A Woman of Bangkok (48 page)

For of course she’d never stick it out for the rest of her life, living in a hut in the forest, surrounded by lepers, and thirty miles from the nearest dance-hall. Even if Dan provided a car, as no doubt he would.

Once, before she’d ever met Dan, describing the only sort of man she could possibly love, she’d described
him
. A man who respected her for what she was, a man who wasn’t forever importuning her to leap into the nearest bed with him …

But no, I refused to believe that Dan was her man. That twerp! One day in the not too distant future he’d wake up to find her hut empty. No doubt he’d worry himself sick about her fate then, just as I’d worried myself sick about it during the last week. But that would be his grief, not mine. This night she was safe. For the next few weeks, while the memory of her was still sore, I could console myself with that thought. ‘She’s safe. There’s no need to worry about her right now. Maybe she’s even profiting from her life in the jungle with Dan—not merely as his business manager.’

Meanwhile, gradually the poignancy of the memory of her would decrease. New scenes, new interests, new experiences, would pile up in the forefront of my mind. Steadily they’d push her backwards into the shadows. Of course, I’d never entirely forget her, any more than I’d entirely forgotten Sheila. Once in a while I’d jerk up in my bed in dismay: ‘But what on earth happened to her in the end?’ It would be a passing shock, though. I’d fall back on my pillows again. ‘For that matter, what happened to Lena? To the girls in Denny’s car? To Ratom? To the air hostess at Karachi?’

At six the next evening all the Thais on the office staff—the three girls, Somboon, and Windmill, who has returned from the Northeast only that afternoon—entertain me at a farewell feast. They invite Frost too. They ask me where I’d like to go, and I choose a place as far as possible away from any of Vilai’s old haunts—the Happy Bar just outside Lumphini Park. We sit on the terrace enjoying the little gusts of cool air that come off the lotus-filled canal. The food is first-class—raw pork with toasted peanuts, my favourite horse piss eggs, beef cooked in oyster oil, a tongue-skinning prawn salad, frogs’ legs, and chicken fried with mint, garlic and chilli—and as I haven’t eaten a square meal for many days I pitch in with relish. Not much is said about the reasons for my departure, but what is said is good for me to hear. Windmill is spokesman. ‘The firm too stric’,’ he declares. ‘Every man must fall in love sometime. And when he in love he like mad. But never mind. He soon recover. No man can stay in love more than a few weeks. Before you meet that girl, you work very good. And I think in about one month more, you can work very good again. Mr. Samjohn should give you holiday one month—that plenty. But he silly to send you home.’ He chewed a lump of raw pork. ‘I think one thing very important about you—all the Thai people like you—’

‘—Especially Verchai,’ shouts Somboon, already a little drunk.

Emphatic protest from Verchai, whom all present know to be an intense admirer of Frost. Cheers and hearty endorsement from all the rest of us, including Frost.

‘Well, I don’t want to make a speech,’ Windmill goes on, but as this is the phrase with which he always
does
begin one, he is hooted down and two more bottles of beer are ordered.

They all go to the airfield to see me off. Frost drives the Riley, with Windmill and Somboon in front, and the three girls and me in the rear. At the airport we have more drinks and sweetmeats. Verchai, as the office’s leading lady, presents me with a very handsome fountain pen. ‘We want to give you lighter and cigarette case,’ she says, ‘but you no smoke. So we give you this. You like?’ I only nod in reply. I am still feeling weak and emotional—disgracefully close to tears …

We leave the formalities to the last minute and arrive at the barrier only just in time. I shake hands with the men and cheered on by them kiss Verchai and the taller of the other two girls—but the third shyly eludes me and gives me a Thai salute instead. Then I shake hands with Windmill and Somboon again and turn away, a lump in my throat. Frost strikes up ‘For heez’ and the whole damn’ posse of them join in ‘a jolly good fell-low …’ Now my eyes are stinging. I swing back and give Windmill a belt on his fat paunch, make another playful feint at the shy girl. And then, to the relief of the ticket-inspector, I stumble past him …

The last time I was here I was on my way to Chiengmai with Vilai, for our moneymoon …

I walk with the rest of the damned across the sward to our tumbril that is glinting silver in the moonlight. The refined accents of the air hostess make my own language sound foreign after months of hearing it mangled in less precious ways. She leads me to my seat and I strap myself in like a baby in his pram. The door slams shut; the red light comes on; the plane begins to tremble slightly as one after another the engineers are started up. And then we begin to trundle through blackness to the end of the runway. There they will rev up each engine in turn, then all four engines in concert. And the next time the engines roar, it will be for the take-off. We’ll hurtle across the field, lift, dip, lift with more assurance, and then go rumbling up into the utter blackness between the invisible earth and the pinpoint stars …

