Catching the Sun. Tony Parsons
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the accent from the north of England. ‘I’m at Heathrow. Just checking into my flight for Thailand. Excuse me a second,’ he said into the phone, and then he stared at me, the pale eyes wide, as if I was someone else, in some other place. ‘Seat 1K?’ he said. ‘Oh, that will be fine. The vegetarian meal, please …’ The eyes flicked away, and I noticed that there were three watches on his thick white arm, all of them set to a different time zone. ‘Sorry about this, John,’ he said into the phone, and the eyes were on me again. ‘Do you have my Gold Executive Club Number?’ A pause. I sipped my water, trying to fit the words he was saying to the place he was in. But I saw that was impossible. ‘Oh, it’s in the system already?’ he said, eyes wide with surprise. ‘Perfect. Sorry, John – the hassle of modern travel, eh? What’s that?’ A burst of mad laughter. ‘Yeah, you’re right there – at least I’m in First Class.’ He covered the phone with his hand. ‘Don’t you have anything to do?’
‘Getting you,’ I said. ‘Bringing you to the house. That’s what I’ve got to do.’
‘Where were we?’ he said into the phone, raising five fingers to say he would be right with me. ‘As I say, I’m leaving London right now and coming to Thailand. I am going to be there with my boss, Mr Farren, for forty-eight hours. And there’s a brief window of opportunity – a brief window – for a serious investor such as yourself who was smart enough to retire to Phuket with his lovely young Thai wife. A high-yield investment programme. New beachfront apartments in Hat Nai Han. You got it – just south of Hat Kata and Hat Karon. I shouldn’t really be telling you this …’
I watched him over the rim of my polystyrene cup. His pale features creased with concentration. There was a script on the table in front of him. But Jesse did not need it.
‘Phuket has one of the fastest-growing property markets in the world,’ he said, his voice lower now. ‘The cost of living is low but rental returns are high. You retired to the most prosperous province in Thailand.’ He paused dramatically. ‘When the other Asian Tigers were mewing for mercy, on Phuket you were still roaring … on Phuket you have muscles on your muscles … Phuket me love you long time … Phuket me love you too too much … Phuket your only problem this side of the grave is wealth management … on Phuket you will live forever in the lap of luxury and the gods will get down on their knees and bow before their master …’ He winked at me. ‘Listen, we’re getting ready for take-off,’ he said. ‘I am going to have to turn off my BlackBerry now. Oh, glass of champagne, please! No nuts! Do you have the extra-large sleeper suit? Look, I’ll call you when I land, John. A beer at the Sunset Bar in the Chedi? Sounds good.’
He hung up and stood up, and I saw his gaudy Muay Thai shorts. The first time we met he had told me that he came to Phuket for the martial arts, that there were serious Muay Thai training camps all over the island and any day now he was going to cut back on the Tiger beer and get back in training.
We walked up to the house together.
‘What’s it like in First Class?’ I asked him, still somehow believing that what he said on the phone had some roots in reality.
Jesse adjusted his Muay Thai shorts, and his blue eyes got a faraway look. ‘I reckon it rocks, don’t you?’ he said.
I nodded towards the house. ‘The Aussie I picked up at the airport,’ I said. ‘Baxter. He doesn’t seem very happy.’
Jesse laughed at that.
‘Farren will sort him out,’ he said.
We were on Bangla Road, the great gaudy strip of Patong, and there was a gibbon in a cowboy hat outside the bar.
‘Hello, sexy man,’ one of the girls said to Baxter – fifty-something, fifteen stone, pale and shaky from the long day – and the gibbon bared its teeth and had a good old laugh at that.
I looked up at the cracked neon sign above the bar. The gibbon in the Stetson followed my eyes. The sign said NO NAME BAR. I looked at the gibbon – the endless limbs, the dark triangle of its face, and eyes so black they seemed to carry the night inside them – and the creature examined its fingernails, massively bored. I don’t think I had ever seen a gibbon in my life before. But somehow a gibbon in a Stetson outside the No Name Bar did not look as strange as it should have.
Bangla Road was a bedlam of bars. They all played their own music, and the songs and the bars and the girls all seemed to melt into one another, and drain each other of meaning. There were bars down the side alleys, bars up a flight of stairs that you could see from the street if you craned your neck, and what looked like giant bars the size of supermarkets until you went inside and realized that the place was actually made up of countless tiny bars, all identical apart from the different songs, where girls hung on poles as if they were on a tube train, or played Connect Four at the bar with customers, or yawned on a bar stool, staring into the wintry glow of their phones.
Bangla Road had a kind of debauched innocence about it because the street was a tourist sight, and entire families from Australia or Europe wandered the strip, gawping at the chaos, soaking up the famous naughty Thailand night. But more than anything, Bangla Road was a place to do business.
‘Is this the place?’ Baxter said, staring beyond the gibbon and the girls at the dark howling interior of the bar. He turned to Farren, who had a protective arm around the Australian’s shoulders. ‘What was the name of those two girls I was with last time?’ he asked.
Farren patted Baxter reassuringly on the back.
‘Number 31 and number 63,’ Farren said. ‘Lovely girls.’
They went inside. Jesse and I stood on the street, staring at the gibbon. It had a soft brown coat with a white trim of fur around its face. I stared again at the eyes. They were totally round. Moist and black and bottomless. It hopped on a stool between the two girls and examined its fingernails.
‘Body massage?’ one of the girls said to me. ‘Hand massage?’
She touched my arm and I pulled away.
‘Why would I want my hand massaged?’ I said.
Jesse laughed. ‘Forgive my friend, ladies. He is fresh off the banana boat. You haven’t quite got the hang of it yet, have you, Tom? They don’t massage your hand or your body. They massage you with their hand or with their body.’ The gibbon chuckled at my dumb mistake. I shot it a filthy look. ‘Slip them a few extra baht and they’ll even wash behind your ears,’ Jesse said. ‘Come on.’
We went inside the bar. Farren and Baxter were talking at a table. We joined them. A round of Singha beers appeared in front of us. Farren signed the chit, not taking his eyes off the Australian.
‘I just want my money back,’ Baxter was saying, much calmer now, encouraged by Farren’s thoughtful nodding. ‘My wife says that foreigners can’t buy land in Thailand. She says it’s illegal.’
Farren took a cheque out of his back pocket and gave it to Baxter. The Aussie put on his reading glasses, peered at it in the darkness. And smiled at Farren. The two men laughed and Farren clapped him on his back.
‘Jesse,’ a girl said. She was holding a Connect Four board and despite the fact that she was dressed as a cowgirl in a mini-skirt she looked like a kid asking another kid if he fancied a game.
‘Legend has it that all these girls are grand masters of the game they call Connect Four,’ Jesse said, rising from his seat. ‘We shall see.’
A girl sprayed my bare arms with Sketolene mosquito spray.
‘What did you do that for?’ I asked, recoiling at the stink.
‘Nuts are not available,’ she said, as if that was any kind of answer.
‘Your wife is quite right,’ Farren was saying to Baxter. ‘Under Thai law, foreigners are not allowed to own land. However, foreigners can own a building, a leasehold of up to thirty years, or a unit in a registered condominium.’ He leaned back and sighed with contentment. The Singha beer in his fist was beaded with sweat. Here I am, his body