Catching the Sun

Jesse sat with his head between his legs and Pirin and I stepped aside to allow two Thai fighters to enter the ring. Their bodies shone and dazzled under the lights and although I had taken it for sweat, I saw now that they were oiled. There were curved rope bandanas around their foreheads, and thin coloured scarves around their biceps. They both circled the ring, lightly touching its ropes.

‘Keeping out evil spirits,’ Jesse said, and I looked at him, expecting to see mockery in his face. But his eyes, closing as I looked at them from the beating he had taken, were misty with belief.

The two Muay Thai fighters got down on their knees and touched their heads to the ground. They spread their arms wide and then, still on their knees, one leg out and one leg back, they began rocking on the rear foot. It was somewhere between a prayer and a warm-up, a stretch and a meditation.

‘The wai kru,’ Jesse said.

‘Remember and respect,’ Pirin nodded. ‘Your ancestor. Your teacher. Your country. Your god. Your king.’

The fighters were in the centre of the ring, smiling – unbelievably smiling – gently touching gloves, gently touching foreheads, gently patting each other on the shoulder, offering an almost fraternal support to their opponent. No, there was no ‘almost’ in it. For even their smiles were gentle. They did not look as though they were about to fight. They looked like they shared a mother.

‘Ah,’ said Pirin. ‘Showing more respect.’

But it did not look like respect. It looked like something deeper than that. It looked like something stronger than that. And I felt that for all the similarities that Farren saw between the British and the Thais, they had things that we did not. They were better at showing love to each other.

The fight began. With the fights that involved Westerners – and it wasn’t just Jesse, there were a few farang on the bill – the fights all began at the same unforgiving pace. But when two Thais fought, they seemed to share a dance before the fighting began – rolling their heads, and practising a few shy kicks and bashful strikes, as though they might call the whole thing off and have a cup of tea and cuddle instead. But then it suddenly escalated and they tore into each other without mercy, and when you saw two Thais fight full out, the ferocity of it trapped the breath in your chest.

‘Look at that,’ Jesse said, perking up. ‘It’s like ballet with blood and broken bones and no protection. Can you believe it, Tom? No protection. No headguard. Not even a bloody vest. Just a genital cup and a magic tattoo.’

‘A magic tattoo?’ I smiled.

Jesse nodded at Pirin. ‘Show him,’ he said.

Pirin lifted up a T-shirt that said Stockholm Marathon 2002. There was a tattoo of a tiger covering his entire chest.

‘Makes the wearer invincible,’ Jesse said, and he chuckled, as the north of England staged a brief comeback in his traitor’s soul. ‘Until he gets hit by a tuk-tuk.’

Pirin was pulling down his T-shirt.

‘Very good protection,’ the Thai confirmed, as if discussing the contents clause of a reasonably priced home insurance policy.

Jesse began to weep and I put my arm around him and rocked him as I would one of my children as he hid his face against me.

‘Maybe it’s not for me,’ he said into my chest. ‘Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I am wasting my time. Maybe I have been kidding myself.’

Pirin tucked in his Stockholm Marathon 2002 T-shirt, and he stared at the broken boy in my arms thoughtfully, and then he told us about the man who would know of these things, as the band played faster still.

The fortune teller’s office was a stone table cemented to the ground of an alley on the dimly lit edge of Phuket town.

The mor duu, Pirin called him – the fortune teller – was a plump old man with a fine head of white hair, and by his side was a battered briefcase that spilled out ancient books and pictures of holy men all sitting in the same position – legs crossed, hands resting lightly in the lap of their saffron robes, and nobody saying cheese for the camera.

There was a sign on the table, a drawing of the palms of a pair of hands, divided into sections. Pirin was ushered forward. Stuck to the wall behind the mor duu was a banner the size of a bed sheet, covered with drawings of elephants and warriors and peasants and gods and kings and assorted unidentified beasts. To me it looked more Hindu than Buddhist, more Indian than Thai. But what did I know? I assumed that the chequered board that was painted on the table was part of the routine. But as Pirin took his place opposite the mor duu, I saw that that was where the old men of the alley – they called it a soi, which could mean anything from a side road to a narrow little backstreet – played their games of chess. The mor duu took Pirin’s hands and stared at them as my friend gave him all his latest news and worries.

The mor duu – and maybe the all-seeing doctor is closer than fortune teller because Pirin was treating his session more like practical advice than an old girl with a crystal ball and big earrings looking into the future – read Pirin’s palms, and then flicked through one of the ancient books, now and then pointing to numbers with the tip of his heavily chewed biro. I couldn’t understand their conversation, but it sounded exactly like the meeting I had had with my accountant when he told me that my building business was finished and that I was bankrupt.

