The Backpacker

by John Harris

  Two other people who had been waiting on the beach, and who I had assumed were nothing to do with the rendezvous, waded alongside and jumped into the boat, followed by Dave. I stood knee-deep in water and held on to the prow, debating whether or not to get in.

  ‘John, get in, man,’ Dave said excitedly, and held out a hand. ‘C’mon!’

  There didn’t seem any point staying so I dived in head-first, pulled over by the others. It seemed a bit unlikely that any other boat would arrive at exactly two o’clock in the morning so, even though the three Thais in the boat made no mention of Rick, I thought I’d better shut up and get in. The driver fired up the engine, turned us around and sped out to sea.

  ‘John,’ Dave whispered as Hat Rin faded away behind us, ‘I take it neither one of these guys is your friend.’

  ‘No,’ I replied very quietly, and glanced at the other people in the boat, ‘not unless he’s disguised himself.’

  ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’

  ‘Dangerous, right?’

  He didn’t answer and sat back on the gunwale, running his hand over the side. After a few minutes Dave looked up. ‘Amazing. John, take a look at the wake, astern.’

  The narrow prow cut through the water, disturbing the phosphorescence and producing a luminous green line that ran out at an angle either side of the boat. I stood precariously, one hand on Dave’s head to steady myself, and checked both sides. It was amazing; the boat producing a green arrow in the water, from its point at the prow, widening until it finally dispersed just behind us. ‘Amazing,’ I confirmed, still standing.

  ‘You should see it from the conning-tower of a 20,000 tonne Destroyer. Awesome!’

  The skipper manoeuvred the boat slightly to the left and I sat down abruptly. He probably thought I was unsteady but he was mistaken. I had just realised where we were heading. ‘Dave,’ I hissed, ‘we’re going back to that fucking beach!’

  His head pulled back from looking over the side and his mouth dropped open, as the sounds and sights on the beach appeared around the dark rocks like a scene from another world. ‘No shit!’

  I was about to dive over the side when I noticed that what we were witnessing was a party. Figures danced around beneath the painted palm trees like cannibals around a fire, the only difference being that the light from that fire wasn’t red but blue. It was coming from one of those ultra-violet lamps that make everything glow radioactive. The paintings on the trees were now luminous colours of green and pink.

  ‘It’s a party! Foreigners! Ha!’ I said much too loudly. I almost said, Thank God, we’re saved!’

  Dave beamed as he looked ahead at the beach. ‘Fuckin’ God almighty, Sir William!’

  Picking up speed, the driver aimed us directly at the middle of the beach and cut the engine. We braced and the boat ploughed smoothly into the soft sand, rising as it went in. Dave was over the side before we’d even stopped swaying, swinging his arms to the beat that was blasting out from somewhere in the trees, while I stepped gingerly out of the boat and surveyed the scene.

  The beach looked so different from when we’d been there earlier in the day. Obviously it wasn’t sunny, but even though it was night, and you’d expect the place to be more forbidding, it wasn’t. The combination of music, people and the cold light that glowed gently pale blue gave it a surreal, almost fairy-tale feel, a bit like a pantomime. No light penetrated past the first row of painted palm trunks into the black jungle behind.

  The light also affected the water, and the phosphorescence in the shallows glowed so that the first five metres of sea looked like a luminous green carpet in which I’d been cut off at the ankles. Lifting a foot to make sure that there was more than just a stump on the end of my leg, I walked up onto the beach.

  ‘’Llo.’ A Thai girl wearing hotpants came jerking down the beach towards me and held my hand. She swished her long black hair and led me to one end of the beach away from the dancing, where a group of people were sitting beneath the trees. ‘You li’ dri’ wa’er or co’nu’?’

  Shit, I thought, I’m gonna be raped by a load of Thai girls. Fantastic! ‘C-coconut please.’

  It wasn’t a prerequisite to an orgy, not yet anyway, and it seemed I was being taken across to meet the group and their leader. Lying on the sand beneath three Thai girls was a man wearing a full tie-dye suit. His baggy trousers would have looked too big on a clown, and he had a matching top that looked like it had been made out of the sail of a yacht. One of the girls had her lips clamped over his face like a plunger while the other two, either side of him, giggled in anticipation, stroking his hair and stomach.

