Catching the Sun

by Tony Parsons

  I put my hand on Chatree’s shoulder.

  ‘Thank you for letting us stay,’ he said.

  I shook his hand. The skin was rougher than a child’s skin should be. Kai smiled at me in bashful apology and turned away.

  Then, as her cousin watched her with his dead eyes, Kai climbed the wooden ladder into the darkness of the tin shack, her second-hand Hermione Granger bag dangling from one thin shoulder.

  21

  We climbed to the top of the hill and the lagoon lay spread below us.

  Down in the clear and shallow water, four figures clung to an empty kayak. Two of them were in diving gear, and the other two wore orange life vests. They talked quietly in Thai among themselves, as they considered an unmoving dorsal fin nearby. The fin shone bone-white in the morning sun. A family of monkeys, skinny and wild, watched with mild interest from the muddy shore.

  Rory started down to the lagoon but I placed a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘That thing will take your head off.’

  He looked up at me and sighed.

  ‘It’s a dolphin, not a shark,’ my son said impatiently. ‘Probably Indo-Pacific bottlenose.’ He took off his glasses, cleaned them on his T-shirt and put them back on. He peered down at the lagoon. ‘But how did it get here?’

  Carried by the water. Picked up by the sea. We both knew that much. But there was no obvious way in or out. The lagoon felt like a secret place, shut off from the rest of the world. We made our way to the water, coming down the slope diagonally to avoid the monkeys.

  When we reached the mud we took off our sandals and placed heavy rocks on them so that the monkeys couldn’t steal them. Keeping our T-shirts on to protect our backs from the sun, we slipped into the water. The men glanced up at us as we approached the kayak, but merely smiled briefly in polite greeting and looked back at the fin. The water came up to my chest. My son had to swim. But he was getting better at it these days.

  We could see the dolphin clearly now. Up close it was the lightest shade of blue, with darker flecks of colour on its belly, and its jewel-black eyes gleamed with terror. It was so still that it could have been dead. Only the glint in those black eyes told you that it was not dead, but waiting to die.

  We all watched the dolphin for a while and then one of the divers made a motion towards it. With a tiny shudder of its tail, the dolphin moved away.

  ‘They never live alone,’ my son whispered to me, his head just above the water, flecks of wet on his glasses. He turned his head to the men. ‘The Indo-Pacific bottlenose,’ he said, slightly louder. ‘They live in family groups. Five, ten, fifteen dolphins. It’s been separated from its family.’

  The men all nodded thoughtfully, although as far as I could tell they did not speak English. Rory moved slowly through the water in a gentle doggy paddle. This time the dolphin did not move away. My son placed a hand on the dolphin’s beak, and a light flashed in those dark eyes. It was perhaps two metres long. My size, and the size of the Thai divers, but much bigger than my boy, who trod water as he continued to rest one hand on the dolphin’s beak while his other hand stroked the top of its head. My son looked at me and smiled.

  ‘Go on,’ he told me. ‘Touch him.’

  I moved through the water, half-swimming, half-walking, until I was beside the dolphin. I placed the palm of my right hand on its side and it was like touching leather and silk all at once.

  ‘He’s beautiful, isn’t he?’ said my son.

  I nodded and placed my other hand on the light blue skin of the dolphin. It was actually more like silk than leather, although it felt like the toughest silk in the world, silk that was built to last for journeys of a thousand miles.

  Then the men were suddenly there, their voices low but excited, pushing the kayak under water and manoeuvring it beneath the body of the dolphin. On the shore the monkeys chattered with mad excitement. The dolphin did not resist or try to move away as we rolled, pushed and lifted it on to the kayak, and it was then that I felt the weight and the power of this creature, and I thought that it would be too much for us, just five men and a boy.

  But after one final effort and a wild flurry of water, the dolphin was somehow on the kayak. One of the men placed a blanket over its head, and above its slender beak the black eyes shifted with surprise. On the shore the monkeys cheered, sounding as if they were clearing their throats.

