by Sarah Long
The antidote to this worry had been his rock-solid home life; his marriage to Laura and the daily joy of watching his children grow, nature’s way of instilling optimism into even the most committed misanthrope. But now he had a fear that dwarfed all others – the fear that this would be snatched away by Flavia, triumphant in her fecundity, as she claimed her trophy, the father of her unborn child.
How big was it now, her foetus? Two, three centimetres? A writhing piece of tissue – nothing that couldn’t be sucked away and nobody be any the wiser. Women got pregnant all the time; often they didn’t realise – it just self-aborted, nature’s way of washing out a being that wasn’t meant to be. Well, this child wasn’t meant to be: it had only one consenting parent, and one unwittingly duped poor sod who had only been fooling around. A friend had once told him that when a woman tells you she is pregnant, your reaction isn’t ‘Do I want this child?’ but ‘Do I want to stay with this woman?’ And he, decidedly, did not.
Laura closed her eyes against the tropical sun and laid back on her lounger. She felt the heat soaking into her, a heavy, moist heat that you never got in Europe. Before her an empty swimming pool stretched out, and beside it stood a table stacked with large white towels. A boy had escorted her to her chair and prepared her bed of self-indulgence, spreading out one towel for her to lie on and placing another one, still folded, on the table for her to dry herself with after her swim.
He was returning to her now, bearing a tray with a fruity cocktail which he placed on the table. The elegance of his buttoned-up white coat and his graceful, silent manner made her feel crude and brash in her lumpen near-nudity. What did they make of their customers, these hotel employees, as they smiled and averted their gaze from the wisps of pubic hair escaping from bikini bottoms to lie in dark contrast to white flabby thighs?
He glided away from her, past the glass wall of the gym, where a solitary middle-aged man was puffing away on a treadmill. There was a pile of towels in there, too, endless fresh laundry waiting to absorb the sweat of bodies ill suited to this enervating climate. If you took into account the towels and dressing gowns in the bathroom, you could probably get through your bodyweight in linen in one day.
To be idle in a working world was the most decadent luxury. Everybody else, including Antoine, had business to attend to this morning, which meant that the leisure facilities of the Sukhothai hotel were for Laura alone. It was, therefore, ungrateful to feel slightly bored.
She picked up the book that Antoine had given her last night, a polemic extolling the wonders of anti-ageing medicine that he had written with a colleague. His photo – rather flattering, probably taken ten years ago – decorated the back flap, together with a brief career resumé which mentioned his marriage to the ‘incontestably ageless’ singing star Sylvie Marceau.
Laura was still stuck on the introductory chapter, which talked a lot about Promethean fire, and how our body cells were good for at least a hundred and twenty years provided we didn’t abuse them. What with drugs to combat the free radicals and cosmetic surgery to nip and tuck the droopy bits, there was no reason not to live on as a century-old hard body. It was a repulsive thought. Dry old bodies jigging around until the cells finally gave up at a hundred and twenty, and then what? Did they just disappear into a pile of dust? And how old was Antoine exactly? She had always supposed him to be about fifty, but maybe he was really ninety-five and the living proof of his medical theories?
He was a wonderful companion, though, and their first night at the hotel had fully lived up to her expectations. They had checked into their enormous suite and Laura had rather shyly unpacked her suitcase, hanging up her few clothes in the giant wardrobe, tucking her skimpy pieces of underwear into the corner of a vast, empty drawer. Her intimacy with Antoine until now had been based on short, passionate meetings, and the prospect of a few days together moved it on to a different, domestic footing.
When she was deciding what to wear down to dinner, he sat on one of the two sofas of the suite facility and offered his opinion: no, the other shirt was better with those trousers, and she should go for the gold earrings rather than the silver. It was a husbandly service he was providing, making a contribution to her appearance, whereas before he only performed the lover’s role, which was to behold and admire the finished article.
