CHAPTER 20
When I left London, it was cold, grey, and overcast, and the airport was noisy and crowded.
A sort of calmness descended once we were onboard the plane. I listened to Enya on my phone, and she sent me to sleep dreaming of Ireland and wide green open spaces. It was when the guy in the middle seat wanted to visit the toilet that I realised I was packed in a metal tube with three hundred others.
In Phuket, I stayed for a night at a small beachside hotel; watched sunbathers, kite surfers, and paragliders; and listened to shrieking adults at play from the ninth floor. I walked downtown at night, bought a beer, and by eleven thirty, with my libido at a surprisingly low ebb despite the choices on offer, returned to the hotel. Early next morning, feeling much fresher, I took a bus that headed south because that was how I’d planned it.
And what a difference this made. This was more like it. Peace and tranquillity in a foreign place with sun, green trees, and fields and far away from Friggin and Coolie.
With my nose pressed to the window, I watched the scenery pass by—shiny, wet fields where rows of women in wide-brimmed hats bent over, planting what I thought must be rice. They were peaceful scenes and food for the fertile imagination that normally only functions when my head is covered by a pillow.
It would have been far more natural, I decided, as I watched the jungle passing by, if I’d spent my early years strapped to my mother’s back instead of being pushed along a filthy wet street in a stroller surrounded by plastic bags of groceries with chocolate ice cream dripping into my bib. If I’d been born in the African bush somewhere, I could have spent my youth fishing in a river where crocodiles ambushed wildebeest and hyenas fought with lions over a freshly killed zebra. Instead, I’d watched my mother fighting with fresh West Indian lodgers.
Why is it that beautiful views can be so easily erased by ugly memories?
Painting walls for the council seemed unlikely to lead to a career as a painter of rolling English landscapes like Constable or candle-lit scenes like Joseph Wright. Watching areas of cream paint expand under your roller is a quiet-enough occupation, but I can confirm with evidence that it does something truly rotten to your brain. There was no chance I could ever emulate that Nigerian wizard with a paintbrush, Aima Onabolu, with only a can of Dulux magnolia and a six-inch roller.
At least collecting people’s trash with Lennie and Bungee on a truck driven by Friggin got you out and about.
For a brief moment, watching the fields glide by, I thought about Sergeant Friggin Biggin. Like his name suggests, Friggin’s a big guy. He’s the only person I know who can do a three-point turn in a truck using only his stomach muscles. Friggin eats sandwiches all day long. He then throws the packs out of the truck window. You can track the truck’s progress around North London just by following the trail of Friggin’s empty sandwich packs.
“If there ain’t nothing to pick up, then we ain’t got no job, Kurt,” he says whenever I accuse him of littering. But I digress once more.
I’d read somewhere that it was a five-hour drive from Phuket to Nakhon Si Thammarat, so when the bus suddenly stopped after five hours with my mind on Friggin rather than street signs, I stepped out into blazing sunshine and looked around. It seemed unexpectedly quiet. I was expecting a sizeable town from where I could then head into the outback for my first sight of a waterfall and a toucan. I quickly concluded I’d made a mistake and got off the bus too early. The proof was two signs. One said, “Welcome to Phra Phrom”; another said, “Nakhon Si Thammarat, 15 kilometres.”
Deciding, nevertheless, to explore and find somewhere to stay, I slung my backpack over my shoulder and walked. It was certainly very different.
In Edmonton or Park Road, I can confirm you’re unlikely to come across a place like the Happy Life Resort with tiny wooden cabins scattered around a quiet flower-filled garden with coconut palms. So I ventured through the gate to an open door that said Reception and found myself in a room surrounded by carved wooden elephants and plastic flowers. It also had a frayed piece of tinsel hanging over an empty desk that wished everyone a Happy New Year. I found a bell, pressed it, waited again, and heard someone shuffling towards me—a young black-haired girl tapping away on a mobile phone as she walked.
