Catching the Sun

Tess looked at me and something passed between us.

‘Why don’t you boys go to see Daddy’s friend?’ she said, putting an arm around Rory, now smothered in the limbs of his sister and mother. ‘The one with the – what is it?’

Rory’s wet eyes were wide. ‘The gibbon?’ he gasped. ‘The man with the gibbon?’

‘That will cheer you up,’ Tess predicted, and while I got the Royal Enfield out of the shed, she dried his eyes, wiped his nose and strapped him into a crash helmet.

Jesse was standing outside the front door of his apartment. His shirt was ripped open and his pale features were slick with sweat. There were fresh scratches on his forehead. He stared at Rory and me, as if trying to place us.

‘Yes?’ he croaked.

I was silent for a moment.

‘This is my boy,’ I told him. I waited. Nothing happened. ‘You said we could come round,’ I reminded him.

Jesse looked at us wildly.

‘To meet the gibbon,’ Rory added, his eyes blinking behind the glasses. He chewed his bottom lip. I had never seen him so excited.

Behind the shut door we heard the sound of things being smashed.

‘Ah,’ said Jesse, attempting to smile at Rory. ‘Of course. Your little boy. The nature lover. The lad who likes monkeys.’

I looked down at my son and watched his mouth tighten.

‘Gibbons are not monkeys,’ he said quietly, then shot me a look – Who is this fool? ‘Gibbons are the fastest and most agile of all tree-dwelling mammals.’

The sound of breaking glass came from within the flat.

‘Yeah, well,’ Jesse said, passing a hand through his sweat-soaked white hair. ‘Travis – my tree-dwelling mammal – is having a bad day.’ Furniture crashed against the door and we all jumped back. Down the hall a neighbour stuck her head out of her door. A woman in her forties, Thai, frowning at the crowd of foreigners standing outside the noisy apartment. ‘Fine, all fine, all under control,’ Jesse laughed. ‘Sorry about the noise, we’ll keep it down.’

The neighbour went back inside shaking her head and no doubt muttering about bloody foreigners.

‘If it’s inconvenient …’ I said.

My son glared at me – Don’t say that to him. Amazing how much your child can communicate without saying a word.

‘It’s actually really inconvenient,’ Jesse said. ‘Maybe you boys could come back some other time.’

Sounds from inside the flat, although further away from the door. Crash. Bang. A distant screech.

‘How old is Travis?’ Rory asked.

Jesse shook his head. ‘Five, they said in the bar. I got him in a bar. Rescued him, sort of. From a life of depravity. Five or six.’

‘That’s not a bad day,’ my son said. He sighed with the kind of weariness that only a nine-year-old can call upon. ‘That’s sexual maturity.’

Jesse laughed. I had to smile.

‘What do you know about sexual maturity?’ Jesse said.

Rory narrowed his eyes. ‘What do you know about gibbons?’ he said.

It was all silent inside the apartment now. I took my son’s hand but he pulled away.

‘But I want to see him,’ Rory said. He looked up at me. ‘Can we see him?’ He looked at Jesse. ‘Please, sir, may we see your gibbon?’

Jesse listened at the door. Nothing. ‘He’ll take your eyes out, kid,’ Jesse said. ‘He’s gone buck wild in there.’

‘That’s just sexual maturity,’ my son said. ‘They get to that age – five or six in gibbons – and they want to mate with you or fight with you.’

‘Sounds like chucking-out time on a Saturday night,’ Jesse said. We both looked at Rory for a moment, wondering what to do next. Then my son opened the door and we went inside.

It was a single guy’s flat above Hat Surin and it was a mess. An even bigger mess than usual, no doubt. There were smashed plates all along the hall. A stain on the wall. Some kind of food smeared across the ceiling.

‘Excuse the mess,’ Jesse said.

The gibbon – Travis – was in the kitchen, having a beer. He squatted by the sink, glugging down a can of Singha, staring thoughtfully around the little room with those huge black eyes.

‘He likes his brew, does old Travis,’ said Jesse, and laughed shortly. ‘He likes a beer at the end of a long hard day of scratching his arse and smashing up my flat.’

‘No,’ said Rory, and I didn’t need to look at him to know how hard he was trying not to cry. ‘He has just forgotten,’ he said. ‘He’s just forgotten, that’s all.’

Travis looked at us out of the corner of his eyes, and I was suddenly very scared of him, and thought how stupid I was to bring my boy in here.

‘Forgotten what?’ Jesse said.

‘Forgotten that he’s a gibbon,’ Rory said. ‘He just doesn’t know he’s a gibbon any more. Can’t you see? He doesn’t understand how to act like a gibbon. Somebody probably stole him from his family when he was a baby.’

The three of us watched Travis slurping his Singha.

‘A beach photographer had him on Hat Patong,’ Jesse said. ‘Then they got him for the bar.’ We watched the gibbon contemplate his soft brown fur, pick an insect from it, pop it into his mouth. ‘But I don’t know where the photographer got him from,’ Jesse said.

The pink cowboy hat was gone, but Travis still looked like a creature of the No Name Bar, like something from the Bangla Road night. He rolled his shoulders and contemplated his beer and narrowed his eyes, as if sizing up his opportunities, as if ready for action.

‘They shouldn’t keep an animal like him in a bar,’ Rory said. ‘That’s so wrong. They shouldn’t keep any kind of animal in a bar. They do it for fun and it’s so wrong.’

I looked at my son but I heard my wife. Rory had the clear-eyed goodness of Tess about him. Both of them could look at something and tell you if it was right or wrong, even if you hadn’t asked. I loved them for it, though it frightened me.

The gibbon stared at us, as if suddenly aware of our presence.

‘Settle down now, Travis,’ Jesse said. ‘We’ve got guests.’

Travis had soft brown fur with a snow-white trim around his black face. He had those perfectly round eyes, moist and black and bottomless. They seemed full of what I can only describe as pain.

Jesse picked up an open packet of cheese puffs and held them out to Travis. The gibbon snatched them from his hand and began stuffing them into his mouth. Flecks of orangey-yellow cheese puffs sprayed out of either side.

‘He loves his Cheesy-Wheezy Puff-Puffs,’ Jesse said quietly. ‘They always calm him down.’