A Woman of Bangkok

by Jack Reynolds

  ‘I mean, I thought it was a burglar, sir.’

  ‘You mean you mistook Mrs. Samjohn for a burglar?’

  ‘No, no—’

  ‘But surely you recognized Mrs. Samjohn sitting at her dressing-table—the first time you opened the door?’

  So he’d been watching me for some time. I hadn’t the faintest idea how to answer him—my mind had gone numb.

  But just at this moment Mrs. Samjohn came out of her room. She’d thrown a frivolously lacy dressing-gown over her shoulders. ‘Whatever’s going on?’ she asked her husband, and then catching sight of me, ‘Why, Mr. Joyce!’ She pulled a handful of lace over the yawning neck of the nightgown. ‘What a surprise to see you back so soon! I thought you were still in the Northeast. And you look so ill—really, dear,’ turning to her husband, ‘Mr. Joyce looks as if he’d just seen a ghost.’

  ‘He has,’ said Samjohn drily. ‘Joyce seems to be suffering from a whole lot of hallucinations, in fact. But don’t you worry about him, dearest. You go to bed and read yourself to sleep. I’ll deal with this young man downstairs.’

  I’m not going to give a verbatim report of that interview. Samjohn made me sit down, settled himself in his own favourite chair, painstakingly prepared a cigar for the burning, and then, talking out of the midst of a cloud like certain ancient deities, launched into the subject of my defects. After twenty minutes, having brushed aside any small protests I tried to make, he lighted another cigar and began his summing up. ‘It all mounts up to this, Joyce,’ he said. ‘You’ve been acting in a very peculiar manner indeed. First of all you seem to think you can chuck your job and come gallivanting up to town whenever it suits you. If you did that in the Army you’d be court-martialled for deserting your post—you might even be shot for it. Well, business isn’t run like the Army—which is probably a pity in some ways, but damn’ lucky for irresponsible people like yourself. The fact remains that you just walked out on Windmill without any consideration for the firm, or Windmill, at all. You say you did so for ‘personal reasons,’ but you decline to say what those reasons were. Now, frankly Joyce, as I’ve already told you, I can’t conceive of a young single man in good health like yourself having any personal reasons strong enough to warrant his walking out on his job. I may be wrong about this, but I think if your personal reasons were really adequate—or if they were completely honourable—you’d have no hesitation whatever in telling me what they were.’ He paused a moment, giving me one last chance to make a clean breast of it all, but I remained obstinately silent. So he continued:

  ‘Right-ho. You drop everything and come rushing up to Bangkok. In the firm’s jeep, as it happens. And in your haste to get here you apparently drive down the face of a precipice. You blame this mishap on a storm. Well, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt there—there was a storm last night—a remarkably bad one. But the points that puzzle me are these. Why can’t you tell me how badly damaged the jeep is? If it’s only upside down, as you say, couldn’t it have been turned right way up again sometime today? Why did you just leave it there upside down? And why haven’t you done a single thing about recovering it yet?’ He took his cigar out of his mouth and squinted at the wet end.

  He tried an experimental puff and resumed smoking. ‘Well, where have we got to? You’ve ditched Windmill and you’ve ditched our jeep and some time this afternoon you arrive in Bangkok. You check in at your hotel and after all this violent rush to get here you hit the sack—according to your story. You make no attempt to phone me that you’ve come home ahead of schedule or that you’ve smashed up the jeep. You certainly don’t feel it necessary for you to come out to Bangkapi and tell me these things to my face. However, after a nice sleep you wake up and find you’ve got nothing to read. It’s fairly late in the evening by now but you feel you’ve got to do something about that. So you make the journey from Bhalangpoo to Bankapi—to this House. I presume you entered by the front door. If you did enter by the front door, Joyce, you must have seen me sitting reading in this chair. Now remember, I’m the senior representative of Broderick Peers in the Far East, and you’re a very junior member of that concern. Doesn’t it strike you as extremely odd conduct on your part not to come in and make some sort of explanation to me—I mean, considering all the circumstances?’

  ‘I’ve already told you, sir. I didn’t want to disturb you at this time of night.’

