A Woman of Bangkok (29 page)

‘Who bring?’

He pointed with his chin. Another boy she’d never seen before was grinning at her from amongst the potted palms in the main doorway.

She turned the letter over. It was addressed in English.

‘What it say?’ she asked Dick.

‘It says “Miss Vilai” in big letters, and underneath in brackets it says “The White Leopard.” Do you want me to read it for you?’

She debated the point rapidly. The only Thai present whose translation she could trust would be the manager, but she didn’t want him to know too much of her business. As for that, she didn’t want Dick to know it either. She accosted the strange boy, who was smart and clean and rather good-looking. He did obeisance to her, which was extremely gratifying in front of Dick.

‘Who sent this letter?’

‘A foreigner.’

‘What is his name?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Where does he live?’

He pointed with his chin and named a hotel she’d never heard of before.

Dick said, ‘If you want me to read that billy-doo you gotta give it me quick. I’m running it mighty fine—’

She handed him the letter.

He opened it and unfolded a single piece of paper. As his eyes ran down the dozen or so lines his puckered eyes began to smile. Finally with a short laugh he handed the letter back to her. ‘That guy sure does hate your guts,’ he said drily.

‘Who?’

‘Reg. The guy that tried to bump you off with a car.’

‘It from he?’

‘Yes. Surprised?’

‘What he say?’

He took the note back and read it quickly in a toneless voice. ‘“Dear Vilai: I hope you can get someone to read this to you. I am sorry I upset you this afternoon. I should have realized how upset you must have been by the accident to your son”—I guess he means your little brother—“and been more decent to you. Vilai, I can’t bear the thought of your dancing at that goddamned Bolero, pretending to be gay and happy, getting drunk to make yourself forget, while all the time Udom is badly injured. I know you are not really as hard and bad as all that. Is it just the money you must have? I will pay all the bills for you, darling. But please, immediately, come here to this hotel, where you can rest decently, and tomorrow if you like I’ll take you to the hospital to see the poor kid. Do please please come, Vilai. I can’t come to the Bolero for you; I can’t bear to see you working there, especially tonight. Reggie. PS. Please tell the bearer if you will come or not. It is torture waiting for you here.”’

She took the note back again. ‘He little bit mad, I sink.’

‘He sure is. Well, you’d better cash in on it, kid. So long.’

She called a
samlor
to take Dick to the taxi-station and by the time he’d vanished waving into the wide dark spaces of Rajadamnoen Avenue she’d decided what to do. ‘Go back to the hotel and tell the foreigner I must have sixty tics to pay the manager, else I cannot leave the Bolero until closing time,’ she told the boy. Then she went back in the Bolero to augment her income if possible.

Not that she particularly needed any cash now that Dick had settled up with her. But making money was the most engrossing pursuit she knew of and it alone had the power to keep horror at bay until you were drunk. Already she had found it was unsafe to sit idle and alone for a single second. And one grisly idea kept jumping into her mind in the middle of a dance, a drink, or a laugh—‘He may have died. He may already have died.’ This idea had been even harder to keep off since just before Dick came in, for then, going towards the bar while the band played ‘Sleepy Lagoon’ she’d thought she heard a faint cry—‘Mama’—up amongst the coloured lanterns—his ghost come seeking her here in the midst of all her shame. She’d nearly fallen, and against all her principles had had to order a whisky without having a prospective purchaser of it in view. Then Dick had come, and of course paid for this one and another. But she didn’t want to hear that ghost again, or be left to herself for a single second: she must have her mind continually distracted.

Luckily there was no shortage of men tonight. The drinks had given her animation and she knew she was looking superb in her ivory-white full-skirted dress. (She’d had to be her own maid after Bochang had finally left for the hospital.) Several men danced with her and bought her drinks at the bar. None secured her to themselves for an hour and that was just as well, for there were always pauses in an hour-long tête-à-tête which tonight she was determined to avoid at all costs.

