Catching the Sun

by Tony Parsons

  When the smell of the open toilets reached me, the bandanas made sense, and as I felt the heat in here, I could understand why men wore only shorts or pants. But I kept my shirt on, and kept my jeans on, no matter how hot it got, as if removing them was some kind of admission that I belonged here, and that I would stay here forever.

  Jesse came and sat next to me. ‘It’s going to be fine,’ he said.

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘It’s going to be all right.’

  Then he covered his face with his hands and I put my arm around his shoulders and I did not look at him.

  Farren sat apart from the rest of us, saying nothing, as if he did not know us. He kept his hand over his wounded eye.

  With my free hand I looked at my phone and when I saw that there was no signal I got up and moved through the bodies to where Farren was sitting.

  ‘I should punch your lights out,’ I said.

  He looked up at me.

  ‘You wanted a new life,’ he said, his voice flat and cold. ‘The good life. The soft life. I gave it to you. Stop whining.’

  That wasn’t true.

  All I wanted was a better life.

  I flew at him, wanting to rip his face off for whatever Tess would have to suffer now, but Pirin was on me at once, far stronger than me, and knowing exactly what he was doing, wrestling me away and down, the space opening up around us to make room for the violence, his thick arms tied in a complicated knot around my arms and neck, pushing my face into the ground, and I felt my nose and mouth and upper teeth being smashed hard into the concrete, slamming into it, banged into it again and again, trying to stop me struggling.

  But my wife filled my heart and she choked it tight shut and no matter how much he hurt me, I would not stop struggling.

  9

  ‘Thomas Arthur Finn,’ said the young cop, and I didn’t get it at first, partly because my name sounded so strange in his mouth, and partly because of that middle name, hated and never used but there in my passport, and there on the computer printout the young policeman read from, the name of my father. About the only thing the bastard ever gave me, apart from eczema.

  ‘Here,’ I said.

  Jesse’s sleeping head was resting on my shoulder. I edged away without waking him and got up, every limb stiff and aching. I suppose I must have slept at some point because the day had drifted by, the sun shifting across the small high windows at the top of the communal cell, and it was fading fast now as the island prepared for another spectacular sunset.

  I picked my way through the bodies, most of them stuck somewhere between sleeping and waking, and I thought of the last time I had seen my dad. I was eleven, and he was leaving us for his new life with a woman a few doors down. She was leaving her home too. ‘You’ll understand one day,’ my father had told me, but by now I couldn’t even remember his face, and I still didn’t understand, and I knew I never would, and I knew I would never want to.

  I followed the cop down a corridor to a small, clean room with a desk and a policeman sitting behind it. The cop behind the desk was the one who I had first seen standing alone on the balcony, staring at the infinity pool. I had thought he was just some young kid, but now I saw there were the three stripes of a sergeant on the grey sleeve of his uniform. He ran his pen down the list of names in front of him and yawned. There were other papers on the desk, many of them with the Wild Palm logo.

  He didn’t look at me.

  ‘I need to call my wife,’ I told him.

  ‘Your job at Wild Palm,’ he said. ‘Are you – an Account Opener? A Property Broker? Or an Investment Advisor?’

  His English was good but careful, as if he was trying out these words for the very first time. There was a nametag in English script on his chest.

  SOMTER, it said.

  I shook my head. ‘None of them,’ I said. ‘I’m a driver. My wife,’ I said. ‘Please, Sergeant Somter. I need to call her.’

  He looked at me now, and sighed. ‘You come to Thailand and do many bad things,’ he said.

  ‘Me?’ I said. ‘No.’

  He pushed a sheet of paper across to me. ‘This is your script,’ he said. ‘What to say to people to get money. What to say when the money is gone.’ He shook his head. ‘How to fool the people,’ he said.

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t have a script,’ I said.

  ‘You come to Thailand for cheap girl, cheap beer, cheap living,’ he said. ‘You come to Thailand for cheap life.’

  I waited for a moment to make sure he had finished. There was a pounding in my head and everything hurt. I didn’t know if he was talking about me or if he was talking about every foreigner that he had ever met. I genuinely could not tell, and not being able to tell scared the life out of me.