  ‘Yes, I recall your saying that. I’m grateful for your consideration, Joyce, but at the same time I feel if you’d had a fitting sense of the seriousness of the trouble you’re in … But we’ll skip that. You preferred to slink by behind my back like a thief in the night—by the way, where are your shoes—?’

  ‘Outside, sir.’

  ‘—but the stairs gave you away. We call that creaking one our burglar alarm. The servants never, or hardly ever, come into the House after dinner and I hadn’t heard Frost and Drummond come back in the car. So you see, Joyce, you thought you heard a burglar in Mrs. Samjohn’s bedroom and I thought I heard one on the stairs—’

  ‘I’m sorry—’ I began but he put his hand up.

  ‘I accept your explanation that you came to borrow some books,’ he said. ‘After all, I saw the great care with which you selected them. By the way, you’ve left them upstairs. You’ll have to collect them before you go.’

  I said ‘Yes, sir, thank you,’ perfunctorily.

  ‘Well, I don’t want to rub it in any more,’ he went on. ‘I don’t understand why you had to take two peeks at my wife before you were able to distinguish her from a burglar. Maybe your eyesight is defective, or maybe there’s something wrong with your mind. All I know is this—and it must be pretty obvious to you, too, by now, Joyce. You’re finished as far as Broderick Peers is concerned. I warned you pretty sternly once before. We have to have men in Siam we can rely on. Men that aren’t likely to bring disgrace on the firm, or for that matter on Britain. Men with some slight sense of responsibility. You have your merits, of course, Joyce: you’d be a monster if you hadn’t. But—well, to put it in a nutshell, you’ve been a big disappointment to us. I’ll review your case again in the morning, at the office, and if you have anything further to say for yourself you can say it then. But, from the way it looks now, we can’t afford to employ you any longer in Thailand. In fact, young man, you can look forward to repatriation within a very few days …’

  He made me go upstairs and fetch the books I’d picked out, then he came out with me to see where I’d left my shoes. When he saw them just inside the gate he gave me a very funny look indeed. ‘Good gracious, Joyce. You really were anxious not to disturb us. But run along now. And be sure to be at the office tomorrow morning at nine. You understand? That’s an order.’

  I knew it wasn’t any use going to Vilai’s place immediately. I’d got to give her time to get back from whatever nightclub she’d gone to with whatever man she’d happened to pick up. To kill time I walked all the way back to the hotel. The boy Arun was in the lobby. He gave me a big friendly smile and about a minute after I’d reached my room he appeared with a bottle of beer. I hadn’t ordered it and I didn’t want it but I realized what a kind gesture it was: for months he’d never known a time when I didn’t want a drink. I motioned him to set it down on the table.

  I locked the door behind him. Then I poured all the beer down the lavatory pan. I did this solemnly, as if performing a symbolic act. For I was through with all that, and with a good many other aspects of my past life too.

  I lay on the bed though I knew I couldn’t sleep. I tried to read a bit but the duck-shooter seemed to glory in killing the very birds he claimed to love and there was blood all over his book, and as for the porcelain, how could I pay attention to anything so fragile and dainty and completely alien? Constantly the words and illustrations whitened away and a vision of Mrs. Samjohn’s body as it might have been, flat on its back on the floor, floated up before my eyes …

  For Samjohn had been justified in all his strictures, but he’d been co
mpletely off the point. He’d complained about my irresponsibility, my lack of loyalty to the firm, my impulsiveness—but these were mere peccadilloes, failings that almost any young man in his twenties is capable of. He didn’t know that I’d entered his home intent on burglary. He didn’t know that I’d turned into a criminal, and that night, but for his lucky intervention, I might have …

  Yet such was indeed the case. When I’d found that Mrs. Samjohn was in her room—an ugly old bitch who by her mere presence was going to thwart my plans—suddenly I’d been blinded by pent-up fury, I’d felt my fists clench and my teeth had grated together; I’d burst the door open again and that first long stride I’d taken had been a stride towards murder …

  ‘Joyce!’

