Catching the Sun

by Tony Parsons

  ‘On the beach,’ he said.

  Far below us the bay curved like a perfect crescent in reverse, and all was dark now but for the fire that raged and burned in the middle of Hat Nai Yang. It must have been burning for a while, because some of the flames were as high as the tallest trees.

  In the black of the night the fire cast a sickening light, illuminating the casuarinas, and throwing enormous shadows that grew and danced with wild abandon across the sleeping sea. The thick black smoke drifted up from the beach and it blotted out the stars and the moon and it burned my eyes.

  I ran to the shed, shouting his name aloud as I threw back the door, although I already knew that I would find it empty.

  30

  In the pearly light of morning Tess climbed on to the back of the bike and we rode down to the beach road to look at the blackened hulk of The Long Bar.

  There were many people on the beach road, staring at the wet black ruin, noting the twisted metal stools and the drifts of broken glass and the long bar itself looking like a boat that had been set alight, sunk, and pulled sodden and ravaged to the surface.

  Behind me on the Royal Enfield, Tess pressed her face against me.

  ‘Oh, God,’ she said. ‘What has he done?’

  But the inhabitants of Nai Yang did not linger. Destruction held no great fascination for them. The people of Phuket were not the kind who slow down to look at traffic accidents. They saw it all the time – the mess that human beings so casually make. So a burned-out bar wasn’t much. They had all seen a lot worse in recent memory. It would be torn down and levelled and its presence would soon be a fading memory when it was replaced by whatever the strip threw up next. Besides, there was a living to earn, and children to pack off to school and fish to catch, and early-morning travellers to approach with the promise of elephant rides, foot massage, cooking lessons and trips out to the neighbouring islands. The Long Bar had burned all through the night but the next day life went on without pausing for breath all down the sandy white curve of Hat Nai Yang. The Royal Thai police were sealing off the smoking ruins of the bar, and their yellow crime-scene tape extended halfway across the beach road on one side, and down to the edge of the sea on the other.

  ‘Where is he?’ Tess said. ‘Where is he, Tom?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘He’s just running.’

  There were five of the maroon-and-white pick-up trucks they used for police cars parked on the beach road and this seemed like a lot for a fire in a beach-front bar until I saw the three body bags laid in a neat line at the boots of the cops in their brown uniforms.

  A cop bent over one of the bags, pulling up the long zip at the front. Before it closed I caught a glimpse of what remained of the face. I did not recognize it. But I recognized the three rented Harleys that still stood untouched on the beach road.

  The cop stood up and looked over at us. It was Somter, and though he made no move towards us, I knew that I was not free to leave. I would have to answer his questions, even if he already knew the answers. Then I saw the tall figure next to him, the green baseball cap with its gold crest pulled low over his face.

  ‘Why is Miles here?’ I said.

  ‘They must have been British nationals,’ Tess said. ‘The people in those bags. That’s why he’s here. Because they were British nationals.’

  I could see it. Too drunk to ride south. Crashed out on the floor of The Long Bar. Nick would not even have known they were there.

  And when I saw Farren in the wreckage, raging and cursing and weeping, I remembered that none of the businesses on Hat Nai Yang were insured. When what you had was taken – by fire, by water – then it was gone forever.

  ‘We have to find them,’ Tess said. ‘Nick and Kai. We have to find them before anyone else does. I don’t know what he might do, Tom.’

  ‘And do what?’ I said. ‘Smuggle him across the border? Nick hasn’t overstayed his visa, Tess, he’s not doing dodgy land deals.’ I nodded at the body bags as they were carefully loaded on to the back of a maroon-and-white. ‘He can’t get out of that.’

  ‘I don’t mean the police,’ Tess said. ‘I mean Farren.’

  There was a motorbike with an ice-cream sidecar parked outside their beach hut. Chatree had come looking for his sister. He came out looking dazed when he heard our bike. He was wearing his school uniform and he had his rucksack with him, but he held it mechanically with one hand and let it drag across the ground.

