Catching the Sun

by Tony Parsons

  ‘Call the RSPCA,’ Keeva said.

  Rory dismissed the idea.

  ‘They can’t catch him,’ he said.

  Every movement the fox made came with a jerky dip as it kept the weight from the bad leg, and after every careful step it seemed to lurch forward and then immediately lift its head and right itself, like a drunk trying to seem sober. The effort was taking its toll, but apart from the injury, the fox still looked young and strong and proud.

  The sun came up over the rooftops and with the warmth on my face I began to feel better about everything and to believe that the sun would never fail us, and that as long as my family were in its light and heat, then we could never truly come to harm. I still had the Wild Palm brochure in my hand. I looked up at Tess to speak, to try to explain, to tell her that it wasn’t over yet, that I had one more chance to get it right, and there would be better times to come if she could believe in me for a little longer.

  But she was already smiling at me.

  She reached out and took my hand and I knew that something had already been decided.

  ‘Look,’ Keeva said.

  With great effort, the fox hauled itself on to the fence on the far side of the garden. I hoped that perhaps it was not something as serious as a broken leg, that perhaps it had only damaged its paw and the wound would heal.

  The fox looked back at us from the top of the fence.

  ‘He’s just trying to survive, isn’t he?’ Rory said.

  As the words left my son’s mouth, the fox dropped to the other side, and he was gone.

  14

  ‘I need you to do something for me,’ Jesse said. ‘A favour.’

  ‘Name it,’ I said.

  I was shocked at the state of him. He was in the special uniform of T-shirt and shorts that prisoners wore for visitors, and with the weight that he had lost they were hanging off him. His face was covered with pale stubble and beneath it his skin was sallow, sick-looking. His fingers picked nervously at a plaster on the top of his arm. He caught me staring.

  ‘They gave us a shot of Twinrix,’ he said. ‘Wonderful stuff. Wards off Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B and tuberculosis.’ He smiled faintly. ‘We’ve got all the mod cons.’

  I touched his other arm. ‘Are you all right?’ I said.

  ‘I’ll be out soon,’ he said. ‘Packed off home. Everybody else has already been deported. You were lucky to get out.’

  ‘Farren?’ I said, unable to imagine the island without him.

  ‘He was the first,’ Jesse said. ‘Must be back in London by now and freezing his butt off.’

  I thought of December in London and saw Farren’s tanned face in those cold streets.

  ‘So no court case then?’ I said, suddenly relieved. ‘No trial? No Bangkok Hilton?’

  ‘Easier for them to just kick us out,’ Jesse said. ‘As soon as the money comes through from my mum I’m off to the airport and then they’ll be tucking me in at 35,000 feet and handing round the nuts. The deportation isn’t so bad. The painful bit is if they deport and blacklist you. That means you can never come back to Thailand. Well, not for ninety-nine years, anyway.’

  ‘So after ninety-nine years, you can come and go as you like?’ I said, and we smiled at each other. But I was shocked. ‘They can’t really do that, can they?’ I said.

  Jesse chuckled.

  ‘They can do what they like,’ he said. ‘It’s their country, mate.’

  It felt like something we had only just started to learn.

  I watched him remove the chain that he always wore around his neck.

  ‘I want you to have this,’ he said.

  He laid it before me. A chain with maybe a dozen amulets. I could see a tooth, an image of the Buddha, an inscription of a language I didn’t recognize that I later learned was Khmer. There were pieces of bronze, and wood, and tin, and a tiny sliver of clay that seemed to have some kind of sparkling dust buried in it. They were shaped like bells, or round like coins, or oval with images of monks who had died a long time ago.

  ‘Charms?’ I said. ‘You should keep your lucky charms. Your plane home might crash.’

  He wasn’t smiling now. ‘You shouldn’t mock amulets, Tom,’ he said. ‘These are not lucky charms. These are real. And I want you to have them so that you can do me this favour.’

  I thought he might tell me about the favour. But instead he wanted to tell me about the amulets. He leaned forward.

  ‘There are four hundred and forty-three Thai troops in Iraq,’ he said. ‘And they are guarded by six thousand amulets.’

