Forget You Had a Daughter - Doing Time in the Bangkok Hilton (3 page)

‘Come this way.’

We follow them, walking at pace through the airport, past people checking in, past people milling around and past others

waiting for the arrival of recent flights. No one pays much atten- tion to our group.As we walk, the moment seems to be increasing into something more spectacular; the officials are walking with the confident air of men whose purpose is a great deal grander than that of airport check-in staff.We are walking way too far and not in the direction of the gates at all.

Finally we come to a door and find ourselves in a hallway with a pale green and yellow linoleum floor, smelling of disinfectant and cigarette smoke.The familiarity of the airport has gone, and we are now in a small room further away again from any terminal activity. There are more linoleum tiles on the floor. It is a seedy little space, sheathed in regularity and dirty convention; a real sense of fore- boding chokes the air.

No sooner have we stopped walking than more people descend upon us and both Robert and Ruth find themselves surrounded. The contents of their bags are quickly, and abruptly, strewn across the floor.The Thai officials look like vultures fighting over a dead carcass. Robert is suddenly barefoot.

To my left there is a large pinboard and above it a sign – Customs Seizures. On the grubby pinboard there are many large, glossy photographs, mainly of African men holding small black boards, with a number of packages containing drugs placed in front of them.

Oh my God! Oh shit, Sandra.

We are in the customs room. My heart booms; it is beating out of my chest.

None of this is making sense. Robert assured me there would be no hitches. Everything was supposed to have been cleared with customs officials; there would be no searches and no one would be caught.That’s what he had told me.That’s what I had been prom- ised.

‘I need to go to the loo,’ I blurt out. By now I really do need to go, but I also want to flush away all the evidence.

‘In a minute you go.’

They begin conducting a serious and diligent search of Robert and Ruth while I stand by the door, vacant, and a little grotesque, doing nothing at all, except staring. Slowly, I am going into shock. My eyes dart around the room. I have never really intended to smuggle heroin, and they will understand this. Of course they will. I am just a mule. I’m just carrying it – it’s not mine.

The men remove Robert’s belt; Ruth is also barefoot. No one is paying me or my bags any attention. Minutes pass and I think again about the presents I will buy for everyone at home.

‘Here,’ someone barks,‘come here.’

Robert is taken behind what looks like a hospital screen, and then quickly reappears. He makes a dark sound in his throat, which he directs at Ruth, quickly explaining that he has just been X-rayed.

Oh shit!

The word explodes in my head.They can’t X-ray me. One offi- cial shoots an occasional glance in my direction as I look at Ruth, who is shaking. I don’t know much about her. I have met her only once before and she seemed pleasant enough. Ruth is taken behind the screen. Like Robert, a few minutes earlier, she quickly reappears and I presume she has also been X-rayed. Quietly, without much fuss, the customs men begin replacing the contents of Robert and Ruth’s bags. I look at Robert. He stares blankly in my direction.

‘Come this way, please,’ says a woman I have not even noticed standing there.

My breathing gets massively heavier and I can hear myself trembling.

Be polite
, I tell myself.

‘Come here,’ the woman says again, and I am led behind the screen.The X-ray looks like a torture chamber.

‘We need to X-ray you,’ she says.

Slowly, I raise myself up onto the table, like some shapeless veg- etable. Suddenly, and enormously, I am involved in something that

has lost all sense of proportion. My head is spinning and, for an instant, I am back in my apartment staring at the black packages of heroin that Robert gave to me only hours earlier. Why have I done this? I want to throw up.

‘OK,’ says one of the men,‘you can go now.’ ‘What?’

‘You can go now.’

His words explode in my face.‘You can go now.’ I hear it again.

Oh my God!
I scream to myself.
Oh my God.

Did I hear him correctly? The heroin couldn’t have shown up. I am bursting with relief. Nothing has shown up.

Christ, I’ve made it.

Was it right that they didn’t see it? I don’t know, and I don’t care. Immediately I feel guilty but stay quiet. Back in the customs search room, Robert, his face cold-set like a statue, and Ruth, more animated than before, are kicking up a fuss about how they have missed their plane and doesn’t anyone realise how inconven- ient all this is?