  Tess said his name and he looked away, trying not to cry. It was the first time I ever thought he looked truly young.

  ‘She didn’t come home,’ he said.

  Tess put her arm around him and together the pair of them walked through the trees towards the mangroves, stopping when they reached the picnic tables that were relics of the old national park. They talked for a long time, but when Tess came back, she came back alone.

  ‘He doesn’t want to come with us,’ Tess said. ‘He wants to stay here. He wants to wait for her.’

  ‘He’ll be all right,’ I said, not believing it.

  I saw Chatree walking through the casuarinas down to the empty white sand of Hat Mai Khao. I watched him remove a book from his rucksack and send it skimming across the pure blue water. He did it again.

  Then he stopped, as a smooth muscle seemed to appear in the Andaman Sea, and then another, and then more, as the heads of the elephants broke the surface and began their slow, dramatic march to the shore.

  The boy on the beach stood motionless, a new exercise book forgotten in his hand, as he watched the great grey beasts rising out of the water, their huge heads nodding as if confirming that this was not a dream, their eyes with lashes like a spider’s web blinking away the streams of water that ran down their ancient faces into that bottomless maw of a mouth, with more water flying off the ears, running down the vast expanse of their grey hides, and dripping from the bodies of the men on their backs, the mahouts, with their bare feet pressed behind the ears of the elephants, and the silver hook in their hands glinting in the sunlight.

  But you always looked straight through the men. All you ever saw were the elephants coming out of the empty sea.

  And then we turned away and walked back to the bike, and I saw no more.

  I followed the girl through the house.

  It was a traditional house in the Southern style, built to accommodate the heat and the rain. It faced a river, the long sloping Panya roof extended over the front stairway, and inside it was a place of cool shadows and empty space and polished wood. When the girl’s bare feet touched the floor, they made no sound.

  ‘Please,’ she said, and she looked away as she smiled and I thought how unlike most Thai women she seemed. The ones I knew, from Kai to Mrs Botan, all had a clear-eyed confidence about them. They looked you in the eye as if they had no reason to do anything else. But there was a self-consciousness about this young woman, and I thought that it couldn’t be explained by the fact that I had come to this place uninvited.

  It was a home with no children. All was calm, there was no clutter, and what furniture there was – a heavy, claw-foot coffee table in front of a cane sofa upholstered in red silk, antique wooden figurines of gods that I didn’t know – looked as though it was on display. There were sliding shuttered walls on every side, and they were pulled back now to catch the breeze of early morning.

  James Miles was on the veranda of the walled garden. He was wearing a white cotton robe, sitting at a small table for two and reading a faxed copy of that morning’s Times. I had never before seen him without his FCC hat, and it lay at his side next to a skinny grey cat. He was quite bald.

  ‘Your friend,’ the girl announced, smiling into the distance, and as I thanked her for her kindness I saw what was different about her. It was her Adam’s apple.

  ‘Tom,’ Miles said, too much of a gentleman to express surprise or displeasure at my appearance, and in one smooth movement he stood, shook my hand and placed the green baseball cap with its dragon crest on
his head. He adjusted his robe and I caught a glimpse of his body, and was surprised how toned he looked for a man of his age. If he had once been a drinker in Bangkok, there was no sign of it now. The skinny grey cat squawked in protest at being disturbed.

  He was drinking ginger, like the women in the massage shops on Hat Nai Yang, and he poured me a glass. He played the perfect host. It was almost as if he had been expecting me.

  ‘You have a beautiful home,’ I said.

  ‘Isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Thank you. We have been here for a number of years.’ He paused, as if debating whether he should tell me the name of the girl with the Adam’s apple. He apparently decided against it. ‘We’ve been very happy here,’ he said.