  ‘That’s good,’ I said. ‘For a minute there I was worried about them.’

  ‘I mean it,’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t laugh about this stuff.’

  ‘I’m not laughing,’ I said, laughing at him.

  He began pointing his index finger at the individual amulets. The nail was filthy.

  ‘This one will guard your pineapple crop against insects,’ he said. ‘This one will protect your water buffalo from sickness. This one will ensure good relations with your mother-in-law.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘It’s really going to come in handy.’

  ‘This one will make sure your fishing nets are never empty,’ he said, ignoring me. His eyes lit up with excitement. ‘Oh, this is a good one – it ensures you pass your driving test at the first attempt. This one—’

  ‘Jesse?’ I said.

  He looked up at me, the chain of sacred amulets between us. ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘Are you honestly telling me that these things work?’ I said.

  ‘Satisfaction guaranteed,’ he said. ‘Or you get your money back.’

  Then he told me about the favour and I decided it could do no harm to take his lucky charms.

  I held my hand under the cold-water tap and let it run until the wound between my thumb and index finger began to feel numb. The pain eased off slightly but the blood did not stop. I tore off a strip of kitchen towel and pressed it hard against the cut.

  Tess was watching me.

  ‘How did you do that?’ she said.

  ‘When I was out with Mr Botan,’ I said. ‘Caught it on a fishing hook.’

  I did not look at her face. Because she was my wife and she knew everything about me and she could tell when I was lying with just one look.

  Keeva was sitting at the kitchen table with Chatree’s big sister, whose name was Kai. She had started coming round for English lessons with her brother, but she wasn’t studying now. My daughter had tied the older girl’s hair back and was holding up a hand mirror.

  ‘See?’ Keeva said. ‘You’re so pretty, and you don’t even know it.’

  Kai smiled politely.

  Tess was still watching me.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said, heading out of the kitchen.

  Rory was on the living-room floor with Chatree, staring at an atlas.

  ‘See?’ my son was saying. ‘Thailand looks just like the head of an animal.’ The tip of his finger moved slowly north, along the borders of Cambodia and Laos. ‘See that?’ Rory said. ‘That’s the ear. A great big flapping ear.’

  Chatree laughed. ‘Great big flapping ear,’ he said, liking the sound of it.

  Mister moved between them, wild for attention, his tail wagging furiously. Rory picked up the dog and let it slobber all over his face.

  ‘And up there,’ Rory said, his finger drifting south-west, along the border with Burma. ‘That’s the head.’

  Rory’s finger made the long journey south. ‘And down here – Peninsula Thailand, where we live – that’s the trunk. See?’ Rory closed the book – The Traveller’s Wildlife Guide to Thailand – and smiled at his friend. ‘Our country is shaped like the head of an elephant,’ he said.

  Tess was in the doorway of the kitchen. She looked at me and smiled. We were both thinking the same thing.

  Our country. It did not sound as strange as it would have a few months ago.

  ‘I’m just going to the garage,’ I said, keeping my voice l
ight. ‘Do some work on the bike.’

  ‘Okay,’ Tess said, not suspecting a thing. I went out to the shed and stood outside the closed door, listening. A light went off in our neighbours’ house. The Botans turned in as soon as the Almost World Famous Seafood Grill had closed its doors and fed its staff. Everyone went to bed early in Nai Yang, and I was happy about that tonight.

  I opened the door of the shed and went inside.

  There was a pile of towels and blankets that I had gathered from Jesse’s apartment and at the sound of the door the gibbon’s head emerged from inside them, baring his teeth at me.

  At first I had thought he was trying to give me a smile, but now I knew it was a sign of aggression. He had given me one of those toothy smiles right before he took a chunk out of my hand on the ride back to Nai Yang from Jesse’s apartment. But it was a half-hearted gesture, and I somehow knew that Travis – and I thought of him as Travis, rather than just another gibbon – was not going to hurt me. It was as if he knew I was his last hope, God help him.

