A Woman of Bangkok (11 page)

It isn’t merely that I have been into comparatively unknown places and seen sights I never expected to see except by grace of other men’s cameras. The real reason for the renascence of my spirits is that for the first time since my speedway days I feel I am a success. I am a success at my job. I have been a success with the Thai and Chinese merchants with whom it is my job to be successful. And—this is the point that is most important for my ego—I have been a success with the girls. My pistol-butt is no longer un-notched; my belt is hung with scalps.

Seated in the first class coach I find myself wondering how things would have worked out if I hadn’t drunk mekong on top of beer that night and so got up enough courage to cross the windy Rubicon from virginity to manhood. I suppose I would have gone round Northeast Thailand as previously I had gone round Britain and Bangkok imagining that I was deriving enormous pleasure from the things that an intelligent westerner is supposed to derive pleasure from—cloudscapes and views and the western books in my suitcase—deluding myself that these pleasures were all I needed from life, that savouring them I actually knew a greater contentment than the run of men around me who seek their joys on grosser levels. I suppose I would have taken photographs of temples (fairy-tale architecture), houses on stilts (reality), boats on rivers (such groupings and atmosphere), the different types of oxcarts (native ingenuity), weaving (they are not without a sense of beauty), the different methods of pounding rice (quaint of course, even a little laughable, but the educated person doesn’t laugh at the backward). And back in Bangkok I would have developed my photographs and received everyone’s congratulations and known in my heart of hearts that I had missed something, as I’ve been missing something all down the line wherever I’ve gone …

But as it is, I have hardly taken a snap, hardly read a book, and not missed my symphonies one whit. For the first time I have been able to take a direct sensual pleasure in the world instead of getting my ideas of such delight second-hand through the works of writers and artists. I’ve been living in the moment as I was never able to do before except during the seventy frantic seconds of a speedway race when to let your concentration relax at all was to court disaster. Then it was largely fear that enabled me to live fully one minute at a time, six times a night, two or three nights a week. Now, curiously, it’s the opposite, the conquest of fear, that is enabling me to enjoy twenty-four hours a day.

Curiously, too, I am beginning to feel less alien in Thailand than I used to feel in Islington. I am actually beginning to feel at home in this country which is more like a lake with islands than like land with lakes. I never saw so many different sorts of birds in my life. I never saw so many happy people in boats. They sit in the sterns of their boats, facing forwards, paddling with long lazy strokes; the women wear enormous straw hats perched high on their heads like upturned ornamental flower-baskets. The light is so intense you can count the leaves on a tree a hundred yards away. The stations are infrequent but kaleidoscopic with crude colour; their names are set forth in the Thai script which looks very much like the Hebrew in my father’s study at home, and also in English. Ban-phagi, Ban-pa-in, Klong Rang Sit, Ayudhya … The last is the ancient capital of the country. A few ruined pagodas soar above the tree-tops, themselves covered with bushes … Don Muang is a sea of corrugated iron glittering in the sun; incredible that here I landed only last September—a lifetime ago—scared and forlorn … Bangsue, and the first ragged edges of the city …

Windmill wakes up and begins to prepare for disembarkation. Characteristically, his first act is to comb his hair. But there’s still a few minutes left before life need begin again.

Suddenly I recall one hour in the remote district of Pyakaphoom. It was perhaps the most perfect hour I have known, except for some few dead ones passed with Sheila in a previous incarnation. We had finished our business and eaten and drunk too much and Windmill and the rest had disappeared for their siestas. I went out into the blinding heat of the afternoon, down the street of baked mud, into a lane of deep sand twisting through the jungle. There was no one about; even the birds had fallen silent, too hot to sing. I turned down a path through a thin scatter of trees and soon found myself on a sort of heath raised above the surrounding forest. Shade was hard to find but after a while I came on a patch under a silver-barked tree soaring upwards out of the clumps of bushes that dotted the heath. I sat down. How would I have spent the ensuing minutes a month before? In lugubrious yearnings over Sheila or in painful mental woodwork shaping another poem, another coffin to engulf the remains of my love. How did I spend them now? Using my eyes to see, my ears to hear, my nose to smell. There were fifteen different sorts of leaves within a few feet of me. There were six different sorts of flowers and the most beautiful were some that were already dead, their withered petals folded like classical draperies. There were twigs and stems of many patterns and a dozen sorts of insects flying and crawling around and upon them. There was a sky you could hardly look at, it was so bright. And there was solitude, and this wonderful new ability to be happy even when idle. Here was a sort of Eden, and I a sort of Adam in it: a man just born adult and fully alive to Eden’s beauty. My perceptive powers had been awakened: the poet, the philosopher, had become an empiricist, and found delight at last …

‘You’d better put your shoes on,’ says Windmill. ‘That’s Petchburi road crossing. In five more minutes we there.’

