The Half-Child (10 page)

Classic fairytales from the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen, some hard cover picture books and an impressive collection of Bible stories.

A baby started howling. In a practised gesture, the German woman scooped him up, placed him over her shoulder and patted his back. The baby gurgled.

At a signal from Frank, Jayne retraced her steps. She noticed dormitory-style bedrooms off both sides of the main room, mosquito nets bunched up on ropes over the sleeping mats that lined the floor. The Australian girl smiled and nodded as Jayne passed.

Frank's office, marked ‘Special Adviser', was in the administration building. He removed the chain from his neck to unlock his door, the key secreted behind the crucifix. Frank's desk was against one wall beneath a map of Thailand. The office also contained a small sitting area.

Frank pulled up a rattan chair and invited Jayne to take a seat on the couch. On the wall above Jayne's head was a picture of a kitten dangling from a bucket beneath the words, ‘Hang in there'.

She handed over her resume but Frank gave it only a cursory glance.

‘I'm sure your credentials are fine,' he said, putting it to one side.

Jayne thought Frank was staring at her breasts, but his focus was her crucifix.

‘Tell me, Jayne, what is it that
motivates
you—' he invested the word with great significance ‘—to work as a volunteer?'

‘Well, I want to help people in need, to make a difference, and to do that in a way that's consistent with my values.'

‘Ah,' Frank nodded.

‘And even more so than Bangkok, Pattaya strikes me as a place desperately in need of God's work, if you know what I mean.'

The increasing tempo of Frank's nods told Jayne she was on track.

‘The wages of sin must take a terrible toll on the women here, and their children, too. And if I could make a difference to just one person…Well, as Saint Luke says, “Joy shall be in Heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety-nine just persons, which need no repentance”.'

This was her coup de grace, memorised that morning from the Gideon Bible in her hotel room.

‘Praise the Lord,' Frank said.

Jayne bowed her head with what she hoped came across as humility and bit her lip.

‘You'd be a perfect addition to our volunteer team.'

‘Oh, I'm so pleased—'

‘First, please don't take this the wrong way, but I need to ask you, Jayne: how would you describe your state of mind?'

‘My state of mind?'

‘Your mental health.'

‘I'm sorry. I'm not sure what you mean.'

Frank left his chair and sat on the couch beside her, so close their knees were almost touching.

‘Would you describe yourself as a person who is easily depressed?'

‘No,' she said slowly. ‘Why?'

‘Because this place can really test your faith and I need to be sure you're up to it.'

Jayne hesitated. ‘It's because of that other girl, isn't it?

The one who killed herself.'

Frank raised his eyebrows.

‘I'm from Australia. The story was in all the papers.

Don't worry,' she hastened to add, ‘I'm coming into this with my eyes open.'

To Jayne's alarm, Frank reached over, took her hands in his and bowed his head.

‘Let us pray,' he said.

Jayne let her hands go limp in Frank's clammy grasp as he gave thanks for ‘delivering Jayne unto our organisation'.

He added a prayer for the repose of the soul of Maryanne Delbeck, and finished with an entreaty to continue to bless their work. In Jayne's history of job interviews, this was without doubt the weirdest.

They agreed she would start the following morning.

‘I have one last question before I go,' Jayne said. ‘What happens to the children who don't meet the criteria for adoption?'

Frank glanced at his watch. ‘Come and I'll show you.'

He led her back out the golden gates, where a different guard from the previous day saluted as they passed. Jayne was careful not to let on that she knew the way and made sure Frank reached the blue gates first.

A muscular man in a navy blue uniform, New Life Children's Centre logo on his chest pocket, sat on a white plastic chair just outside the compound reading that morning's edition of
Thai Rath
. A blue tiger tattoo stretched along his inner right arm. This man Jayne recognised—the tough guy from the previous evening. He looked even tougher up close, his dark face pockmarked with scars.

He leapt to his feet when Frank approached.

‘
Sawadee krup, nong
,' Frank said to the man as he unlocked the gate. ‘This is Mister Chaowalit,' he added in English. ‘He's the guard and handyman for this part of the centre.' He turned back to Chaowalit. ‘
Sabai dee mai
?'

