A Woman of Bangkok (12 page)

God, it’s great to be back home again.

Not that the room has anything especially attractive about it. The bed, like most hotel beds in Thailand, is square and rather hard. There are, as always, two pillows (for nobody is ever expected to sleep alone in this amorous country, especially in a hotel), and two blankets, one each, neatly folded at the foot. No other covering unless you count the mosquito-net. There is one large window which opens onto a mango-tree; it is just a square hole in the wall, with bars and a flimsy curtain across the lower half; if it rains, you have to pull the shutters to and stew. You don’t have to stew long, for the storms are so furious they quickly wear themselves out, and when they’re over for a time it’s almost too cool. The walls are pale green and bare, the teak floor bare, the furniture minimal—one table, three chairs, and a chest of drawers. The only touch of opulence is in the spittoon which is of brass and as big as a young milkchurn. In fact nothing is provided which is not absolutely essential to the physical well-being of a never-ending series of casual occupants arriving mainly in pairs. But light and space and air have crept in too, and the place is clean, so the spirit soars.

At home there was the oilcloth in the hall, cold and hard to chubby bare knees. The thick prickly pile of the carpet under the dining-room table. The coal-cellar which stank of cats and gas leaking from the meter; a terrifying place, really, from which one was always glad to emerge alive. In the attic the toy train whizzed punily, disproportionately fast, between the stacks of old newspapers, which were mountains, and there was a window, high, small, covered with cobwebs, from which one could obtain an airman’s view of the neighbours’ gardens. The study was the sacred grove which one entered only by special invitation; it smelled of musty tomes and stale tobacco; one had to sit quiet on the floor looking at the steel engravings in a huge old Bible. Even Isaiah or was it Elijah being fed by ravens in the wilderness and Job smitten with boils had the frame and musculature of Samson or Joe Louis, but all the women subsequent to Eve, the Delilahs and Jaels no less than the Ruths and Virgin Marys, were monotonously anaemic, with worried expressions and voluminous clothes like nuns’. As for Eve, she was being tempted behind a frustrating twig in Plate One, and expelled from the Garden with her hand over the part which most aroused one’s curiosity in Plate Two. Then there was the pantry, full of the pale smells of cold food, and the kitchen, from which one was forever being shoo’d, either into the hall, if it was wet, or the garden, if it was fine. Six bedrooms, six worlds, all but your own an adventure to enter.

Sure enough environment shapes you, but environment is more than the interiors of a few rooms. Environment was the copper fender round the hearth-stoned hearth and the giant scuttle which emitted, when its iron handle dropped on its iron black cheek, a bass note if full and a tenor note if empty, but it was also the
Children’s Encyclopedia
, in which eight battered volumes you browsed by the hour. Environment was the tools in the toolshed, the hanging rakes and spades and forks and hoes, the scythe you were forbidden to touch with its Ivanhoe blade tied up in an old sack, the lawn mower smelling deliciously of oil and grass; but it was also aniseed balls at twenty for a ha’penny, and putting three of your six weekly pennies into the red velvet bag on the end of the comic pole, and having your hair cut by Mr. Styles, who had only one eye, and was Scoutmaster, and that was why you couldn’t be a scout. Environment was a million things—the speckled Ancona cock who once nipped your finger surprisingly hard when you were simply admiring him and had no intention at all (on that particular occasion) of depriving him of one of his tail-feathers, the kittens foolishly trying to climb the hollyhocks at the back of the herbaceous border, the snails amongst the mint which grew around the scullery drain; but it was also the wraiths, your parents, your brother, Ellen the maid and Tripp the gardener, who were so much filmier, so much less real, than furniture and worms and places. I suppose I was rather inhuman; perhaps all children are; but that’s how the past looks …

Denny was the only human being who seemed real. Andy was too much older than I—six years—and most of the time away at school. It was later when my hero-worship began, when I became a first-former in the school of which he was School Captain. He was captain too of both the soccer and cricket teams, the idol of all the small fry, a paragon I could never measure up to, but against whom I was always being measured …

Jesus, what hell it was being Andy’s brother at school. ‘Come, come, Joyce junior, you can do better than this. Your brother—’

