A Woman of Bangkok (5 page)

I was met at Don Muang, the airfield, by two representatives of the firm, the above-mentioned Frost and a Siamese man called Mom Vimil. Actually it was the latter who contacted me first. He made a providential appearance just as I was getting into deep waters at the immigration desk, threw out the lifeline of a string of fluent Thai and pulled me, considerably shaken, to the shore. I have since been pretty constantly in the company of this Vimil, or Windmill to give him his nickname, and I consider him to be the nicest man I have yet met out here. He has been with the firm for more years than I have been on Earth and one of his jobs is to show the new boys like me the ropes. He is well-suited for his job, being a plump, pleasant, easy-going type who likes to make it seem that there aren’t any ropes to learn, or that if there are, they aren’t at all important. He never volunteers information but he will patiently answer endless questions, even those that must seem puerile to him. Therefore he is a much better educator than for instance Drummond who fired facts at my head for two solid hours one morning expecting them to stick, and who now, if I confess that one or two of them didn’t, barks plaintively, ‘But I told you that days ago’ and then snaps, ‘Better see Windmill or Frost about it. I haven’t any time.’

But I’m still making a muddle of the story. A few minutes after Windmill had done his rescuing act, Frost appeared. He is a tall burly Englishman, as fair as I am and two years my junior, handsome I would say except for a pronounced cast in his left eye. His first remarks were characteristic.

‘Sorry I missed the reception. I got a call. ’Ad to empty me ’od.’

As the first half of his remarks had been spoken in copybook English I realized that the cockney conclusion was supposed to be funny and dutifully laughed. ‘What’s the trouble? Stomach upset?’

‘Don’t know for sure. Too early to tell yet. I didn’t turn in till four. Bit of a night out.’ He winced and looked anxious. ‘Blimey, it’s flipping miles to the crapper. I hope they provide spare pants for the ones that don’t make it.’

We went out to the car. It was a fairly ancient Riley. I noticed that it had recently been in combat. And that some humorist (I now know it was Frost) had painted a Purple Heart on the windscreen (‘because it got scratched at the front’).

Frost and I got into the front seat and Windmill and another man with a lot of gold teeth got into the back. This second man was Duen, the office driver, or that is what they call him, but actually he does very little driving; mostly he dozes in the rear while Frost drives.

I suppose I ought to describe that car ride, Sheila. You lap up local colour, I know. But I don’t suppose I saw half the things that you with your bright eyes would have seen. I remember the asphalt road, and a humpbacked concrete bridge, and my first Siamese temple, my first paddy field full of brilliant green rice, my first wild egret, my first sarong, my first water buffalo with its enormous slate-grey barrel of a body plodding on inadequate legs and its patient, stupid antediluvian head borne down by the mighty sweep of fossilized horn, my first huge lotus-flowers, my first bare female breast and my first little Chinese boy flying a kite. Because I am I, the most enduring of these recollections is the breast but at the time, the most impressive was undoubtedly the temple, for the multi-coloured tiles of its steep and lofty roofs were glistening in the rays of the climbing sun and the yard around it, full of fantastic stone towers, was like a builders’ yard where pre-fabricated steeples were being stored against the time when Hans Andersen’s fairy tales will replace St. John’s Revelation in the Bible.

Often we passed priests, shaven-headed, bare of foot, walking in single file. They were dressed in the most gorgeous saffron robes, like gaudy togas. They leave their temples to beg for their food at sun-up—they never eat after midday—and once I saw a line of them drawn up before a rickety wooden lean-to and a woman in a transparent white silk blouse and a red sarong placing handfuls of rice in their proffered bowls. It was a beautiful picture, full of peace and devotion; and the priests were fine-looking men, for so good is the shape of the Siamese skull that shaving its hair seems actually to increase its beauty, rather than to detract from it; you seldom see an ugly priest here.

Frost drove as if he were the Flying Dutchman off the Cape and that’s why I didn’t see more than I did. I hardly dared drag my eyes from the road. He asked me if I drove.

‘I’m actually more of a motorcyclist.’

‘You’d better drive here if you can. Never let a Thai drive you. They’re too flipping reckless.’