‘
Sabai dee
,' Chaowalit said to him. ‘
Farang khon nee put thai dai mai
?'

He was asking if she spoke Thai. Frank shook his head and Jayne pricked up her ears.

‘There's a problem—' Chaowalit said, but Frank cut him off.

‘I don't have time now,' he said in Thai. ‘I won't be long with her and then we'll meet, okay?'

Chaowalit scowled but stepped aside.

‘This section of the centre is for children whose parents place them in institutional care but don't consent to them being adopted out. We call these kids boarders to distinguish them from orphans.'

He led Jayne into the nursery. It had much the same layout as the orphanage, but with fewer toys and no foreign volunteers. The smaller babies dozed or wriggled around on grass mats. Older children—Jayne guessed around age nine or ten—played with the younger ones. The Thai carers were dressed like nurses. One sat on a chair mending a mosquito net.

‘Most of these children come from families too poor to educate, house or even feed them. So they send them to the centre,' Frank said. ‘Many of the parents are itinerant workers with irregular income and no stability. We become the keepers of the children's birth certificates, vaccination records, even school reports.'

‘Why don't the parents give them up for adoption?'

‘Different reasons. Many intend to maintain family ties.

Others count on a change of luck putting them in a position to care for the child. This is particularly common among the…ah…working girls in Pattaya. They think marrying a rich Westerner will solve all their problems. It doesn't occur to them their future husband might not look too kindly on raising another man's child. Nor do they consider whether such an arrangement would be in the child's best interests—' He stopped mid-sentence.

‘Forgive me, Jayne. Once I'm up on my high horse, I get a little carried away.'

She gave him a polite smile.

‘The sad fact is that most of these children are abandoned.

They'll remain in our care until they finish middle high school, at which point we are obliged by law to release them to fend for themselves.'

Jayne recalled the words in Maryanne Delbeck's letter home.
It seems so unfair. It's not as if their families visit them all the time. Some never come back for them at all
.

‘It seems so unfair,' she echoed.

‘Tragic, really.' Frank gestured around the room. ‘Many would be perfect for adoption. Thai girls and half-ca—I mean,
mixed race
—babies are particularly sought after.

And as you can see, we have a lot of the latter here, both Eurasian and Afro-Asian.'

A tinny rendition of Beethoven's ‘Ode to joy' sounded from Frank's shirt pocket. He took out his mobile phone and glanced at the screen.

‘Excuse me,' he said to Jayne. ‘Feel free to have a look around.'

She wandered into the main room. The children might not have as much stuff as the orphans, but they looked well fed and cared for. On the plus side, their bookshelves were free of Bible stories.

She watched one of the older girls encouraging an infant to walk.

‘Come on Dollar, you can do it,' the girl coaxed.

Jayne smiled. It was trendy among Thai people to give a child an English
cheu len
or nickname and not uncommon, as in Dollar's case, to choose words rather than actual names.

‘Look, watch how Kob does it!'

The girl pointed towards a little boy who stood upright using the edge of a chair for balance. He was what the Thais called
look kreung
, literally ‘half-child' but meaning half-Thai. With dark skin and corkscrew curls, high cheekbones and almond-shaped eyes, he looked like something from a utopian society where humans were designed to be beautiful.

Jayne wondered if this Kob was Mayuree's son.

Casting her eye around the room, Jayne spotted a few more
look kreung
, or what Frank referred to as Eurasian and Afro-Asian. She supposed these were the offspring of the working girls.

‘Can you wipe Moo's nose?' A Thai staff member gestured to a boy at Jayne's feet.

She almost fished a tissue out of her bag before remembering she wasn't supposed to understand Thai.

‘Sorry?' she shrugged.

The nurse made a wiping gesture and pointed again at the child.

Jayne nodded, suppressed a shudder and squashed the slug of snot beneath the child's nose.

Frank reappeared.

‘Already putting you to work I see.'

