by Andrew Hicks
‘Okay, we find Goong,’ she said. ‘Remember my friend Goong, massage lady? Her auntie have new baby.’
Fon set off along the beach at speed, Ben following happily in her wake. An evening alone with her would have been better but this was a good second best.
‘You like pork balls?’ she demanded. ‘Banana roti, okay?’ she said, stopping to buy cooked foods at stalls along the sand.
At the far end of the beach he followed her into the trees where they came to some low huts on the fringe of the jungle. The first hut, roughly built
of wood with a tin roof, had a low veranda on which an elderly couple were squatting, the old man with a faded sarong round his waist, the woman holding a new baby. Fon stooped low under the overhang of the roof and sat down with them.
Ben could see the aunt’s resemblance to Goong, her smile as wide as the face, the eyes that crinkled up and disappeared into the smile and the button nose and protruding ears. She and the old man, both of them lined by years of work in the rice fields, were, Ben guessed, probably the proud grandparents of the child.
‘Ben,’ said Fon, ‘this Mama, Papa and this their baby girl.’
Ben just did not know what to say. The night of passion here in this hovel when the baby had been conceived was simply unimaginable. He would have cast the woman as one of the Three Witches and the man as Time the Reaper rather than as parents of a tiny child.
The food Fon had brought was pooled with what Goong’s auntie had already cooked and they were soon joined by Goong and by a wizened old woman with bright and lively eyes. As they sat talking under the overhang of the roof, to everyone’s amusement Ben was given the baby to hold. She clung blindly to him, mouthing around for a nipple.
‘Want milk,’ said Fon. ‘Better try Mama!’
‘But what are they all laughing about?’ Ben asked her.
‘Mama she say, now Ben can have baby too … half Thai, half farang.’
Her answer left him thinking hard.
Sitting cross-legged on the floor, they ate the rich assortment of dishes with their fingers, the joking and bantering now centred around the old woman.
‘What’s the story this time?’ Ben asked Fon.
‘Old lady not have husband, very scared alone at night. Sometime bad devil come and sit on her bed … she ‘fraid devil bite off her big toe.’
Fon did her best impression of a devil that bites off old ladies’ toes and everyone erupted in laughter.
The old woman then shuffled off without saying a word but soon came back and proudly showed Ben some photos of a stylish young woman standing by a fountain in a park.
‘This my daughter … stay university Bangkok. Before maybe, I want she marry you, Ben, but now cannot, no possible.’ She gave a knowing look towards Fon who remained impassive. Ben had no idea what to make of all these assumptions about their relationship.
Unable to follow the chatter going on around him, Ben’s thoughts then turned to the attractive daughter in the old woman’s photos. If she could afford to study in Bangkok, perhaps there was some hope for the baby girl, even though born into poverty. The old couple must have left their Isaan rice farm to work on the island and if their child could now do well enough at school, she might be able to earn a better wage somewhere in town. But he was not entirely convinced this apparent progress would necessarily benefit them all in the long run. He still clung to the romantic ideal of a sustainable lifestyle among the rice fields in preference to the pressures and pollution of Bangkok. Nothing seemed worse to him than urban poverty.
When they had cleared the plates, the old folks got up, taking the baby inside the hut and left Ben with Fon and Goong on the veranda.
‘Can buy Mekhong … small bottle, Ben?’ asked Fon.
‘Yes, why not. Some whisky would be great.’
‘Give money then … get better price than you.’
Fon disappeared with Ben’s wallet to buy the whisky, leaving him wondering how he would pass the time with Goong. But Goong had a favour to ask and produced a postcard of Koh Samet.
‘This postcard for Luigi … live Milano. Massage with me many times.’
‘He’s gone back home now though?’
‘Two months ago. But he write me, say he miss me … so Ben, please you write postcard.’
Ben was just finishing an innocent little message to Luigi when Fon got back with the whisky.
