The Beach (15 page)

The music started up at eight, which was lucky, or I might have slept until midnight. Up and down the beach, four or five different sound systems blasted out, each with its own agenda. I could only hear two clearly, the ones on either side of me, but all the bass lines seemed to be vibrating through my head. Swearing and rubbing the daze out of my eyes, I jumped up and ran back down the beach to the café.
The café was now packed with people but I spotted Jed immediately. He was by the same table we'd sat at earlier. He had a bottle of beer in his hands and was looking extremely pissed off.
'Where the fuck have you been?' he said angrily, when I sat beside him. 'I've been waiting.'
'I'm sorry,' I replied. 'I fell asleep... I've had a bad day.'
'You did, huh? Well I'll just bet it wasn't a patch on mine.'
'Why, what happened? Didn't you get the rice?'
'I got the rice, Richard. Don't worry about that.'
I looked at him hard. There was a worrying note of menace in his voice. 'What then?'
'You tell me.'
'Tell you...?'
'About two Yanks.'
'Two Yanks?'
Jed took a huge gulp of beer. 'Two Yanks I heard talking about a place called Eden in the marine park.'
'...Oh shit.'
'They know you, Richard. They used your name. And they've got a map.' He squeezed his eyes shut like he was fighting to keep control of his temper. 'A fucking map, Richard! They were showing it to some Germans! And who knows who else has seen it?'
I shook my head. I was feeling dazed. '...I'd forgotten... I'd...'
'Who are they?'
'Jed, wait. You don't understand. I didn't tell them about the beach. They told me. They already knew about it.'
He put his bottle on the table with a thump.
'Who are they?'
'...Zeph and Sammy. I met them on Ko Samui.'
'Go on.'
'They were just these two guys in the hut next to mine. We spent some time together, and the night before we were going to leave for Phelong they started talking about the beach.'
'Unprompted?'
'Yes! Of course!'
'So you drew them a map.'
'No! I didn't say a thing, Jed! None of us did.'
'Then where did the map come from?'
'The next morning... I drew it and pushed it under their door...' I pulled out a cigarette and tried to light it. My hands shook badly and it took me three attempts.
'Why?'
'I was worried!'
'You just drew them the map? They didn't even ask for it!'
'I didn't know if the beach really existed. We could have been aiming at nowhere. I had to tell someone where we were going in case something went wrong.'
'What could go wrong?'
'I don't know! We didn't know anything! I just didn't want us disappearing with nobody knowing where we'd gone!'
Jed put his head in his hands. 'This could be bad, Richard.'
'We could have disappeared into the marine park and no one would have...'
He nodded slowly. 'I understand that.'
We sat in silence for several minutes, Jed staring at the table and me looking anywhere but at him. Over by the Space Invaders machine a tubby black girl with corn-rows was trying to hit the last invader. It was moving so fast it was a blur. She missed it on every pass, and just before it reached the bottom line she turned away, disgusted. The sound of talking and music was too loud for me to hear her exploding spaceship, but I saw it on her face.
Eventually, Jed lifted up his head. 'These two Yanks. Do you think they'll make the trip?'
'...They might do, Jed. I don't know them well enough.'
'Fuck.
This could be so bad.' Then suddenly he reached over and laid his hand on my forearm. 'Listen,' he said. 'Are you blaming yourself?'
I nodded.
'Don't. I'm serious. Whatever happens with these Yanks, it isn't your fault. If I'd been in your shoes I might have done the same thing.'
'How do you mean, 'whatever happens'?' I said warily.
'I mean... I mean whatever happens I don't want you to blame yourself. It's important, Richard. If you really want someone to blame, blame Daffy.' He sighed deeply. 'Or me.'
'You?'
'Me.'
I opened my mouth to ask him to explain, but he held up a hand. 'There's no point talking about it.'
'OK,' I said quietly.
'Look, we might not even have a problem. In a few weeks the Yanks will probably be flying off home and the map should go with them. Even if they stay in Thailand there's a good chance they won't bother trying to reach us. They seemed like a couple of air-heads, and the trip isn't easy.'
'I hope you're right,' I said hollowly, remembering how skilled they were at their surfer act.
'Hoping's about all we can do. That and wait...' He finished his beer. 'We've got to get the rice back to the boat tonight because I don't want to be carrying those sacks in broad daylight. Are you ready to go?'
'Yes.'
He stood up. 'Good. Then let's get to it.'
Around the back of the café was a thin passage between two beach huts, and under a tarpaulin were our rice sacks. We put them on the tarpaulin so we could drag them along the sand, and holding a corner each, set off on the long trek back to the boat.
Just after leaving Hat Rin, we had a fag break and ate a few of the boiled sweets from my bag of presents.
