Catching the Sun

by Tony Parsons

  The sun was just losing its heat when the bride and groom knelt on a pedestal with garlands around their necks, their hands pressed together in a gesture of prayer and connected with a small chain of flowers. Mrs Botan stepped forward holding a conch shell and poured water from the shell over their joined hands. I turned to Mr Botan for an explanation.

  But it had been a long day, and a long wedding ceremony, beginning last night when nine shaven-headed monks in their saffron robes walked from the local wat down our dirt-track road to prepare Nick and Kai for the wedding – ‘Asking blessing from the ancestors,’ Mr Botan had told me at the time, with a bit more enthusiasm than he could work up now.

  I smiled sympathetically at him, knowing he was getting tired of talking me through it all. A Thai wedding ceremony lasts longer than a lot of marriages back home.

  ‘Happy ending story,’ he said briskly, his old Chinese face nodding once, as if that was the end of the matter. I thanked him and turned to watch the young couple on their pedestal.

  They kissed.

  Nick and Kai became man and wife on Hat Nai Yang and they kissed. Or at least – Nick kissed, pressing his lips awkwardly on her face, partly on her mouth, partly on her cheek, and Kai squeezed her lips together in shy response, but did not quite touch his face.

  And then she sniffed him.

  Kai put her face close to her new husband’s face and inhaled – briefly, deeply, softly, but unmistakably – and I did not need Mr Botan to explain this gesture of understated adoration. But he explained it anyway.

  ‘Hom kaem,’ said Mr Botan. ‘Called hom kaem.’ He was smiling again. We were all smiling now. Tess and Keeva and Rory. Mr and Mrs Botan. Chatree. The cousin and uncle who had come up from Ko Siray. The owners and chefs and waitresses and waiters from the neighbouring beachfront restaurants, and even a few of their early-evening diners. Nick’s family and friends from Liverpool and London.

  Nick kissed Kai and Kai sniffed Nick, as proud and bold as a war bride, and every single one of us saw it and smiled.

  ‘Nice-smelling kiss,’ Mr Botan said. ‘Like animals. Sniffing the other animal.’ He looked down at Rory and touched him gently on his back. ‘Humans are just more animals, no?’ he said.

  ‘That’s right,’ Rory said, as though he had never doubted it.

  Rory was wearing a silk smock jacket like the white one that the groom was wearing. Most of the men and boys at the wedding wore them. The jackets buttoned all the way up to the neck and had a high collar with little upright lapels. There was an Indian tailor on the Hat Nai Yang strip who had made a job lot for us. Peter Suit International, it was called, run by Mr Peter himself. Exclusive Ladies and Gents Custom Tailor, it said on his card. Daman und Herren Masschneider Shraddare. We all got to choose our colour. Mine was green. Rory’s was gold. Mr Botan’s was red. I had no idea if this was correct form – if you could choose any random colour for your wedding jacket. But that is what we did. The only warning we had been given was that we could not choose black. ‘No black at a Thai wedding,’ said Mr Peter of Peter Suit International on Hat Nai Yang, his dark eyes flashing with amusement. ‘Black is very bad luck for the Thai marriage.’

  I reached Nick and Kai and took my turn pouring water on their clasped hands. Nick’s hands looked huge next to those of his bride. I could not work out if her hands were really so small or if my friend had huge hands and I had just never noticed before. And he was so pale and she was so dark. And he was so tall and she was so small. Everything about them seemed totally different, apart from the joy in the smiles they wore.

  It had been a hurricane of a courtship and there had been many moments in the weeks leading up to the wedding when I had doubted the wisdom of all this – but not now.

  Today I felt nothing but happiness for the pair of them. There was no trace of cynicism or doubt inside me. They each seemed to be the missing half of the other. They fit together. It was as simple as that. Tess looked at me and smiled, and squeezed my arm as I stepped away from the pedestal, and I knew that she felt it too.

  I had seen flashes of doubt on the faces of the wedding party during the long and various steps of the ceremony – nothing much, just the odd muttered comment, the quiet shaking of a head, the long cool look at the grinning Englishman and his Thai bride. But the misgivings and disbelief seemed to fade with the heat of the day.

