A Woman of Bangkok (30 page)

‘And a damn’ long time it took you to get here, too.’

‘Could not find hotel, darling.
Samlor
-boy not know. He take me many place not right, I must pay him sirty tic. Much trouble to me.’

‘What’s the time now?’ He could have looked at his own watch but he roughly grabbed at her wrist and she allowed him to hold it. ‘Yes, you’ve certainly done some searching all right. Must have been all over Bangkok. It’s taken you more than four hours to get here since I sent you that hundred tics. For which by the way you haven’t said thank you yet.’

He jumped up and again started tramping about. She smoked quietly for a minute, then she said, ‘If you my husband, yes, of course I come your house when you ask me, for nussing. But you not my husband—’

‘Why d’you come here then?’

‘Because last time you very good to me. Pay me well. Buy me many d’ink. I sink tonight maybe same. But you buy nussing. Not even cigalette.’

‘I’m sorry about that.’

‘And I come this hotel. Not good for me to come hotel, darling. If you not pay me what I do? I not know policeman here. But if at my house, you not pay, I call policeman, he come quick quick quick—’ She laughed.

‘He gets a cut off it too, does he?’

She had been casting her eyes around the room and now she located his discarded clothes on the towel rack. She got up and looked in his shirt pocket. Only small notes, as she’d expected. She felt his wallet in his trousers pocket and carried the garment back to the armchair and sat down again. He made an attempt to prevent her opening the wallet but it was only halfhearted. She began searching through the compartments for hundreds.

He said, ‘I’m damned if I’ll stand for this. Put that wallet back immediately.’

She laughed and lifted her legs up again. ‘I not take nussing. I just look see.’

He resorted to force and that was of course poor strategy on his part for the moment his flesh brushed against her his energy was diverted from protecting his money to other matters. He was suddenly kissing her arms and legs and any other parts he could reach and while she wriggled to keep his interest up she got the wallet opened in the right place.

‘A-a-ah …’

She stopped wriggling and he buried his face in her belly, trembling.

There were six red notes. She took the five cleanest ones and put them in her bag. He never looked up.

While his head was still pressed into her stomach she crushed out her cigarette in his perfectly empty ashtray. She looked down at the back of his neck which was a choleric red, like so many fair men’s, between the yellow hair and the whiteness of his back. Then she tapped his shoulder. ‘Come on, Wretch. Take a bass. Clean your teece. Make your-self smell good.’

He seemed to think it was unnecessary but of course he did her bidding. When he emerged from the bathroom she was already under the mosquito netting. She had taken off her dress and was in pants and bra only, smiling at him.

‘Christ, you’ve got a lovely figure, Vilai.’

‘Yours good too. Turn fan this way, darling. It so hot.’

Fundamentally one man’s love-making was exactly like another’s and that increased the dullness of it. It very seldom happened that a man was able to stimulate in her a passion commensurate with his own. Usually she pretended successfully enough that they did, with the result that her fame had gone round the world. But the groans, the head-rollings, the beating of the bed with doubled fists, were all part of routine, like a dancer’s movements in the classical dance, and if there was any emotion in them at all it was impatience.

But just occasionally some combination of circumstances would predispose her body unpredictably to be genuine in its responses. It was in these embraces that she had earned the name of Leopard, rather than in her ruthless prowlings at the Bolero. Any man who had happened to be the lucky
agent provocateur
on such an occasion was unlikely ever to forget his good fortune.

Tonight was such a night. She’d been dimly aware for some hours that it would be. The day had been one long assault on her emotions. Udom’s ridiculous loyalty to his princess: that had made her cry in the first place, had filled her heart with pride and shame and consuming but thwarted love for her son. Then seeing him hurt before her eyes. And then all Wretch’s goodness to her. Of course she didn’t let that fool her altogether; she told herself he wasn’t entirely disinterested; what man ever is when a beautiful woman is the object of his benevolence? He wanted to sleep with her again. And his attitude a few minutes ago had shown that he was hoping that in view of his helpfulness this afternoon he’d be let off paying for the privilege. Men were all the same: they thought if they put themselves out for you the slightest little bit they merited a reward. But such services were to be regarded strictly as extras, like handbags and tins of expensive cigarettes. They were no substitute for money. Usually she had difficulty in putting this point of view across, but Wretch seemed to have grasped it at once. That was another reason for her receptive state. Wretch was unutterably nice. He was short-tempered of course, but he was generous within his means, he was adoring, good-looking, clean, and humbler in his manner than most men. Chokchai came into her mind once again: this boy had the same innocence and the same unspeakable delight in pleasing. She wanted to cuddle and kiss him, as she would the pup, out of gratitude for his affection, his youth, and his beauty. So the minute he got into bed with her she put her arms round him and kissed him on the mouth. That was something she rarely did to any man. But tonight she’d known she must. And she’d already wiped her lipstick off in preparation, while he was bathing.