'I'm sorry if I flew off at you,' Jed said as I passed him the packet.
'It's all right.'
'No. I'm sorry. You didn't deserve it.'
I shrugged. I felt like I did.
'I didn't ask you why your day was so bad.'
'Oh. It's nothing... It was just Hat Rin. The place, or the people... They gave me the creeps.'
'Me too. Fucked up, isn't it?'
'Fucked up... Yeah. It is.'
'Richard?'
'Yes?'
'When we get back to the camp, don't mention this thing with the Yanks.'
'But...'
'Sal and Bugs. I don't think they'll understand.'
I looked at him but he was busy trying to get the wrapper off one of the sweets.
'...If you think that's the right thing to do.'
'Yeah. I do.'
It took us another three hours to get back to the marker. The forked stick showed up clearly in the bright moonlight, and we left the sacks beside it. Then I went to check on the boat while Jed moved the sacks off the tarpaulin and spread it across the sand. It was pitch black under the bushes but I could feel the curved prow. That was enough for me. As long as we had our means of escape, I could relax. Jed was already asleep by the time I got back to the marker. I lay beside him and looked at the stars, remembering the way I'd looked at the stars with Françoise. Somewhere amongst them was a parallel world where I'd kept the map to myself, I thought, and wished it could have been this one.

Mister Duck sat in his room on the Khao San Road. He'd pulled back one of the newspapers that covered the window and was peering down to the street. Behind him, strewn across his bed, were coloured pencils, obviously the ones he'd used to draw the map. The map was nowhere in sight so maybe he'd already tacked it to my door.
I saw that his shoulders were shaking.
'Mister Duck?' I said cautiously.
He turned, scanned the room with a puzzled frown, then spotted me through the strip of mosquito netting.
'Rich... Hi.'
'Hi. Are you all right?'
'No.' A tear rolled down his grubby cheek. 'I'm going to kill myself pretty soon. I'm feeling really bad.'
'...I'm sorry. Is there anything I can do?'
He sighed. 'Thank you, Rich. You're a good friend, but it's too late now. I've been in a Bangkok morgue for the last eleven weeks.'
'There's no one to collect you?'
'No one. The Thai police contacted the British Embassy. They found my parents in Glasgow, but they didn't want to come out to sign the release papers. They don't care about me.' Another tear trickled out. 'Their only son.'
'But that's awful.'
'And I'm going to be incinerated in another four weeks if no one signs my release papers. The Embassy won't cover the cost of returning my body.'
'You... wanted to be buried.'
'I don't mind being incinerated, but if my parents won't come to collect me then I don't want to be sent. I'd rather have my ashes left out here.' Mister Duck's voice began to crack. 'A small ceremony, nothing fancy, and my ashes scattered into the South China Seas.' Then he collapsed into uncontrollable sobbing.
I pressed my face and hands against the netting. I wished I were in the room with him. 'Hey, come on Mister Duck. It isn't so bad.'
He shook his head angrily, and through his sobbing I noticed he'd started to sing the theme song from
M*A*S*H
.
I waited until he'd finished, not knowing where to look, then said, 'You've got a good voice,' mainly because I didn't know what else to say.
He shrugged, wiping his face with his filthy T-shirt. His face ended up dirtier than it had been before. 'It's a small voice but it can carry a tune.'
'No, Mister Duck. It's a good voice... I always liked
M*A*S*H
.'
He appeared to brighten up slightly. 'So did I. The helicopters at the beginning.'
'The helicopters were great.'
'It was about Vietnam. Did you know that, Rich?'
'Korea, wasn't it?'
'Vietnam. Korea was the excuse.'
'Oh...'
Mister Duck turned back to peek between the newspapers again. He didn't seem like he was about to speak, so I asked him what he was looking at to keep the conversation going.
'Nothing,' he replied softly. 'A tuk-tuk driver asleep in his cab... A stray dog sifting through litter... You take these things for granted when you're alive, Rich, but when they're the last things you're ever going to see...' His voice began to quaver again and he bunched up his fists. '...It's time I got this over with.'
'...Killing yourself?'
'Yes,' he said. Then he said it again, more firmly. 'Yes.'
He walked briskly over to the bed, sat down, and pulled a knife from under the pillow.
'Don't, Mister Duck! Don't do it!'
'My mind's made up.'
'There's time to change your mind!'
'I won't turn back now.'
'Mister Duck!' I cried out feebly.
Too late. He'd already started to cut.
I didn't watch him die because I thought it would be disrespectful, but I checked on him five minutes later to see how he was getting on. He was still alive, jerking around on the sheets and spraying the walls. I waited another fifteen minutes before checking again, wanting to be sure. This time he was still, lying in the position I'd first found him. His torso was twisted so that his legs were off the edge of the bed — a detail I hadn't noticed previously. Maybe he'd tried to stand up just before he'd died.