As he said that he roared full-pelt over a crossroads just as a car coming from our right did the same thing. The other driver slammed on his brakes so fiercely he swerved into the gutter. Frost didn’t even lift his foot from the accelerator pedal. As we snorted across the other’s bows he continued calmly, ‘It isn’t driving skill you need in Bangkok. It’s psychological insight. If you think you can scare the other bloke you’ve got the right of way. That was a typical instance just now. Some sixth sense told me that flipper would stop for me.’

‘But which was on the major road, him or us?’

‘They’re
all
major roads. That’s just the point. You never want to let the other bloke intimidate you. You’ve got just as much right to go first as he has.’

Somehow we reached Bankapi without qualifying for any more Purple Hearts. You know, my love (my late love), nor will you ever forget, that I could roar into the first bend as boldly as any man. But I confess I am daunted by Bangkok traffic. I reached the House trembling.

And the House and my reception there did little to restore my confidence. Perhaps inevitably, Sheila, after all those years in Lena’s poky flat, there’s only one big house that doesn’t intimidate me, and that’s Malderbury Vicarage, where I was born. All other large houses are associated in my mind with wealth and luxury; I can’t help but regard them as anachronisms in these days of bedsitting rooms and kitchenettes—left-overs from an age of wrong values. Well, the House, Broderick Peers’ home from home for their British exiles in Bangkok, is very big indeed, almost palatial. You go through large gates on to a gritty drive that is bordered on one side by a pond full of fish and blood-red lotus-flowers and on the other by a rather mangy lawn surrounded by exotic shrubs. The House itself is a pile of soaring over-balancing roofs, of spacious verandahs, gaping glassless windows, dazzling white walls, and trellises burdened with masses of purple flowers. Straight from England you are chilled by the absence of chimneys; clearly there ought to be stacks of them, but there isn’t one. Behind, there’s a long row of houses, almost like a street: these are the servants’ quarters. You wouldn’t be very much surprised to see a servant in livery emerge through the ever-open front door to receive you, but except at mealtimes, when Somchit puts on a white jacket, the whole tribe go around happily in singlet and shorts if male, and a blouse and sarong if female, and this informality enables me to accept their services with less sense of guilt than I would otherwise have felt.

The House is divided into two parts, one being occupied by Mr. Samjohn and his wife, and the other by Frost and Drummond. We went into this second part first. It appears that Mrs. Samjohn has gone upcountry to visit friends so for a few days the boss is eating with his assistants in their half of the palace. He and Drummond were halfway through their breakfast when we went in.

Since then I’ve sometimes wondered whether it wouldn’t have been better if we’d earned another Purple Heart on the way to this place and so been delayed for a time. For it’s always a nuisance when guests arrive in the middle of a meal and when that meal is breakfast … What made it worse was the fact that Samjohn and Drummond are men who make a habit of getting out of the wrong side of the bed every morning and having to desist from bacon and eggs while they were introduced to me did nothing to dispel their normal morning misanthropy. I could see disappointment in Samjohn’s eye and contempt in Drummond’s. After breakfast when I went to my room and caught sight of myself in one of the innumerable mirrors I realized I was looking quite a wreck. The forty sleepless hours had left me crumpled and bleary, not at all the smart bright active cheerful sort that a traveller, commercial, is expected to be. But we shook hands as though we liked the looks of each other and Frost and I sat down at the places that had been laid for us.

Then the problem of Windmill cropped up. No place had been laid for him. Unfortunately he followed us in as if he was expecting sustenance. Somchit ran up with an extra chair and implored him to be seated; it was quite clear that the servant was making a great effort to atone for his masters’ lack of courtesy. Mr. Samjohn after a short pause added his entreaties too: ‘the boy can soon lay another place.’ But Windmill, even more sensitive than I, had noted that significant pause before the gush of spurious heartiness. He hung back, coy and embarrassed, began backing away with repeated polite refusals, making it look as though the honour was more than he could accept, smiling and shaking his head—finally asked if he might borrow the car for a few minutes to go and attend to some private business. ‘Well, if you’re really adamant …’ Almost too promptly Mr. Samjohn signalled to Somchit not to bother to bring the cutlery he was assembling on the sideboard. Windmill went out, the car started up, Somchit left the room in search of fodder for Frost and me. I thought Windmill had been played a dirty trick. After all, he must have got up damned early to go to the airfield with Frost to meet me.

