The Half-Child (4 page)

She made her way on foot towards the river. Even without the added chaos of the Skytrain construction, the quickest way to her destination this time of the evening was by Chao Phraya river ferry. It was also a journey that showed
Krung Thep
—‘City of Angels' as it was known in Thai—in one of its most flattering guises. Jayne caught a local boat from the Central Pier and stood on the outer deck to take in the view. The rays of the setting sun combined with Bangkok's veil of pollution and the dry season dust to turn the muddy waters of the Chao Phraya bronze and bathe the city in a fiery glow. As the ferry traced the serpentine route north, the silhouette of Wat Arun appeared on the west bank, its spires like fingers pointing to the red sky. The temple was named after Aruna the Indian god of dawn, an item of guidebook trivia that came to mind on account of the man she was on her way to meet.

They'd met a month earlier when Jayne ventured across town to trawl Khao San Road's bookstores for second-hand crime novels. While most resident expats avoided the backpacker precinct, Jayne had a soft spot for Banglamphu, the part of town where travellers from all over the world congregated to swap stories over cheap local whisky that gave them killer hangovers and doubled as a disinfectant for their ulcerated mosquito bites and newly inked tattoos.

The largest bookshop on Khao San Road was Seema's, named for the granddaughter of the proprietor, a genial Indian man known as ‘Uncle'. The books at Seema's teetered in gravity-defying stacks taller than Jayne's 1.6 metres and filled all available floor space. The shop smelled of sandalwood, dust and the fragrant tea Uncle drank from a gold-frosted glass. Though the books appeared to be piled up randomly, he knew his stock by heart. From his perch behind the counter, he would dispatch one of his runners with instructions on how to locate a title, which they'd extract with such speed and precision that the stacks barely moved.

Uncle would write receipts by hand and place carbon copies with the purchases inside plastic bags, before returning to his perusal of nineteenth-century atlases that he liked to spread across the counter.

People shopped at Seema's for the spectacle. If she didn't have something specific in mind, scanning the stacks for crime fiction could take Jayne hours. So it was a shock to walk in and find books neatly shelved by genre in alphabetical order, the atlases and tea glass cleared to make space for a computer, and Uncle's place behind the counter usurped by a handsome young Indian man.

‘What happened?' she wondered aloud.

‘Please, not another dissatisfied customer.' He shook his head. ‘And here I was, thinking it would be helping my uncle's business to put everything in order.'

His smile showed pronounced eye teeth. A neat moustache and short pointed beard framed his mouth, and his thick lips were tinged purple.

‘Where
is
your uncle?' she asked, trying not to stare at those lips.

‘He had a heart attack about a month ago.'

‘Oh, I'm sorry to hear that.'

The man wiggled his head. ‘Happily, he is recovering, although he is still very weak. The doctor says it will not be being safe for him to return to work at this stage. My cousins were wanting to keep the bookstore open, but nobody could find anything. Uncle had a system, but he wouldn't tell anyone what it was. They asked me to step in and as you can see—' he gestured towards the shelves ‘—I have alienated my uncle's loyal customers by replacing his esoteric arrangement with a modern and efficient alternative.'

She couldn't tell whether he was being ironic or genuinely apologetic.

‘For what it's worth, I think it's an improvement.'

‘Thank you, Madam.'

‘Oh god, don't call me Madam. It's Jayne.' She handed him a business card.

‘Rajiv Patel,' the man said, exchanging it for one of his own.

Though only a month since his uncle's heart attack, Rajiv's card bore the logo of Seema's Bookshop and listed his profession as Acting Manager and Information Technology Consultant. A string of qualifications after his name suggested he was older than he looked.

‘So, Miss Jayne,' Rajiv said, nodding towards the computer, ‘how can I help you?'

‘Just Jayne, please.'

He wiggled his head again. She took it as a nod.

‘I'm after novels by Carol O'Connell,' she said, ‘an American crime writer. I've read
Mallory's Oracle
and I'd like to see if she has any others.'

Rajiv tapped at the keyboard.

‘We have one called
The Man Who Lied to Women
,' he said, looking at the computer screen. ‘Sounds ominous, isn't it?'