  The wedding guests were a mixed crowd. A few of Nick’s friends from London in their late twenties, most of them with partners, one or two toting small babies, and his divorced parents from Liverpool, both with their new spouses. All of them were reeling with jet lag and the heat. Then there was us – the Hat Nai Yang people, our family and the Botans, and of course Chatree, proudly carrying around Nick’s camera, and taking charge of the endless photography of a Thai wedding ceremony, for it felt like every moment had to be captured. And finally there were two chao ley from Ko Siray – the cousin and the uncle, awkward and apart, as if working out what it could all possibly mean. Aside from the nine monks from the local wat, who had joined us for the wedding on the beach, improbable and exotic in their bright saffron robes, the two sea gypsies were the only local men who were not wearing one of the silk smock coats. They wore the sleeveless shirts and baggy trousers of the island’s fishermen.

  A police car stopped on the beach road and the cousin and uncle lowered their heads and spoke among themselves, watching it warily out of the corner of their eye. Sergeant Somter got out of the passenger seat and leaned over the open door, watching the wedding from behind his shades.

  ‘You should go and talk to him,’ Tess told me. ‘I don’t know if they cleared all the paperwork for today.’

  I nodded. On Hat Nai Yang there was always a grey area between what we had permission to do and what we just did. I walked over to the police car as Nick and Kai posed for more photographs.

  ‘Those chao ley,’ Somter said, not looking at me. ‘They are a long way north.’

  He meant the cousin and the uncle, not Kai and Chatree. At least, that’s what I think he meant.

  ‘They’re family,’ I said.

  ‘Family?’ he said, almost smiling.

  ‘The bride’s side,’ I said. ‘Fishermen from down south. Why does everyone seem to hate them?’

  He inhaled deeply.

  ‘There was once bamboo all over these islands,’ he said, looking around, as if remembering the bamboo. ‘The chao ley cut it all down. All the bamboo in these islands – chopped down by chao ley.’

  I had heard this one before. It was one of the reasons that the sea gypsies were considered second-class citizens, or not citizens at all.

  ‘To make homes,’ I said. ‘The chao ley chopped down the bamboo so that they could build homes.’

  And Sergeant Somter looked as though he had heard that answer before. He nodded, unimpressed.

  ‘Home,’ he said, turning his dark glasses in my direction. ‘I told you to go home, didn’t I?’

  We looked at each other for a while.

  ‘I went home,’ I said quietly, and he laughed.

  He took off his glasses and looked at me – really looked at me – for the first time today.

  ‘No, you did not go home,’ he said. ‘And now it is too late for you to go home.’

  ‘What’s your problem with me?’ I said.

  ‘You do not take me seriously,’ he said.

  ‘I do take you seriously,’ I said.

  He held up a hand, and shook his head. He wasn’t having it.

  ‘The Westerners in Thailand do not take the law seriously. Not until the moment you are crying for your mother or your embassy or your lawyer.’

  ‘Oh well,’ I said.

  He smiled grimly. ‘One day I think you will take me seriously,’ he said.

  I kept my mouth shut. He got back into his car and nodded to the driver. As he pulled away, I walked back to the wedding party.

  ‘Is it all right?’ Tess asked me, and I put my arm around her and kissed her cheek. No
thing was going to spoil today.

  The ceremony was nearly over. The day was nearly done. The sun was sliding into the glassy sea. The timing was perfect. The candles shimmered and shone on the tables of the Almost World Famous Seafood Grill. We were ready to open.

  There was a large plastic box packed with ice in the entrance to the restaurant. Mackerel, snapper, grouper, giant prawns and fish that I had never learned the names of. And, off to one side, in the misty water of a massive glass case, the lobsters moved in slow motion.

  The bride and groom were posing for their final photographs just as the sun went down with its usual dramatic light show over Nai Yang bay, and on the horizon low clouds that looked like a distant mountain range were smeared with red and gold. I could smell the fresh fish being grilled and my mouth flooded with hunger as I released a breath that felt like it had been held forever.