  Feeling like a spare part, I coughed loudly.

  The man pushed the kisser away from him. She tried to move back in but he held her forehead with the flat of his hand and looked up at me, lipstick smeared all around his mouth, making him look even more like a clown. ‘You took your fooking time!’

  SEVEN

  Rick tried to stand but the girl he had been kissing clung onto his arm, forcing him to twist his way free. ‘Gerroff.’ Adjusting the baggy top, still on his knees, they kissed quickly. ‘I told you, Ta,’ he said as though lecturing a child, ‘don’t be so possessive, you know I don’t like that,’ and shuffled around to the other two girls and kissed their upturned faces. ‘Later my dears,’ he said, and stood up, brushing the sand out of his clothes before looking at me again. ‘Where the fook have you been?’

  We shook hands. ‘Well it’s great to see you too,’ I said grinning. ‘You don’t look like you’ve had too bad a time.’ I glanced down at the girls who were adjusting their skirts. ‘It’s like a harem. And you look like Coco the Clown in that gear.’

  He held his imaginary lapels and pushed his nose up. ‘No self-respecting member of the peerage would be seen wearing anything else.’

  ‘I thought you’d been knighted?’

  ‘Same thing.’

  ‘You’re not going to ask me to bow are you?’ I said. ‘Cause if you are you can fuck right off.’

  ‘Oi, you’re a Lord, now, John, so mind your fooking language.’

  ‘I’m not a–’

  ‘Shh, not so loud.’ He looked back over his shoulder. The three girls on the sand were sipping from fresh coconuts, and one of them, I noticed, was wearing the silver shark’s tooth necklace that I’d seen Rick wearing in India. ‘Go down the beach a bit further, John, and I’ll explain it all to you.’ He glanced around. ‘Back in a minute, girls.’

  As we stepped to one side I said, ‘That’s your necklace isn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah, it means she’s the one I’m with at the moment. So no touching! Anyway,’ he turned to face me and we moved a step further away from the girls, ‘your name’s Lord John and I’m Sir William, so don’t call me Rick. Least not around here.’ He leaned against a tree, lighting a cigarette, and started to laugh.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ I said, taking one of his cigarettes.

  ‘Your face!’

  ‘I’m the one who should be laughing: a man wearing pyjamas on a beach!’

  He stared down at his billowing clothes. ‘All my other clothes are full of holes.’ Lighting both our cigarettes, he flicked the match into the bushes. ‘It’s not just your face though. While I’ve been sitting on this beach with so many pretty girls, I thought about you sweating it out in India. All that shit and stink. It’s a funny thought.’

  ‘Hilarious.’

  Once he’d stopped giggling at his own joke he continued. ‘How’d you get on in India anyway?’

  I shrugged and leaned on the tree. ‘Not bad. Got pissed off with it in the end, though. All the messing about with trains and that kind of stuff gets on your nerves after a while.’

  ‘Well, I told you to come with me but you wouldn’t listen. If you had, you could have been in the same position.’ He glanced around the tree. ‘See that girl, the one wearing my necklace? Thai royalty.’

  I burst out laughing. ‘Her? Oh come off it, what d’you take me f
or?’

  ‘I’m telling you, her father is one of the richest men in Thailand. Don’t believe me, ask her.’ He started singing: ‘Happy days are here again, da da da daa daa.’

  ‘She’s a prostitute, Rick.’

  ‘Do you mind? You’re talking about the woman I love. Da da da daa daa.’

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I took a step sideways to get another look at the girl sitting under the trees, just to be sure that we were both referring to the same person. Suddenly I found myself sizing her up, trying to judge if she was blue blood material or not. ‘Rick, if she’s royalty then I’m a Lord,’ I said, immediately wishing I hadn’t fallen into the trap.

  ‘Good, I’m glad you accept your new title.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. Tell me, no disrespect, but if she’s the daughter of one of the richest men in Thailand, what’s she doing here with you, one of the poorest?’

  He held the cigarette daintily between his fingers as though in a holder. ‘Because, dear boy, I’m one of the richest men in England.’

  ‘Eh? You’ve lost me there.’