They had dined at the hotel’s Celadon restaurant, on a fairy-lit terrace overlooking the gardens. The conversation was discursive and relaxed, for now they were free of all time constraints – the loss of urgency moved things away from their favourite subjects of poetry and philosophy and towards practical plans for the days to come. Laura had even brought her guidebook down to the table so they could decide how to plan their time, but Antoine had pushed it aside, suddenly leaning over the table towards her.
‘Laura, we are lovers,’ he had said. ‘We do not need to look at guidebooks. Look at those people over there.’
He nodded towards a retired-looking couple poring over a map they had spread out on the table.
‘They are very clearly married, so they must have their guidebook to get them through the evening. But we are quite different. We need only each other. And if you want to know about Bangkok, I can tell you all you need to know.’
Laura had laughed and apologised and looked only at Antoine, listening to his lively accounts of the bars he had visited in Bangkok where you think the girls are nearly naked but they turn out to be wearing tights beneath their G-strings; of the snake farm where you can’t buy a drink except from the crone living at the adjoining shack who takes your money through a hole in the fence and pushes a can of Coke back in return; of the canal trips he had taken off the Thonburi river, where rich men’s comfortable villas with gates opening on to the water give way to shanty huts housing chickens and children who left their chaotic homes to hop into boats in their smart school uniforms.
He spoke of the smells and the crowds of Chinatown, the fluttering shimmering colours of their ribbons, their fortune cookies. Laura was glad to be there, glad to have escaped her husband, happy to laugh at Antoine’s stories and know that they would spend the night together, and the next night and the next.
After dinner they had gone to the bar for one last drink before returning to the bedroom, a little drunk but not too late since Antoine had to work the following day. Laura had hung up her clothes and joined him in bed. ‘Only ever in hotels,’ she said as she rolled on top of him. ‘You are my hotel husband. I think you would disappear in a puff of smoke if ever we tried to do it somewhere else.’
‘Not true,’ he said. ‘There was one time at my house, you remember?’
‘Not in the bedroom, though, only hotel bedrooms for us. Top-class hotels, of course.’
He had left her in bed this morning, deliciously free to get up and take a long bath before making it down to the dining room in time for a late breakfast. Which meant that she wasn’t hungry for lunch, just the fruity cocktail she was sipping now that would take her through until dinner tonight. She rubbed some oil into her stomach and thought about taking a dip. To do so would attract the attention of the pool attendant and the puffing man in the gym. But it was too hot not to.
She lowered herself down the steps – no splashy dive for her – and took a few sedate strokes down the pool. Up and down she went. How boring swimming was. If only she had company perhaps she could work out a formation swimming sequence like in the comic-strip books of her childhood where women in frilly swimming caps simultaneously raised a shapely leg out of the water to create the stamens of a giant flower.
She almost wished she had accompanied Antoine to his clinic; she could have made herself useful, done a bit of filing for him, or Meeting and Greeting of his patients. The life of a medical receptionist suddenly seemed rather appealing, much better than swimming up and down an empty pool with no-one to talk to.
After four lengths she climbed out, modestly pulling down the legs of her bikini bottom which had ridden up during the exercise. She flopped d
own on the chair again and thought about her children.
They would be sleeping now, dreaming of whatever they did, their arms and legs flung out of their beds in their usual dramatic poses, while she, their mother, was lying here anointing her limbs with the oil of the adulteress, tanning her skin the better to please her lover.
She wished she was at home; she wished she could walk down the familiar corridor to the children’s bedroom and stroke their smooth, sleeping flesh. But they were halfway round the world – the distance that separated them made her feel giddy. Imagine if aeroplanes stopped working, if she was abandoned here with only the illicit enjoyment of Antoine, her older man, to comfort her. It was no substitute. She didn’t care how much fierce Promethean fire was burning beneath that carefully pampered exterior, she realised with a shock – that she was betraying her lover with dreams of escape. For, if she could, she would leave right now, go home to breathe in the sweet smell of her delicious sons.
Then she could slip back into the marital bed. Jean-Laurent would be waiting for her. She could wallow in the joy of their rekindled love; his broad bulk would comfort and protect her the way it used to when she had been so happy to leave the stresses of her working life for the long slide to happiness that he had promised – and delivered – to her.
