Grandad, There's a Head on the Beach

by Colin Cotterill

  “Mair!”

  Gogo growled. The others ignored me.

  “Yes, child?”

  “Do you have the number for your friend at the post office?”

  “Nat? Of course I do.”

  “Can I have it?”

  “It’s in my phone.”

  “Where’s your phone?”

  “Phuket.”

  “Phuket?”

  “I’m assuming so. I contacted the gibbon rehabilitation center at Bang Pae. I’d taken some pictures of Elain here, and I wanted them to see her. See if they’d agree to take her on.”

  “So naturally you put the phone in the envelope so they could take a look.”

  “There’s probably a way to send the pictures separately, but I couldn’t for the life of me get them out. So I’ll let them sort it out in Phuket.”

  “Did you, at least, turn it off?”

  “The phone? Naturally. Do you think I’m completely useless? I’m sure animal activists will be able to work out how to turn on a telephone.”

  Sticky was mating with Mair’s foot. He had an impressive erection for a young fellow. I had to turn away.

  “Mair, I think the dogs are getting too excited.”

  “Well, somebody didn’t take them for their evening walk, did somebody?”

  “Mair, I’m a little bit bogged down here with stuff.”

  “I forgive you, darling.”

  “Have you seen Captain Kow around?”

  She twitched.

  “No. Why should I have?”

  “I just want to talk to him.”

  “He won’t tell you anything.”

  I tell you. Weird is a difficult concept to get your head around. If I ever wanted to waste a few years on a Ph.D. I’d probably look at signs in early life that point to the inevitability of Alzheimer’s. Mair had always been that fringe character. Like me, her school and university mates had liked her, I suppose. She was funny, friendly, but too odd to join those cliques that linger later in life. The old school network didn’t have a seat for Jitmanat Gesuwan. Her communist jungle years put her in touch with like-minded outcasts, most of whom sought respectability once the armistice was agreed.

  Mair never really lusted after respectability. That’s what I’d loved about her. Her joy. Her total disregard for Thai etiquette. Not caring what people thought of her. She’d been so unlike all the other mothers. She’d turn up at parent–teacher meetings in shorts and a T-shirt and boots. Unmade up. Unadorned. Unencumbered by shallow considerations. No show at all. And if the headmistress said something stupid—and they all did and everyone in the hall would know it—it would be Mair’s hand in the air. Mair’s voice saying what everyone thought. Damn, I loved her at those meetings. I didn’t care that I was the daughter of the odd woman. I’d push it to its limits. My trademark dark brown nail varnish, for example. If anyone else had tried that, they’d be dragged in front of the discipline mistress. But me? I was “the daughter.” I needed tolerance. They probably had teachers’ meetings just about me. I was top in most subjects, so the mother–daughter relationship hadn’t retarded me at all. It just made me culturally dubious. If Mair had been Chinese or farang—a white foreigner—the faculty would have had no problem at all in labeling me. Ostentation was commonplace in foreigners. My defect lay in the fact that I was Thai, born of Thai parents from a long, inexhaustible line of Thais. They put the accident of me down to my mother. Neither of us fit. We’d gone our own ways. Me, into the unquenchable fascination of study. Her, into—wherever she was now. She came back to visit us on Earth from time to time, but I knew she had a happier place. I just wondered whether I was headed there too.

  The monkey, aka Elain, climbed down from the table and started to pick imaginary ticks out of my mother’s hair.

  “I’ve rented a room,” said Mair.

  “For what?”

  “Our Burmese school.”

  “Mair, we don’t have—”

  “Don’t worry. It was only a hundred baht a month.”

  “Oh? What type of room can you rent for cheaper than a three-pack of toilet rolls?”

  “Well, when I say room, perhaps I mean space. It’s the unused back corner of the ice works down at the docks.”

  The same factory I’d visited earlier.

  “Wouldn’t that be a bit noisy?”

  “It’s a start. And to start badly is better than never to start at all.”

  That was, of course, so not true.

  * * *

  I doubted whether my TV would have been much more entertaining had there been power. I lay on my bed staring at it anyway. The screen reflected the tiny glow of the mosquito coil burning on the floor beside me. Beyond the window was a sort of final blackness. It suited my purpose: a clean slate.

  Here we go.

  The Noys. An upper-middle-class family. Father a successful businessman. Mother, the head of a large suburban middle school. Daughter, as bright as the Big Dipper. She gets a scholarship to study in the U.S. She struggles right up until the final year, when suddenly she outscores everyone on her finals. Far from being elated, she runs away without collecting her degree and reappears in Thailand, where her entire family is forced to flee, pursued by some mysterious “they.” If I didn’t have such a problem with clichés, I might, at this point, have told myself I was missing something. So I didn’t. Even though I obviously was. I wondered whether the father’s gambling debts had something to do with it. But how would that follow Noy to the States? I wondered whether Noy really was hooking to pay her way through school. What if, suddenly, she got serious about her studies and—I don’t know—missed a date with some Saudi oil sheik? But how many D.C. pimps had a network that would hound the Noys all the way back to Thailand? And what about the mysterious sex-change boyfriend? How did the clerical department of one of the country’s top universities stuff that one up so badly? That, I decided, was the place to start.

