Thai Girl (9 page)

‘Why is it? In what way?'

‘Well, there's no horses in Hackney … silver spoon up me arse more like. None of this university stuff … just got a few GCSEs and I'm lucky to be a secretary. I've struggled up from the bottom and now I'm a supervisor … well, I was until I gave in my notice. It was partly because I broke up with my boyfriend. Then me and Nadia came out here together.'

‘And now you hate Thailand?'

‘Well, not hate it exactly, but it's not what I expected. We've worked for our holiday and now we want to relax and not be fighting with the Thais.'

‘But why do you see everyone as hostile?' asked Emma.

‘Maybe because where I come from, life's always a struggle and you have to battle for every little thing. And there's so many decisions to make, so many choices. I don't just mean work, I mean life in general … what you want to be, who you settle down with and stuff. It's like I'm always at a turning point and about to get it wrong.' Samantha clung to her empty beer bottle.

‘How nice,' said Clarissa. ‘Getting older means I don't have so many options left.'

‘Sounds great,' said Samantha. ‘Fewer nooses to stick your neck into. I envy the Thai workers here on the beach with no prospects, just blue sea and sky.'

‘You can't really believe that,' said Ben. ‘Everyone wants opportunities and not to be stuck in a hole.'

Samantha was sitting stiffly upright, but the alcohol had loosened her tongue.

‘I'm sure getting older can be tough,' she said, ‘but I always think of my Auntie Ada. She's lived in Hackney all her life … it's the whole world to her. She was a cleaner, married to my Uncle Ken. He snuffed it a few years back and now she's got the ideal life, safe and settled. She's got her pension, has tea with her friends and watches her favourite telly programmes. My cousins take the grandchildren round at weekends and she makes'em fat with piles of cakes. There's no decisions to make and she doesn't want anything different. I really envy her.'

‘Sounds awful,' said Emma. ‘Moving on's not easy but it's exciting too.'

Some serious eating from the collection of dishes in the middle of the table was not going to stop Clarissa challenging Samantha.

‘No Sam, your auntie just made the best of a bad job. It's you who's got everything … your health, good looks and boyfriends if you want them, sexual freedom without being seen as a slapper. Career, money, travel, control of your life. Your auntie had none of these. She was messed up by the war I suppose, and by womens' low status … no expectations and no chance of anything better. You were born at the best possible time … you can have whatever you want.'

‘No I can't. Anyway I'd rather have fewer options and more security. I'd like an easy life, like the Thai workers here on the beach.'

Maca guessed Sam's bluntness was because she'd drunk too much and perhaps to tell these middle class plonkers how easy they'd had it in life.

‘Look Sam,' he said. ‘Try telling that to the girl who served our food tonight. Imagine what she'd give for the money you earn, for regular hours and holidays … all dreams beyond belief. People get trapped, the Thais too, desperate to move on in life. That's why some of them even sell their bodies.'

‘But I could never ever do that,' said Samantha. ‘Never!'

‘It's easy for you to say that, but you've never been so hopeless. Lots of the bar girls have children, and women'll do almost anything for their kids.'

‘Well, maybe, but work on the island still looks an easy option to me.'

‘Okay then, imagine being a worker on this beach,' said Maca. ‘The island was almost uninhabited before it was hit by tourism and now all the guesthouses need cooks, cleaners, waiters. So there are hundreds, maybe thousands of migrant workers here, most of them from Isaan, the North East. It's hard to make a living farming rice, so families send their young away to find work. The waitress is from there … her broad face and dark skin are typical Isaan. I'll bet she sends money back to her Mum and just scrapes by herself … you wouldn't believe the long hours and low wages. She may go home in the rainy season to help on the farm, but that's her world … never been anywhere else and never will.' He stared out at the bright lights of the distant fishing boats and paused for breath.

‘Sounds all right to me. Not a bad life,' said Samantha defensively, but even Maca was now beginning to get irritated with her.