The customs men assure us the plane is waiting; the pilot has been told to wait. Robert and Ruth continue…

‘Don’t you realise we are British citizens?’

Shut up, Robert, you prat
, I think to myself.

We move quickly from the room while Robert and Ruth quietly mumble to each other. At the bureau de change we pick up some Japanese currency and are joined by a woman from the airport authority who begins talking, via a walkie-talkie, to the pilot on the plane.We have made it.

Our escort points to the toilet
30
metres away from where we

are standing, and asks if we still need to go. I look up. If I really want I can get rid of this stuff, I can flush it all down the toilet and there will be no more worries. But what is the point? I have made it this far. I have earned £
1
,
000
.

‘No, it doesn’t matter,’ I say to her.‘I’ll go on the plane.’

She smiles; then, through the walkie-talkie, reassures the pilot we

are almost there and I can hear the sound of the plane’s engines gunning.Robert and Ruth walk ahead.Time to gather my thoughts. Then I hear the sound of rushing footsteps behind me and sud- denly someone grabs my shoulder while another hand grabs vigorously at the handle of my brown leather bag. I look around in

a panic, complaining, half-heartedly, that he is making a mistake. ‘What’s all this about?’ I ask, looking for Robert.

‘I don’t know,’ replies the woman with the walkie-talkie, sound- ing a little upset.‘I’m very sorry. I think they want you to go back.’ They march me briskly back to the customs room and the offi- cial who appeared to be in charge, who had been waiting for

Robert at the check-in counter, looks straight at me.

‘We know you are trying to leave my country with heroin.’

The man looks up at one of the walls where an X-ray has been attached to a light box. I know instantly that the X-ray belongs to me. I shake my head. I take a step backwards and my heart sinks. Transparent, endlessly relevant and guilty, it is a picture of my lower abdomen. He points and I look up.There are four packages containing heroin and they are identical – it is the heroin Robert brought to my apartment. Robert, his face a mask of beetroot anger, and a panicked Ruth are hauled into the room and Robert is screaming the place down.

‘I’ve got a plane to catch,’ he snarls. ‘What the hell’s going on?

It’s disgraceful.’ His voice is fighting, almost in pain. Can’t he see? Can’t he see the X-ray on the wall?

‘Count the packages, Robert, and you’ll see why they’re making all this fuss.’ My head is spinning around the room, and all I can hear are the shouts from the customs men. My body feels like it has been wedged under something heavy, something unpleas- ant. I look at Robert, and point at the evidence on the wall.

‘Robert,’ I whisper, almost crying,‘they know.They
know
.’

When Robert sees the X-ray his face buckles, and he turns away from me.

‘I don’t know this woman,’ he shouts.‘What’s going on? I don’t

know her.This is disgraceful.Will someone please tell me why I am here?’

I stare at Robert.What did he just say?
What did he just say?

My God! No, Robert, you can’t say that. Please, don’t say that, it’s not true.

My heart pounds almost to the point where it might explode

inside me. I feel tired, like an old woman who is suddenly lost and confused. For a while I just stare at the X-ray.The customs men are still screaming in Thai. One of them looks at me and puts two fingers to his temple.

‘Boom, in Thai, you die.’

I can see my pitiful reflection in the gold rim of his sunglasses. ‘You bad.You heroin.You die. Ha ha.’

‘Robert, tell them the truth.You’ve got to tell them.’

He is cuffed behind his back, shackled at the ankles and led away.As he is taken out the door, one of the customs men turns to one side, jumps high into the air and kicks him in the small of his back. As he shuffles screaming down the hallway, in chains, over and over I hear the sound of kicking. Ruth is led away to another room.

The officials leave me in the search room with an officer who tells me to sit down while a set of heavy handcuffs is brought out for me.This is no dream, and no amount of dreaming will take this away.

My God, Sandra, what have you done, what have you done?

Emotionally I shrink to my childhood self.

The customs man is laughing; the acoustics of the room echo. ‘Boom,’ he says,‘in Thai, you die.’

I don’t cry. I am in such a state of shock that I am just numb and I sit there quietly, staring.