‘Goong! Why send card to Luigi? Luigi, Luigi, you go with Luigi!’ she teased. Goong fell over backwards and covered her face in confusion.
‘No,’ said Goong indignantly. ‘Not have sex with him, never.’
‘You virgin, so want sex!’ Fon ducked as Goong swung at her and the two of them rolled across the floor in fits of laughter.
When the fooling was over, Goong wanted to correct an impression.
‘Ben, this postcard not serious. Luigi just friend. But can farang lady sleep with boyfriend before she marry?’ she asked him with a serious face.
‘Yes, sometimes they do, but not always,’ said Ben cautiously.
‘No good if lady like too much sex.’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘what’s important is to love someone. We only sleep together when it’s special. Though it seems to me Thai men with money can get it whenever they want.’
‘Men can, women cannot,’ said Goong emphatically.
‘But why the double standard now women can go on the pill?’
Goong did not reply but sat and looked at her feet for a moment before glancing up and bowling a fast one.
‘You have many ladies, Ben?’ she demanded with a mischievous twinkle. Fon, who had been unusually quiet, joined in the uproar. The whisky was having its effect.
It had been a good evening but in the last moments before he was to leave Koh Samet and go home, Ben needed to be alone with Fon. Remembering the night out dancing at the Meridian bar with Jinda and Goong, he wanted to do it all over again, but this time without the others. The following day he put the idea to Fon who looked doubtful, so it came as a surprise when some time later she suddenly declared, ‘Ben, we go dancing tonight, Meridian. Just you and me.’
‘Nothing I’d like more,’ he said, ‘well, almost nothing.’
‘But first I eat with Joy … she want me same Mama,’ she said.
They met on the beach quite late and Ben was blown away by how she looked. Fon’s little black dress was about the sexiest thing he had ever seen. It was short with a high collar, on the right bust a pocket, the left cut away to reveal a bare shoulder. He could not take his eyes off her and she was to be his alone for the whole evening.
‘Meridian bar too far … lady not walk,’ she said twirling around on tiptoes to signify her status and elegance, ‘so we go sorngthaew.’
She deserved a limousine no less, but they roused a sleeping driver from the seat of his battered pick-up, climbed into the back and jolted away up the track. It was a rough and dusty ride, the vehicle dipping and bumping over the rutted surface, the dry jungle lit by the one headlight that was still working. When they first heard the thump of the music as they neared the bar, Ben could see the sparkle of anticipation in Fon’s eyes.
As before, the open air bar was alive with people, serious hedonists drinking and dancing and chilling out in the heat. The music quickly drew them onto the dance floor and they danced as they had never danced before, for the first time as a couple. They found that they danced well together, as if they had long been practising for this very moment. For Ben this was what he had so many times dreamed of, but it was far better in reality. He marvelled at his partner, at how she danced so easily in her slip-on shoes with so natural a sense of rhythm and with such poise and dignity.
They stopped for drinks and sat down at the table again, Ben now soaked with sweat, but when a favourite track came on, they were back on the floor again, re-energised by the music.
An English girl dancing alone came drifting by them.
‘Are you together … you two?’ she asked
Ben over the music.
‘Yes,’ he replied.
‘You’ve come here to be with her?’
‘You bet I have,’ he said, taking pride in being seen with Fon.
It struck him as strange that for her it was the opposite; he was a probable cause of embarrassment and disgrace.
At two in the morning when the bar closed, they took a pick-up back to Ao Sapporot, exhilarated but ready to drop. Ben expected Fon to go straight home but there was an unusual look in her eye, sombre, reflective.
‘Come, Ben, sit,’ she said.
They sat side by side under the trees at the top of the beach looking at the stark white lights of the squid boats out at sea. Fon did not say much but there was an intensity to her mood that Ben had not seen before and did not quite understand. She had a faraway look on her face, half happy, half tragic, very different to that early morning on the bus returning from the North East when the good times together had so suddenly come to an end. If she was now no longer thinking that things were impossible between them, perhaps dealing with a glimmer of hope was proving even more difficult for her.
