The Grey Man

by John Curtis

  We reached the moat that surrounded the old city and I knew I didn't have much of a lead so I went for broke and increased speed. I still had to traverse two sides of the moat before I reached my destination. Finally, I could see the Amora Hotel looming ahead of me. I passed a burger joint popular with expats, drove past the hotel's façade and headed for Tha Pae Road. To access the street behind the Amora I would have to go the wrong way down Tha Pae Road but for only thirty metres or so. I'd seen tuk tuk drivers blatantly ignoring the traffic flow in order to sneak in to pick up fares or drop off hotel guests; now I turned into the traffic, beeping away, with Kem hanging on for dear life and probably wondering what this mad man had gotten her into.

  People entering the hotel car park were supposed to stop and collect a ticket from the security guard at the gate, but I just whizzed past him as we bumped off the road and into the driveway. I drove the bike into an area at the back of the hotel that couldn't be seen from the street. In the basket of the bike was my black pullover and I had a couple of baseball caps in the backpack. I put the jumper on Kem, and we each pulled on a cap. I always carried a couple of items of different clothing in case I had to change my appearance when tailing someone. The guard walked over and insisted we take a ticket for the bike. ‘Yeah, okay, whatever. Thanks mate,’ I said to him, snatching the paper from him and scrunching it in my pocket. I didn't know if the tattooed man had seen us turn off, but I wasn't hanging around to make sure. I took Kem by the hand and we walked briskly to the back entrance and through the hotel. Running would have drawn more attention to us, but nonetheless heads turned, and God knows what the staff and surprised guests thought of a middle-aged westerner dragging a thirteen-year-old girl through the lobby. Out the front I hailed a tuk tuk, bundled Kem in, climbed aboard and told the driver to take us to Wat Phra Sing, a temple near the guest house where I lived. I checked behind us and, to my relief, couldn't see the bouncer in the sea of motorcycles, cars and tuk tuks.

  There was a big crowd at the temple, perhaps for a funeral or observing some festival. We lost ourselves in the throng of worshippers, and when the mass of people began to thin out after fifteen minutes or so I at last felt confident that we had truly shaken the tattooed enforcer.

  Still, as we left the wat and headed along the footpath towards my place, I kept a keen eye out for his bike. Up until this point Kem hadn't said anything or shown much emotion, save for the odd gasp at my driving. ‘That man, he very bad,’ she said now, confirming my suspicion that we both would have been in the shit if tattoo guy had caught us.

  ‘You'll be safe now. It'll be all right. We go stay with friends,’ I said to her.

  As well as the abandoned motorcycle, I'd hired a small Toyota sedan for the day, leaving it parked a short distance from where I was staying. I didn't want to bring an underage girl back to the guest house and arouse the suspicion or ire of the Thais I lived alongside, so I needed to take Kem to a safe house. My Lahu hill tribe friend, Sila, had put me in touch with another member of his tribe, who knew a Lahu man named Jumna, who lived in a village close to Chiang Mai. Hearing of my mission in Thailand, he had told me there was a spare hut in his village and that it would be okay if I ever needed to bring someone to stay. I had offered to pay him rent for the hut, but the Lahu are very hospitable people and he'd declined the offer of money.

  We made it to the car and I unlocked it and told Kem to get in the back. I showed her the blanket I'd placed on the back seat and, hoping I wasn't scaring her, told her in my rudimentary Thai more with sign language than voice to lie down on the floor and cover herself in case we were stopped by the police. I also told her that when we got to her destination I would give her 3000 baht to get home. She didn't seem to understand, so I left the money side of things alone. I hadn't mentioned the cash until then in case Kem had been tempted to come with me for that alone, and then return to the brothel. This way I knew she was serious.