After she’d washed herself she put on her brassiere and tied one of his towels around her waist and lay down beside him again. He promptly rolled over and clasped her but she shook him off. ‘No. Now I slip. What time now?’

‘Nearly four.’

‘Wake me five o’clock. Must go home before light.’

‘Stay here, Vilai darling. I have the car this weekend. I can take you to the hospital—’

‘Not haff clo’es.’

‘We can send the boy. Or fetch them in the car.’

‘No, I go home.’ She took both pillows for herself and made herself comfortable. ‘Not want you tutss me, darling. It so hot.’

‘Anything you say.’ He moved away but a few seconds later his body was touching hers again, unobtrusively but annoyingly.

She lay on her side, curled up, with her back to him. Completely tired out and sexually replete she’d expected to drop asleep at once but now she lay staring into the blackness outside the dim whitish smear of the net and she knew sleep was still a long way off. Wretch wasn’t sleeping either. Every time she moved a little he made a reverent adjustment of his own body to fit hers lightly but persistently.

‘Why you not slip?’

‘Me? Good God, Vilai! Do you realize this is the first time in my twenty-seven years I’ve actually slept with a woman—I mean, just lying down peacefully beside her with my eyes closed? Do you think I’m going to waste a single precious second of such bliss in unconsciousness? This is the climax of my life, this is peace, this is what I’ve been seeking, without properly knowing it, ever since I first got impatient of my mother’s fondlings when I was around six or seven, I suppose—’

She turned on to her back. ‘Wretch, how mutss money you haff?’

That stopped the ravings. After a pause he said, ‘How much did you take? There was six hundred in the wallet, I think.’

‘I no mean that. I mean altogesser. In bank—’

He lay very quiet for a moment. Then he said, ‘Haven’t I given you enough? More than a thousand, counting in drinks, for just two—’

She tossed her body impatiently. ‘I not sink that now. I sink Udom. Wretch, I not like he at
ron-piya-ban
all by he-salf. I sink all the time he call ‘Mama, Mama’ but Mama no come. Wretch, I want go
ron-piya-ban
, stay wiss my son till he well again.’

He got up on his elbow and stared down at her face through the darkness. ‘You do?’ She could tell he was thrilled. He was certain now that she had the right maternal instincts. He felt his love for her had not been misplaced.

‘I want. But how can I do? Must pay for room. Must pay for food. Must pay for
samlor.’
She sighed, and rubbed her eyes—really, her lot was very hard and it was a wonder her tears weren’t flowing. ‘If I not go Bolero every night—’ Suddenly she grabbed his hand and pressed it to her lips in such a way that his wrist touched her cheek. For it was wet …

He said, thickly into her shoulder, ‘Vilai, Vilai.’ He was overcome with pity. Finally he lifted his head and said, ‘Sweetheart, sometimes you act the tough guy so well you bamboozle even me. But I
know
you aren’t bad, not right deep down. How could I love you if you were? And this proves it. You’re good, good, good—’

She agreed with him, but practical as always, she said, ‘How mutss you giff me?’

‘How much do you think you need?’

She’d already made a guess at what she thought would be the utmost he could manage. ‘I sink two t’ou-zand—but I know you very young boy—and young boy never haff mutss money—’ She continued to cry softly in the darkness.

Finally he spoke. ‘Vilai, if I give you a cheque for two thousand—
if
I do—do you swear you’ll forget the Bolero for a few nights and go to be with Udom at the hospital?’

