The Beach (16 page)

No one was even slightly interested. A few asked 'How was it?' out of politeness, but as soon as I began to answer their eyes glazed over or their attention became diverted by something over my shoulder.
At first I found this attitude pretty frustrating — I wanted to talk at length about how fucked up Ko Pha-Ngan was — and the frustration was compounded by the unenthusiastic response I got when I handed out my little presents. Françoise took one taste of the toothpaste and spat it out, saying, 'Ugh, I did not remember the way it burns,' and Keaty said I shouldn't have bought Thai-brand batteries because they run out so fast. The only person who seemed at all grateful was Unhygienix. He went straight off for a shower after I gave him the bars, and later he gave me a glowing report on the thick lather they produced.
But my frustration only lasted while Ko Pha-Ngan was fresh in my mind, which wasn't long. Just as when I'd first arrived at the beach, my memory began to shut itself down. Steadily, quickly, so that within a week nothing much existed beyond the lagoon and its circle of protective cliffs. Nothing except the World, that is, and that had returned to its previous condition, a name to something faceless and indistinct.
My worries about Zeph and Sammy were the last things to go. As late as the fifth night I was kept awake, fretting about what plans they and the mysterious Germans might be making. But it became hard to maintain that level of worry as the days passed, and still no one had turned up. Having said that, the day after the fretful fifth night I did ask Jed whether he'd also been thinking about the Zeph and Sammy problem, and he made a see-saw motion with his hands. 'I've been thinking about it a little,' he said. 'But I think we're OK.'
'You do?' I replied, already sensing the weight of the problem lifting.
'Yeah. Those two were on the pilgrim's route. They had guidebook written all over them. If not, like I already said, we'll deal with it when it happens.' He pulled a knot of hair out of his beard. 'You know, Richard, one of these days I'm going to find one of those Lonely Planet writers and I'm going to ask him, what's so fucking lonely about the Khao San Road?'
I smiled. 'Just before you punch his lights out, right?'
The smile was not returned.

A few weeks after the Rice Run I woke up to the noise of rain on the longhouse roof. It had rained only three or four times since I'd arrived at the beach, and those had been no more than showers. This was a tropical storm, even heavier than the one on Ko Samui.
A few of us huddled around the longhouse entrance, looking out across the clearing. The canopy ceiling was channelling the water into thick streams that shone like lasers and cut muddy holes into the earth. Keaty was standing under one of them, his top half obscured by the silver umbrella that exploded off his head. I only recognized him from his black legs and the faint sound of his laughter. Bugs was also standing outside. He had his head tilted so that one cheek was angled upwards, his arms were held slightly away from his body, and his palms were ready to catch the rain.
'Thinks he's Christ,' muttered a voice behind me. I turned around and saw Jesse, a compact New Zealander who worked on the garden detail with Keaty. Jesse was one of the people I'd never had much cause to speak to, but I'd always suspected that he'd been the one to pick up my first John-Boy cue.
I looked back at Bugs and smiled; there
was
something Christ-like about his pose. Either the pose or the beatific expression on his face, anyway.
'Know what I mean?' Jesse said.
I smiled.
'Maybe the carpentry's gone to his head,' said Cassie, who was also standing near, and we all chuckled. I would have added something but Jesse nudged me. Sal had emerged from the far end of the longhouse and was walking towards us. Gregorio was beside her, looking a little hassled.
'What's the delay?' asked Sal, as she approached.
Nobody answered her so I said, 'Delay about what?'
'Fishing, gardening, work.'
Jesse shrugged. 'Not much gardening to be done in the rain, Sal.'
'The plants can be protected, Jesse. You can rig up a shelter.'
'Plants need rain.'
'They don't need rain like this.'
Jesse shrugged again.
'And you, Richard? What will we eat with your rice if you don't go fishing?'
'I was waiting for Greg.'
'Greg's ready now.'
'Yes,' said Gregorio, and Étienne and Françoise also appeared. 'We are ready now.'
