Catching the Sun

by Tony Parsons

  As the girls embraced, Rory looked at me and raised his eyebrows, as if confirming that we did the right thing by letting them sort it out between themselves. I began to breathe again.

  ‘England is still there,’ Tess said, rocking Keeva in her arms, wiping her eyes with her fingers. ‘And when we go back to visit, Amber will still be your friend. But we are building a life here. Isn’t that right?’

  Tess looked at me. Outside I could hear all the noises of the night, the diesel engine of a distant longtail, the insect drone of the bikes, and the wind in the casuarina trees, making them sound as if they were breathing. I realized that Tess was waiting for a reply.

  ‘That’s right,’ I said.

  The fortune teller was wrong. The darkness wasn’t an inch away.

  But it was coming.

  7

  When the wind was strong enough to move the tops of the trees, the red satellite dish on the roof of the home of Mr and Mrs Botan flapped like a broken door. Tess and I stood at the window of our bedroom, watching it through the insect net over the glass.

  ‘They’re old,’ Tess said. ‘Can’t you fix it for them?’

  The red dish swung back and forth.

  ‘You know I can,’ I said, thinking of the tools I had seen at the back of the shed. There wasn’t much, but then I would not need very much.

  ‘It’s not just dangerous for them,’ Tess said. ‘It’s dangerous for us, too. It’s dangerous for the kids.’

  The shed was still full of bottled water. I could not imagine that we would get through it in a lifetime. But at the back, on a paint-splattered little workbench, I found what I was looking for. A drill. A ratchet. Some silicon sealant. A few odd plugs. The drill was dusted with rust but when I plugged it in and turned it on it worked. Tess watched me from the door of the shed. Keeva and Rory came and stood either side of her. They were both holding a book called the Oxford Junior Atlas.

  ‘No ladder,’ I said.

  ‘I’ve seen a step ladder round the side of their place,’ Tess said. ‘Is that tall enough?’

  ‘That’ll do,’ I said.

  From the top of the ladder I could see water damage in the bracket that held the arm of the dish. But the real problem was that whoever put the thing up in the first place had over-tightened the wall mount so that there was no give when the high winds came. Mr and Mrs Botan had joined Tess and the kids at the foot of the ladder. I looked down at the little crowd.

  ‘What cowboy put this up?’ I said, and Tess was the only one who smiled.

  Even with my broken old tools it was a simple job. I removed the whole thing, then drilled four new holes for the wall mount, secured the bracket and fitted the arm that held the red satellite dish. I called down and told them to try their television. They all piled inside, my family and the Botans, but only the grown-ups came out. I could imagine my TV-starved children channel-surfing, the Oxford Junior Atlas forgotten on their laps. Tess gave me the thumbs up.

  ‘Looking good,’ she said.

  Mr and Mrs Botan were talking quietly to each other when I came down the ladder and I guessed that they were wondering if they should try to pay me. The old man looked at me and I looked at him and he did not attempt to give me money. I was happy about that.

  ‘You know many things,’ he said.

  ‘I wasn’t always a driver,’ I said.

  Despite the red satellite dish that now stood straight and tall on their roof, the Botans’ place felt like a classic Thai home to me, because every part of it felt like it was bathed in a light of soft honey-tinted brown.

  Buddha images stared from alcoves and the top of black lacquer cabinets. There was a photo of the King on the wall. Six chairs stood in perfect alignment around a long, wooden dining table, as if waiting to have their photograph taken. Everything immaculate, exquisite and very clean.

  Although it had exactly the same layout as our place, it felt like another way of living. It had none of the jumble and mess that you get with children growing up in your midst, the endless books, the forgotten items of clothing and the discarded toys – not that we had brought many of those. Snacks were important to Rory and Keeva. The last snack. The next snack. The snack that they wanted and the snack that they were allowed. There was no evidence that any kind of snacking ever took place in the Botans’ house.

  But Mr and Mrs Botan were parents too.

