Journey to the Sea

by Gil McNeil

  She stayed in Bangkok for a year, a year of pain and loneliness, which she tried to disguise for the children’s sake. Her weepy moments, alone in the apartment overlooking the Chao Phraya river, were never witnessed by the children, although the boy sensed the depths of her distress, she felt, and put his arm about her at odd moments and hugged her to him. ‘You have me,’ he whispered. ‘You’re not alone. Remember that.’

  A year after it happened she was invited by friends for a long weekend in their house on Samui, an island in the southern provinces. These friends, Americans who worked for one of the banks, were childless and her children, sensing a weekend without teenage company on Samui, opted to stay with friends in Bangkok.

  The American couple lived on the west coast of the island, near a small village called Baan Thaling Ngam. They had spent a great deal on the house, which perched on the top of a hillside and was surrounded by palm trees. It had been built in the Thai style, but to the specifications of a Bangkok architect. The top storey had a large living room with a balcony overlooking an emerald-green sea; down below there were several bedrooms, with polished hardwood floors and windows with shutters against the heat. When the doors of the living room were opened, a warm breeze entered the house and kept it cool. This breeze carried the scent of the frangipani trees that had been planted in front of the house, a scent that made her think of expensive unguents and soaps.

  ‘It’s lovely here,’ she said. ‘So peaceful.’

  ‘Yes,’ they said. ‘We’re going to miss this place. We’ve put so much into it.’

  ‘Miss it?’

  ‘Paul’s going back to New York. We’ve decided to sell.’

  She said nothing, but that night, on the verandah, when they watched the sun burn down over the mainland, she decided that she would buy this house and live there. She would come down with the children during their school holidays and stay in the apartment in Bangkok during term.

  ‘I’ll buy this house from you,’ she said suddenly.

  And they had laughed. ‘We hoped that you’d say that. We wanted somebody we knew to look after this place and its spirit house. Thank you.’

  Many Thai houses had a small wooden spirit house in the garden: a tiny building on a pole, resembling a bird-house, but decorated with ribbons and flowers and with offerings for the spirits. A well-kept spirit house would have happy spirits, who would be willing to stay. One that did not have regular offerings of fruit would be deserted by the spirits, spurned.

  She returned to Bangkok with pictures of the house to show to the children. They approved of the idea. The boy, in particular, liked the sea. They had taken him on a number of occasions to Hua Hin and Phuket, and it had been difficult to get him out of the water.

  ‘Aquatic,’ said her husband. ‘Look at him. He’s like some beautiful sea creature. An otter maybe.’

  II

  She was proved right about the children. They took to the house immediately and while they were on the island they largely forgot about their Bangkok friends. The boy took to fishing, and he struck up a friendship with a young man from a fishing community on one of the tiny islands off the shore of Samui. They could see this island from the house: it was a tiny lump of rock that rose sheer out of the sea and was topped by dense green jungle vegetation. At the base of this rock, the fishermen had built a few houses on stilts: houses made of palm straw and thick bamboo poles. On the edge of the cliff they had tied fishing poles with lines dangling down into the water, to catch lobsters and crabs, which they would take into the fish market on the large island. The boy sometimes went out with the young man, who was about his age, and fished from the side of the young man’s father’s longtail boat. She watched them set off from the beach, her son almost as browned by the sun as the other boy, and she thought of how her husband would have liked this. He found it more difficult to get over his natural reserve, and he spoke hesitantly to the locals. ‘I feel so out of place with these people,’ he said ‘So . . . so large. It’s as if I just don’t get it.’ She knew, though, that her son got it, whatever it was.

  There were other foreigners in the area, and there was some social life amongst them. She got to know a couple, German artists, who had a villa further along the coast, and who entertained on a large scale. They held several parties each New Year, and it was at one of these that she met one of their friends, another Australian. He had been working in Bangkok and was between jobs. He was renting a house on Koh Samui for a couple of months before returning to Australia. She spoke to him for several hours at the party and invited him to the house the next day. He came, and met the children. She saw her son look at him, with attention, and then look away again.

