The Half-Child

by Angela Savage

  ‘So you’re not interested in anything I might turn up?’

  ‘Frankly, I’m going back to three progress reports, two funding applications and a new round of placements for Thailand and Vietnam.’

  ‘Then I’d better not keep you.’

  Jayne stood to leave, put her cigarettes into the pocket of her jacket, when a voice behind her said, ‘I taught I recognised dose black curls.’

  She turned around.

  ‘Hello Declan. How are you? How’s Noi?’

  ‘Noi?’

  ‘You know, Thai girl, barely legal—remember?’

  Declan grinned. His eyes were amber, but not in an attractive way. As if his skull was full of beer.

  ‘Ach, I was sooch a fool!’

  ‘I won’t argue with you there.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?’ Kate interrupted them, her own bleary eyes locking on Declan’s.

  ‘Sure,’ Jayne said. ‘Kate, this is Declan. Declan this is Kate.’

  Jayne inched away as she spoke.

  ‘Kate, I know more about Declan than I wish I did, and Declan, I know less about Kate than I’d like to. But enough about me.’

  Neither of them looked at her as she backed out the door.

  5

  People went to Ekamai only to leave it. Bangkok’s Eastern Bus Terminal was a maze of ticket windows, shelters and numbered docking bays, where dozens of buses idled with engines rumbling, air noxious with the smell of diesel fuel and rotting fruit. Despite the diligent cleaning ladies whose grass brooms whisked away litter beneath the feet of thousands of travellers each day, a layer of grime covered every surface, a miasma of dirt hung in the air. Sad-eyed children holding paper cups wandered among the crowds gesturing for food, while their quicker-fingered compatriots filched unguarded purses and wallets. Poor families huddled around red, white and blue striped bags that contained cheap plastic goods, paid for with their life savings, which unscrupulous traders convinced them would sell for a huge profit in their village back home. Flustered tourists rushed from one dock to another in search of their departure point, anxiety mounting at each dead-end. It didn’t help that they kept asking people at random for help. Loath to disappoint, the Thais would rather give wrong directions than none at all.

  Jayne took pity on a German couple and escorted them to their bus to Rayong, before making her way to the Pattaya berth. On Jim Delbeck’s allowance she could have hired a taxi for the trip, but figured she’d try to make some money out of this job.

  The frigid temperature inside the bus overcompensated for the humidity of the depot. Jayne chose a window seat towards the middle, took out a jacket and stowed her backpack in the overhead luggage compartment. Her ticket promised on-board entertainment and as the bus pulled out, a video started up on a television mounted above the driver’s seat. An American action movie with Thai subtitles. The soundtrack was indecipherable, though that didn’t stop the driver from turning up the volume. Jayne tuned out to the din—a skill she’d honed living in Bangkok—and turned her attention to the report into Maryanne Delbeck’s death.

  According to the Pattaya police, Maryanne’s body was found at the foot of the Bayview Hotel’s White Wing in the early hours of the morning of Monday 30 September 1996. She appeared to have fallen fourteen storeys from the rooftop terrace to the lawn of the hotel garden. The police were called by the hotel night guard who’d come across the body during a routine inspection. The guard had not seen the accident take place, nor heard anything other than what he thought was a peacock’s cry; the exotic birds wandered the gardens of a nearby resort. The report noted for the record that he was a former soldier with a spotless record. Death was confirmed by the police medical officer at the scene, the corpse identified by the hotel receptionist. Maryanne had been staying on the premises for three months. The deceased’s room was subsequently cordoned off. Police found nothing there other than personal effects.

  The Scientific Crime Detection Division found no evidence of foul play at the scene. There was a swimming pool on the rooftop terrace, but there was nothing to suggest Maryanne had been in or near the pool prior to her death.

  The safety barrier surrounding the rooftop area—a metrehigh wall of painted concrete and iron—was undamaged, and it was not possible to say whether she’d climbed, fallen or been pushed over it based on traces of paint on her feet and clothes.