  Next to what looked like a small altar – more Buddhas, a few lit candles, and a solitary teacup – there was a silver-framed photograph of a large, prosperous-looking man in glasses standing next to his seated, tiny, very pretty wife with a solemn-looking little boy standing to attention between them.

  ‘Our son,’ Mr Botan said, the pride obvious. ‘A lawyer in Bangkok.’

  ‘What a lovely family,’ Tess said. ‘And do they visit you often?’

  Mr Botan frowned with thought, and sort of slowly rolled his head, as though it was very hard to give a definitive answer. I could hear Keeva and Rory in the other room, laughing together as they changed channels.

  ‘Not so often,’ said Mrs Botan, bringing a tray of tea.

  We all looked at the silver-framed photograph and, placed that close to the altar, I thought that the family in the picture looked as though they were being worshipped too.

  We went back home after our tea but an hour later the Botans knocked on our door with two plastic bags, one for Keeva and one for Rory, both stuffed full of a jumble of banana leaves, candles and flowers ready to assemble. The Botans told us that tonight was the festival of Loy Krathong and although I had no idea what that might be, I saw that this was how they were thanking me.

  When night fell and November’s moon rose full and white, the children carried their hand-made baskets to the beach and walked with the Botans down to the water’s edge. The baskets were lotus-shaped and decorated with banana leaves, flowers, coins and unlit birthday cake candles.

  All along the bow-shaped beach of Hat Nai Yang, people were carrying baskets down to the sea where the candles were lit by parents before the baskets were gently set adrift. We arrived not long after sunset, but already there was fire on the water as a hundred pinpoints of flame floated out to sea, flickering in the moon-washed night.

  Our first Loy Krathong. At the time I did not understand the importance of the festival to the Thai people. I had seen ready-made baskets being sold by the side of the road without understanding their significance. Without the Botans as our neighbours, we would have missed it completely.

  Rory and Keeva were excited and happy about the whole concept. Putting down their Oxford Junior Atlas, spending all afternoon making baskets and then staying out late to send them out to sea – what was not to like?

  Now, as we watched them prepare to push their baskets across the glassy black surface of the Andaman, the sea as unmoving as a skating rink, the Botans attempted to explain the significance of the night to us all.

  ‘Loy means float,’ said Mr Botan. ‘Krathong means …’ He reached for the words. ‘Leaf cup?’ he said, looking at his wife.

  Mrs Botan said, ‘To honour the spirit of the water for providing life to the land.’ She thought about it. ‘To beg forgiveness for the sins of the humans who spoil the land.’

  ‘Cool,’ said Keeva.

  Mr Botan took out a cigarette and hungrily eyed the unlit roll-up.

  ‘For a better day,’ he said simply, and as I watched the tiny lights shimmer in the darkness, I decided that is how I would define Loy Krathong to myself, and how I would understand it. A small prayer for a better day. But it was really much later before I really understood how important the ceremony was to Thai people. On that very first Loy Krathong all I saw was the beauty and magic of a night that seemed to be swarming with fireflies.

  Mrs Botan shot her husband a look and the old fisherman slipped the cigarette into his pocket, deciding not to risk it. Keeva gave her basket a hefty shove and it spun away. Rory held his basket like a precious chalice, reluctant to release it. He tu
rned his face imploringly to Mrs Botan, and the flames flickered on the pink and blue candles that he had pushed into the soft surface of the banana tree basket.

  ‘Can I just keep it?’ he said. ‘Maybe I should do that.’

  She laughed and shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘You have to let it go.’

  Together they bent down and slipped the basket into the water with a soft splash. We watched their baskets disappear into the night, until the pinpricks of flame were lost among all the others.

  The longtail boats bobbed in the darkness and we felt the soft white sands of Hat Nai Yang under our bare feet. I tried to work out where the sea ended and the sky began. Voices murmured all along Hat Nai Yang but I had never been in a place more still than that beach on Loy Krathong.

  Tess took my hand and squeezed it and as I saw her smile on the beach with her face lit by nothing but November’s full moon, I knew that she saw it too. It was beautiful.

