Sheer Abandon

by Penny Vincenzi

And wishing she could tell him.

  She had been half asleep on the boat, coming back from Koh Tao to Koh Samui. She had gone there for a couple of days, having been told it was the most beautiful of all the islands, that she must see it. She had been told that about most of them, but had been half inclined this time to agree; a white-rimmed jewel in the dazzling sea, electricity which only ran in the evenings, and huts so basic they made the ones on Samui seem quite luxurious. The girl she had gone over with had stayed to do some scuba diving; Martha’s money didn’t extend to that, and ravishing as the island was, it didn’t take hold of her heart as Koh Samui had.

  The boat seemed unusually rickety, even by Thai standards—very basic, with no toilet on board. She slung her rucksack onto the huge pile with all the others, found a quiet corner, and settled down with her book. She had found it on the secondhand shelf, at the dock at Mae Hat, the first half of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; it was the custom to rip books in two, to save rucksack space, and leave behind what you’d read. It could sometimes be months before you could find the second half.

  The trip was quite long, over three hours, and a wind had come up. Martha, who was a good sailor, had drifted off to sleep, lulled by the rise and fall of the boat; she woke once to see her rucksack tumble onto the mailbags on the lower deck. She reached over and tried to haul it back up, but she couldn’t reach it, and went back to her corner. They were about thirty minutes from the jetty at Hat Bophut, when she heard his voice.

  “Hi, Martha! I only just realised it was you. Your hair’s different.”

  She struggled to sit up, slightly dazed, and saw him, smiling down at her. “Hi! Oh, the braids? Yes, I had it done on the beach. Were you on Koh Tao?”

  She wasn’t remotely surprised to see him; that was the whole thing about travelling. People came into your life, you became involved with them, and then you parted, to meet up with them again months later, in an entirely different place.

  “Yeah. Been diving. You?”

  “No, just snorkelling. Lovely though. Then back to Big Buddha for a few days and then I’ve got a vague arrangement with some girl to move over to Phuket.”

  “It’s lovely there. And Krabi. And green sea, rather than blue. You been north yet?”

  “Yes, it was amazing.”

  “Isn’t it? Can I sit here?”

  She nodded; he smiled, slung his rucksack down on top of Martha’s and the mail pile, and offered her a cigarette. Martha shook her head.

  “So, where are you going now?” she asked.

  “Up to Bangkok for a few days. Girl I knew quite well was in a scooter accident on Koh Phangan, pretty badly hurt, she was taken up there. Here, Martha, can you smell burning?”

  “Only your cigarette.”

  “No, it’s not that. I’m sure I—Christ! Look, look at that smoke!”

  She looked; there was a thick grey cloud pouring out of the engine room. Nobody seemed terribly concerned; the guy who was driving the boat smiled and there was a complete absence of anyone else who might have been considered crew. The smoke grew thicker.

  “Shit!” he said. “I don’t like this. Jesus, I’m right too, bloody flames now!”

  Martha was suddenly very frightened. These boats, old and battered, usually had one lifebelt, at the most.

  She looked towards land, at the comforting white curve of the beach, and the stern towering figure of Big Buddha, and felt better. They were surely near enough to swim to shore if necessary. She said so.

  “No way, Martha, that’s at least a mile and this is shark territory. Shit, shit, shit!”

  Everyone was beginning to panic now, pointing at the flames, shouting at the captain, who was continuing to steer his boat doggedly towards the land, grinning determinedly.

  “What do we do?” asked someone.

  “Jump!” said someone else.

  “No, it’s much too far,” said another.

  “Sharks!” said someone else, voice trembling.

  The fire was quite obviously out of control now. One girl started to scream, and then another. An old Thai woman started muttering what was obviously a prayer.

  “Dunkirk,” said Martha pointing. “Look!”

  A small armada of longtail boats, their deafening diesel engines at full throttle, was setting out from the shore. One pilot per boat with two small boys perched at the stern of each.

  They must have noticed the fire, Martha thought, almost as soon as it began, and simply set off. No official rescue could have been better.