  ‘Heard of a guy called Jim Thompson?’

  I thought for a moment, quickly going over Hollywood stars and famous people. The music on the beach changed from its mechanical beat into a whirring trance that sounded like a thousand police sirens going off at the same time, and I momentarily lost track of what I had been thinking about.

  ‘John?’ he prompted.

  ‘Um, no,’ I said, snapping out of the rhythm, ‘never heard of him.’

  ‘Well Jim Thompson was an American bloke, a millionaire businessman who made his money in Thai silk and shit. Dead now, that was back in the fifties or something. Anyway, it just so happens that I look exactly like him. Everyone says so.’

  Eyeing Rick’s dress and long, now blond (from the sun) hair, I shook my head doubtfully. ‘How the fuck would anyone remember what some fat fifties businessman looked like?’

  ‘Because he’s famous. They’ve still got his house in Bangkok, preserved like a museum. Tourists walk around taking photos, they sell souvenirs and shit with his picture on. That’s where I met Ta.’ He puffed the cigarette haughtily. ‘Ta very much.’

  The penny dropped; slowly but surely it all began to fall into place. ‘I get it.’ I used my cigarette as a pointer. ‘She saw you in...’

  ‘In the museum, yeah, and said, "You look like Jim Thompson".’

  ‘To which you said?’

  ‘Yes, that’s because I’m his son!’

  ‘Fuck me, you didn’t?’ I doubled over, half laughing and half in shock. ‘She thinks you’re this millionaire’s son then?’

  He nodded and puffed elegantly on the cigarette again.

  We both laughed and I had to steady myself against the tree. ‘I’ve got to hand it to you, Rick, you certainly know how to get yourself into hot water.’

  He was unfazed. ‘If all goes well, I’ll be taking life very easy in future.’ He stubbed his cigarette out on the tree. ‘You too if you want to stay. She’s got mates down here; those other two girls are her friends from Samui. We’re all living in a house up on the hill. I’ve got no bills to pay, no food to buy, they cook, buy me weed, the works.’

  ‘I can’t believe it!’ I thought about the last few days and drew in the last of the cigarette. ‘How did you know I was here?’ I said, looking for a place to deposit the butt. Throwing it on the sand seemed like the wrong thing to do so I held on to it.

  ‘Tom–’ Rick kept silent as a coconut was brought across for each of us by one of the girls, and he kissed her cheek. ‘Thank you, Toom. Where’s Tommy tonight?’

  The girl curtsied, said, ‘He go Bangko’, and ran back with her arms in the air, waving to the sound of the beat.

  ‘Toom?’ I asked, scarcely believing what I’d just seen.

  ‘Hmm,’ he said, sucking on the straw. ‘Toomy, Tommy’s sister. Tommy’s the guy you met at the Back Yard Pub.’

  ‘He told me he didn’t know you.’

  ‘He doesn’t know anyone called Rick. When he told me that someone was asking for a man called Rick I knew it must be you.’ He paused. ‘Fuck, John, where have you been? Every day I’ve been down to your hut, you’re never in.’

  I shrugged. ‘With Dave mostly. Swimming... ’ Suddenly I remembered the finger. ‘Oh shit, Rick, you’ll never believe... ’

  Toomy came running back across and grabbed Rick’s arm. ‘We go now, no more talk. Take drug then dance, ’K?’

  Rick turned back to me as he was led away. ‘Tell me later, John,’ he shouted, ‘now it’s party time. Come with me, you’re gonna love this.’

  EIGHT

  I was led behind the speakers, behind the first row of tree trunks, to where a ragged-looking Thai girl sat on the exact same flat stone where we’d seen the severed finger. Her body obscured most of the stone’s surface but it looked like it had been washed down: streaks of dried sand clung to the side of the rock in little dried up rivulets, some of them a washed-out red colour. Around the base the sand was cratered where the water had dripped off the sides.

  The girl sitting on the flat surface had a tiny bottle in one hand and a pipette in the other. One by one the revellers shuffled up in line, went down on one knee and had a single teardrop of clear, glistening liquid dropped into their open eye. It was like being at the altar and accepting the body and blood of Christ.

  Rick blinked hard and stood up, letting another believer take his place.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked nervously as he came back down the line.