  This new friend returned her invitation.

  ‘My house is not nearly as nice as this,’ he said. ‘But there’s a pool, if the children want to come.’

  The boy did not want to go. ‘I’m going fishing,’ he said. ‘Samsook said he would collect me at the beach. We want to get some red snapper.’

  She left them behind and went to his house. He showed her the pool and the living room. He had a spirit house, too, but he had left it untended. A few flowers, now dried, placed there by a previous tenant, were lying at the spirits’ doorway.

  ‘The spirits will have moved out in disgust,’ she said, half chiding him.

  ‘I’ll try to get them back,’ he said, laughing. ‘I’ll make it up to them.’

  She found herself comfortable in his company. He had an easy charm, and was a good conversationalist. She realised that since her husband’s death there had been so much she had not been able to say, because there was nobody to say it to. She had forgotten, she realised, what it was like to sit down with a man, at the table, and talk to him about anything, small things that had happened during the day, things that people had said. And he sat there listening, and smiling; not the Thai smile with its numerous meanings, but a flickering smile that signalled intimacy and understanding.

  He was divorced, and had been for some years. He had not wanted the divorce, and had tried to persuade his wife to stay. ‘It was like a death,’ he said, and then stopped, realising that this was tactless.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I’m sure it’s just like that. I’m sure of it.’

  They saw more and more of one another. He came to the house early in the mornings and stayed until late at night. They went out for dinner together at the nearby restaurant. The girl came with them sometimes, but the boy declined each invitation.

  ‘I’m not sure if he approves of me,’ he said to her.

  She looked down. ‘He’s jealous. That’s how it can be sometimes. I’m sorry. He’ll get over it.’

  He nodded. ‘I’ve tried,’ he said. ‘I’ve tried to get through to him, but he doesn’t seem to want it.’

  ‘I’ll have a word with him,’ she said. ‘It’s difficult being a teenage boy, you know. They’re all a bit like that.’

  She went into her son’s room that night. He was lying in bed, covered with a sheet, reading a book. He looked at her and smiled.

  ‘I want to talk to you about Joe,’ she said.

  The boy’s smile faded. He looked pointedly at the open pages of the book. ‘What about Joe? What about him?’

  ‘You should try to get to know him,’ she said. ‘You really should.’

  The boy said nothing for a moment. ‘He’s going back to Australia, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, that’s the general idea.’

  ‘And he’s going to ask you to go with him, isn’t he?’

  She caught her breath. They had talked about that, but she had no idea that her son would have worked that out. It was so recent, just the previous day, when he had asked her whether she would consider coming to live with him, and she had replied that she would. And then he had said: What about leaving this country? Will that be all right? And she had said, Yes, there would be no difficulty in that. She did not know Melbourne, but they could all be happy there, just as they had been happ
y in Sydney.

  She reached out and put a hand on his shoulder, over the sheet. ‘Sooner or later you’re going to have to go back. This isn’t really your country, you know. Australia’s our country. If we go back with Joe, I’m sure you’d be happy. I’d be happy, you know. You do want me to be happy, too, don’t you?’

  ‘You could be happy here with me,’ he said. ‘Here in Thailand. What’s wrong with that?’

  She bent down and placed a kiss on his brow. ‘Darling, sleep on it. Think about it. But give Joe a chance. Please. Just get to know him a little. Take him fishing. You and Samsook, take him fishing in that longtail boat.’

  The boy said nothing, and so she stepped back and left the room.

  III

  The boy asked Joe to go fishing several days later. She saw them off at the beach. Joe stepped into the longtail boat, which was painted bright blue, with red lines round the rim and a garland of yellow flowers draped around the prow, for luck, for fish; for safety. Samsook was wearing a red sarong and smiled in welcome at Joe, bowing his head and performing the ritual Thai greeting with hands held together, as if in prayer. The boy said nothing, or very little, but looked at her in a strange way when the boat pushed off from the beach and into the light green water. She thought that she might call out to her son, to ask him what he wanted to say; but she did not wish to embarrass him. He looked at her again as Samsook lowered the long drive-shaft into the water and engaged the engine; a look that was half regret, half reproach.