  One after another the longtails pulled up alongside the burning boat and people scrambled over the side and down into them. The flames were increasing all the time and there was still a slight swell; some people were clearly terrified, screaming and crying, but the boatmen remained not only calm but cheerful, urging and coaxing them along.

  The backpackers left the boat last; being inherently courteous (and English, she said), Martha, hiding her terror, was in the very last one; her last desperate thought as she slithered down the ladder was that she should somehow rescue her rucksack. Only it was at the other end of the boat, near the flames.

  As the longtails made in convoy for Hat Bophut, the captain and a boy were struggling to rescue some of the luggage, while the flames began to consume the boat in earnest. Martha gazed at them trustingly; they would surely get her rucksack, they surely, surely would. And then, knowing that even just five minutes later they would have been in very real danger, she found herself crying.

  They stood on the shore watching as the ship went up like a fireball. Martha felt sick; she had stopped crying but she was shivering violently, even in the hot sun.

  “Hey,” he said, coming over to her, putting his arm round her shoulders, “you’re cold. Here, have my sweater.” He put it round her.

  “I think I’m a bit shocked,” she said. “I mean, if it had happened even half an hour earlier we’d be dead. We couldn’t have swum it, and there were definitely sharks out there.”

  “I know. But it didn’t happen half an hour earlier, and we’re not dead. Think of it as an adventure. At last, something worth writing home about. On second thoughts, perhaps not. Hey now, here’s baggage reclaim. And Martha—who are the lucky ones? I see both our rucksacks, nobody else’s. And you know why? They came in on the mail coach. Look!”

  It was true; four mail sacks and two rucksacks had been brought safely in to land. The rest of the luggage was clearly at the bottom of the sea.

  Everyone was dreadfully shaken. The tourists left in taxis, the backpackers all went into the café by the jetty that doubled as a ticket office, bought Cokes, swapped cigarettes, fretted over their rucksacks. For many of them it was extremely serious; your rucksack was your life, your home, you never left it without padlocking every pocket separately. Most of them did have their day packs, the small bum bags containing such vital things as tickets, passports, and money, but a few had lost everything. Several girls were hysterical.

  Martha looked at them and felt upset herself. “What can we do to help?”

  “Nothing,” he said, “really nothing. How could we? They’ll be all right. They’ll go into town, go to the poste restante and cable home, and there are phones there too, and then they’ll try the tourist police, who’ll probably find them huts to stay in free of charge for a day or two until things begin to get sorted out, and they’ll all sit on Big Buddha beach, smoking grass and telling everyone who comes along how exciting it was and what heroes they are.”

  “You’re so cynical,” she said laughing. “I feel guilty. It seems so unfair.”

  “Not unfair. But we were lucky. Right. What shall we do?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, and suddenly started to feel rather bad again, shivery and miserable. “It’s all…horrid. Isn’t it?”

  “Mmm. You look a bit green, actually.”

  “I feel green,” she said. “Oh, God—excuse me!” And she bolted into the toilet and was very sick.

  “Poor old you,”
he said when she emerged. “Here, I’ve got some water for you. Have a sip, that’s right. Look, tell you what, I just happen to have rather a lot of money on me—my dad cabled me some extra. Why don’t we treat ourselves to a night in a hotel? To be honest, I don’t feel exactly great myself.”

  And indeed he didn’t look it; he was suddenly pale under his tan and sweating.

  “Sounds lovely. But I don’t have any money. You’ll have to go on your own.”

  “I don’t want to go on my own. I want you to come with me. I might have nightmares. Don’t look at me like that. Two rooms, no hidden agenda, honest. There’s a really cool luxury beach resort near Chaweng—Coral Winds. And let’s get a cab, none of your bus rubbish.”

  Martha still felt terrible; she knew he was rich—it was patent from various things he had said—and their shared adventure had indeed made her feel as if he was an old and extremely close friend, or even a relative. She suddenly had a sense of total unreality.