Almost an hour after Dick had left, the nice-looking hotel-boy returned with another envelope from Wretch. There was no letter this time but there was a hundred-tic note. She put it into her handbag with a sense of deep satisfaction. Four hundred already tonight for nothing. Plus all the chits for drinks and dances that were going down to her name. ‘Tell him I will come as soon as I can,’ she told the boy. ‘I think twelve-thirty, but I may be late. And if I don’t come tonight then definitely tomorrow … What was the name of that hotel again?’

At two-thirty in the morning she kept her promise.

She’d had an excellent night. She’d danced and drunk and chattered till eleven-thirty. Then a group of business men who’d been pretty boisterous and had already made several attempts to get her to join them had jettisoned that Black Leopard from their midst and so she had yielded to their persuasions. She’d already noticed that money was abundant at their table and that bottles of bourbon were arriving full and being carried empty away with a speed and regularity that foretold easy pickings later on for even the dumbest type of girl. An old customer, a round-shouldered chinless blond with extremely high-powered spectacles, had made the introductions. He was quite tight. ‘Hi, Leopard,’ he’d shouted, staggering to his feet and grasping her hand and shaking it warmly but then trying to encircle her with a familiar arm—‘Hi, Senator, hi, Senator—’ He’d had a great deal of difficulty in disengaging the Senator’s mind from another girl whose knee he’d got hold of but finally the flushed, moon-shaped face had swung round. ‘Hi, Senator, she’s here. The number one lay in Bangkok, in the Orient, in the world! The Whi’ Leopard I been telling you about all ni’. Hi, Senator, meet the Whi’ Leopard, the number one lay in Bangkok, in the Orient, in the world I figure—’

When midnight came the party had been divided about what it should do with itself next. Chinless had vociferously insisted that the Senator must be guided to the Leopard’s den by himself. ‘Only the great deserve the fair,’ he had shouted, and as this had made the others laugh and clap the first time he said it, he’d repeated it twenty times getting no further laughs but his own. Some of the others had been of the opinion however that what the Senator needed first was a few more drinks. ‘It’s too early to go to bed, even with the number one lay in Bangkok, in the world, in the universe,’ one of them had said—the nicest-looking of the lot—with a sly smile at her, which clearly set themselves as two individuals aside from and above this drunken rabble, and she’d returned the smile and said ‘Why we not go Champagne Bucket?’ and the suggestion had been jubilantly taken up.

She’d lost the Senator and Chinless but she herself had got into a big American car and after a crushed and dangerous ride during which her dress was torn at the waist she’d arrived with four or five men and a couple of other Bolero girls at the Champagne Bucket. And the man who’d taken the seat next to hers was the nice dark quiet one with the sleeked hair and the sly companionable grin, the one who was easily the pick of the bunch.

The party spirit hadn’t survived transplantation any too well however and soon one man and one girl had disappeared and shortly after that everybody else went except for the nice dark man and another man who was almost as nice. Even these two kept on yawning and though they both danced with her once or twice they showed more inclination to talk together, mostly about what they thought about the Senator. She’d found she was getting left out and that was just what she couldn’t stand tonight. She’d looked at her watch. One-thirty. Goddam early. Should she try for one of these two or someone else in the place? Or go to Wretch? It would be a bore going back across the city by
samlor
to search for that hotel. And then Wretch would be sympathetic instead of distracting. He’d tend to concentrate her mind on her troubles instead of diverting it from them. She groaned inwardly. This was the usual interlude of despondency that descended on her briefly in the small hours, only tonight it was worse than usual …

Then another American had come up and clapped the other two on their shoulders and had his own clapped back and had asked if he might make use of the amenities since they seemed to be neglecting them. He’d trod on her toes and held her too low down. When the dance was over she’d gone to the toilet and after releasing a lot of beer and whisky characteristically examined herself in the glass. Her lips had needed renovation and there, when she opened the bag, on top of everything else had been Wretch’s letter. She’d opened it and looked at it although it was incomprehensible to her. In a way he was nice. And he’d sent that money and here it was. And he might be good for more yet. And it would be wrong to break your word to a man who was good to you. The Buddha would be displeased. And He mustn’t be displeased in any way whilst Udom was still in danger …

She hadn’t bothered to go back to the others to say goodbye. Let them gabble on about their fat old
assuin
! She’d slipped out of the side-door and into one of the fifty waiting
samlors
.

