by Tony Parsons
How little he knew. ‘Thais don’t use chopsticks, you dumb bastard,’ I called.
He came back smiling with two bottles of Singha from the little yellow fridge and watched me unwrap the food. Fish curry. Gway jaap, rolled rice-noodle soup with pork. Pahd Thai, in its bright yellow blanket of wafer-thin omelette. A pile of bite-sized spring rolls with a chilli dip made from sugar, shrimp paste, lime juice, thinly sliced shallot and chillies – especially chillies. And a bag of fleshy, pale yellow fruit.
‘Grapefruit?’ he said, frowning.
‘Pomelo,’ I said. ‘For dessert.’
It was not like any Thai food he had eaten in London, or even in the restaurants he had been to on Phuket. This food was full of competing flavours, and made no concessions to timid Western taste, and the chillies made it seem as if it was on fire.
It was a simple meal. But I knew that it would be the best meal Nick had ever eaten in his life. This was, after all, the best food in the world.
After the first mouthful of fish curry, he broke out into a sweat, smiled, and gave me a wordless thumbs up. Then he choked, controlled himself, and smiled again. He could not speak.
And all at once I tasted garlic and lime juice and lemon grass, the sour and the sweet and the sharp, the salt and the sugar, the pungent tang and the searing heat.
This was the food of the island. So many flavours pulling in opposite directions, but somehow you were aware of them all at once.
And perhaps that was the island too.
Then Nick croaked out something that I didn’t get.
‘What?’ I smiled.
‘I said – it hurts,’ he managed. ‘Jesus Christ, Tom. It’s hot.’
I nodded.
‘But good,’ I said. ‘And Tess is right. You should keep your distance from Kai. She’s not like the girls you meet down on the Bangla Road.’
‘I told you,’ he said, dragging his fingers through his thick black hair. The sweat was making it stick to his skin. ‘I’m sick of the Bangla Road,’ he said.
24
There had been no day of rest from the building on Hat Nai Yang and for those early months of the year we worked seven days a week. But now it was March and the cool season would soon be over. The breezes would be gone and the weather would become hotter, wetter and more humid. The work would be harder.
I stood on the sand with the Botans. On the far side of the beach road, the kitchen needed a roof and the small bar was still missing. But on the beach itself, halfway between the road and the sea, the two open-sided shelters were completed. I had just put up the curved wooden archway of the entrance at the edge of the sand, the door with no walls, and when Mrs Botan wrapped it with palm leaves and decked it in fairy lights it would once again look like the front door of the Almost World Famous Seafood Grill.
The little patch of Hat Nai Yang where we worked had stopped looking like a building site on the sand and started looking like a beachfront restaurant. We would have to complete the final touches in the hot season, and we would need to hire more men to get the big roof on, but we were nearly there.
‘We need to decide about the roof,’ Mr Botan said.
‘The choice is wood or steel,’ I said. ‘Wood looks better, but steel is faster, cheaper and doesn’t get eaten by insects.’
‘I still like wood,’ he said.
‘Me too,’ I said.
‘Enough for now!’ Mrs Botan told her husband in English. ‘Let the man spend some time with his family,’ she said.
So on the first Sunday of the new month, I took a day off and Tess and Keeva and Rory and I walked between two waterfalls. It was a hard walk. Between the Ton Sai and the Bang Pae waterfalls, there was nothing but virgin rainforest.
At the visitor centre of the Khao Phra Thaew National Park they had told us that it would take maybe three hours of serious walking. But with two children in tow – Keeva pushing on ahead with Tess, Rory lagging behind with me, his glasses steaming up in the day’s growing heat – we walked all the morning and we still had not reached our destination.
Rory paused to sit on a fallen tree. Up ahead I could see Tess and Keeva. Far more athletic than her brother would ever be, I saw my daughter jump on a trunk barring the path, strike an ironic ballerina pose for a moment and then she was gone. Ahead of her, Tess had disappeared from view, but now and then I could hear the thwack-thwack sound of the machete that Mr Botan had urged us to carry.
