The Dying Beach (33 page)

She checked her watch. Nine forty-five. She tried Rajiv's number, only to be diverted to his voicemail. He was probably spending the night with his relatives in Pahurat, Bangkok's Little India. She imagined the scene: Rajiv sitting around with the aunties, uncles and cousin-brothers, Jayne's name flashing on the screen of his mobile phone, a family member asking, ‘Who is it will be calling at this time of night?' as Rajiv let it ring out. She considered his excuse. Not a number he recognised. An anxious client who could wait until tomorrow…

Rajiv couldn't be more enthusiastic about formalising their PI business, but she worried the novelty of the work would wear off, that he'd find it less thrilling and more taxing as time went on. And while it suited her that Rajiv wanted to keep their relationship a secret—she'd had her fill of extended family during her brief engagement—she wondered now if she should make more of a fuss. Start making longer term plans.

She tossed the phone on the bed. Since when did she care about long-term plans?

She draped her clothes over the back of a chair, wrapped herself in a sarong and made her way to the bathroom. She used the toilet and brushed her teeth, rinsing her mouth with tap water in defiance of the guidebook.

The cleaner had left the shower curtain down. Jayne pulled it back and froze. Coiled on the tiled floor of the shower recess was a cobra. The sudden movement of the curtain made it rear up and hiss, its hood flared. Jayne admired its terrible beauty in the split second before the terror set in.

Her body went rigid though her stomach churned with fear. The snake seemed not to have noticed her, its focus on the shower curtain bunched up against the far wall and still moving.

Jayne's mind raced. She tried to recall what Rajiv had told her at the Krabi Snake Farm. Cobras could lunge a distance equivalent to only one-third of their body length. Shit, that did her no good. She was useless at maths. A wave of panic rose in her chest and she feared she might throw up or pass out, either of which could get her killed.

No sudden movements
. She remembered that much. If she stayed still for long enough, perhaps the cobra would lose interest and lie down again and she could make a run for it.

No, running necessitated sudden movement and that was to be avoided at all costs. Jayne felt tears on her cheeks though she wasn't conscious of crying. The cobra was still staring at the shower curtain, which wavered in a breeze generated by the ceiling fan in the room next door.

Jayne took a deep breath, tried to think clearly. Rajiv said cobras could be so distracted by peripheral movement, they didn't notice the snake catcher looming over them. If this cobra continued to fixate on the shower curtain, she might be able to back away unnoticed. Either that or the movement would alert the snake to her presence.

She had no choice. Whether she stayed put or tried to escape, she risked death. Better to die trying to save her life than lose it without a struggle.

Eyes on the cobra, Jayne inched her way backwards to the door. Her skin crawled with goosebumps despite the heat, and her heart pounded. Her breath came in gasps as if she'd been running, though she'd never moved so slowly in her life. She remembered what Rajiv said about snakes having poor hearing, reassured her loud panting was unlikely to blow her cover.

Her foot hit the ridge where the bathroom tiles finished and the concrete floor of the bedroom began. She faltered, froze again. The cobra wavered like a vibrating string and turned its head towards her.

Their eyes locked. Seconds felt like hours as they faced off, neither of them moving, Jayne willing the cobra to let her go.

The snake's hood deflated as it spiralled back down to the tiled floor of the shower recess. No longer poised to strike, its head rested on the ground, eyes facing in Jayne's direction.

The cobra will not be attacking a human unless it feels
threatened.
Rajiv's words came to her in their distinctive syntax. If Jayne backed off now, the cobra might rear up again but not attack, as she'd only be getting out of its way. And to the best of her calculations, she'd put enough distance between them to avoid being bitten if it did strike.

With a sharp intake of breath and adrenaline-fuelled strength, Jayne sprang out of the bathroom and across the bedroom, and yanked at the door handle. Locked. Shit. Hands trembling, she cried out in frustration as she fumbled with the bolt, fighting the urge to look back over her shoulder. When at last she got it open, she shot out the door and slammed it behind her.

Her sarong came loose as she sprinted across the path to Paul's room. She held it up with one hand and pounded on his door with the other.

58

It had to be Jayne. No one else would be banging on his door at this hour.
She wants me
, Paul said to himself.
I
knew it
.

