A Tiger in Eden (6 page)
It’s easy to forget the Thais are Buddhists, most of them are anyway, sure I nearly died when the barman tells me what year it was. Here’s me thinking it was 1996 but nah, he goes, it’s 2539 in our calendar. I didn’t know what the fuck he was on about at first but then he says to me, he says the Thailand is 543 years ahead of you.
How’s that, I goes, are youse in the future or something, sure where’s all your jetpacks and that? I couldn’t make no sense of it, sure I just assumed the whole world had the same system. It blew me away, so it did.
When the Thai New Year came up this wee lad helped me and whoever else was staying in the huts to make these wee boat things out of sticks and mud. At midnight you lit a candle and stuck it in your boat, they were only about the size of your hand. Then you had to write down
on tiny bits of paper all the things that were bothering you during the past year and that you wanted rid of out of your life. You burned them over the candle and threw the ashes into your boat and went down to the ocean and sent it out into the waves.
It was fucking magic so it was, there were hundreds of wee boats with candles in them drifting out on the water all along the beach where people were doing it. I suppose there was millions of them all around the country. I’d never seen the like of it and it’s a fucking brilliant idea too, getting rid of all your aul problems even if it was just ceremonial or whatever.
I was dead pleased with my boat but when I put it in the water it only went out about five feet or something and then a wave comes in and swamps it. The cunt floated right back to my feet. I looked around and everyone else’s was heading out to sea and I thought fuck me, that’s just my luck so it is, saddled with the same aul fucking problems for another year.
I was getting restless anyway and I was thinking of taking the bull by the horns and fucking off somewhere else for a while even though my options were limited, so they were. After New Year I borrowed one of the aul mopeds and scooted up to the port where they had a couple of shops and a phone line. Sure I needed some more flunkies anyway, just in case mind. I gave Big Jim back home a call just to check in sort of thing and let him know I’d be moving on, he couldn’t really talk, I think he had someone in the office with him and had
to watch what he was saying but he gives me a number to write down.
You ‘member Olly, he goes, sure he’s down your way youse two should meet up or something.
The Frenchman who ran all that gear across to Marseille for us, I says, aye the very one Big Jim says, drop him a line Billy, here I’ll have to go but give us a ring next month, you all right for money and that.
I told him I was and said cheerio then went and treated myself to a Mars Bar at the wee shop sure they’re like hen’s teeth and they charge you a fortune for them ‘cos they know all the westerners are dying for a hit of chocolate and it’s not like you can run round to the Spar when you’re on some fucking aul island in the middle of the Andaman Sea.
Olly was this mad French cunt who was an officer in their army and he done us loads of favours, I’membered him so I did, he was all right even though he was a Fenian, so were all the French but when it came to making money he was a smart one and didn’t mind doing business with us Prods. He was in charge of transport or something and always had these wee convoys of trucks scooting about Europe and knew everyone so he did. If we wanted to get drugs or guns or anything dodgy in the slightest from A to B he was our man.
He was only a young lad like twenty or something, he was doing his national service, most of the young ones get it over with and then fuck off out of it but he stayed on and signed up for a couple more years ‘cos he
was making so much money and didn’t have to pay for nothing, he had his own digs on some army base down near Lyon. I jawed on the phone with him a couple a times sure his English was brilliant so it was and he was dead funny I’membered.
Why he was down my way, whatever that meant ‘cos for all I knew he could be thousands of miles away in the Philippines or something, I could only imagine. He was probably on the run like me I was thinking and it might be all right meeting up with him ‘cos sure he always had something going on at least I’d be guaranteed a fucking good time and some company with someone who knew the score, like.
It was a bit awkward getting in touch with the fucker sure I had to leave a couple of messages and run back and forth to the phone every day for a week but eventually I got a hold of him and he was chuffed to hear from me, turns out he was in sort of the same predicament I was. He’d done a runner from France with eighty grand in his aul skyrocket and was just knocking around like a beach bum trying to make it last ‘cos he was feared to go back. Sure enough he’d been in the Philippines for ages but now he was next door to me down in Malaysia.