  Suddenly the peace was shattered.

  Voices were being raised. Fingers were pointed. There was an excited babble of Thai and I realized that there was a boat out on the sea. Not a longtail, with a diesel engine that split the night. But a wooden boat that slipped across the water with almost no sound and revealed itself as just the faintest silhouette – a blur of black against more black. Then, as your eyes focused on all that darkness, you could see why the boat was out there. Whoever was on it was scooping up the Loy Krathong baskets as if they were some exotic form of fish.

  A cry of anguish came from further down Hat Nai Yang. The voices of men and women who were suddenly angry. A child began to cry and protest in Thai and I saw a basket with its tiny prick of flame lifted from the water and stashed inside the boat.

  Out in the shadows a small body slipped over the side of the boat and into the sea. A small armada of Loy Krathong baskets were ushered to the side of the boat. Hands lifted them from the water and the birthday cake candles went out. There was no attempt to disguise the thieving now.

  People were so angry that I expected someone to wade into the water and go after the thieves in a longtail. But nobody moved from the shore.

  ‘Why would someone do something like that?’ Tess said. ‘Steal a child’s basket?’

  ‘They steal,’ said Mr Botan. ‘They steal and sell to tourists on the beaches of the south. The tourists who can’t make their own Loy Krathong.’

  ‘Good business,’ said Mrs Botan, as if it was a racket that was worth getting into.

  Then I heard his laughter, out on the water, seeming to enjoy the angry cries of the people on the beach of Nai Yang. I heard his laughter and I saw his small hard body as he pulled himself back into the boat. And as the boat turned away, the moon caught the strange flash of light in his hair and it shone like gold.

  My daughter looked up at me.

  ‘Chatree,’ she said, breathless with excitement.

  My son did not take his eyes from the sea.

  ‘That bad boy,’ he said. ‘He’s so bad. He’ll get punished for being so bad.’

  ‘Maybe he’s not really bad,’ Tess said. ‘Maybe he’s just trying to feed his family.’

  ‘They get it in the end,’ said Rory.

  8

  I rode under the barrier and past the security guard and as I looked up at Farren’s balcony I saw the grey uniform and sunglasses of a member of the Royal Thai Police.

  I touched my brakes and sat on the Royal Enfield, the engine still running, staring up at him, and under the crash helmet my face was damp with bike sweat and dread. I glanced back at the security guard in his little hut as if his face might tell me what was happening, but he had gone. I wondered if something had happened to Farren, if there was an innocent explanation to have cops crawling all over his home.

  The cop was up there staring at the infinity pool, his thumbs cocked inside his belt, and he seemed to be trying to work out how the trick was done, how this sheet of still water just seemed to stretch out into space and stop there. Then there was another cop, and then one more, all of them looking at the infinity pool and laughing. I swore under my breath, the sickness rising in my throat. I swallowed hard, forcing it back down, torn between running away and going up to the house. Neither of them felt like a good thing. Then I heard another bike.

  The rider pulled up beside me and pulled off his helmet, and his face was pale and dark at the same time. The Russian from the night of Muay Thai. He looked briefly at the cops on the balcony and then jammed his helmet back on and rode off, swerving around the security barrier without waiting for the guard to lift it. I watched him go, and the petrol stink of the Royal Enfield mixed with the fear in my gut, making my head feel light and giddy.

  ‘Tom!’

  Jesse was jogging up the dirt-track road that led to the marina. He got on to the back of the bike.

  ‘Just go,’ he said, indicating the way he had come, and I rode back down the unmade road to the Wild Palm office, sitting among the trees like an air-raid shelter in a rainforest. Inside there was none of the usual babble of cajoling, pleading and promises. The Wild Palm staff talked in lowered voices. The phones were silent.

  ‘We’ve got to get out of here,’ Jesse said, and I watched him tearing things from his desk and throwing them into a rucksack. They seemed like important things. A passport. Keys. Phone. Thai baht and English pounds. ‘We can take the bike to the end of the road and get out by the marina,’ he said, hefting the rucksack on his back.