  “It sounds wonderful,” she said. “Thank you.”

  There is something about being in a very expensive hotel that is the opposite of character forming. There is a strong sense, born at the reception desk, that the servility and cosseting on offer are an absolute right, to be maintained at all times, and from which the most momentary lapse is an outrage.

  Martha, who had been brought up to regard frugality as the ultimate virtue and arrogance as the ultimate vice, found herself settled by the flower-and fern-fringed pool at the Coral Winds Hotel a mere sixty minutes or so after unpacking her rucksack (while picking her way through the bowl filled with peaches and grapes supplied to her room by the management and sending down her crumpled and grubby shorts and T-shirts to the hotel express laundry), waving at the pool boy and asking, just slightly irritably, if her second cocktail was on its way.

  Having received a profuse apology, along with the cocktail, she sipped it briefly and then stood up, walked to the edge of the pool and dived neatly in, swam a length or two, and then walked languidly back to her place and lay down again, aware that she was being watched appreciatively by most of the men sitting around the pool. The fact that they were mostly middle-aged and for the most part accompanied by young Thai girls—or boys—increased her pleasure; it felt rather good to be the only Western girl there and to have a novelty value.

  “Hi,” he said, appearing from inside the hotel. “You OK now?”

  “Absolutely OK,” she said, “thank you.”

  “Excellent. Me too. What’s that you’re drinking?”

  “A Bellini.” She spoke as if she drank them quite often; she had only ordered it because it was at the top of the menu. It was extremely nice.

  “Ah, one of my favourites. I’ll join you. I thought we’d have lunch here. They do a very good club sandwich, I’m told. Would that suit you?”

  “Perfectly,” she said, “but”—conscience cutting briefly in—“couldn’t we just go to the beach or something?”

  “No, I really don’t want to move. It’s awfully hot. We can eat there tonight.”

  “Fine,” said Martha, “my treat.”

  Lunch was brought and they ate it in a companionable silence, watching one of the men taking endless photographs of his Thai boyfriend.

  That evening they wandered along the beach in the soft darkness; every hundred yards or so was a restaurant, candlelit tables set on the sand, a stall of fresh fish laid out on ice, and a barbecue alight to cook it. They sat down, ordered barracuda, and while they waited for it, drank iced beer and watched the water lapping on the shore.

  “This is the life,” she said. “What a lovely day it’s turned out to be. I feel quite different.”

  “You seem quite different,” he said, “different from how I remember you.”

  “Oh really? Well, I’m the same.” Really she wasn’t; she had become, just for the duration of the fairy tale, careless and confident, another sort of girl altogether, no longer Cinderella but the princess, and until the clock struck and they left in the morning, so she would remain.

  After dinner they walked slowly back to the hotel; there was a jazz singer in the bar, and they sat and listened to her, while drinking more cocktails.

  “Honestly,” said Martha, “I’ve drunk more today than I have in the last three months.”

  “It suits you,” he said. “Have another, have a Bellini, that’s what you’ve become, a Bellini girl. I’ve enjoyed the transformation.”

  “Thank you.”

  “No, it’s been huge fun altogether. Thank you! It’s been a very nice interlude. And tomorrow I fly up to Bangkok—so come on, one more drink and then I think we should go to bed.”

  That was what had done it, that one more drink. One more Bellini. She had become tipsy, silly, more and more confident.

  So that when they were walking to their rooms and he leant forward and kissed her very gently, saying, “It’s been really fun,” she responded rather more enthusiastically than she had intended. She sensed his slight shock, then his pleasure; and he took her hand and led her along the wooden, palm-fringed walkways towards their bungalows and said, “Tell you what, shall we have yet another last drink? I’ve got half a bottle of champagne in my mini-bar and I’m sure you have too, so why don’t we enjoy them together?”

  Which they did; and then, somehow, it seemed really rather a good idea to sit down on the bed and let him kiss her again; and after that, it was just the shortest step to continue being one of those carelessly confident girls who took sex, along with all the other pleasures, not especially seriously.