  I flicked on my all-night rechargeable electronic hurricane lamp—made in Taiwan. Guaranteed eight hours of almost daylight. The picture on the box showed Saddam Hussein and his officers in an underground bunker, plotting by the light of the Shinomax. It momentarily bathed my room in an impressive warm light before fading down to dim. It was just enough to help me thumb through the pile of handouts Sissi had e-mailed me from Chiang Mai. She’d pretty much cleared out the Georgetown files. There were financial records, course registrations, and what I was looking for, the student lists. I found the name Chaturaporn on all of Noy’s class files. He did indeed begin his academic life as a Mr. before reappearing as a Ms. by semester two. That would have remained a mystery to me had I not come across the list of deposit receipts from overseas students. I paused only to boggle at the cost of overseas study. No wonder my local education department sent me to Sydney Tech. Financial records rarely thrilled me, but that one list provided two fascinating discoveries that sent shudders through my knees.

  First was the reason the clerks had initially classified our Ms. Chaturaporn as a man. They had condescendingly assumed that anyone from Thailand couldn’t spell. Admittedly, we can’t. But that wasn’t the case in Chaturaporn’s fee receipt. The name was not Mr. Chaturaporn but ML, Chaturaporn. The clerks had taken the liberty to adjust the spelling, but anyone who grew up in my country would know there was no error. The ML was an important clue. It painted the scenery an entirely different color.

  I was about to put down the bank transfer details and move back to the lists when I noticed the second startling piece of information. According to the receipts, ML Chaturaporn had received her deposit via the Bangkok Bank Corporation. It made me curious about who had funded Noy’s study. But I certainly wasn’t expecting what I found. The wire had been from exactly the same account. The bank details for both girls were identical. And there, like that first ever orgasm from a totally unexpected donor, the stars burst before my eyes. I had it. I wanted to shout. I wanted to call the Chiang Mai Mail to remind them what a great head of the crime de
sk I would have made. But, of course, I could not announce what I had learned. I could, however, confront the lawbreaker.

  My Shinomax offered little more than a gray puddle of light to guide me to the Noys. It felt like midnight in Transylvania, but my phone told me it was only 8:37 P.M. Candles still flickered behind the Noys’ curtains. I knew what crime they’d committed and had an idea who was after them. I had to admit they were totally screwed. I didn’t bother to knock. The Noys were on their beds, reading by candlelight. With no fan to cool them, they wore the flimsiest of sleepwear. But I didn’t let their gorgeousness distract me from my task. They didn’t seem at all flustered by my arrival.

  “Sorry, ladies,” I said, and sat down at the end of Mamanoy’s bed. They both knew the story, so I guess my purpose there that night was to confirm that I knew it as well.

  “Here’s the drama as I see it,” I began. “A straight-A student is hired by a family to be a study friend to their eldest daughter while overseas. Of course, they didn’t employ you for your social skills. You were there to attend every class together with your new friend. Perhaps we should call her … the duchess. I was confused that the registrar’s office had her listed as a male in the first semester, then changed to female in the second. It didn’t seem like the kind of error a university clerk would make But our Ms. Chaturaporn had indeed intended to write ML. As you know, it had nothing to do with gender. It was the abbreviation of Mom Luang. ML Chaturaporn was a member of the aristocracy. Her father, I imagine, is a very powerful man, I’m sure you know that. You were a shadow student to a little duchess. And in return for you kindly keeping their daughter company, they agreed to pay off all your father’s gambling debts, unmortgage your house, and rescue you all from the threat of poverty.”

  “Jimm, I don’t think—” Noy began.

  “And all you had to do was switch ID cards before the tests or when you handed in the papers. I wouldn’t even be surprised if you switched names for the entire time you were there. Your faces were similar enough. And heaven knows, we Asians all look alike. Now, the rest of this—you can just stop me if I’m wrong. Your duchess was an average student with no motivation. But her family expected excellence from her. It’s a system that goes way back. So many of her ancestors had traveled the same route. Brain-box study buddy. No risk. The daughter passes with honors. The shadow either fails in the end or, if she’s very lucky, squeaks through with poor grades. The sponsor has to do the very least to keep the shadow in class right up to the final semester. She can’t fail too many courses before then or they’d send her classmate home. But in that final term she doesn’t need the shadow anymore, so if she’s of a mind, she could just not attend any classes. Send the shadow home with no degree at all. No problem. Who cares?”

  The Noys said nothing. Their faces contorted in the candle flickers.

  “But, Noy,” I said, “you cared. You were an excellent student. The material was easy for you. You loved the courses. You devoured them. But at the end of each semester, you’d reluctantly hand over your student ID card and accept whatever grade she’d deign to eke out for you. And what was she doing while you slaved over books? She was in the nightclubs, wasn’t she? Driving the BMW around with her high-society friends? And I bet she didn’t show any respect at all. Not a word of thanks after those A grades. You were the maidservant. You labored for her. You and your family were taken care of financially, so why give thanks, eh?