We jogged down to the beach, sliding around in the mud. I don't know why we were jogging because we were soaked within seconds, and in any case, we were going to spend the next three hours in the sea. I suppose there was a general feeling that we wanted to get the fishing done as quickly as possible.
While we jogged, I thought over the brief exchange under the longhouse entrance. I'd never mentioned the way Bugs irritated me, not even to Keaty. It hadn't seemed like a wise idea, considering his standing in the camp, and my criticisms seemed so petty. But from the way Jesse and Cassie had been talking, I began to wonder if others felt the same way. Although they hadn't said anything nasty they'd certainly been taking the piss, and until that moment it hadn't occurred to me that people took the piss out of Bugs.
The thing that most struck me was the way they'd hushed up when Sal came over. If it hadn't been for that, the joking would have seemed far less telling. As it was, I felt like I'd witnessed some kind of division — however slight — and possibly been included in it. I decided I ought to find out more about Jesse and Cassie, if only to get to know them better. I'd have asked Gregorio, but I knew I'd get a uselessly diplomatic answer. Keaty or Jed were the ones to talk to.
The sea was covered in a thick, low mist of vaporized raindrops. Under the shelter of a palm tree, we leant against our spears and shook our heads.
'This is too stupid,' said Françoise. 'We cannot kill fish if we do not see them.'
Étienne grunted his agreement. 'We cannot even see the water.'
'Yes, we use the mask,' Gregorio replied, holding it up, and I groaned.
'Is that what you normally do when it rains?'
'Of course.'
'But that means only one person can fish at a time. It's going to take for ever.'
'It will take a long time, Richard.'
'How about Moshe and the Yugoslavian girls, and the Swedes? They don't have masks.'
'They will try to catch fish but they will kill only a few... When it rains like this, we can get very hungry on the beach.'
'And if it rains for five days?' said Françoise. 'It can rain for five days, no?'
Gregorio shrugged and glanced at the sky. From the look of it, the rain wouldn't ease up for at least another twenty-four hours. 'We can get very hungry on the beach,' he repeated, and dug his spear further into the wet earth.
We lapsed into silence, each of us apparently waiting for someone else to take the first go on the mask. I wanted to stand under the palm tree all day, ignoring the enormity of the work ahead, because as soon as the work was begun we'd all be committed to finishing it.
Five minutes passed, then another five, and then Étienne slung his spear over his shoulder.
'No,' I said, sighing. 'I'll go first.'
'Are you sure, Richard? We can throw a coin.'
'You've got a coin?'
Étienne smiled. 'We can throw... the mask. Face down, I will go first.'
'I don't mind going first.'
'OK,' he said, patting my arm. 'So I shall go next.'
'OK.'
Gregorio passed me the mask and I set off for the water. 'Swim deeply and look under the boulders,' he called after me. 'The fish will be hiding.'
It was a buzz, swimming through the thick vapour. I couldn't wear the mask because the spray was too dense to let me breathe through my mouth, which meant I was constantly blinking to clear the water from my eyes. With nothing to see but a blurred foot of sea on either side of me, and each breath requiring a manageable amount of labour, I felt agreeably cocooned by a mildly dangerous world.
I stopped at the first boulder I came to. It was one of the smaller ones, sixty or so metres from the shore. We rarely used it as there was only room for one person to sit on it at a time, but seeing as I was alone it didn't make much difference. When I stood up my top half cleared the layer of mist. Étienne was standing on the sand, holding his hands like a peaked cap to ward off the rain. I waved my spear in the air and he spotted me, then turned to walk back to the tree-line.
The first thing I needed to do was to find a heavy stone so I could rest on the bottom with a decent lungful of air. I put on the mask and slipped into the water, kicking out for the sea floor. The light was dark grey, deadened by the black sky and the mist, but the visibility was good. There weren't, however, any fish to be seen, not even the clouds of tiny fry which usually wheeled around the corals.
