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DAVID BLAMEWORTH, A fifty-nine year old Englishman with a beard and a tremble, sat at his desk in his office on the edge of Phuket Town. His jeans were washed-out, his Bermuda shirt was three buttons short at the bottom and his feet were bare. It was his day off. Flanked by a bunch of plastic flowers and an air-freshener, he was grilling Wimon Sowanna in Thai. It was midday.
Wimon sat on one of the two central chairs inclined inwards to facilitate intimacy. He tucked his feet beneath him and dug the tips of his black shoes into the carpet. Other chairs lined the skirting boards for girls’ chaperones or family. The walls displayed framed photos of old Western men with young Thai women, so many they overlapped in places. Fifteen hundred Bahts were at stake.
“He sounds as if he fits the bill money-wise,” David Blameworth said. “I’ll give you that.”
“Who are you going to pair him off with?”
“Hold hard, we’re not even past first base yet.”
“But assuming he’s suitable? You’ve got someone in mind, I know you.”
“Do you want the money or not?”
Wimon shrugged. “Okay, but you’ll tell me who afterwards, agreed?”
“Concentrate on the matter in hand. Did he say he was looking for romance or anything like that?”
“He said he wasn’t. But that doesn’t mean anything. I - ”
“It means something to me.”
“He’s staying for a month. He was on his own.”
“Suppose he’s married?” David Blameworth said.
“Does it matter?”
“I don’t supply call girls, Wimon.” He tapped the sign on his desk. “Marriage broker. Marr-iage brok-er.”
“If he’s married, his wife’s out of the picture. Wives ring ahead, they make arrangements, they take charge. He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.”
“How old did you say he was?”
“Mid to late fifties. I didn’t ask.”
“He could be married.”
“No wedding ring.” Wimon tapped his own ring finger, also bare.
“Probably irrelevant in a man his age. Anyway, rewind a bit. He said he wasn’t looking for romance? Is that a, ‘he positively said he wasn’t’, or, ‘he didn’t express an opinion on the subject’?”
“He said the actual words.”
“And how did he look when he said them?”
Wimon laughed. “As if – as if I’d read his mind!”
David Blameworth folded his hands. He let out a low whistle and leaned back. “Thank you,” he said. “That’s all I need.”
He produced the money from the drawer. He made Wimon sign a statement to the effect that he wouldn’t tell anyone then he poured two large tumblerfuls of brandy, gave one to Wimon, and went to look out of the window at the mountains.
“Easiest money I’ve earned for a while,” Wimon said. He put it in his back pocket and grinned. “Are you sure you’re really on to something? I hate taking your money off you for nothing.”
“When you’ve been in the business as long as I have, you develop a sixth sense. The slenderest of evidence gives volumes away.”
“You’re shaking.”
“To” – he looked at the card Wimon had written the name on – “’Charles Swinter’. May all my money problems come to an end. There’s a whole one percent in it for you if it comes to anything.”
“So who have you been keeping for him?”
“Well, you’ve never given me reason to doubt your discretion.”
“Who?”
“Nongnuch Kitkailart.”
“Nongnuch Kitkailart? ‘English Noonie’?”
“The same.”
Wimon shook his head. “Sorry to rain on your parade, boss, but surely she’s not in the farang market? She’s got a well-paid job, high status. She’s not going to want to up and away to a grey, rainy hole like England. I’m sure he was English. And with an old man ... nearly sixty, I’d say ...”
“Not if she was in her right mind, no. But we live in a crazy, crazy world, Wimon. What professors of politics call ‘post-colonial’.”
“She could have anyone. A TV celeb, a film star. Someone as young and attractive as she is. Come on.”
“She spent four years at Bangkok University. If she was going to meet a high flyer, she’d have met one. She’s had the opportunity, she’s had the time. She’s twenty-seven. No, fate’s conspired to make her unmarriageable in the usual sense. I’ll be doing her a favour by putting Charles Swinter in her way.”
“I didn’t know she was one of your girls.”
“Neither does she. But her mother does – I should say, stepmother.”
“So you’re a friend of the family.”
“More than you can possibly imagine. I could write a book about her. Parents killed when she was a baby. Twin brother, separated from him at birth. Recently rediscovered. Or maybe not. No one’s done a DNA test so no one knows. He’s Adirake Leekpai so you’ll know what I mean when I use the word ‘dubious’.”
“That wouldn’t be Adirake Leekpai the lifeguard, would it?”
“How many Adirake Leekpais are there?”
“But – what? Everyone likes Adirake Leekpai. What are you talking about, ‘dubious’?”
“He’s six foot six, she’s five foot seven. He’s looks like a pit bull, she looks like a model. He’s Muslim, she’s a Buddhist. He’s stupid, she’s smart. Twins? Dubious.”
“I wouldn’t go round telling people you think he’s stupid.”