  ‘I came to Thailand for a better life,’ I said quietly.

  He nodded, as if I had agreed with everything he had suggested.

  ‘Many farang come to Thailand,’ he said.

  ‘Look, I want to help,’ I said. ‘Sergeant Somter. Please. I want to answer your questions. But I don’t know anything about – what is it? – Property Openers and Investment Advisors? I don’t know anything about that stuff. That wasn’t me. I just drive.’

  ‘Not just holiday,’ said Sergeant Somter. ‘To live. To stay. To suck what blood you can. Cheap life, cheap living.’

  ‘That’s not me,’ I said.

  ‘Men like your boss,’ said Sergeant Somter. ‘Farren. Is Farren your boss?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  I was every farang he had ever arrested. Every foreigner he had ever seen fighting in the bars, drunk in the street, shirtless in the temple.

  ‘My wife will be worried,’ I said. ‘She doesn’t know I am here. We have two children—’

  ‘Your wife knows exactly where you are,’ he said, cutting me off, and he nodded to the young cop who had remained standing at the door.

  Sergeant Somter smiled at me, his teeth white and even.

  ‘And you really believe that we are the barbarians,’ he told me.

  The young cop came back and Tess was with him, calm and controlled but her mouth set in a thin hard line, registering her shock at the state of my face with her eyes, only her eyes, and I grabbed her and told her how sorry I was and she told me not to be silly, all of our words less than a whisper. When she gently but firmly broke away from me I saw there was a man with her.

  An Englishman in a baseball cap.

  Tall and slim and untroubled by the heat inside Phuket Provincial. His jeans were neat and pressed and he wore a blue business shirt. Sergeant Somter rose from his chair and shook hands with the man. Then the man looked at me, but he didn’t hold out his hand.

  ‘James Miles,’ he said. ‘I help out at the British Office. At the Honorary UK Consulate. That’s where Mrs Finn found me.’

  There was a dragon in dark glasses on his baseball cap, and some words in Chinese. Foreign Correspondents Club of Hong Kong, it said.

  ‘The British Office has a space on Patak Road,’ he said, as if that explained everything.

  ‘Karon Beach,’ I said.

  ‘That’s it,’ he laughed. ‘More of a hole in the wall than an office. Above Klong Furniture.’

  I stared at him, thrown by the small talk.

  Tess took my arm and squeezed. I didn’t understand what was happening. I looked at Sergeant Somter and his face revealed nothing. James Miles spoke to him in what sounded to me like fluent Thai. Sergeant Somter nodded and left the room, nodding to the cop at the door to come with him. When they had gone Tess threw her arms around me, her eyes shining, and I held her tight.

  ‘I’m all right,’ I told her.

  ‘Phuket Provincial was built for seven hundred prisoners,’ James Miles said. ‘There must be twice that number inside. But there’s worse than Phuket Provincial. A lot worse.’

  ‘So you’re from the embassy?’ I said, my arm around my wife’s waist. ‘You’re getting me out?’

  James Miles laughed.

  ‘I�
��m not that important,’ he said. ‘I write travel books. I’m a humble scribe. As I said, I just help out at the British office because they get so busy with no official consul or embassy on the island. But I’m going to try to get you out.’

  That didn’t sound too promising.

  ‘The police think that Farren was running a boiler room,’ he said.

  ‘A boiler room?’

  I had never heard of a boiler room. I felt stupid. Stupid and helpless. The relief that I had felt at seeing Tess was changing to something else. I did not want her to see me in this place. I hated it that she had to see me in this place.

  ‘Boiler rooms offer investments in IPOs – Initial Pre-Offering Shares,’ Miles said, and my face flushed at the extent of my ignorance. I looked at Tess and she nodded and smiled and squeezed my hands. James Miles was still talking. ‘They’re sold at a low base price to people in the know – usually directors. And when the company gets listed on the stock exchange, the price soars. And you make a fat profit.’ He allowed himself a little laugh. ‘If the company is real.’