  I'd done the deal with Jumna because I knew that the further I drove from Chiang Mai the more likely it was that I would be stopped by a police roadblock and it would be hard for me to explain the presence of a thirteen-year-old girl in my car; I would be unlucky to be stopped between here and Jumna's place. The nights were getting cold, so I swapped my baseball cap for a beanie and we set off for Jumna's place. About forty minutes north of Chiang Mai I took the turnoff from the main road and drove for another fifteen minutes along a rough dirt track until I came to the village. I found Jumna and told him what I'd been up to, and he took us to the hut. He seemed to take the whole thing in his stride.

  The adrenaline rush was starting to subside and I was feeling tired and hungry. Kem was still quiet and seemingly unemotional. Jumna's wife prepared some rice and a spicy soup dish for us and we sat down to eat. As we ate I asked Jumna if he could organise transport for Kem to Mae Sai. In one of our earlier discussions she'd told me that she lived not far from the Thai-Burma border and could find her way home once she was across.

  When I finished my food I unzipped my backpack. Inside was a smaller bag with the 3000 baht (A$120) I would give to Kem. I transferred her toy, postcard and other odds and ends into the smaller bag and gave it to her. I handed 1000 baht to Jumna to cover his expenses; in spite of his earlier refusal, he simply nodded and accepted the money.

  Even though this was only my second successful rescue, I'd already realised that if I was expecting any Hollywood endings to this business then I was wasting my time. Jumna said he would take Kem to someone who would drive her to Mae Sai and I realised it was time for me to go, as I had to get the car back early the next morning and retrieve my motorbike. I got to my feet and said goodbye to Kem. ‘You're free to get on with your life.’

  She just looked at me, not understanding the English.

  ‘Mee kwam suuk,’ I added, a Thai phrase that simply means ‘Have happiness’.

  ‘Kop khun ka,’ was all she said back to me, using one of the few Thai phrases I could understand back then. I love the way Thai women, and Kem in this case, say thank you in their language; the final kah is like a soft sigh. No promises, no gushing – but all the same, those three words . . . they were enough.

  ONE

  Aimless

  People get lost in the Australian bush all the time, and many of them learn that this seemingly temperate, benign and beautiful world can actually be deadly.

  At fifteen I was starting to find my way in the bush, but in other areas of my life I was lost. I had learned to recognise vague pathways and rock formations that were my landmarks and I now walked, alone, through this oddly welcoming landscape, so different to the urban environment in which I lived. One minute I was weaving between towering blue gums, my feet crunching on dry bark and fallen twigs, and in the next instant I was on the edge of a precipice. If it had been dark I might have walked off, and it could have been years – perhaps never – before someone found my body at the foot of the 150-metre cliff face on the top of which I now stood.

  Spread out below me were the suburban streets of Wollongong and the towns that flanked it down the narrow stretch of inhabitable land on the east coast of Australia. Off to the right were the belching smoke stacks of the Port Kembla steelworks that provided employment to so many people in this tough, working-class city. Beyond a fringe of golden beaches was the Pacific Ocean, dotted not with pretty sailboats but with the rust-streaked hulls of cargo vessels bringing iron ore to the mill and container loads of crap for the consumers populating the streets beneath me. That was my world. But was it to be my future? I hoped not. I made sure the straps of my small hiking pack were pulled taut, then I stepped over the edge of the sandstone cliff. It was dangerous, but what fifteen-year-old thinks about the consequence of his actions? Besides, I'd done this before and I knew the familiar hand and footholds. Muscles straining in my arms and legs, I climbed carefully but confidently down the almost sheer face of the cliff.

  For a moment my foot dangled in midair as I felt for the natural step. I connected and low
ered myself to the ledge that jutted out from the face. I was here, my place of refuge. There were no Aboriginal carvings or paintings in the small hollow that backed onto the ledge, just the scuffmarks of my feet from my last visit. Still, I couldn't help but wonder if a descendant of one of the continent's first humans had sat up here in shelter from the elements and watched the white man claim this ancient land.

