Anyway, I was proud of Trevor; he was unmoved by these objections. “I don’t care if a woman’s poor,” he said, talking through his hat. “I want someone who is honest and gentle and who will be a good mother to my children. Someone I can introduce to my parents and be proud of. And she has to speak English.”
“Did Meow tell you she’s studying English at A.U.A.?” interjected Lek, just by the way.
”If she did tell him,” Eddie said to me out of the corner of his mouth, “it must’ve been in Thai, A.U.A. language course or not. Nixon has a better grip on English than she does.”
“I think she’s pretty nice,” said Trevor, not yet willing to leave off his consideration of the Gauguinesque charlady. “Her English is good.”
“She has a moustache,” Lek said.
“A moustache!” Eddie looked surprised. To tell the truth I hadn’t noticed this feature either. Of course it’d taken me a while to notice Trevor’ s moustache, too. And these women did pick up on things we males were often blind to, you had to admit it.
“And she has stretch marks,” Lek added.
“Stretch marks?” Trevor looked confused. He’d probably never even heard of stretch marks before.
“She has children.” Lek and Meow nodded at each other with satisfaction. “Sure.”
To them, maybe, but to me it wasn’t obvious at all. Candidate #3 had worn a long dress with the collar buttoned modestly to the neck. Where were these stretch marks they’d spotted? On her ankles?
In any case, they had managed to put Trevor off. “Are you sure she has a moustache?” he asked, kind of wistfully.
When she came back from the toilet Trevor, Eddie, and I all stared surreptitiously at her upper lip, and, sure enough, she had a moustache. Even if it wasn’t really bushy or anything, you could probably expect it to grow ever more luxuriant as the years went by.
Now Trevor was talking to Candidate#5, an item named Noi who said she was from Songkhla, and who exuded all the energy and excitement of a water buffalo. She had big soft bovine eyes that swam myopically in the calm repose of her broad face, and her solid frame sat still and composed. Lek stopped by our table briefly, and she expressed the opinion Miss Noi remained so impassive mosdy because she was afraid if she smiled or anything like that, her makeup would crack and fall off in slabs.
Trevor had already gotten through the details of her educational background, and was talking to her about her family now. She was relating in a soft voice the various catastrophes and cruel turns of Fate that had left her to fend for herself in this vale of sorrows. You could see she was doing well; Trevor liked a woman with a soft voice.
I had never given Meow the credit I guess she deserved, never figuring her for the necessary equipment to be devious; but she proved me wrong. She suddenly appeared in the doorway and called out in Thai: ‘There’s a phone-call for Miss Noi — it’s important. There’s illness in the family and a dozen or two of her uncles and aunts and cousins have got the plague or food poisoning or something. They’re all very sick.”
This is anyway what Eddie tells me she says.
“What? How did...? Oh, no.” Noi shot up out of her chair just like she really believed she had all these sick relatives, even though weknew she hadn’t any, because she’d only aminute before told Trevor she was all alone in this world and he’d almost fallen right into the great limpid pools she’d made of her eyes.
“You are Noi from Ubon, aren’t you?” Meow asked as Candidate #5 pushed past her to get at the phone.
“Ubon? No, I’m from Songkhla.”
“Oh, sorry. My mistake. Wrong Noi; this call is for Noi from Ubon who is an Avon lady and who has a big family which is all sick at the moment Excuse me.” Or words to that effect.
“Toylayl” spat the lovely Noi. “Bullshit!” She was clearly piqued.
Meow, on the other hand, was triumphant. As she and Lek explained to Trevor later, after Noi had left, no polite Thai lady would ever say toylay, even under direst provocation. Most polite ladies had never even heard the expression. Besides, Noi had revealed the fact she had at least a couple of dozen relatives that she wanted to keep for a nice surprise.
Just for now, however, Meow didn’t even deign to respond to this great big less-than-refined cowlike creature. If anything, she became sweet and refined enough for two ladies all by herself, and you could see this really rankled with the buffalo.