But the swagger left his step when he saw the look on her face. She was ghostly pale and when she buried it against his chest her forehead was clammy with sweat. As he put his arms around her, she started shaking so violently her knees fell out from under her.

Paul managed to catch her, although her sarong slipped off. He tried covering her up, but she didn't seem to care that he could see her naked. She put her arms around his neck and clung to him as though he'd pulled her drowning from the surf. He sat them on the bed, cradling her in his lap, their arms around each other. Her head was on his chest, and he held up the sarong awkwardly. Jayne was still shaking, though the spasms were coming in waves, followed by moments of stillness. Neither of them spoke.

At some point during a calm spell, Jayne lifted her head, put her lips to his and kissed him. Paul kissed her back, a curious, gentle question mark of a kiss. She responded with enough passion to force him down onto the bed. She straddled him at the waist, leaning into him, her kisses deep and urgent. His hands found her breasts and she groaned with what Paul took to be pleasure.

She sat up on top of him, her sarong bunched around her waist, breasts like alabaster, face like stone.

‘I—I'm sorry,' she said.

He eased himself up onto his elbows. ‘Don't be.'

‘No, I am. I'm so, so sorry.'

The shaking returned but when he tried to hold her, she slipped from his grasp and stood naked by the side of the bed. She pointed to the bathroom. ‘Ch-check it, p-please.' Her teeth were chattering.

Paul frowned. ‘I don't understand.'

‘Check the b-b-bathroom!' There was panic in her voice.

Paul raised his hands. ‘Okay, okay.' He stepped into the bathroom and looked around. ‘Nothing unusual in here.'

‘Sh-shower c-c-curtain.' She was still pointing though her body was shuddering again, her hand trembling.

Paul pulled back the shower curtain to expose the empty shower recess. He shook the towels and patted the window ledge. ‘Still nothing.' He returned to the bedroom. ‘What the hell's going on, Jayne?'

She brushed past without answering and closed the bathroom door behind her. Through the thin walls Paul heard her throwing up into the toilet.

He hovered outside the door. ‘Are you okay? Do you need help?'

‘No.'

He heard her vomit again. After a minute or so there was the sound of the toilet flushing and water in the basin.

Paul was sitting on the edge of the bed when Jayne re-emerged with damp hair, her face as white as the towel she'd wrapped around herself. She smelled of toothpaste. He offered her a glass of water. She shook her head.

‘Paul, I'm so sorry but—'

‘Stop saying you're sorry.' He took her face in his hands and held it so their eyes met. ‘Just tell me it's not my kissing that made you throw up.'

‘God, no.' She turned and kissed one of his hands but when Paul tried to put his arms around her again she pulled away. She retrieved her sarong from the floor, hitching it up under the towel and fastening it around her waist. ‘Can you lend me a T-shirt?'

He fished one from the back of a chair and held it out to her. ‘Are you going to tell me what's going on?'

She pulled the T-shirt over her head and removed the towel from underneath it. ‘We need to wake Mister Singh,' Jayne said with her back to him. ‘There's a cobra in my bathroom.'

Paul wasn't sure he heard her correctly. ‘What did you say?'

‘There's a cobra in my bathroom.'

When she turned around, there were tears in her eyes. ‘Paul, I thought I was going to die.'

59

Rajiv squatted on the landing of the fire escape outside his cousin Rohit's room and tried to call Jayne. Again her phone rang until it reached voicemail. It was only fifteen minutes since she'd tried calling him. Could she have fallen into such a deep sleep in the interim that she couldn't hear the phone?

He tried to think of other reasons she might not answer. Perhaps her battery had gone flat. But then why would she be calling him in the first place if her phone was about to die? Perhaps she'd dropped the phone and broken it. Rajiv had to rescue it once before, when she'd let it fall into a fish pond, drying it out in the sun to bring it back to life. She'd been more careful since then. But still.

He couldn't stay out on the landing much longer without arousing the suspicion of his extended family, who believed him to be taking his bath. He pressed redial and waited but the outcome was the same.