  For a moment I hadn’t been able to get him in focus, but as he came clear, like the top-half of a broken accusatory statue, a huge horror had begun in my bowels and swiftly enveloped my whole being. It was as if, after staggering about in a drunken daze for years, I’d barged into a solid full-length mirror and with that one blow knocked myself sober. Suddenly I’d seen myself from the outside, instead of from my usual interior viewpoint: seen myself as I must look to others—to normal, sane, decent citizens like Samjohn himself, for instance, and—good God, what had I come to?

  Once, a few years before, I’d tried to kill myself. Brokenhearted over Sheila, frustrated by my blind-alley job, out of sorts with all the world in which I could make no mark, and conscience-stricken over Lanky, I’d lain on my bed in Lena’s backroom, methodically crunching up tablets and washing them down with lemonade … Three days later I’d come round—still in Lena’s back bedroom. I’d found myself black with bruises, and tied to the bed. Lena had always refused to say how she’d managed me in my maniacal fury, and I don’t remember anything about it. All she’d said was, ‘God has been good to us, Mr. Joyce. He made me drink too much tea at supper time and I woke up and heard you moaning. It was a miracle really, and I think He’s saved you for a definite purpose. I think you’ve been saved to do something really worthwhile in the world …’

  I’d hoped so too at first. But then—back to the old bacon-counter. And now this …

  God, how easy it was to kill other people! For years I’d been tortured by remorse over Lanky’s death. Time after time a grisly doubt had come into my mind: perhaps if only I’d laid my bike down an instant faster Lanky needn’t have died. But I’d been too intent on getting another first: seeing a chance to drive through on the inside I’d refused to throw that chance away I’d thrown away another man’s life instead …

  But this was different. Lanky’s death, when all was said, and done, had only partially been my fault. (In fact the coroner had exonerated me entirely.) It had been just the luck of a hard game, that’s all.

  But Mrs. Samjohn hadn’t been pitting herself against me in any sort of rivalry. She was just a rather silly old woman who had happened to get in my way. Yet I’d lost control of myself—I’d let something incredibly violent and amoral deep down inside myself take charge—I’d deliberately started into that room with intent to kill …

  My eyes filled with tears. I’d lowered myself a long way into the mire. Then my hands had slipped and suddenly I was submerged in it.

  But again I’d been saved. I who had been prevented from self-murder by the weakness of my landlady’s bladder—by an extra cup of tea—had now been saved from the murder of someone else by an imperfect piece of joinery. A stair had creaked and brought Samjohn to the rescue …

  I knew what my parents and Lena would say. They had no doubt that the universe was run by a Deity who was almighty in power yet loved and respected every creature it contained, even the repulsive ones. They believed that, having set the universe to run like a machine, He was yet prepared to throw a spanner in the works at any moment in answer to a prayer. ‘Nay,’ my father would say, ‘He doesn’t always wait for the prayer even.’

  It wasn’t true. But if only you could believe it! … People who did believe it were obviously happier, more serene, more humane, than people that didn’t. And they fitted into the scheme of things more comfortably too. They never attempted to kill either themselves or their neighbours …

  Up till that night I’d always rather despised my father. Not only for his benevolent metaphysics, which didn’t fit the facts of life in my opinion, but because of his whole outlook. What a footling way to spend your days! Slaving over sermons which nobody ever really listened to. Puttering in the garden. Sipping tea with old ladies. His greatest problem in life was to keep his pipe going, it had seemed.

  Yet how fundamentally decent, how wholesome, the man was! He might be rather hedged away from the world behind the Daily Telegraph and his garden wall and the pulpit rail and the blue smoke idling upwards from his mouth; but he’d never hurt anyone in his life, he saw the good in every living soul and strove to draw it out—he’d even seen good in Sheila when my mother, and I, couldn’t. He would see some good in Vilai, too, if he ever met her, I was sure.

  I could never live like him, of course. But I could move a lot nearer to him, and I realized that in that direction lay real happiness on earth.

  I wanted to re-model my life at once. I would have to begin of course with a few renunciations. Well, the last bottle of beer had gone down the glory-hole. That was renunciation number one.