“She was brought up by her Auntie Tasanee and two Englishwomen to be married to a farang wealthy enough to make up for the loss of her mother’s dowry. Which is where I come in. I’ve been a friend of Tasanee’s since day one. You know Tasanee?”
“Kitkailart? Her husband died two or three years ago. Nice woman.”
“Everyone loves Tasanee.”
“She’s lucky she’s got Noonie. Her two sons haven’t amounted to much. Nice guys, small brains.”
“Don’t be too hard on them. They haven’t exactly had the breaks. They weren’t introduced to the Englishwomen for a start.”
“Any Englishwomen I know?” Wimon said.
“Georgina Chappel and her partner, Alice whatever. Alice whatever-her-bloody-name-was. Dead now, thank God. Georgina Chappel still guards the shrine of the vestal virgin, though. She’s going to be an obstacle, that woman.”
“I take it you don’t get on.”
“Noonie was my nest-egg, Wimon. Georgina Chappel went and filled her full of ideas about the self-sufficiency of women, the virtues of higher bloody education, the importance of having a career. In some ways, I wish they’d never met.”
“Just in some ways?”
“The fact is, it’s because she has introduced her to all those things that she’s made her so ... rare. Where there’s rarity, there’s always a market. You’ve just got to look harder.”
“And when you find that market, you can charge whatever you like. I’m beginning to understand why this ‘Charles Swinter’ is so important to you.”
“Him or someone like him. To begin with, he has to have the money. That’s the bottom line. That narrows the pool. Then, within that, I’ve got to find someone who’ll consider a woman, however stunning, whose head’s jam-packed with all the crap Georgina’s Chappel’s put in there. You can see what I’m up against. I’m looking for the Great Farang.”
“The Great Farang?”
David Blameworth scanned the horizon and finished his drink. “And he shall descend from the sky with wealth and great lust and bestow untold riches upon his servant David Blameworth. And she shall behold him with weeping and gnashing of teeth and repent of her liberal arts education. And the three shall live happily ever after. Especially David Blameworth.”
“I can see why it might be a project worth pursuing,” Wimon said.
“The irony – although only time will tell whether it’s irony for me or for her – is that it was me who introduced Noonie to Georgina Chappel in the first place.”
“Oh, dear.”
“This isn’t the most successful marriage bureau on the island for nothing. I scan the births section of the papers. If I don’t know the parents already, I go and look at them. If they’re easy on the eye, their daughter will probably be. Be nice to the sire and the dam while the foal’s growing up – the odd loan when hard times hit, the odd bit of advice, friendly word – and you can sell them on the notion of the well-heeled farang. And pretty girls fetch high prices.”
“If you’re doing so well, why do you need Charles Swinter?”
“Because I’ve got expensive habits, Wimon. Bad habits. Horses and Chinese tobacco among other things.”
“So you introduced Noonie to this Georgina Chappel woman as – what? As a favour to Tasanee?”
“Tasanee heard two Englishwomen had arrived on the island advertising for a maid. She wanted me to get Noonie the post.”
“At seven? Didn’t she have school to go to?”
“Tasanee planned to help out with the maid thing. I told the Englishwomen about her parents’ deaths then that Tasanee was hoping to turn her stepdaughter into farang bait. All of this in English, so Tasanee and Noonie couldn’t follow.”
“What happened?”
“A seven year-old maid’s a pretty useless proposition. But I calculated they’d think they were cleverer than Tasanee and I. They’d think it was in their power to subvert the farang project. So they’d hire her for the sake of the greater good, regardless of whether she’d polish the silver or mop the floor properly.”
“Their sort make me ill. Coming over here with their big ideas about how we should do things like them. Why can’t they just stay where they are if they don’t like us? Christians, I bet.”
“I believe they call themselves Humanists.”
“Same interfering thing.”
“Even then, I think I was counting on them increasing her scarcity value.”
“So they think they’ve got you beaten, eh?”
“Not ‘they’. ‘She’. There’s only one of them left. She thinks I gave up the ghost years ago.”
“But?”
“Noonie’s never been put to the test. They didn’t have her for the first seven years of her life, Tasanee did. Who knows what lies buried under all the stuff they’ve put in there? During her formative years she was taught to look out for the Great Farang, that’s the crucial thing. Her formative years.”
“And now he’s arrived.”
“Unless all my instincts are wrong. I already have a strong feeling about this one.”
“Do you think she’ll even remember what she was taught when she was a little kid?”
“That’s not the point. You know what the Jesuits used to say. ‘Give me the child until he’s seven and I’ll give you the man’. Anyway, I’m finally ready to do battle for her. I’ve waited a long time for this campaign, Wimon. If Charles Swinter’s what I think he is, I’m about to get what’s been coming to me.”
“Look out Georgina Chappel, wherever you are.”
“Look out world.”