I looked at Rory with concern. It was too far to go back. All we could do was push on to the Bang Pae waterfall.
‘You all right, kiddo?’ I asked him.
He nodded and smiled. His face had that soft, squinty look that he always got when he removed his glasses.
‘It’s worth it,’ he said, and looked around with satisfaction. ‘There were elephants here once. And tigers. And rhinos. And Malayan sun bears.’
I watched something rustling in the thick undergrowth.
‘And it’s still quite busy,’ I said.
Then we lifted our heads because we heard the sound of a gibbon singing – that haunting, owlish hooting – coming from somewhere up in the trees.
‘Come on,’ Rory said excitedly, putting on his glasses and jumping up. ‘It can’t be far now.’
The walk was steep, and it felt as if we were always climbing. The canopy of trees was perhaps sixty metres above our heads, and it was like a thick green roof, shutting out most of the sunlight. We had been told that the floor of the rainforest was clear, but in places there was dense growth underfoot, and there were times when the track – which we had been assured was always obvious – seemed to taper off into a thick green nowhere, containing hundreds of trees, all of them different.
But there was water close by. As Rory pushed on, making slow progress because I would not let him take the machete, I crouched beside a small stream that ran over rocks worn smooth and burnished the colour of old gold. I cupped cold water in my free hand and threw it on my face. Then I heard it again and it sounded more like a musical barking, sharp single notes, like a flute from another world.
The song of the gibbons.
And still we could not see them.
‘They avoid humans,’ Rory said, pausing to catch his breath. ‘And I don’t blame them.’
Something stirred close to our feet and I took his hand. Neither of us moved.
‘Cobras are nocturnal,’ he whispered. ‘They don’t harm humans unless threatened.’
‘That’s really comforting,’ I hissed.
‘The thing about cobras, the thing about cobras …’
He was babbling now. I gripped his hand tighter. Up ahead I heard Tess call his name and then mine. We did not reply. ‘Females,’ he said, then swallowed hard. ‘Female cobras lay up to forty-five eggs in a clutch. They hunt birds, other snakes, toads and—’
A black creature stuck its snout out of the thick green bush and stared at us with its beady little eyes. I breathed out – it wasn’t a cobra. It had a muzzle so long that it almost touched the ground, and a powerful body supported by strangely spindly legs. For a moment neither of us moved. And then it shot back into the dense undergrowth and was gone.
Rory grinned happily.
‘Wild pig,’ he said. ‘I wonder if it was a male or female?’
‘Let’s not ask,’ I said. ‘Come on.’
We walked on and within minutes we heard the sound of the Bang Pae waterfall. We had crossed the rainforest. Tess and Keeva were waiting for us in a small clearing by the side of the fall.
‘Look,’ Tess said.
There was high wire mesh fencing among the trees. It was the first of the cages. But these cages at the top of the Bang Pae waterfall were so huge, so high – the very last stop before gibbons were returned to the wild – that they seemed to reach all the way to the canopy of trees and beyond, so that they did not seem man-made at all, but as if they were part of the rainforest.
We walked down the track that led to the gibbon rehabilitation centre and, sta
nding outside one of the smaller cages, there was a young man holding a bottle of baby milk, looking up into the trees. He took off his baseball cap to wipe his face with the back of his hand, and I saw the familiar shock of white-blond hair.
‘It’s our friend,’ Rory said.
He was right. It was our friend. I called his name and Jesse turned towards us, and I could see the changes. He was lean, fit, serious. He looked older.
‘They let you back in?’ Tess said.
He grinned with embarrassment.
‘I wasn’t blacklisted,’ he said. ‘So they let me back in.’
‘You work here?’ Rory said, looking from the bottle of baby milk to his face.
‘It’s temporary,’ he said. ‘Until I get a real job somewhere. But I get board. And I get to see my friend. And it’s a good place. You know?’
‘I know,’ Rory said, and Tess put her arm around him.
‘I want to do it a bit differently this time,’ Jesse said, looking at me. He felt the temperature of the baby bottle and whistled up into the trees. ‘You know what I mean? Do it right this time.’
