by Roland Perry
‘My name is Nattanun,’ she said in English with a big smile. ‘You are Mr Vic.’
They shook hands. Cavalier had taken Polly’s advice as to which travel company to use. Now he wondered what Nattanun’s connection might be with the Federal Police or even ASIS.
‘Call me Natt,’ she said as she lifted the coffin into the boot of her late-model BMW hatchback. ‘I am told your Thai is very good.’
‘Rusty, but will improve in a day or two,’ he said in Thai. Despite his big night and alcohol consumption, Cavalier felt fine, although he found the heat hard to handle. Today was hot and energy-sapping.
‘Pity,’ she said in English with a smile. ‘I was wishing to use my English.’
‘We can take turns,’ he suggested. ‘Do you want me to drive?’
‘No,’ Natt said with a mock frown, ‘this is part of my job.’ Cavalier studied his maps.
‘Your articles are on history, no?’ she asked.
‘Yes, 1942 to 1944.’
Natt glanced at him. ‘What happens at the Burma border?’ she asked. ‘You have two days free.’
‘We’ll work that out when we’re there.’ Cavalier opened his iPad and looked at a news website. ‘Your prime minister has been removed from office, by the judiciary.’
‘Huh! Trouble!’
‘What kind of trouble?’
‘The army will take care of it.’
‘A coup?’
‘Why not? We’ve had twelve since 1933. The country is unstable. The military will stabilise it.’ She glanced at him and smiled. ‘We Thais need it every now and again.’
Cavalier wondered how this development might affect his plans.
‘Don’t worry,’ Natt said, as if reading his mind, ‘nothing will be different on this trip. Bangkok and Chiang Mai may have problems but not elsewhere.’
Now Cavalier thought Natt might have a connection to Jacinta, which was an extra incentive to make his cover of writing articles convincing. When they stopped at Bampong, a village sixty kilometres west of Bangkok, he stepped out of the vehicle’s air-conditioned comfort, put on his fedora, applied sunscreen and wandered to the little group of shops, his Nikon slung around his neck. He took shots and scribbled notes, asking Natt to join him in speaking to some of the older locals about the Japanese having brought POWs through their area seven decades earlier. ‘They’d have to be eighty to remember anything,’ Cavalier told her.
A few octogenarians remembered the Japanese occupation but none knew about the hundred thousand locals who had died as slave labour, in addition to the British and Australians. Cavalier was disappointed but admitted to Natt that this was because of his parochial Australian view. The war against the Japanese was a nation-defining moment for his country, which, as a federation, was just over four decades old when Japan threatened to take it over. But for the Thais, the Japanese occupation was just another invasion period of many experienced by them over a millennium.
The only sight that had confronted the POWs in 1942 and was still very much in evidence was the vultures. These ominous black birds, with their huge claws that could carry off lambs or dogs, hovered or sat on house tops and in trees. Cavalier moved close to their perches and took photos, causing not even a wing flap of fear from these mystical predators. Some turned their heads with a casual lack of interest. One cawed but it was not a warning; more a gesture of boredom.
Another sixty-five kilometres on, at the town of Kanchanaburi, Cavalier asked to stop at the town’s war cemetery in Jaokunnen Road. ‘This town is where the POW slaves ended up after their stint in hell making the railway for the Japanese,’ he said as they climbed from the vehicle and again faced the withering heat and dripping humidity that, within minutes, would make their necks and foreheads moist. ‘Many had the will to make it here but could go no further. Death had stalked them on the railway and killed half of them. It caught up with some here and they never got back to Changi prison, where their slavery had begun.’
Natt, in a white baseball cap, and large dark glasses that hid her concentrated gaze, stayed under a shelter, while Cavalier wandered among the graves of hundreds of POWs, bowing his head and reading the gravestones of men half his age. He spent a particularly long time standing in front of one of them. After an hour, he sauntered out of the cemetery with Natt. ‘What will you write about?’ she asked. ‘Sacrifice,’ he said.