After Noi sat down again, Trevor asked her if she wanted anything else to drink, and she said yes. Imperiously she told Meow: “Bring me a hot Ovaltine.” Not only that, but she did this thing in English, thereby causing some loss of face to Meow, who didn’t understand at first and had to be told again.
Eddie and I agreed this one was doing well. She’d borne up under everything so far including Meow’s little stratagems, and all she’d done was say “Bullshit”, which Trevor hadn’t even understood. Evidently he hadn’t understood her to express concern for a small army of sick relatives either, judging by the fond looks he was still lavishing on her. Yes, she was sailing through it all like a prime candidate for dinner, minimum, and maybe even good times in Kuwait and Norwich to come.
Then Meow came back with the Ovaltine. She came out onto the patio balancing the cup and saucer carefully — nobody likes their Ovaltine sloshing all around in their saucer — and no doubt forgetting for a minute she was no great shakes at getting around on those high heels. Next thing you knew she was doing her ‘Going to Chicago’ routine once more, and once again she didn’t make it to Chicago or even to Detroit. This time she deposited the hot drink in Noi’s lap.
Now, water buffalo are generally placid beasts, with or without slabs of make-up they don’t want cracking and falling off. They are slow getting riled; but when they do, it’s best to give them a wide berth.
Miss Calm and Repose was on her feet in a second, and the air was turning blue with bon mots obviously selected from an impressive repertoire. Trevor was probably grateful Noi wasn’t his new bride and Meow the vicar’s wife back in Norwich who’d just poured tea on Noi’s pussy.
There was a lull wherein we all goggled in admiration at her tour de force of expletive fluency. Into this breach sallied forth Nixon, who until then had been somewhat withdrawn. “Hial” he screamed with glee, ‘giant lizard’ being the vilest thing he could think of right then. This was enough to set off the other birds, who tried a ragged chorus of “Hial Whoop! Hial Hello; sawasdee khrapr together with a medley of whistles and traffic noises.
Seeing she was in some danger of being upstaged, and not taking kindly to being called a giant lizard by an ugly and obviously depraved bird, Noi rounded on Nixon, countering with “You, hia!” delivered in tones so forceful he fell right off his perch and into a stupefied silence.
At that moment a new element entered the equation.
“Oh, no,” said Eddie; and then Trevor said it too.
So did I, come to that; “Oh, no,” I said.
There in the doorway stood 100 pounds of lean, mean, fighting machine. “Here you are!” she announced. “Where have you been?”
“Hello, Dinky Toy,” said Trevor cautiously, plainly skirting the issue of his recent whereabouts.
“I wait for you all morning,” she continued. “And you no come.”
“What do you mean? Come where?”
“You say you meet me at the coffee shop at the Sheraton Hotel.”
Trevor was nonplused. He looked from Dinky Toy to Noi and then back again. On second thought he also looked at Meow, who on the other hand was looking from Dinky Toy to Trevor and back again with no little interest. In fact, by this time everybody was looking at everybody else, and nobody knew what was what.
“That was Thursday” claimed Trevor. “Thursday morning. Today is Tuesday.”
“Tuesday? Anyway — Thursday... Tuesday: it doesn’t matter. I took my day off so I no work today, and when I go to the coffee shop you aren’t there.”
Dinky Toy was angry; she was close to te
ars.
Noi the Buffalo, meanwhile, was clearly not fond of queue-jumpers. Who was this piece of baggage to come marching into the middle of her imminent betrothal and start hassling the man to whom she would be betrothed? It was distracting, not to say bad form, and God knows there’d been enough distractions already, what with a bunch of sick relatives who never were and a lap full of hot Ovaltine. And all this was not to mention the bitch Meow who wouldn’ t go away even for a minute, doing this daredevil act on her six-inch spike heels, and a gang of foul-mouthed birds who wouldn’t shut up. It was enough to make you mad. This time she didn’t say toy lay, she said something so interesting Lek and Meow wouldn’t even discuss it, afterwards. Whatever it was, though, it proved effective—always supposing, of course, it was designed to totally piss Dinky Toy off.
”You! You... you lady of the night!” Dinky Toy obviously felt restrained in her choice of language, there in front of Eddie’s wife and sister-in-law.