  “And it built up in you,” I continued. “All this injustice. You knew the duchess was intent on failing you. She hardly attended classes that final semester. You were a brilliant student, yet people looked down on you as a dunce. And after three years of it, you were Mount Etna. The humiliation bubbled up inside and you blew. You marched into those exam halls, turned up with your term papers, and brushed past the outstretched ID card of your duchess. And you hammered everything that final semester, just like you did the entire course, but this time the honors were in your name. You’d stayed on for the Honor Council inquiry, passed the extra oral tests, suffered the humiliation of the lie-detector test. And all because your foolish courage would have meant nothing if they’d stripped you of your degree. You were in a red funk. A mad rush of blood. And it wasn’t until it was all over that you realized what you’d done. What danger you’d put your family in. You probably called your parents then and told them. It was no small matter. You’d broken a contract. But, more important, you’d broken the face of a dynasty. You’d destroyed a century-old tradition. And, Noy, do you know what?”

  “What?”

  “Good for you, is what. Screw the tradition. You’re a bloody heroine. It was one in the eye to the classes who believe their heritage allows them to break the rules. Left to her own devices, the little duchess probably failed the final semester, and they’re still conducting an inquiry to see where she went wrong. As far as they’re concerned, she was a top student who suddenly went bad. They’ll invite her to resit those last finals, but for reasons you and I know, she’ll have to decline. She still doesn’t have her degree, does she?”

  Noy blushed and sighed. There was a long period of silence that seemed appropriate.

  “They came to see me in the dormitory,” she said. “A couple of Thai goons in safari shirts … in the middle of D.C., I tell you. They asked me if I wanted to see my parents hurt. It would be a shame, they said, if they were to have an accident. The goons were very matter-of-fact about it. They told me all I had to do was go to the dean and confess that I’d switched my ID card with the Mom Luang’s. She hadn’t noticed I was a cheat. That, in fact, all my final semester scores should have been hers. Of course, I would have been thrown out of Georgetown in disgrace. My name … my family name would have been dirt. So I ran. I jumped on a Greyhound bus and headed south. I don’t know why. It was all a little bit overwhelming. I was starting to get paranoid that they were after me. I was certain there’d be some way of checking passenger lists on aircraft out of the country, so I decided to leave overland. I met up with a tour group of Taiwanese students, and somehow, in the confusion that happens at borders, I got lost in the chaos when a large group came up against an underpaid immigration officer, and I arrived in Mexico in a tour bus. There was no record of me entering the country. I flew home from Mexico City. I think that was what gave us the time to get away from our house. They were still looking for me in the States.”

  “I respect her for what she did,” said Mamanoy.

  “You lost your jobs and your house,” I said.

  “We’d already lost them,” she said. “My husband’s debts … Noy’s time in America gave us a sort of stay of execution. That was all. They paid off our bills as part of the deal, but they’re in a position to put more pressure on us. My husband would never get work in his field again. He has accepted full responsibility.”

  “Oh, what a wonderful man. Frankly, I’m amazed that you’re still together,” I said.

  “Love is—”

  “Yeah. Don’t bother.”

  “Being a family is all we have.”

  “Being a family’s really going to make everything so much better on the road and in hiding for the rest of your lives.”

  “Do you have a better solution?”

  “I can fix this,” I said, with more confidence than I was actually generating.

  “How?”

  Good question.

  “I’ll get back to you on that,” I said. “We have time. You’ll be safe here for the foreseeable future. We can work together on a strategy.”

  They didn’t look inspired. They still saw me as the cook. They didn’t know I had contacts beyond Maprao. I had skills. But I did not reveal my secret identity just then. When the time was right, they would see my super-self.

  11.

  Give Me My Porpoise When You Get Home

  (from “Respect” — OTIS REDDING)

  The uneventfulness of the following morning made it all the more remarkable. At three A.M. the power had returned, and all
the lights we’d forgotten to turn off and the utilities we’d forgotten to unplug came to life. There ensued the act of putting them all back to sleep. We’d awaken later to a cautious normality. The natural erosion caused by the backhoe ditch had turned our garden into the Grand Canyon. Water had gushed out onto the beach, and the rear flood waters had subsided. The tide had ebbed to leave one end of our latrine block embedded in the beach, as if it had dropped from space. The sky was clear, and the only reminder of the monsoon was a brisk wind blowing off the Gulf. The Noys sat on their veranda playing pre-breakfast mah-jong with Grandad and Captain Waew. Mair and the ladies of the cooperative continued with their exemplary renovation of the shop. Arny worked out by raking beach wood into pyres, which, if they ever dried out, would one day make spectacular bonfires.

  Captain Kow announced that the small boats would be able to venture out that day. As they’d been docked during the temperamental tempest, he had no fresh fishballs to sell from his motorcycle sidecar. Undeterred, he was there bright and early in front of our shop with an honest sign saying THREE-DAY-OLD FISHBALLS—NOT THAT DELICIOUS. It was hardly surprising he sold not a one. I’d invited him to join us for breakfast. As always, he seemed flattered. Grandad Jah seethed, like the alpha old man, at the table but said nothing. And once everyone else was full and gone, I led the captain to my balcony. He admired my mobile shell collection.