‘Vilai!’

No doubt about his delight at seeing her. If he’d been Chokchai he’d have collapsed on his side wagging all over. And curiously she was pleased to see him too. His hair was tousled and his eyes were heavy with sleep and his torso soared nude and beautiful out of his western-style pyjama trousers which had green and white stripes on them. She didn’t know why she was so drawn to him. He was blond and she hated blonds, he was too young, he was poor, and worst of all, he was romantically infatuated. He seemed dazed with his good fortune and didn’t know what to do first. In the end he shut and locked the door and came and fell on his knees before her. ‘Vilai,’ he groaned, like a man who sees God.

She got up out of the chair she’d plumped into and pushed past him and examined the bed and the wash handbasin and the
hongnam
and herself in the full-length wardrobe mirror, ‘This room nice,’ she said, turning from side to side before the glass so that her skirts whirled back and forth.

‘I suppose it is. But I never realized it till this minute.’

‘Why you not have that?’—indicating the fan, and as he got up off his knees to start it, ‘I go pee-pee.’

She did so on the tiled floor with the proper place to perform the function only a yard away. She threw water about and when she came back into the room he was combing his hair.

‘You haff somesing for me to eat?’

‘I’m sorry, no.’

‘Not d’ink neither?’

‘There’s water.’ He indicated a flagon with a tumbler on it.

She touched it. ‘Not cold.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Never mind.’

She sat down on one of the hard wooden chairs. There were a few letters on the low wooden table and she riffled through them but there was nothing of interest—nothing in Thai, no pictures. He dragged the fan up on a stool so that it blew directly on her. Then once again he sank onto his knees before her.

She lifted and angled her legs and pulled her skirts up to her hips. She had on tight pink panties with white lace inserts. A hair or two emerged and she snatched one out with a gasp and a laugh, and then rubbed the injured spot.

‘Vilai, have you had any news of Udom?’

It was just what she’d feared. He was going to try to make her face her troubles instead of helping her to ignore them. She flared up. ‘I not want you talk Udom. He not your son—why you must worry to him? He
my
son, but I not worry.’

He said, ‘Vilai, there’s no need to act with me. I saw it happen and I know what you must be feeling. I asked you here because I can give you sympathy. I won’t try to—to make you tonight, darling; I’m not so insensitive. I want you to get on the bed, and I’ll just take the two blankets which you won’t need. I’ll be able to sleep on the floor quite comfortably, and in the morning—’

She said, ‘How much you give me?’

His head jolted backwards. ‘What for?’

‘For come here tonight.’

He looked at her, hurt, a moment, then he said gently, ‘You don’t understand, darling. I’ve just said I don’t want to—
do
anything tonight. I’ve asked you here because I’m your friend, to, to
save
you from all that—’

She said, sticking to her guns: ‘You giff me five hunderd?’

Suddenly he was blazing with anger. He leapt to his feet and unlocked the door and flung it open. ‘
Lakon,
’ he grated.

That meant ‘Goodbye forever’ but she continued to sit on the chair with her legs up and her skirts too, rolling her hips about and humming.

He shut the door with a slam again and marched up and down the room a few times and then stopped in front of her to harangue her furiously. ‘God damn and blast you to all eternity! You haven’t got a soft spot in your make-up anywhere. You don’t care tuppence for your son, or for anyone else who loves you—’

She said, ‘Please sit down.’ She waved to the other armchair the other side of the table and in the end he dropped into it, though still fuming. Then she said rationally, ‘Wretch, you nice boy, but all the time must angly to me. I not like that. Man like me, must be good to me. He not like, must not ask me come he house. Fight all the time, no good. No good him, no good me … You haff cigalette giff me?’

He shook his head.

She laughed. ‘Wretch good boy, I sink. Not haff nussing in he house for giff girl.’ She found a cigarette in her bag and went on: ‘Tonight Saturday night. Many men at the Bolero. Many men want White Leopard, I sink. I sink, I go wiss them, I get many hunderd tic. But Wretch send letter say he want me, so I not go wiss usser man. I come see Wretch—’