The Beach (4 page)

At five that afternoon the temperature cooled, the sky turned black, and it rained. Unexpectedly, loudly - heavy droplets pouring down, cratering and re-cratering the beach. I sat on the small porch outside my hut and watched a miniature Sea of Tranquillity form in the sand. Across the way Étienne appeared briefly, snatching the swimming shorts he'd left out there to dry. He called something to me but it was lost in a roll of thunder, then he ducked back inside.
I had a tiny lizard on my hand. It was about three inches long, with enormous eyes and translucent skin. The lizard had been sitting on my cigarette packet for ten minutes, and when I'd got bored with watching it, waiting for a tongue to lash out and lasso a fly, I'd reached out and picked it up. Instead of wriggling away as I'd expected, the lizard had casually rearranged itself on my hand. Surprised by its audacity, I let it sit there - even though it meant keeping my hand in an unnatural position, palm facing upwards, which made my arm ache.
My attention was distracted by two guys running up the beach, whooping and shouting as they came. As they reached my hut they turned off the beach and leapt athletically on to the next porch along from mine.
'Man!' whooped one of them, white-blond with a goatee beard.
'That's some fuckin' storm!' replied the other, yellow-blond and clean-shaven. 'Whoop!'
'Americans,' I whispered to the lizard.
They rattled at their door, then ran back into the rain towards the beach restaurant - weaving around, trying to dodge the rain. A couple of minutes later they came speeding back. Again they rattled at their door — then white-blond saw me, apparently for the first time. 'Lost our fuckin' key!' he said, and jabbed a thumb towards the restaurant. 'They lost theirs too! Can't get in!'
'Stuck out here!' said yellow-blond. 'In the rain!'
I nodded. 'Bad luck. Where did you lose it?'
White-blond shrugged. 'Miles down the fuckin' beach, man! Miles and miles!' Then he walked up to the wooden guard-rail that separated our two porches and peered over. 'What you got in your hand there?' he asked.
I held up the lizard.
'Wow! Is it, like, dead?'
'Nope.'
'Excellent! Hey, can I come over? You know, meet the neighbours!'
'Sure.'
'You want to smoke a joint?'
'Sure.'
'Excellent!'
The two of them vaulted over the guard-rail and introduced themselves. White-blond was Sammy, yellow-blond was Zeph.
'Zeph's a strange name, right?' said Zeph as he shook my left hand, not wanting to disturb the lizard. 'Can you guess what it's short for?'
'Zephaniah,' I answered confidently.
'Wrong, dude! It isn't short for anything! I was christened Zeph, and everyone thinks it's short for Zephaniah, but it isn't! Cool, huh?'
'Definitely.'
Sammy started rolling up, pulling the dope and papers out of a waterproof plastic bag in his pocket. 'You're English, huh?' he said, as he flattened out a Rizla with his fingers. 'English people always put tobacco in joints. You see, we never do. Are you addicted to smoking?'
'Afraid so,' I replied.
'I'm not. But if I put tobacco in joints I would be. I smoke all day, like that song. How's that song go, Zeph?'
Zeph started singing a lyric that said, 'Don't bogart that joint, my friend,' but Sammy cut him off.
'No, dude. The other one.'
'What, 'I smoke two joints in the morning'? That one?'
'Yeah.'
Zeph cleared his throat. 'Uh, it goes, "I smoke two joints in the morning, and I smoke two joints at night, and I smoke two joints in the afternoon, and then I feel all right"...And then it goes, "I smoke two joints in times of peace, and two in times of war. I smoke two joints before I smoke two joints, then I smoke two more." I can't remember the rest.' He shook his head.
'No matter, dude,' said Sammy. 'You get the idea, Ricardo? I smoke a lot.'
'Sounds like it.'
'Uh-huh.'
Sammy had finished rolling the joint while Zeph had been singing. He lit it up and passed it straight to me. 'That's another thing about English dudes,' he wheezed, smoke coming out of his mouth in short bursts. 'You hang on to the joint for an age. Us Americans take a toke or two and pass it on.'
'It's true,' I replied, sucking in.
I was going to apologize for the poor manners of my countrymen but I collapsed into a coughing fit.
'Rickster!' said Zeph, patting me on the back. 'You gotta cough to get off.'
A couple of seconds later a blistering bolt of lightning crackled over the sea. After it was gone, Sammy said in an awestruck voice, 'Most totally excellent, dude!' Zeph quickly followed it up with, 'Like, utterly outrageous, compadre!'
I opened my mouth, then hesitated. 'Excellent, dude,' I muttered thoughtfully.