He issued instructions to one of Uncle's runners, and they watched as the man shuffled across to the bookshelves and pulled out the paperback.

Rajiv winked at Jayne.

‘Do you read much crime fiction?' she asked as she paid for the book.

‘I try to read a bit of everything to build my general knowledge. If what they say about a little knowledge being a dangerous thing is true, then I am becoming a very dangerous man.'

That smile again. Jayne looked once more at the letters on his business card. Rajiv Patel was becoming increasingly attractive. She decided to take a chance.

‘Would you like to have coffee with me?'

‘Yes.'

They looked at each other, both surprised.

‘Though the coffee around here is not so good,' Rajiv added.

‘And on a hot night like this, maybe cold beer would be better?' Jayne said.

‘You are reading my mind.'

Since then they'd gone on several dates. At least Jayne assumed that's what they were. She'd almost forgotten what it was like to be romanced, so much so that spending quality time in the company of a straight man whilst not getting laid messed with her sense of equilibrium.

The venue on this occasion was a floating restaurant on an old pontoon near the Phra Athit pier. Jayne disembarked from the ferry, taking care not to brush up against the orange robes of the Buddhist monks, and checked her watch. Rajiv managed to be so punctual despite the vagaries of Bangkok traffic, she could time it for a cold beer to arrive at the table just as he did.

Rajiv sighed as his mobile phone screen lit up yet again with his uncle's number. He hit the loudspeaker button.

‘Yes, Uncle.'

‘Are you already leaving the shop?'

‘Yes, Uncle.'

Rajiv slipped the phone into his shirt pocket, dragged the accordion gate across the shopfront and snapped the padlock into place.

‘Do you think you should be going back and checking that you have turned off the electricity?' his uncle's voice buzzed against his chest.

‘I have turned off the electricity, Uncle-
ji
,' Rajiv said, retrieving the mobile and speaking into it like a Dictaphone.

‘I checked.'

‘It will be very important,' the old man said. ‘My own brother's wife's father's business burned down two years ago due to a malfunction in the electrical circuitry—an accident that could have been avoided if only the master switch had been left in the off position.'

He paused to clear his throat and Rajiv acted quickly to fend off an impending lecture about the myriad misfortunes, acts of God and other catastrophes that had the potential to destroy Uncle's businesses and those run by his extended family members, friends and associates in Thailand.

‘Rest assured, Uncle, I have followed your instructions to the letter. Your reminder call is always appreciated. I will see you later. Tell Auntie not to keep dinner for me.'

He hung up before the old man could rabbit on further and headed for the river. Rajiv toyed with the idea of turning off his phone altogether, but for his relatives who prised their mobiles from their ears only to sleep at night, this would suggest he'd been robbed, kidnapped or left for dead in a gutter. Better to know who was calling and how often, so he could manage any concerns before they became catastrophes.

Rajiv supposed his relatives were like any minority, always on edge, never trusting the foreign soil beneath their feet. He supposed, too, they derived comfort from their ‘Little India' in Bangkok's Pahurat district, where the air smelled of cumin and sandalwood rather than coriander and jasmine; where you ate your curry with chapatti instead of rice; where conversations took place in Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi instead of Thai; and where, amongst the bolts of fabric, costume jewellery and kitchen implements, you could make your offerings at shrines dedicated to the elephant-headed Ganesh as well as the Lord Buddha.

For Rajiv who'd left India in search of adventure, Pahurat was a disappointment. His mother made him promise to visit his family there, and it became their sole topic of conversation each time he phoned home during his first week in Bangkok. She was glad to know he'd arrived safely but had he spoken with Auntie Priti and Uncle Sunder yet? Sightseeing was all very well, but when exactly did he plan to contact his family? Would he guarantee that by the time they next spoke he would have first-hand news of her beloved sister? Rajiv hadn't planned to let his relatives know he was in the country until the end of his trip when, after a year on the road, he might have welcomed some home cooking and familial banter. But his mother wore him down. Once he met his aunt and uncle, they invited him to stay with them in Pahurat, as they were bound to do, and he accepted their invitation, equally duty bound.