The breakfast was as good as any I’ve had in my life, not forgetting those we had at that farm at Aber, remember? It began with a slice of papaya, a new fruit for me, like a melon without pips, cherry-red, and having the consistency of Turkish delight; you squeeze lemon on it and eat it with a spoon; I didn’t like it much, it was rather sickly, and also I’m scared of catching typhoid. But then came cereals, then bacon and eggs, then toast and butter and marmalade. The coffeepot seemed bottomless and the sunlight poured in on the silver knives and the lemon-coloured cups and plates, birds sang, flowers scented the air, and against the sky, coconut palms exploded like huge green mops—conclusive proof, romantic proof, that I had arrived in the tropics.

Unfortunately there were Messrs Samjohn and Drummond there and either of them by himself would have been sufficient to poison the atmosphere of Eden.

The first is a fierce little man with a hot red face, hot blue eyes and white hair. According to a legend which he made up himself he has lived on nothing but whisky, curry and cigars for the last thirty years (except for the four when he was interned by the Japs). The diet has had an effect on his figure, which is tubby, and his temper, which is vile. He is fond of saying that his bark is worse than his bite but that proverb is suspect when it is applied by a man to himself; ask the people he snaps and barks at if you want an unbiassed view. Everybody but Windmill seems to be scared of the blighter and I never feel comfortable in his presence myself.

Drummond is another misery. He is a tall thin hollow-chinned man who, dressed in the open-neck white shirt and light-coloured trousers which are the businessman’s uniform here, looks like the village undertaker turning out for the village cricket team. This rather plebeian appearance makes his old school tie and officers’-mess affectations even more irritating than they would otherwise be, and moreover he makes a point of never being satisfied with anything either at home or at work.

He and Mr. S. finished eating before we did. Living up to his legend, Mr. S. lighted a cigar and said to me, ‘We’ll have to push off to the office. No need for you to come in today. You’ve got a lot of sleep to make up. Frost will show you round the house and we’ll send the car for you in about an hour, eh, Frost?’

‘Right-ho.’

‘We’re a bit pushed for room here, Joyce. Afraid your room isn’t all that it might be. In fact we’ve been thinking—’ But he didn’t divulge their thoughts. He looked at the clock. ‘Right, Drummond—’

Somchit said, ‘Car not come yet.’

‘What?’

‘Mr. Vimil take car. Not have come back.’

It was a good job Windmill returned only a minute later. Mr. S. was on the point of bursting a blood vessel. But Windmill took a violent dressing-down very equably.

Afterward Frost led me upstairs. The room that wasn’t all that it might be was at least three times as large as Lena’s back bedroom. It was sumptuously furnished and had its own private bathroom and a verandah overlooking the pond. The bed was huge and snow-white and I fell into it without further delay.

It was three in the afternoon when I awoke. I found somebody had brought lunch and left it beside the bed. I wolfed it down, got up and had a shower. My cases had been brought into the room; I got out a shirt and shorts and put them on. Then, having examined the bookcases and found little but mysteries, I went out for a stroll. Just down the lane and back again. It was the hottest part of the day and nobody was out except myself, so I didn’t see anything interesting.

When I came back I went upstairs to go to my room. To reach it I had to cross Drummond’s. I barged in without thinking—it never occurred to me that he might be back from work—but there he was, just in the act of removing his trousers. His face went like the lotus-petals in the pond outside, not from outraged modesty, but with anger.

‘Can’t you bloody well knock?’

‘I’m sorry.’

Since I was already in the room there was no point in withdrawing. I crossed to my own. I lay on my bed listening to the sounds of Drummond having a shower in his own bathroom. I felt very much of a stranger in the house.

I let ten minutes go by after hearing him leave his room before I ventured across it again. In a dim way I had been conscious of his grousing voice downstairs and as I went down the staircase I could hear what he was grousing about. Me. ‘God almighty, I’ve been here ever since I was demobbed after the last show and I think I’m entitled to a bit of privacy and I’m damned if I’m going to put up with a young whipper-snapper straight from Blighty strolling through my bedroom at any hour of the day or night—’