  He only came halfway out of his bedding, and a towel with Amanpuri on it drooped over his head like a shawl. He looked like ET’s stunt double. I slowly and gently lifted the shawl back to take a look at him, and he gave my bloody hand a quick sniff.

  ‘Yeah, I wonder who did that?’ I said.

  He glanced away and then back at me. The black skin of his face looked as tough as leather, but the eyes were huge and perfectly round. They seemed to have no bottom to them, no depth, they just went on forever. I had never seen a face so expressive, or so full of sadness.

  It was all there, I felt. Whatever someone had done to catch him. Whatever they had done to keep him up late and pulling in the happy punters on the Bangla Road. All right there. It was a look that said – Sorry, so sorry, but there is nothing that can be done.

  But I didn’t believe it.

  I was going to set Travis free.

  Put him back into the wild, where he belonged. I reached out my hands and he came to me in one nimble movement, perching, those endless limbs wrapped lightly around me, taking his own weight. I had no doubt that he was completely wild and yet there was something delicate about him, something that had not yet been touched and spoiled and hardened. He was only going to hurt me if he meant to hurt me.

  ‘Come on, Travis,’ I said, and carried him out of the garage, the towel from the Amanpuri resort again wrapped around his face, and we headed down the dirt-track road. I glanced back once at the house and then stepped off the road and into the trees.

  Few foreigners who came to Phuket had any idea of the lushness of our island, how green it was, and how dense. Avoiding the lights that glittered and showed signs of life below, I carried Travis towards the darkness of the thick forest. Soon we could go no further.

  It was not as far from the lights of civilization as I would have liked, but the forest was too dense to go on without a machete. The forest was that thick. I lifted the Amanpuri towel and we looked at each other.

  ‘Time to go,’ I said, and carefully lifted him on to a thick branch that blocked our way. The towel was in my hands. The gibbon stared at me. ‘Scoot,’ I said. Then I heard the boy’s voice.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Rory cried, coming down the hill, and I had never heard him so upset. ‘You’re going to kill him!’

  Rory came crashing through the undergrowth. Chatree was behind him. My son pitched forward flat on his face, picked himself up and staggered on, straightening his glasses. Travis considered him with interest, as if he recognized the boy from somewhere but couldn’t quite place him.

  ‘Calm down, Rory,’ I said.

  ‘You bloody bastard,’ my son said. ‘Oh, you bloody, bloody bastard.’

  ‘Hey,’ I said. ‘Watch your mouth. What do you think is happening here?’

  He pointed at the gibbon, who had hopped away from us and now clung to the thick leaves of a pineapple tree.

  ‘You’re killing him!’ Rory said.

  Now I was angry too. ‘You think I’m going to kill an animal, do you? You think I’m taking him out here to kill him, Rory? I’m putting him back in the wild. I’m setting him free.’

  My son shook his head, swallowed hard. Chatree stared at us looking worried, but closely following the action.

  ‘You don’t understand, Dad,’ Rory said. ‘If you just put him back in the wild, then he is going to die.’

  I stared at him. For a moment all I could hear was the distant buzz of the bikes on the road, and the wind that moved through the thick canopy of trees above us. I shook my head.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I said.

  ‘That’s right,’ my son said, and his face crumpled into a teary sort of smile. ‘You really don’t understand, do you?’ He nodded at Travis, who seemed to be listening carefully to the conversation. ‘Gibbons only survive in the wild if they are part of a family unit,’ Rory said, speaking very slowly, so that the lesson would sink into my thick head once and for all. ‘Okay, Dad?’ he said. ‘Without a family – they don’t survive. It’s that simple.’

  I sat down on the nearest branch. Rory sat beside me. ‘We can’t keep him,’ I said. ‘You saw what happened at Jesse’s place.’

  ‘I know,’ the boy said. ‘I know that we can’t keep him. I know that he will never be a pet. I know that, Dad.’

  ‘So I have to let him go,’ I said, feeling helpless, and suddenly believing that my son was right – leaving him in the forest would be as bad as dumping him by the side of the road. ‘I have to let him go and he just has to take his chances. What else can I do?’