  The rooftop bar was closed for service after ten o’clock at night, though the terrace remained accessible via the main elevator and a goods lift. Estimated time of death was around one in the morning. Police interviewed hotel staff, but no one noticed the lift ascending to the rooftop at that late hour. Nor did they see anything suspicious on the night.

  The autopsy report outlined multiple skull and spinal fractures and internal organ damage, and concluded ‘the deceased’s injuries are consistent with a fall from a height commensurate with the fourteen storey building at the base of which the body was found. Death was most likely instantaneous.’

  That thought gave Jayne some comfort as she skimmed through the photographs of Maryanne’s broken and bloodied body. She’d landed on her back. Her hands were raised at either side of her face, a sleeping child pose at odds with the pool of blood at the back of her head and the violent twist of her legs. She wore simple cotton pants and a T-shirt and her feet were bare.

  The daily newspapers in Thailand were filled with gruesome images like these, ostensibly to remind all good Buddhists of the impermanence of the flesh. However, it felt voyeuristic to Jayne. She put the photos back in their envelope and returned to the report.

  With the physical evidence inconclusive and in the absence of a note or confession, the finding of suicide appeared to have hinged on the testimony of Maryanne Delbeck’s colleagues at the New Life Children’s Centre where she’d worked as a volunteer. The centre was an orphanage for babies and children who’d been abandoned, relinquished, or admitted into care by families who couldn’t afford to keep them. Children eligible for inter-country adoption were housed in their own facility and foreign volunteers engaged to acclimatise them to being around Westerners before their adoptive families arrived to claim them. Maryanne had been assigned to two babies, the first adopted out two months before her death, the second due to be adopted out the week after.

  Maryanne’s colleagues said she’d seemed unwell in the weeks leading up to her death. Fellow volunteers said she’d complained of headaches and seemed tired all the time. One described her as ‘distracted’. Frank Harding, the centre’s resident foreign adviser, said Maryanne had become ‘increasingly tense and depressed’ during her five months in Thailand. He speculated ‘she was unable to cope with the level of human despair and degradation she witnessed day-to-day during her placement in Pattaya.’

  The crucial testimony came from Doctor Somsri Kaysorn, the specialist medical consultant to the centre.

  Unbeknownst to either her family or colleagues, Maryanne had regular appointments with Doctor Somsri at his private practice for more than two months prior to her death.

  Doctor Somsri had diagnosed clinical depression, prescribed antidepressants and conducted therapeutic counselling.

  The autopsy found no traces of drugs of any kind in Maryanne’s bloodstream. When asked about this, Doctor Somsri maintained that had she taken the prescribed medication, Maryanne’s suicidal impulses would have been kept in check.

  Jayne flicked back to the autopsy report and noted there was no trace of alcohol in Maryanne’s bloodstream either.

  Nothing. Not even paracetamol for the headaches.

  She looked up from her reading and gazed through the tinted window of the bus. There was little countryside between Bangkok and Pattaya, the urban sprawl of the city extended into the new estates and industrial zones all the way to the coast. The highway was thick with fast moving traffic. Ahead of the bus in the adjacent lane was a utility truck loaded with hessian sacks of rice that bulged over the sides of the tray like
a paunch overhanging a pair of tight jeans. A motorcyclist tailed the truck, helmet on his handlebars, baseball cap on his head. Other than the odd, amusing use of English—a condominium called ‘Happy World’, the ‘Nanny Pink’ fashion boutique, the ‘Life Style Shop’ selling pedestal toilets—there wasn’t much to look at.

  Not Thailand at its finest.

  The other finding of note in the police report was that only a few days before her death, Maryanne had emptied her Thai bank account, withdrawing the equivalent of around three thousand Australian dollars. Bank statements appended to the report showed a history of regular deposits into the account: small amounts in fortnightly payments suggesting a volunteer stipend; larger monthly instalments sent by international transfer, which increased over time and probably came from Jim Delbeck. There was no way of knowing what Maryanne had done with the money, though the chief investigating officer concluded her actions supported the suicide theory ‘as the deceased probably felt she had no further use for the funds’. It struck Jayne that if this were the case, Maryanne would have closed the account altogether. Or was she too suicidal to bother with such banal tasks?