  I shrugged off my pack and laid out the meagre contents; I had already learned that it was good to travel light in life. I unrolled my blanket and set out my knife and supper – a trail mix of dried fruit and nuts, and some water. I was alone and, for the moment, at peace. Beyond the glittering ocean was the rest of the world; behind me was an environment as inhospitable as it was beautiful. From my perch I could see my house and the community in which I lived, and I was glad to be up on my cliff, in my cave.

  I was stuck, a prisoner of a life that held no promise and little love, but with the world literally at my feet. I was a loner, but I didn't crave solitary confinement. Sitting in my cave, I was at once at peace, yet also restless. I just wanted to do something worthwhile with my life. But what?

  My father, Alec, never wanted children, but he ended up with six of them. He supported us, barely, but I don't remember ever hearing a kind word from him. If he said anything at all, it was something along the lines of ‘You're stupid’, ‘You'll never amount to anything’, or, in his Irish accent, ‘You're a fooking cont and you'll always be a fooking cont.’

  Many years later, after I visited his childhood home, I would forgive him for the damage he did to us. His brother told me: ‘Your grandfather never treated Alec very well at all.’ From what I could gather, my grandad never had a kind word for my father, and made him work like a dog. So there it was, the sins of the father passed on to the son. He was emotionally abused by his father and passed that abuse on to us.

  Like hundreds of thousands of other people seeking a better life in a sunnier climate, my father had emigrated to Australia after the Second World War to work on the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme. He was a truck mechanic – just the sort of person needed to keep this massive engineering undertaking going. After finishing at the Snowy, Dad met Mum, who was a nurse, and they married and moved to Sydney. My long-suffering mother made the wrong choice in a husband. She paid for that mistake the rest of her life, and so did her children.

  Their oldest child, I was born in 1959 in the inner Sydney suburb of Bankstown. At the time he got Mum pregnant, Dad was running his own small mechanic's business. He wasn't present at my birth, which I suppose wasn't unusual for the fifties, but he didn't even go to the hospital to pick us up when Mum was ready to go home. It was a story I would hear often over the years.

  Sometimes Dad worked at home and when Mum walked up the garden path that day with me in her arms she could hear muted curses and the clank of metal on metal. Dad was lying on his back under a truck, his legs in grease-and-oil-spattered overalls sticking out from under the vehicle.

  ‘Do you want to have a look at your newborn son, Alec?’ my mum asked.

  ‘Oh, for fook's sake, woman, can't you see I'm working?’ he said.

  Mum had fallen for Dad because he could be charming when he wanted to be but I think they'd realised pretty soon after getting married that they weren't meant for each other. Mum used to say that Irish men were a lot of fun to hang out with, but that you should never marry one, because they made crap husbands. Dad probably resented a wife and a kid putting the handbrake on his free and fancy lifestyle, and I think my mum, who was better educated than Dad and had once had a career as a nurse ahead of her, also felt that marrying him hadn't changed her life for the better.

  Not long after I was born we moved to the fast-growing south coast of New South Wales. My mother, father and I lived in Berkeley for a while, but my father soon decided to pursue a business venture in South Australia and left my mother and me behind. Basically we were abandoned, although my father later said he asked my mother to come with him. She says that wasn't true. Mum had to get a job in Sydney to support us, so she left me with her mother during the week and would see me on the weekends. Consequently I developed a strong bond with my nan and grandfather, who were living with us.

  My father failed at his business in South Australia and later moved back. Despite being mismatched, my mum and dad had another six kids after me – five boys and one girl. For most of the time I was growing up we lived in a simple house in Balgownie, a suburb of Wollongong a few kilometres from the beach. Once I was old enough to ride a bike, I would cycle down to the waterfront by myself. I liked growing up on the coast, the Pacific in front of me and towering sandstone cliffs and bush-covered mountains behind me. What made my life less than perfect – crappy in fact – was my family situation. We were not one of those happy families like you see on the television where everyone gets on. All of us kids had very distinct personalities and would fight and argue constantly. Ten or eleven (when my father returned home) people in a four-bedroom house created a pressure cooker situation.