  They were gone the whole day. At three in the afternoon she felt uneasy, and went outside, into the heat. She paused at the spirit house, which was positioned in a small clearing, surrounded by a clump of banana trees. There were fresh flowers on the small platform and a bowl of ripening plantains, as an offering. She had not put these there, so she concluded that it was her son. He was attentive to the spirit house, like a conscientious Thai.

  At five in the afternoon, with a storm brewing off towards the mainland, she went down to the beach. There was a stiff breeze from the sea, and the fronds of the palms moved in sympathy with the wind. She looked out over the water, which was still calm but which was beginning to ruffle slightly with the effect of the wind. She saw the longtail boat in the distance, a low black shape like a tree trunk in the water, and she breathed a sigh of relief.

  The boat nosed into the sand and Samsook jumped out, his bare feet in the sand and powdered shells. Joe followed him. He seemed to have lost his hat, and had tied a red bandanna around his head to protect him from the sun. Her son was at the back of the boat, attending to the engine. He looked up and glanced at her, then looked back at the engine.

  ‘You look like a pirate with that thing on your head,’ she said to Joe, pointing at the bandanna.

  He caught her eye. He was not smiling. ‘Could you come with me back to my place,’ he said. ‘I want to talk.’

  There was something in his tone that alarmed her, and she followed him back along the path to where he had parked his rented truck. They climbed in, and he drove quickly down the track that led to the main road. She noticed that his lips were pursed and that there was a scratch along the side of his cheek.

  ‘Has something happened?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t want to talk just yet,’ he said. ‘We’ll talk when we get to my place.’

  ‘You’ve cut your cheek,’ she said. ‘I’ll put something on it for you. You have to watch cuts in this heat.’

  It was no more than a ten-minute drive to his house, but he drove fast and it seemed that they were there in no time. When they arrived, he nodded for her to follow him.

  ‘You’re being a bit mysterious,’ she said as they mounted the steps into the building. ‘At least you could tell me what . . .’

  He turned to her and spoke. She saw that he was shaking. ‘He tried to kill me,’ he said. ‘He pushed me in and they went off.’

  She stood quite still. It was difficult for her to take this in. ‘Who tried?’ she said. ‘Tried to do what?’

  ‘Your son,’ he said, pointing a finger at her. ‘He gave me a shove when I was standing up to free a line. I hit the side of my head as I went in – hence this.’ He touched the wound gently. ‘And then they went off. I saw them. But they had an argument – I saw it, hands waving, everything, and Samsook grabbed the controls and they came back and he hauled me back in. Your son was all apologies. It was an accident, he said. I should not have stood up in the boat like that. He was turning the boat to get into a position to rescue me. That’s what he said.’

  She stood and looked at him. She wanted to say, This is not true; it simply isn’t true, but the words would not come.

  ‘We were way out,’ he went on. ‘Really far. If it hadn’t been for Samsook, then I don’t know. With the storm coming on, nobody would have seen me. The fishing boats were all running for shelter.’

  She closed her eyes. It could not be true. Her son would not try to murder Joe. He was sixteen. He was a boy.

  He reached out and touched her gently on the arm. ‘This won’t work, you know. I couldn’t ask you to choose between your son and me. I couldn’t ask you that. I’m very sorry.’

  ‘I’ll talk to him,’ she said. ‘I’m sure that there’s been a misunderstanding.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m very sorry. I’m going to pack up and go back to Bangkok. I can’t be involved in . . . I can’t be involved in this. Not with him. Sorry.’

  He moved away from her, up the steps and into the house, but he stopped short of the door.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m not thinking straight. I’ll run you back to your house. Give me a moment.’