Walking up the platform at Hualalomphong Station I am conscious of a new swagger in my gait. For the first time in my life I don’t feel apologetic to the porter. Heretofore I have always suspected in him a person superior to myself but forced by unkind circumstances to act as my minion. Now I ask myself, ‘Has
he
had seventeen different women in six weeks, and one of them half a dozen times?’

The office car has come to meet us. Duen looks like an old friend. I return his golden smile with one that is only ivory but probably more sincere than his is. I say to Windmill ‘How are we going to arrange this? Shall we go to your place first, or mine?’

Duen says, ‘First to office. Mr. Samjohn want to see you.’

My spirits droop, for whatever my new attitude to porters I still don’t feel equal to the boss and I was hoping this interview could have been put off till the morning. It is four-ten now; the office shuts at four-thirty; ‘Don’t you think it’s absurd—?’ I begin.

But Windmill laughs, and now his eyes laugh with his lips, for we are good friends. ‘Never mind,’ he says. ‘I think Mr. Samjohn not want eat you. I think he must be very pleased with you after this trip. Me too,’ he adds with satisfaction.

Our reception in the outer office is certainly more heart-warming than anything I had expected. Somboon leaps up with a glad cry and seizes my hand. The three pretty girls, all identically clad in transparent white blouses and short blue skirts, smile their identical lipsticked smiles. Frost bawls, ‘Hey, where you been, you two? Get lost in a teak forest?’ And even Drummond allows an aborted grin to pass across his hollow-cheeked face before he burrows back into his ledgers again. Windmill, puffed by the stairs, falls into a chair in exaggerated distress and one of the girls flies for iced water for him. Somboon continues to fuss round me like a delighted pup, asking all the inevitable Siamese questions: ‘Was it very hot? Are the girls pretty in Korat? Where are the girls prettiest, in the Northeast or Bangkok? Have you A Friend in the Northeast?’ Given that intonation the phrase means a girl, amateur or professional, with whom one sleeps. I think of Venus and nod. ‘You must tell me about her,’ he coos. ‘Tonight you eat with me? My dear, dear friend?’

I shake my head indecisively—I am afraid of an invitation from Mrs. Samjohn. Then a bell rings, and I know what it means. One of the girls darts to the swing doors and returns quickly to say with a smile, ‘Mr. Joy, Mr. Samjohn want to see you.’

‘Now?’

‘Now, yes.’

‘Don’t be fright-end,’ Windmill calls after me.

But I am. Mr. Samjohn is rumpling his shiny pink brow over a chaos of papers. The ceiling fan, wheezing round and round above him, ruffles what is left of his hair and the corners of a hundred different sheets of paper on the desk. For some reason (I have noted this before) he never seems able to get a clean shave on the left side of his jowl; there are the usual white specks on the choleric skin, like grains of face powder. He looks furious, as usual. But to my amazement when he eventually looks up his face breaks into a grin and he says ‘Ah, Joyce, glad to see you back again. Sit down. You’re looking very fit. Must say the reports on your trip sound very healthy too. Cigar? No, you don’t smoke. Wish I didn’t. How about a beer instead?’ He thumps his bell and when one of the three pretty heads is thrust through the swing doors, barks, ‘Beer for Mr. Joyce. Small one.’ He lights a new cigar for himself and finding a brimming ash-tray after search under the papers, crushes out his match in it. Through a thick haze he says, ‘Beer, now. That was the one line you didn’t do so well in. Why was that?’

‘They don’t seem to be partial to English brews. They prefer Danish or German.’