Not only did they choose to live in Little India, Rajiv's relatives felt compelled to maintain standards now considered outmoded in the Mother Country—another liability of immigrant life—making them more conservative than the extended family he'd left behind. His cousin-brothers who were not much younger than him had a curfew of ten o'clock.

His cousin-sisters seldom left Pahurat at all. And while Rajiv was told he could take responsibility for himself, on the rare occasion he stayed out late, Auntie made such a fuss about losing sleep, it hardly seemed worth it.

The bookshop was Rajiv's saving grace. Though aware that Khao San Road didn't resemble the ‘real' Bangkok any more than Little India did, working at Seema's got him out from under the family's constant surveillance, mobile phone notwithstanding, and gave him the chance to explore what kind of a man he might be in another context.

It turned out he was the kind who dated farang girls. This surprised him. Though a farang girlfriend was considered an essential accessory by most single, male traders on Khao San Road, and a good deal of the married ones, too, Rajiv wouldn't have guessed he could be such a cliché.

To be fair, his relationship with Jayne didn't really fit the norm. For one thing, most Khao San Road romances lasted about as long as it took to shop for souvenirs and arrange a minibus back to the airport. Rajiv had been seeing Jayne for several weeks and he liked her. She was unlike any girl he'd ever met. She lived on her own and did everything for herself. She didn't even have a cleaner. Rajiv had never met anyone who didn't have a cleaner. She ran her own business as a private investigator, which Rajiv was sure must be thrilling, despite what she said. Her modesty only made her more attractive.

She reminded him of ‘Fearless Nadia', née Mary Evans, a circus performer turned Bollywood film star from the nineteen-thirties and forties. Fearless Nadia performed all her own stunts—sword fighting, whip cracking, lion taming—her signature act was fighting villains on top of moving trains. And like Jayne, Fearless Nadia was born in Australia.

Rajiv's attraction to Jayne both excited and unnerved him. He'd been in love once before, and he'd had sex once before, but not at the same time. His girlfriends back home came from nice, middle-class Bangalore families like he did. They'd permit a bit of ‘Eve-teasing'—a grope, rub, pet—sometimes even under their clothes. However, they drew the line at anything that might technically constitute deflowering. They were ‘saving themselves', though not for him.

Rajiv longed for sex
and
romance, and falling in love with a foreigner—with Jayne—seemed at last to provide a means to that end. But as yet he'd been unable to take their relationship to the next level. Admittedly, they'd only been on a few dates, exchanged a chaste kiss at the end of the night. Contrary to popular wisdom, Jayne appeared happy to let things develop between them with no sign that ‘all

Western women want is to jump into the sack at the drop of a hat,' to quote his
Mama-ji
.

As much as it unnerved him, Rajiv wanted more. He wanted to spend the night with Jayne, not just have sex and leave as if she were a prostitute. That meant explaining his absence to his relatives. He might contrive to spend a day with her but the thought of making love in daylight made his heart race with anxiety, and he still faced the problem of accounting for his whereabouts. Even in a city of eleven million people, he felt trapped by the scrutiny of his family.

Rajiv was stuck in Little India when his heart's desire was to run wild in a foreign country.

He stepped down from the street on to the floating dock that housed the open-sided Ton Pho Restaurant. The interior was bright with the stark light of naked fluorescent tubes. A fly-spotted poster of a fruit bowl, an outdated Tiger Beer calendar, and faded plastic roses in vases on each table passed for decorations. He nodded in greeting to the elderly lady cooking in the veranda-style kitchen off to one side, and spotted Jayne sitting at a table by the river's edge.

She looked up as he approached. She didn't greet him with a kiss for which he was grateful, being brought up to believe it was rude to display affection in public, but there was warmth in her smile. A waitress appeared with a bottle of cold beer and a menu as he took his seat. Rajiv's Thai was basic, but he got the gist when Jayne declined the menu and deferred to the woman in the kitchen. They'd just opened a second bottle of Tiger Beer—that was another thing Rajiv had learned about himself, he liked cold beer—when the food arrived. Prawn
tom yam
soup, glass noodle salad, deep-fried snakefish with a spicy dipping sauce, stir-fried greens and steamed rice. They ate with gusto and when they pushed back their empty plates, Rajiv caught a return nod of approval from the old auntie.