Catching the Sun. Tony Parsons
Читать онлайн книгу.
mor duu, Pirin called him – the fortune teller – was a plump old man with a fine head of white hair, and by his side was a battered briefcase that spilled out ancient books and pictures of holy men all sitting in the same position – legs crossed, hands resting lightly in the lap of their saffron robes, and nobody saying cheese for the camera.
There was a sign on the table, a drawing of the palms of a pair of hands, divided into sections. Pirin was ushered forward. Stuck to the wall behind the mor duu was a banner the size of a bed sheet, covered with drawings of elephants and warriors and peasants and gods and kings and assorted unidentified beasts. To me it looked more Hindu than Buddhist, more Indian than Thai. But what did I know? I assumed that the chequered board that was painted on the table was part of the routine. But as Pirin took his place opposite the mor duu, I saw that that was where the old men of the alley – they called it a soi, which could mean anything from a side road to a narrow little backstreet – played their games of chess. The mor duu took Pirin’s hands and stared at them as my friend gave him all his latest news and worries.
The mor duu – and maybe the all-seeing doctor is closer than fortune teller because Pirin was treating his session more like practical advice than an old girl with a crystal ball and big earrings looking into the future – read Pirin’s palms, and then flicked through one of the ancient books, now and then pointing to numbers with the tip of his heavily chewed biro. I couldn’t understand their conversation, but it sounded exactly like the meeting I had had with my accountant when he told me that my building business was finished and that I was bankrupt.
Pirin wai-ed and paid the mor duu, nodding at me as he stood up.
‘Now you,’ he said.
I laughed and shook my head, and pointed at Jesse, and said that this is the one who needs to know what the future holds, and if he is on the right path, and all that stuff, but the old seeing doctor was indicating the chair opposite him and Pirin was smiling encouragement, and Jesse was shoving me forward, and saying I should go first, as if he was scared of what he might be told, and in the end it would have seemed rude of me to refuse.
The mor duu took my right hand. I held out the left, trying to be helpful, but he shook his head and I pulled it away.
I grinned self-consciously at Jesse and Pirin as the old man rubbed the fleshy bit of my hand, where the thumb meets the palm, but they were both watching the face of the mor duu.
The tips of his fingers ran over my skin, and he poked and stroked the lines of my hand, as if they were the years of my life that remained.
I realized that I had stopped smiling.
He spoke to me in English.
‘An inch ahead is darkness,’ he told me.
I snatched my hand away and stood up and walked off, as Pirin and the old man barked at each other in Thai, something about money. Jesse came after me, but he was limping from the fight and I broke into a run and I did not stop until I found the soi by the stadium where I had left the bike. I shot past Jesse on the Royal Enfield, and he called out something but it was lost in the noise of my leaving.
I never rode faster in Phuket than I did that night. The roads, and the number of crashes, always frightened me, even during the dry weather, and I more or less attempted to stay within the speed limit at all times, and more or less on the correct side of the road.
But that night my heart was pounding with dread, and I flew home as fast as I could, up the long road out of Phuket City and past the wobbling flocks of drunken tourists who rule the beaches of the west, and then still further north, the fat farang and their burned faces and skinny girls way behind me now, up into the lush green far north of rubber plantations that were blacker than the night, even the green hills black, and passing through the villages that appear out of nowhere and are suddenly gone, as if you might have imagined them, and temples so big and golden and deserted that they can only be real but could be the ruins of some lost civilization, always on the lookout for dreamy locals taking a stroll and little children who stayed up very late and the odd water buffalo who had decided to sit down and take a nap in the middle of one of those dark dark roads, pushing the old Royal Enfield as hard as I could, the diesel roar mixing with the boom-boom-boom in my head, because I had to get home to my family.
The lights were all blazing. I left the bike out front and went inside, pulling off my helmet, my hair plastered down and wet, my entire body slick with sweat, and it took me a few long moments to realize that there was a row.
‘She’s being difficult,’ Tess said, standing above Keeva at the dining table. Our girl hung her head, a book open in front of her. In the corner Rory lounged in a chair, reading a handbook with some kind of rodent on the cover. He was keeping out of it.
‘She wouldn’t work today,’ Tess told me, and Keeva did not move a muscle. ‘She wouldn’t eat her dinner. So I have asked her to read and now she can’t even do that.’
‘It’s hot,’ Keeva said, looking up with narrowed, resentful eyes. ‘It’s hot all the time.’
‘Oh, do you want to lounge by the pool all day?’ Tess said. ‘Shall we rent a banana boat instead of working? Shall I get room service to send up a Knickerbocker Glory?’
Tess looked at me as if I might have something to say, or order from room service, but I shook my head.
‘I didn’t say I wanted ice cream!’ Keeva said. ‘I just said it was hot. And it is hot.’ Then the clincher. ‘I don’t like it here, okay? Is that allowed?’
‘I like it,’ Rory piped up, although nobody had asked him. ‘I like Mr and Mrs Botan. I like Mummy teaching us. And I like the island.’ He settled comfortably into his chair, turning back to his book with the rodent on the cover. ‘There’s more animals than England,’ he said.
Keeva erupted.
‘You like it because you didn’t have any friends,’ she shouted at him. ‘Only a hamster and me! Your sister and a pathetic hamster!’
‘I had friends,’ Rory said defensively. ‘Just not special ones. I was friends with everyone.’
Keeva’s face was cloudy with tears.
‘But I had Amber,’ she said, and her face crumpled at the thought of the lost friend back in London. ‘I had her. Oh, Amber, Amber, Amber!’
I was by Keeva’s side now and I touched her shoulder as lightly as I could.
‘Angel,’ I said. ‘It’s a big change and it takes some getting used to.’
She looked up at me as if I didn’t get it. ‘But I don’t want to get used to it!’ she said. ‘I miss my school. I miss London. I miss Amber.’
‘There’s Skype,’ I said, knowing how feeble I must sound to my daughter. ‘There’s email.’
‘That’s not being friends!’ Keeva said. ‘Don’t talk rubbish!’
‘Hey,’ Tess said. ‘Don’t you dare talk to your father like that.’
‘It’s okay, it’s okay,’ I said, holding up my hands.
‘No, it’s not okay,’ Tess said. She pulled out a chair and sat next to Keeva, who ignored her. ‘Look at me,’ Tess said, and Keeva looked at her. ‘Listen to me,’ Tess said, and Keeva raised her chin, her mouth set in a tight, unhappy line. Tess put her face close. ‘We are here for your father’s job,’ she said. ‘I didn’t have a daddy or a mummy, okay?’
‘Tess,’ I said. ‘Come on.’
‘No, she needs to hear this.’
‘But I know about all this!’ Keeva said quickly, anxious to head her mother off. ‘You don’t need to tell me.’
She swallowed hard and there was a silent pause where we all took a breath. We rarely talked