  Then from out to sea there was the rising whine of a fast, powerful engine, coming closer.

  It was not a sound that we heard very often on our beach, where we were more used to the dignified diesel growl of the longtails. I looked up to see a speedboat curving around the bay, coming from the south, heading directly for Hat Nai Yang.

  Chatree grinned at me and then back at the speedboat.

  ‘Poo-yai!’ he said, turning away from the bride and groom and rushing down to the water. ‘Poo-yai!’

  As it got closer to the beach the engine was cut, and the speedboat drifted in between two longtails, the old boats of the fishermen bobbing in its wake.

  There was a white man standing on the bow of the boat in a black T-shirt and black jeans and I remembered the warning about not letting anyone wearing black approach the wedding party, and I thought it would be better if he could have landed further down the beach.

  But it was too late now.

  Bad luck, I thought, but then I remembered the laughter in the eyes of Mr Peter the Indian tailor when he had told me of the superstition, and I dismissed the thought. The boat was drifting towards Hat Nai Yang, with the last of the sunset directly behind the man in black, making the sky look as if it was on fire.

  The man on the boat was Farren.

  Chatree laughed happily.

  ‘Poo-yai!’ he said, and took a photograph.

  I looked at Mr Botan to translate. He ignored me, watching the longtails rock in response to the speedboat, and one of them was his own.

  ‘Poo-yai!’ the boy said again, as Farren jumped off his boat and waded ashore and on to our beach. He walked past without looking at me, heading for the bride and groom.

  Mr Botan’s lips curled with distaste. At the end of a long day, he had finally run out of words. But he made one last effort.

  ‘Poo-yai,’ he said. ‘Head of family. Big shot. Big man.’ His old Chinese face gave away nothing. ‘The boss,’ he said.

  I heard the sound of laughter and somewhere a switch was pulled, and the thousand fairy lights of the Almost World Famous Seafood Grill all came on at once. There was applause, more laughter, and the lights were all around.

  Farren hopped on to the little pedestal and kissed the bride, and my fingers flew to the amulets around my neck.

  Black at a Thai wedding, I thought.

  What rotten luck.

  PART FOUR

  Song of the Gibbons

  27

  The real heat came in April and the old Royal Enfield kicked up clouds of pale yellow dust on the back roads of the island.

  The heat was always there, of course, but the heat that came in April was the hard stuff – the air bone-dry and still, the trees unmoving, and as I rode towards Nai Yang village and home, the entire island seemed to shimmer in the haze.

  At the sound of the approaching bike, a girl in her teens stepped into the road. She was grinning and holding a plastic orange saucepan of water. As I passed her, she threw it in my face.

  I steadied the bike, water streaming down my visor and the girl in fits of giggles behind me. Then there was a young man with a blue plastic bowl ahead of me, waiting. I steeled myself for the inevitable and as I reached him he threw the contents of the blue plastic bowl at me. His aim was not as true as the girl with the orange saucepan and the water hit my chest and lap and bike. I looked down anxiously as I heard the elderly engine splutter and cough with shock. But I kept going, nodding and forcing a good-natured smile that I did not really feel. I was coming back from Phuket City with some parts for the bike, and people had been throwing water at me all the way.

  Then, just as I was leaving the village, there was a pick-up truck rumbling behind me, the back full of young men and women. They all had buckets and they all emptied them over the head of the young man with the blue plastic bowl. He stood there, stunned and dripping.

  And that did make me smile.

  This was Songkran, the Buddhist festival of the Thai New Year. At the local wat, Buddha images were purified with water for good luck. Children poured fragrant holy water over the hands of their senior relatives. And everyone else had a water fight. They seemed to particularly like soaking a farang on a motorbike.

  As I came out of Nai Yang village and started up the hill to home, my eyes were stung by a drifting cloud of thick black smoke. It was coming from the edge of the football pitch where the water buffalo grazed. Some of the villagers were burning piles of rubbish. It was the time of year when all that was old and dirty had to be burned.

