imagine.’ He did not look at her and gave all his attention to driving in this confusion.

‘Yes.’ Her voice was soft. ‘I will.’

‘To find parking, that is the big problem,’ he went on, as he was being waved on by a traffic policeman.

‘I thought you said Mauritius has a saying—it’s no problem.’ Suddenly she laughed, and was surprised when he flew into a temper.

‘Everywhere there are no stopping signs,’ he snapped. ‘Can’t you see that for yourself?’

There were the usual skinny island dogs, all the same shape and size, which roamed the entire island. Vehicles missed them by a mere hair-breadth.

‘I usually find parking down at the harbour,’ Laurent was saying. ‘I think I will go back there.’

It was the first time Jade had ever seen him at a loss over something and she felt a twinge of spiteful satisfaction. There was a vitality and impatience about him, which she found endearing, as he hunted for a parking space, and the spite in her died. When he had found one he turned to her and said, ‘I do not suffer fools gladly, and that policeman who waved me on just now was a fool.’

‘Everybody is a fool except you,’ she said.

‘Exactly.’ Suddenly they were laughing. ‘You look radiant, cool, beautiful and very feminine,’ said Laurent, ‘if a little pale today. Why is this, do you think?’

‘Perhaps I was jealous,’ she felt reckless, ‘when Marcelle phoned.’

‘So?’ He got out of the car and went round to her side and opened the door for her. ‘Let us go and haggle for bargains. What would you like me to buy you?’

‘A little phoenix,’ she told him, laughing. ‘Even a plastic one will do.’

They began walking. There were smells of curry, incense, hot ghee and dhal in cooking pots. Girls with rattling bangles, caste marks and marriage dots wove in and out of the traffic, which was nothing short of hideous.

‘You either hate Port Louis or you love it,’ Laurent said, pronouncing it ‘Paw-loo-ee.’ ‘If you buy, be careful. Be careful, also, of so-called antiques. Many of these co-called bargains are clearly of dubious authenticity.’

‘I won’t be buying anything,' Jade said. 'I can’t take too much back to Australia or England with me.’

What did she hope to gain by reminding him that she would be leaving Mauritius? she asked herself.

They visited shops, some of them very dark, with goods from Thailand, India, Japan, China and the Philippines. Jade examined Thai silks and cottons and Chinese shantung.

Along with other people and skinny dogs, they crossed the streets, aware of the grinding of traffic and unlike those other people and the dogs who seemed impervious to it.

Jade stepped over fermenting vegetables which had become scattered, and once when she nearly slipped and fell, Laurent caught her to him. ‘Careful, my darling.’

My darling .... My darling ....

‘My darling,’ she repeated, laughing at him, ‘isn’t that cynicism?' Her hair blew across her face and she shook it back.

‘Not at all. I prefer to call it irony.' The voice that had been softly caressing and agreeable had changed.

‘I think I’d rather buy something from your shop in Curepipe,' she said.

‘I want you to buy something in Port Louis.' His voice was still abrupt. ‘Maybe you will take it out one day, and think of today.’

‘What about you?’ she asked. ‘Will you think of today—when I’m gone?’

‘For sure.’ He shrugged offhandedly. ‘I told you, didn't I, that after business hours I sit and overlook the coral reef? I have a drink and my mind seems free to think ... if I so wish.’

‘Free to think of the girls you’ve had island romances with?’

‘But this is unbelievable! ’ He moved away from her. ‘Look in this window ... a flawless white muttonfat jade phoenix. It is waiting for you.’ He put an arm about her shoulders and his lips brushed her hair and she felt like weeping at the closeness of him. ‘I want you to have it. Come.’

The shop was a cut above most. They examined the eternal phoenix. Jade found herself trying to work out what it must be costing Laurent and then she said, ‘I couldn’t allow you to buy this for me, really.’

‘Why not?’ he snapped, turning to look at her in the gloomy shop. ‘Tell me—why not?’

‘I couldn’t accept this costly thing from you.’ Her voice broke suddenly. ‘You—you don’t have to buy me.’ She put her fingers over her face.

'Buy you?'
He took her roughly by the shoulders, while the Chinese gentleman looked on with an inscrutable expression. ‘I have no intention of buying you.' Laurent’s strange sea-green eyes were furious. ‘Look at me! ’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ve had enough of this whole thing. I’m through.’

‘Let me put it this way,’ his voice was hard. ‘So have I had enough of this whole thing. I love you too much for these damn silly games.’

He had forced her hands away from her face and she looked back at him through tears.

‘Love me? D-did you say
—love
me?’

They had a small, excited audience now.

‘Yes, I said I love you.' He shook her by the shoulders.

‘But... you said that you weren’t faithful to any one particular girl—that variety was the spice of life.’

‘I know I said that. What did you expect me to say —first it was Marlow Lewis, then this other man in Australia who waits for you.’

‘But Marcelle?’ Her blue eyes searched his.

‘There has been no other woman for me—that goes for Marcelle, and Nicole as well. I knew I wanted you on that plane. What is it with you, anyway? There have been times when I have been so sure of you—sure enough to ask you to be done with this and marry me ... and then you come up with another Australian! ’ Suddenly Jade was laughing and crying at the same time. ‘Ask me,’ she said.
Ask
me, Laurent.’

She watched, wide-eyed, as Laurent turned to the Chinese. ‘Sir, you will be my witness, no, while I ask this lady to be my wife?’

‘But surely!’ There was a rustle of excitement from the audience, murmurings and soft laughter.

‘Darling,’ Laurent’s arms went around her, ‘will you marry me?’

‘Yes,’ she answered, and bit her lip.

‘And what about this Australian who waits like an idiot in Australia for you to make up your mind?’

‘When I’m unhappy and jealous and uncertain,’ she confessed, ‘I don’t create any limitations for myself. I invented him.’

‘In future,' he said, ‘stop to ask yourself what you’re talking about. I have a frank admiration for those who are inventors, but in this case, the inventor went too far.’

They went out into the sunshine, 'Thank you,’ said Jade, ‘for the phoenix, Laurent.’

Port Louis, with its teeming streets and alleyways, sagging architecture, market-places and heady scents of spices, chillies, saffron, masala, pepper and cloves, was suddenly, for her, a place of oleander and hibiscus bushes, behind old railings; a mosaic of races, customs, creeds, cultures and languages.

‘Do you remember what I once said to you?' Laurent looked at her.

‘You've said so many things to me ... some of them quite brutal and uncaring! ’

‘I said—if I touch the fingers of a girl who attracts me I have got to go as far as I can with her. There was only one such girl, and her name was Jade. Some things you don’t understand. After warning one had been given I went to the hotel to look for you, and I was told that you had gone to—to this hunter’s plantation house. Immediately I got into my car and rushed up to Curepipe to my business to see that all was in order there before the cyclone. I knew I had time. And then I was coming on to Marlow's house for you. What I had not taken into account was the fact that Marcelle was almost hysterical then, so I told her to get into the car and I would take her home. There is a bridge to her place and when we got there it had already been washed away. I had no option, then, but to turn back. In this area the roads are normally bad and in no time they were impossible. I got to you only in time, do you know that, my darling?' He took her fingers in his own and kissed them. Suddenly he smiled. ‘And, like you said, things backfired for me and I landed up with two girls. Can’t you understand—there was only one girl I wanted there? That girl was you.’

They stood crushed together in the mass of people, while he kissed her.