  She made a note of the anomaly and swapped the police report for the envelope Jim Delbeck had given her. In stark contrast to the forensic images was a head-and-shoulders photo of Maryanne. She had the same guileless smile on her face as she did in The Bangkok Post, the air of a person without a care in the world. It was hard to reconcile this image with that of a young volunteer depressed to the point of being suicidal.

  Nor was there any sign of depression in Maryanne’s letters home to her family. In one of the earliest dated 10 June 1996, Maryanne described her work as ‘so satisfying’.

  I’m working one-on-one with a little girl called Sobha, though one of my tasks is to get her used to her new name, Sophie, she wrote. I’m preparing her for life with her adoptive parents, who are coming from the USA to collect her in about six weeks. She’s just under a year old and I’m teaching her how to say mummy, daddy, that sort of thing.

  Jayne checked the dates of Maryanne’s letters against the doctor’s report. Was it significant that her first visit to Doctor Somsri roughly coincided with the departure of Sobha/Sophie to live with her adoptive parents?

  Jayne leafed through the photocopied letters.

  Sophie’s new parents, Mike and Deborah, came for her today, Maryanne wrote to her mother on 19 July. They were so happy, it was fantastic! Of course, Sophie couldn’t really know what was going on, but I like to think I prepared her well. She didn’t cry when Deborah picked her up, but let herself be held and cuddled. It helped that Deborah was wearing a string of brightly coloured beads: Sophie loved them. She’s totally adorable and I’ll miss her. But she’s gone to a lovely family, and it feels great to have helped make that happen.

  While Maryanne undoubtedly kept things from her parents—just as Jayne sanitised her experiences in her own letters home—it didn’t make sense for her to put on a brave face in this instance. She seemed genuinely happy about the outcome for Sophie.

  Jayne read through the rest of the letters and conceded that Jim Delbeck had a point: Maryanne’s correspondence was uniformly upbeat. She came across as cheery, her confidence verging on conceit. There was nothing to suggest depression, let alone suicidal tendencies.

  Maryanne wrote once a fortnight for the first two months, tapering off to once every three or four weeks thereafter. The only negative inference Jayne could find was in a letter dated 5 August.

  I feel sorry for the ones who can’t be adopted out, Maryanne wrote. It’s quite common here for poor families to hand over their kids to be raised in an institution. But they’re not considered orphans so they can’t be put up for adoption. It seems so unfair. It’s not as if their families visit them regularly. Some never come back for them at all.

  Even in this case, Maryanne focused on the positives.

  They’re not all lost causes and we’ve had a few cases where successful counselling has resulted in a parent or parents putting their child up for adoption. The specialist adviser, Frank Harding, is really good. He’s American but he speaks Thai fluently and he’s been in Pattaya a long time. Because he knows both Thailand and the USA, he can be honest with the poorer mothers and families about where their child would be better off.

  That’s a matter of opinion, Jayne thought.

  I really like what I do now, but I’m thinking of asking Frank if I can work with the boarders, Maryanne concluded in a letter on 23 August. I’d like to try and help make a difference to these kids, and my teacher says it would be a great way to improve my Thai language skills.

  Hardly the words of someone unable to cope.

  The Australian Embassy’s investigator noted this apparent contradiction, though after re-interviewing Doctor Somsri and staff and volunteers at the New Life Children’s Centre, he stood by the Pattaya police report findings. His report included a photocopy of a prescription for antidepressants issued to Maryanne Delbeck six weeks before her death. There were also photocopies of pages from the doctor’s appointment diary showing the frequency of Maryanne’s visits. The consultant noted that depression was an insidious illness, the effects of which Maryanne could well have kept hidden from her loved ones, particularly given the distance between them.

  Jayne scanned back over the letters for any irregularities she might have missed. There were letters addressed to her mother and father, others to her mother alone, none addressed only to her father, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. Passing mention of the brother, Ian, but less concern for his wellbeing than for ‘Mitzu the Shiatsu’ to whom Maryanne sent love at the end of each letter. She wasn’t unique in preferring the company of a dog to a sibling.