Rajiv raised his head but no stars were visible through the miasma of smog and artificial light generated by the city. Below him the deserted stalls of Pahurat market clattered with the sound of rats' claws on wood and metal.

Rajiv thought of the tall, fair Australian travelling with Jayne. He'd seen how Paul looked at her. Did Jayne harbour feelings for Paul, too? Was her desire to stay on in southern Thailand really about Pla, or was it about spending more time with Paul?

Rajiv realised he knew little of Jayne's customs and culture. Perhaps what his
Mamaji
said about Western girls was true, and they did all ‘jump in the sack at the drop of a hat', mixed metaphor notwithstanding.

But Jayne had made no effort to hide her relationship with Rajiv from Paul. If anything, she'd seemed proud to be with him. Rajiv still remembered the bewildered look on the Australian's face when it dawned on him that they were a couple. And Jayne wasn't the one who suggested Rajiv return to Bangkok without her.

A yowl drew his attention back to the deserted market. Somewhere in the shadows below him cats were mating. Or fighting. In the dark he couldn't tell.

There was nothing to be gained in speculation. Rajiv snapped his phone shut, slipped it into his pocket, and shimmied back through the window to join his family before he was missed.

60

Singh, the guesthouse manager, called the Krabi Snake Farm to send someone to catch the cobra in Jayne's room. Jayne recognised Charlie from the Cobra Show. Brandishing his snake stick like a spear and armed with an empty cotton sack, he assumed the same action-hero pout he deployed in his performance, nodding for Singh to open the door to the room and closing the door behind him. Jayne, Paul and Singh waited outside, with the night guard, whom they'd roused from his hammock.

‘I don't understand why someone doesn't just kill it,' Paul said.

‘Might be a reincarnated spirit,' Jayne explained.

‘For Thai people, you see a snake, it means money coming to you,' Singh piped up. ‘Very lucky.'

‘Yeah, very lucky not to get bitten,' Paul said. He turned to Jayne, adding in a lower voice, ‘You'd think it was a good thing one of his guests was nearly killed by a cobra. How the hell did it get inside your bathroom, anyway?'

Jayne shuddered. ‘I don't want to know.'

Paul disappeared into his room. Jayne bummed a cigarette from the night guard. Paul reappeared wearing boots and carrying a torch and went off to inspect the perimeter of the bungalow. Jayne smoked half the cigarette, put it out when Charlie emerged from her room. He held up the bag so they could see it writhing, but there was none of the cockiness he'd shown on the way in.

‘
Ngoo hao toua nee doo meuan kan kap toua thi dai hai
pheuan
,' he said to Singh.

Jayne moved as close to Charlie as she dared while keeping clear of the cotton sack. ‘What did you say, younger brother?' she asked him in Thai.

Charlie looked startled. ‘Ah…madam—' He looked to Singh for help but the older man stood frowning, with his arms folded. The night guard entwined his fingers and cracked his knuckles.

‘You just told Khun Singh that you lent this snake to a friend,' Jayne continued in Thai.

‘I—It looks like the same snake,' Charlie stammered. ‘It had a black heart shape on the back of its hood like this one.'

‘What was your friend's name?'

‘It can't be the same snake.' Charlie shook his head. ‘My friend said he needed the snake to catch rats.'

‘Do you often lend snakes to your friends?' Singh asked.

‘My friend, he knows how to handle snakes. He worked at the snake farm before.'

It was only because he still held the cobra that Jayne resisted the urge to grab Charlie by the neck of his T-shirt. She channelled her anger into her eyes and voice. ‘Your friend's name,' she growled.

‘Hey, look at this,' Paul called from behind her bungalow.

‘Can it wait?' she shot over her shoulder, still eyeballing Charlie.

‘I think you should see this,' Paul said. ‘Bring the snake guy, too.'

Jayne gestured for Charlie to walk ahead of her to where Paul was crouched by the corner of the bungalow. He pointed his torch at a blue PVC pipe that jutted out from the floor, a piece of cloth stuck in the end like the wick of a Molotov cocktail.

‘I don't think that cobra crawled into your room by accident,' Paul said.

Bile rose in Jayne's throat. She took a deep breath, put a hand on Paul's shoulder to steady herself and squatted down beside him for a closer look.