They would laugh off the troubles of recent weeks, and tomorrow they would get up late and go to the park together with the children. They would drive up to the Pré Catalan in the Bois de Boulogne. The boys would take their scooters, those funny little silver trottinettes, and race ahead along the path while their parents followed, Jean-Laurent’s arm round Laura’s waist. They would stop by the Shakespeare garden and peer in, as they always did, complaining that it never seemed to be open, and trying to make out the Macbeth heather bed, the Tempest collection of aromatic thymes and lavenders.
Except that she was here in Thailand and Jean-Laurent was in Paris. Probably lying next to Flavia. She bet he would have waited for the children to go to sleep and then invited her round to keep him company in Laura’s bed. Flavia, his chosen companion, the partner of his glory years, carefully growing the baby that was to push Laura firmly into touch. Laura, the dignified rejected wife, would selflessly raise her sons in obscurity while Jean-Laurent scaled the heights of professional and personal happiness.
The boys would look forward to their weekend visits, they would delight in their baby sister – she knew it would be a girl – and enjoy the treats their part-time father showered upon them. A divorced friend had told her how it felt when the children went off to stay with their father. ‘You can’t imagine what it’s like,’ she said, ‘when the door closes behind them and you are left alone. You can’t imagine that silence.’
Laura raised her hand to attract the attention of the pool attendant. She ordered another Sukhothai Sling to dull the pain. It shouldn’t be like this, she thought. I am living the ultimate escapist housewife dream, a luxury slice of tropical paradise with my clever, attentive French lover, and all I can think about is the everyday reality I meant to leave behind. It was time to stiffen her sinews. I am in Paradise, she told herself firmly, I am in Paradise and I am bloody well going to enjoy it.
‘So, you are happy you came with me, are you not?’
Antoine wandered out of the studio-sized bathroom into the bedroom where Laura was lying in bed contemplating the arrangement of fresh flowers whose petals had been neatly folded in on themselves. Origami on lotus blossoms – that really was taking sophistication a bit far. How long did it take someone to fold up a vase of flowers? It would have taken her the best part of an afternoon, but no doubt a deft-fingered smiling Thai had knocked it up in ten minutes.
She looked up at Antoine, who was wearing a white cotton bathrobe provided by the hotel. His thin legs protruded beneath it and were encased by Sukhothai monogrammed slippers. In his hand he held a cotton-wool puff which he was using to clean his face. She had found the Helena Rubinstein cleansing milk earlier when she had been snooping through his toilet bag, and had been mildly shocked by the range of cosmetics it contained.
The arsenal of suppositories was less surprising – she had been married to Frenchman for long enough to know they liked to take their medicine up the shooter – but the anti-wrinkle eye cream and exfoliating facial foam had been a bit of a turn-off. It was one thing to look after your appearance, but for a man to equip himself with a beauty kit worthy of Elizabeth Taylor was a bit too Danny La Rue for her taste. Such were the surprises reserved for those who accompanied their occasional lover on an extended mini-break.
‘Yes, of course I’m happy. I’m in Paradise. The Land of Smiles.’ She smiled to reinforce the point.
Antoine took the cue to impart a little knowledge.
‘You know that Sukhothai means “dawn of happiness”? The hotel was named after the capital of the first Siamese kingdom.’
He disappeared back into the bathroom to complete his toilette. Laura heard the jars being opened and closed, and the discreet spray of what she guessed was the anti-baldness potion. He re-emerged, coiffed and scented like a tart’s boudoir, she thought disapprovingly.
‘I hope you were not bored by yourself all day. When we get to Amanpuri, I shall be one hundred per cent at your disposal.’ He raised a suggestive eyebrow and Laura had a surge of mild panic.
‘No, I had a great time,’ she said quickly. ‘I went to Jim Thompson’s house.’