About The Author

Jack Reynolds was born Emrys Reynolds Jones on 19 June 1913 in Hertfordshire in the south of England, the son of a non-conformist minister. Later at school in north London, he became known as Jack Jones, which is Cockney rhyming slang for a loner. His father wanted him to follow in his footsteps into the church but he rebelled and led a wandering life moving from job to job as a fish trimmer on a North Sea trawler, a sampler in a Lincolnshire sugar beet factory, a monumental mason and market gardener. To relieve the tedium of low paid jobs he was also a speedway racer, chancing his arm for one of the north London teams, and he wrote some fine poems, in 1937 aged only twenty four publishing a book of his own poetry. The parallels with Reginald Ernest Joyce, the anti-hero of his novel, are very apparent.

At the beginning of the Second World War Jack registered as a conscientious objector and was excused war service on condition he work on the land in food production or relief work with the Friends Ambulance Unit. Continuing as a market gardener, in March 1944 he joined the FAU, training as a medic, driver and mechanic and on 3rd September 1945, the day after the Japanese surrender, he sailed for China. There he spent almost six years with the FAU, distributing medical supplies over vast distances in appalling conditions. He survived a near fatal bout of typhus fever, plunged sixty feet into a ravine when his truck ran off the road and was captured and beaten by bandits. As the FAU’s West China Director based in Chungking he led a team of western and Chinese workers, in 1950 opening a clinic to serve the local population. During this time he was constantly active as a writer, producing blog-like articles for the weekly FAU newsletter, a hoard of which has recently been unearthed in archives in London and Philadelphia. His experiences in China inspired his later book,
Daughters of an Ancient Race
published in 1974, a series of stories of the hard lives of the women he treated in his Chungking clinic.

Held under house arrest by the communists, he finally reached Hong Kong in June 1951 after a gruelling journey down the Yangtze river and by train. There he landed a job as a transport manager with UNICEF in Thailand and in August sailed for Bangkok. With no wish to return to England, he met and married a Catholic Thai much to his parents’ dismay and raised a family of seven children.

Travelling widely throughout Thailand for UNICEF, Jack had time on his hands to write while in seedy hotels in dusty rural towns, and so his novel was born to immediate acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic. Nonetheless, despite his prodigious and versatile talent as a writer, he failed to produce another one. He put this down to his commitment to his large family, though, as he wrote to a friend, the manuscript of a second novel was lost when it slipped from his grasp while crossing a river in a small boat. It fell into the water and was eaten by a crocodile.

When his UNICEF contract came to an end in 1959, he took a further UN contract in Jordan, accompanied by his family until the political situation there became too dangerous. Leaving Jordan in 1967, he worked for the
Bangkok Post
and other journals as writer and editor, sandwiched between further unaccompanied postings with the UN in the Far East and Africa. He finally returned to journalism in Bangkok in the Seventies and was a favourite contributor of articles on a range of local topics with a strong popular following in Thailand. His principal resource was of course a rich fund of stories from a life time of extraordinary adventures in China and his years of arduous relief work in far-flung places.

Not long before his death, he told an interviewer that he was still working on the book that would be his masterpiece and he continued dreaming of literary acclaim to the end. On his death aged 71 in Bangkok on 2nd September 1984, the
Bangkok Post
published several warm tributes to ‘Bangkok’s grand old man of letters’. Writing was Jack’s passion and he should be reassured that an author needs only one outstanding book to be remembered and celebrated, as this new edition now affirms.

About Monsoon Books

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Thai Girl

A
NDREW
H
ICKS

When travellers Ben and Emma come to blows on the idyllic Thai island of Koh Samet, it’s not long before Ben falls for Fon, a flirtatious but enigmatic beach masseuse, and is forced to come to terms with the darker side of tourism in Thailand.

As Ben parties on the beaches with travellers from around the world and experiences the raunchy nightlife of Bangkok, he is drawn deeper into the harsh reality of his island paradise. The closer he is to Fon, the sparkling Thai girl of his dreams, the more he realizes what it means to be truly poor and what drives farmers’ daughters away from their homes to sell their bodies in the bars of Bangkok.

On the surface Thai Girl is an endearing romantic adventure novel; at another level it explores some of the disturbing issues affecting a fast-developing country and its people as well as the problems associated with cross-cultural relationships. Hicks weaves a gripping and thought-provoking narrative that reaches its climax in the sultry heat of Thailand’s exotic traveller beaches. This novel is available from Monsoon Books in paperback form and as an ebook.

My Thai Girl And I