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THEY LEFT APPLETON in charge of Charles and arrived in Bangkok in the early hours. No one was picking up at the bar. Georgina wasn’t picking up either - but then Georgina lived miles away. They caught the plane to Phuket in a daze. Noonie buttoned and unbuttoned her coat and rubbed her face. They landed in darkness.
The heat, even at this time of night, caught her by surprise. The smells that met her were those she’d loved: rubber plantations and rice paddies, the ocean, the baked soil. It was the start of the hot season and an easterly wind carried all this to her, unasked.
For a long time, she was barely aware of Thanongsak except as a series of polite queries directed at her. It wasn’t until they got in the taxi that she fully registered him. The driver nodded and pulled out into the southbound traffic. The yellow neon lights of the highway streaked Thanongsak’s face in accelerating bursts as the car sped up. He wore a short-sleeved khaki shirt.
“I’ll wake you early in the morning,” he said. “The Carlton, in Thalang, driver. Do you know it?”
The driver nodded.
“I don’t want to go to the hotel,” she said. “I want to go to Patong.”
“We’ve just had eleven hours of flying, Noonie. Neither of us is going to be any use for anything if we don’t get some sleep.”
“I’m not tired.”
“You mean you don’t think you’re tired.”
“I’m not tired. Look, we’ll drop you off at the hotel. I won’t hold it against you if you want to get some sleep. As you said earlier, it’s been a long journey. And you’ve got no personal connection. All your relatives live in the North.”
“I’m staying with you. Besides, I have got a personal connection. I’ve got you.”
She blinked slowly.
“I didn’t mean that to sound like sweet-talk,” he said. “I was just stating a fact. Or trying to. Okay, Patong, please, driver.”
“You won’t get very far,” the driver said. “Most of it’s cordoned off. Rescue-workers only. Have you got family over there?”
Noonie looked up at the ceiling of the taxi and hugged herself.
“Yes,” Thanongsak said. “Do your best. Please.”
“Sure.”
Twenty minutes later, they hit a queue. A pair of policemen with red and blue Tourist Police badges wandered along the line speaking to drivers. Blue and yellow lights flashed at the roadside. In front, cars were being diverted east. The first policeman bent down to speak. The second logged the registration number.
“Local?”
Noonie poked her head out. “My mother and brothers live on the beachfront.”
“You’ll have to come back in the morning. You wouldn’t get any answers, not the way things are now. And we’ve got to keep the roads clear for the emergency services.”
“Why are you taking my number?” the driver said. “I’ve done nothing wrong.”
“Just routine, sir. We’re taking everyone’s.”
“Could I walk down there?” Noonie said, putting her fingers on the rolled-down window. A helicopter roared overhead. Somewhere in the distance, a mobile phone began to ring.
“Have you any specialised medical training?”
“No.”
“No offence, but you’d be doing more harm than good. You’re going to have to turn back.”
“Come back in the morning,” the other policeman said. “Bring some ID. We’ll see what we can do.”
“Go and get some sleep, now. Move on. Follow the diversion signs, driver.”
He stepped back and beckoned the next car forward with his torch.
The taxi driver pulled away. “Where to now?”
“The Carlton, Thalang,” Thanongsak said.
“No,” Noonie said, “no, no.”
Thanongsak put his arms round her. “We’ll come straight back. There are only a few hours till daylight.”
Noonie’s room had a single bed pressed up against a window and a pole in an alcove draped with empty coat-hangers. She kicked off her shoes, laid on the bed in her clothes and fell asleep. The ticking of the carriage clock at her bedside seemed to pace her dreaming – snatches of being turned back from Patong over and over again – and woke her just before dawn.
She knelt on the floor and looked out of her window. The sun was low - either rising or setting. She panicked. What if it was sunset? What if she’d missed a day? No, Thanongsak would have woken her. She should go and get him.
The events of a few hours ago came back as if through a hangover. She needed to dress down this time in case she had to make a break for it. She knew her way around Patong like the contours of her own face. If she got past them they’d never get her back.
The problem was, she hadn’t packed much. She undid her suitcase and changed into a T-shirt and a denim jacket, jeans and tennis shoes. She tied her hair up and went to wake Thanongsak.
An hour later they were back in the queue. The policeman looked at her passport and handed it back through the taxi window. “Are you the woman that was here last night?”
She nodded.
“Kitkailart, right? Move into the side, driver. We’ll find what information we can, Miss, so we can get you straight to where you need to be. Is it just you?” he said, still addressing her but looking at Thanongsak.