  I was going to have to renounce the East, too. Actually there wasn’t much choice about that. I could of course defy Samjohn—find myself a new job and stay on in Bangkok in spite of him. But what would be the point of doing that? Three hours ago my idea would have been to stay because of Vilai—in case she needed me. But now I was renouncing Vilai too.

  When I thought of Vilai I couldn’t prevent some bitterness from creeping into my mind. I was far from blaming her for everything that had happened. Long before I’d met her I’d set out on the path which had finally ended this evening at the door of Mrs. Samjohn’s bedroom. But Vilai had helped me along in the last stages. Before I’d met her I’d been taking the route that almost any beaten-up, self-pitying man is liable to take if he has money enough. I’d found a means of forgetting, for most of the time, the crushing memories of defeat. My drinking, the cheap and easy conquests in the stews, the daily atmosphere of feasting and good-humour, had wrapped me in an almost perpetual cocoon of animal well-being. Swiftly, cheerfully, I had been turning into another no-good—but a harmless sort of no-good, the sort that is little trouble to anyone but himself, and a positive angel to brewers and pimps …

  Then Vilai. I knew it would be unjust to say she’d deliberately made me fall in love with her. For that I was wholly to blame. But when in my rediscovered longing and loneliness I’d done just that—fallen in love with a tart—she’d taken quick advantage of the fact. She’d battened on me like a leech. Today, working on my emotions, she’d incited me to theft and violence. I had simply acted like a marionette while she pulled the strings, or like a man she’d hypnotized. And there had very nearly been a ghastly tragedy …

  I’d intended to stay in the hotel until two in the morning but by half-past twelve I couldn’t stick it any more. I’d got to go and have it out with Vilai. Inform her that I had failed her—thank God! Inform her that I was casting her off forever, that henceforth she would be on her own, that I had my own soul to save and (since that was the way she wanted it) to hell with hers …

  I went downstairs and told Arun that it was too hot, I couldn’t sleep, I was going out for a breath of fresh air. He grinned and wagged his finger at me and put his arms around an imaginary girl. I grinned back—that would explain a lengthy absence. Outside I caught a motor-samlor and had the driver take me to a famous nightspot on the New Road. From there I walked to Vilai’s house.

  There was a light in her window but that was nothing to go by. I had to keep pounding on the door for five minutes before anyone came. As soon as the latch was lifted I put my shoulder against the door and shoved—I had no intention of being refused admittance. I thought it wou
ld be the old woman letting me in but it was a complete stranger. A blowsy type with an elaborate perm and heavy make-up. She was holding a gaudy kimono around herself with calculated negligence. When she saw me she let it slip even further awry.

  ‘Why, darling,’ she said. ‘I not ex-pact you.’

  ‘Is Vilai in?’

  Her smile vanished. ‘You mean White Lappard? No, she out.’

  ‘When will she come back?’

  ‘How I know that? She very bad girl. Roam all the time. Roam at night, roam in day too.’ Her face covered itself with a smile that was meant to be seductive and she turned sideways to me so that I could see her curves. ‘Why you worry about that old Lappard?’ she said. ‘She very low class, fight all the time, want too much money. Men not like her any more—’

  ‘She’s here, I know, and I’m going to see her.’ I crossed to the foot of the stairs. The woman closed the door behind me, saying as she did so, ‘I think I not see you before. You very handsome man. You come my room, darling? I not like White Lappard. I Python. I give you very good time—’

  But I was already pounding up the stairs and she screamed after me, ‘Hey, where you go? I tell you White Lappard—’

  I burst into the room. At first sight it looked normal but then I saw it wasn’t. The stool in front of the dressing-table was overturned. Some of the scent-bottles were knocked over. The mosquito-net, which was down, had been torn from its moorings at one corner, and the bedclothes were half on the floor. The radio was still standing under the window, turned on but relaying static only. All the dresses had gone from behind the curtain …

  ‘What I told you?’ the Python said, coming in behind me. ‘The White Lappard—’

  ‘What’s happened? Where’s she gone? I’ve got to see her—’

  ‘I think you never see White Lappard again,’ the Python said slowly. ‘I think you have sense, you forget White Lappard, forget altogether. I think it time for you to get a new girl, darling …’