Catching the Sun

‘Come on, mate,’ Jesse shouted. ‘We’re going home.’

I looked up but he wasn’t talking to me. Jesse slid from his stool and took the hand of the gibbon.

The creature adjusted its cowboy hat and fell into step beside him, its free arm trailing, and there was much wailing and moaning among the bar girls as the pair of them disappeared through the curtain that covered the door.

The mamma-san spoke sharply to the girls. You didn’t need any Thai to know she was telling them that Jesse had won the gibbon fair and square and they should get back to work. One of the girls wiped her eyes with her fingers and started packing away the Connect Four. I headed for the door.

Out on the street Jesse and the gibbon were already settled in the back of a tuk-tuk. The gibbon stared straight ahead with its depthless black eyes, unsentimental about leaving its place of work, although holding on to its hat as if fearing it might blow away on the ride home. I called Jesse’s name but he didn’t hear me, and the tuk-tuk puttered off down the Bangla Road, trailing smoke.

Back inside the bar Farren and Baxter were shaking hands.

‘We’re going to clean up!’ Baxter bawled over the song they were playing and when he stood up to embrace Farren his sturdy legs overturned a table of glass and beer and overpriced fruit juice.

It was ‘Highway To Hell’ by AC/DC.

I recognized it now.

It felt very early when I left them to it in the bar, but by the time I got back to Nai Yang it seemed very late, as though everyone around here had gone to sleep hours ago.

The lights were off in the Botans’ house. In our place there was a light left on for me. I wheeled the Royal Enfield into the shed as quietly as I could and stood there in the moonlight, smelling the clean air, just a hint of sulphur from the mangroves, and hearing the insect-drone of the traffic.

Our house was still unfamiliar to me and in the darkness I held out a hand to guide myself, the hard wood of the wall panels cool and smooth and somehow comforting against the palm of my hand. In the bedroom I undressed quickly in the darkness. When I curled up against Tess she murmured and pressed herself against me and I buried my face in her hair.

‘Good day?’ I said softly.

‘They’re all good days,’ said Tess. ‘How about you? Is everyone really friendly? Did you meet anyone you like?’

‘There’s an English kid called Jesse. He’s full of himself but I like him.’

I didn’t tell her about the gibbon and I didn’t tell her about the Australian who tried to strangle my boss and I didn’t tell her about the little Muslim girl on a motorbike. Because I wanted it to be true – for all of the days to be good days. But it felt like there was a lot I couldn’t tell Tess if I wanted her to keep her smile. And I wanted that more than anything.

‘You need to talk to Farren about our visas,’ she said, more asleep than awake now. ‘Your work permit. All of the paperwork. We need to get that sorted.’

‘Tess?’

‘What?’

‘Nothing. Close your eyes, angel.’

Soon I felt her slip into sleep but I stayed awake for a long time, curled up against her, my face in her hair, listening to the distant buzz of the motorbikes out there in the wide wild night.

4

The pick-up truck woke me just after dawn.

I could hear the diesel engine rumbling right outside our bedroom window as it slowly backed up our narrow road.

‘Somebody must have the wrong place,’ I told Tess, pulling on my jeans.

I went out on the porch. The open back of the pick-up truck was piled impossibly high with pallets of plastic bottles of water. The pallets were stacked higher than the cabin. It was one of those sights you saw all the time in Phuket – loads that seemed to violate every law, especially the one about gravity. The driver’s face frowned with concentration as he carefully reversed past a banana tree.

Mr and Mrs Botan came out to watch. I looked at them and smiled, hoping they would take responsibility for the delivery. But Mrs Botan just shouted something at the driver. She seemed to be telling him to be more careful with our banana tree. Some of the thick leaves, still shiny with rain, had already been ripped off by the truck and littered the road.

Tess came out of the house, tucking a T-shirt into her shorts. The driver seemed to know her. He leaned out of his window, holding out an invoice, tapping it for a signature.

‘Not this much!’ she said, shaking her head at the mountain of mineral water, and I heard the sharp tone of the teacher she was back in England. ‘I didn’t order this much!’

The water came in cellophane-wrapped six-packs – big bottles, 1.5 litres, with a dozen of the big six-packs on every cardboard pallet, and another layer of cellophane over that, and too many of the pallets to count.

‘Reckon we’ve got enough water, Tess?’ I smiled, and she shot me a look before ripping the invoice from the driver’s hands. He was talking in Thai, very insistent now, and Tess was standing up to him, staring hard at the paperwork. ‘But I can’t read this,’ she said. ‘It’s all in Thai.’

Rory and Keeva came slowly out of the house, still in their pyjamas, still rumpled and sleepy from bed. We all stared at the pick-up truck.

‘I wanted a twenty of the six-packs,’ Tess was telling the driver. ‘Not all these – what do you call them?’

‘Pallets,’ I said.

It was getting heated. Mr and Mrs Botan came over to help, or perhaps just to get a better view. The old man looked at the invoice and nodded thoughtfully.

‘He is right,’ Mr Botan said. ‘You ordered a lot of water.’

Mrs Botan was more concerned about Tess.

‘Jai yen,’ she told Tess. ‘Jai yen. Keep a cool heart.’

Tess and I looked at each other. We had never heard of jai yen before. We had not heard the words or the concept. Where we came from, great importance was placed on being warm-hearted. But in Thailand they believed in the opposite. They believed in jai yen. Mrs Botan took Tess by the hand and gently stroked her arm, smiling as she taught her about the benefits of a cool heart.

‘All right,’ Tess said, and she nodded curtly at the driver. ‘My mistake. Sorry.’

‘Good,’ Mrs Botan said.

We kept the water. We kept a cool heart. The neighbours and the driver, all smiles now, helped us to unload it. I moved the motorbike out of the way and we stored it in the shed that passed for a garage.

‘Mai pen rai,’ the old lady told Tess. ‘Never mind. The water will keep. Never mind, never mind.’

When the water was unloaded, Tess and Mrs Botan and the children went inside our neighbours’ house for breakfast while I stood outside with Mr Botan as he smoked a cigarette. You could tell that he wasn’t allowed to do it in their house. The sky rumbled and cracked somewhere out to sea. You could see the storm clouds gather and the lightning flash.

‘Will it rain again soon?’ I asked him.

Mr Botan considered the sky. He took a long pull on his cigarette.

‘It hasn’t rained since yesterday,’ he said.

I digested this information, and wondered what it could possibly mean. We watched the sky in silence for a while.

‘How long do you stay?’ Mr Botan asked.

‘What?’ I said, shocked by the question. Wild Palm had a year’s lease on our little villa, and Farren had told me with a smile that Mr Botan had insisted on half of the money in advance. But I knew my neighbour was not asking me about leases or rent money.