She gave me a nice smile, so I smiled back and then waited again until she’d finished what she was doing. She wasn’t bad looking. She came up to my shoulder. Her jeans fitted her nicely, and her flip-flops had coloured beads on the strap.
“You want room?” she asked.
“Yes, please,” I said. “One with a view of toucans if you have one.”
She seemed confused by my comedy. “What name, please?”
“Kurt Learner.”
“You have passport, please?”
I placed my Courtney Lemar Delmont Learner passport into her little hand, and she smiled. “How long you stay, Mr. Cow-er-tee?”
She looked up at me with black eyes beneath a perfectly straight black fringe. I, with my freshly gelled haircut adding another couple of inches to my six feet, looked down and tried out my special smile and more comedy. “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe I’ll stay forever.”
“You want to see room?”
“No need. Is there Wi-Fi?”
She smiled again and pointed to a number on the key. “Password. Five hundred baht. Number 3. Outside. Have a nice stay.”
Ten minutes later, I was lying on my bed in this quaint little room resembling a large garden shed. It was far nicer than Coolie’s place and even had a shower with soap and a towel.
It was certainly very quiet. There was no movement or sign of life but a clear blue sky with fluffy white clouds and a backdrop of hills covered in jungle. There were no people, cars, trucks, or buses and not a breath of wind. So I lay on the bed with my eyes closed and my hands over my ears to stifle the silence that buzzed in my ears. For a moment, I thought I might have died.
I normally avoid thinking about death, although listening to Clannad and Enya as I’d been doing recently would bring on a sort of melancholy like dying alone. I’d started to imagine living on the desolate west coast of Ireland, where life hung on a fragile thread of emotion, and Enya would sing on windswept cliff tops, waiting for me to sail into view on giant Atlantic waves.
Unlike me, Coolie and the others would only ever make infantile jokes about death. The Alzheimer of Stacker’s gran was a Coolie favourite. Friggin himself discussed erectile dysfunction as the saddest symptom of imminent death. Bungee avoided it altogether and did Ali G impersonations, and Stacker, another mate, would joke about death by Vindaloo curry at the Passage to India, commonly known as the QPFL—the Quick Passage to Find a Loo.
To my shame, I often joined in their infantile laughter because that was what was expected. So why was I lying there thinking about them when I came here to see a toucan, chill out, and forget them.
I think Stacker, Bungee, Friggin, Coolie, and all the others are too scared to share real feelings because it isn’t cool or macho. Not that I did much sharing either because, frankly, there isn’t anyone I trust enough.
Some subjects are beyond jokes. Death is the big one. Death is the end. It happens to everything. Dead leaves are swept up by the council. Flies get sprayed or swatted. Chickens get turned into chicken nuggets. Pigeons get flattened by buses and trucks because they’re too slow.
Death, though, was hardly a happy subject for the start of my first ever holiday, so I got up; grabbed my phone, wallet, and backpack; closed and locked the wooden door; and set off to explore the town.
I found a roadside place that sold meat balls. I ordered a beer to go with them, and for a while, I watched the ways of the locals and passing motorcycles. That was OK for a while, but then I walked on.
Was it a mistake to come here on my own just to find peace and quiet and learn and see something different? Cass had tried that, but turning points often start with mistakes.
My mistake was to bring that damned phone and to find fresh messages from Coolie and Lennie and a rare one from Bungee. All of them needed witty replies. Concentration was vital, and the sun was sinking lower and shining in my eyes when I took a wrong turning. Then my phone battery went off.
“Aaargh!”
I then looked up for the first time for a while and was shocked not to see Edmonton, where I’d been living remotely for the last twenty minutes. Instead, I was in a foreign country with palm trees, distant mountains of thick green jungle and a lake reflecting the red setting sun. And there, sitting cross-legged on the sloping bank with his arms outstretched like a sun worshiper was a long-haired man wearing loose silky trousers in a colour not dissimilar to the setting sun.