The teak house of the British silk merchant who had mysteriously disappeared was a favoured destination of Western visitors to Bangkok. After all, see one temple and squat Buddha and you’d seen the lot. Shopping and Jim Thompson’s house, that was all you needed to do here.
‘Did you go down the river?’
‘I took a short ride. But I’ve seen the sights before – I just wanted to relax by the pool really.’
Laura didn’t add that she had also sought out the guest house where she had stayed with Jean-Laurent years ago, before they had the children.
It was still there, in the street of budget hotels recommended by the Lonely Planet guide. She had taken tea in one of the cafés and noticed how young World Travellers were still as boring now as they were then, with their banal conversations about train journeys and poor sanitation. They might just as well have been in Starbucks on the Charing Cross Road complaining about how long it had taken them to get in from Streatham.
She and Jean-Laurent had laughed at them then, those latter-day hippies in their uniform of wild-coloured cottons and backpacks. How conventional they were, how dogged in their determination to complete their ‘year off’. ‘Vietnam, yeah, great. You know when I was sitting on the toilet in this hill village, you could actually see the pig with his mouth open underneath the hut, just waiting for it!’
Laura had only known Jean-Laurent a few months when they decided to go to Thailand for Christmas. It was the first time in her life that she hadn’t spent it at home with her parents, and she could sense her mother’s disappointment, even though she had said she thought it was a marvellous idea and that Laura was so right to take these opportunities while she could.
When she woke up next to Jean-Laurent in their fancooled room on the Khao San road, unburdened by the giving and receiving of presents, then went out in a sundress to take coffee and watermelon for Christmas lunch, she knew that this was freedom. With Jean-Laurent she learned that you didn’t have to stuff yourself with turkey and all the trimmings and watch reruns of the Morecambe and Wise Christmas Special. You could do whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted. He truly did believe that you made your own happiness.
It was his youthfulness that was so appealing. While her friends were beginning to settle comfortably into the deep groove of premature middle age, saddling themselves with houses to renovate and school-fee plans, she was stuffing a sarong into a rucksack and roughing it on the student trail. True, it was only for three weeks – she had her job to think of and Jean-Laurent his course to complete – but it made her feel so light
-hearted. She and her delicious toy boy: not for them a New Year spent sanding floorboards, but rather an evening getting drunk in a seedy dive in Patpong before heading north to ride elephants through the jungle.
She remembered shivering in the doorway of a jungle shelter in the early morning mist, listening to the sounds of the approaching elephant crashing through the trees and stopping every now and then to wrap its trunk round a young sapling which was casually uprooted and eaten, and the fear with which she stepped into the basket on its back, praying it wouldn’t slip down and drop her under those heavy feet. Jean-Laurent sat on the beast’s head, of course, cross-legged and confident. The guide led them to a different hut that night and cooked them dinner while they and their fellow travellers – all younger than Laura, and all without jobs – smoked opium through a primitive pipe and felt like Samuel T. Coleridge as they each conjured up their personal crystal gorges of the Khubla Khan.
Then it was on to Koh Samui to recuperate on the beach. They slept in a bamboo hut, on a stained mattress beneath a mosquito net, and laughed at the muscled Australian next door. A creature of habit, he performed his full workout outside their door and greeted them the same way every morning – ‘Good Exercise!’ – though they were never sure if this was a comment on his own performance, or an exhortation to them to follow suit.
After breakfast they would walk down to the beach, bathing in the warm turquoise water, before throwing themselves down on the sand and sneering at the middle-aged guests of the upmarket resort hotel next door who sunbathed on adjustable plastic sun-loungers. ‘We will never be like that,’ said Laura and Jean-Laurent, lying together on a shared towel, their limbs carelessly intertwined, sand in their mouths and hair. ‘We will never sit on vile his-and-hers plastic sun-chairs.’
On the flight back to London, Laura had held Jean-Laurent’s hand and whispered to him of her plans to take a year off after he had finished his course. They could do the whole of Asia, maybe South America too. Perhaps they should drive overland to India, keep a diary, make a documentary.