‘You giff me two t’ou-zand, of course I not go Bolero. Who want to work when he haff money?’

This rejoinder was clinching, she thought, but it didn’t seem to carry Wretch as it should have done. He lay silent for a long time. Then he said doubtfully, ‘That’s more than half of what I’ve saved. If I give it to you, do you promise—’

‘I plomiss.’

‘If you cheat me, Vilai—’ He didn’t complete the threat and if he
had
done so it wouldn’t have interested her much. He hung over her for a long time, propped on one elbow, then he growled, ‘I’m a chump,’ and got off the bed. He snapped on the light and stark naked began searching for his pen and chequebook. At that moment, as she lay comfortably on the bed, he looked to her the handsomest of the two or three thousand men who had known the inmost chalice of her body …

‘I’ll date it for Monday,’ he was saying. ‘The bank’s not open tomorrow, or rather today. But if you cheat me, Vilai—’

‘Of course I not cheat you, darling. Don’t you unnerstand I in love wiss you?’

And she really was a little at that moment. Therefore she suffered without too much fretfulness the long kiss he came over to fix on her lips …

Going home by
motor-samlor
in the waxing light of dawn it was only the thought of that cheque which kept her spirits up. The ribald comments of the early pedestrians who happened to catch sight of her bare shoulders and flowing skirts were mercifully drowned by the uneven explosiveness of the engine and the rush of air past her ears but nothing could drown her thoughts. She’d been betraying Udom all night long. He’d made his school fellows think she was a princess—and a princess who’d been to America and had medical qualifications into the bargain—and now, poor little child, he was sick. Yet instead of staying by his bedside, reciprocating his loyalty, she’d been determinedly thrusting him out of her mind all night, exerting herself to entertain foreigners who cared no more for her than she for them—men who made her as low as he’d made her high. She thought of him coming round in that dingy barn of a place and wondering where he was and seeing those dreary white nurses floating around—perhaps he would think he was dead and be terrified and start to cry out for her, but no one would take any notice. He might be screaming with terror at this very moment and probably Bochang was asleep … Only she, his Mama, really knew how to look after him …

She decided to do what she’d told Wretch she would do. Go to the hospital and keep Udom company till he was discharged. Wretch had made it possible for her to do so, and she wanted to do it …

She paid the
samlor
-boy the exorbitant twenty tics he’d demanded and began pounding heavily on the corrugated iron door. Siput was always a sound sleeper.

The footsteps came unexpectedly soon. There was no reply to her shouts to hurry up. The lock was fumbled with and finally the door dragged open.

Bochang!

‘Why aren’t you at the hospital?’ she began in a fury but then she saw Bochang’s expression and she stopped. An agonizing pain opened in her heart and spread frighteningly through her breast. ‘Udom—?’ she quavered.

‘Oh, Mem, Mem,’ Bochang burst out, her voice hoarse and bewildered like a frog’s. ‘Why did you let the foreigner take our Udom to the hospital? Why did you not bring him home where we could have looked after him ourselves? Everybody knows hospitals are not to be trusted. Everybody knows that they will not trouble themselves about a little boy unless of course his family is exceedingly rich and can pay huge fees …’

Part Three

THE SLAUGHTER

‘Who rides a tiger cannot dismount’

Chinese Proverb

Eight

After she’d gone that Sunday morning I went back to bed. But I was too hungry and too stirred up to sleep.

Simultaneously I despised and admired myself. I despised myself because I’d allowed myself to be cheated so badly. What had I paid her during the previous few hours? Altogether two thousand six hundred tics. At the rates then prevailing that was fifty-four quid or one hundred and thirty US dollars. Ten weeks before, when I was still a grocer’s assistant, it would have taken me the best part of three months to earn that much. And every few minutes that thought would bring me up aghast. For what was there to show for my money? Nothing—unless you counted a single strand of her hair I’d found on the pillow. And I’d had her body twice … Ratom would have given me that much for a fiftieth of the cost. In fact I had allowed my lust and my sympathy, both riding me full-pelt, to stampede me into idiocy, and at intervals that thought would make me writhe.

But the rest of the time I had no compunction at all over what I’d done. On the contrary I was pleased with myself.