I took my time hunting for the stone, making myself move slowly. If there were any fish around I didn't want to scare them off. Eventually I spotted one that looked the right size and weight. I'd run out of air by that time so I stuck my spear beside the stone to make it easy to find again, and rose up to the surface.
On the way back down a few milkfish appeared, coming to inspect the new arrival to their storm shelter. I settled at the bottom with the stone on my lap and waited for their curiosity to bring them
within range.
I saw the shark on my third dive. I'd just killed my first milkfish so it must have been attracted by the smell of blood. It wasn't much of a shark, about a foot longer than my leg and much the same width, but it gave me a hell of a shock. I didn't know what to do. Despite its small size it made me nervous, but I didn't want to swim back with only one fish. I'd have to explain why I gave up so soon, and it would also be embarrassing if the shark was seen later. It was probably only a baby.
I decided I'd have to resurface and hang around on the boulder, hoping it would go away. I did this and spent the next ten minutes shivering in the mist and rain, crouched down because I didn't want the others to see that I wasn't fishing. Every so often I peered underwater to check if it was still there. It always was, circling slowly near the spot where I'd been sitting, watching me — I reckoned - with its inky eyes.
A brilliant idea coincided with a blistering peal of thunder. I put my milkfish, which was still in the twitching stage of death, on the tip of my spear. Then I rolled on to my front so I could dip my head and arms into the water, and held the spear ahead of me. The shark responded at once, breaking out of its leisured pace with a crisp snap of its tail. It headed towards me at an angle that would have carried it past the boulder, but six feet away it turned abruptly and lunged at the milkfish.
Out of sheer instinct I pulled the spear back. The lunge had been so quick and threatening that my reflexes had got the better of my common sense. The shark whipped past me and vanished behind a bank of corals. It didn't reappear within ten seconds, so I pulled myself out of the water to get some air.
I swore at myself, took a few deep breaths, then dipped back in.
The next time the shark appeared it was more cautious, swimming near but showing little interest. The milkfish was dead by now and floating limply, so I tried jerking the spear to approximate life. The shark's enthusiasm revived. Again it began its angled approach, but this time I took care to tense my arms. As it lunged, I pushed. The point of the spear caught momentarily on its teeth or gums, then sunk into its mouth.
With a mighty wrench I pulled myself upwards, stupidly thinking I'd hoist the shark on to the boulder behind me, but the spear simply snapped. I looked blankly at my broken spear for a couple of seconds, then shoved myself completely off the rock.
Underwater, the greyness was already hanging with curiously static strings of blood. Close by, the shark wildly thrashed and twisted, champing at the splintered bamboo between its teeth, sometimes diving directly downwards and ramming its snout on the seabed.
Watching it, I realized I'd never killed anything as large before, or anything that fought so violently for its survival. As if to complement my thought, the shark increased the intensity of its thrashing, and became obscured behind a cloud of disturbed sand and shredded seaweed. Occasionally, like in a comic-book fight, its tail or head would appear out of the cloud before darting back inside again. The sight made me grin, and salt-water eased through the sides of my mouth. I resurfaced. I needed to spit and I needed some air. Then, with no intention of going near it while it was in that frantic state, I floated face down and waited for it to die.

I don't keep a travel diary. I did keep a travel diary once, and it was a big mistake. All I remember of that trip is what I bothered to write down. Everything else slipped away, as though my mind felt jilted by my reliance on pen and paper. For exactly the same reason, I don't travel with a camera. My holiday becomes the snapshots and anything I forget to record is lost. Apart from that, photographs never seem to be very evocative. When I look through the albums of old travelling companions I'm always surprised by how little I'm reminded of the trip.
If only there were a camera that captured smell. Smells are far more vivid than images. I've often been walking in London on a hot day, caught the smell of hot refuse or melting tarmac and suddenly been transported to a Delhi side-street. Likewise, if I'm walking past a fishmonger's I think instantly of Unhygienix, and if I smell sweat and cut grass (the lawn kind) I think of Keaty. I doubt either of them would appreciate being remembered in such a way, especially Unhygienix, but that's how it is.