‘No way! The beach workers have the same problems you talk about … new aspirations and no security. Thailand's changing fast with crazy materialism. It's all there in the shops even in Ban Phe … televisions, videos, motorbikes, clothes, cosmetics. And the Thai soaps on the telly are showing a new urban life-style, raising expectations sky high. And of course she sees us, the
farang
always on holiday. Like you, Sam.'

‘Why me?'

‘Because you're a princess … well dressed and made up, the world at your feet. And we
farang
never apparently do any work. All we do is sit around drinking and eating the best food, reading trashy novels, and having sex. Unreal! Seeing us, it's getting much more difficult for a Thai beach worker to accept her limited horizons.'

‘So what's the future for a girl like the waitress, Maca?' asked Emma.

‘I guess she'll fall for one of the men working here, get pregnant and go home to have the baby. Then she'll come back to work leaving the child at home with Mum. If he's a good guy, they'll register the marriage, he'll contribute to the child's upkeep and she'll be faithful to him. But he may go and work somewhere else and find another girlfriend. So she just keeps on serving food and wiping tables … if the tourist trade doesn't collapse. There are worse places than Koh Samet, but it's not much of a life. What do you think, Sam?'

‘No … maybe not,' she said shifting in her seat.

‘Of course, many of the girls dream of marrying a
farang …
which means big money. And they think Europeans make good husbands! How about that, ladies?' said Maca with a silly grin.

‘Sod the men,' said Samantha, ‘I'm sticking with Nadia.'

Nobody laughed and Maca and Ben exchanged glances.

Such evenings go on indefinitely, the warm night, the unlimited alcohol, good food and company giving little reason to leave. More bottles of beer were emptied while the serving girls waited late into the night, their early breakfast shift coming ever closer.

It was Emma who made the first move to go to bed, followed by the other women.

‘Ben, you didn't let me sleep last night, staying out late with the lowlife, so I'm turning in. Are you coming?'

Ben looked a little apprehensive.

‘Yeah, well soon anyway. Just one more beer.'

Maca, Chuck, Stig and Ben stayed up into the small hours, gazing dopily into the flame of the oil lamp as they discussed whether Samantha and Nadia were gay. A few hundred yards away in the hut, Emma lay on the hard bed unable to sleep. Thailand was still not the escape from reality she had hoped for and she knew she would soon have to face up to making some serious decisions of her own. She pretended to be asleep when Ben at last blundered clumsily into the hut.

An hour or two later they were both roughly woken by the storm. An unseasonable squall of rain swept across the island, the wind howling through the trees, causing the tin roof of the hut to crash and strain as if it was about to be ripped away. It was almost morning when the storm subsided and they finally fell asleep.

8

In the early hours, the rain pounded on the tin roof of the hut with tropical ferocity. For what little remained of the night, Ben was dimly aware of the hum of the distant generator that supplied power to the resort and of the pounding of the waves, still agitated from the night's storm. He could hear the drips falling from the trees and running off the eaves onto the ground and could smell the rich scent of wet earth.

At his home in Haywards Heath the dawn is always silent except for the hum of traffic and the clink of milk bottles. The birds are either too chilled to sing or have been decimated by domestic cats. But Ben was learning that here in Thailand the world wakes up noisily. First are the cockerels, very early and very vocal. The dogs often join in, barking and howling at each other. Then comes a chorus of bird song, including sometimes the distant pulsing cry of a nightjar. Ching-choks, the tiny near-transparent lizards that inhabit every building and climb like Spiderman across walls and ceilings, make a distinctive sound like clicking tongues. An invisible gecko lizard is more intrusive, loudly repeating ‘tukkae, tukkae' from somewhere under the floor. Happy with the flow of rain water into the hollows, the bullfrogs are in full throat calling their ladies with their bizarre ‘oink-oink, oink-oink'. And as the morning begins to heat up, insects hidden in the trees one by one begin a continuous chorus of high-pitched shrieking.

