Cab!
'Night John-Boy,' said a voice. Bugs' voice, loud and firm.
' 'Night Rich,' came the immediate reply - hard to recognize, but I guessed Moshe.
I grinned at the darkness. I knew Bugs had been pissed off by the way we'd laughed at him, and knew this was his way of regaining - what? Authority or respect. And now his cue had been chucked directly back to me, the person who caused the laughter. That must have grated.
My grin widened and I let the silence hang for a few seconds, then I said, 'Night Jesse.'
Jesse passed it to Ella, who passed it to an Aussie carpenter, who passed it to one of the Yugoslavian girls, and I tuned the rest of the game out.
There was a question that needed answering, I realized as I lay awake that night and listened to the laser beams hammering on the longhouse roof. Why did Bugs get on my nerves so much? Because he really did. I hadn't even realized how much until Jed told me to admit it.
I mean, it wasn't like he'd done anything bad to me or said anything rude. In fact I barely ever talked to him. Not
talk
talked. Our exchanges were all about work, arranging the carpentry detail to knock up some new spears, passing on a message from Gregorio or Unhygienix, stuff like that.
To answer the question I made a mental list of all the things he'd done to piss me off. There'd been his stupid stoicism when he hurt his leg, the thing with the soup, his almost wacky name. He also had an irritating competitive streak. If you'd watched the sun rise over Borobudur, he'd tell you that you should have seen the sun set, or if you knew of a good place to eat in Singapore, he'd know of one better. Or if you'd caught a shark with your bare hands...
I decided to deny him the chance to talk me through his tiger-shark experience.
But anyway, these weren't big enough reasons. There had to be something else.
'Just a hunch then,' I muttered, and rolled over to go to sleep, but it didn't satisfy me as an answer.
It would have been useful if Mister Duck had dropped by that night, because I could have asked him to fill me in more about Bugs' character. Unfortunately he didn't. He was a bit like taxis in that respect. Taxis and night buses.
Seeing Red
The rain continued to pour all through that week and half the next, but in the early hours of a Thursday morning it stopped. Everyone was relieved, and no one more than the fishing details. Sitting on the seabed for one-minute bursts, occasionally spotting a fish and usually missing it, had got old pretty fast. When we woke to see that the blue skies were back, we couldn't get down to the water quick enough. Something of a killing frenzy ensued—we caught our entire quota within an hour and a half — and after that, the only thing left to kill was time.
Gregorio and Étienne swam off to the coral gardens, and Françoise and I swam back to the beach to sunbathe. We lay in silence at first, me watching how much sweat could collect in my belly button before it spilled out, and Françoise on her front, sifting sand through her fingers. A few metres away, in the shade of the trees, our catch splashed in their buckets. Considering its source, the sound was strangely soothing. It complemented the moment - the sea breeze and the sunshine — and I missed it when the fish were all dead.
Not long after the last splash Françoise sat up, twisting gracefully out of her recline so that she was kneeling with her hands on her hips and her slim brown legs tucked neatly to the side. Then she rolled the top of her swimming costume down to her waist and stretched her arms up at the blue sky. She held that pose for several seconds before relaxing again and dropping her hands into her lap.
Without thinking I sighed, and Françoise glanced at me. 'What is the matter?' she said.
I blinked. 'Nothing.'
'You sighed.'
'Oh... I was just thinking...' My mind ran through a quick list of options: the return of the sunshine, the stillness of the lagoon, the whiteness of the sand.' ...how easy it would be to stay here.'
'Ah yes.' Françoise nodded. 'To stay on the beach for ever. Very easy...'
I paused for a moment, then sat up too, spilling my sweat reservoir into the waistband of my shorts. 'Do you ever think about home, Françoise?'
'Paris?'
'Paris, family, friends... All that.'
'Uh... No, Richard. I do not.'
'Yeah. I don't either. But don't you think that's a bit strange? I mean, I've got a whole life back in England that I can hardly remember, let alone miss. I haven't telephoned or written to my parents since arriving in Thailand, and I sort of know they'll be worried about me, but I don't feel the urge to do anything about it. When I was in Ko Pha-Ngan, it didn't even cross my mind... Don't you think that's strange?'
'Parents...' Françoise frowned as if she were struggling to remember the word. 'Yes, it is strange, but...'
'When did you last contact them?'
'I do not know... It was... That road. The road we met you.'
'Khao San.'
'I called them from there...'
'Three months ago.'
'Three months... Yes...'
We both lay back down on the hot sand. I think the mention of parents was slightly disquieting and neither of us wanted to dwell on the subject.