‘Ben, when you come back Koh Samet next time?’ she asked him. It was the same question she had asked before, but this time it had much more significance.
‘I’m not sure, Fon. But really, I don’t know how I can bear to be away from you at all … it’s intolerable.’
‘So why you go then?’ she asked innocently.
‘Because I’ve no choice. I can’t change my flight and I’m running out of money … and there’s the Thai visa problem too. I’ve got to go home and get myself sorted out.’ He knew it was a feeble answer and was relieved when she accepted it without question.
‘Sometimes I dream get passport, go England,’ said Fon with a sudden glow of happiness. ‘I dream, I dream, Ben, you and me.’
‘Yes, my dream too. But anything’s possible if you want it enough.’
‘You mean life can give you what you want?’ she asked doubtfully.
‘Yes, but it doesn’t just happen on its own. You’ve got to go for it.’
‘Maybe, Ben … maybe it can for farang.’
Sitting in the moonlight leaning forward and staring intently into the darkness, they briefly came together. Ben held Fon for a moment until she stood up and said she must go home and get some sleep. Then it was over, his last but one evening on the island.
32
After the night out at the disco, Ben found time fast accelerating towards the moment he would have to board the ferry and head back home, leaving Fon adrift on her tiny island. It would be like falling off the precipice at the end of the world. Now in his last full day, the thought of leaving her was too awful to contemplate and he tried to banish it from his mind. Being with Fon was a bond that seemed impossible to break and somehow the parting seemed distant and remote. It helped that she was still in high spirits, though she was busy all day and the sun was already setting when his final massage began.
In flirtatious mood, she kept repeating a line from a song as she worked.
‘Hua Hin bpen tin mee hoy,’ she sang.
‘What are you singing?’
‘Thai love song.’
‘So what’s it about then?’
‘It say beach Hua Hin have many shell.’
‘What’s that got to do with a love story?’ asked Ben intrigued.
‘Song say farang wait on beach for shell.’
‘Farang wait for shell? What does that mean?’
‘Open shell, inside same lady. Farang look for lady on beach,’ she giggled coyly.
‘That’s a bit direct, isn’t it?’
He was again struck by the earthiness of the rural Thais.
‘Farang all the same,’ she said. ‘Same you … want to go with lady.’
‘No, it’s only you I want, Fon … and that’s because I love you,’ he said with added conviction as she firmly massaged his shoulders.
‘You say farang marry for love,’ said Fon giving his neck an extra hard
squeeze. ‘So better I marry farang!’
‘Well, at least we do try to be faithful.’
‘Okay then Ben, tomorrow before you go, we marry … yes?’ She dissolved into peals of laughter, leaving him feeling slightly uncomfortable.
As the massage ended, Ben now wanted to plan the rest of their last evening together.
‘We’ll eat together tonight then, just you and me?’ he asked her.
‘Yes, no problem.’
‘Let’s go to the beach we ate at before.’
‘Okay,’ said Fon packing up her things.
‘I’ll go change and wait for you here,’ he said. ‘Be quick, we’ve so little time.’
Ben had a shower and put on cotton trousers and his last clean shirt and sat on the beach and waited. When Fon at last appeared, he realised why she had taken so long. She was carefully made up, looking a little severe in a dark sarong and a tight black sleeveless blouse, her hair formally piled up on top. Her face was impassive and unsmiling, the earlier lightness now gone. As they walked over the headland and along the coast path, she was the first to speak.
‘Tomorrow you go what boat, Ben?’
‘Eleven thirty. Gives time to say goodbye and get the Bangkok bus.’
‘And when you fly England?’
‘The day after tomorrow late at night.’
Fon said nothing in reply.
As they ordered food at their favourite beach and began to eat, the sombre mood lifted a little, but Ben was disturbed that there were so many things unresolved between them. So much still needed to be said.