  She returned to the beach. Her son was still there, with Samsook. They had dragged the longtail boat up onto the sand, for safety, and were doing something to the engine. She saw that Samsook had a can of oil in his hand. He looked up at her when he saw her coming and said something to her son.

  She walked over to the two boys. ‘Samsook,’ she said. ‘What happened? What happened?’ She struggled for the Thai words as she pointed out towards the sea.

  Samsook looked at her in surprise. Then he looked at the other boy, and there was a sign. She was sure of it; there was a sign. ‘He fell into the water,’ he said. ‘Like that. Splash. We picked him up and came back. He does not know the sea.’

  She moved towards him. ‘Is that true? He says that he was pushed into the sea and that you boys wanted to leave him.’

  Samsook looked at her, and smiled. He moved slightly away. This was the smile that meant, You’re embarrassing me. He smiled again. It was the same message.

  She turned to her son. He had been busying himself with the engine, as if indifferent to what she had said to Samsook.

  ‘Is that true?’ she said to him, her voice raised. ‘Did you push him in? Did you?’

  The boy stood up. She noticed now, and every time she looked at him, how he seemed to have become a man, so recently, right under her eyes. He looked back at her, meeting her gaze.

  ‘Of course I didn’t do anything of the sort,’ he said quietly. ‘Of course I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t push the farang in.’ And then he smiled. He had acquired Thai ways – he smiled – and she saw immediately what it was. The wrong sort of smile.

  LIVING EVERY SECOND

  TRACY EDWARDS

  ‘TRACY, TRACY, WAKE up.’

  ‘What?’

  I opened my eyes and looked up into the smiling face of Helena. She held a bowl and a spoon. ‘I’ve brought you some dinner, I didn’t think you’d be able to make it to the galley.’

  I hadn’t eaten since the accident because the painkillers made me feel nauseous.

  ‘Adrienne is doing the cooking. She’s wearing her survival suit just in case the pasta decides to leap up and attack her.’

  I wanted to laugh but knew it would hurt. Helena helped me sit up. I glanced at the numbers above the chart table. The wind was a steady 50 knots.

  ‘The waves are getting better,’ said
Helena. ‘Adrienne thinks we might be over the worst of it.’

  I drifted off to sleep again. At some point Adrienne came back from the galley. She sat at the chart table and began calling up the latest satellite weather maps. Her face had taken on the green glow of the navigation instruments.

  ‘I reckon we should be able to gybe back in another couple or hours,’ she said, showing me the latest map.

  ‘What speed are we doing?’

  She glanced at the dials. ‘We’re keeping it down to 15 knots most of the time. Occasionally we’re surfing at 27.’

  There was a movement to the left and behind me Miki appeared in her survival suit, looking like an astronaut. I could only see her eyes behind the mask, but they were clearly tired and fraught.

  For the next few hours I drifted in and out of sleep, unable to move. Each time the boat smashed into a wave, the muscles down the left side of my spine contracted and I groaned.

  Adrienne woke after two hours and checked the messages. I watched her silently and realised how much weight she’d lost. Just after noon GMT, Lee advised us that we could turn back on to our favoured gybe. We had to wait another two hours between squalls before we could change direction.

  We had never gybed in 44 knots of wind. Everybody was needed on deck, except the cripple in her bunk.

  ‘Okay, let’s do it,’ said Miki.

  As the boat shifted downwind, Helena winched in the main until the boom was directly over the cockpit. As one side of the boat released the sheets, the other side was winding them on. The main swung from starboard to port and the wind filled the sail. There was a tremendous sense of achievement amongst the crew. After being hammered for so long, we had proved our resilience. We were back in the race.

  The ride felt a lot easier with the wind behind us. Occasionally, the ‘big cat’ would take off and surf, but it wasn’t happening so often.

  I drifted in and out of sleep, fuzzy with painkillers.

  Is this what you wanted, Tracy? I asked myself silently. Is this what you expected? Did you underestimate the challenge?