'Most excellent,' Sammy repeated.
I groaned.
'A problem, Ricardo?'
'You're winding me up.'
Sammy and Zeph looked at each other, then at me.
'Winding you up?'
'Having me on.'
Sammy frowned. 'Speak in English, my man.'
'This... Keanu Reeves thing. It's a joke, right? You don't really talk like that... do you?'
There was a brief silence, then Zeph swore. 'We're rumbled, Sammy.'
'Yeah,' Sammy replied. 'We overplayed our hand.'
They were Harvard students. Sammy was studying law, Zeph was studying Afro-American literature. Their surf act was a reaction to the condescending Europeans they kept meeting in Asia. 'It's a protest against bigotry,' Zeph explained, pulling knots out of his tangled blond locks. 'Europeans think all Americans are stupid, so we act stupid to confirm your prejudices. Then we reveal ourselves as intelligent, and by doing so, subvert the prejudice more effectively than we would with an immediate barrage of intellect — which only causes confusion and, ultimately, resentment.'
'Really?' I said, genuinely impressed. 'That's so elaborate.'
Zeph laughed. 'No, not really. We just do it for fun.'
They had other acts they liked to do. Zeph's favourite was the Surf Dude, but Sammy had another - he called it the Nigger Lover. As its name implies, it was a bit more risque than the Surf Dude.
'One time I got punched doing the Nigger Lover,' Sammy said, as he began to roll another joint. 'Knocked flat on my fuckin' back.'
I wasn't at all surprised. The act involved Sammy starting violent arguments with total strangers, insisting that because there's a . country in Africa called Niger, all people from Niger were niggers -regardless of whether they were black or white.
'Aren't they called Nigerians?' I asked, bristling slightly, despite knowing I was being suckered.
Sammy shook his head. 'That's what everyone says, but I don't think so. Think about it. Nigeria is right below Niger. They border each other, so if they were both called Nigerians it would cause chaos.'
'Well, I still doubt they're called niggers.'
'Oh sure. Me too. I only say it to make a point... Fuck knows what the point is, but...' He drew on the joint and passed it on. 'It's like my grandad taught me. He was a colonel in the US Marines. Sammy, he'd say, the ends
always
justify the means. And you know what, Richard? He was right.'
I was about to disagree, but I realized he was winding me up again. Instead I replied, 'You can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs.'
Sammy smiled and turned to look at the sea.
'That's the boy, ' I thought I heard him say.
Lightning silhouetted the line of palm trees on the beach into a line of claws with pencil arms. The lizard scuttled out of my hand, startled by the flash.
'That's the kid.'
I frowned. 'Sorry? What was that?'
He turned back, also frowning, but with the smile still not faded from his lips. 'What was what?'
'Didn't you just say something?'
'Nope.'
I looked at Zeph. 'Didn't you hear him say something?'
Zeph shrugged. 'I was watching the lightning.'
'Oh.'
Just the dope talking, I guessed.
The rain continued as night fell. Étienne and Françoise stayed in their hut, and Zeph, Sammy and I stayed on the porch until we were too stoned to do anything but sit in silence, passing the odd comment between us if there was an impressive roll of thunder.
An hour or two after dark a tiny Thai woman came over to our porch from the restaurant, almost hidden under a giant beach parasol. She looked at the dope paraphernalia strewn about us with a wan smile, then handed Zeph a spare key to their room. I took that as my cue to crawl into bed. As I said good night, Sammy croaked, 'Hey, nice meeting you. Catch you tomorrow, dude.'
He seemed to say it without a trace of irony. I couldn't work out whether it was a continuation of his surfer joke or whether the grass had regressed his Harvard mind. It seemed too complicated to ask, so I said, 'Sure,' and shut the door behind me.
At around three in the morning I woke up for a short while, dry-mouthed, still high — and listened. I could hear cicadas, and waves sucking down the beach. The storm had blown itself out.

The next morning the sky was still clouded over. As I walked out on to the porch, scattered with rain-soaked joint butts, I had the bizarre sensation that I was back in England. There was a slight chill in the air and I could smell wet earth and leaves. Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I padded over the cool sand to Étienne and Françoise's hut. There was no answer, so I tried the restaurant and found them eating breakfast. I ordered a mango salad, thinking an exotic taste might compensate for the feeling of being at home, and sat down with them.
'Who did you meet last night?' said Étienne, as I pulled up a chair. 'We saw you talking outside your room.'
'We watched you from our window,' Françoise added.
