The Angel of Bang Kwang Prison (19 page)

After attending an Easter Local High School Camp she had made lots of friends. She had experienced some difficulties in her school in Thailand, and had been picked on for being a
farang
and consequently being jeered for being ‘chubby’ and white—the only truth in those taunts was the fact that she is a Caucasian, as she is a tall, slim and stunningly beautiful girl, even if I do say so myself.

While we were still planning our future together in Bangkok, Garth had talked about how much time he was going to spend with Talya and how much help he was going to give her, with homework and life. I think he was driven by the fact that his father had left when he was still so young. He developed a very good relationship with Talya and she confided in him about her worries and problems. However, he seemed out of his depth with a young, independent teenager and cracks started to fracture their previously smooth respect for one another. I’m sure this happens all the time with teenagers, but Garth couldn’t see that and grew hurt and offended by her teenage step-daughter rants. I decided to take this in my stride thanks to my own rebellious ‘teen-hood’, deciding time would work it all out.

Garth also found his fame as a former Bang Kwang inmate unsettling and would fret about the amount of staring and whispering that followed him around his visits to town. All I could do was listen and tell him not to dwell on it. He moaned about the old, conservative family-type car that a kind friend had given us, which embarrassed him. He was not the laid-back hippie that I thought he was. Instead he worried about his image and lack of material goods. This was a surprise. I felt him withdrawing a little from me, but I told myself that this was perfectly natural, until he was able to put his past behind him. He had a lot to cope with and I appreciated that.

Nevertheless, a little voice in my head started to nag me about the slight changes in him. His behaviour started to contradict his words to me while he was in Bang Kwang. That time he spoke about how important it was to him to be part of me and Talya and to be a proper family. Now, months later, he was going out more often than just being happy at home with me. Now, when he was home, he was watching lots of TV instead of talking to me. Teething problems, I told myself. He had also especially looked forward to all the family holidays that punctuated the year—Easter, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Halloween was looming and Talya had a favour to ask of him. Her friend’s high school was holding a dance on Halloween night and Talya was beside herself with excitement. She and her friends made feverish plans. Her friend’s parents would collect her and bring her to the dance, and she asked Garth if he could pick her and her mates up afterwards, at 11.30pm, and drop them home.

To my shock, and Talya’s horror, he immediately refused, saying that he missed out on a lot of Halloweens due to being in prison. I think he felt that she was being spoilt or getting too big for her boots. He really had no understanding about teenage girls and how important these things are to them. Naturally Talya was bitterly disappointed and I raged inwardly that I had never learnt to drive. I did my best for her. We dressed up on the day and played games, but understandably it all paled in comparison with attending her first dance with her school friends. It probably didn’t help much when Garth himself was invited, and went, to a party on Halloween night, leaving the two of us at home to watch a movie.

Another problem was that Talya and I didn’t have a long-term visa to stay in America unless Garth and I got married. Up to then I had to keep leaving the States to go to Costa Rica, Panama and Mexico when the visa ran out, but I couldn’t keep doing this. It was very expensive and it just wasn’t fair on Talya. On a trip to Mexico we ended up staying for seven weeks when Talya came down with chicken pox. Meanwhile, back in Monterey, Garth was out with our van and gave a ride to a guy he barely knew. They stopped to take in the sights and this creature stole the van, leaving him stranded. Just about everything I owned was in the van and I was stricken when I took his call in Mexico. I managed to convince myself that it would be a good experience for me not to own anything for a while, but the thought sounded hollow, even in the private depths of my mind.

And yet, God works in mysterious ways. A woman I had gotten to know in Panama heard our news and prayed for us. She rang me, confident that we would get the van back with most of our stuff in tact. Thankfully she was right. By the time I returned to California, the police had found the van 400 miles away, where the engine had cleverly died. The only items missing were some old paperback books of mine that had been long out of print.

Talya and I needed some stability in our lives. It was hard to settle when we had to keep leaving America every three months to get our visas stamped. We were going to have to return to Australia in December to get a long-term visa sorted and things would be a lot easier if I had an American husband. I told Garth that we should get married. To be honest, I expected him to say no. Things weren’t great between us and I think I was prepared to leave the States and return to Thailand for good if he said no—it’s always best to have a back-up plan, it prevents you from being completely dependent on the situation in hand. I was pleasantly surprised when Garth readily agreed that yes, we should make things official.

Looking back, I can see that I felt frustrated and disappointed. We never got to do all the things we had talked about doing and I just felt that I wasn’t getting enough of his time and attention. Meanwhile, he was probably determined to make the relationship work so as not to have to add it to the list of things that hadn’t worked out for him.

I called a judge and a few friends and we got married a few days later on the beach. The date was 24 November 2003. It was a lovely wedding, even if I say so myself. The judge’s son was a Justice of the Peace and he married us for $100. The wedding party, Garth’s band mates, his brother and Talya, met down at the local store beside the beach. We all wore white shirts, denim jackets and boots. It was freezing cold but nobody complained. The Justice of the Peace rolled up in his Mercedes SUV and was a little wild looking with his dishevelled hair and constant mutterings to himself.

The ceremony was short and simple, which suited us. There was the most incredible sunset and the colours in the sky were literally changing from minute to minute. I was filled with optimism for my little family. Things could only get better. I knew things weren’t going to be perfect but I hoped that they were going to be a little easier. That evening Garth, Talya and I went for dinner to the Bubba Gump Shrimp Restaurant, which had been made famous by the popular American movie,
Forrest Gump
, and was now a busy haunt for movie buffs and tourists. It was a nice ending to our wedding, particularly for Talya.

