'I'll sort your ashes out, Mister Duck,' I whispered through the netting. 'You don't have to worry about that.'
Messed Up
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 Francoise'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.'
PRISONERS OF THE SUN
Bible-Bashing
No one was even slightly interested. A few asked 'How was it?' out of politeness, but as soon as I began to answer their eyes glazed over or their attention became diverted by something over my shoulder.
At first I found this attitude pretty frustrating – I wanted to talk at length about how fucked up Ko Pha-Ngan was – and the frustration was compounded by the unenthusiastic response I got when I handed out my little presents. Francoise took one taste of the toothpaste and spat it out, saying, 'Ugh, I did not remember the way it burns,' and Keaty said I shouldn't have bought Thai-brand batteries because they run out so fast. The only person who seemed at all grateful was Unhygienix. He went straight off for a shower after I gave him the bars, and later he gave me a glowing report on the thick lather they produced.
But my frustration only lasted while Ko Pha-Ngan was fresh in my mind, which wasn't long. Just as when I'd first arrived at the beach, my memory began to shut itself down. Steadily, quickly, so that within a week nothing much existed beyond the lagoon and its circle of protective cliffs. Nothing except the World, that is, and that had returned to its previous condition, a name to something faceless and indistinct.
My worries about Zeph and Sammy were the last things to go. As late as the fifth night I was kept awake, fretting about what plans they and the mysterious Germans might be making. But it became hard to maintain that level of worry as the days passed, and still no one had turned up. Having said that, the day after the fretful fifth night I did ask Jed whether he'd also been thinking about the Zeph and Sammy problem, and he made a see-saw motion with his hands. 'I've been thinking about it a little,' he said. 'But I think we're OK.'
'You do?' I replied, already sensing the weight of the problem lifting.
'Yeah. Those two were on the pilgrim's route. They had guidebook written all over them. If not, like I already said, we'll deal with it when it happens.' He pulled a knot of hair out of his beard. 'You know, Richard, one of these days I'm going to find one of those Lonely Planet writers and I'm going to ask him, what's so fucking lonely about the Khao San Road?'