  ‘But we’re not doing anything wrong, are we?’ I said, and he looked at me as if I knew it wasn’t true.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said.

  I took out my phone as we made for the door, the need to speak to Tess suddenly overwhelming. CALLING HOME, it said on the screen as the police came through the door, and I heard her say my name, once, and then again, with a question mark this time, before the connection was broken.

  Without needing to raise their voices, the police were lining up the Wild Palm staff against one of the walls. Nobody was being touched, apart from Jesse. One of the cops was gently lifting his elbow, and at first I thought he was fascinated by the unearthly pallor of my friend’s skin.

  But what he was looking at were the three watches Jesse had on his arm, each of them set to a different time zone.

  The cops all had a good laugh at that.

  Through the barred windows of a police van I saw the name of Phuket Provincial Jail written in Thai script. They had not bothered to spell out the name in English, and looking at the mysterious letters I never felt more like a great big bungling farang. The sinking feeling came to rest in the pit of my stomach.

  I was with Wild Palm staff I did not know. We sat opposite each other in the back of a small van with a teenage cop, so young that there was a smattering of acne on his smooth cheeks. None of us talking, all of us in handcuffs, all of us very scared. An Aussie guy. A couple of North Americans. A blonde Kiwi girl, quietly crying to herself.

  The van passed through a set of gates, and then another and into a central courtyard. In the front pocket of my jeans, pressed hard against my thigh, I could feel my phone vibrate for a long time and then fall still. I could not reach it, and that made me feel a kind of shameful relief. Because I knew it was Tess calling me back, and I knew that I did not have the words to explain any of this. Tears stung my eyes and I blinked them away. The van came to a halt and they got us out.

  There was a queue of women prisoners in the courtyard. All of them locals. Brown uniforms, barefoot, surprisingly cheerful. One of them smiled and laughed and gave me one of those looks that you saw in the bars. A professional look, full of longing and invitation, so well executed that the only way to tell it from the real thing was that you knew it could be switched off or directed elsewhere in a fraction of a moment. Some of them had their ankles shackled. Some of them were not women at all but men banged up between sex-change operations.

  ‘Kathoeys,’ said the Aussie. ‘The second kind of woman.’ Then he cursed when we saw tha
t some of them were coughing. ‘Jesus Christ,’ said the Aussie. ‘Tuberculosis! They’re checking them for TB! There’s TB in this fucking place!’

  I swallowed hard and tried to control my breathing. Breathe in slowly through the nose, let the lungs fill, then exhale slowly through the mouth. Again and again and again. Trying to find control in a world where I had no control.

  We were formed into rough rows. There was Farren, his face set into hard lines. Pirin, looking defiant, by his side. Jesse, his face whiter than ever, visibly struggling in the heat. The sun was hot now, and it blinded me after the darkness of the van. Voices called out to us in English. Farang prisoners, gesturing us to come closer, desperate to convince us of their innocence.

  But the cops murmured to us in Thai and we were ushered inside the main building, like a tour group in handcuffs, our eyes adjusting to the light, my skin feeling burned after just a few minutes in the courtyard.

  Then Farren stepped out of line.

  ‘There’s been a mistake,’ he said, smiling coldly at one of the young policemen, and I thought it might have been the one with bad skin in our van, although a lot of them looked alike to me, very young, dangerously young; you had to be careful around cops that young. The cop looked at Farren without expression and held up his hand – Halt, his hand seemed to say. But his hand said far more than that, because the open palm struck Farren hard on the socket of his left eye, and I watched him reel back, his hand on his face, the shock and the pain of the blow robbing him of breath.

  He got back into line.

  Because there had been no mistake.

  We were kept in a giant cell where most of the prisoners wore nothing but shorts and a bandana around their mouths, like the villains in an old western. It was crowded with bodies, a great mass of stinking frightened flesh, and there were other foreign faces in here, it was not just the people from Wild Palm. The foreigners all had the same look, as if they had woken up and found that the nightmare they were having was real.