by Graham Joyce
So this was what Phil was jabbering about all the time! Phil hadn’t come out here to help me or to help Charlie. He’d come on a spiritual quest, to brace himself against hardship and temptation. He was on a hair-shirt holiday, for nothing other than his own selfish salvation. Pilgrim’s Progress and those gaudy illustrations flung back in my face, after all these years, like a pot of paint.
While chewing on sour jackfruit and wiping beads of sweat from the bridge of my nose, I suddenly remembered Rupert Bear lying squashed at the bottom of my rucksack. I went to get my pack, as much to get away from Phil’s carefully cubed fruit as anything else. It had been Sheila’s idea that I bring Rupert Bear. I’d wanted to tell her not to be so stupid, but some deeper wisdom inside me allowed him to be packed along with my other things, and I’d transferred him to the rucksack when we’d left Chiang Mai.
Chiang Mai! How that exotic and mysterious town with its pearly-green river and morning mists seemed like a vision of home, a second home. I wished I was there, with iced drinks and foot massages and proximity to an airport. With my thoughts on the comforts of Chiang Mai, I emptied my rucksack and dug out Rupert Bear.
Rupert Bear was, but for a few months, as old as was Charlie. Out of all the soft toys you can give a child, and for no rational reason, one gets elected as favourite. More than a favourite, it’s a comfort, a companion and a condolence. It’s a friend to sleep with, something to stroke, and what’s more, it speaks. It articulates many concerns. Parents can learn a lot from asking it direct questions, or by listening to its demands. Over the years Rupert Bear was misplaced many times. The resulting hunt was anxious and fraught. One sneaky effort by me to buy an exact replica to replace the loss caused more problems than ever. It obviously didn’t smell right; that is to say it didn’t smell faintly of curdled breast milk, perspiration, posset, soap, vomit, dribbled juice, spilled Calpol, the breath of bedtime stories, whispers, strung-out kisses, fevers, dreams, nightmares … the complete harness, the smoking night potion that mutates it from the rank of just another soft toy to a creature of feather and fur and bone and essence. The things that make its spirit familiar, the things that make it a talisman. Sheila had had the instincts to push on me the thing idle maturity would have rejected.
‘What the fuck are you going to do with that?’ Mick laughed.
‘I’m going to give him back to Charlie,’ I said.
Rupert Bear had faded and was a bit threadbare at arse and ear, but considering he was over twenty years old, he was wearing well enough. I went inside and at first I put Rupert Bear under Charlie’s nose as she slept. I might have left him there, but I decided instead to stick him in the wall above her head. It was easy to part the bamboo and to shove him in the gap, so that he could preside over her opium dreams.
There was always something strange about the world of Rupert Bear. Stranger than Rimbaud and Coleridge and De Quincey and all of those fellows, I mean.
Later, while Mick, Phil and I sat outside our hut, we saw Khao – Jack’s bearded henchman – filing through the village with four other men. They were men I hadn’t seen before, all wearing army fatigues. As he passed by Khao scowled. Mick being Mick, he scowled right back. They locked eyes as Khao and the new men trooped past our hut.
‘An ugly one,’ Mick said after they’d gone.
‘He’s bad news.’
‘What’s he done to you?’
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Yet.’
I took Mick and Phil up to the opium fields. I cannot describe how outlandish and beautiful was the appearance of these fields in the diffuse early morning sunlight. It has become mixed up in my mind with images of a radiant Eden. I decided to introduce them both to the fairy-tale figure of Khiem.
Khiem was decked in his red, white and purple petals, and today he wore a floppy felt hat, also pinned with poppy flowers. Mick approached the old man with a wide mouth and enough respect to float a sailboat. He waid ridiculously deeply, and even though the hill tribes tended to shake hands rather than wai like the Thais, Khiem returned the honour. I told him Mick’s name and the old man repeated it two or three times.
The amulet hanging around Mick’s throat caught his attention. He moved in to inspect it, indicating his approval with soft, cooing noises. Mick made to take the thing off so that Khiem might examine it, but Khiem stopped him with the flat of his hand, gesturing that Mick should keep it on. He glanced from the amulet to Mick with bulging eyes, and then back at the amulet. Something in the figure of the crescent moon impressed him deeply.