‘Just trying to be helpful,' she said, holding out the used tissue.

‘There's a trash can just outside the door.' Frank motioned for her to follow him.

‘This section is only down the lane from the orphanage, but the two facilities are separated by a yawning chasm when it comes to opportunity,' he sighed.

Jayne threw away the tissue and held out her hand.

‘Thanks for the tour. I guess I'll see you in the morning.'

‘Not necessarily. Nurse Connie and the others will put you through your orientation. If you need me, I have offices in both parts of the centre. I'm usually in one or the other.'

‘So you work with the boarders, too?'

‘There are sometimes opportunities to counsel families to reconsider their decision and relinquish the child for adoption. It's part of my role at the centre to pursue those opportunities. As I said, many of the children would be ideal for adoption and we have such a long waiting list of suitable applicants.'

‘Do you ever have foreign volunteers working in this section?'

The mild curiosity underlining the question surged when Frank blanched in response.

‘We tried it once but decided it wasn't in the children's best interests.'

And there was Jayne's answer: Maryanne had been granted her wish to work with the boarders.

10

F
rank Harding glanced at the framed photo as he placed his mobile phone on the desk. Him with his brothers, Kevin and Sid, taken just before Kevin left for Nicaragua. Frank was not the only Harding with a missionary calling. Kevin was working to repair the damage done by years of socialism, while Sid was doing the Lord's work on the island of Mindanao in the Southern Philippines.

Like Sid, Frank's calling had brought him to Asia, though Thailand was not his original destination. Five years earlier, Frank was posted to Laos under the auspices of Charitable Care, part of a consortium formed to bring relief to drought-affected areas of southern Laos. His mission was reconnaissance, to explore opportunities for evangelism through Charitable Care's work in food security and famine relief.

Frank was amongst those who volunteered to carry supplies into villages that could only be reached on foot. Ten people participated in the two-day trek, each carrying what they insisted on calling ‘fifteen kilos' of supplies—it was thirty-three pounds where Frank came from—plus water for personal use. When they finally reached their destination,

Frank unloaded not the rice his colleagues assumed he was carrying, but thirty-three pounds of Bibles.

He knew he was doing the right thing, bringing something that would sustain the villagers through far more than a single drought. But his colleagues did not see it that way, even when he pointed out that the translation was in the relevant village language. A French doctor, clearly with communist leanings, resorted to name-calling and harassment.

‘What does it matter that the Bibles are in the local language?' the man sneered. ‘The villagers cannot read, you
imbécile
.'

He said the word in French, but there was no mistaking what he meant. Frank refused to be baited.

‘Does it occur to you that the reason they cannot read is because they don't have inspirational reading materials?'

Frank said calmly. ‘Surely there's no stronger motivation for them to learn than the word of God.'

The Frenchman shook his head and muttered something under his breath, adding in a louder voice, ‘
Alors
, they are good for one thing.'

He took a Bible from the pile at Frank's feet and handed it to the village headman.

‘
Sahai, soup yah
,
bo
?' he said, addressing the man as ‘comrade'.

Frank watched in disgust as the headman tore out a page, dipped into a leather tobacco pouch at his waist, and proceeded to roll a cigarette. He handed the Holy Book around for the other men in the village to do likewise. Their laughter was still ringing in his ears as Frank turned and walked away.

When they returned to the Lao capital Vientiane, he was summoned to the Ministry of the Interior and charged with crimes against Lao culture. Frank was baffled. He'd only wanted to save the villagers who, in their pagan ignorance, were destined for eternal damnation. And for this he was deported. He suspected the Frenchman of turning him in, but reminded himself that vengeance was the Lord's area of expertise.

The deportation turned out to be a blessing in disguise as it brought Frank to Pattaya. And if ever there was a place in need of the Lord's redeeming light, it was Pattaya and its twin town of Jomtien, Thailand's own Sodom and Gomorrah. People of means came here expressly to gratify their basest desires, preying on the weakness of the poor, the ignorant and the avaricious. A place where the Devil spent his holidays. A place where Frank could make a real difference.