“Me? Mel Why you ...!” But I never got to hear Noi’s rejoinder, Lek was making too much noise telling all these bad-mouthed babes to get out of her house, where did they think they were, anyway?
The Cosmetic Imperative giving way before expediency, Meow removed her high-heels. She wore an unpleasant smile. Somehow I’d never figured her for a street-fighter.
Things were breaking fast. Eddie figured he’d better do something, so he opened a couple of beers, neatly side-stepping Lek, who was arming herself with a mop, and bringing the bottles over to our table.
“Is it okay without a glass?” he asked me, always the perfect host.
“No problem.” The fewer breakable items around the better. Especially ones that’d leave pieces with sharp edges.
Dinky Toy was reaching for Noi’s hair, and Lek was raising the mop for action. Meow was moving in behind Noi with some mischief clearly in mind. The birds were silent, the situation developing so fast it defied their powers of commentary.
“I’d better do something,” said Eddie, taking a big hit of beer.
I just loved Eddie’s brunches.
Later, in Boon Doc’s, we were all to agree that Trevor was growing up; his recent experiences had been like some rite of passage.
Trevor had been sitting around, up to this point, looking vaguely alarmed and trying to gaze sternly off into the distance. This was not easy under the circumstances, however—not with all hell breaking loose, and him the center of events, morally speaking at least.
I watched him get up and move to intervene between Noi and Dinky Toy.
“I say, ladies,” he said, stroking at his upper lip, his ears blushing furiously.
And that’s all he got to say. Lek had already started the mop in full swing, probably meaning to bring it down between the belligerents; instead, she caught Trevor alongside the head, rendering him even more vague than was his wont. In fact, he was considerably dazed, not knowing where this unlooked-for attack had come from. “Ow!” he said. “Bloody hell.”
“Another beer?” Eddie asked me, and I said sure.
It was hard to tell who loved him more: Dinky Toy grabbed the mop away from Lek, while Noi grabbed Trevor in a hug and started asking him if he was okay, the poor dear. Meow was right in there, as well, trying to pull Noi off Trevor; she pretty clearly felt there was only room for one Florence Nightingale on this patio, and she was going to be it.
Lek came over to our table to tell Eddie she was washing her hands of the whole affair. And if Eddie knew what was good for him, he’d see to it that the employees of Boon Doc’s did not come to the Cheri-Tone again.
Understandably, perhaps, Trevor was by now somewhat unsure of who was an enemy and who wasn’t, what with mops suddenly descending on his head and large, buffalo-like creatures grabbing him and shrieking epithets in a strange language. How was he to know, in his condition, that the buffalo was merely screaming threats at Meow, and not at him? On top of all this, Nixon had taken to screeching “Crook! Crook!” at the top of his lungs, which only confused the situation further.
Trevor elbowed Noi in the stomach, and then fell down together with her in a heap on the floor. Meow was pulled down in the same heap, and Trevor managed to butt her in the head as he struggled desperately to get out from under Noi. Eddie and I would’ve gone to his aid but, I am ashamed to say, we were kind of helpless with laughter just at that moment.
With a strength no doubt born of terror, Trevor did twist his way free, but unfortunately at that very moment Dinky Toy brought the mop down on what was meant to have been Noi’s head, but what was now Trevor’s head, instead. Leaving Noi and Meow lying there in a great pile of moans and groans, Trevor staggered to his feet and wrestled Dinky Toy for possession of the mop.
Then, just when you had to reckon the situation couldn’t get any better, no matter what, it did. The farang ladies reappeared on the patio. They took one look at this scene and sized things right up.
Trevor the male chauvinist pig was abusing this pile of ladies, and it was plain reinforcements were needed.
“Right on, sisters!”
That’s exactly what they said, Eddie and I were later to agree; it had been no hallucination.
With one exchange of glances, we tacitly concurred only a blockhead would want to get involved in this fracas. Besides, someone had to guard the beer bottles—you couldn’t have broken glass all over the patio; it wouldn’t be safe.