‘Moon!’ Khiem said.
‘Moon!’ Mick said.
‘Moooon!’ Khiem said.
‘Moooooooooon!’ Mick said. ‘Mooooooooooon.’
‘Stop it!’ Phil said. This tomfoolery around the tribal medicine man seemed to unnerve him.
I glanced skywards and said, ‘“Then they called Superstition and asked him to look at the prisoner”.’ It was a line I remembered from Pilgrim’s Progress. Mick didn’t seem to hear, but Phil turned and stared at me. I’d been right. I’ve no idea what I meant by saying it, and I couldn’t even remember the context, but I’d got the little bastard’s measure. Let’s see how he likes it, I thought.
Khiem seemed favourably disposed towards Mick. We left the old man to his work and moved through the poppy fields. Mick got among the labouring villagers, relieving them of their tools, making a great show of taking over their work. This amused them greatly. They giggled at his efforts, and scolded him if he incised the pods too deeply, or butterfingered some of the crystallised latex to the ground. Meanwhile Phil hung back at a distance, wincing slightly.
It fascinated me, the difference between the two of them. That Mick could do this, where Phil (and I, it has to be added) would hang back; where one man would dive into any given pool, while another would always be subject to a checking or restraining instinct. Within ten minutes it seemed that everyone in the field was laughing and repeating his name. ‘Amick. Amicka.’
‘You do realise this makes you complicit,’ Phil said.
‘You what?’
‘You’ve joined in the harvesting. That will go to make morphine and heroin and it will end up being sold outside the school gates at home.’
Mick looked at me, as if he might detect through me whether Phil was being serious. ‘Bollocks.’
I also showed them the generator, which was ticking over nicely. The hideous masculine groaning on the radio had been replaced by some tinny female vocals only marginally more acceptable. We grabbed a couple of bottles of the unwanted Calpol to take back with us.
The village was quiet as we approached the hut. This business with Phil had me pretty agitated At last it erupted. ‘Look Phil,’ I demanded, ‘what’s all this about jealousy?’
Phil didn’t even break stride to answer, loudly, ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’
I was as tired of Phil speaking in Bible quotes as I was of hearing guff from Pilgrim’s Progress. I rounded on him angrily, grabbing his shirt collar. My eyeball was an inch away from his. ‘Talk straight for just once in your life.’
‘Get your hands off me.’
‘You two knock it off,’ Mick said.
‘Not until he meets a straight question with a straight answer.’
We scuffled a bit, turning an undignified half-circle in the dust while Phil tried to break my grip. I wanted him to take a swing at me. I’ve never hit him in my life but with the stress I felt at that moment I could easily have knocked his brains out.
‘Right, that’s enough!’ Mick said, coming between us. ‘I said stop or I’ll bang both your bloody silly heads together!’
I let go of Phil’s collar. He was red in the face.
‘Fucking ridiculous,’ Mick said. ‘The pair of you.’ But I knew he meant mostly me.
We crossed the village and approached the hut in sullen silence, but as we drew near to the porch something made Mick stop dead. He put a hand on my arm and Ph
il, too, drew up short behind me. Through the open door we could see one of Khao’s bandits standing over Charlie’s bed. The man’s elbow jiggled at his side. He was masturbating over her as she slept on unaware.
Mick dashed inside and surprised him. He did something I’ve never seen before or since. With one hand Mick grabbed the man by the face, squeezing his fingers around cheeks, jaw and nostrils, lifting him clean in the air. The man’s semi-erect dick hung from his open trousers as Mick carried him out of the hut, toes trailing the earth before he was thrown twelve feet across the dusty ground.
The man was so shocked he lay in the dust for some moments capturing his breath.
‘A good wank?’ Mick said.