It was when I failed Matric for the third time that my life first began to go to pieces, I think. After that even my father, most sanguine of parents, could no longer conceive a future of academic brilliance for me. He had had it all mapped out for years; Andy, big and strong, endowed with rapid reflexes, was to be the man of action; I, by no means a weakling, but more studiously inclined, was to win the intellectual honours. And for ten years I was dutiful enough to narrow my chest over my father’s ambition for me. But then suddenly—

Suddenly around the age of fourteen I realized that I liked the sun outside my window far better than even the fattest book. I no longer wanted to narrow my chest over Shakespeare and Plato and all that gang, I wanted to expand it. For long my dreams had been Walter Mittyish and always there was a naked girl in them, usually some local wench years older than myself, and myself heroic amongst the roaring flames, or the icy seas, or the falling bombs, for her sake. And now these dreams became more important than books, they occupied all my thoughts even in the classroom. For the next three years the headmaster’s reports grew progressively more anxious: ‘Not concentrating.’ ‘Must apply himself more diligently to the subjects he dislikes.’ ‘Must realize that the time has now come to make a final effort.’

The list is up on the board. I approach with dread in my bowels. My eyes are so glazed with apprehension I can’t sort out the letters that form the names. And there’s no need. Amongst the press of excited boys, all my juniors (for my own year has passed out either to the university or into the great big busy world where I shall never do any good), I hear the voice of Bambridge, that never-to-be-forgotten voice: ‘Crikey, look where old Joyce is. Still running true to form.’ And then the burst of laughter, but some faces reddening and growing apologetic as they turned and saw me standing …

So they put me down in Fourth Commercial, which was a disgrace, especially for Joyce major’s brother. (By then he was a planter in Kenya and therefore still a heroic figure.) And I was two years older than the next oldest boy in the form …

Christ Jesus, why go through that again?

I get up and go across the room. On the table is my mail. Only six letters—one per week. One from the bank. One from my mother. One from old Slither Higson, who used to ride with me on the cinders. And three from Lena.

I sit down on one of the hard wooden chairs. When I receive more than one letter at a time I like to read them in an ascending order of interest. I sort these out carefully. First the bank statement—that will only confirm what I already know. Then my mother’s—that will be only parish small-talk. Third, Lena’s—what sort of letters will she write? Finally Slither’s, which is bound to be good and full of speedway news.

The bank statement is certainly gratifying. Although I have not stinted myself since I arrived in this country, I have saved more than one third of that part of my income which is being paid here.

I slit open my mother’s sixpenny airmail form. It begins more or less as I expect:

Dear Reginald
,

It is time I wrote to you to say thank you for your letters telling us about your aeroplane journey and your life in Bangkok. I am sorry you are having to live in a hotel. I have never stayed in a hotel in my life but I am sure it must be very uncomfortable. Aren’t there any good boarding houses there where you can get good English food and proper attention? I know you are grownup now and able to look after yourself but I cannot help feeling that the most undesirable characters live in hotels and I expect it is much worse in a foreign country than it is in England. You must also be careful with the food—the Chinese meal you described sounded quite dangerous to me, especially as you ate it in a shop which you said was very dirty
.

Bangkok sounds a beautiful city from your description but I am sure really nice girls would not bath in canals in full view of the public even with all their clothes on as you describe
.

Last Sunday your father was unable to take the services as he had a very bad night with pain round the heart caused by wind. I had to ring up Mr. Pottle the curate at Cotters Green who came over and did his best
.

Your father is all right again now. I can’t think what upset him. We only had cold beef and apple pie for supper
.

We had the first fog of the winter yesterday, then it rained and the fog cleared. This morning when we got up it was snowing—much to our surprise. We don’t often get snow so early in Malderbury. It didn’t last long but has been cold and dull all day: but I expect you are sweltering in the heat and have almost forgotten what snow looks like
.

