Fishing

Holidays were no longer the same. The cacophony of the shows and shills, ‘what you wan’ baby?’ ‘You American?’ ‘English?’ ‘You look like rich American.’ ‘You look like Elvis,’ and the laugh that said come on in, with a flounce and flick of the hair that would give a hard-on to a dead man. The in-chair massage. Rock music. Karaoke. Manicures. Pedicures. Any kind of cure. Beautiful girls crawling under tables for less money than you’d throw away at the scramble for a wedding. Boys too, if that was your thing, or girl-boys, or boy-girls. It was a supermarket sweep that stuck to your skin, squeezed you flat, rolled over you and crawled inside your mind, like a cockroach finding home. The next day was the same and the day after.

You learn one or two words of the language and begin to feel good about yourself. Then you begin to notice the air conditioning that doesn’t work and when it does work sounds as if it’s humping a camel breathing out diesel fumes. Drivers’ smile as long as you are paying them, but don’t really give a toss and their jeepnay cars seem to run on cow dung. There’s nothing to see. It’s all peeling paint and the smell of pee and people shitting in the gutters. That’s what they do over there. They just don’t care. So you start making certain rules. I’ll give the girl that cleans my room a tip- a good tip, in their money- but only if she doesn’t ask for it. If she asks she’s getting fuck all. For a few baht people will take you anywhere any time. I wouldn’t have been the least surprised if in old black and white shots of moon landings, one of these guys was banging his hand off the dashboard in frustration, tooting his horn and flashing his teeth, having elbowed in and overtaken that astronaut that drove that first buggy. They are as adaptable as head lice. When things are slow their cars turn into buses. Well, not buses. Vans with a few seats in the back. They’ve got a route which they follow. I just give them what the local’s pay, which is about the equivalent of twenty pence. Sometimes I just took a young girl with me. It’s easier. They speak the language. When you’re going fishing you can just stick out your hand and flag down a motorbike. Girls are small hipped. Three of us could get on the driver’s bike. That saved me the hassle of two bikes and paying two drivers. Then I started getting a bit pissed about that as well. Girl’s pouting, hanging about all day, was a distraction when you’re trying to fish. I took a card with the hotel’s name on it, and could point to it if the driver didn’t understand what I was saying.

The fish were as big as a weightlifter’s arm. They jumped on the hooks and it got to be too easy. There were days I didn’t bother taking a rod. There was a cove that called out for just sitting and looking at the waves. The occasional breeze would blow in, giving the semblance of coolness and a sweet-spot where the ultramarine sky met the sea and hours, or lifetimes, would pass. I’d dip in and out of the water, do a bit of swimming, but mainly sitting was enough. There was a red marker buoy some way out. It wasn’t out there for nothing. It’s not that kind of place. You get nothing for nothing there and it began to irritate me. I wondered if swimming out that far was possible.

My sandals were left at the water’s edge and peaked cap with money belt lying beneath it like a turtle. The first few feet splashed away from the beach were warm, but then a slight chilling of temperature. It was by no means cold, but it was a warning that this was the deep end and just to emphasise the point, the water began to whip and chop, as if not playing any more. School- pool breaststrokes go me probably about half way out to the buoy, before I skedaddled back to the safety of the beach. The breath had been knocked out of me and needed a fag, which got me musing, it was stupid turning back having reached half way. I sat on the same spot and looked out to where the sky met the sea. I’d even framed a word for it in my head that I liked to breath in and out like a Buddhist mantra: ‘skea’. But I couldn’t focus. The red buoy taunted me and a dot appeared in the ‘skea’.

The dot became a boat that became a dinky, white, rich man’s toy cutting up the sea. The boat, one of those big- arsed cruisers, was tied to the buoy. The splashes of swimming and girls’ laughing as they jumped off the boat, sounded out over the water. I had another fag. The taste of barbecued meat was on my tongue, and the clink of ice cold beer as party music started and brought the city to the sea. I didn’t stay long.

I don’t go in for all that philosophising shit. I sat in my usual spot, but no matter how I tried I could no longer see the ‘skea’. The magic had gone. Somehow I convinced myself that if I could swim out to the buoy things would be back to normal and I’d be able to see. I tried a few stretches before getting into the water. Nothing too energetic, just bending my knees and pulling them in a lazy arc up towards my bum. One foot settled into the sand and my torso took the shape of a pregnant one legged stork ready to fall over. There was no taking flight, not right away. The shallow water bumped against my knees. When the waves got up to my chest my eyes trained on the buoy, or at least they would have if an upsurge hadn’t come over and swatted me under like a big hand. Sea water filled my mouth and nose and left no room for air and, in coughing it out, swallowed even more and sunk. My feet kicked out searching for sand or sediment, or any solid thing and, god knows how, stumbled crab-footed back to the beach. There was no one around to see my disgrace and had only made about one-quarter of the way to the buoy.