All that said, I wish there'd been someone with a camera when I sauntered out of the mist with a dead shark over my shoulder. I must have looked so cool.
That afternoon, I was the toast of the camp. The shark was grilled and cut into strips so everyone would get a proper taste, and Keaty made me stand up and repeat my story to the whole camp. When I got to the part about the shark's first lunge, everyone gasped as if they were watching fireworks, and when I told how I tensed my arms for the deathblow, everyone cheered.
For the remainder of that day and night I had people constantly coming up to me to give their congratulations. Jed was the nicest. He walked over to where I was smoking with Étienne, Françoise and Keaty, and said, 'Well done, Richard. That was really something. I think we ought to rename you Tarzan.' That made Keaty giggle like crazy, mainly because he was stoned, so Jed sat down with us and we all got wasted together.
It was doubly nice because Keaty and Jed got on so well. After the Rice Run I'd been trying to persuade Keaty that Jed was OK, and now I felt like I'd had some success. It also turned out they had something in common, one of those weird coincidences that could easily never have been realized. Six years ago they'd both stayed at the same guesthouse in Yogyakarta, on the very same night. They were able to work this out because on that night the guesthouse had mysteriously burned down—or not so mysteriously as it turned out. Keaty had been tripping, and the mosquitoes in his room were driving him mad. Knowing that mosquitoes were driven away by smoke he lit a small fire, and the next thing he knew the room was completely ablaze. Jed explained that he'd had to escape the guesthouse by jumping from a third-storey window and that all his money had been burned, and Keaty apologized, and everyone rolled around laughing.
If there was a sour note to the evening, it was Bugs, but ironically even that turned out OK. He came over while we were in the middle of another laughing fit, this one about the moment Étienne had realized we were standing in a dope field.
'Hi, man,' he said, flicking his head back to clear the hair from his eyes.
At first I didn't answer because I was out of breath, and then I said, 'What?' It wasn't a good choice of words. I'd honestly meant it in a friendly way, but it came out sounding like a confrontation.
If Bugs was taken aback he didn't show it — then again, he wouldn't have done.
'I just came over to say congratulations. About the shark.'
'Oh, yeah. Thanks. I... uh... I'm glad I caught it...' Again, my stoned head seemed to be putting the most inappropriate words into my mouth.' ...I've never caught a shark before.'
'We 're all glad you caught it... Actually, I've caught a shark before.'
'Oh?' I said, now trying extremely hard to concentrate on what I was saying. 'Really? That's amazing... You should certainly... uh... certainly tell us about it.'
'Certainly,' Keaty echoed, then coughed in a way that sounded suspiciously like a suppressed giggle.
Bugs paused. 'It was in Australia.'
'Australia... Gosh.'
'Must be about five years ago now.'
'Five years? Was it as long ago as that? ...uh...'
'A tiger shark, twelve-footer.'
'How very... huge.'
Suddenly Keaty dissolved into hysterics, and he set off Jed, who set off the others.
Bugs smiled thinly. 'Maybe I'll save it for another time.'
'It sounds like a great story,' I managed to say before he turned to go. Then Keaty gasped, 'Certainly,' and I collapsed as well.
'My God, Richard,' said Françoise a couple of minutes later. Her face was shining from tears. 'What were you saying to Bugs? Everything you said...'
'Was wrong. I know. I couldn't help it.'
Étienne nudged me. 'You do not like Bugs, huh?'
'It isn't that. I'm just wasted. I'm not thinking straight.'
'That's bullshit, Rich,' said Keaty, grinning slyly.
Jed nodded. 'Admit it. I've seen the way you look at him.'
There was a silence while everyone looked at me, waiting for an answer. Eventually I shrugged. 'All right then, you've got me. I think he's a prat.'
This time we laughed so long and so helplessly that people started peering at us to find out what was going on.