Natt had booked two rooms in a villa-style hotel overlooking the river and the steel span crossing it, made famous by the film Bridge over the River Kwai. After settling in, they sat sipping gin and tonics on a balcony as the sun set over an idyllic vista. A sampan floated by. A fishing boat chugged in the other direction. Teenage boys leapt from the bridge into the river, while women on the far bank used it to wash. Further up the bank, fishermen plied their trade.
Cavalier opened his iPad and went to the website Thaivisa.com, which he’d found to be less censored and so more reliable than any of the TV channels. ‘It’s warming up,’ he remarked. ‘Your military chief has imposed martial law.’
‘It’ll be okay,’ Natt said, sounding only vaguely interested.
‘I’m not sure about that. The judiciary got rid of your PM, which will paralyse the government. It’s teetering on the brink of being dissolved: “Gun-toting soldiers are roaming Bangkok streets. Tanks are on the edge of the city. Military vehicles were seen in the heart of the capital’s retail and hotel district.”’
‘The army has not taken over, has it?’
‘All but! It’s serious but no one is admitting it.’
Natt, now more attentive, examined her phone. ‘They’ve left the government in office,’ she observed.
‘Read on. The generals have positioned troops at TV stations. Broadcasts have been suspended under “sweeping censorship orders”.’
They went into Cavalier’s villa and flicked on the TV. Many channels were already shut down and no foreign-based or local networks were available.
‘This is a coup in all but name,’ Cavalier said quietly.
‘As I said, it’s nothing new in my country,’ Natt replied with a shrug.
‘Do you support the government or the opposition? The red shirts or the yellow shirts?’
‘I am from Isaan, in the north.’
‘Which supports the red shirts and the government.’
‘I do what the king decides.’
‘But if he is unwell . . .?’
Natt shrugged, but did not answer.
They dined in a local cafe. Instead of talking about the political situation, Cavalier steered the conversation to Natt’s life story. She had an economics degree. She admitted she had very little interest in history or in world affairs, and had never travelled abroad, yet she had ambitions to visit the United States. She had married young and had a baby. Her husband, also a Thai from a rice farming family, had disappeared, leaving her with a child who was only a few months old. She then had a relationship with an Englishman, who had helped with her English, and hungry to improve, she had taken lessons. Natt looked after her parents and child financially, and was most grateful for the job at the travel company. She told him frankly it had allowed her to avoid being a bar girl.
‘It has to work for me,’ she confessed, ‘because I am now too old for bar work, and I would not like that anyway.’
Cavalier had heard this kind of tale often and knew that most of these stories were more or less true. It seemed to him that, overall, the females did the heavy lifting, while some of the men seemed intent on taking the scenic route through life, with booze, gambling and women, and living off others’ earnings.
Towards the end of the meal, Natt said to him gently: ‘You stood in front of one grave for about twenty minutes. You cried.’
Cavalier took his camera from around his neck and flicked back through the shots he’d taken. He magnified one with the inscription on a tombstone. Her hand went to her mouth as she read:
Victor Donald Cavalier
1919 to 1944
8th Division
‘Your father?’ she almost whispered.
‘Uncle. I was named after him.’
‘Is that why you came here?’
‘One reason, yes.’
They strolled down the main street after dinner. Locals and foreigners thronged the market, and there was no sign of martial law being imposed, at least in this western province. A military jeep with two soldiers holding automatic weapons crawled down the road. But their aim seemed only to be making their presence felt. Cavalier and Natt entered a bar close to their hotel. Cavalier was unsettled after finding his uncle’s grave, and while he had avoided having alcohol with dinner, he now needed a Scotch.
‘I’m not winning the battle against this,’ he told Natt, indicating his glass, ‘but I’m holding the line. I’ve not been drunk for a couple of weeks. I need to be alert.’
‘I don’t like alcohol,’ Natt said, touching his hand affectionately, ‘except for some wines, like this one.’
‘It’s from New Zealand.’
‘Where?’
‘It’s a little province of Australia. At least, it should be.’
