‘But if your wife has doubts,’ Farren said to Baxter, ‘then let’s have some sanuk and you can go home with your money. You know sanuk? It is a very Thai concept. A lot of farang think it means fun but sanuk is far more than that. It means finding pleasure in everything you do. Finding pleasure in all things. It’s not hedonism. It’s a philosophy, a credo, a way of life.’
The two men clinked glasses. I went to the bar and watched Jesse playing Connect Four. He was playing with a different girl now. The prettiest girl in the place, who wore jeans and a T-shirt and served behind the bar. They had already gathered an audience. Every time it was her turn, the girl slammed small blue discs into the slots on the board. Jesse laughed, shook his head.
‘The reason they always win is because they are allowed to set the pace,’ he told me, dropping a red disc into a slot with slow deliberation. ‘And you have to play at your own pace, not theirs,’ Jesse said.
The gibbon hopped up on to the bar and straightened the rim of its Stetson. It seemed fascinated by Jesse’s ground-breaking Connect Four technique. Girls climbed on bar stools to get a better look at the action. It was like watching James Bond blowing them away at baccarat at a casino in Monte Carlo.
The wall behind them was covered in photographs and I wandered over to it. I didn’t see any of the faces in the bar in the photographs. These were all the girls who had worked here in the past, and the men who they had known. Everybody was gone now. Years of thin women with smiling faces and the men, older and whiter and drunker, all mugging for the cameras, all seeming to have the night of their lives. I wondered what had happened to them, all those girls and all those men, and if they missed the Bangla Road and the gibbon in the cowboy hat. Although I guessed it must have been a different gibbon back then.
A roar from the bar. Jesse had won again. Now a small stout woman in her forties was rolling up her sleeves and taking her seat opposite Jesse.
‘Oh no,’ Jesse laughed, his pale face shining like the moon in that unlit bar. ‘Secret weapon. They’re wheeling out the mamma-san.’
‘I beat you,’ the mamma-san said, with no trace of humour in it. ‘I beat you good, white boy. Oh – such a white boy, you are, I never saw such a white boy.’
The mamma-san reached for Jesse’s face and took a fistful of his ghostly flesh in one of her small brown hands. The No Name Bar girls laughed with appreciation.
‘Want a bet?’ Jesse said.
‘Yes, I want bet,’ the mamma-san said, and the girls all cheered.
Jesse rolled his eyes.
‘But what do you have that I could possibly want?’ he said, and the gibbon’s mouth stretched in a huge and mirthless smile.
When I went back to the table Baxter was entwined with girls. Their thin brown limbs snaked around his waist, his neck, his khaki shorts. The girls chatted among themselves, examined their nails, and stared into the glow of their phones while absent-mindedly rubbing his old didgeridoo. And now it was Baxter who had his cheque book at the ready. A girl approached Farren but he held up his hand. He had lovely manners. She shrugged, smiled and walked away.
‘Explain one more time,’ the Australian said. ‘About setting up a Thai company that I control.’
The thing I was realizing about that Phuket, the Phuket of bars and beer and girls – the hundreds of bars, the thousands of girls, the ocean of cold Thai beer – was that it offered more than anyone could ever possibly want or need. And although, as Jesse said, I was fresh off the banana boat, even I had already worked out that they were not really selling sex on the Bangla Road.
They were selling dreams.
‘Come on, mate,’ Jesse shouted. ‘We’re going home.’
I looked up but he wasn’t talking to me. Jesse slid from his stool and took the hand of the gibbon.
The creature adjusted its cowboy hat and fell into step beside him, its free arm trailing, and there was much wailing and moaning among the bar girls as the pair of them disappeared through the curtain that covered the door.
The mamma-san spoke sharply to the girls. You didn’t need any Thai to know she was telling them that Jesse had won the gibbon fair and square and they should get back to work. One of the girls wiped her eyes with her fingers and started packing away the Connect Four. I headed for the door.
Out on the street Jesse and the gibbon were already settled in the back of a tuk-tuk. The gibbon stared straight ahead with its depthless black eyes, unsentimental about leaving its place of work, although holding on to its hat as if fearing it might blow away on the ride home. I called Jesse’s name but he didn’t hear me, and the tuk-tuk puttered off down the Bangla Road, trailing smoke.
Back inside the bar Farren and Baxter were shaking hands.
‘We’re going to clean up!’ Baxter bawled over the song they were playing and when he stood up to embrace Farren his sturdy legs overturned a table of glass and beer and overpriced fruit juice.
It was ‘Highway To Hell’ by AC/DC.
I recognized it now.
It felt very early when I left them to it in the bar, but by the time I got back to Nai Yang it seemed very late, as though everyone around here had gone to sleep hours ago.
The lights were off in the Botans’ house. In our place there was a light left on for me. I wheeled the Royal Enfield into the shed as quietly as I could and stood there in the moonlight, smelling the clean air, just a hint of sulphur from the mangroves, and hearing the insect-drone of the traffic.
Our house was still unfamiliar to me and in the darkness I held out a hand to guide myself, the hard wood of the wall panels cool and smooth and somehow comforting against the palm of my hand. In the bedroom I undressed quickly in the darkness. When I curled up against Tess she murmured and pressed herself against me and I buried my face in her hair.
‘Good day?’ I said softly.
‘They’re all good days,’ said Tess. ‘How about you? Is everyone really friendly? Did you meet anyone you like?’
‘There’s an English kid called Jesse. He’s full of himself but I like him.’
I didn’t tell her about the gibbon and I didn’t tell her about the Australian who tried to strangle my boss and I didn’t tell her about the little Muslim girl on a motorbike. Because I wanted it to be true – for all of the days to be good days. But it felt like there was a lot I couldn’t tell Tess if I wanted her to keep her smile. And I wanted that more than anything.
‘You need to talk to Farren about our visas,’ she said, more asleep than awake now. ‘Your work permit. All of the paperwork. We need to get that sorted.’
‘Tess?’
‘What?’
‘Nothing. Close your eyes, angel.’
Soon I felt her slip into sleep but I stayed awake for a long time, curled up against her, my face in her hair, listening to the distant buzz of the motorbikes out there in the wide wild night.
4
The pick-up truck woke me just after dawn.
I could hear the diesel engine rumbling right outside our bedroom window as it slowly backed up our narrow road.
‘Somebody