“He’s with me,” she said.
“I’m her fiancé,” Thanongsak said.
The policeman nodded. His colleague hoisted the barrier. The taxi drove through at walking pace and pulled into a lay-by. Two policemen and two policewomen sat at a foldaway table with a map of the island pinned to a board. Noonie got out. She sat down at one of the seats in front of a young policewoman with a walkie-talkie. Thanongsak stood next to her. Behind them, the taxi driver leaned on his bonnet and lit a cigarette.
“You’re looking for your relatives?” the woman said. She was thin-faced with a fringe. “I’ll need your passport and as much information as you can provide.”
Another helicopter roared overhead. An ambulance appeared and its driver yelled for the barrier to be raised.
“My mother and brothers own a bar called Kits, on the beachfront,” Noonie said.
“‘Kitkailart’: is that your mother and brothers’ name, too?”
Noonie nodded.
“How many brothers?”
“Two.”
The policewoman turned to one side and raised the walkie-talkie. “Puek, come in, please.”
There was a crackled response.
“I need information on a Kits bar on the seafront. I’ve got the daughter of the proprietress here, name of Kitkailart. Bar named Kits, family name Kitkailart.”
More crackle. The policewoman’s face betrayed her. She looked at Noonie and took a deep breath and looked at the table.
“I’m – I’m sorry. Your mother and brothers were well known in the area so we’ve had a lot of positive identifications. The rescue workers are laying them out now. We’ll give you a priority pass. I’m so, so sorry.”
Amid the piles of rubble, the flotsam and jetsam of scattered belongings, the children climbing in and out of the debris and holidaymakers and locals looking haunted, Tasanee and Wichien and Tueng lay against a concrete wall as if they’d just gone to bed. Their hands were crossed over their chests, their eyes were closed and their lips apart. The only sign that they weren’t asleep was the creamy pallor of their skin.
Noonie felt her eyebrows arch in the middle as if she still had a residue of surprise left in her. The bottom of her throat tickled as if she was about to laugh. Her mouth opened and closed like a fish’s. She put her hand over her lips to stop herself then found herself unable to look any longer. She paced back and forward in agony then went down on her haunches, then her knees. That howling noise: that was her. She felt a pair of arms around her.
“Shush! Shush!”
It wasn’t Thanongsak’s voice: it was a woman’s. She looked up, expecting for some reason to find herself looking into the face of the policewoman. It was Solada. In the background, Adirake held Nui and conversed with Thanongsak.
Noonie’s grief redoubled and she grabbed Solada and pulled her into her and lost all her remaining self-possession. The aid workers stopped and looked across and moved on. Adirake and Thanongsak got down beside them.
“Noonie,” Adirake said. “Noonie? Noonie.”
It took her a while to realise that he wasn’t repeating her name to bring her to her senses but to prepare her for more bad news.
“What is it?”
“Georgina, too.”
Noonie nodded. Her grief hadn’t bottomed out but her means of expressing it was nearly exhausted.
“Is her body ...?”
“We’ll have to be quick,” Adirake said. “They’re taking them to the morgue as soon as they can get positive IDs, otherwise there’ll be an epidemic.”
“Better get moving, then,” Thanongsak said.
Solada put her arm round Noonie. Adirake led the way. They passed along the corpses and stopped.
Georgina looked as vacant as everyone else in the line and seemed to have taken up her position there by way of confirming her new status. She no longer belonged to the world, was all she had to say.
Noonie knelt down by her body. She kissed her hand and wept. Her body juddered like a broken down lorry. Behind the kisses, her teeth wouldn’t stop chattering.
‘Body of Dowry Fugitive Found among Wave Victims’. There was no detail. Noonie wondered if Valérie and Edward would be pleased.
She hadn’t spoken to Thanongsak since getting back to the hotel that morning. It was now three in the afternoon. She sat in the hotel lounge with the Phuket Gazette in her lap. Beside her, on a walnut table, was an untouched cup of Lapsang Souchong. At right angles to her, Thanongsak sat with his chin propped on his right hand. He stared at the floor. The room had three flat walls and a sliding window with a European-style garden beyond it. A stereo played a Schubert string quartet. There was a smell of industrial cleaner.
Even reading the paper, she was helpless against the images that chased her. Her mother and brothers and Georgina being smashed then drowned. She wondered how much they’d suffered, whether the end had been quick, how frightened they’d been. Her nose and jowls ached with the weight of her pity and anger and guilt.