  ‘It ain’t eye-drops,’ he said, his eye still twitching. ‘Acid. LSD.’

  ‘She’s not an optician then?’

  ‘You’ll definitely see more clearly. Have some.’ I winced at the idea of having something dropped into my eye, and Rick said, ‘You don’t need to put in your eye, mouth’s OK, just takes longer to work. It’s brilliant.’

  I queued up behind the others, presented my upturned face and received the droplet, before turning and going back towards the beach.

  Dave was at the back of the queue hopping from foot to foot. ‘John, what’s going on? Whoo-ee! Way to go, Johnny-boy. Acid, neat, that’s cool, whoop!’

  ‘Don’t put it in your eye,’ I whispered as I went past, still grimacing from the taste.

  When Dave got to the front he was bobbing so much that the girl had to put her hand on his head to keep him still. The first drop ran down his chin, which he licked off, before a second one hit the target. He licked his lips with a smack, came running back and leapt on top of me.

  ‘Dave,’ I said, ‘calm down.’

  ‘JohnnyJohnnyJohnny!’ He ran back out through the trees, vaulted someone who was petting a dog, and went mad on the sandy dance floor.

  Rick put his arm around my shoulder, his left eye still twitching and blinking. ‘D’you know him?’

  ‘Yeah, met him in Bangkok when I first arrived. He’s a nice guy.’

  ‘Listen, John,’ the coconut girl was still trying to drag him away, ‘if we don’t talk tonight I’ll see you tomorrow and we’ll have a chat about everything. Meantime, let’s boogie!’

  ‘Rick, what about– ’ Remembering that he wasn’t supposed to be ‘Rick’, I shut up. It didn’t matter anyway; he was gone, swallowed up by the crowd and the music. A trance-like state seemed to be coming over most of the people, and one by one they began writhing to the beat.

  At first I just wandered around the beach, walking and gently skipping to the music at the same time, not really intending to dance, the movement in my feet just seemed to come naturally the more I walked. At first a normal step became pronounced, so that when a foot was lifted into the air it took longer than normal to touch the ground again, a bit like when soldiers march in a funeral procession: up, along, down. Like a soldier I marched around, checking out the painted trees, skirting the crowd.

  On one of the trees someone had painted a compass in luminous pink. A four-pointed pink star, and at each point o
f the compass, instead of the usual N, E, S and W, were the words Sex, Drugs, Rock, Roll. And in place of the usual needle was a hand with a pointing finger.

  The paint was still wet, and beneath the tree was a can of spray paint so I drew another, this time with the usual north, east, south and west points, but with a penis as a needle. I put the can down and stepped back to observe my handiwork. I couldn’t remember who had told me about a compass.

  Something moved at my feet, making me jump back with fright. Something bright and hairy, something that didn’t make any sense.

  A dog was pissing against the tree; a dog that had been painted in luminous paint. It sniffed my leg, as though wondering if it had made the correct choice, and trotted off, its pink and green banded tail waving in the air as it went like a poisonous snake.

  Fuck, my head felt funny, like it was imploding. Not a headache, just slight pressure; soft hands pushing it from both sides. I put my hands to my temples and closed my eyes in an attempt to clear the confusion, but when I opened them the trees in front of me were swaying in the wind. Close them again. Open again: the trees stopped moving. Close, open: moving again!

  My legs, still dancing and making my body bob, were something I’d forgotten about, like they belonged to someone else. I did another circuit of the crowd and walked down to the water’s edge, thinking it would be nice to look at the rocks at one end of the beach. A pair of soft hands went up to relieve the pressure on my temples. I started and spun around.

  ‘You wan’ ma’ lo’ to me?’

  Without answering the beautiful girl, I turned away to look at the rocks, swallowing hard to rid my throat of the dry coconut-flavoured mucus that had formed. Now the rocks were moving! Not swaying, but gently heaving, like waves lapping the shore. The water was still dead calm when I looked down and blinked hard, but the landscape was moving. First the rocks and then the sand beneath the rocks. The trees around the beach were rigid poles with Rasta haircuts, and the people beneath them were little wind-up toys, but the rocks were soft and flowing, as thick as an oil slick.