I pulled out a cigarette to kill time before breakfast arrived. 'I met a couple of Americans. Zeph and Sammy.'
Françoise nodded. 'Did you tell them about our beach?'
'No.' I lit up. 'I didn't.'
'You shouldn't tell people about our beach.'
'I didn't tell them.'
'It should be a secret.'
I exhaled strongly. 'And that's why I didn't tell them, Françoise.'
Étienne interrupted. 'She was worried you might have...' The sentence trailed off into a nervous smile.
'It didn't even cross my mind,' I replied irritably, and stubbed out my cigarette hard.
It tasted like shit.
When the mango salad arrived I made an effort to relax. I told them about how the Americans had fooled me with their surfer act last night. Françoise thought the story was extremely funny. Her laughter partially defused the tension and we began making plans for the day ahead.
We decided that we had to hire a boat. The normal tour agencies wouldn't do because they'd be too organized, and we doubted we'd be able to slip away from their supervision. Instead we would need to find a fisherman who was unaware of or unconcerned about the rules on tourists in the marine park.
After breakfast we split up to improve our chances. I went north, towards Ko Mat Lang, and the other two went south, aiming for a small town we'd passed on the jeep ride. Our rendezvous was in three hours' time, back at our huts.
The sun came out as I set off down Chaweng, but it did little to salvage my mood. Flies buzzed around my head, smelling the sweat, and the walking became increasingly laborious as last night's rain dried off the sand.
I began counting the guest-houses I passed along the shore line. After twenty minutes I'd counted seventeen, and they were still showing no signs of thinning out. If anything, the palm trees were more cluttered with Ray-Bans and concrete patios than before.
In 1984 I was in my sitting room, playing on my Atari, and listened to the babysitter talk about Ko Samui. As I mopped the screen clear of space invaders, names and places stuck in my head.
Pattaya was a hell-hole. Chiang Mai was rainy and cold. Ko Samui was hot and beautiful. Ko Samui was where she had stayed with her boyfriend for five months, hanging out on the beach and doing strange things she was both reluctant and keen to talk about.
A-levels out of the way, my friends and I scattered ourselves around the globe. The next August we started coming back, and I learnt that my babysitter's paradise was yesterday's news. Ko Pha-Ngan, the next island along, was Thailand's new Mecca.
A few years later, as I checked my passport and confirmed my flight to Bangkok, a friend telephoned with advice. 'Give Ko Pha-Ngan a miss, Rich,' she said. 'Hat Rin's a long way past its sell-by date. They sell printed flyers for the full-moon parties. Ko Tao. That's where it's at.'
After an hour of walking I gave up trying to find a fisherman. The only Thais I met were selling gemstones and baseball caps. By the time I got back to my beach hut I was exhausted, sunburnt, and pissed off. I went straight to the restaurant and bought a packet of cigarettes. Then I chain-smoked in the shade of a palm tree, looking out for Étienne and Françoise, hoping they'd had better luck.

Thais, or South-East Asians in general, make eerily convincing transvestites. Their slight builds and smooth faces are a recipe for success.
I saw a particularly stunning transvestite as I waited under the palm tree. His silicone breasts were perfectly formed and he had hips to die for. The only thing to betray his gender was his gold lamé dress — a bit too showy to be worn by a Thai girl on a stroll down Chaweng.
He was carrying a backgammon set under his arm, and as he slunk past he asked if I wanted to play a game.
'No thanks,' I replied with neurotic haste.
'Why?' he wanted to know. 'I think maybe you afrai' I win.'
I nodded.
'OK. Maybe you wan' play in bed?' He tugged at the long slit up the side of his dress, revealing fabulous legs. 'Maybe in bed I le' you win...'
'No thanks,' I said again, blushing slightly.
He shrugged and continued walking along the beach. A couple of beach huts down someone took him up on the backgammon offer. Curious, I tried to see who, but they were blocked by the trunk of a leaning coconut tree. A few minutes later I looked back and he was gone. I guessed he'd found his punter.
Étienne appeared not long after, beaming.
'Hey, Richard,' he said. 'Did you see the girl walking this way?'
'With a lamé dress?'
'Yes! My God, she was so beautiful!'
'She was.'
'Anyway, Richard. Come to the restaurant.' He reached out a hand and hauled me up. 'I think we have a boat to take us into the marine park.'
The man was the Thai version of a spiv. Instead of being lean and weasel-like, with a pencil moustache and a flash suit, he was short, fat, and wore drainpipe marbled jeans tucked into giant Reebok trainers.