He said he’d been running a bit of resin in Penang but he didn’t trust no one and sure it was the death penalty if you got caught so someone shopping you to the peelers was pretty fucking serious and he was dead paranoid.
I told him I was bored as fuck and he says, let’s meet in the middle and check into the cheapest place you can
find on Langkawi I hear it’s nice there, plenty of rich women, except he says it in his French accent so instead of the and there he says ze and zere, you get the picture.
I was glad to be on the move actually so I caught the bus down to Satun pronto like. The ferry over to Langkawi was a bit fancy and there was loads of aul couples on it, I was thinking what the fuck does Olly want to meet up here for but I assumed he was taking the back door out of Penang probably to avoid paying someone, it wouldn’t of surprised me with that cunt.
There was only one cheap joint on Langkawi, sure it was all resorts and that not the sort of place for the likes of me who was used to aul fleapits and shacks half falling into the sea. It wasn’t even that cheap, to be honest I baulked a bit at handing the money over, I know I’ve got loads but you never know when you need a bit of stake money for a wee job or when you have to buy your way out of a fucking tight corner. The room was no great shakes but there was a lounge for hanging out in, it was all right actually ‘cos the only people staying there were your real independent traveller types, sure you could tell straightaway from the state of them and none of them planned to stay long they were just ticking the island off some list in their Lonely Planet.
Some aul Scottish fella was arguing with a sunburnt English bint about India. She said it was shite and he was pissed off because he’d spent a couple of years there and she’d only been for a fortnight but still, she wouldn’t back down. I could see him eyeballing my tatts and
nodding so I guessed he was a Prod for he starts glaring at me for support.
Don’t be looking at me I says to him, sure the closest I ever got to the India was down the takeaway on Chichester Street. Fucking beef madras went through me like a dose of salts, so it did.
The girl laughed, Japanese flag she goes.
What’s that supposed to mean, I says.
You know, she goes, white with a red hole in the middle.
Oh aye, right enough, I goes, laughing a wee bit but thinking fuck sake what sort of thing is that for a woman to say to a man she’s just met, not exactly the romantic type, are you love? I’m sure I was no oil painting myself but both her and the aul fella looked like they could do with a good going over with a scrubbing brush. Sure they had a layer of grime on them. Such is the way of it when you’re travelling on a budget, I suppose.
I had to sit there for two days listening to their bickering and carrying on, they didn’t even know each other and even though there was forty years between them sure you’d swear they were married or something. I told them to shut their gobs I don’t know how many times but they didn’t pay me no mind. The aul fella worried me a bit. He’d worked all over the world doing wee jobs here and there, saving enough to move on somewhere else. He reckoned he’d had a fantastic life and I wasn’t doubting it but he looked about a hundred years old, sure his skin was like a prune or something.
I was thinking fuck me am I looking at myself in thirty years time, fuck I hope not, I better get myself sorted out before I end up like this aul cunt. The English girl had a right ugly face on her and a fair aul jiggle round the belly, she did nothing for me especially when she put her feet up on the table and started picking at her dirty toenails. She gave me a look sometimes like she wouldn’t have minded a ride but there was no way I was going there. I couldn’t wait for Olly to turn up ‘cos I knew he’d fuck the arse off of her, sure he’d do anything with a pulse.
Took the cunt long enough getting there but I was glad to see him all the same. He just walks in one day like he’d lived there for years, some fellas have got a talent for that.
Billy Montgomery, he shouts, fucking hell look at you man.
Lieutenant Olivier Morel, I goes to him, where’ve you been, soldier.
He gave me a big hug and kissed me on both cheeks which surprised me a wee bit before I’membered that these French cunts will kiss everyone that’s just the way they are.
Who’s this beautiful lady he goes, and the English girl went beetroot. I fucking knew it, so I did. I don’t know why he bothered with half the women, he wasn’t a badlooking fella, dead tan like me of course from bumming around on the beaches except he had curly blond hair and wore wee round glasses. He had a permanent sweaty kind of look and this cheeky aul grin like where’s the
party at, let’s go out and start some trouble, sort of thing. It was hard not to like him. It’s no wonder he was into a bit of smuggling and adventuring and what have you. You couldn’t imagine a fella like that sitting behind a desk in an aul fucking office.
