A Woman of Bangkok (24 page)

The barman brought her order. ‘Things seem quiet today,’ she said, ‘or perhaps it’s because I’m later than usual.’ She spoke brightly and he heard all right but he refused to respond to her sociableness, turning away wooden-faced without a word. Then she lowered her head for a long refreshing drink.

With her head down she looked up artfully under her lashes to study Dick in the mirror. What with the dim cool greenish sub-aquatic light, the confusion of heads and tables and palms and posturing waiters and pirouetting fans, and the state of her eyes, which were not so good as they had once been, she couldn’t make out the features of his face, but she could tell a lot from its angle. She was sure he had seen her and was hoping she hadn’t seen him, sure that in a minute or two he would try to make an unobtrusive getaway. She could make out that much as clearly she thought, as if he’d spoken his thoughts in her ear.

She bit a cream-puff in half and the cream blupped richly onto her tongue but she hardly noticed how delicious it was.

What a cad Dick was turning out to be! Just like all the other men. Talking all that nonsense about love—but it never meant anything. Cheating her last night. Lying too—saying he’d fly at dawn—yet here he was at midday as large as life at the Singsong. He must have had more money than he’d declared all along too, for the Singsong was expensive. Or had he contrived to raise a few dollars this morning? If so why hadn’t he come straight to her house to pay his debts? He knew the place all right and it was only three minutes’ walk from here. Once before when his plane had been delayed by engine-trouble he’d knocked on her door before she was up and spent all day with her, and that time—it was in the days when he was still being good to her—he’d given her five hundred tics, so they’d both been very happy.

She felt like spitting but you weren’t supposed to do that when there were foreigners around, even in a public place like this.

Why didn’t Dick go?

Did he think he was safer here, amongst his own kind, than he would be if he attempted to flee? Was he afraid she’d chase him? Her lip curled. He ought to know her better than that by now. She was the White Leopard: men ran after her, not she after them. He was free to beat it if he wanted to.

Besides, trying to run away wouldn’t do him any good. He’d been silly enough to tell her the name of the airline he worked for. Somebody in the office would be bound to tell her where he was staying. They might not want to at first, but a tip would soon loosen their tongues. Afterwards Dick would have to refund the tip, besides paying up what he already owed, plus another thousand tics for having given her so much trouble.

‘Go,’ she whispered fiercely at his reflection. ‘You’re in my way. Wretch would give me a handbag.’

She finished her second cream-puff and called to the waiter for tissue to wipe her mouth and fingers. She sought out Wretch’s reflection in the mirror. He couldn’t take his eyes off her, it seemed, was hungering for her to look round and recognize him. It was a pity not to be able to turn such devotion to account and she cursed Dick again.

‘Goddam you, Dick, Goddam.’

It had already occurred to her that the Lounge might contain a better proposition than either Dick or Wretch—since they temporarily cancelled each other out—but that was something she couldn’t determine from the mirror; she’d have to turn sideways on the stool and give the place a careful survey, or maybe even go for an exploratory walk amongst the tables.

She left half a cream-puff on her plate—only the poor cleaned their plates as if they couldn’t afford to waste a single crumb—shovelled ice into her mouth with the straw and still crunching, swivelled round.

Her face wore a smile, one of her professional smiles. It was as discreet, and yet at the same time as indiscreet to those in the know, as the red lamp over a French doorway. It said, ‘I am a high-class girl enjoying my hours of leisure. I am certainly not looking for men in the streetwalker sense: I am not on duty now. But I thrive on the admiration of men, and if there is a really nice one in this assemblage who wishes to strike up an acquaintance with me and can do so in a gentlemanly manner that won’t make me look cheap and too easy in the sight of all these rich nice people …’