  I shook my head.

  ‘But Wild Palm sold property,’ I said.

  ‘It comes down to the same thing,’ Miles said, and he wasn’t smiling now. ‘Bogus investments. The glossy website is a front for a shack with a dozen telephone lines. Cold-calling the greedy and the gullible and separating them from their life savings. It may not have been a boiler room in the strict sense of the term. But our Sergeant Somter is right to smell a rat.’

  I felt that something was slipping away from me.

  ‘But,’ I said, ‘Wild Palm didn’t do anything illegal.’

  For the first time I saw a flash of irritation in his eyes.

  ‘And how would you know that, Tom?’ he said.

  I said nothing. But I wondered whose side he was on. It didn’t sound like mine.

  ‘As far as I can see, the Thais are right to be concerned,’ he said. ‘Farren has been playing fast and loose with Thai property and land ownership rights. Wild Palm have been setting up Thai companies, but it’s illegal to use nominees. These companies are meant to be genuinely controlled by locals. They have something called the Foreign Business Act of 1999 and they take it very seriously.’

  I stared at him. ‘Who are you?’

  He laughed. ‘I’m just a hack. I write travel books.’ He glanced at Tess and seemed to soften. ‘Look, I’m not here to make moral judgements,’ he said. ‘The Thais have been watching Farren for quite some time. Before you ever got here. I’m just here to help, Tom. But we have to help Sergeant Somter, too. What do you know about Farren?’

  ‘He’s a businessman,’ I said. ‘A property developer.’

  He laughed. ‘Farren will end up running a bar,’ he said. ‘They always do.’

  ‘You don’t know him,’ I said, feeling suddenly angry at this man. ‘And you don’t know me.’

  ‘Tom,’ Tess said, but I didn’t look at her.

  ‘I know you’re not like the rest of them,’ James Miles said, and he was trying to be kind. I could see that. If not for my sake, then for the sake of Tess, and I wondered what terrors she was feeling when she found him at the British Office on Patak Road. ‘I know you were just a driver,’ he said. ‘Isn’t that right? You were just a driver at Wild Palm?’

  I thought of the building business that I had once had in London before they took it away from me. I thought of the men who had worked for me and the things we had made with our hands.

  ‘That’s right, I’m just a driver,’ I said, and I turned away.

  I didn’t give a damn what this man thought of me. But the thought of Tess looking at my broken face at that moment was unbearable.

  10

  They must have heard the bike bumping down the dirt-track road because they were all waiting for us when we got home.

  Rory and Keeva, both holding copies of a book with a little girl and a pig on the cover. Mr and Mrs Botan, looking at me without meeting my eye. And, unaccountably, the boy with the gold streak in his hair, the boy from the beach, the chao ley kid who had tormented the turtle and thieved the baskets on Loy Krathong. He was also holding a book, but it was a different one from my children. He had to be a couple of years older than our kids, but the book he was holding was called Stories for Six-Year-Olds.

  ‘I’m helping him with his English,’ Tess said. ‘He’s had no formal education. His sister teaches him. Can you believe that?’

  I nodded, because I could believe it very easily, and got off the bike, feeling dirty and tired, the kind of dirty and tired that would not come off in a shower.

  Then Keeva was in my arms.

  ‘We saw you! On TV! But we couldn’t understand it! It was all in Thai!’

  I guessed we must have made the local news. I looked up at our neighbours. Mr Botan examined the unlit cigarette in his hand and Mrs Botan smiled sadly. It was my turn to look away.

  Keeva was kissing my arm, but Rory hid behind Mrs Botan, studying the cover of his book.

  ‘Rory,’ Tess said. ‘Welcome your father home.’

  But the boy still held back, hiding behind the Botans, not looking at me. Tess said his name again – sharply, this time, with that classroom sting she could put into her voice when she needed to – and he slowly began moving towards me. I shook my head.

  ‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘Rory doesn’t have to welcome me home.’