But I did find it interesting that I wasn't the only one to experience the amnesiac effect of the beach. I wondered where the effect came from, and whether it was to do with the beach itself or the people on it. It suddenly occurred to me that I knew nothing about the past lives of my companions, except their place of origin. I'd spent countless hours talking to Keaty, and the only thing I knew about his background was that he used to go to Sunday school. But I didn't know if he had brothers or sisters, or what his parents did, or the area of London where he grew up. We might have had a thousand shared experiences that we'd never made an effort to uncover.
The only talking topic that stretched beyond the circle of cliffs was travel. That was something we talked about a lot. Even now, I can still reel off the list of countries that my friends had visited. In a way it wasn't so surprising, considering that (apart from our ages) an interest in travel was the only thing we all had in common. And actually, travel conversation was a pretty good substitute for conversation about home. You could tell plenty about someone from the places they'd chosen to visit, and which of those places were their favourites.
Unhygienix, for example, reserved his deepest affection for Kenya, which somehow suited his taciturn nature. It was easy to imagine him on safari, quietly absorbing the vastness of the landscape around him. Keaty, livelier and more prone to enthusiastic outbursts, was much more suited to Thailand. Étienne had an unfulfilled yearning to go to Bhutan, quietly good-natured fellow that he was, and Sal often talked about Ladakh - the northern province of India, laid-back in some ways and hard-edged in others. I knew my affection for the Philippines was equally as telling: a democracy on paper, apparently well-ordered, regularly subverted by irrational chaos. A place where I'd felt instantly at home.
Amongst some of the others, Greg went for gentle Southern India, Françoise went for beautiful Indonesia, Moshe went for Borneo - which I took to be connected to the jungle-like growth of his body hair - and the two Yugoslavian girls chose their own country, appropriately nationalistic and off the wall. Daffy, I didn't need to be told, would have chosen Vietnam.
Of course, I know there's an element of pop psychology about how much you can read into people's favourite travel locations. You can choose which aspects of a nation's character you want to accept or ignore. In the case of Keaty, I chose liveliness and enthusiasm because mercenary and calculating didn't fit the bill, and in the case of Françoise I ignored dictatorship and mass murder in East Timor. But nonetheless, I have faith in the principle.
'I'm going to take the catch back,' I said, standing up.
Françoise pushed herself up on to her elbows. 'Now?'
'Unhygienix might be ready.'
'He will not be ready.'
'Well, no... but I fancy a walk. You want to come?'
'Where will you go?'
'Uh, don't know. I was thinking about heading for the waterfall or into the jungle somewhere... maybe to find that pool.'
'No, I think I will stay here. Or maybe I will swim to the corals.'
'OK.'
I walked to the buckets, and as I bent to lift them I saw my face reflected in the bloody water. I paused to study myself, almost a silhouette with two bright eyes, and then I heard Françoise padding over the beach towards me. Her dark face appeared behind my shoulders and I felt her hand on my back.
'You do not want to come to the corals?'
'No.' My fingers squeezed around the handles but I didn't straighten, knowing that if I did her hand would drop. 'I'd rather go for a walk... Are you sure you don't want to come?'
'Yes.' Her red reflection shrugged. 'It is too hot to walk today.'
I didn't reply, and a couple of seconds later I heard her footsteps padding back across the sand. When I looked around she was wading into the water. I watched her until the water reached her torso, then started the walk back to camp.
Naturism
Facing in the direction of the mainland, the jungle to the left was familiar because the carpentry detail used it for their lumber. The area was criss-crossed with paths, some of which led to Jean's garden and the waterfall, some of which led down to the beach. To the right, however, the jungle was still virgin, so this was the direction I chose to explore.
The only path that led into it stopped after fifty metres. It had originally been cleared because a freshwater pool lay further along, and Sal had thought it could be converted to a larger substitute for the shower hut. The idea was abandoned when Cassie discovered that monkeys used the pool for drinking, and now the path was only used by people who, like me, were uncomfortable with the plastic-pitcher option in the toilet. Judging from the faces I'd passed on the path, I'd say that accounted for at least three-quarters of the camp. It was used commonly enough to have acquired a nickname - the Khyber Pass — and the regular tramping of our feet kept the weeds under control.
It took me half an hour to find my way to the pool, which turned out to be a slight disappointment. As I'd picked my way through the undergrowth I'd been imagining a cool glade where I could bathe whilst watching monkeys swinging in the trees. Instead I found a muddy puddle and a cloud of flies. Flies that bit, I should add. I stayed by the pool for less than a minute of constant swatting and cursing. Then I pressed on into the jungle with the sound of primate laughter ringing in my ears.