  Behind the glasses his weak eyes drifted from my face to the chain of amulets that I wore around my neck.

  ‘I know a place,’ he said.

  The next day I borrowed Mr Botan’s pick-up truck and Rory and I started out towards the Bang Pae waterfall with Travis sitting calmly between us, the shawl from the Amanpuri over his head. At a red light a scooter carrying a family of five gawped at the gibbon and Travis stared right back. Yeah – I’m a gibbon. Get over it.

  The three of us drove towards the last of the island’s rainforest.

  ‘There were tigers and sun bears in there once,’ Rory said. ‘Even now, there are wild boar and flying foxes and cobras.’ Then he smiled. ‘And gibbons, of course,’ he said.

  The Bang Pae waterfall is just inside the Khao Phra Thaew National Park. We left the pick-up truck outside a small café and bought some bottled water from the woman who owned it. She did not seem remotely surprised to see Travis in my arms.

  ‘He looks like my side of the family,’ I said, and she nodded in agreement.

  We walked towards the waterfall and that was when we heard the singing. It was a kind of smooth, melodic hooting – high and musical and hypnotic, and unlike any sound that I had ever heard.

  ‘Can you hear them?’ Rory said. ‘The gibbons are singing.’

  ‘Why do they sing?’ I asked the boy.

  ‘They sing to find a mate,’ he said. ‘But even after they have found a mate, they keep singing.’

  We stood there listening to them but it was only much later that I felt I began to understand the songs of the gibbons. Rory was right – they sang to find a mate. But then they sang because they were gibbons, and they sang because they were alive.

  We climbed the hill to a small hut. In the distance, towards the Bang Pae waterfall, there were giant cages that were more than cages – part of the rainforest itself, built around it, but protected and watched over. Inside one of the massive enclosures I could see a black gibbon hanging from a large wooden triangle. But we heard them more than saw them, heard their songs stretching all the way to the top of the Bang Pae waterfall and beyond.

  We were at the Phuket Gibbon Rehabilitation Centre. A young American stepped out of the hut to meet us. We had not phoned ahead, or given anyone any indication that we were coming, but somehow it was as if they were waiting for us.

  ‘Who have we got here?’ the young American said.


  ‘Travis,’ Rory said. ‘We have Travis here.’

  The young American took Travis from us and handed him over to an even younger Thai woman, who took him away before we could say goodbye. Rory and I stared at each other, dumbfounded. The young American smiled.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘We’ll get Travis checked out. Test him for Hepatitis A and HIV.’ I must have registered shock, because the young American held up his hand. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll take him in, whatever the results are,’ he said. ‘But he can’t be released into the wild if he’s HIV positive or if he’s disabled.’

  ‘Because he wouldn’t survive,’ Rory said.

  Somehow the fact that Travis had been brought to this place of care and love made his past seem all the more terrible. I felt I should apologize, or at least try to explain.

  ‘A friend of mine found him in some bar,’ I said, looking up at the giant cages. I could see a dark brown shape move swiftly through the trees. ‘I don’t know what they’ve been giving him to keep him awake.’

  I was trying to say something about the horror in this animal’s past that had been inflicted by men and how we wanted to put it right. But the young American was way ahead of me.

  ‘It’s illegal to keep a gibbon as a pet in Thailand,’ he said. ‘But people do and they don’t treat them well. They don’t treat them like they’re living creatures who share most of their DNA with us.’

  ‘He’s forgotten what he is,’ Rory said. ‘He doesn’t know how to feed himself. He doesn’t know anything.’

  The young American nodded. ‘This is where he’ll remember,’ he said. ‘If he checks out okay, we gradually reduce the amount of food and human contact he gets. Encourage Travis to forage on his own and hope that he finds a mate. Move him up the hill to bigger cages. Soft release, we call it.’

  ‘Soft release,’ Rory said, making a mental note.

  Then the young American smiled.

  ‘Happy holidays,’ he said, and I remembered that it was Christmas Day.

  We kicked off our shoes at our front door, and just as I felt the cool hardwood floorboards worn smooth by generations of bare feet, I smelled the roast turkey in the oven.