The bandit hauled himself to his feet and started screaming. He zipped up his trousers, releasing a volley of abuse and threats. We didn’t need to know what any of it meant as he adopted the posture of a Thai boxer, punctuating his high-pitched curses with a number of swift jabs and kicks at the thin air. But Mick had clearly terrified him, because none of his thrusts landed within six feet of where Mick stood. Moments later this ineffectual whirlwind was joined by Khao and another bandit, both of whom instantly drew pistols.
One of the pistols was levelled at Mick but Khao, snarling, brandishing his gun, marched directly past me and into the hut where Charlie was sleeping. I followed him, three paces behind. Inside the hut he walked directly up to Charlie, pushed the barrel of the pistol into the side of her head and cocked the trigger.
I had never before been faced down with a gun. It’s an instructive moment. For that period of time you are utterly in the power of the person wielding the gun, and you are afraid to move half an inch to right or left should your minimal movements provoke some action. I remember, though, that it seemed important to appear unafraid, and this I think I did. Though I felt fear. I felt it in my liver.
Gouging the gun into the side of Charlie’s head, Khao shrieked at me, his face contorted, rubberised. He was totally out of control. Charlie was awake, wide-eyed, shrinking from the pistol bruising her temple, her terrified gaze flickering from Khao to me.
Khao screamed a question at me, a question I didn’t understand. I couldn’t guess whether the correct answer was yes or no. He had gone directly to the point of my greatest weakness. He hadn’t levelled his gun at me, but at Charlie, and yet the action was directed at me. Khao knew that if he threatened Charlie, he threatened everything I was there for. I had no place or purpose there without her. He understood that if it came to a choice I would always say take me instead of Charlie. He had instinctively touched my deepest wound, the way only a killer of his nature can. And I could only stand there, motionless in that stifling hut, feeling a fat, oily globe of sweat run from my brow, down the bridge of my nose and into the corner of my mouth.
Nabao appeared from nowhere, flinging herself at Khao’s feet, wailing softly, rocking, imploring him. It did enough to unsettle the gunman, and a couple of minutes later Khiem and three villagers from the fields were on the scene, standing at the door, everyone shouting at once while Nabao rocked gently back and forth on Khao’s feet. I sensed that Khiem possessed a strange authority over the bandit. With Khiem standing at the threshold, a noisy argument broke out between them, and with that I felt the dangerous moment had passed.
Khao spat in my direction and re-holstered his pistol. The shouting and back talk went on for some time until Khao and his men walked away; but not before Khao had pointed his finger, first at Mick, then at me. After they’d gone Khiem waved his arms, palms downwards, and then turned with the others back towards the fields.
Nabao, who had intervened at the crucial moment, remained behind, rocking Charlie like she was her baby, clucking and shaking her head.
We had to tell Charlie what had caused the fracas. She said it happened often; that in a state of half-sleep she would sense intruders but was too sluggish to wake to see who it was.
‘You’re lucky,’ I said, still shaking, ‘that they haven’t raped you.’
‘They have,’ she said coldly. ‘Until Jack put a stop to it.’
I could only look at her. And as I did so I was aware that Mick and Phil’s eyes were not on Charlie, but on me. Charlie had just said this terrible thing and the pair of them were staring not at her, but at me.
I was a husk. I was a sack of skin barely kept upright by bone. Even the breath that might make me speak evaporated in my throat, until I heard my tiny voice say, ‘The one with the beard?’
‘Him. And the other one.’
I wanted to know more, but there are some things a father can’t ask his daughter. Phil said to me, ‘We have to put this behind us.’
‘Are you all right, Danny?’ Mick added.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m all right.’
‘No he’s not all right,’ Phil said darkly. ‘I know him and he’s not all right. He’ll try to do something stupid.’
‘I said I’m all right.’
‘Argue it out between you, boys,’ Charlie said. ‘I’m the one who was raped.’
The incident left Mick with a strange, undischarged energy. ‘Fix up,’ he said, clapping his hands together. ‘We’re going to fix up round here. This hut’s a fucking shambles. Phil, get a broom off Nabao. I want this place swept out. Danny, that filthy fuckin’ sheet Charlie’s lying on: get off your arse and wash it or burn it, one thing or the other. As for you Charlie, I’m going to wash your hair.’
