A Woman of Bangkok Read online

  A WOMAN OF

  BANGKOK

  Jack Reynolds

  Contents

  PRAISE FOR A WOMAN OF BANGKOK

  Part One: THE LAMB

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Part Two: THE LEOPARD

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Part Three: THE SLAUGHTER

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ABOUT MONSOON BOOKS

  THAI GIRL

  MY THAI GIRL AND I

  ESCAPE

  ESCAPE: THE PAST

  BANGKOK HARD TIME

  NIGHTMARE IN BANGKOK

  CONFESSIONS OF A BANGKOK PRIVATE EYE

  THAI PRIVATE EYE

  COPYRIGHT

  Praise for A Woman of Bangkok

  ‘Among the ten finest novels written about Asia’

  The Asian Wall Street Journal (Harry Rolnick)

  ‘Pulls no punches … a book to remember’

  The Age, Australia

  ‘At times the lying, grasping, impenitent and wholly immoral Vilai becomes

  twenty times larger than life. She is the real thing …’

  The New York Times

  ‘One night in Bangkok, so the song goes, makes a hard man humble. The city is, in fact, a combine harvester for the expat male heart. Jack Reynolds captures the ethos perfectly in this, the definitive account, written 50 years ago’

  The Guardian, UK (Malcolm Pryce)

  ‘Fascinating … intensely readable’

  Gore Vidal, author

  ‘More than half a century ago, Jack Reynolds wrote the original Bangkok bargirl story, highlighting the dangers that can befall a man who loses his heart in the Land of Smiles. The story is as pertinent today as it was then and always will be so long as men continue to look for love in the wrong places’

  Stephen Leather, author

  ‘Jack Reynolds’ 1950s A Woman of Bangkok (originally published A Sort of Beauty in 1956, republished under the new name shortly thereafter), a well-written and poignant story of a young Englishman’s descent into the world of Thai brothels, remains the best novel yet published with this theme’

  Joe Cummings, author

  Part One

  THE LAMB

  The sunlight on the garden

  Hardens and grows cold;

  We cannot catch the minute

  Within its nets of gold;

  When all is told

  We cannot ask for pardon.

  Louis MacNeice

  One

  It is on the second Sunday in September that I am due to fly to Bangkok. The preceding day I spend with my parents. That entails going down to Malderbury by train. I feel sick with apprehension. I am afraid there are going to be tearful scenes, especially with my mother, and I am even more afraid that Andy and Sheila will show up and try to effect a last-minute reconciliation.

  But as it turns out, these fears, like most of my fears, are groundless. My father is locked in his usual Saturday hell consuming ounces of tobacco over his sermons for the morrow. My mother is busy jam-making. No signs of Andy or his bride. After a few minutes I get out the lawn mower and lay absolutely regular strips of viridian and terre verte across the tennis court. For lunch there are home-grown tomatoes and Danish tinned ham and what talk there is deals casually with disaster amongst the parishioners, not with anything real.

  After coffee I retire to my own room. All the poets are there from Chaucer and Langland to those two doubting Thomases of modern times, Edward and Dylan; but I can’t settle to read anything; the salt hath lost his savour; symphonies sound like solos on the piccolo. I am glad when the gong booms for tea. It booms early, so that I can catch the 4.33 back to town. There is real butter, and some of my mother’s famous bread, and the scum off the new jam, still hot. Again, all mention of my personal affairs is avoided. After emptying my fourth cup I look at my watch, say ‘Well, I suppose,’ get up rather clumsily off the straight-backed Chippendale chair, shake hands with my father, unable to look in his eyes, kiss my mother twice. To my annoyance I am nearly more emotional than they are. I am annoyed too because they aren’t coming to the station to see me off. They are expecting some ‘young people’ they say to play tennis on the lawn I so kindly cut. Bitterly I recall how when Andy first set forth for darkest Africa the whole family accompanied him to Liverpool and saw him safely aboard his ship … But never mind.

