The Beach

∨ The Beach ∧

23

Talk

Late morning, I reckoned. Only from the heat. In the darkness of the longhouse and the steady glow of the candle, there was nothing else to reveal the time.

A Buddha sat cross-legged at the foot of my bed, palms resting flat on ochre knees. An unusual Buddha, female, with a US accent, heavy breasts clearly outlined through a saffron T–shirt, and long hair tied back from her perfectly round face. Around her neck was a necklace of sea shells. Beside her incense sticks burned, sending tiny spirals of perfumed smoke up to the ceiling.

‘Finish it, Richard,’ said the Buddha, looking pointedly at the bowl I held in my hands – half a freshly cut coconut, now nearly drained of a sugary fish soup. ‘Finish all of it.’

I lifted the bowl to my mouth, and the smell of the incense mixed with the fish and the sweetness.

I put it down again. ‘I can’t, Sal.’

‘You must, Richard.’

‘I’ll throw up.’

‘Richard, you must.’

She had the American habit of frequently using one’s name. It had the strange effect of being both disarmingly familiar and unnaturally forced.

‘Honestly. I can’t.’

‘It’s good for you.’

‘I’ve finished most of it. Look.’

I held up the bowl for her to see and we stared at each other across the blood-stained sheets.

‘OK,’ she sighed. ‘I guess that’ll have to do.’ Then she folded her arms and narrowed her eyes and said, ‘Richard, we need to talk.’

♦

We were alone. Occasionally people would enter and leave but I’d never see them. I’d hear the door at the far end of the longhouse bang open and a small rectangle of light would hover in the darkness until the door swung shut.

When I reached the part about finding Mister Duck’s body, Sal looked sad. It wasn’t a strong reaction; her eyebrows flicked downwards and her lower lip tensed. I guessed she’d already heard about Duck’s death from Étienne and Françoise, so the news wasn’t as shocking as it could have been. Her reaction was pretty hard to read. It seemed more directed at me than at anything else, like she was sorry that I’d had to witness something so horrible.

Aside from that one moment, Sal made no other signs. She didn’t interrupt me, frown, smile, nod. She just sat in her lotus position, motionless, and listened. At first her blankness was disconcerting and I paused after key events to give her time to comment, but she’d only wait for me to continue. Soon I found myself slipping into a stream of consciousness, talking to her as if she were a tape recorder or a priest.

Very like a priest. I began to feel as if I was in confession, guiltily describing my panic on the plateau and trying to justify why I’d lied to the Thai police; and the silent way she absorbed these things was like absolution. I even made an obscure reference to my attraction to Françoise, just to get it off my chest. Probably too obtuse for her to pick up, but the intention was there.

The only thing I held back was that I’d given two other people directions to the island. I knew I should tell her about Zeph and Sammy, but I also thought she might be pissed off if she knew I’d spread their secret. Better to wait until I knew more about the set up and not risk rocking the boat so early on.

I also didn’t tell her about my dreams with Mister Duck, but that was different. There wasn’t any reason why I should.

♦

I punctuated the end of the story, leading right up to the point where I’d walked into the camp and collapsed, by leaning out of bed and pulling the two-hundred pack of cigarettes out of my bin-liner. Sal smiled, and the confessional atmosphere was broken, abruptly flipped back to the semi-familiarity of before.

‘Hey,’ she said, stretching out the word in her North–American drawl. ‘You sure came prepared.’

‘Mmm,’ I replied, all I could say as I sucked the candle-flame on to the tip. ‘I’m the addict’s addict.’

She laughed. ‘I see that.’

‘You want one?’

‘No thanks. I’d really better not.’

‘Giving up?’

‘Given up. You should try too, Richard. It’s easy to give up here.’

I took a few quick drags without inhaling, to burn the waxy taste out of the cigarette. ‘I’ll give up when I’m thirty or something. When I have kids.’

Sal shrugged. ‘Whatever,’ she said, smiling, then brushed a finger over each eyebrow, smoothing out the sweat. ‘Well, Richard, it sounds like you had quite an adventure getting here. In normal circumstances, new guests are brought here under supervision. Your circumstances were very unusual.’

I waited for her to elaborate but she didn’t. Instead she uncrossed her legs as if she was about to leave.

