Francoise. Somewhere amongst them was a parallel world where I’d kept the map to myself, I thought, and wished it could have been this one.
? The Beach ?
43
Through Early Morning Fog I See
Mister Duck sat in his room on the Khao San Road. He’d pulled back one of the newspapers that covered the window and was peering down to the street. Behind him, strewn across his bed, were coloured pencils, obviously the ones he’d used to draw the map. The map was nowhere in sight so maybe he’d already tacked it to my door.
I saw that his shoulders were shaking.
‘Mister Duck?’ I said cautiously.
He turned, scanned the room with a puzzled frown, then spotted me through the strip of mosquito netting.
‘Rich…Hi.’
‘Hi. Are you all right?’
‘No.’ A tear rolled down his grubby cheek. ‘I’m going to kill myself pretty soon. I’m feeling really bad.’
‘…I’m sorry. Is there anything I can do?’
He sighed. ‘Thank you, Rich. You’re a good friend, but it’s too late now. I’ve been in a Bangkok morgue for the last eleven weeks.’
‘There’s no one to collect you?’
‘No one. The Thai police contacted the British Embassy. They found my parents in Glasgow, but they didn’t want to come out to sign the release papers. They don’t care about me.’ Another tear trickled out. ‘Their only son.’
‘But that’s awful.’
‘And I’m going to be incinerated in another four weeks if no one signs my release papers. The Embassy won’t cover the cost of returning my body.’
‘You…wanted to be buried.’
‘I don’t mind being incinerated, but if my parents won’t come to collect me then I don’t want to be sent. I’d rather have my ashes left out here.’ Mister Duck’s voice began to crack. ‘A small ceremony, nothing fancy, and my ashes scattered into the South China Seas.’ Then he collapsed into uncontrollable sobbing.
I pressed my face and hands against the netting. I wished I were in the room with him. ‘Hey, come on Mister Duck. It isn’t so bad.’
He shook his head angrily, and through his sobbing I noticed he’d started to sing the theme song from
I waited until he’d finished, not knowing where to look, then said, ‘You’ve got a good voice,’ mainly because I didn’t know what else to say.
He shrugged, wiping his face with his filthy T–shirt. His face ended up dirtier than it had been before. ‘It’s a small voice but it can carry a tune.’
‘No, Mister Duck. It’s a good voice…I always liked
He appeared to brighten up slightly. ‘So did I. The helicopters at the beginning.’
‘The helicopters were great.’
‘It was about Vietnam. Did you know that, Rich?’
‘Korea, wasn’t it?’
‘Vietnam. Korea was the excuse.’
‘Oh…’
Mister Duck turned back to peek between the newspapers again. He didn’t seem like he was about to speak, so I asked him what he was looking at to keep the conversation going.
‘Nothing,’ he replied softly. ‘A tuk-tuk driver asleep in his cab…A stray dog sifting through litter…You take these things for granted when you’re alive, Rich, but when they’re the last things you’re ever going to see…’ His voice began to quaver again and he bunched up his fists. ‘…It’s time I got this over with.’
‘…Killing yourself?’
‘Yes,’ he said. Then he said it again, more firmly. ‘Yes.’
He walked briskly over to the bed, sat down, and pulled a knife from under the pillow.
‘Don’t, Mister Duck! Don’t do it!’
‘My mind’s made up.’
‘There’s time to change your mind!’
‘I won’t turn back now.’
‘Mister Duck!’ I cried out feebly.
Too late. He’d already started to cut.
I didn’t watch him die because I thought it would be disrespectful, but I checked on him five minutes later to see how he was getting on. He was still alive, jerking around on the sheets and spraying the walls. I waited another fifteen minutes before checking again, wanting to be sure. This time he was still, lying in the position I’d first found him. His torso was twisted so that his legs were off the edge of the bed – a detail I hadn’t noticed previously. Maybe he’d tried to stand up just before he’d died.
‘I’ll sort your ashes out, Mister Duck,’ I whispered through the netting. ‘You don’t have to worry about that.’
? The Beach ?
44
Messed Up
I woke up at the first glimmer of dawn. The sun was still under the horizon and the beach was lit with a strange blue light, both dark and bright at the same time. It was very beautiful and calm. Even the waves seemed to be breaking more quietly than usual.
I didn’t wake Jed because I like being awake when other people are asleep. It makes me feel like pottering around, fixing breakfast if there’s anything to be fixed, and in this case, wandering aimlessly up the shore. While I walked I looked out for pretty shells. The necklace that Bugs had made me was OK, but many of the shells were a bit drab. I got the feeling that he hadn’t been too bothered to make them nice. Even Francoise’s necklace, which was the best out of the three, wasn’t as good as most of the others in the camp. It didn’t take long before I’d worked up a collection and was having to make hard choices about which shells to discard. The prettiest I found was flecked with blue, red and green – the back of a tiny crab. I decided that this would make the centrepiece of my new necklace, and looked forward to restringing it when I got home.
I found the couple lying fast asleep on the grass verge, about two hundred metres further on from where we’d hidden the boat. It was the same couple that Jed and I had passed yesterday. My first instinct was to turn back, but curiosity stopped me. They’d chosen an oddly remote beach hut to stay in, miles from Hat Rin, and I was intrigued to see what kind of people they were. I pocketed my shells and padded across the sand towards them.
Now I had a chance to see the couple from close up, they made an ugly sight. The girl had nasty sores around her mouth and was covered in fat black mosquitoes. At least thirty or forty were clustered on her legs and arms, and when I waved my hand over them they didn’t budge an inch. There were no mosquitoes on the guy. ‘No surprise,’ I thought, because he wouldn’t have made much of a meal. Judging by his height I reckoned he should have been eleven stone, but he couldn’t have weighed more than eight. His body was like an anatomical diagram. Every bone was clearly visible, as was every pitiful muscle. Beside him was a pill bottle, marked with the address of some dubious pharmacy in Surat Thani. I checked inside but it was empty.
I’d been studying the guy for a while before I noticed that his eyes were slightly open. Just little slits, easy to