  He sighed and looked out at the walled garden. What was unusual about it was that nothing was planted in the ground. The tiles were covered with potted plants. There were clusters of terracotta pots holding purple flowers and red-leaf plants, and there were the giant wide-rimmed dragon jars – mangkorn, Thais call them – bearing everything from what looked like lilies floating on water to small, spiny-stemmed trees. But nothing grew in the ground.

  ‘My neighbour,’ I said, sipping my ginger, ‘Mr Botan, he told me that the Thai love of potted plants is based in Buddhism. Things planted in soil seem more permanent. Something planted in a pot reminds us everything passes in the end.’

  ‘Your neighbour is right, Tom,’ Miles smiled. ‘Although there is also the practical consideration of a people who sometimes have to move home quickly. You can take a potted plant with you.’ He was warming to the theme. ‘And then there’s the Thai obsession with riab roi. They place great value on tidiness.’ He took a drink, not looking at me, and the mask seemed to slip. ‘You know you shouldn’t have come here, don’t you?’

  ‘I didn’t know where else to go,’ I said truthfully.

  He shook his head.

  ‘But I can’t help you,’ he said. ‘Your friend is in a lot of trouble. You know that.’

  ‘Tess told me to come to you,’ I said. ‘My wife. It was her idea. I know you don’t think much of me, and I don’t blame you. But I think you respect her.’

  He was silent for a while. We could hear the island sound of light motorbikes and scooters buzzing by, but they seemed very far away. In the end he tugged at the rim of his FCC hat and shook his head again, and there was a finality about it now.

  ‘You have to leave,’ he said, courteous but firm. ‘I’m very busy.’

  ‘Do me one favour,’ I said. ‘Please.’

  ‘I can’t do anything for you,’ he said.

  ‘You’re a travel writer,’ I said. ‘You know things about this place. You have contacts.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m a travel writer.’

  ‘All I’m asking,’ I said, ‘is that you help me to find someone.’

  ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘But your friend should turn himself in immediately. Anything else will make it far worse for him in the end.’

  ‘It’s not Nick that I need to find,’ I said. ‘It’s his wife.’

  ‘What’s her name?’

  I looked at him for a beat.

  ‘Lindsay,’ I said. ‘Her name is Lindsay.’

  Inside the house I saw the girl moving through the hushed shadows, carrying some clean laundry into what must have been the bedroom, and as her bare feet fell softly on the dull gold of the hardwood floors, they made no sound at all.

  In the heat of the middle of the day, I walked past the great houses built by the Chinese who had made their fortunes in tin and rubber on the island more than a hundred years ago.

  There was nobody else on the street and it was not just because of the heat. The old Chinese quarter of Phuket town was not a place that many travellers sought out, and it was of no interest to the Thais with no Chinese blood. So the streets belonged to me – and with my T-shirt stuck to my body like cling film, I walked past the great homes of Thanon Thalang, Thanon Romanee and Thanon Deebuk as beyond the black, wrought-iron fences the great houses seemed to be sleeping behind their closed shutters. The houses were cream and yellow and blue, and they were so lovingly cared for that most of them looked newly built. I looked up at their balconies and half-expected the hard, smart, self-made Chinese men who had built them to walk out.

  There were alleys in the quarter. I ducked down one of them and felt the fire before I saw it. It was coming from an oven, and an old woman was burning counterfeit money – hell notes – to prepare her way in the next world. In the tight little alley I had to squeeze myself against the wall to get past her, but she made no move to get out of the way, just kept on feeding the hell notes to the fire, as if one of us was already a ghost.

  There was a temple next to the alley. Mr Botan had taken me here and told me that, although the Thai street signs called the temple Kwanim Teng, its true name – its Chinese name – was Pu Jao, dedicated to Kuan Yin, the Taoist god of mercy.

  I went inside, and stepped immediately into a thick fog of incense and hell money burning in huge stone drums. It was too much – a lung-clenching, mind-warping perfumed smoke, and combined with the hundreds of small sacred statues, it made the temple an hallucinogenic experience. At first I thought I was just imagining him. But it was really Nick – standing motionless as an elderly Chinese man shook bamboo sticks to find out what the future would bring.

