The Thai Amulet (13 page)

“Do you live here or work here?” I said.

“Both,” he said, taking down the bottle and a couple of glasses.

“How did you find it? Or did you build it yourself?”

“It was my father’s studio,” he said. I waited in vain for a detail or two. There weren’t any. We took our drinks back to the sala and sat sipping them silently. I wondered which one of us would break down and say something. I was determined it wouldn’t be me.

“Do you like my father’s paintings?” he said finally.

“I’m not sure how to answer that,” I said slowly. “He was an immensely talented artist, but I suppose I would have to say that I find them too disturbing to enjoy. What happened to him?”

“He died. I told you.”

“No, I mean what changed him from a portrait painter to the person who saw such violent images?”

“I have wondered that myself,” he said. “I don’t know. He was certainly successful. His work is in many galleries. I, on the other hand, am a failure. I tried to be a painter—for years in fact—but never measured up. I have all his brushes and materials. I cannot part with them, but they are a daily reminder of my own inadequacy.”

“Did you carve the spirit house?”

“I did. Oh, that reminds me,” he said, going back out to the sala and peering over the side. “Just checking,” he said, turning back. “You have to place them where the shadow of the house never falls on them. I studied everything very carefully before I placed it the other day, but you will understand with a tree house, there are certain challenges. I wouldn’t want to offend the
chai.
Very bad luck indeed. I don’t suppose you’d like one, a spirit house, I mean. Didn’t you tell me when you phoned you have a shop?”

“It is very beautiful. I don’t think there’s a huge market for spirit houses where I come from, but your carving is exceptional. I might—”

“You don’t have to say that,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. Sit down. Finish your scotch.”

“I keep thinking chess sets,” I said. “When I look at your work. All those rows of little animals and carts and everything. My partner Rob—he’s a policeman—he loves to play chess. Do you think you could make a chess set, a distinctively Thai one?”

“I could do, I suppose,” he said. He sat there for a minute. “Elephants,” he said, finally. “I could use elephants for the knights. I would use two different colored woods, a red wood, and then black. Yes, I could do that. Are you saying you’d like one?”

“Yes,” I said. “I might like more than one. I have a couple of customers who play chess, and others who would just appreciate the beauty of it, even if they don’t play. You think about it.”

“You asked a lot of questions before, but I’m not sure how I can help you,” he said.

“I’m looking for William Beauchamp. He owned at least two portraits that were painted by your father.”

“Three,” he said.

“Three what?”

“Beauchamp bought three of my father’s portraits. He bought all I had. All of the portraits, at least. What’s left of his other work is here. There’s a lot of it in galleries and such, as I believe I mentioned.”

“So you did know Will Beauchamp,” I said.

“Not really,” he said. “He just came, bought some paintings, and left.”

“And you have no idea where he might be at this moment?”

“Not this or any other moment,” he said. “He paid cash. I didn’t need to know anything more about him. He did give me his card. I suppose I could look for that. He owned an antique store, I believe.”

“Fairfield Antiques off Silom Road.”

“That sounds about right.”

“Did you know who the portraits were of?”

“Two of them, I did. My father kept meticulous records. One was a Scot by the name of Cameron MacPherson. The other was his brother Duncan. Two well-to-do merchants who lived in Thailand after the war. I looked it up.”

“And the third? Do you know who the woman in the third painting is?” I asked.

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to tell me?” he said.

I was tempted to be as reticent as he was, but relented. “Helen Ford.”

“Hmmm,” he said.

“Do you know who that is?”

“No.”

I debated about telling him his father had painted an axe murderer, but decided against it.

“I should,” he said.

“You should what?”

“I should have known who it was. Baffling, really.”

I had to agree with him.

“You see,” he said, “it would appear that my father was an extremely well organized man. I didn’t know him that well. He and my mother divorced when I was quite young, and she and I moved to England. I didn’t come back here until he died. But the evidence is there. That’s what made him so good at the portraits. He worked and worked at them until he had captured the essence of the person, not just their external appearance. I wish I had the talent. The artist gene seems to have passed me by.”