  “You’re absolutely gorgeous,” he said, “really absolutely. I had no idea, I had no idea at all…” And it was so wonderful to be told that, and by someone so beautiful himself. She really wasn’t about to become boring, buttoned-up Martha again, until she absolutely had to.

  Her last thought, as she lay down and watched him pulling off his clothes, was one of gratitude to a boy who had relieved her of her virginity in the north, in the elephant village near Chiang Mai. That might not have been a beautiful experience, but it meant she could really enjoy this one. Well, concentrate on enjoying it, anyway. As she did. Very much. And even more the following morning, just before dawn, and before he left for the airport in one of the hotel limos, and she became Cinderella again. It had been fun while it lasted, and so very unlike her. But now it was over. Completely and absolutely over. She had no illusions whatsoever about that.

  Chapter 36

  They’d had another row.

  Gideon had a call from a chain of food stores he owned in the southern States; there was a crisis over redundancies, the unions were getting heavy, and he said he really needed to go to Seattle the next day and sort it out.

  “Is that OK?” he had said, putting down the phone. “I’m sorry, my darling. You can come too, obviously, and then we’ll go down to San Francisco for a couple of days if you like. I’m sure I can fit it in.”

  She hesitated, then said, “I can’t. I really feel I must be around London for the next few days. Kate’s rather depending on me at the moment. She keeps calling. And I’m the link with Martha. I feel I can’t let her down. Especially if the story comes out.”

  “I’m really worried about her,” Helen had said when she’d called on the Friday evening. “She’s very withdrawn, just stays in her room, won’t even talk to Nat. I think, really, she ought to meet this…this woman, but she says she doesn’t want to, ever, that she hates her. She’s not going to get over it that way, is she?”

  “No,” said Jocasta. “Oh, dear. I’ll give her a call, Helen, see if I can persuade her. Even if she never sees her again, she’s got to confront her. However painful for everyone.”

  But Kate wouldn’t. “She’s a stupid cow. Sorry, Jocasta, but I don’t see the point.”

  “OK. But if you change your mind, let me know. I’ll come with you. If that would help.”

  “It wouldn’t help, because I’m not going,” said Kate. “But I might just call for a
chat. I’m so glad you’re around, Jocasta. It’s difficult to talk to Mum about it.”

  So how could she go running off to Seattle?

  “Quite easily I should say,” said Gideon now. “I think you’re getting this thing a bit out of proportion, Jocasta. She’s not your child, she’s not your responsibility—”

  “But I feel she is. I’m so involved with her, Gideon, you don’t understand.”

  “No,” he said, “it seems I don’t. We’ve only been married a few weeks and I’m beginning to feel marginalised. Already.”

  “Well, you’re a fine one to talk,” she said. “Since we got married we’ve hardly been together. You’re always away, I’m always alone.”

  “Don’t be absurd. There is absolutely no reason for you not to come with me, whenever you want. Clearly you don’t.”

  “That’s crap!”

  “It’s not crap. My life is hugely complex, you know that, I have commitments all over the world.”

  “Yes, and they’re the ones that count, aren’t they? Yours. Mine are of no importance whatsover, it seems—”

  “You’re being childish,” he said. It was already one of his favourite taunts. Jocasta went out of the room and slammed the door. Later they made up, magnificently, in bed. But it still meant being alone. For at least a week. She decided to call up some of her old friends, see if she could spend some time with them. They were all delighted to hear from her, and she fixed up a Saturday lunch in Clapham, and a couple of her girlfriends asked her to go clubbing that evening. But somehow that didn’t feel right anymore, married to Gideon. How could you get drunk and dance the night away in some club, being eyed up by blokes—even if you had not the slightest intention of having anything to do with any of them—if you were a married woman and your husband was thousands of miles away, alone in some hotel room? You couldn’t. Better to be alone. Anyway, there was this other wretched business. Maybe she could talk to Clio about that.

  But Clio was unavailable; she and Fergus were going to Paris for the weekend.