  The kayak moved slowly through the water, towards the corner of the lagoon, and the dolphin was infinitely patient and still, trying to be of help, trying to cooperate. From high above us, I heard the sound of applause.

  Nick was sitting on a rock, smiling as he lifted a camera to his face and took a picture, and then another. He was still wearing his polo shirt and chinos. It was too much in this heat. But it did not matter much because he was going home soon.

  ‘Lucky fish!’ he called.

  Rory’s face was tight with rage.

  ‘It’s not a fish,’ he hissed, trying not to raise his voice. ‘It’s a marine mammal.’

  Nick nodded. ‘Lucky marine mammal!’ he called. ‘Do you know how long they were staring at Flipper there before you two turned up?’

  He said something else, but we didn’t hear him as we were approaching the sheer wall of the lagoon. Then suddenly we were moving into it, through a half-submerged cave, and when one of the divers shone a torch at the ceiling we saw that the roof of the cave was covered in bats. Thousands of bats. It was as if the ceiling of the cave was made of bats.

  ‘Fruit bats,’ Rory said. ‘Fascinating.’

  One of the divers placed a finger over his mouth and Rory smiled and nodded. ‘I understand,’ he whispered. ‘Mouths shut, right? Because of the possibility of bat poo.’

  I cursed under my breath, but after that I kept my mouth shut tight.

  The kayak moved slowly through the cave, the weight of its passenger pushing it low in the water. Above us the bats rustled and stirred, the sound as dry and lifeless as leaves.

  Ahead of us we could see a semi-circle of light. Then suddenly we were out of the cave and in open sea, and for one moment we paused, our eyes adjusting to the sunlight’s glare after the blackness of the cave. Now the men were at the back of the kayak, lifting it up and shouting encouragement, and I quickly pulled my son away as the dolphin slid and splashed into the sea. There was a flash of silver like underwater lightning, and then it was away and gone.

  Rory trod water and stared out at the ocean as the men pushed the kayak back into the cave. The sound of their happy laughter echoed in that dark chamber and then faded away.

  Rory continued to look out at the horizon. But of course there was no longer anything to see.

  ‘Dad,’ my son said. ‘Can we come back tomorrow?’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Tomorrow I have to work.’

  Later I sat on the sand of Hat Nai Yang with Nick, and as the children played with the dog down by the shore we watched the setting sun paint the sky in the exact colours of fire.

  Behind us I could hear Tess telling a young aid worker that she did not have to pay for the bottle of water she was handing her.

  Tess’ nam plao stand had been going for a week. I had reinforced and extended the shelter, so it was bigger and more cool and shady, and I had found a ping-pong table washed up on the beach and dragged it back to use as a kind of bar.

  I looked at her and she smiled and gave me a thumbs up before tearing the cellophane off another twelve-pack of water. There were still quite a few left, but demand had slowed to a trickle. The shortages were over in days. There was water and food and electricity. What the island needed now was to rebuild.

  Rory and Keeva wandered up from the shore, Mister yapping between them.

  ‘So what happened to your girlfriend?’ Keeva asked Nick. ‘We saw her on television. She’s very pretty.’

  ‘She went home,’ Nick smiled.

  ‘Do you want to help me look for bottlenose dolphins?’ Rory asked him. ‘My
dad’s got to work.’

  ‘I’m going back tomorrow,’ Nick said. ‘I’ve got to work, too.’

  ‘Do you like our bar?’ Keeva said, looking up at Nick.

  ‘It’s a great bar,’ he smiled.

  ‘It’s a very long bar,’ my daughter said. ‘Because my dad got my mum a ping-pong table.’

  Nick laughed. ‘It’s the long bar,’ he said, and the name made me smile.

  The long bar, I said to myself.

  Tess would like that.

  Rory and Keeva wandered off to help their mother and Nick pushed his bare toes into the soft white-gold sand of Hat Nai Yang. He lifted up a fistful and let it run through his fingers, and I heard him sigh. It was difficult to leave the beach.