“But your carving is wonderful. I’ve never seen anything like it.” Fitzgerald Junior obviously had a serious inferiority complex. I don’t know why I felt I had to keep reminding him about his talent, though. He just seemed terribly vulnerable, I suppose, and I couldn’t resist mothering him.

“That’s nice of you. The point I’m making, and I’ll grant you I’m taking some time getting to it, is that my father kept the most careful records. I couldn’t find anything that would indicate who that woman was. Come, I’ll show you.” Fitzgerald led me along to the other pavilion and to the room that looked both bedroom and office.

“My father, mother, and I lived in a big old house apparently. I can’t recall it at all. I was just a baby when my mother took me to England. But he spent most of his days, and some of his nights, here,” Fitzgerald said. “This is where he worked. He had his easel set up in the sala and painted there. My mother has told me that in the early days, many of his subjects came here to pose for him. Now, here is where he kept all his records. You see what I mean when I say he was a meticulous man.”

He gestured toward a rather primitive teak desk with wooden drawers, one of which he pulled open. There were rows and rows of ruled cards, all sorted alphabetically by name, but also, I realized after I’d had a look, color-coded by date.

“The date on the back of the painting was January 1949-I have looked all through 1949, 1950, and several years before,” he said. “Now that you’ve given me a name, I’ll check that, too. See,” he said after a minute. “No Helen Ford.”

“Try Chaiwong,” I said. “Just as a test.”

“Chaiwong,” he said, rifling through. “Yes, here they are. Two portraits, one of Chaiwong, comma, Thaksin and Virat. This one was done in 1948. The other is Chaiwong, comma, Saratwadee and Sompom, age five. The date is 1949 for that one.” He handed them to me.

“I’ve seen these two portraits. They’re hanging in the Chaiwong family’s living room. So your father’s system works. I notice your father kept the dimensions of his paintings on the cards, too. Can you recall how big the portrait of Helen Ford was?”

“Maybe twenty inches wide by thirty,” he said.

“So how do you think Will Beauchamp found you in the first place?”

“Not hard to do. I advertised in the
Bangkok Post
classifieds. Beauchamp seemed a pleasant fellow. It was a couple of years ago, right after I got here. He came to look at the portraits, because he said he was opening an antique store, and wondered what I might have. He took the three of them. I was able to tell him who the others were, but not this one. He said he really liked it, and he might keep it for himself and try to find out who it was. I shouldn’t have let it go, really. It was one of the best paintings my father ever did. But I barely knew the man, remember him only vaguely. There were a few holiday visits with him, but that’s about all. I found him to be a difficult man, on those few occasions I was sent out to spend time with him. I had no sentimental attachment to his work, is what I’m saying. However, it now seems to me that I didn’t charge enough. You and Beauchamp are not the only people interested in that painting.”

“Who else is interested?”

“I’m not sure I should say,” he replied.

“I know Tatiana Tucker was interested in it. She’s making a documentary.”

“Tatiana? Right. Rather fetching young woman.”

“Others are interested, too?”

“Yes. I’ve had a couple of calls about it, not mentioning the name the way you have, but describing it pretty clearly. And another person, an attractive Thai woman, also came looking for the painting and Beauchamp. Can’t remember her name, though.”

“You’ve been very helpful,” I said.

“I don’t know how I could have been,” he said. “I don’t have much to tell you. However, I haven’t had a chance to look at my father’s diaries yet. They’re all those lovely leather volumes on the shelf there: one per year, pages and pages of very neat, tiny print. He did one every year from 1945 to 1949, then stopped, but took it up again in about I960. I thought there might be something in them about who the woman was, but you know, once I’d sold it, there didn’t seem to be much point. I did wonder, though, whether she was someone he was in love with. I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about that, given she wasn’t my mother, but the portrait was so beautiful. It touched me in some way. Now that I have a name, I’ll look and see if there’s anything that would give a clue. Tell me where I can reach you.”

“You’ve been very generous with your time,” I said, writing down the hotel number. “I’m quite envious of your home, and I loved seeing it. Thanks for the scotch and for showing it to me.”

