No anniversary passes unnoticed or unhallowed by traditional rites and I well remember rising at five on the morning of Lisba’s fifty-fourth birthday, the streets still cool and suffused with mist, the blaring traffic almost absent, when we stood in the doorway with offerings for the priests on this occasion. On a little table were curries and rice in separate containers, tied with ribbon and adorned with purple orchids, joss sticks and homely objects such as cleaning materials in western packaging. As the saffron-robed monks glided silently through the streets, I saw that other householders with an event to commemorate also awaited them with their gifts. Our offerings were accepted without thanks for ‘ours was the privilege of giving’.
In a further birthday ceremony, monks had been invited to Chakrabongse House and entering the drawing room, sat cross-legged on a long bench, each holding a royal fan as Queen Rambai was present. In front of them was a narrow table with, at one end of it, a shrine bedecked with flowers and lighted candles, which held relics of Chakrabongse, Katya and Chula from which a long white cord was unwound and passed through the hands of each monk. When they began chanting it was strangely hypnotic, with a curious contrapuntal echoing sound, as though proceeding from regions far removed from earthly desires and aspirations.
After the chanting, Lisba presented each monk with robes and they were then served a splendid luncheon. Then, when each had received a tray of useful household objects, they all arose and their habitual detachment undisturbed, in silent dignity they departed.
Later that day, Lisba was brought a bowl containing 54 live fish to release into the river and 54 caged birds who, when she opened the door, soared swiftly back to freedom in the sunny sky.
Afternoon tea in the garden was delightful – like a doll’s tea party: cups and plates so frail and small, cakes so tiny, some wrapped in palm leaves, their delicate flavours intriguingly unidentifiable to a western palate. One day I paused before joining Lisba at the table, for crouching at her feet was a penitent gardener, who was being admonished for larking about the shrubbery and flinging empty bottles (disgracefully intoxicated by their contents) at another gardener. As she spoke to him in Thai, she explained this afterwards, adding that on promise of future good behaviour he had been forgiven with a caution.
Eileen and Lisba in Thailand
I had tea alone one day as Lisba had been invited to have it with Queen Sirikit, the reigning monarch’s beautiful wife. But I was joined by Bisdar, who had thought to console my solitude with a dish of fried octopus and chilli sauce which he had prepared for me himself. Although a trifle exotic for consumption in midafternoon, it was quite delicious. Nevertheless, he stayed to chat awhile and, though I had met and liked him in England, here in his native land, liking had deepened to affection for, though he and Pungpit supervised the complicated running of Chakrabongse House for Lisba and looked after it in her absence in England, it was his unaffected infectious delight in life’s pleasures – great or small – that made him so endearing.
We spent a morning at Jim Thompson’s house. He was the American who brought to profitable life the Thai silk industry, and mysteriously disappeared in 1967 in the Cameron Highlands. Lisba and Chula knew him well, used to dine there and found him a genial hospitable host. Although it now seems improbable that it will ever be known what became of him, he left as his lasting memorial, not only the thriving silk industry, but his exceptional house which, though open to the public, retains the imprint of a very personal private home.
Standing in one of the many countrified lanes on a quiet reach of the river where boats pass, piled with country produce, poled by women in traditional straw hats, the thud of looms was constant and skeins of brilliant red and purple silks hang on the balcony and reflect in the rippling water. Apparently Thompson had architectural training and assembled the house from fragments of ancient houses, fretted windows and carvings he discovered in remote parts of Thailand. The rooms are small and intimate, filled with treasures: screens, statuary, bronzes, pictures, old prints, all evidence of a refined and instinctive taste. Fresh flowers filled vases in every room and somehow the atmosphere conveyed a sense that, given up by the rest of the world, Jim Thompson’s house awaits him still and has not lost faith in his return.
One evening we attended the Winter Fair – so popular in Katya’s day, but no longer a social event where grand personages presided over stalls. Now obviously less refined, it was a bedlam of noise, jazz, drumming, a Ferris wheel, barkers shouting, groups squatting on the ground and frying food, spiralling smoke, smell of cooking oil, vanilla and everywhere the elusive spicy scent of Asia itself. Most remarkable of all were the Chinese fit-up theatres: two equally melodramatic plays being given within one hundred yards of the other, the actors screaming yet almost inaudible due to drums and cymbals throbbing and clashing below stage. Heavily padded garish costumes, mask-like make up ending at the jaw line, women crude white, black arched brows, carnation pink on cheekbones and voices never pitched below a sobbing shriek. Warriors in gold, emerald and scarlet, in weighty head-dresses topped by a single emotionally wagging feather. A blasé shirt-sleeved stage manager came on stage to lay down matting on which in dreadful throes of tongue wagging and eyeball rolling, a dying hero could more comfortably expire, the matting promptly removed when the corpse arose and exited. Clearly visible throughout were characters backstage, smoking, chewing, spitting, occasionally cuffing or kicking small boys who hung about, no less entranced than we were.
We lunched and dined out frequently: with Queen Rambai, and at several embassies. The British Embassy is a fine building with an impressive double staircase and a real punkah swishing above the dinner table. In the centre of the front courtyard sits a coal black statue of Queen Victoria. And once, when paving was being relaid to guard Her Majesty from harm, she was protected by a wooden cover. The Thai workmen on hearing the statue was that of a great queen, made two slits on a level with her eyes so that she might see out!
Although it is true that much of the old city of Bangkok, laid out by Chulalongkorn with tree-lined boulevards and rimmed with canals has been intruded upon by the West, its civilised plan defaced by huge cinemas, grotesque advertisements, modern hotels, massage parlours and the everlasting screech and grind of traffic, its original elegance still asserts itself in places as a reminder of that illustrious monarch.
The countless brilliantly glittering temples are seldom empty but full of people of all ages who make offerings, light candles, prostrate themselves or chat quietly to one another, seated gracefully on the ground. For here, the full inner life of the soul is not set apart but always present and acknowledged as though Thailand, pervaded by guardian spirits, maintains ties with her past that, like silken cords, twine and thread their way through daily life.
Other evenings we spent at home, out on the veranda, while darkness hid the glossy-leaved trees and shrubs, frogs croaked and touk-kae – a giant frilly-necked lizard – appeared, then shyly disappeared. Smaller lizards remained motionless on the walls while we listened dreamily to music played on Bisdar’s record-player, or laughed and gossiped together, as we had in our youth. I can only remember one instance during those happy, happy weeks when I felt not sadness but an intimation of sorrow. I was awaiting Lisba in the garden, my mind idling and feeling agreeably blank but, as she came towards me, it struck me like a blow that the tone of her golden skin had changed – was a bad colour – and I was afraid. In a flash I rationalised and exorcised it: she was wearing green – a sharp green that did not suit her – of course, that explained it. I put my arm around her and realised, for all her energetic and radiant vitality, how slight she was. A year later, she fell ill and two years later she was dead.