Twenty minutes later I was ready to get going.
'Right,' I said, sitting up. 'Let's start up the engine.'
'The engine's fucked. You can't start it. I think we might have to go back and get the Swedes to sort it out.'
'Sure I can start it. I've been on this kind of boat loads of times.'
Jed looked doubtful but gestured for me to give it a try.
I crawled into the boat and slid down to the stern end, and to my great delight I recognized the engine type. It was started like a lawnmower, by winding a rope around a flywheel and giving it a hard tug. A closer look revealed a knot at one end of the rope and a groove in the wheel for it to fit into.
'I've tried that fifty times,' Jed muttered, as I put the knot in place.
'It's in the wrist,' I replied with deliberate cheerfulness. 'You have to start slowly then snap it back.'
'Uh-huh?'
When I was ready to pull I gave the engine a last cursory check. I wasn't looking for anything in particular but I wanted to give the impression that I was, and my shallowness paid off. Almost obscured by layers of grease and dirt I noticed a small metal switch with 'on/off' written beneath it. I glanced backwards over my shoulder and discreetly flicked it to the correct setting.
'Here we go!' I shouted and gave the rope a yank. Without even a splutter the engine roared into life.
West More Land
At the point we set off, noisily chugging out from the mini-harbour in a cloud of petrol fumes, I was keen to get to Ko Pha-Ngan. Although I'd been told it was past its best, Hat Rin still had a slightly legendary reputation. Like Patpong Road or the opium treks in the Golden Triangle, I wanted to know what all the fuss was about. I was also pleased to be doing something important for the beach. I knew that Sal appreciated my volunteering for such an obviously unpopular task, and I felt like I was involved in something serious and worth while.
But an hour later, as the shape of Ko Pha-Ngan was forming on the horizon, my keenness began to be replaced by anxiety. It was the same feeling I'd had under the waterfall. I was suddenly aware that encountering the World would bring back all the things I'd been doing such a good job of forgetting. I wasn't exactly sure what those things were, because I'd forgotten them, but I was pretty convinced I didn't want to be reminded. Also, although we couldn't really talk over the noise of the engine, I sensed Jed was thinking along the same lines. He was sitting as rigidly as the choppy motion of the boat would allow, one hand gripping the tiller, keeping his eyes absolutely fixed on the island ahead.
I reached into my shorts pocket for a cigarette. I'd taken a new pack – hoping the seal would keep them waterproof – and matches. They were in the plastic film-carton that Keaty used to keep his Rizlas dry. 'This is the most precious possession I have,' he'd said before handing it over. 'Guard it with your life.' 'Count on it,' I'd replied earnestly, imagining a three-hour boat trip without nicotine.
Lighting up turned into a bit of a drama because the matches were a crappy Thai brand and they splintered if you pushed them too hard. The first three broke and the next four blew out in the wind. I'd only taken ten in the film can, and was beginning to lose my cool, when I finally managed to get the cigarette lit up. Jed lit one too, off the end of mine, then we both went back to gazing at Ko Pha-Ngan. Between the blue and the green I could now make out a strip of white sand.
To avoid thinking about the World, I started thinking about Francoise.
A few days earlier Etienne and I had been having a diving competition near the coral garden about who could make the smallest splash. When we asked her to judge it, she watched us both and then shrugged, saying, 'You are both very good.' Etienne looked surprised. 'Yes,' he said impatiently. 'But who is better?' Francoise shrugged again. 'What shall I say?' she laughed. 'Really. You are both as good as the other.' Then she gave us both a little kiss on the cheek.
Her reaction had surprised me too. The truth is, Etienne was a much better diver than I was. I knew that without a shadow of a doubt. He could do effortless backwards dives, swan-dives, jack-knifes, weird twists without a name, all sorts of things. I, however, could only manage a backwards dive with a violent jerk that usually flipped me right back on to my feet. As for who could make the smallest splash, Etienne entered the water as straight as a bamboo spear. I didn't need to see myself to know that I was more like a tree-trunk, branches and all.
So when Francoise said that we were both as good as each other, she was lying. A funny sort of lie. Not malicious, apparently diplomatic, but vaguely puzzling in a way I found hard to pin down.
'West… more… land…' I heard over the noise of the engine. Jed was calling to me, snapping me out of my day-dreaming.
I looked round and cupped my hand to my ear. 'What?' I yelled.
'I'm heading west! There's more open beach to land! Less beach huts!'
I gave him the thumbs up and turned back to the prow. While I'd been thinking about Francoise, Ko Pha-Ngan had got much closer. I could now see the trunks and leaves of the coconut trees, and the mid-day shadows beneath them.
Re-entry
A hundred or so metres from the shore, Jed cut the engine so we could paddle the rest of the way in. The idea was to look like day-trippers but we needn't have bothered. The stretch of beach we landed on was empty apart from a few beat-up old beach huts, and they looked like no one had stayed in them for quite a while.
We jumped out and waded to the sand, dragging the boat by the outrigger. 'Are we going to leave the boat here?' I asked when we were clear of the water.
'No, we'll have to hide it.' Jed pointed to the tree-line. 'Maybe up there. Go and check it out. Make sure this area is as empty as it seems.'
'OK.'
I started jogging up the beach, then slowed to a walk almost
immediately. My sense of balance still thought I was at sea and I was
swaying drunkenly from side to side. It passed quickly, but for a
couple of minutes I actually had to concentrate to keep from falling
' over.
Not far from where we'd landed I found two palms that were far enough apart to let the outrigger through and close enough together to look inconspicuous. Between them was a bush with a large canopy which would cover the boat completely, especially with the help of a few well-placed branches, and the nearest of the ramshackle beach huts was a good fifty metres away.
'Here seems fine,' I called to Jed.
'Right. Give us a hand then.'
Everything would have been much easier if there'd been a third person to help us. With the weight of the engine it took both of us to lift the stern – we had to keep the propeller up to stop it from getting damaged—so the front end kept sliding away from us. It was hard enough on the sand, but getting it over the small grass verge was a nightmare. We had to shunt it in short back-breaking bursts, none of which seemed to take us more than a foot.
'Bloody hell,' I panted, after the boat had swivelled away from the tree-line for the twentieth time. 'Is it always this hard?'
'Is what always this hard?'
'Rice Running.'
'Of course,' Jed replied, smoothing the sweat out of his beard. A stream of oily drops ran down his wrist and dripped off his elbow. 'Why do you think nobody wants to do it?'
Eventually we managed to manoeuvre the boat between the trees and under the bush. After we'd knocked up some camouflage, there was no way anyone would have spotted it unless they were going out of their way to look. We were even worried that we'd have trouble finding it again ourselves, so we marked the spot by pushing a forked stick into the sand.