  I went inside the house, Keeva still holding my arm, rattling away about what they had seen on TV, and Tess thanking the Botans for looking after the children, and scolding our boy. I could hear all their voices but the words were not registering.

  All I could think was – None of this is mine.

  None of it.

  The bike. The house. The furniture. It all belongs to someone else. What is mine?

  ‘Mrs Botan turned it off quick, but we saw you and your friends,’ Keeva said, her breath on my arm.

  ‘They’re not my friends,’ I said. ‘Jesse is my friend. The man with the gibbon. Not the rest of them. They’re not my friends.’ I thought of Farren. ‘They’ve done nothing for me,’ I said.

  ‘Okay,’ Keeva said, her eyes wide. ‘Okay, Daddy.’

  I smiled at her and touched her face.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘About everything.’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ she said quickly. ‘It was Rory. He was crying. He didn’t like it.’

  ‘Well,’ I said. ‘I didn’t like it much myself.’ I got down on my knees to look my daughter in the eye. ‘But I haven’t done anything wrong,’ I said.

  She smiled at me, her eyes shining with a love that I knew I did not deserve.

  ‘I know,’ she said.

  Rory came into the house, and went into his room without meeting my eye. Keeva gave me one last fierce kiss on the arm and followed him.

  I walked into the living room where the chair was not mine, and the table was not mine, and the air that I breathed was not mine. I sat in a chair that wasn’t mine and my eyes closed without being told to. I was beyond exhausted. Then I felt someone standing in front of me and when I looked up Tess was standing there, as I knew she would be.

  The Thai boy was at her side, still holding his babyish book. I felt a wave of frustration. My family were taking in waifs and strays when we were living under a borrowed roof.

  ‘You still here?’ I asked the kid.

  He briskly nodded. ‘Pleased to meet you,’ he said, and his voice was thin and musical, and it seemed all wrong coming out of his body. ‘How are you today? I am well.’ He turned to Tess. ‘Excuse me, I must be going.’

  And he left.

  ‘It’s not his fault,’ she said, and I felt a surge of shame.

  ‘I’m sorry, Tess,’ I said, and I meant – for all of it.

  ‘Come here,’ she said, and I got up and wrapped her in my arms, and I put my face in her hair as she told me what I was going to do now.

  ‘You’re going to eat something,’ Tess said, and she had
brought food from next door, and it was waiting on the table for me. Mrs Botan’s Pahd Thai, the steaming noodles wrapped in a wafer-thin omelette. ‘Then you are going to clean up,’ she said. ‘Then you are going to sleep.’ She placed a kiss on my forehead and I felt myself slump into her arms. She gently straightened me up. ‘And in the morning you’re going to have to look for work,’ she said. ‘Okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  But the big question hung between us, unspoken yet everywhere. Tess smiled at me, and waited for me to say it.

  ‘And what about home?’ I said. ‘What about going home?’

  She held my shoulders and gave them one gentle shake.

  ‘We are home,’ she said quietly.

  The next morning I awoke at first light while my family was still sleeping and I wheeled the old Royal Enfield out of the shed.

  It was so early that I could hear the adhan, the Islamic call to prayers. Foreigners think that all Thais are Buddhist, but our part of the island, that old Phuket, the far northern tip, was almost as Muslim as it was Buddhist, and by the time you reached the far end of Phuket, just before the bridge to Phang Nga, there were more mosques than temples.

  I stood in the cool shadows of the dawn, listening to the calm certainty of the adhan, letting it still my heart. But again I was stabbed with the knowledge that none of this was mine. Not the bike, not the home, and not even the sense of calm that belonged to somebody else’s religion. It was all borrowed and it would all have to be given back.

  Mr Botan came round the side of his house, his arms full of ancient lobster pots.

  ‘Don’t worry about the house,’ he said, his voice soft because everyone else was sleeping. ‘It is paid for six months.’

  I knew he was trying to be kind, but I felt myself tense.

  ‘I’m not worried,’ I said.

  He placed the lobster pots on the ground and looked at his hands, as if noticing something about them for the first time.

  ‘My hands are getting old,’ he said. ‘You could help me fish.’