There was nothing she could do in Phuket any more. She had to get back to England. Attending Charles’s death was a formality now but until it was complete she couldn’t think about what to do with the useless forever of her life. If he was dead, she could get on and die too. It wouldn’t take much. She wished she could have been there when the wave struck.
Thanongsak shifted in his chair. “I think we should put the marriage off for a while.”
She smiled. “You mean, until we’ve got all the funerals out of the way?”
“Yes.”
She folded the Phuket Gazette and put it on the table next to her tea. It hadn’t occurred to her until now. She was free. Valérie’s threats no longer applied. “There isn’t going to be a marriage.”
“I don’t think we should go that far.”
“Don’t you.”
He leant forward in his chair. “You haven’t lost everything Noonie. You haven’t lost me. I accept you may not be capable of feeling much for me – for anyone – at the moment. But think about it rationally. I love you, I can look after you properly and most importantly, I’m Thai: we share the same backgrounds, prejudices, tastes, ideals, memories. We speak the same first language. And all the little things: things so small we ourselves aren’t even aware of them. We’re on the same wavelength, we’re equals. You belong with me – or someone very like me - and you know that deep down. Marrying Charles was a big mistake, but everyone’s allowed one.”
“I haven’t made any mistakes.”
“Noonie, you’ve got to accept that you have, if you’re to move on. If we’re to move on. You’re a victim, just like me: a victim of a world that was once torn apart by countries like the one we’re living in, and that’s now suffering the aftermath of that. We’re victims of that process, and we can only achieve happiness by sticking together. Marry me and we’ll live in Krung Thep together. We can put all this behind us, and it’ll be as if it never happened. We can start again.”
“I haven’t made any mistakes.”
“Noonie, listen - ”
“No, you listen. I haven’t made any mistakes. I only agreed to marry you because Valérie said she’d sue me if I didn’t cooperate, and that would mean losing the bar. Well, it’s lost now. It’s over.”
“I don’t understand. You’re saying - ”
“I don’t even like you, Thanongsak. You’re a bully. And I think you’ll find you don’t like me, if you’re honest. You like – love, maybe - some sort of ideal me. I don’t know who it is you’re thinking of but it isn’t Nongnuch Kitkailart. As for me, I’m all out of love for anyone now except perhaps Charles. Please leave me alone. I’m going to my room.”
Thanongsak sat up. “Valérie ... blackmailed you? And that’s ...”
“I know you didn’t know. But don’t pretend you’d have cared if you’d found out. You’ve ‘a great believer in the healing properties of time’, remember? I’d have got used to it.”
She felt momentarily sorry for him, but then she closed the door on all pity. She now had no honour to lose, no one to save face in front of. Nothing could be taken from her family any more, not even by Valérie. With the possible exception of Charles, she’d lost everyone she’d ever been attached to. Whereas previously, she’d been a citizen of two countries, now she belonged nowhere. The one thing that had remained constant throughout her long ordeal was her loathing for Thanongsak Chongdee. She hoped she’d never see him again.
She returned to her room and forgot her conversation with Thanongsak as if it had never happened. She sat on her bed until night, hardly aware of the passage of time.
Then – as if an alarm clock went off inside her head - she wondered what she was doing. She should be at home, with Charles. She went to her suitcase and removed her handbag with her plane ticket, her visa and some English and Thai money inside, and slipped on her shoes. She knew the way to the airport. She would walk. She went downstairs and out onto the neon-lit streets.
No sooner was she out in the fresh air than she began to feel that crucial elements of her personality were leaking out. She no longer felt grief, or anger – just a blank desire to get back to England. Charles wouldn’t have died in her absence because that was how married couples worked. If they were in love, as she and Charles were, they waited for each other.
Holes started to appear in her experience. First, she was walking through the streets, then a blank, then she was walking north, along the motorway, then a blank. Then a different part of the motorway. A woman in a jeep. Did she want a lift? No. And suddenly here she was, outside the airport. Tired with her clothes torn. Perhaps she’d got tangled in something somewhere. She almost laughed.
The terminal was overcrowded and smelt of sweat and unwashed fabric. Lots of people in uniform were on their way somewhere or directing others: nurses, soldiers, members of the emergency services, aid-workers, airline and tour-company reps. People shouted at each other, trying to control the undercurrent of panic but inadvertently threatening to loose it. The floor was covered in mud.