Around the huts can be heard the sounds of talking and laughter as the daily routine begins at first light. The workers' flip-flops slop down the path as their home-made brooms swish away the night's fall of leaves. After the storm there is much for them to do. Rubbish has blown into the restaurant, chairs are overturned and rotten branches lie scattered over the pathways. Long before the
farang
surface, they are up and about, having crawled out of their rough wooden huts or from behind the bar where they slept under a table with a mosquito net thrown over it.

The sleeping
farang
make no sound, except perhaps an occasional groan. They are on holiday, indulging in a serial hangover. Silently cursing the sounds of the morning that wake them too early, they stay late in bed and so miss the best part of the day. But in a flimsy beach hut, it is hard to stay asleep once the island has begun to stir.

After his late and alcoholic night, Ben was finally disturbed by the morning noises and by the light pouring in through thin cotton curtains. It was damp and sweaty in the hut and he was feeling seriously dehydrated. He went cautiously out onto the veranda in his sarong and surveyed what he could see of the world. Everything was wet and leafy, the ground dark and sodden, though he was surprised the storm had not done more damage. He was most intrigued by the chickens; red, original chickens, very skinny with long necks and legs, running everywhere like mini-dinosaurs. A bamboo ladder stood against a palm tree where a nesting box kept their eggs safe from the many rangy dogs on the island.

As he went back into the hut, Emma was just surfacing.

‘Christ, you look bleary,' he said. ‘You okay Emm?'

‘Yes, but no thanks to you. Think I need more sleep in this climate, and I'm not sure I'm over the jetlag yet.'

They threw on their shorts and wandered down to the restaurant, an open-sided building by the reception hut. Breakfast was black coffee, scrambled egg and bacon, toast with butter and jam and a plate of fresh fruit.

It was a big surprise when Chuck and Maca appeared a few minutes later and joined them at their table.

‘Bit early for you guys!' teased Emma.

‘G'day Emma. I like an early brekkie … sets me up for a busy day.'

‘So what are you going to do today then?'

‘I'm easy Emm, but one thing's for sure … I'll be flat out like a lizard drinking.'

‘Well, I'm not sitting around doing nothing!' said Ben scornfully.

‘Chill out man,' droned Chuck.

‘Slow down, Ben. Time's on your side … you've got lots of it for once,' said Maca.'

‘Walk the middle path, seek Nirvana.'

‘Yes, but how exactly?' Ben asked, slightly puzzled.

‘Well, you get your bathers,' said Maca, ‘you pick up a book, a bottle of water and sun glasses and you find a deckchair. You sit on it and read the book. Get too hot, you walk to the sea and throw yourself in. Get too hungry, you eat food. Even roll a spliff.' He filled his mouth with scrambled egg.

‘Very droll,' said Emma finishing the last slice of papaya.

‘Anyway, I'm going for a walk,' said Ben. ‘Want to come, Emm?'

‘No thanks, I'm doing it Maca's way today. Didn't get much sleep you know.'

Incapable of doing nothing, Ben had his usual urge to explore his new surroundings. He left the others and walked to the rocks at the end of the bay and across the headland until he could see the next beach through the trees. Along the way he passed several Thais selling sweets, cooked food and fruit, carrying their loads in baskets balanced at each end of a bamboo pole and slung across one shoulder. Most were middle-aged women and walked with a rolling gait to handle the weight, the pole flexing with the rhythm of each step.

Ben stopped one of the fruit sellers and looked in her baskets. There was papaya, pineapple, watermelon, pomelo, mangoes, bananas and coconuts, the soft fruit carefully packaged in white styrofoam trays and covered in cling-film. He chose a coconut and the fruit lady cut its top off and gave him a straw and a plastic spoon to scoop out the soft, unripe flesh. The milk was fresh and cold with a pleasant sweetness; he wondered how anyone could drink cola when this god-given nectar was falling from the trees.