Sheer Abandon (30 page)

He said he’d been a great novelty there, being blond, and that the whole village had been summoned to stare at him. “They sat and stroked my arms, because I’m so hairy.”

“I’d love to go,” she said, and then, because it would give her an excuse to leave the beach, she said she was thinking of moving on and she might make her way up there.

“Oh, but you mustn’t go on your own,” he said. “It’s much more dangerous up there, you must go with a guide, pay for your food and accommodation in advance. You do that in Bangkok, it’s quite easy. Now, you in touch with the others?”

“No. Jocasta left weeks ago to go north—I’m surprised you didn’t bump into each other—and Martha left about a fortnight ago. To go to Phuket, I think.”

“So you’re on your own?”

“Well, no, not really. I’m staying here with two other girls and a bloke.”

“Do you know anywhere I could sleep?”

“In my bungalow,” she said and then thought he might think she was trying to pull him and flushed. “The thing is, there are four of us, and one is moving on today. We could go and ask the guy who runs the place.”

“Cool. Well, if you don’t mind. I’m going to check a few things out.”

He came back quite quickly; she was sitting chatting to a couple of the little Thai boys who swept the beach and put out the loungers, enjoying their sweet friendliness, their pride in earning some money for their families.

“Well, apparently Ang Thong is a must. Why don’t you come too? It’s a day trip; boat goes from Na Thon, at eight thirty.” He had looked at her rather consideringly with his amazing blue eyes and suddenly grinned and said, “You look great, Clio. Being here obviously suits you.”

Clio didn’t eat anything for the rest of the day, in case her flattening stomach redeveloped a bulge.

She felt distinctly nervous but hugely excited next day, joining Josh and half a dozen friends he’d made the night before. It was a stunning morning, clear and blue, as they moved out of the harbour towards the archipelago of Ang Thong. The boat served the usual disgusting coffee and some rather nice cakes for breakfast and, after a bit, Josh and most of his new friends fell asleep, stretched out on the hard benches in the sun. Clio stayed carefully under the tarpaulin; she burnt easily, in spite of her dark hair.

After about half an hour, Josh woke up, saw her sitting alone, and patted the bench next to him. “Here,” he said. “Come and sit with me.”

And she had, her head swimming with excitement, sat down next to him and he’d grinned at her and put his arm round her and passed her his beer to share. He liked her! Josh Forbes, the gorgeous,
gorgeous
Josh liked her. Fancied her. She could feel it. And somehow it didn’t matter when another girl arrived and sat the other side of him and he put his other arm round her, because for the first time in her life she felt good about herself, and she knew that really he liked her best.

The boat had reached the mass of islands now, was making its way between them, some of them quite large and lush, others little more than huge rocks carved into incredible shapes by the sea. They saw dolphins playing, and above them clouds of seabirds crying in the wind; and nearer to shore gazed down at rainbow-coloured fish through the incredibly clear water above the coral reef. It was an extraordinary journey.

They anchored off the biggest of the islands, and transferred to a longtail boat to take them in to shore. They jumped out into water knee-deep and, even by Thai standards, warm—“Too hot to swim in,” Clio said to Josh—and the boat’s captain pointed them in the direction of the island’s greatest challenge, a steep 500-metre climb in a hollow behind the beach.

“Very hard,” he said. “Not danger, but hard.”

“Right,” Josh said. “I’m off. Who’s coming with me?”

Clio was—and to her slight disappointment, all the others too.

It was an incredibly tough climb through hard scrub and awkward boulders, up and up, sheltered to an extent from the sun, but not the heat, by the trees. They began light-heartedly, larking about, became tired and hot and increasingly silent. Two of the girls gave up, started slithering down, laughing again, telling them they were mad. Clio, directly behind Josh now, less fit than they were, knew she would rather die than give in.

As she struggled on, feeling her salty sweat stinging her eyes, her muscles straining, everything hurting, dying seemed quite likely.

But she made it, emerged from the darkness of the trees into brilliant blue light and up the last few metres to the summit; and then stood there, weariness set aside. It was as if she was flying above the islands, spread below and beyond her, jagged shapes, rimmed with white sand, carved out of the blue, mystically beautiful. Even Josh seemed moved by it, stood there, gazing at it in silence, and then smiled at her rather slowly without speaking. Clio wished she wasn’t quite so drenched in sweat.

She had expected the descent to be easy but it wasn’t, and she was tired, dreadfully tired. As she neared the bottom, she began to feel dizzy and sick, the sun seemed horribly dazzling and she found it hard to find footholds; twice she slipped. Josh was ahead, and she was thankful; she didn’t want him thinking she was pathetic.

There was a stretch of grass at the bottom of the steps; Clio just reached it, collapsed onto it, under a palm tree, her legs completely without strength. She sat, her head buried in her arms, feeling faint and dreadfully thirsty; she knew she had to get back to the boat within a few minutes, everyone else had gone, but she literally couldn’t walk. Nor did she care.

“You OK?” It was Josh’s voice, clearly anxious.

“Yes, I’m fine. Thanks.”

“You don’t look it. You look awful. Quite green.”

“I’m OK.” She struggled to stand up and couldn’t.

“Clio, you’re not. You’re dehydrated. Stay there, I’ll get some stuff for you.”

He was back in minutes, carrying not only water but crisps (“You need salt”) and cola (“You need sugar”), and stood over her while she consumed them. Their captain waved to them to hurry; Josh shouted that he had to wait, gesturing to Clio lying on the ground; everyone stared. She could imagine them getting impatient, scornful of her, and worst of all, amused.

Gradually she felt her strength return and managed to stagger to the boat, leaning on Josh’s arm, and felt self-conscious, sitting in the longboat, smiling feebly at people.

“Right,” said Josh, handing her up the ladder into the other boat, “there you go. OK now?”