  I walk down the lane—perhaps for the last time: who knows what deadly tropical disease I may not soon contract?—and turn round under Mrs. Danforth’s damson tree to wave goodbye. They are standing by the gate, my father, short and round and rubicund, clenching between his teeth the pipe which I am sure is more comfort to him than his religion, my mother, taller and more severe, automatically wiping her hands on her apron. I wave. They wave. I turn my back on them. Free at last. Or at any rate, adrift. I ought to walk more jauntily than I do, but my feelings are distressingly muddled: a lift in the heart but a lump in the throat, and in the bowels, a queasy debilitating fear.

  Meeting the ‘young people’ is a godsend of an anticlimax. There’s half a dozen of them packed into the Dennisons’ new car. Some of them I don’t recognize, for it is seven years since I last lived at home and during that time people seem to have been growing up much faster than I ever did. The only hand I really care to shake is young Dennison’s own. He takes it from the wheel and stretches it out to me across the laps of two girls who are snuggled in the front seat with him. I grip it heartily, not because of any present affection for Denny (I scarcely know him any longer) but for the sake of auld lang syne. He must be doing pretty well at whatever it is he is doing: the silk scarf inside his open-neck shirt, the curly pipe in his mouth, the glossy new look of the whole ensemble, clearly proclaim success. And it seems to me (conscious as I am of a sports jacket baggy at the elbows and corduroys baggy at the knee) that those two girls in the front seat are adjuncts of his success, no less part and parcel of it than the car. I cannot help but feel that their waves are too set, their lips too red, their sweaters too tight and their shorts too short, for their own comfort or anybody else’s: it is as if they have always considered themselves to be ugly ducklings and can’t believe that they’ve suddenly turned into swans; they still feel it necessary to over-emphasize every potential charm, like fading courtesans. I blush under the upward scrutiny of their huge brilliant eyes and try to drag my hand from Denny’s but he holds it captive, embarrassingly within the warm aura of their thighs. There is the usual flapping of tongues:

  ‘Thought you’d gone, old boy.’

  ‘No, not yet. Tomorrow’s the day.’

  ‘Tomorrow D-day, what? Flying, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes. DC-6.’

  ‘You’ll find flying pretty boring.’

  I stare at him cholerously. The cheek of the man! How dare he contrast before these girls, whose eyes have grown bigger and brighter as their coyly-revealed ears drink in this staccato men’s talk, his own experience in the air (five minutes for ten bob in a Gypsy Moth at Clacton-on-sea, if that) with my own inexperience, which he insultingly assumes? And that huddle of limbs and racquets in the rear seat is equipped with ears too. I stammer lamely, ‘Well, we’ll see.’

  ‘Where’s he going?’ asks the girl next to him, the one whose sweater is so tight in two places that you can see the white bulges of her brassiere through the expanded meshes of red wool.

  ‘Yes, where are you going, Reg? Kenya, is it, where Andy—?’

  ‘No. Thailand.’ They all look blank. ‘Siam, to give it its old name.’

  ‘Ah, I knew it was som
ewhere that way.’

  The sweater rubs his arm and he says, turning to her indulgently (though he is still holding my hand and our palms are getting objectionably moist), ‘Si-am, honey. Haven’t you ever heard of Si-am?’

  Apparently she hasn’t, but meanwhile the other girl, whose sweater is primrose-yellow, addresses me direct in a husky voice. ‘Why on earth are you going there? And how long for?’

  ‘My firm’s sending me. For three years, I expect.’

  Her eyes grow momentarily tremendous, then unfocus themselves from me, lose their brilliance and turn away. Three years … Her hopes for the next month or so are centred nearer home. She looks at her wrist-watch.

  Denny puts the car into gear. ‘Well, mustn’t keep you, old man. Wouldn’t do for you to miss your train, I expect. Some little lady in Palmers Green waiting to say a last fond farewell, what? What?’