But the survey was unpromising. There was a group of American naval ratings at one table—‘narvy’ she called them—but she had a low opinion of the American narvy; either they were genuinely short of cash or they were close-fisted; they seemed to have the idea that they were heroes and that girls should be honoured to lie with them for nothing, whereas in peace-time they were no braver than other sailors and ought to pay market prices as other sailors did. Only a few months ago when an American narvy boat had brought fifty new planes for the Thai air-force she’d had serious trouble with one officer, not at her home thank God but at the Cottages; the naval MPs had wanted the Thai police to lock her up, and all over a measly hundred tics she’d extracted from his pocket because he hadn’t given her enough seeing he was an officer … There was a little gibbon-faced man who was devouring her with his eyes whenever he got a chance; he looked vaguely familiar and she thought she might have slept with him sometime once; but he was with two large ugly superbly-well-got-up foreign women and anyway he didn’t look like a good spender … There were also a few bad eggs, regular Bolero-ites and Champagne Bucketeers; they recognized her and she them; but they only cracked smutty jokes about her amongst themselves and she hated them all; they would go with the Black Leopard or any of the other girls as soon as with her, they were too coarse to be able to appreciate the difference …

She shrugged round again, called the barman and ordered another coffee. While it was on the way she took out her compact and examined her face with care, including her teeth. Everything was in order, though a gold locket would have gone well in the deep neck of this blouse. Gold lockets didn’t grow in the klongs like water lilies though …

When her coffee came she slipped off the stool and carried it between the tables. At one point she deliberately paused looking from side to side with lowered eyes but nobody hailed her, and finally she sank onto a sofa in an alcove between two pillars. She was only twenty feet away from the table that interested her most and directly in front of Wretch. Playing with fire again. In a few minutes she would be at the table or they would be on her sofa. And she was so incensed with Dick that inevitably the topic of money would come up, and with it trouble. For Dick would resent being accused of welshing in front of his friend. As for Wretch, he seemed like an idealistic type: it was quite possible he would be nauseated by the idea of there being an understanding between her and Dick. They might even fight. Men were so stupid: they never seemed to realize that a girl was always willing to be as good to one man as to another as long as both were equally good to her. Well, if it came to blows, never mind: it was always reassuring to find men still thought you worth fighting over, and the Singsong was dull today; goddam, she’d been here more than a quarter of an hour and she hadn’t had any fun at all yet.

Although she hadn’t once looked straight at him (naturally) she’d been well aware of Wretch’s mounting excitement as her meanderings between the tables brought her nearer. She could now see out of the corner of her eye that her proximity was so distracting to him that he couldn’t pay any attention to Dick’s drawl. He was shivering with anxiety to catch her eye. So young, she thought, and so poor at hiding his feelings: it was pathetic.

She considered him as dispassionately as if he were a cream-puff. One more of the two thousand. No more important to her than the little gibbon-faced imp who had also had his hour with her and continued on his march into oblivion. He’d been a lot nicer than some, of course—uncommonly free with his money, humble and worshipful in her room, an earnest if uninspired performer in bed. To be honest, she would have welcomed further attentions from him, for she had been just pleasantly tipsy while he was young and clean and unvicious and good-looking, but when she’d hinted at more money he’d taken her seriously, got into a huff, got dressed, and had stupidly given Bochang ten tics though she’d done nothing for him and departed. It was only because these incidents were so recent that she recalled them; in a week he would be forgotten, for she deliberately erased from her memory those who paid only once; they weren’t worth remembering. There was little likelihood that he’d ever become A Friend, as Dick had been. His youth was against him. Young men seldom have much money—how can they? they are just setting out in the world; their pay is low and furthermore their appetites are insatiable. Ten to one next time he tried to get her he’d only want to give her a hundred tics, and that would be the end of him as far as she was concerned.

But in the meantime she must give him the chance to make good …

She lifted her eyes and recognized him with a start of surprise and pleasure and clung to his gaze for a moment and then looked meaningly from side to side and dropped her eyes. He understood perfectly: she was delighted to meet him again but she didn’t want any of his acquaintances who might be present to see him exchanging glances with her: he might go down in their estimation. Next time she looked at him she saw he was in a turmoil of pleasure at being recognized and deeply touched by her discretion. He was in fact as innocent as Udom’s pup and a predestined purchaser of handbags …

She was just running her mind over the current shop displays and wondering how deep his hand would go into his pocket when Dick, who was getting to be a goddam nuisance, went and spoiled everything.