A few beers didn’t do any harm the night before, didn’t smoke much, and came earlier to the cove the next day. It was cooler and figured that would make it easier. Swimming goggles in my knapsack were my secret weapon. They’d cost about ten pence, but out here that’s a lot of money and they looked the business. The girl selling them had a kind of shrine set up behind her, red candles burning, picture of a child laughing up at the camera. Other stalls had the same thing. That’s one thing. They love their kids. You don’t get any of those fat plug- ugly little fuckers that grow up to be bag-snatching lumps of lard on legs. The kids are cute as a Koala bears and smart too. The thought of using flippers drifted through my mind, but figured that would be cheating. There was no messing. No Siree. Straight into the sea and started swimming the breast stroke towards the buoy, but water somehow got into one side of the goggles. It was like having an optic measure pressed up against my eyeball and beating the egg-white lens stiff with salt water. The only sane thing to do was to take them off, or turn back. There was no chickening out. A killer wave pushed me back towards shore, but even with one eye little rainbow coloured fish dotted the deep, and where there was little fish, naturally my mind jumped to ‘Jaws’.

Exhaustion and heat made me lie on the sands and stones of the beach and rest my eyes. The midday sun treated me the same as any tourist and tattooed my eyelids to eyeballs and was sure my nose was the same colour as the red buoy. The shallow surf was a natural balm, the waves washing up and over my head. The sideways drift picked me up and drew me out, like a kiss, into deeper water. Instead of going back the way my body drifted further and further from the shore. A wave crested and flung me up and outwards and the red buoy bounced into view. The beach was about three-quarters of the way behind. The two smallest toes of my left foot begin to curve and curl and spasm. My feet beat against the surge, but made two yards and lost three. The shore remained further and further away. The cramp in my toes spread cutting a diagonal across the instep, curving my foot like a bow, sending arrows of agony up my calf and into my legs. My screams were muffled gargling. The tongue bite of drowning kept me afloat, moving the wrong way, toward the buoy.

My mind unshackled and picked out of the debris of my life the image of the white yuppie yacht that had moored a few days earlier. The city music blasted out its anthem and the girls were back in the water, swimming with easy strokes, up and around, as if sleek dolphins were inspecting a fat seal pup.

‘English,’ I shouted as I swam. ‘English.’

‘Engleesh! One shouted to the other.

‘Engleesh.’ A blond swam underneath me, inspecting the state of my baggy shorts, and splashed up, ahead. ‘Very good, Engleesh’.

‘I need help.’ But seeing them gave me energy.

‘Anglaise?’ A tanned girl swimming ahead of me asked.

They swam together in a childish race, which only the beautiful could win, a competition to see who would be first back to the boat. The boat’s engine throbbed with concealed power and whined to be let loose, churning up water, the displacement pushing me away, and shutting out my screams. Something splashed close to my head. My hands flailed at it, thinking it was a lifebelt or a line, but it clamped onto my face and pulled me under. The propellers whirled above ready to chop limbs into uneven parcels. My head broke the surface and the boat had moved one or two feet away from the red buoy. The thing grabbed at my hair again, and little hands grabbed in sheer terror. It was a little boy.

‘Help. Help.’ I shouted clinging to the buoy. The child was about three or four and scrambled up and onto my head, bobbing up and down, threatening to pull both of us under.

The engine went into neutral. A tanned young man, with white slacks, wearing the crease of a captain’s gold braid, looked over the water at us and smiled with perfect white teeth.

‘Mad Anglaise.’ He laughed and one dimple appeared on his cheek like a good natured scar.

‘Help!’ I shouted. The boy perched on my head shuddered, squirmed, clutched and dragged me under.

The captain’s smile was there for us when we resurfaced. The boy gasped and spasms of fear rippled out from his stomach as my left hand shot-putted him towards the marker float. He flung his thin legs underneath it, shivering in shock and terror, his dark eyes as big as moons. Rock music blared from somewhere in the lower deck. The captain shrugged his shoulders as if apologising.

I made a dash for the boat swimming as fast as I could, the child’s screams filling the air like seagulls’ song. The captain looked over the hull at me with sad brown eyes as if I was an interesting fish and with a boat hook pushed me away.

‘Help the kid.’ He didn’t seem to understand.

‘Chinese Noir.’ He pointed at the kid and mimicked shooting him with two fingers. The boy whimpered ‘Noir. Like you. Mad Anglaise.’ His lips pursed and forefinger wagged at me as if I’d been naughty.

The girls appeared on deck, hair and swimming costumes dry, and all lipsticked up. The captain adopted a new tactic. The boat taxied away two feet from my flailing efforts to get near. The girls drank different coloured cocktails out of long glasses, looking over their sunglasses at me. The engine died and the captain leaned over. As I swum over he dinked me on the head with the metal end of the boating hook.

‘Olga,’ his teeth glinting in the sunlight, ‘has a little wager, that you mad Anglaise won’t make it to shore because you’ll try and save the little monkey. I like Olga very much’.

The child whimpered and the captain smacked me on the head with the boat hook again as if it was my fault.

‘Irina.’ The tallest of the group stepped forward and her bony hips brushed against his as she kissed him on the cheek. ‘Irina has a wager that you’ll simply swim for shore.’

‘Yulia says you’re weak and you’ll drown.’

The boat hook caught me on the shoulder as my body turned back the way I’d come, a great weariness in my shoulders, arms and legs. A garden of exotic perfumes lingered on the water and the clink of glasses kept stroke with the sound of a shouted, ‘Bravo’. ‘Told you so.’