Even though it was only lunchtime when he arrived we started hitting the cocktails, though I could see he was watching his money the same as me. He sat with his arm draped around my shoulders for a while and the English girl asked him loads of questions and he told her loads of lies that I backed him up on. I wasn’t used to a man being in such close proximity to me but the French are different to the boring aul uptight fucking Brits. If any of the lads from the Shankill walked in and saw me sitting all cosy like with this blond Frenchman they’d be thinking we were bum chums or something.
The only man familiar with me was our Mark and we were brothers like so that was all right. I told Olly that one night a few weeks later and he just shrugged like it was nothing at all and says in France all men are brothers. That cut me up, so it did. The Brits are always slagging the French but as I found out they actually do loads of things better.
Liberté égalité fraternité
was their motto Olly explained to me, freedom equality brotherhood. And they fucking took it seriously and all. Our ones wouldn’t even know the meaning of words like that, me least of all. Sure I was the last one to understand brotherhood.
It only took him a few hours to get invited up to
that ugly bitch’s room, it disgusted me the thought of her aul dirty feet with the big black hairs sticking out of the toes but Olly wasn’t as fussy as me, for years the only women he’d seen were on posters stuck up on the inside of lockers so fair enough and at least the English girl was getting her end away at last, maybe then she’d shut her gob for a while.
We never hung round long enough to find out. Olly crept into the room early the next morning and says to me, grab your shit we’re getting out of here, you didn’t pay the bar bill last night did you?
Course not, I says, what do you take me for?
Right, come on then, he goes.
Fuck sake, I says, it must be about four in the morning.
There’s a ferry at six, he goes, let’s make sure we’re on it. This is our Olly all over, I was thinking.
We were looking over our shoulders the whole time before the ferry left just in case a bunch of Malays with machetes turned up looking for the money we owed them, or even worse the English girl.
How was she, I asked Olly, a good ride?
All right I suppose, he goes, she smelled weird.
Hope you didn’t suck on her aul hairy toes, I says.
Olly laughs then and goes, yes! They were hairy weren’t they but don’t worry I kept well away from them, how come you didn’t fuck her?
Sure she was disgusting, I says, no offence like.
What do you mean, he goes, looking a bit hurt.
Well let’s just say she wasn’t my type, I says, I’m into
the whatchamacallit intellectual types these days, the ones that take care of themselves and have a good head on them.
You get many of them round these parts, he goes, laughing.
I suppose not, I says, but the life we have puts you out of touch with what’s going on, there’s no way to learn nothing unless in books and I get fed up with that, do you not?
C’est vrai
, he goes, which means right enough in our lingo, that’s why I was dealing in Penang just to keep myself from going crazy and feel like I was doing something.
Aye, it sounds mad though. Were you not feared of getting caught, sure they’re dead strict and that.
Well I’m out of it now, he says, but if you’re interested I’ve got the number of a guy up in Bangkok who’s looking for westerners, it’s easy money and low risk.
What is it, I says, mule work, ‘cos call me mad but I don’t fancy swallowing twenty flunkies full of horse. One of them bursts and you’re proper fucked.
No no, he says, no way nothing like that, you just have to escort someone to Japan. They’re travelling on a fake passport but you go on your own and sit next to them on the plane, fill in their immigration forms or whatever, maybe you both dress up like businessmen, it’s just so they feel comfortable going through customs at the other end, you get a free flight to Japan and a thousand bucks US, it’s easy, one of my buddies from
the army has done it a couple of times.
Aye, it doesn’t sound too bad, I says, I’ll think about it. Japan, I was thinking, sure that’d be all right something different for a change.
Obviously we’ll tread carefully and check it out, Olly says, but this Mr Carson is into all sorts of stuff apparently so we’ll get something.