‘Uh, now can I ask you some questions, Sal?’ I said quickly.

Her eyes flicked down to her wrist. She wasn’t wearing any watch; it was a motion of pure instinct.

‘I have some things to do, Richard.’

‘Please, Sal. There’s so much I’ve got to ask you.’

‘Sure there is, but you’ll learn everything in time. There’s no particular hurry.’

‘Just a few questions.’

She crossed her legs again. ‘Five minutes.’

‘OK, uh, well first I’d just like to know something about the setup. I mean, what is this place?’

‘It’s a beach resort.’

I frowned. ‘A beach resort?’

‘A place to come for vacations.’

I frowned harder. By the look in Sal’s eyes I could see she found my expression amusing.

‘Holidays?’ I tried to say, but the word caught in my throat. It seemed so belittling. I had ambiguous feelings about the differences between tourists and travellers – the problem being that the more I travelled, the smaller the differences became. But the one difference I could still latch on to was that tourists went on holidays while travellers did something else. They travelled.

‘What did you think this place was?’ Sal asked.

‘I don’t know. I didn’t think anything really.’ I exhaled slowly. ‘But I certainly didn’t think of a beach resort.’

She waved a chubby hand in the air. ‘OK. I’m kind of teasing you, Richard. Of course this is more than a beach resort. But at the same time, it is just a beach resort. We come here to relax by a beautiful beach, but it isn’t a beach resort because we ‘re trying to get away from beach resorts. Or we ‘re trying to make a place that won’t turn into a beach resort. See?’

‘No.’

Sal shrugged. ‘You will see, Richard. It’s not so complicated.’

Actually, I did see what she meant but I didn’t want to admit it. I wanted her to describe Zeph’s island commune of free spirits. A holiday resort seemed like a poor reward for the difficulties we’d had to overcome, and a rush of bitterness ran through me as I remembered the swim and the terror of hiding on the plateau.

‘Don’t look so disappointed, Richard.’

‘No, I’m not…I’m…’

Sal reached over and squeezed my hand. ‘After a little while you’ll see that this is a wonderful place, as long as you appreciate it for what it is.’

I nodded. ‘I’m sorry, Sal. I didn’t mean to look disappointed. I’m not disappointed. I mean, this longhouse and the trees outside…It’s all amazing.’ I laughed. ‘It’s silly really. I think I was expecting an…an ideology or something. A purpose.’

I paused while I finished the cigarette. Sal made no movement to leave. ‘How about the gunmen in the dope fields?’ I asked, conscientiously tucking the dead butt back into the packet. ‘Are they anything to do with you?’

Sal shook her head.

‘They’re drug lords?’

‘I think ‘drug lords’ is a bit dramatic. I have a feeling the fields are owned by ex-fishermen from Ko Samui, but I could be wrong. They turned up a couple of years ago and pretty much took over that half of the island. We can’t go there now.’

‘How do they get around the marine-park authorities?’

‘Same as us. Keep quiet. And half of the wardens are probably in on it, so they make sure the tourist boats don’t come near.’

‘But they know you’re here.’

‘Of course, but there isn’t much they can do. It’s not like they can report us. If we got raided then they’d get raided too.’

‘So there’s no trouble between you?’

Sal’s hand flicked to the sea-shell necklace around her neck. ‘They stick to their half. We stick to ours,’ she said briskly, then suddenly stood up, patting the dust from her skirt with pointless attention. ‘Enough talk, Richard. I really do have to go now, and you’re still running a fever. You need some rest.’

I didn’t bother protesting and Sal began walking away, her T–shirt catching the candlelight a little longer than her skin and skirt.

‘One more question,’ I called after her, and she looked round. ‘The man in Bangkok. You knew him?’

‘Yes,’ she said quietly, then she began walking again.

‘Who was he?’

‘He was a friend.’

‘He lived here?’

‘He was a friend,’ she repeated.

‘But…OK, just one more question.’

Sal didn’t stop, and now only her saffron T–shirt was visible, bobbing in the darkness.

‘One more!’

‘What?’ her voice floated back. ‘Where’s the toilet?’

‘Outside, second hut along by the edge of the camp.’ The bright sliver of light through the longhouse door slid back to blackness.