I knew what he meant.
Then a skinny baby gibbon ambled out from under a small climbing frame. Its face was pink and hairless, shockingly human, and its fur a pale crop. Its wet black eyes were huge in its tiny head. It draped a hand over the lowest bar on the climbing frame but made no attempt to scale it.
‘Come on,’ Jesse said, waving the hand that wasn’t holding the baby milk. ‘Come on, you dozy little bugger! Climb! Climb!’
But the baby gibbon would not climb. Instead it swung on to the fence, its eyes on the bottle of milk. It glanced our way, then back at the milk, hopping a bit further up the cage and pushing its mouth through the mesh. Jesse held the teat to its mouth and it sucked on it hungrily. As he fed the gibbon, Jesse held one small paw between his thumb and his index finger, and he gently rubbed it as the baby gibbon suckled.
‘So you’re back, Jesse,’ I said, really pleased to see him. ‘You’re back and you’re here.’
Jesse smiled. ‘I just volunteer here,’ he said. ‘But it’s something I want to do. At least until the money runs out.’
‘What are your duties?’ Rory asked, as if volunteering was something he would like a crack at.
‘I help the animal keepers preparing food and feeding. I talk to the tourists about our work here. I work in the gift shop. I sell T-shirts and souvenirs. I clean the cages. You want to feed her?’
Rory frowned. ‘But aren’t we supposed to limit human contact? So that they remember they are gibbons? So they don’t need us?’
‘Well, that’s right,’ Jesse said, suddenly blushing.
‘I’ll feed her,’ Keeva said.
‘No, best not to,’ Tess said, putting her arms around her, and cutting off disappointment and further debate with a look.
‘You can both help me with my chores,’ Jesse said. He unfurled a hose and showed Rory and Keeva how to fill the water containers that were attached to the side of the cages.
‘Where’s Travis?’ Rory said. ‘Is he here? Is he back in the wild?’
Jesse didn’t look at us.
‘No,’ he said. ‘He’s not back in the wild.’
‘Where then?’ Rory said.
‘You’ll see.’
We went to a higher cage, halfway up the Bang Pae waterfall. There were a few gibbons here, languidly swinging on climbing frames before disappearing into the trees, but I recognized Travis immediately – the soft brown fur with a snow-white trim around a jet-black face, and those unforgettable black eyes – round and moist and bottomless. He was sitting quietly, contemplating another gibbon. Smaller, golden and – I was guessing – female.
Rory gasped with excitement.
‘Travis found a mate?’ he said.
Jesse shook his head. ‘He’s still looking for a date,’ he said.
We watched Travis watching the small, golden girl gibbon.
‘What’s her name?’ Tess said.
‘Paula,’ Jesse said. ‘Her background is very similar to Travis. Hunter killed her family when she was a baby.’
‘Oh,’ said my daughter, her hands flying to her mouth. ‘Oh.’
‘Sold her to some beach photographer down on Hat Patong,’ Jesse said.
‘I hate Hat Patong,’ said Rory.
‘The beach photographer was getting grief from the cops, so he sold her to a bar,’ Jesse said. ‘They gave her things to keep her awake, which didn’t do her a lot of good.’
‘But now they can mate,’ Rory said. ‘Now they can start a family and go back to the wild.’
‘Well, that’s the idea,’ Jesse said. ‘They’re taken in. Remember to be a gibbon. Find a partner. Learn to be part of a family. And released, when they can survive in the forest.’
‘He should sing to her,’ Rory suggested. ‘Travis should sing her a few songs so Paula will get to like him.’
Jesse looked pained, and I wondered what was coming.
‘It doesn’t work out for all of them,’ Jesse said. ‘There are three kinds of gibbons in here. Babies and juveniles who are learning to be gibbons. The ones who are looking for a partner so they can eventually be released – like our mate Travis here. And then there’s the third kind, who can never be released because of some disability or illness – like Paula.’
‘But Paula seems fine,’ Rory protested.
Tess shot me a look.
‘Look at Paula’s front paws,’ Jesse said.