The man, his fingers at his temples, repeats himself again. ‘Boom, in Thai, you die.’

I wonder if it will hurt.

two

Class Act

School Report,
1978

Sandra’s unfortunate desire to always have the last word will, I fear, lead her into trouble for some time yet…

Swadelands School, Lenham

I close my eyes.We are together, my brother and I, riding on bicy- cles next to our house and there is a cartoon sticker on the red frame of mine. It is warm and breezy, the summer of
1971
and I am happy for sure. Moments earlier – or moments later, I can’t quite recall – we are whizzing around the cul-de-sac street and in the distance I can hear the distinct sounds of family. It might be our family or it might be someone else’s, I don’t know, but the sounds retain that shiny-haired, clear-eyed warmth of a relationship from years gone by, that somehow seems missing now.

Here I am again, Sandra Mary Gregory, two years old, with curly, yellow hair, and a crinkle in my eyes. I am wearing my new, pink nightgown and gazing at the camera as if it might whisk me away somewhere magical. Beside me again is my brother, ordinary yet sparkling; he is five years older than me, though sometimes it seems like a lifetime.

I picture another scene, this time with John, my first and best friend for a decade of my early life; he is giving me a piggyback ride on the grass. As recollections go they are nothing much, just little snapshots of childhood, but they are precious and my memory

is littered with them. In yet another I am
12
years old, riding across the grass on Goldie, my beautiful pony. For years I imagined him as mine, something special, not a riding-school pony at all. I was a distant child, caught up in my own little dreams, some happy, some sad, and others mostly selfish.At
12
I wanted everything.

I was born on
30
May
1965
, in a place called Minchinhampton, Gloucestershire, but grew up in Hollingbourne, five miles outside Maidstone in Kent, after my parents moved there when I was six months old. Hollingbourne looks as quaint as the name might suggest; it is quintessential Middle England and everywhere there is a nascent image of well-bred people imagining themselves as humble folk of the soil. The people who lived there spent their time making jams and pies, while swapping recipes with neigh- bours, and attending the village fete. Everyone took great pride in their gardens. Perhaps the most memorable aspect of Hollingbourne is Eyehorn House, where a famous poltergeist has, for years, wreaked havoc upon its residents.

Typically, it was a middle-class upbringing, although both my parents, Stan and Doreen Gregory, grew up in working class dis- tricts of Stockport and Dundee, respectively.They met in London and married there soon after meeting, breaking the hearts of my maternal grandparents with the knowledge that their daughter had been stolen, by an Englishman no less, from them and, of course, Scotland. My mum was concussed with love while com- pleting her nursing training.

Hollingbourne really was the most wonderful place to be young. John and my brother and myself built fantastic tree houses and dens, and we roamed the vast expanse of open fields and splashed around in rivers and streams. I attended Hollingbourne Primary School, a wonderful little place, which never had more

than around
70
pupils.

When I was aged four my mum took me to ballet lessons at the local village hall, but even then the quiescent life of running around in a pink tutu didn’t suit my nature at all.

‘She runs like a baby elephant,’ the teacher told my mum,‘and will not pirouette. She’s also a little
boisterous
.’

It was true. I possessed none of the delicate co-ordination that my classmates displayed, preferring, instead, to thrash around wildly when instructed to point my toes. My mum tells me she was slightly shocked by the teacher’s stinging comments, and asked whether it was worth bringing me back to the class.

‘No, it probably isn’t,’ replied the teacher before turning her nose away. I doubt I mourned very long.

Thinking back I know my mum thoroughly enjoyed her daughter, but I suspect she always carried with her the weight of fear and loss that comes with something coveted. My litany of betrayals was not too far off. She was a family planning nurse who really was the most liberal of mums and whatever I wanted to do she always seemed to find a way. Feigned little tantrums would see to it that she sometimes skipped work, opting instead to spend an evening with me, regaling me with stories of fairies in blue dresses. She was good for tales.

I hated school from my first day and could never seem to engage in learning, nor adapt to being told what to do, whether this involved running, singing, dancing or reciting silly numbers. It was nothing to do with school itself, or my parents, but it had everything to do with me.