The Furies beheld each other with amazement and delight. The Revolution had come, just when they’d given up all hope for their Asian sisters. But the frail young things needed help, beset on all sides the way they were by Trevor the Chauvinist Pig. So in they sailed, hurling imprecations and clawing savagely at the Man Who Would Be Married in a Hurry.
“You should be ashamed,” one of them told Trevor, as she grabbed the back of his collar and pulled. You could hear a tearing sound, punctuated by a hearty slap in the face contributed by the other champion of female human rights. “Let go of this poor girl.”
The poor girl in question, commonly known as Dinky Toy, freed forthwith and still armed with the mop, immediately set about her like an old hand with quarter staves, and had the more robust but far less vigorous Amazons dispersed in all directions in less time than it took Trevor to gasp “Help, bloody hell. Help.”
If there was one thing in the world that would’ve established solidarity amongst these particular Thai women at this particular time, it was an attack upon their hopes and plans for the future, as these were embodied in the person of this vulnerable young gentleman. Noi and Meow were at the traveling ladies like avenging angels, at one with Dinky Toy in their willingness to fly at anything, no matter how large or foreign or slatternly, so long as their Trevor was left intact to finish his interviews and then sweep some fine and deserving lady away to greener pastures.
The Americans outweighed the Thai ladies by a good fifty pounds, never mind there were only two of them while there were three of these passive, oppressed young Asian items. Still, given the latter individuals’ spirit and vested interest in certain matters at hand, it was no contest. In fact, the traveling ladies were no dummies, and they quickly saw which way things were going. They had their consciousness raised in a matter of seconds, and this consciousness told them there was a time to be concerned with the plight of Asian womanhood, and there was a time to save one’s own butt.
As they beat a disorderly retreat towards the door, they were joined by what must’ve been Candidate Number Six, Trevor’s last scheduled interview. Whoever she was, she was young and pretty and Thai—definitely the best prospect he’ d come up with so far by a furlong or more, if you went only by first appearances. But these were the only appearances we had to go on. She took one quick look at all the interesting things which were transpiring out there on the patio of the Cheri-Tone Guesthouse, and clearly decided she’d planned on a somewhat more tranquil existence than this traffic engineer appeared to be offering, and perhaps she’d just go away, now, and find somebody else to get i
nterviewed by.
Trevor staggered over to our table disheveled, collar flapping, and looked at us with hurt disbelief. “You just sat here and drank beerl” he said, as though it would’ve been more acceptable if we’d been drinking maybe milk instead.
It was Dinky Toy and Noi who were now beating a hasty retreat before Lek’s indignant onslaught. In fact, it was hard for any of us to feel welcome, given the prevailing climate. Eddie and I slipped out to share a taxi to Boon Doc’s with Dinky Toy, where we had a couple more beers and tried to reconstruct the events of that afternoon.
As we left, the only one who seemed to have it all together was Meow, who’d been standing there cool, collected and foursquare in her bare feet. She’d been smiling serenely as she turned her attention back to Trevor. Trevor was the only one who didn’t make good his escape. Except for Nixon and Co., who were also encaged.
I had to go to Penang to look after a bit of business, and I stuck around down there a couple of weeks to research some stories I had in mind.
When I got back, I dropped in at the Cheri-Tone to find Meow had left off teaching Nixon how to say handy stuff like ”Dubba loom eighty bahf and had instead taken to drilling Trevor in the Thai language.
“Kuhn mee pyoo suay”, said Trevor. “You have lovely skin.”
“Kaeng mahkl” Meow applauded. “Very good!” She was simpering as though Trevor’s compliment had been a real one, and she was its target And maybe that was the case after all, for Trevor was simpering a little bit, himself.
I was told Trevor might really be serious about learning Thai. “They’ve been at it a week, now. If he’s not careful, she’ll have him reciting the marriage vows before its over,” Eddie said.
“So it looks like he’s a goner?”
“They’ve kept pretty close to each other, these past couple of weeks, all right—except for last weekend, that is. Lek and Meow are still trying to get Trevor to spill it, where he was those two days.
“They’ve even made life a little rough for me, but I’ll never tell. Not as long as Trevor keeps buying the drinks.”
Bangkok Knights Page 18