'Tha' can be arrange',' he said, quoting from the universal phrase book of the entrepreneur. 'Of course, yes.' He grinned and made an expansive gesture with his arms. Gold sparkled in his mouth. 'No' difficul' for me to do tha'.'
Étienne nodded. So far he'd done all the bargaining, which was fine as far as I was concerned. I don't like dealing with money transactions in poor countries. I get confused between feeling that I shouldn't haggle with poverty and hating getting ripped off.
'Actually, my frien', your gui' book is no' correc'. You can stay Ko Phelong one nigh', two nigh' — is OK. Bu' this island you can only stay one nigh'.' He took Étienne's book and laid a chubby finger on an island close to Phelong.
Étienne looked at me and winked. From my memory of Mister Duck's map, which was back in the beach hut, our island was the next one along.
'OK,' said Étienne, and lowered his voice conspiratorially, even though there was no one around to hear. 'This is the island we want to see. But we want to stay more than one night. That is possible?'
The spiv furtively looked over his shoulder at the empty tables.
'Yes,' he whispered, leaning forward, then looked around again. 'Bu' is mo' money, you un'erstan'.'
The deal was eventually struck at 1,450 baht, diligently knocked down from 2,000 by Étienne. At six the next morning we were to meet the spiv in the restaurant and he would take us to his boat. Only then would we pay him the money, a point Étienne wisely insisted upon, and he would take us to the island. Three nights later he would come back to pick us up—our contingency plan in case we got stuck there.
That left us with only a couple of problems.
If we made it to the next island along, we would be missing when the spiv came to collect us. To deal with this, Étienne invented a story about some other friends we were going to meet there, so we might come back early — no cause for alarm.
Another difficulty was how to get from the drop-off island to the beach island. We could have asked the boat to take us directly there, but not knowing exactly what we were going to find on the beach, we didn't want to blunder in on a motor boat. Anyway, as the beach island was out of bounds to tourists, we thought it better to start out from one we were allowed to stay on - if only for one night.
Étienne and Françoise seemed far less concerned about this last step of the journey than I was. They had a simple solution — we would swim. By examining Mister Duck's map and the map in their guidebook they'd decided that the islands were roughly a kilometre apart. According to them, that was a manageable distance. I wasn't so confident, remembering the diving game from the day before. The tide had pulled us a long way down Chaweng beach as we swam. If the same thing happened between the islands, the length of the swim could effectively double as we corrected and recorrected our course.
The final problem was what we would do with our bags. Again, Étienne and Françoise had worked out a solution. Apparently they'd done a lot of planning last night while I was getting stoned. Later that day, sitting in the shallows with the wash collecting sand around our feet, they explained.
'The backpacks will not be a problem, Richard,' said Françoise. 'Actually, maybe they will help us to swim.'
I raised my eyebrows. 'How's that?'
'We need some plastic bags,' said Étienne. 'If we have some plastic bags we can tie them so water does not enter. Then... they float. The air inside.'
'Uh-huh. You think it'll work?'
Étienne shrugged. 'I think it will. I saw it on television.'
'On TV?'
'It was
The A-Team
'
'
The A-Team?
Oh, that's great. We'll be fine, then.'
I lay back in the water, propping myself up on my elbows.
'I think you are very lucky to have met us, Richard,' Étienne laughed. 'I think without us you could not reach this beach.'
'Yes,' Françoise said. 'But also we are lucky to meet him.'
'Oh, of course. Without your map we could not find the beach either.'
Françoise frowned, then smiled at me. 'Étienne! We are lucky to meet him anyway.'
I smiled back, noticing as I did so that the bad mood I'd been carrying all morning had completely lifted. 'We're all lucky,' I said happily.
Étienne nodded. 'Yes. We are.'
We sat in silence for a few minutes, basking in our luckiness. Then I stood up, clapping my hands together. 'Right. Why don't we go for a long swim now? It could be a practice.'
'It is a very good idea, Richard,' Étienne replied, also standing. 'Come on, Françoise.'
She shook her head and pouted. 'I think I will stay in the sun. I shall watch you two strong men from here. I will see who can swim the furthest.'
Doubt flickered in my mind. I looked at her, trying to see if her words were as loaded as they appeared. She was watching Étienne as he made his way into the sea, giving nothing away.
'That's it, then,' I thought. 'Just wishful thinking.'
But I failed to convince myself. As I waded after Étienne, I couldn't help wondering if Françoise's eyes were now on my back. Just before the water became deep enough to swim I needed to know, and glanced behind me. She had moved up the beach to the dry sand and was lying on her front, facing the land.
Just wishful thinking after all.