  The way Mr Botan translated it for me, Songkran meant change. The Thais loved to chuck around water to wash away old sins – it was where the national spirit of sanuk was at its most widespread – but the piles of garbage that were quietly burned were also part of the festival. If you took the unclean with you into the coming year, it would bring you bad luck. Everyone knew about the water, but there was also the black smoke of the small fires.

  And that was Songkran too.

  I had the bike up on my bench in the shed so that its name was at the same height as my face. I turned on the engine and let the bike warm up, thinning the oil and getting all the rubbish into the bottom of the crankshaft. The humidity of the island left condensation on the crankshaft, and there was a lot of crap in there.

  I liked clean oil. I was no mechanic, but changing the oil was cheap and easy and always made me feel better. The bike liked it too. Nothing kept the old Royal Enfield running sweeter than fresh oil.

  Outside there was the sound of laughter and shouting as the children chased each other through the trees with water pistols.

  I let the engine run for five minutes, circling the bike, preparing my gear, careful not to touch the exhaust with my bare arms. It was getting hot now.

  Keeva appeared in the doorway of the shed, toting a white plastic AK-47 water gun, her hair and T-shirt flattened with many soakings.

  ‘Where’s Mister?’ she said.

  I laughed. ‘Probably hiding from you.’

  She stayed in the doorway.

  I turned off the bike. The oil was ready to drain now. ‘Why don’t you stay and help me, Keev?’ I said. ‘I’ll show you how to change the oil on a motorbike.’

  ‘Nah,’ she said, waving her hand. ‘I’ve got to find that dog.’

  ‘Okay, kiddo.’

  Then she was off and gone and I turned back to the bike.

  I took off the drain plug with a spanner. Mrs Botan had given me a five-litre tin that had once held cooking oil and I drained the bike’s oil into that. The oil was very hot from where I had warmed up the engine and although I tried to be careful some of it splashed on to the palm of my hand and left a darker stain where it burned my tanned skin.

  When I had finished, the cooking oil tin was more than half full and I knew that was exactly how much oil I had to put back. I gave the Royal Enfield three litres of fresh oil and I turned on the bike. Then I stood back and watched it, rubbing at the burn on my skin with an old oily rag. The bike purred with contentment.

  I felt someone in the doorway of the shed and I looked up, expecting to see one of my chil
dren in search of their dog. But the shadow was the shape of a man, and the man was Farren.

  ‘Tom,’ he said, and he came into the shed, and shook my hand, and my palm was slick with oil and still stinging with the burn. ‘Let me look at you,’ he said.

  I was barefoot, stripped to the waist and wearing a baggy pair of green fisherman’s trousers.

  He laughed at me.

  ‘You went native, didn’t you?’ he said.

  I turned off the Royal Enfield.

  He was groomed – shaved and clean and spruce, sprayed with something sweet that was out of place in my oily little shed. He only stopped smiling at me when I got my sore hand around his throat and banged him up against the wall. I pushed my face close to his face, shaking my head.

  ‘You dropped me in it, didn’t you?’ I said.

  I let him go almost immediately. I was afraid of the police. I was afraid what they might do to me and my family if I hurt him.

  ‘That cop,’ he said. ‘Somter. He had me down as running a boiler room. I was never running a boiler room – you know that, don’t you?’

  ‘You sold property,’ I said. ‘And you sold land. Even though foreigners can’t own land in Thailand.’

  He snorted with impatience.

  ‘There are ways around that,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘The client gets his Thai girlfriend or Thai wife to put it in her name. Then one day – a week later – ten years later – she comes home and finds him in bed with some other woman. But the land is still in her name. That always works quite well, right?’

  He shook his head and laughed, as if I didn’t get it, and I never would, as if it was all a bit too complicated for me to understand.

  ‘Got a job for you,’ he said. ‘A real job.’ He looked around the shed, smirked at the baggy trousers. ‘Great days are coming,’ he said. ‘This area is so beautiful. The coastal forest. The empty beaches. The stillness of the place. I’m going to build a bar on Hat Nai Yang. A proper bar. Not one of these hole-in-the-wall joints.’

  ‘You mean like the No Name Bar,’ I said. ‘That kind of proper bar?’