He kissed her on the cheek. She responded with a brief but enticing kiss on the mouth.
They sat in silence.
Natt ran her thin fingers along Cavalier’s forearm. ‘You have hair,’ she whispered, ‘I like that.’ She undid a button on his shirt and touched his chest.
‘And you like older men too,’ he said, with a trace of cynicism.
‘I do.’
‘That’s what all the Thai women say.’
She laughed and sipped her drink.
‘Do you like fat men? You know, poompei?’
‘You are not fat.’
‘Give me twenty years.’
He paid the bill and they walked back to the hotel, holding hands. Her phone rang as they entered his room.
‘I can’t talk right now,’ she said in Thai to the caller, but spoke briefly to them before ending the conversation.
She and Cavalier embraced and kissed. His phone beeped.
‘I think we should switch these off,’ he said.
Natt hesitated. ‘It’s okay,’ she said, tugging at his trouser belt, ‘I won’t answer it.’
Cavalier pulled away and turned off his phone. ‘On silent, please!’ he said, pointing at her phone. She cocked her head and obliged. ‘Thank you,’ he said, embracing her again.
‘You’re old-fashioned,’ she whispered in Thai.
‘In matters of romance and phone etiquette,’ he said, unbuttoning her blouse, ‘I am.’
After they had made love and Natt was showering, her phone vibrated. Cavalier picked it up and looked at the number on the screen. It was Jacinta. He put it back on the table as she returned, a towel wrapped around her.
‘You had a message, I think,’ he said, nodding to her phone, ‘it vibrated.’
Natt sat on the bed and checked the number, then went to the bathroom and shut the door. Cavalier couldn’t hear what she was whispering but it was of no consequence. She was reporting to Jacinta, and that was all he needed to know. When she came back to bed, he poured them both wine.
‘Business?’ he asked casually.
‘What?’
‘The call?’
‘Yes, business,’ she said. ‘My boss, wanting to know how things were going.’
‘It’s midnight.’
‘She . . . she always checks on me with new clients.’
Natt’s towel slipped off. She put down her glass and kissed him passionately.
THROUGH THE PASS
After having breakfast together, Cavalier and Natt checked out of the hotel and visited the Thailand–Burma Railway Centre near the war cemetery, which was run by Rod Beattie, an Australian ex-pat. Cavalier took notes, interviewed former engineer Beattie, who claimed to be the world expert on the railway, and then drove on Highway 323 with Natt to the Hellfire Pass Memorial Museum at Konyu, which the Australian government had established in 1998.
During a coffee break in the museum’s cafe, Cavalier opened his iPad. He didn’t have to turn to Thaivista.com this time. The overthrow was worldwide news.
‘The coup is official,’ he said quietly to Natt. ‘The military has sacked the government and taken over.’
‘Had to happen,’ she shrugged. ‘Do you want to go back to Bangkok?’
‘No. We go on to the border, as planned.’
‘Do you still wish to see the Weary Dunlop Park and the Tiger Temple?’
Cavalier glanced at his watch. ‘Just the Dunlop Park,’ he said, ‘I can go to the temple and pat the tigers any time.’
Natt backtracked a few kilometres south to the well-manicured park that a Thai had set up in memory of famous Australian POW surgeon Lieutenant-Colonel Edward ‘Weary’ Dunlop. Cavalier did a tour of the memorial and was back in the car just as a busload of Japanese tourists arrived. He looked at his iPad again.
‘Weird,’ he murmured. ‘The generals and their “National Peace and Order Maintenance Council” are shutting down TV news services and stations. They may even shut down Facebook. They’ve arrested some local journalists in Bangkok. Hmmm,’ he continued, ‘been at a few war fronts, but I’ve never been in a coup before.’ Checking his phone, he saw he had two messages, from Driscoll and Gregory, urging him to leave Thailand.
‘Will your cricket matches still go ahead?’ Natt asked.
‘I think so, at least in Chiang Mai.’ Cavalier watched the Japanese tourists wandering into the park. ‘What would they be doing here?’ he asked.