Apart from the sharp grasses that occasionally nicked my legs, the walking wasn't taxing. Weeks without shoes had hardened the soles of my feet and left them almost numb. A few days before, I'd pulled a thorn from my heel, half a centimetre long. Its base had been covered in a crust of dirt and I guessed I'd been strolling around with it for quite some time, never feeling a thing.
The hardest part about walking was that my progress was so slow, constantly detouring around thickets and bamboo clusters, and that I was never completely sure about which direction I was heading. This didn't worry me too much, because I was sure that sooner or later I'd reach the beach or the wall of cliffs. Unfortunately my confidence also meant I didn't make an effort to remember my route, so when I came across the papaya orchard, over an hour later, I didn't have a clue as to how I could ever find it again.
I call it an orchard for want of a better word. The papayas were random in size and spacing, so they hadn't been planted. Possibly the soil in that patch was particularly suitable or the limited room on the forest floor had kept them all together. Whatever - they made a wonderful sight. Much of the fruit was ripe, bright orange and as big as marrows, and the air was filled with sweetness.
I pulled one down with an easy twist of the stalk and split it open on a tree-trunk. The fluorescent flesh tasted like melon and perfume— not, perhaps, as nice as it sounds, but pretty good all the same. Then I pulled out the joint I'd rolled before leaving the camp, found a clear area to sit, and settled down to watch smoke collect beneath the papaya leaves.
After a while, monkeys began to appear. I couldn't name their species, but they were small and brown, with long tails and oddly cat-like faces. At first they kept their distance. They didn't study me or register my presence in any way, beyond giving me a wide berth. But then a mother-monkey, with a tiny baby clinging to her stomach, ambled over and took a piece of papaya from my hand. I hadn't even been holding it out to her - I'd been saving it until I finished the joint - but clearly she had other ideas. She casually helped herself, and I was too surprised to do anything but gape.
It didn't take long before another monkey followed the mother-monkey's cue. Then another, and another. Within a couple of minutes the papaya was being pulled out of my hands as quickly as I could tear it from the fruit. My body was covered in sticky juice, my eyes were watering because I didn't have time to pull the joint from my lips, and little black fingers were pawing at me from all directions. Eventually all of them managed to get a chunk, and I was left sitting cross-legged in a sea of munching monkeys. I felt like David Attenborough.
It was the distinctive sound of falling water that finally led me out of the jungle. I heard it fifteen minutes after leaving the orchard, and then it was just a matter of zoning in on the noise.
I came out by the carved tree and immediately dived into the waterfall pool, keen to wash the sweat and papaya juice off my body. It was only when I came up that I realized I wasn't alone. Sal and Bugs were kissing, naked, in the penumbra of the spray.
'Damn,' I thought, and was about to discreetly swim back to the bank when Sal noticed me.
'Richard?'
'Hi, Sal. Sorry. I didn't see you there.'
Bugs looked at me and smirked. It seemed to me that he was saying my apology was prurient. Gauche, next to his relaxed but frank sexuality. The prick. I held his gaze, and the smile twisted into an inane sneer, the expression he should have started with.
'Don't be silly, Richard,' Sal said, detaching herself from Bugs' embrace. 'Where have you come from?'
'I went for a walk down the Khyber Pass and found a bunch of papaya trees, then ended up here.'
'Papayas? How many?'
' Oh, loads.'
'You should tell Jean, Richard. He's always interested in that sort of thing.'
I shrugged. 'Yeah, the problem is, I doubt I could find them again. It's hard to keep your bearings in there.'
Bugs revived the sneer. 'It takes practice.'
'Practice with a compass.'
Smirk. 'I spend so much time in the trees, I suppose I've got an instinct... almost animal, man...' He pushed his wet hair back with both hands. 'Maybe I'll find them tomorrow.'
'Uh-huh. Good luck.' I turned to go, adding, 'Don't get lost,' quietly.
I ducked under and swam back to the shore, surfacing only when the water was too shallow to cover me. But I hadn't escaped quite yet.
'Richard,' Sal called, as I hauled myself out. 'Hang on.'
I looked round.
'Are you heading back to the camp?'
'I was going to.'
'Well... wait.' She began to swim over, looking slightly like a turtle with her chin jutting up clear of the water. I waited until she reached me.
'Will you walk with me to the garden? I've got to go down there and Bugs has to go to the longhouse. I'd like some company, and we haven't talked for a while.'
I nodded. 'OK, sure.'
'Good.'
She smiled and went to get her clothes.