TONY PARSONS
Catching the Sun
For Yuriko and Jasmine In sunshine and in shadow
‘… it was now too late and too far to go back, and I went on. And the mists had all solemnly risen now, and the world lay spread before me.’
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
‘Do good – get good. Do bad – get bad.’
Thai proverb
Table of Contents
Part One: Swimming With Elephants
Part Three: The Young Man and the Sea Gypsy
Part Four: Song of the Gibbons
Read on for one of Tony’s short stories from Departures
1
On the first day we watched the elephants come from the sea.
‘Look!’ Keeva cried. ‘Look at the sea!’
I sat up but I could see nothing. Just my daughter – Keeva, nine years old, stick thin, pointing out at a sea so calm it looked like a lake made of glass.
Tess, my wife, stirred beside me and sat up. She had been sleeping, worn out by a night in the air and coming seven thousand miles. We both watched Keeva, down where the sand met the water, excitedly waving her arms in the air.
I could actually see the heat. We were on the beach at Nai Yang, just after breakfast, and the air was already starting to shimmer and bend. I thought – If it’s this hot so early in the day, what will it be like later?
Keeva was jumping up and down by now.
‘Oh!’ she cried. ‘You must see it! Oh, oh, oh!’
Our boy, Rory, was between me and Tess, on his stomach, a wet and battered copy of My Family and Other Animals on his lap. He looked up at his twin sister, adjusting his glasses, impatiently shaking his head. Then his jaw dropped open.
‘Oh,’ he gasped.
Tess laughed, and stood up, brushing the sand from her legs, and all the exhaustion of the journey seemed to vanish with her smile.
‘Can’t you see them?’ she asked me, taking Rory by the hand as they began walking down to the sea.
Then it was suddenly there for me too, this thing poking out of the water, a gnarled tube