'I'll sort your ashes out, Mister Duck,' I whispered through the netting. 'You don't have to worry about that.'

I woke up at the first glimmer of dawn. The sun was still under the horizon and the beach was lit with a strange blue light, both dark and bright at the same time. It was very beautiful and calm. Even the waves seemed to be breaking more quietly than usual.
I didn't wake Jed because I like being awake when other people are asleep. It makes me feel like pottering around, fixing breakfast if there's anything to be fixed, and in this case, wandering aimlessly up the shore. While I walked I looked out for pretty shells. The necklace that Bugs had made me was OK, but many of the shells were a bit drab. I got the feeling that he hadn't been too bothered to make them nice. Even Françoise's necklace, which was the best out of the three, wasn't as good as most of the others in the camp. It didn't take long before I'd worked up a collection and was having to make hard choices about which shells to discard. The prettiest I found was flecked with blue, red and green - the back of a tiny crab. I decided that this would make the centrepiece of my new necklace, and looked forward to restringing it when I got home.
I found the couple lying fast asleep on the grass verge, about two hundred metres further on from where we'd hidden the boat. It was the same couple that Jed and I had passed yesterday. My first instinct was to turn back, but curiosity stopped me. They'd chosen an oddly remote beach hut to stay in, miles from Hat Rin, and I was intrigued to see what kind of people they were. I pocketed my shells and padded across the sand towards them.
Now I had a chance to see the couple from close up, they made an ugly sight. The girl had nasty sores around her mouth and was covered in fat black mosquitoes. At least thirty or forty were clustered on her legs and arms, and when I waved my hand over them they didn't budge an inch. There were no mosquitoes on the guy. 'No surprise,' I thought, because he wouldn't have made much of a meal. Judging by his height I reckoned he should have been eleven stone, but he couldn't have weighed more than eight. His body was like an anatomical diagram. Every bone was clearly visible, as was every pitiful muscle. Beside him was a pill bottle, marked with the address of some dubious pharmacy in Surat Thani. I checked inside but it was empty.
I'd been studying the guy for a while before I noticed that his eyes were slightly open. Just little slits, easy to miss at first glance. I waited to see him blink. He didn't, or didn't seem to, so I waited to see him breathe. He didn't do that either. Then I bent down and touched his chest. He was warm enough, but the air was pretty warm too so that didn't mean anything. I pressed my hand down harder. My fingers sank deeply between his ribs and the skin moved slackly against the bone. No pulse. I started counting, carefully marking the seconds with elephants, and by the time I reached sixty I knew he was dead.
I frowned and looked around me. Apart from the silhouette of Jed and the rice sacks, the beach was completely deserted. Then I looked back at the girl. I knew she was alive because of the mosquitoes, and anyway, her chest was rising and falling.
This unsettled me. I wasn't bothered about the guy because he'd come to Thailand and messed up, so that was his look-out. But the girl was another matter entirely. As soon as her opiate slumber wore off she'd wake up to an empty beach and a corpse. I thought that would be a terrible thing to happen and, seeing as I'd been the one to find her, I felt I had some responsibility for her well-being. I lit up a cigarette and wondered how I might help.
Waking the girl up was out of the question. Even if I managed to bring her round, she'd only freak out. Then the authorities on Ko Pha-Ngan would get involved and it would be a disaster. Another option was to wake Jed up and ask his advice, but I decided against it. I knew what he'd say. He'd say it was none of our business and we should leave the couple as we found them, and I already knew I didn't want to do that.
Eventually I hit on a good idea. I would drag the guy's body away to the bushes and hide it. Then, when she woke up, she'd just think he'd gone for a walk. After a day or so she'd realize he was missing and might worry about what had happened to him, but at least she wouldn't know he was dead. By that time he would probably have been eaten by ants and beetles, and no one but me would be any the wiser.
I busied myself with the task at hand, keeping half an eye on my watch. Jed would be awake soon and then it would be time to leave.
'Jed!' I said softly.
He stirred and waved a hand over his face, like he was brushing away a fly.
'Jed! Wake up!'
'What?' he mumbled.
'We should go. It's getting light.'
He sat up and looked up at the sky. The sun was fully above the horizon. 'Shit, yeah, we should. Overslept. Sorry. Let's get cracking.'
When we were halfway between Ko Pha-Ngan and our island I told him what had happened with the corpse and how I'd dealt with it.
'Jesus fucking Christ, Richard!' he'd shouted - only because the engine was so loud. 'What the flying fuck did you do that for?'
'Well, what should I have done?'
'You should have left him there, you bloody idiot! What did it have to do with us? Nothing!'
'I knew you'd say that,' I said happily. 'I knew it.'