  Nick looked at me and smiled weakly. ‘I didn’t think anyone would find me down here,’ he said.

  ‘This is the first place I’ve looked,’ I said.

  Our eyes watered in the holy smog.

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘How stupid I am.’

  ‘Not so stupid,’ I said. ‘It could be worse.’

  He laughed bitterly at that.

  ‘You didn’t run,’ I said, and I touched his arm. ‘You didn’t try to get across the border.’

  ‘I thought about it,’ he said. ‘I did, Tom. I couldn’t make up my mind between Laos, Cambodia or Burma. Figured I would get a tug in Malaysia – as I would landing at Heathrow. I also thought about topping myself.’ He laughed. ‘But I couldn’t decide between sleeping pills and jumping under a tuk-tuk. And then I realized that I couldn’t do any of these things because I love my wife.’ He choked on his sadness and his love and picked up some bamboo sticks. ‘Do you know what you do with these things?’ he said.

  ‘You shake them and read the number they give you,’ I said. ‘Then you go into the other room and find out your fortune. But I don’t think it’s in English.’

  He gave the bamboo sticks a tentative shake. ‘Shall I do it?’ he said, attempting a smile. ‘See what the future holds?’

  ‘Nick,’ I said. ‘I found her. I found Kai.’

  He looked at me, waiting, the bamboo sticks still in his hand.

  ‘It’s a place for rich Thais,’ I said. ‘Foreigners can’t go there.’

  He tossed down the bamboo sticks.

  ‘I’m going there,’ he said. ‘What’s the address?’

  ‘Nick?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s not a good place,’ I said.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said angrily. ‘It doesn’t fucking matter that it’s not a good place. Do you think it matters what kind of a place it is?’

  The perfumed smoke of the backstreet temple filled my eyes, my throat and my lungs.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t think it matters at all.’

  31

  Without taking my left hand from the bike I could see from my watch that it was close to midnight. I could hear Nick breathing behind me as we looked up at the house.

  ‘It’s almost time,’ I said.

  We were on a quiet residential road in the heart of the Old Town. It was a short, terraced street of what they called Chinese shop-houses. These were not the great colonial mansions behind the black iron fences. This was where, a hundred years ago, a family had a business on the ground floor and a home above – long, thin buildings, narrow at the front but going way back. They all had three s
huttered windows on the first floor. Most of the street was in darkness. But in just one of the old Chinese shop-houses, now among the most expensive properties on the island, all the lights were blazing.

  ‘You understand that we can’t just walk in there,’ I said, without turning round. ‘They don’t want us in there.’ Nothing from the back of the bike. I turned my head and spoke more sharply. ‘Are you listening to me?’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ Nick said quietly, not taking his eyes from the house with the lights. ‘I’m listening. I am.’

  We took off, nice and easy, just another motorbike moving through the city, and I rode to the night market that sits off a side street on the Phang Nga Road.

  The night market operated in shifts. In a few hours the vendors selling fresh produce would be setting up their wares and the cooks and their helpers would be arriving to buy fruit and vegetables in the cool time before dawn. Later there would be food stalls selling soup and noodles for the hungry people who got up early or stayed up late. But right now the market was a giant car boot sale selling clothes, craftwork, bootleg DVDs and everything else that would raise a few baht. Thai pop music was blasting everywhere.

  ‘How do you know about this place?’ Nick said.

  ‘Tess ordered water from here once,’ I said. ‘When we first arrived.’

  I parked up the Royal Enfield and we started roaming the stalls. After five minutes I found what I was looking for – a man selling soft drinks wholesale, drinks he had either got from businesses that had gone bust or stuff that had fallen off the back of a tuk-tuk. I bought two dozen big bottles of nam plao in four shrink-wrapped packs of six.

  ‘Mineral water?’ Nick said. ‘But why are we—’

  ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘Just shut up and trust me and everything will be fine. Okay?’