‘The railway was a big engineering feat,’ Natt commented.
Cavalier glanced at her to see if she was being sarcastic. She wasn’t. ‘I guess that’s right,’ he said, ‘it was a spectacular construction in such a short time. Pity they had to murder hundreds of thousands of humans to do it.’ He took pictures of the tourists. ‘The museum’s a wondrous exhibition for the Japanese, especially as the propaganda on the walls doesn’t mention the numbers slaughtered.’ His gaze returned to his iPad screen. ‘It’s just a pity the place is named after a true Australian hero.’
While Natt drove back to the highway heading north Cavalier searched for more information on the coup. ‘Huh!’ he grunted. ‘The generals are going to pay off the rice farmers.’
‘They should!’
‘That’ll get some of the red shirts on side.’ He flicked through several more websites. ‘Your new rulers are thinking about cutting off access to the internet,’ he said, scrutinising the screen.
Natt showed little reaction as they motored on towards the mountains at the border. After several minutes, in which Cavalier scribbled notes, she asked, ‘Did you gather enough for your article?’
‘I did,’ he said, ‘thank you.’
Cavalier took photos of the impenetrable jungle, with thick, interlocking vines and scrub. ‘Wouldn’t get two metres into that,’ he muttered, ‘no wonder not many diggers tried to escape.’
‘What?’
‘Nothing,’ he said, ‘I was thinking aloud.’ He slid his fedora over his eyes and slumped in his seat, pushing the backrest to a forty-five-degree angle. ‘Wake me when we reach the mountains,’ he added and fell asleep within minutes. Three hours later, he awoke to them winding around the mountains on a narrow road leading to the Three Pagodas Pass and the Burma border. As he righted his seat, Cavalier clutched his back and groaned.
‘What’s wrong?’ Natt asked.
‘I’m afraid,’ he said with a grimace, ‘shagger has returned.’
‘What?’
‘Shagger’s back. It’s a nasty condition caused by contorting your back in positions it’s not used to.’ He managed to wince a smile at Natt. ‘I’ll need a remedial massage, a good one, and about two hours’ manipulation. It usually only lasts a day or two but better book two separate rooms again. I’m afraid I’m in for a restless night.’
They arrived at 6 p.m. at a resort on the Song Kali
a River in Three Pagodas Pass at the Thai–Burma border. The resort, surrounded by mountains, was not luxurious but tranquil and pleasant with views along the river, which seemed more like a series of lakes.
‘The Pass has historical importance,’ Natt informed Cavalier as they waited in his room for the masseuse. ‘The Burmese have used it for invasions of Thailand since the war between the two countries in 1548.’ She paused and asked, ‘Why do you do research here?’
‘The Japanese built the railway through this mountain pass into Burma and there’s a memorial to Australian POWs here. There was also a slave camp here, but I think the river waters have swamped it over the decades.’
Rose, the masseuse, arrived. Her jet-black hair, dark skin and black–brown eyes indicated she was Burmese.
‘I’ll have a meal in the room later,’ Cavalier said to Natt, ‘and then I’ll sleep. See you for breakfast at 10 a.m.? I’ll try an early morning walk to see if I’ve recovered. And can we meet in the village? I’d like to sample the local food.’
‘What else do you wish to do tomorrow?’
‘Stay around the area, rest a little.’
‘And then?’
‘It’ll depend on how fit I am and what’s happening with the coup.’
Natt nodded, hugged him and left.
Cavalier stripped to his underpants and lay on the bed. He spoke to Rose in Thai and explained his problem. After about twenty minutes of probing and manipulation, she had alleviated the pain. He asked her if she was from one of the hill tribes.
Rose hesitated. ‘I can’t say,’ she said coyly as she continued her work.
‘Why?’
‘There are visa issues sometimes.’
‘Let me guess,’ he said, turning his head to look at her, ‘the hill tribes don’t have citizenship in either country. You don’t have a visa?’
Rose blushed but did not respond.
‘I want to visit Burma,’ he said, lying flat again.
‘When?’