  ‘So the dolphin will be a story, will he?’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘In my game they say, “If it bleeds, it leads,”’ he said. ‘Meaning there’s nothing that the world likes better than hearing about someone else’s misery. But it’s not true.’ He looked up at me. ‘Most of all, people like stories that give them hope. The dolphin is that kind of story.’

  There was almost nothing of the sun left now, just the fading red and gold smeared low across the sky.

  ‘You all packed?’ I asked him.

  He nodded. He was leaving in the morning.

  ‘There must be a thousand stories in this place,’ he said. ‘But the clear-up has kicked off and there are no more miracle survivors. You all right?’

  I was thinking of the little Norwegian boy called Ole. I wondered if his father had found him. I would never know.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘So your editor wants you back?’

  He nodded and as the last of the sun slipped away it was as if God had suddenly turned on the night.

  ‘I could use a beer,’ Nick said, turning to look at me. But he knew that we only had water. ‘Don’t you fancy a few beers, Tom?’ he said.

  I looked up at the hill. I could see no lights in the Botans’ house. It was possible that they had already turned in.

  ‘I’m getting up early tomorrow,’ I said. ‘But I’ll drop you off somewhere on the bike.’

  He thought about it for a moment.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘You heard of this place – the Bangla Road?’

  I drove him to Patong.

  Before he had got off the Royal Enfield, a girl was out of one of the bars and on him.

  ‘Oh, hello, sexy man! Oh, hello, my big, big honey! Oh, I want you happy-happy! Oh, I want to take care of you! Oh, I want you so happy-happy!’

  She had him in the bar-girl full nelson – one arm wrapped around his waist, the other snaking around his arm. In this fashion, she eased him from my motorbike.

  Laughing, he shook her hand and said he was very pleased to meet her. For his reward she gave him a wide white smile and an ecstatic squeeze, as though he was too adorable to believe. Then she tugged modestly at her tiny leather mini-skirt, as if anxious that he should not get the wrong impression about her. Nick tried to hide it, but I could see that he was very slightly overwhelmed.

  ‘She acts like she’s been waiting for me all her life,’ he said, a big grin spreading across his handsome face.

  ‘Yes,’ I nodded. ‘Don’t get too carried away. She would act that way with the Elephant Man. In fact, I think I saw him just leaving.’

  We shook hands and we said goodbye. I could not imagine when I would see him again.

  But Nick Kazan slept very late the next day.

  And his Thai Airways flight left for home without him.

  22

  At first light Mr Botan and I carried our tool bags down to the beach.

  Already Hat Nai Yang was bustling with life. All along the beach, from where the seafront restaurants had once stood to the far end of the bay, the curving far end of the beach road where nothing had ever stood before, dark figures pulled back the tarpaulins that covered building materials to protect them from the sun.

  The sound was exactly like sails out on open water being whipped by the wind, and it made my heart feel light and happy to hear it because it was the sound of work, and it was the sound of hope and it was the sound of all that had been taken away starting up again.

  For the island. For the beach. And for me.

  ‘Eat breakfast later?’ Mr Botan said, his voice still gruff with sleep.

  ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘Then we begin,’ he said.

  And without saying anything beyond deciding on our immediate tasks, Mr Botan and I went to work.

  Before, the Almost World Famous Seafood Grill had been just a few tables and chairs scattered across the beach, from the beach road at the top all the way down to where the sand met the sea.

  Now we were planning to add a couple of open-sided shelters – hardwood tables and benches on raised decking where the roof would provide shelter from the sun or the rain.

  Before, the only lighting had been a candle on every table with a few random lights hung in the trees plus the fairy lights strung around the entrance. Now Mrs Botan – who had a deep love of fairy lights, and a profound belief in their power – wanted every tree on our little part of the beach to have wreathes of tiny coloured lights running through their branches, which would mean rigging the electricity to reach to the very edge of the sea. The Almost World Famous Seafood Grill would be different this time. Bigger, better, brighter and with many more fairy lights.

  ‘But still no bread,’ Mrs Botan told me.