  A chorus of so-longs, happy landings, cheerios, and a mock military salute from me. As the car draws away there is a commotion in the front seat and the head of one of the girls comes through the window. Impossible to tell which one: they are lipsticked and powdered to such a pitch of similarity that only by their sweaters can they be told apart. ‘Bring me back a sarong,’ she squeals, ‘you know, like Dorothy Lamour,’ and she waves a slim arm at me. Mrs. Danforth’s damsons intervene again and my last salute, an acknowledgement of that arm’s, goes unobserved by mortal eye. To the eye of Heaven, if that happened to be trained on me at that moment, it must have looked a fatuous gesture. Young Reggie Joyce down there, saluting the arse-end of an Austin A-40 …

  As it happens, Denny guessed right. There is a little lady waiting for me. Not in Palmers Green—but to a man who thinks Thailand is in the same general direction as Kenya, the difference between one North London suburb and another must seem immaterial. Nor is she the sort of ‘little lady’ that Denny implied with that knowing upward twitch of one eyebrow. I have known her intimately for six years and never kissed her once. Nor wanted to.

  She is sitting in the front room window with her hat already on. She is manicuring her nails to pass the time. When she sees me she throws down the orange stick and jumps up. I don’t get a chance to use my key. She hurtles through the door, slamming it shut behind her. ‘Good gracious, Mr. Joyce’ (in all these years I have never been able to induce her to use my first name) ‘I thought you never was coming. We’ll have to queue, that’s certain.’

  I had wanted to go inside for a minute (those four cups of tea) but I decide to suppress myself for a while longer. For one who is fifty-seven years of age, and only about that number of inches high, and at a guess about twice that number of inches round, she can cover the ground at an astonishing speed. Her calves twinkle fawn-stockinged between this evening’s particular flowery voluminousness and her run-over-at-heels but meticulously-polished shoes. Yet despite the energy she is expending, she has breath left for conversation.

  ‘Did you see your Mum and Dad?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How were they?’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Weren’t they—upset?’

  ‘Why should they be?’

  ‘Well, with you going away. For so long. To them foreign parts. I’m sure I’m upset.’

  ‘Oh, you’re just sentimental, Lena. We Joyces are a travelling family. We’re used to our loved ones taking off for the antipodes.’

  ‘Yes, but you’re going to Siam.’ Her next question is put almost warily. ‘Did you see your brother?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nor his wife?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Poor Mr. Joyce. But perhaps she’ll be there tomorrow.’

  I pretend to be astounded by the idea. ‘Where d’you mean? At the airport? She certainly won’t. And I damn well hope she isn’t.’ I hardly realize I am lying. Men are deceivers ever, especially of themselves. If she isn’t there, it’s going to be miserable. And if she is—

  ‘There’s our bus,’ cries Lena, breaking into a fast trot.

  The film is Ivanhoe. The book was required reading at school and like all Scott, a thorough bore. I queue with a bad grace. But blessed is the pessimist, for he shall receive occasional pleasant surprises. For two hours, swiftly past, tomorrow, the future, Sheila, this century, are all abolished. Sunlight sparkles on castle walls; Sordello cavalcades ride forest trails; the Saxon baron is courteous, after careful explanations to his Saxon guests, to Norman knight and even to wandering Jew; gauntlets are flung down, deadly insults hurled from lips pale with rage, trumpets raised to bray to the cloud-piled skies; the earth rumbles under the hooves of chargers in the joust; arrows fly as thick as grass from the mower’s blades; bodies plunge off battlements into moats; swords clang on shields, which sound like dustbin lids. Ivanhoe is properly athletic and well-motivated but a silly ass over women.

  A thousand plush seats have hiccups as two thousand buttocks ascend a few inches nearer heaven. If you reach the back aisle before the drum-roll you can carry on to the exit without convicting yourself of treason. If you are caught amongst the seats you must stand riveted amongst them, arms like pokers at your sides. Go-o-od save the Queen. All right, you can go now. The royal countenance is obliterated by sumptuous curtains and American jive steps sharp on the heels of Britain’s most-played tune.

  ‘How’d you like it, Lena?’

  ‘Oh, it was all right. But I like Abbott and Costello better.’