  The letters were matter-of-fact rather than intimate.

  There were occasional references to friends in Pattaya but nothing specific and little about the place itself. In short, a G-rated account of her adventures in Thailand. Jayne wondered if there were an R-rated version somewhere. A journal perhaps. Maryanne struck her as the type to keep a diary, but there was no mention of one in any of the reports.

  Jayne understood Jim Delbeck’s frustration. The finding of suicide appeared to come down to the opinion of a doctor over a father.

  She stared again through the bus window. She doubted she’d learn anything new by interviewing the same people for a third time. If there were fresh light to be shed on the case, it would have to come from somewhere else. She went over the case again in her head, searching for gaps, until she remembered a throwaway line in one of Maryanne’s letters.

  My teacher says it would be a great way to improve my Thai language skills.

  Maryanne was studying Thai. There was no mention of anyone having interviewed her Thai teacher. It might not amount to much, but it was a start.

  The noise from the video cut out abruptly as the driver announced their arrival at the Pattaya Bus Station. Jayne fended off the taxi drivers and hotel touts and headed to North Pattaya Road to hail a songthaew, literally ‘two rows’. Pattaya’s chief form of public transport was a utility truck, its tray lined with parallel bench seats and sheltered by a canvas awning. Jayne checked the direction the driver was headed and climbed on board. There were six farang men and three Thai women in the vehicle, one bouncing a chubby infant on her lap. Jayne took a seat at the end of the bench on the right side where she had a view out the back.

  The songthaew headed west along a road lined with billboards plugging beer, shampoo, petrol, mobile phones and ‘Tiffany’s: The Original Transvestite Cabaret Show New Extravaganza’. Turning left at a roundabout with a dolphin fountain at its centre, they cruised south along

  the coast road, following the curve of Pattaya Bay. The songthaew pulled over to let off the Thai woman and her baby. Jayne got her first good look at the beach. She took in a grubby strip of sand dotted with coconut palms and large-leafed hu khang trees. Tourists lazed on wooden sun lounges beneath umbrellas that stretched as far
as she could see. Vendors trawled the sand with baskets of fruit on their heads, sarongs draped over their arms, and seafood grilling in metal bowls dangling from poles across their shoulders.

  A sinewy Thai woman massaged the back of a fleshy blonde in a leopard print bikini. Her companion was having her toenails painted. The whine of distant jet-skis could be heard above the idling songthaew engine. They took off again and Jayne turned her attention to the opposite side of the road, a stretch of open-fronted beer bars, guesthouses, hotels and go-go clubs with a 7-Eleven every fifty paces. The bars had names that ranged from corny—Happy Friend, Lovely Corner, We Are The World Beer Bar—to bawdy. Among the latter, Jayne liked Shaggers for its simplicity. Despite the mid-afternoon sun, the bars were more crowded than the beach, and Jayne noted with a wry smile that where Thai women were concerned, the beach was for covering up, the bars for bikinis.

  The trip continued through Central Pattaya past more beer bars, a dive centre, a couple of shopping plazas. Two more farang men descended at Soi Pattayaland 2, aka ‘Boyz Town’, the town’s busiest gay zone, before the songthaew turned left into South Pattaya Road and headed away from the beach. Jayne lost her bearings for a few minutes as they zigzagged up the cliff, but caught sight of the Bayview Hotel and pressed the button on the roof to bring the songthaew to a stop.

  A young Thai woman in high-cut denim shorts, pink singlet and diamante-studded sunglasses watched Jayne get out. In one of those moments when Jayne wished she couldn’t speak the language, the woman turned to her friend and in a voice loud enough to be heard over the engine asked, ‘What do you think a fat farang like her is looking for in Pattaya?’

  6

  Jayne could see why Maryanne chose the Bayview Hotel. It was a cliff-top sanctuary dividing the sleaze of Pattaya in the north from Jomtien in the south, a quieter stretch billed as ‘family oriented’ with a gay beach at one end and a large Russian presence at the other.