The two white tufts of eyebrow draw together ominously. ‘What d’you mean, Joyce? English beer is the best in the world. You’ve got to push it, man.
Make
the blighters like it. You understand?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Too much continental beer is no good for anyone. Almost as bad as too much American beer. The Siamese need building up. They want something with plenty of good Kent hops in it. Something that will put weight on them, the poor little sods.’ A bell rings in the outer office. ‘What’s that? Knocking-off time? Great Scott, how tempus fugits.’ He shuffles the top layer of letters and then bangs his own bell again. Almost before the head automatically appears he shouts ‘Cancel that beer, Mary.’ (He calls all three girls Mary with an occasional inconsequential switch to Betty). ‘Mr. Joyce won’t have time to drink it now.’

‘But—’ the girl begins, and I observe that she has an opened bottle in her hand.

Mr. Samjohn sees the bottle too but perhaps he doesn’t notice that the cap’s off. ‘Put it back in the fridge,’ he orders.

‘But—’

‘And tell Mr. Windmill to come in here immediately.’

The head gives me a small commiseratory grin and withdraws. I judge I am redundant like the beer and rise.

‘Oh, Joyce, one other thing before you go. Where are you planning to stay this time while you’re in Bangkok?’

‘Same place as last time.’

‘That hotel?’ He is actually looking a little uncomfortable. ‘No need to go there really, you know. Plenty of room at the House.’

I resist the temptation to snap, ‘Why, who’s moved out?’ No sense in starting ructions. ‘Actually I like being at the hotel. It’s not so much more expensive than being at the House. And anyway I’m only due to be in town for a few days—’

‘Right, then off to Chiengmai with you.’ He sounds relieved. ‘Well, glad you’re comfortable. Feel free to come to the House at any time. After all, you’re one of us.—Ah, Windmill,’ (as my stout guide parts the swing doors) ‘glad to see you. Sit down. Have a cigar. Oh, don’t be bashful, man. You’ve had a wonderful trip. More solid orders than you’ve ever booked in a single trip before, eh?—See you tomorrow, Joyce.—To what do you ascribe your success, Windmill, old man?’

Dearly would I like to hear the reply but Windmill maintains a discreet silence until the swing doors flop past each other behind me.

Back in the outer office I catch Mary, whose real name is Verchai, putting the beer back in the refrigerator as ordered. I shout, ‘Hey, what are you doing?’ in a scandalized voice and leap towards her. It is the first time I have raised a laugh in the office by intention; heretofore what laughs I have inspired have all been behind my back, provoked by my blunders and awkwardness. The new friendly note sounds sweet. I seize the bottle and drain it in three gulps.

Frost cries, ‘Blimey, that’s the first time I ever saw anyone actually drink one of the beers we sell. Better call an ambulance, Verchai, just in case.’ He takes the bottle from me and holds it upside down so that all can see that it’s too empty to drip even. ‘Joyce, we owe you an apology. I mean Drummer and me. We completely misjudged you. I mean, when you first came, you
did
seem a bit of a pansy, damn it. You didn’t smoke. You puked over your Scotch. And that night I had Daisy in—holy Christopher, you were like Mrs. Grundy herself, only worse. But, judging from what old Windmill’s just been telling us, you’ve merely been biding your light under a bushel. Hell, don’t look so windy, chum; he hasn’t said anything bad about you; just made us envious of your powers, that’s all.—Hey, Drummer, how many poor unfortunate women did
you
lay your first trip upcountry?’

‘Too many.’

‘My own tally was ten—no, eleven: for some reason I always forget one little Annamese in Mukdahan. She spoke French too. Now come on, Joycey, let’s have the vital statistics. How many women have
you
really, honestly, truly, slept with, this last six weeks?’

Do they really want me to tell? ‘I’ve lost count,’ I lie defensively, and instantly they are all laughing again as if I had cracked a good joke. Verchai and the other girls are laughing along with the men and I would swear there is admiration in their sidelong glances, tinged with only the slightest hint of reproach …

By a stroke of luck I get the same room I had before and that increases my sense of homecoming. I have a shower, my first for six weeks, and throw myself on the bed to savour my contentment. The electric fan, turning from side to side with perfervid attention to duty, sweeps me with a cool beam of air. On a chair within easy reach are a bottle—good German beer this time, ice-cold—a glass, and a plate of horse urine eggs garnished with sliced raw ginger. It’s hardly the sort of tea my mother provides at Malderbury vicarage, but scones and strawberry jam are the other side of the world, and these are the items that I happened to fancy this afternoon, here in the Far Far East.