And immediately we saw that her hands were mere stumps where the tops of her fingers had been chopped off.
‘She was in the bar,’ Jesse said. ‘It was late. Some man decided that it would be funny to dance with her. She scratched his face. So they chopped off her fingers. And now she can never go back to the wild.’
‘What?’ said Keeva. ‘Never?’
But my son did not speak. Because he already understood. We were silent for a while, watching the darker, larger gibbon admiring the smaller, lighter gibbon, who completely ignored him.
Travis sang. He had a high, sweet singing voice with a trembling quaver in it, as if he was still getting the hang of the whole singing thing.
But the female gibbon looked away, unimpressed, and contemplated her mutilated hands, as if she knew that this would never work out.
‘Gibbons need to be part of a family,’ said Keeva, looking up at her mother. ‘They’re a bit like us.’
‘No, darling,’ said Tess. ‘They’re exactly like us.’
When the four of us walked into the half-built kitchen it was still early, but near the end of Sunday’s daylight.
At one end of the bay the sky was inky black with cloud and night and at the other end the sky was streaming with pink and orange and red.
Then, as we collected our plates of fish curry from Mrs Botan and carried them down to the beach, real night suddenly fell, and all you could see out on the water were the parking lights that some of the longtails had, pulsing red or green in the sudden darkness, while further down the bow-shaped bay the lights of the restaurants and bars and massage shops all came on at once, a shining arc of white and gold.
Hat Nai Yang was bigger now, much bigger, with a strip of new small businesses at that far end of the beach. There was music drifting in the night, lots of music, mostly Thai pop songs but with the odd big Western hit, and all the different kinds of music bled into each other.
But there were still no jet skis and no hotels and no banana boats, I thought. Hat Nai Yang was open for business, but it was not open to the modern world.
We ate our fish curry in one of the two dining areas that I had built, the dusting of the Milky Way close enough to reach out and touch, and the feel of the new tropical hardwood and the memory of the long days spent working made Mrs Botan’s fish curry taste even better.
Tess smiled. ‘Looks good,’ she said, and her face became serious as she touched the collection of cuts and welts on the palms of my hands. ‘Oh, your p
oor hands,’ she said, and the way she said it made me feel loved.
I grinned proudly and looked up at the restaurant, seeing the figures of Mrs Botan and Kai moving about in the roofless kitchen on the far side of the beach road. When you were eating at the Almost World Famous Seafood Grill, it felt as though it ended and began on the beach. But when you stopped and took it all in, from the kitchen and the bar on the far side of the beach road, to the tables that reached all the way to the edge of the sea, you could see that it was a big place that felt small. There was a lot to do.
Kai and Chatree seemed very happy living with the Botans, and although our neighbours were kind people – despite Mr Botan’s prejudice against the chao ley – I suspected that the main reason they got along was because Kai and Chatree were both used to working.
There was a small catch of fish on ice outside the entrance, that gateway with no sides and no walls and no purpose other than to make you feel as if you had come to some special place, and to make you feel welcome, and the leafy arch of palm leaves was now covered in fairy lights, though they were dark tonight. There were also fairy lights in the trees, and there were more lights strewn across the roof of the shelters I had built, but none of them were turned on because the Botans did not want to give the appearance that the place was already open.
But two young Swedes came up the beach, watching our family tuck into fish curry. A boy and a girl. They had both been recently patched up from a motorbike fall – the girl had one arm in a sling and the boy had lost a lot of skin on both arms – but this was such a common sight on our island that they did not look unusual.
‘Family,’ Mrs Botan told them, coming down to meet them, wiping her hands on a dishcloth. ‘Only family tonight.’
The two young Swedes nodded and walked away and the girl reached out her good hand and the boy took it as they stared at the beach, and the bay, and the white gold lights that glittered in the soft warm night. They stared at Hat Nai Yang and I felt that I saw it through their eyes. The stillness, the beauty, the quiet untouched glory of the place. They breathed in the air, very deep and slow, really noticing it for the first time, and they were thinking that it seemed sweeter and cleaner and lighter than any air they had ever known.