Eleven days later Talya and I flew to Australia for four months in order to visit my family and sort out our paperwork. I mused that it would be like a second beginning, a fresh start, when we returned. Things would improve and all my frustrations would be dealt with. I was sad to be leaving so soon after getting married, but I couldn’t help but think that the break might be a good thing for Garth. After all, he had only been a free man for 12 days before I arrived, so maybe my presence was delaying him from properly adjusting to his new life. On and on I counselled myself with thoughts like this while I readied myself and Talya for our trip. Garth was going to work on finding proper accommodation for the three of us, which I believed would officially signify our new beginning as Mr and Mrs Hattan.

He drove us to the airport on 5 December and we tearfully said goodbye. We both said that we would miss one another but planned, once again, to do the most wonderful things on our return. Things happen for a reason—something I had to keep repeating to myself on our eventual return to California. I missed him terribly over the next four months but I did enjoy catching up with the family, old friends, and Melbourne itself, and the time did pass rather quickly. I really enjoyed a good old-fashioned family Christmas in Melbourne. Relatives gathered from miles around and we all watched the carol singing in the Botanical Gardens in Melbourne on TV; a well-known tradition.

On Christmas Day my sister and brother-in-law had us over to dinner with our collective parents and in between missing Garth I ate far too much. I missed my new husband terribly, especially when I dwelled on the fact that he wasn’t a free man regarding coming to Australia. The drug offences on his record would keep him from meeting my family for many a year to come. Talya managed to meet up with her dad and met his parents and umpteen cousins for the first time. I spoke to Garth two or three times a week and we both confessed how much we were looking forward to seeing one another.

We didn’t spend the four months in Australia, as we were both anxious to visit Thailand to catch up with friends and projects. Brian Haffendon, a good friend who ran a drug rehab centre just outside of Bangkok, donated the use of a hotel room to us for two weeks, so this was our base while we met up with all our old friends and I visited the prison, laden with cakes and gifts. We soaked up the culture and guzzled our favourite Thai foods. I also enjoyed speaking the language again. It was only then that I realised how much I had missed Thailand and I found myself feeling a little bit of regret at the thought of leaving it once more, possibly forever.

Garth kept himself busy too. He had found a job with a construction company and used the money to rent a small furnished apartment. A sense of dread nipped me when he rang me to suggest that Talya and I take another week out, and maybe visit Sri Lanka, a place I had always longed to see. He would pay for Talya and me to go.

‘Strange,’ I thought, ‘surely he should be impatient to see me again.’

Something was up. He collected us from the airport on 2 April 2004. I hugged and kissed him, more so for myself than for him. He brought us back to our new place and Talya and I dutifully ‘oohed’ and ‘aahed’. It was small but neat, with a nice little kitchen complete with coffee machine. It overlooked a busy pub, which meant I could people-watch from the window, as the tables outside were always full of laughing, merry customers. From my bed I could see the hills, so we had a bit of busy town and quiet countryside, depending on which window you were looking out of. So we had a comfortable home at last. It’s just a pity that we didn’t have a comfortable home life.

Garth was not himself at all. He was distant and spent a lot of time either out of the house or on the phone. Almost immediately on our return to the apartment there was a gulf of secrecy between us that was much worse than the iron bars at Bang Kwang. I didn’t know what to do. I was hurt that he didn’t seem too delighted to have me home after four months and instead made me feel like we were in his way.

He took up drinking with a vengeance and was constantly trying to pick fights, which I did my best to ignore. But I’m only human. When I engaged in the petty fights that he seemed to want so badly I would rage inwardly at myself for giving in to his taunts and complaints. We didn’t make love for a while because he had poison ivy all over his testicles and legs—he didn’t tell me how he got it.

Then, one day when I was tidying up, I found some porn magazines, and they weren’t even classy ones like
Playboy
, so it couldn’t have been for the articles. They were tacky porn with lots of photos of large women.

‘This is natural,’ I told myself. ‘I’ve been away for months.’

It proved a bit more difficult, however, to apply the same rationale when I found an open pack of condoms in his drawer. When he came in that evening I asked him about them. He shrugged and replied, ‘Well, you were gone for so long.’

Ah, it was my fault. The room swayed a little as I asked the obvious question: ‘Who was she?’

He looked straight at me. ‘I hired a hooker!’

I don’t know why I needed a name but I did. So I asked.

‘I don’t remember her name; I just got a number from the
Yellow Pages
.’

This particularly sickened me—that he couldn’t even put a name to the girl he had used for sex. I also sensed that there was more to it. He repeated his excuse about me being away for so long, and he might have succeeded in making me feel guilty except that I thought to ask him when exactly, throughout my prolonged absence, he had been driven to picking up the phone to ring a prostitute.

His eyes narrowed and I felt a chill even before he said the words: ‘A couple of days after you left.’

I sat down. The walls of the room were closing in on me and I could hear shouts of laughter and merriment from the pub. My head began to tighten and I desperately tried to control my brain, which was shooting ahead, screaming about betrayals. I didn’t want to think or understand too much, not just yet. But he had more to tell me. He had slept with five different women before Christmas Day—Talya and I had only left on 5 December—only they weren’t hookers, they were one night stands he had picked up. But he wasn’t going to tell me their names as he didn’t want to cause them any trouble with me.

It was a lot to take in. I gazed at the floor, trying to establish how I felt. Did he want to be caught? Is that why he left the condoms around? Was it better that it was five girls and not just one? Wasn’t this only normal for a guy who had spent so long behind bars? He came out of prison wanting to try all the different foods he had missed—wasn’t this the same thing? Also, this was the first time in his adult life that he was in a proper relationship, so wasn’t it understandable if he wanted to explore a little?