Pirin wai-ed and paid the mor duu, nodding at me as he stood up.

‘Now you,’ he said.

I laughed and shook my head, and pointed at Jesse, and said that this is the one who needs to know what the future holds, and if he is on the right path, and all that stuff, but the old seeing doctor was indicating the chair opposite him and Pirin was smiling encouragement, and Jesse was shoving me forward, and saying I should go first, as if he was scared of what he might be told, and in the end it would have seemed rude of me to refuse.

The mor duu took my right hand. I held out the left, trying to be helpful, but he shook his head and I pulled it away.

I grinned self-consciously at Jesse and Pirin as the old man rubbed the fleshy bit of my hand, where the thumb meets the palm, but they were both watching the face of the mor duu.

The tips of his fingers ran over my skin, and he poked and stroked the lines of my hand, as if they were the years of my life that remained.

I realized that I had stopped smiling.

He spoke to me in English.

‘An inch ahead is darkness,’ he told me.

I snatched my hand away and stood up and walked off, as Pirin and the old man barked at each other in Thai, something about money. Jesse came after me, but he was limping from the fight and I broke into a run and I did not stop until I found the soi by the stadium where I had left the bike. I shot past Jesse on the Royal Enfield, and he called out something but it was lost in the noise of my leaving.

I never rode faster in Phuket than I did that night. The roads, and the number of crashes, always frightened me, even during the dry weather, and I more or less attempted to stay within the speed limit at all times, and more or less on the correct side of the road.

But that night my heart was pounding with dread, and I flew home as fast as I could, up the long road out of Phuket City and past the wobbling flocks of drunken tourists who rule the beaches of the west, and then still further north, the fat farang and their burned faces and skinny girls way behind me now, up into the lush green far north of rubber plantations that were blacker than the night, even the green hills black, and passing through the villages that appear out of nowhere and are suddenly gone, as if you might have imagined them, and temples so big and golden and deserted that they can only be real but could be the ruins of some lost civilization, always on the lookout for dreamy locals taking a stroll and little children who stayed up very late and the odd water buffalo who had decided to sit down and take a nap in the middle of one of those dark dark roads, pushing the old Royal Enfield as hard as I could, the diesel roar mixing with the boom-boom-boom in my head, because I had to get home to my family.

The lights were all blazing. I left the bike out front and went inside, pulling off my helmet, my hair plastered down and wet, my entire body slick with sweat, and it took me a few long moments to realize that there was a row.

‘She’s being difficult,’ Tess said, standing above Keeva at the dining table. Our girl hung her head, a book open in front of her. In the corner Rory lounged in a chair, reading a handbook with some kind of rodent on the cover. He was keeping out of it.

‘She wouldn’t work today,’ Tess told me, and Keeva did not move a muscle. ‘She wouldn’t eat her dinner. So I have asked her to read and now she can’t even do that.’

‘It’s hot,’ Keeva said, looking up with narrowed, resentful eyes. ‘It’s hot all the time.’

‘Oh, do you want to lounge by the pool all day?’ Tess said. ‘Shall we rent a banana boat instead of working? Shall I get room service to send up a Knickerbocker Glory?’

Tess looked at me as if I might have something to say, or order from room service, but I shook my head.

‘I didn’t say I wanted ice cream!’ Keeva said. ‘I just said it was hot. And it is hot.’ Then the clincher. ‘I don’t like it here, okay? Is that allowed?’

‘I like it,’ Rory piped up, although nobody had asked him. ‘I like Mr and Mrs Botan. I like Mummy teaching us. And I like the island.’ He settled comfortably into his chair, turning back to his book with the rodent on the cover. ‘There’s more animals than England,’ he said.

Keeva erupted.

‘You like it because you didn’t have any friends,’ she shouted at him. ‘Only a hamster and me! Your sister and a pathetic hamster!’

‘I had friends,’ Rory said defensively. ‘Just not special ones. I was friends with everyone.’

Keeva’s face was cloudy with tears.

‘But I had Amber,’ she said, and her face crumpled at the thought of the lost friend back in London. ‘I had her. Oh, Amber, Amber, Amber!’

I was by Keeva’s side now and I touched her shoulder as lightly as I could.

‘Angel,’ I said. ‘It’s a big change and it takes some getting used to.’