  My mother and grandmother were strict, and what I learned about discipline and parenting probably came from them. At some stage my grandparents moved to their own place and I was sorry to see them go, especially my nan. As the oldest child, I had to be the responsible one and was left to look after the kids a good deal. I taught myself to cook so I could lend a hand in getting us all fed. The only reference I had was a Chinese cookbook, so we ended up eating a lot of Asian food. Money always seemed to be tight, and I had to learn how to improvise, adapt and extend. When times were good I made my specialty, crispy-skinned beef. More often than not, though, I had to work with whatever I could find in the fridge and cupboards. By the time I was twelve I was getting more adventurous with my cooking and I even remember making crepes suzette, which I was very proud of.

  It seemed like almost every day there was a family drama of some kind. One night, all of us were watching television and someone said something which triggered an argument. I'd had enough, so I walked out. There was a storm brewing but I didn't care, walking for miles towards the beach just to get away from it all. The rain started and the storm finally reached me. I was about fifty metres from a telegraph pole when a bolt of lightning hit it and blew it to pieces. ‘Wow, that was cool,’ I said to myself and kept going. The storm was raging and I sat down on the sand, soaked by the rain. I was the only person on the long flat beach and I hoped a lightning strike would end it all for me. Eventually, though, the storm passed over and I headed home and went to bed.

  While I was the responsible kid of the family, my next brother down, Danny, was the black sheep. Danny was in trouble with the law from an early age, and it wasn't unusual for the space under our house to be crammed with stolen goods – televisions, VCRs and microwaves. Danny wasn't exactly a criminal mastermind: he would often just leave stuff in the boxes they came in, their shipping notes still attached.

  Visits to our house by the police were becoming a regular occurrence and one morning I woke to see some officers surrounding our place, their guns drawn. My mother hated what Danny was doing, but she would stand up fiercely for any of us. On another occasion Danny stole my motorcycle and was chased by police after they saw him speeding. He outran them, but the cops came looking for me as the owner. I was away from home at the time, and my mum was able to fob them off. Maybe Danny had inherited his behaviour from my father – Dad had spent six months in gaol in Ireland as a young man, for smuggling fabric across the border from Northern Ireland to the republic.

  Danny soon started getting into drugs. He began with grass, and as well as the stolen goods he also had a flourishing marijuana plantation growing under the house. He began to deal locally, so we had a parade of interesting characters turning up at our place at all hours. I got pretty used to the strangers, although they weren't all mellow dope smokers just looking to score.

  I answered the door one day to a pretty rough-looking dude with long hair.

  ‘Where
the fuck's Danny?’ he asked.

  I yawned. ‘Not here, mate.’ I was about seventeen at the time and by then I was used to people coming looking for Danny.

  He looked around me, his face menacing, his eyes wild, then pointed at my chest. ‘You tell that fucker that if he doesn't give us our money I'm going to shoot out his fucking kneecap.’

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘Which kneecap, left or right?’

  ‘Just fucking tell him!’ he shouted. I closed the door. I later told Danny about the visit, but he just took it in his stride. Maybe he should have been more concerned, as the guy who came to the door and his girlfriend would later do time for kidnapping and torture.

  I came home from school one day and found Danny in the front yard surrounded by a group of thugs. They looked like scum, so I assumed they were his mates. One was swinging a pair of nunchakus, fighting sticks linked with a chain, and I think at least one other had a knife. At first I thought they were just mucking around and playing at Bruce Lee, from Enter the Dragon. I walked inside and found Mum and Nan were having a panic attack.

  ‘We don't know what to do, John. Danny's in trouble – those boys are going to hurt him,’ Mum said to me. ‘I can't call the police, either.’ The reason Mum couldn't get the cops to help us was because the phone had been cut off – she didn't have the money to pay the bill.