“Yes, I’m fine,” she said. “Thank you. Sorry.”

“Don’t be silly. You did well.” He grinned at her.

She had expected him to leave her then, but he sat by her while they ate the lunch, and the others came over to them and chatted, asked her if she was all right. She felt wonderful; she could have laughed for joy, sitting there, with Josh at her side looking after her, sharing his bottle of beer.

They stopped again later, on a much smaller island called Mae Koh, where another wonder awaited them—“And another climb, great!” said Josh—but this one was easy, leading through a narrow gorge and suddenly arriving at an extraordinary green-blue lake far, far below, entirely circled by cliffs, and filled with fresh seawater by way of an underground tunnel. It had a magical quality. Clio half expected some exotic sea creature to rise from it in greeting, and said so; two of the girls looked at her and then each other and raised their eyebrows; she felt incredibly foolish, until Josh said, “Or even a mermaid,” and again she felt fantastically happy.

They snorkelled and then sat on the beach in the sun; one of the girls passed round a spliff and this time Clio took it—it was obviously so boring not to, and she inhaled, felt an easy warmth, a heady spinning of her senses. The girl wandered off down the beach, her small, perfect bottom moving very gently from side to side.

“She’s nice,” said Clio, looking enviously at the bottom.

“She’s OK,” Josh said, beginning to roll another spliff, “not as nice as you,” and gave her a kiss on the top of her head. They smoked together for a few minutes, Clio feeling increasingly wonderful. And then he said that she was burning. “Why don’t we move round there, into that sort of cave thing, you’ll be sheltered there.”

That had done it, really. She had known this was it, now, here, at last: a man wanted her and she wanted him. She was suddenly sexy and confident and they were away from the others at his instigation, so surely he felt the same too. She turned to him and pulled his head down to hers and kissed him on the mouth. She could feel him first hesitate, and then respond; he was a very good kisser, she thought confusedly, a lot better than anyone who had ever kissed her before.

She found she was experiencing a lot of strange things, strange sensations. There seemed to be some link between her mouth and a place deep within her, a dark, sweetly soft place, that moved every time he kissed her, and her heart was racing. She felt warm and relaxed and excited all at the same time, and she could feel a longing that was exactly like hunger—or was it thirst? Somehow the two fused together—to have Josh there, meeting the place—and she turned on her back and tried to pull him onto her.

“Hey, now,” he said, very gently. “Careful, Clio.”

But she was beyond being careful, beyond sense, beyond caution or anything, she just wanted him; she could feel his penis stiffening against her, and he was kissing her again, but very gently, and she tried desperately with her free hand, the one that was not holding his head to hers, to pull off her bikini pants.

She thought he would go on kissing her, but he had stopped. Maybe he was going to take his shorts off; she lay back, breathing heavily, looking at him, then pulling his head down again, pushing her tongue into his mouth, wondering how to find his penis, urge it into her, and all the time this fierce, strange, violent sensation: but then, suddenly, it was different. He was resisting her, pulling his head back slightly, and he said, “Clio, not now, not just now. Calm down.” And then he stopped and gave her a half smile, and even through the booze and the dope and her own ignorance, she knew. He didn’t want her—not now, not ever. She was being rejected, turned away as she always was, as she always had been. She felt fat again, naïve, uncool, and looking over his shoulder she saw the girl, the other girl watching them from the other side of the rocks, a half-amused look on her face. Hot with shame and misery, she turned away from Josh, pulled up her pants, and ran fast, as fast as she could, down to the sea and into it, careless of the coral hurting her feet, and if she’d had the courage she would have walked on and on until she could be seen no more, but it was no good, she couldn’t do that, and finally, she turned and looked for him on the beach, but he had gone and was walking towards the long queue forming to get back to the boat.

They were on their way back; Josh was standing with a group of friends at the bows of the boat; he saw her looking at him, waved awkwardly, and then turned away, staring out to sea. A girl joined him, put her arm round his waist, pushed her hand into the pocket of his trunks, and it physically hurt Clio to see them, it was like a twisting wound in her stomach. The journey back seemed endless.

That night, as they all sat on the beach, Clio desperate for an excuse to go inside to bed, still watching the group miserably, expelled from it by her own foolishness, it happened. A boy—quite a nice-looking boy—asked if he could join her, offered her some drink, and after a little while started to kiss her and stroke her breasts, and then to push his hands down into her pants, probing into her pubic hair and further still; and after only a very little time, she was leading him into their hut, giggling deliberately loud, making sure that Josh was watching. Already a little of her humiliation and sense of worthlessness had gone.

It was not a good experience; the boy was inside her swiftly, far too swiftly, and it hurt dreadfully, but she felt healed and restored and less humiliated, all at the same time, and she hoped against all hope that Josh might realise someone did want her, and assume that he had been alone on the beach and on the boat, and even in the whole of Thailand, in being foolish enough to reject her.

Over the next few months, she slept with a great many boys, some of them extremely good-looking and sexy, some of them less so; sometimes she enjoyed it and sometimes she didn’t. The important thing seemed to be that she could persuade them to want her. She had become, she supposed, that much-despised creature, a slag, and she also supposed she should despise herself, but she didn’t; she felt very little about herself at all. She was simply running away from the plump, dull, innocent person she had been and was so afraid of; and every time she had sex with someone, that person was further away from her.

A new Clio came home, the old one left behind in the sun and the islands or perhaps in the hill villages of the north, or even the glittering ostentation of Singapore: a slim, even thin Clio, with sun-streaked hair and a deep tan, a Clio who could attract men quite easily, but who was still anxious, still eager to please, still very far from sexually confident.

And the new Clio did not know, had not even considered, that she might carry a legacy from those dangerously careless days, which would damage her for the rest of her life.