  We stand in a queue for the bus. We stand on the bus. There is one nice-looking girl, fair, self-contained, a little like Sheila. We alight: Lena walks on ahead while I queue again for fish and chips. When I reach the flat she has laid the table and put the kettle on for my cup of tea. She has taken her hat off and is carving bread in the terrifying female manner with the loaf pressed against her beflowered bust and the knife held as Lucretia holds hers in the Titian. A wisp of grey hair has come adrift from its clips and as she pauses to brush it out of her eyes I feel a pang of tenderness for her deeper than any I have felt for my mother all day long. The kettle lid starts rattling and I go out to the scullery to make the tea. Lena Braidman. To my parents she is merely the spinster sister of one of the sidesmen at Malderbury. To her neighbours in Pennywort Road, that queer old girl at 96, has a nice-looking young lodger, seems a bit too friendly with him too, goes to the pictures with him regular, rum goings on. To Denny, if he happened to see her, that old bag …

  ‘What time do you want to be called in the morning?’ she asks.

  ‘I’d better leave here about eight. I have to be at Kensington air-terminal at nine-ten.’ I open a bottle of stout with my penknife. I fill the glass too rapidly and the froth rising with a slow but implacable ebullience passes the brim and slides down the outside to the cloth. ‘Oh, blast … Are you coming with me?’

  ‘Of course.’ She has unwrapped the fish; she screws the paper into a greasy ball and throws it into the coal-scuttle. ‘I’m going to miss you, Mr. Joyce.’

  I scrape a good helping of chips off the dish onto my plate. Got to say it somehow. ‘I’m going to miss you, too, Lena. You’ve been like a—well, like a jolly good Aunt to me all these years.’ She cascades the rest of the chips onto her own plate, takes the smaller piece of fish and hands me the other. Then she begins to saturate her plateful with vinegar. ‘The bit I liked best was when Elizabeth Taylor was listening behind the curtain,’ she says. ‘I think Elizabeth Taylor’s a lovely girl, don’t you?’

  ‘Not half,’ I reply with relief. ‘If ever I get knocked off a horse with a ten-foot bargepole, I hope Elizabeth Taylor’s around to hand me the smelling salts.’

  The washing-up done, I call ‘Goodnight’ to Lena and go to the back bedroom which has been mine ever since I came to London to seek my fortune. It looks bare tonight. The books, the portraits of sailing ships and speedway riders which used to adorn the walls, the two Negro carvings Andy gave me, the radio set I built myself, have all been removed to Malderbury. My remaining belongings are already packed in the two new suitcas
es standing by the wall. Only unpacked items: my pyjamas on the bed, the suit I’m going to wear tomorrow behind the door, my toilet articles on the dressing-table and washstand. I go through the drawers for a last quick check-up. Empty. Empty. Empty. An odd button, a few tintacks, the top of a broken fountainpen. The sheets of newspaper which were used as linings are all awry and yellowed. End of an epoch. I open the bottom drawer. Here virgins stow their hopes and dreams. What is a virgin bachelor without hopes likely to have put there?

  I had expected it to be empty too but it isn’t. There’s an old exercise book. I recognize it with a shock. My novel. The one I started to write immediately after the Sheila episode. Begun in bitterness and ended in frustration. What in hell am I going to do with the thing now?

  The title page is elaborately designed in Indian ink: ‘Perfidy, by Reginald Ernest Joyce.’ On the next page there is a Note: ‘This is a novel, and all the characters are fictitious. Any likeness …’ Etc. Etc. Blah blah blah. What barefaced lying. Who was I hoping to fool? The hero was Reginald Ernest Joyce. The heroine Sheila. The villain Andy. The perfidy Andy’s and Sheila’s.

  I read the first few lines. ‘Chapter One. Until I was twenty-seven I was like the Lady of Shalott. I lived in an ivory tower and never looked out of the window: I daren’t. For my knowledge of the world beyond the panes I relied on my mirrors, books. Now anyone who has ever looked over his sweetheart’s shoulder into her mirror as she powders her nose—’

  God, what a shock I got that day!

  ‘—and seen their two faces there, his own no less handsome and frank and open than usual, but hers suddenly strange, with unequal cheeks and lopsided smile, a travesty of her real face (though she appears to be satisfied with it herself, and even derives spiritual strength just from contemplating it), realizes that mirrors do not reflect facts; light travels in straight lines, as is demonstrated to you at school with pins and prisms, but the truth, as Einstein is said to have proved, is slightly bent; and it follows that some of the ideas I had formed in my private chamber were pretty queer. Yet for some of these misconceptions, wrong-headed though they were, I was prepared to lay down my life …’