Presumably he wondered what Wretch was goggling at and glanced over his shoulder to see. When he saw her he couldn’t prevent himself from starting slightly but he acted very well, there was nothing guilty-looking about him, his expression could easily have passed for honest surprise. He raised his hand in an informal salute and grinned. Then he beckoned to her, in the crude western way, with his finger up, instead of with the hand turned tastefully downwards.

She looked away stonily, her eyebrows depressed in a frown.

Dick laughed and excused himself to Wretch and rose to his feet. He was really a most handsome man in his airline uniform, broad-shouldered, narrow-pelvised, long-legged; the crinkled brow, the bent nose, the smile that went further into his right cheek than into the left, were all very engaging; it was a naughty-boy face, full of self-confidence and good-humour. She couldn’t help feeling a little more forgiving as he came towards her, lounging along as unconcernedly as if there were only themselves in the whole place. He was a man that even a Miss Thailand would have felt proud to stand beside. Compared with him, Wretch, though even handsomer, was distressingly adolescent. But in spite of his looks this Dick was bad, like all men, and she steeled her heart against him.

‘Hi, Leopard, I didn’t know you prowled by daylight too. Why don’t you come on over to our part of the jungle, meet my friend?’

‘Give me my money.’

‘What?’

‘I want one t’ou-sand tic.’

‘What!’
He stared at her incredulously, then broke into a laugh. ‘One—thousand—tics! You must be crazy, kid. Jesus, that’s more than sixty dollars!’

‘OK. Give me cheque for eighty dollar, enough.’ She shot him a dazzling smile, not because he deserved it, but because she’d noticed a few people watching them, and she didn’t want them to get the impression that the colloquy was anything but friendly and casual.

He clapped his hand to his head in a helpless gesture that had often seemed captivating before. Then he said earnestly, in a low voice, ‘Look, honey, my friend’s waiting and I’ve gotta get back to him. But I’ll see you some place else and pay you something, honest I will. Maybe I’ll come to your house. Or maybe I’ll go to the Bolero tonight—’

‘I must go my home, wait you all day? And
then
maybe you not come?’ She almost choked with rage—now he was really beginning to treat her shabbily—but she forced another incongruous smile, and it was so enchanting that it deceived not only the people it was intended to deceive but him too. He jumped to the conclusion that she’d been joking and his relief showed in his face.

‘Did I ever double-cross you, honey? You ought to know me by now. I’m one of the best friends you ever had.’ He smiled down at her. ‘Come on, kid. Let me introduce you to my new buddy. He’s a good guy, did me a damn’ good turn this morning.’ He tried to catch her hand but she eluded him. ‘Come on. Come on.’ Half plea. Half command. The conjugal tone. It infuriated her. It made her look cheap in front of everyone, as if she were a dancing-girl even now, when off duty.

‘I sink your frand go,’ she said coldly.

‘Eh?’ He whipped round in consternation. ‘Hey, Reggie, what’s the big idea? You’re not walking out on me, are you, bud? I thought we were all set for a beery afternoon.’

Wretch gave him a haggard grin and subsided into his seat. And as he settled himself he looked at her. Just like Udom’s pup again. After he’d been kicked.

Now Dick would have to buy that handbag.

Suddenly she was in a blind fury. She could have torn Dick’s cheeks to shreds with her Leopard’s claws, there in front of everybody. If she’d had a gun she’d have shot him and cheerfully done her ten years. Cheated. Brushed off. Made to look mean in this public place. And before a man who honoured her and might have turned out unexpectedly generous—

She jumped up, knocking over the coffee.

‘That’s the stuff, kid. Come and meet—’

But she swept past him like an empress. She was too incensed even to give Wretch a promising glance. She marched to the bar and demanded her bill. Nine tics fifty satang. She threw a ten-tic note at the barman and stalked out. Near the door she threw one look backwards. Dick had gone back to Wretch. His back was towards her but he appeared to be saying something about her and laughing. Wretch wasn’t paying any attention; he was craning his neck to watch her. She couldn’t make out whether it was from desire still, or just curiosity.