  She brought me steaming Pahd Thai wrapped in wafer-thin omelette for breakfast and we laughed as I remembered the day we had watched the elephants come out of the sea. When she was gone I looked over at the little ramshackle structure that I now thought of as The Long Bar, and Tess raised her hand and waved to me, and she did it every time I looked over at her, until I felt that I should concentrate more on what I was doing, and ration the number of times that I looked at her.

  Tess was watching me work.

  The sun came up and the heat built but still we kept at it, me out on the sand cutting the wood for the two open-sided shelters, Mr Botan on the other side of the beach road, joined by Mrs Botan now, where the kitchen had stood before and where it would stand again, as they took delivery after delivery and attempted to make sense of the boxes of equipment that were continually arriving.

  It was lucky that this was the coolest time of the year, the middle of the dry season. January meant days of blue skies, calm seas and a wind that was never more than a warm breeze. It meant that I could work for hours without stopping.

  My first job was to build the two little wooden shelters that were already the talk of Hat Nai Yang. How could the other seafood restaurants begin to compete? Smiling to myself, I knelt next to the neat stacks of wood and, between measuring and cutting them to size, I let my fingers glide across their surface.

  I loved the wood in Thailand. The look of it, the feel of it, the rich deep brown colour. Tropical hardwood that would have been much too expensive to build with back home was the same price as standard construction woods like pine and fir. I loved to smell it, to see those rich shades of brown, and to run my fingers over that glass-smooth surface. As I worked with it on that first day, I could not imagine a time when I would ever take its tough beauty for granted.

  Our progress was good on that first day. It was early afternoon when the heat finally became too much, and all at once I was too tired to go on.

  Mr Botan came across the beach road, a cold bottle of nam plao in each hand, and he nodded with satisfaction at my work.

  The skeleton of the new improved Almost World Famous Seafood Grill was starting to take shape. Already the rough outlines of our two open-sided shelters were marked out with the wood that would build them, and I had also mapped out the area where the Almost World Famous Seafood Grill had once stood with posts and string. It was as if Hat Nai Yang itself remembered what had stood here before the water came.

  ‘Enough for one day,’ Mr Botan sai
d.

  ‘Okay,’ I said, taking the water gratefully as I crouched down and touched the wood for one last time today.

  It was strong and beautiful and heavy.

  It would last a very long time.

  Tess was no longer alone.

  Keeva and Rory were there, Mister going mental between them, and two slim young figures who I took for aid workers, going to or coming from the devastation further north in Phang Nga. But as Mr Botan and I got closer to The Long Bar they waved and smiled at me and I saw that it was Kai and Chatree.

  ‘The chao ley,’ Mr Botan said.

  ‘But what are they doing here?’ I said.

  He laughed at the question.

  ‘Still they wander,’ he said. ‘The chao ley – forever they wander.’

  Chatree had picked up Mister and the dog was licking his face.

  ‘Just visiting, I guess,’ I said.

  Mr Botan rolled his eyes, as if sea gypsies never did anything else.

  As we reached The Long Bar I saw that Kai and Chatree were holding their childish overnight bags. Hermione Granger and the snow leopard. They smiled at me bashfully and I looked at Tess. It seemed a bit quick for a visit.

  ‘They’ve had to come back,’ she told me, and turned to look at them. ‘Haven’t you?’ she said.

  ‘What happened?’ I said. ‘What about your family in Ko Siray?’

  They both smiled broadly, a sign of deep embarrassment.

  ‘There’s no work,’ Kai said.

  ‘No work for anyone,’ Chatree echoed.

  ‘No fishing?’ I said.

  ‘The boats don’t leave the shore in Ko Siray,’ Chatree told me. ‘They fear the ghosts.’

  I nodded, and patted the kid on the shoulder. It did not seem ridiculous to me. It did not seem far-fetched. I still spent time staring at the horizon. I could easily understand how you could be afraid of the ghosts who haunted that sea.

  ‘Enough talk,’ Tess said briskly. ‘These children are hungry. And they need a place to stay.’

  Mr Botan had been watching the chao ley without expression. At last he spoke.