‘It’s going to be awful leaving you tomorrow,’ he began. ‘I hate goodbyes.’
‘No problem Ben, you come back when you get money. I wait you here.’
He was wondering how she was so sure he would return when she asked him a difficult question.
‘Your girlfriend … you seeing her again?’
‘No,’ said Ben, feeling a bit guilty but figuring she would not answer his awkward questions either. He wanted to ask about the boyfriend she had talked about when they first met, but knew he would not get a proper answer. Instead he raised something else that had been bothering him.
‘Fon, you told me not to come back to Ao Sapporot, but you changed your mind. Have there been any problems for you?’
‘People say, “Fon, when you marry Ben?”’
‘They’ve got a nerve. Why can’t we just be boyfriend and girlfriend?’
‘Because if we not married, then I go with farang for money.’
‘Oh God, Fon, not that again.’
‘And they say to Joy, “You like, now you have Papa farang?” So Joy, she say, “Yes, I like.”’
Ben stopped eating and sat bolt upright.
‘Why can’t people leave you alone, Fon?’ he said angrily. ‘You work your butt off all the time and you’d never be bought by anyone.’
‘Yes, my life’s my work,’ she said. ‘When cannot work, maybe shave my head, go monastery.’
To Ben’s relief she hooted with laughter.
‘Yes, but Fon, I want you to have a life, to make something of yourself right now.’
‘What life? Which dream?’
‘Fon, I just can’t bear the thought of leaving you behind.’
‘So I get passport? Go England?’ she said, her smile vanishing.
‘It’s not that easy to get a visa … you know what they think about Thai women. But Fon, trust me, please … you’ve got to trust me.’
‘You have good heart, Ben. I do trust you, jing jing.’
Walking back to Ao Sapporot after the meal, they left the path and walked to the rocks overlooking the beach where once before they had almost kissed. This time the moon was full and there was no restraint. They held each other tightly, Fon straining upwards, her arms around Ben’s neck. After a time they hid together in the rocks, Fon sitting between his knees, cradled back against him. Twisting round, she pulled him towards her
and clung to him, her breath coming in short gasps. When at last they disengaged, she lay in his arms looking up at him.
Ben knew that whatever was to be said between them had to be said now. This was probably their last chance.
‘I keep telling you how I feel about you, Fon,’ he began, ‘but you told me you’ll only say when your heart’s sure as a rock. I go home tomorrow and I have to know.’
‘Last time say I love you forty percent … now go up litty bit!’ she said, trying to lighten things with a laugh.
‘Fon, seriously, I can’t go away not knowing.’
‘Okay, Ben, I love you ninety five percent … maybe ninety nine!’
She gave him a roguish smile.
‘Fon, you’re playing with me again.’
‘No, Ben, not playing. How I ask you come here with me if not serious?’
‘So are you sure of your feelings then?’
‘Sure. Since you come back Koh Samet, I know my heart.’
‘Yes Fon, but what do you feel? You’ve got to tell me,’ he demanded impatiently.
‘Ben, I tell you. Now I know my heart same rock.’
When Ben finally got back to his hut late that last night, there were still ten hours before he was to be parted from Fon. On waking the next morning, he had only four and a half hours left before the eleven thirty ferry was due to leave. Nearing the end of the world, he could not yet see the edge of the precipice, though he knew it was coming very close.
He slowly packed his things, paid the bill for his hut and went down for breakfast. He could hardly eat. When Fon did not appear, he decided to wait for her on the fallen tree trunk and within minutes saw her coming along the beach. She was in dark slacks and a grey top and could only manage a shadow of her usual smile.
‘Where were you?’ said Ben.
‘Have booking nine o’clock and start massage. When I not see you, give Gaeo to finish, then come looking.’
‘You okay?’
‘Have to be, Ben.’
He felt sick, his heart thumping, his mouth dry.
‘What are you going to do now?’ he asked her.