haircuts, no longer than shoulder length, a sign that they were from the city’s public schools. The majority of the girls with longer hair, shorter skirts and Gucci high-heeled shoes were from the international schools, where fees were higher and the pupils were given more leeway dress-wise and were allowed to grow their hair longer. There didn’t seem to be any mixing between the two groups. The public schoolgirls headed for the bus stop, the up- market pupils walked together in small groups, presumably to wherever they’d parked the cars that their doting parents had given them.
It was just as easy to spot the social status of the boys. The few who were in the public school system had crew cuts, with well-worn white shirts tucked into black shorts. The private school kids had their shirt tails out, their ties at half mast, wore their hair fashionably long and had cellphones pressed to their ears.
As one lot of pupils flowed out, a new lot flowed in. More upper-class pupils arrived by the luxury car-load while the poorer kids walked from the bus stop.
My bottle of Heineken arrived with a handful of shaved ice in a glass so I drank it from the bottle. There was a stack of Thai newspapers on one of the tables so I leaned over and picked up a copy of Thai Rath, the local scandal sheet. They specialised in close up photographs of road accident victims or Burmese girls hiding their faces but not their breasts after being busted in a local massage parlour. The old woman who’d bought me my beer nudged her husband in the ribs and nodded at the farang reading a Thai newspaper. He snorted and closed his eyes again.
Five minutes after the bell the pavements were empty again. I read the paper from cover to cover and ordered another Heineken, without ice. The old woman put a fresh bottle on the table, with a fresh glass of shaved ice. I smiled. Sometimes it didn’t matter how fluent you were in the language, whatever you said went in one ear and out of the other. The trick was not to let it annoy you.
Jai yen.
Cool heart.
Forget about it.
The next time the bell rang three farangs were among the throng of eager-to-leave pupils. All men in their twenties wearing polo shirts, jeans and cheap shoes and carrying plastic briefcases.
Teachers.
They headed over to the shophouse, flopped down at the table next to mine and ordered three Singha beers. I’ve never been fond of Singha. It’s too sweet and on the few occasions I’ve had more than a couple of bottles I’ve always ended up with a fierce hangover.
I sipped from my bottle of Heineken and listened as they swapped gossip, war stories of a day at the chalkface. The one in the pale blue shirt was British with a girlish giggle and a rash of acne across his cheeks and neck. The one in the red polo shirt was Canadian with receding hair and nicotine-stained fingers, and the one in the green shirt was from New Zealand or Australia, I can never tell the difference between the accents, a good-looking guy with piercing blue eyes and a dimpled chin. The Brit was describing a girl in one of his classes in a way that would annoy the hell out of me if she’d been in any way related to me. The other two nodded enthusiastically as if it was the most normal thing in the world for teachers to be discussing the breasts and thighs of a fifteen-year-old girl who’d been entrusted to their care.
I leaned over. ‘Are you guys teachers?’ I asked.
The Brit stopped his girlish giggling and his cheeks flushed. Maybe he thought I was the father of one of the girls at the school, or maybe it was just the Singha beer kicking in. ‘Why?’ he asked defensively.
I smiled amiably. ‘I’ve just been offered a job over there,’ I said, nodding in the direction of the school. ‘Supposed to start tomorrow.’
‘You talked to Petrov, yeah?’ said the Canadian.
‘Yeah, what’s his story? Bit strange to find a Russian running an English language school, isn’t it?’
The Canadian shrugged. ‘There’s all sorts running schools out here,’ he said. ‘Any man and his dog can set up a school. Where did you teach before?’
‘Back in New Orleans,’ I said. ‘Came out here on spec.’
The Kiwi grinned. ‘Well you sure didn’t come out here for the money,’ he said.
‘The son of a friend of mine told me it was a good place to work,’ he said. ‘American guy, Jon Clare. Do you know him?’
‘Jon Boy? Haven’t seen him around for a couple of weeks.’
‘He quit, didn’t he?’ said the Brit.
‘I didn’t know that,’ said the Kiwi.
‘From Salt Lake City,’ I said.
‘Yeah, a Mormon,’ said the Canadian. ‘Could never get him inside a go-go bar.’
‘I thought he was gay,’ said the Brit.
‘Just because he didn’t want to watch naked girls swing around silver poles doesn’t mean he’s gay,’ said the Kiwi.
‘Yeah, but it’s a good indication,’ said the Brit, and giggled. It was the sort of giggle that made me want to lean across and slap his acne-scarred face.
Jai yen.
‘Jon Junior wasn’t gay,’ I said. ‘Just a well-brought up kid. Any idea where he went? It’s been a couple of months since I spoke to him.’
All three men shook their heads.
‘Petrov could have sacked him,’ said the Brit. ‘Jon Boy was forever in his office complaining about one thing or another.’
‘Complaining about what?’ I asked, and took another sip of my Heineken.
‘He needed to kick back and relax,’ said the Kiwi. ‘He took it all too seriously.’
‘Took what all?’
The Kiwi shrugged again. ‘We’re not teaching brain surgery, right? Mainly we’re teaching rich kids to speak English. Most of them don’t want to be there, it’s their parents who want them to learn. So they resent it. They resent us and they resent their parents. Our job is to stand in front of them for an hour and talk to them in something approaching a Western accent. If Petrov could get away with it he’d staff the school with Indians and Malaysians but the parents want to know that they’re getting genuine native speakers so he has to hire us.’
The Brit giggled girlishly. ‘Yeah, but sheep-shaggers don’t really qualify as native speakers, do they?’
‘It’s your language in name only,’ said the Kiwi.
‘What’s this crap about lingua franca, anyway?’ said the Brit. ‘Why use a French phrase to say that English is the common language. I’ve never understood that.’
‘It’s Italian,’ I said.
‘What’s Italian?’ said the Brit, frowning.
‘Lingua franca. It’s Italian.’
His frown deepened. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yeah, I’m sure.’ I waved for a round of beers. ‘On me,’ I said. ‘Tradition back at my old school was that the new guy buys the beers.’
‘I’ll drink to that,’ giggled the Brit. I was giving serious consideration to hitting him over the head with my bottle of Heineken.
Jai yen.
‘So you’re telling me that job satisfaction isn’t high on your list of priorities?’ I said.
‘You get bitter and twisted,’ said the Canadian. ‘Some of the kids do want to learn. Some of them work during the day and spend their own money on the courses. But in the main, yeah, it’s rich kids doing what their parents want. If you want job satisfaction, join one of the international schools or the Thai universities.’
The fresh beers arrived and the teachers toasted me. ‘So what’s your reason for coming to Thailand?’ the Kiwi asked me.
‘To teach.’
The Brit sniggered but didn’t say anything.
The Kiwi shook his head. ‘You’re not being interviewed now,’ he said. ‘No one comes to Thailand to teach. There’s no money in it. You must have talked money with Petrov, right? You’ll be getting a quarter of what you’d be getting in the States.’