She went upstairs to Departures. There was a long queue at her checkout, mainly white people. She took her place behind two backpackers in batik vests. From what she could hear, they were disappointed at having been on the west of the island when the wave struck. Some of their friends had been at Kata and Nai Harn and had stories to tell. She felt old.
After half an hour, she arrived at the front. The receptionist, a Chinese-looking woman in a blue jacket, took her ticket and visa and shook her head.
“You’re not due to use this ticket for another week,” she said. “Did you lose family?”
Noonie nodded. She raised her hand to her face and pinched it without thinking.
“Give me your visa. I’ll be right back.”
She walked away and disappeared behind the large Singapore Airlines logo.
“For God’s sake,” someone said. “How many more delays?”
Five minutes later, the receptionist resumed her seat. “Good news. We can fit you on the next flight out. Forty-five minutes time, Gate C. And there’s a flight from Bangkok an hour afterwards.”
“Thank you.”
“I’ve written all the details down. If I can get you anything, come back and let me know.”
She bought herself a Coke and wandered around for a while. She found herself standing where she’d watched her family emerge from the airport that day. She watched them walk to the taxi and fade away.
She slept all the way from Bangkok to Heathrow and didn’t wake up for the refuelling. She strode through customs and flagged a taxi down and went straight to Black Gables. She had a sense of being doomed to travel back and forth on taxis and planes forever. This was like all the others she’d ever been in.
When she arrived, Black Gables was in complete darkness. But Charles’s room was at the back of the house. If there was a light on in there, she wouldn’t be able to see it from here.
She let herself in and went straight upstairs through the darkness. Charles was lying as and where she had left him in. Appleton looked up without surprise then went back to looking straight ahead of him. The room was illuminated only by ten or twelve candles, grouped together. There were huge pools of darkness where the light didn’t reach. Mozart’s Requiem played from the corner.
“Is he ...?” she said.
“He’s still got a few hours left in him. Why don’t you sit down, Madame Butterfly? You must be tired after your long journey. I’ve made you some tea. It’ll be cold now.”
She felt like she’d never been away. She took off her coat and sat down and took Charles’s hand. The flesh was still warm but he was barely breathing.
She picked up her tea. It was cold. She guessed it had been made a long time ago, days even. She drank it.
“Why don’t you tell Charles about your journey?” Appleton said. “I’m sure he’d love to hear all about it.”
She ignored the suggestion as long as the rational part of her mind held sway but when the caffeine wore off and fatigue closed in, she told Charles about her mother and her brothers, about Georgina, Thanongsak’s proposal, the blunt way she’d rejected him. She punctuated her story with assurances of her continuing love for him.
Suddenly she realised he was no longer breathing. Appleton stood up, held his pulse and wept.
“He’s – he’s gone,” he said.
“I know.”
“I’d like to thank you for what you just said. I’m very sorry about your family.”
She nodded.
“I’d better be off now,” he said. “I’ll come back in the morning with the death certificate. I haven’t slept much during the past few days. Will you be okay on your own?”
“Yes. Thank you for looking after him while I was away.”
“What will you do now, Madame Butterfly?”
“I don’t know.”
“Farewell then.”
He kissed her hand, and departed.
She sat listening to the CD for a while. She picked up a bottle of tablets from Charles’s bedside, poured the contents into the palm of her hand and chewed them one by one until they were all gone. She opened the second bottle and did the same. By the time she reached the third, she was beginning to feel nauseous and sleepy. She sped up. She couldn’t afford to come out of this alive. She might not get a second chance. She wanted to be with her mother and brothers, with Georgina, with Charles. This world had spat her out.
She became aware of a movement in the shadows. Her hand was stopped on its way to her mouth. Something grabbed her round the waist. She looked up.
Appleton. He prised the tablets from her grasp and put them back on Charles’s bedside table.
“You didn’t really think Richard Appleton was going to leave you on your own, did you?” he said.
She was on the verge of oblivion now. She could see herself as she must look to him: open-mouthed, fuddle-eyed, stupid. His right arm was all that was stopping her flopping to the floor.
Why hadn’t he gone home? Not that it mattered. Nothing did any more. She was on her way out, finally, thank God.
Almost the last thing she registered before the blackness engulfed her was his grin. Wide and lewd. His eyes bored into her as if he wanted to climb inside her.
Well, she’d let him. She smiled again.
Yes, yes, he could have her.