Last Wednesday, I went down to Bantingham to see Andy and his good lady. As I expect you have heard, Sheila has been very ill. She was going to have a baby but shortly after you left something went wrong. Of course it happened in the middle of the night and the farm is miles from anywhere and not on the phone and there was only their two selves in it so Andy had to do everything himself. It wasn’t until about ten the next morning that the policeman providentially called with a summons because Andy’s pigs had got into Mr. Templeton’s winter oats—that horrid man next door—and they were able to send Sheila to hospital. She’s up and about again now but very pale and thin and she won’t be able to help Andy with the milking all through the winter …

Follows parish gossip, and then at the end:

By the way, Sheila asked to be remembered to you. She looked dreadful, poor girl. I’m sure Andy has some very bad luck, and he works so hard
.

Poor girl, she looked dreadful. I had intended to spend the evening in the hotel but after reading those words the room seems intolerable, so I dress and go out.

I feed in Rajadamnoen Avenue. That is the Pall Mall of Bangkok. I think it is even wider than London’s, and night augments the amplitude of its proportions. I sit at a table on the pavement outside a restaurant which has the seductive word dough set up in modernistic wrought-iron lettering at the door. Enormous bats dive past my head and puzzled frogs jump and ponder, jump and ponder, between the chair legs. I order chicken salad, scrambled eggs on fried bread, cheese sandwiches, banana in cream, and beer. It is my first western food for weeks and in spite of my concern for Sheila—poor girl, poor girl—I enjoy it. A cool breeze is blowing down the desert of concrete; it stirs the leaves that catch the light of the lamps and my hair too and the folds of my shirt. The cars speed by, long streaks of smooth tinselled dimness, and in that vast expanse of thoroughfare their horns are muted and sound pleasant like a chorus of bullfrogs in paddyfields far away.

Poor girl. She looked ghastly. A conversational formula. The first two phrases that occurred to the speeding pen. Dead verbiage. Yet they have brought Sheila back to life again, made her as real as if she was sitting at the other side of the table …

Damn and blast the poor girl …

For the fact is that during these last few weeks I have been getting my obsession under control. For the first time in four long years, ever since I first met her—

What did she see in me in the first place, I wonder? She came to that hospital to see Greg who was sick in the next bed. Nothing much the matter with him: just an appendix. I was in that time with a fractured knee-cap. Literally tied to the bed with a ton-weight, as it seemed, on my left leg. She was wearing a pale blue jacket and skirt and a cream blouse and her cloud of hair, hardly less pale than the blouse, fell over her shoulders in an ordered sequence of shallow waves. She kissed Greg and made him blush.

I was staring at her pretty frankly and I saw her cast more than one covert glance my way and when Greg finally got round to introducing us—‘Sheila, I’d like you to meet Reggie Joyce’—she wasn’t merely polite, she was pleased.

‘Reggie Joyce? The name sounds familiar.’

‘Of course it does. He rides for the Leopards. He’s ridden for England twice.’

She had half-risen from her chair by Greg’s bed to cross to me and shake hands but at these words her face clouded and she sat down again. ‘Are you really a dirt-track rider?’ For the first time I felt the force of that ice-blue candid gaze bent full upon me. Clearly I was being measured against some preconceived notion of my breed. ‘I think it’s a horrible sport.’

It was my living. ‘Have you ever seen any?’

‘Yes. Once.’

‘I took her,’ said Greg. ‘It was an unlucky night. There was a bad pile-up. You remember Lanky Spence—’

‘Somebody ran into him and broke his back,’ Sheila interjected angrily. ‘He died next day.’

‘Not next day. Three days later.’

‘It was murder,’ Sheila said. ‘Men killing each other for just a few pounds.’

It wasn’t murder at all. Lanky was my friend. We rode as a pair and shared our point-money.

‘I think it was an accident,’ I said. I hated anyone to remind me of that night. It was the biggest blot on my copybook, then. But—‘Did you stay to the end of the meeting?’ I asked at length, when I’d managed to master my feelings. Because if she had, she was overstating her aversion.

‘No. I just stayed till the next time that man—the one that did it—was supposed to race again.’

‘Why’d you do that?’

‘I wanted to see if he would.’

‘And did he?’ I did like hell, chased by my fears for Lanky, hoping I’d crash heavily and expiate my—