‘No you’re not,’ Charlie said.
‘We’ll see about that,’ Mick said. He went out and returned dragging the water drum inside the hut. He squeezed half a bottle of shampoo into the palm of his hand. ‘Get over here. Mick’s in the chair, and we’re fixing up!’
Charlie meekly submitted. As did Phil and I. While Mick had Charlie stooped over the water drum, Phil swept and tidied the hut. I took Charlie’s bedding outside and I burned it. In future she would have to lie on one of my shirts.
Mick thoroughly soaped Charlie’s hair and rinsed it and combed it free of knots and lugs. Throughout all of this he looked furious. I knew why he was doing it. He was carrying my anger. He had to do something with it.
Later we were utterly exhausted from these exertions. Charlie, smelling of shampoo, squatted at the threshold of the hut while we three sat just outside, trying to breathe, trying to extract some air from the oppressive heat. We were all sweating externally and quivering inside after the events of the morning.
Charlie noticed the broken leather strap around Mick’s neck. It had obviously been snapped off in the struggle, and Mick had lost his amulet. He was dismayed. Phil and I had a good hunt for the thing, but we couldn’t find it.
‘Your lucky rabbit’s foot,’ I said, trying to force an ounce of humour out of myself, but Mick was too upset to be teased.
After a while some village children came up to us. Mick let them stroke his hairy chest, which made them giggle. Within a moment there were three wide-eyed kids sitting on his knee and he was teaching them counting games and nursery songs, as if what had happened an hour earlier was a dream.
As I sat by the doorway talking to Charlie, one little girl made a garland from poppy petals and placed it around Mick’s neck.
‘I’ll make you a garland, Dad,’ Charlie said. ‘But you’ll have to bring me the flowers.’
I looked at her. She was utterly composed. How could she be, after what she’d been through? Yet she sat there with her hands in her lap, once again like a temple idol, looking back at me. It was then that I identified that elusive power I had seen in her. It was the awesome power of youth. It sat on her shoulders like a brilliant, silver carapace, barely chipped by her experiences. It gave no quarter. It forgave nothing and it surrendered to nobody. It could face any wild thing except its own inevitable foreclosure. I knew then that I had no answer for its terrible force.
‘What?’ Charlie said.
‘Nothing,’ I said. I pointed at Mick instead. ‘Look. He’s so good with them.’
‘Wh
y didn’t he ever have children?’
I shrugged. It was not something we’d discussed.
‘The villagers say that a man without children is damned to a life of tears.’
‘Damned to a life of tears if you have ’em, too,’ I shot back, rather too quickly.
I reached across the threshold, held her hand and gave her a thin smile. She was beyond all recrimination; really that’s how I felt.
I looked again at Mick sitting in the dust, barechested and wearing his knee-length shorts, playing happily with the kiddies. He clapped his hands and sang for these mites with eyes like molasses, and he was anointed by a ray of golden light. His blond hair flared in the sunlight; his blue eyes by contrast seemed pellucid, cloudless. I experienced a sweet moment of dizziness, as if something strange was happening; he and the children were suspended an inch or two from the ground as they played, and tilted at forty-five degrees to the earth. I heard the tinkle of temple windchimes.
Charlie heard me gasp. ‘What are you staring at?’
‘It’s Mick. For a moment he looked like something from a picture book. It was like a vision of heaven.’
‘I saw it too,’ Phil said, coming up behind me and murmuring in my ear. ‘It was a moment of blessing.’ For once Phil was absolutely correct. I couldn’t argue. In our suffering and in the midst of our predicament we had been given a divine instant. ‘This balances what happened earlier. There’s an exact symmetry in our day. You know, this is all being watched by a higher power.’
Charlie squinted from one to the other of us. ‘Have you two been on the pipe?’
‘Do you know something, Dad,’ Charlie said to me that evening, when the four of us were snuggling down to sleep, the air temperature dropping fast. ‘I had such a vivid dream. I had a dream about Rupert Bear.’
Mick winked at me to say nothing. ‘What’s this about Rupert Bear?’ he said.