“Thank you,” he said. “You can come again, if you like. I’ll help you down.”

“One more question,” I said. “You said your father captured the essence of a person in his portraits. What was your impression of the essence of Helen Ford?”

“Interesting question,” he said. “What would I say?” He hesitated for a moment. “Defiant,” he said. “That’s the best word I can think of for her.”

I climbed down out of the tree rather depressed by my visit. Once again I hadn’t learned much except that Robert Fitzgerald Junior was a man who lived in the shadow of a talented father he barely knew. I had to wonder why he’d come back to Bangkok in the first place, and even more why he’d choose to live in the studio of the man he envied so profoundly. I didn’t think that there was anything I or anyone else could say that would make him feel the equal of his father.

Did Chat, I wondered, feel that way about his father, the hugely successful businessman? I knew Chat as a pleasant young man to meet and talk to, respectful of Jennifer, Rob, and me. From Jennifer I knew him to be solid, quiet, with a touch of
gravitas,
yet determined, with a very firm sense of what was right. Did he envy his father’s success? Would Fatty, for that matter, grow up feeling inadequate because her mother was so extraordinarily accomplished?

And how, when it came right down to it, would Natalie cope with her daughter, Caitlin, never growing up at all? It was a thought that brought me to the most depressing fact of all. Despite all the buzzing around I was doing, I was nowhere nearer to finding Caitlin’s dad.

When I got back to the hotel, there was another voice mail from Jennifer. “We’re on our way back to Bangkok, apparently,” she said. “I gather it’s been a rather unsuccessful trip, although nobody is saying much. See you tomorrow.”

Chapter 6

If defeat in our attempts to subdue Chiang Mai and Setthathirat was unfortunate, it was nothing compared to what was to follow.

I remember very well the fateful day on which everything in my life changed. While it ended most horribly, I recall the early hours with pleasure, as perhaps the last carefree day of my life.

That day, as we waited for the return of the king, I had taken Yot Fa and his younger brother, Si Sin, to see the royal elephants in their enclosure. They are magnificent beasts, elephants. I have always had a fondness for them. The light that day was preter-naturally clear. There were storm clouds on the horizon, yet for us the sun shone.

“Soon I will ride with my father into battle on one of these elephants,” Yot Fa said. “And you will be with me. I will be a great soldier, just like the king.”

“You must learn to be more than a soldier,” I told him, “if you are to follow in your father’s footsteps.”

We made our way back to the palace slowly, as boys that age do, generally making a nuisance of ourselves wherever we went. After the noise and heat of the elephant compound, the palace was strangely silent on our return. I heard, though, an ominous sound, what I took to be a distant wailing of women.

My mother rushed to greet us at the outer gate. “The king is dead,” she said, tears streaming down her face. “What will become of us?”

I cannot recall the exact moment I became convinced Will Beauchamp was dead. And not merely dead, if one can use the word
mere
under the circumstances, but dispatched from this world by an unseen and malign hand. Certainly there was no blinding flash, no stunning revelation. Rather there was a growing sense that no matter who I talked to and what I asked, the answer was always the same. It was as if Will had held a Fourth of July party and then walked to the edge of a cliff, watched by numerous people who turned away the second before he went over the side. Except one of them had to have seen, had to have been complicit.

Perhaps the reason it took me so long to reach the inevitable conclusion was that I was two people while I was in Bangkok. As one, I was an antique dealer trying to find a fellow shopkeeper who’d decided to disappear. As the other, I was struggling to redefine my role in Jennifer’s life, as someone who was perhaps a parental substitute. Unfortunately, I succeeded at neither. It was as if my right brain and left had been severed somehow, so that I was trying to be too rational on the one hand, too emotional on the other.

Both sides of the brain were functioning. The connections were not being made.

“Hi,” a voice above me said. I turned down my newspaper. “It’s me,” Jennifer said quite unnecessarily. “I’ve come to help you find William Beauchamp.”

Her nose was a little pink and her eyes rather puffy. “Have you had breakfast?” I said, signaling the waiter.