Bangkok Knights (22 page)

As I’ve said, I’d had a look at Daphne and I could see how
she might tend to leave one a bit cowed. I had a question for Frank, though: did
his mother and his childhood affliction really believe that he had been leading
a monastic existence here in Bangkok?

“I don’t know what they thought before, but I fear they
have come to hold dire suspicions.

”You know how wolves and things leave their spoor around
to mark the boundaries of their territory? Well, I figure that’s what Mu was up
to — maybe she didn’t believe it was really my mother who was dispossessing her
of her home.

“No sooner had Daphne tucked herself in one night, when
she decided to check her pillow for scorpions or something. And what did she
find, nestled there between the pillow and the pillowcase? A pair of frilly
knickers with ‘Eat me’ embroidered on them.

“The issue of the toothsome panties arose at breakfast,
just about first thing. Well, it looked as though either I’d had a woman in
there, or else it was something worse. But then I thought of another story: the
maid also did washing for several other apartments, and she’d probably got a
pair of my neighbor’s panties stuck up in there by accident. When I thought
about it, I said, that had to be what had happened.

“This, my inquisitors had to admit, was a real
possibility. The next thing I knew, however, they had decided my maid was not
really a maid, but was really a girlfriend. I couldn’t believe it; I might as
well have let Mu stay. I could’ve let them
all
stay, come to that, and
tried to claim that Noi was the gardener and Lek was my bodyguard, or
something.

“So when I wasn’t at home facing the Inquisition, I was
out slogging around in the heat getting to visit places I’d never set eyes on
before and wouldn’t have even known existed had I not seen them on Nancy
Chandler’s tourist map of the city and then managed to walk a long way around
them. I saw snake farms, crocodile farms, rubies, sapphires, silk shops, and
classical dancers. We got to go on rides in boats on canals, looking at all the
other tourists in boats on canals. We got to talk to all manner of touts, and
visited all the local hotspots, like Jim Thompson’s House. We even went down Patpong Road, one evening, and I had to deal with questions like this one: ‘Why is she
calling you “Harry”, Frank? Does she
know
you?’

“Before too long, of course, Mother began to close in on
the main puipose of their visit—to close in for the kill, you might say.

“Well, it didn’t take me too long to see it. We were
sitting there, with Daphne rabbitting on about ‘birds of a feather’ and Mother
chewing on the other ear about Thai food being sure to give you stomach cancer
or maybe even ulcers, and I said excuse me but I had to go out to see to a few
things.

“I finally realized it—I have no choice; there’s no place
to run to. The world’s too small. I’m trapped.”

It was terrible to see the man I’d known as Philanderin’
Frank Keenock brought to this pass, hollow-eyed and trembling, a spirited young
buck brought to bay.

“You’re going to get married, then?”

“That’s right This is something Mu has wanted for a long
time, and I should’ve made up my mind months ago.”

“Mu?”

“Who else?”

Mu! Mu of the eighteen cousins and a sick uncle. Mu who
loved to play cards for more money than she had. Mu the sweet and lovely young
thing who liked to tell Frank long stories in a version of English that wound
him up into a total frenzy of incomprehension. Mu the woman who Frank had
thought about marrying from the time he met her, but whom he could on a good
day find twenty-seven reasons not to marry, and sometimes thirty-six on a
Sunday.

“Yeah, I think we’re just going to slip away and make it
all a fait accompli. I called her last night. I’ve got to meet her in half an
hour.”

“Congratulations,” I said, and I meant it. I was happy for
him; but I didn’t want to have to be the one to tell the redoubtable Daphne. Or
Mother Keenock.

“Can I ask a favor of you?” said Frank.

All was quiet on the patio out behind the Cheri-Tone
Guesthouse. Unusually quiet; there was nothing but an occasional whistle or
mutter from the five cages which hung around the wrought-iron enclosure. The
inmates were strangely subdued. Maybe they were sick, I thought. Especially
Nixon, the normally ebullient ringleader of the five resident mynah birds — I
hadn’t heard him scream or cuss since I’d arrived.

The only real noise was Eddie’s wife Lek beating a
bedroll. In fact, I couldn’t help noticing she was beating this item with a
good deal of enthusiasm. And when Eddie Alder came out to join me at the table,
I could see his birds were no more subdued than he was, maybe even less so.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“You see that mattress Lek is beating up? Yeah? Well,
that’s not a mattress; that’s
me”

“She’s kicking the dog,” I guessed.

“That’s right; and if that mattress was a dog, it’d be
enjoying life in Doggie Heaven right now.”

’Kicking the dog’ refers to the Thai custom of indirecting
your anger — if you get mad at somebody, it’s considered good form to smile at
that individual while at the same time you vent your anger on some other handy
object, such as a passing dog. If this operation is performed correctly, the
real object of your pique is made fully aware of this pique, while being left
with nothing but respect for your sense of propriety. That’s why Thailand stays the Land of Smiles. That’s overlooking the dogs, of course; they don’t smile a lot.

Anyway, I had to think Eddie was profoundly grateful for
this custom, as I watched Lek rip the bedroll off the line and carry its
chastened corpse into the house.

“I’m not a crook,” quavered Nixon in a voice that said he
thought he was a good guy, even if the whole world, maybe even his own mother,
was trying to claim otherwise. A broken bird. It was almost enough to inspire
compassion.

I saw Meow, Lek’s cute sister, appear in the doorway for a
moment, and I called, “Meow; how’s it going, you sweet thing, you?”

Too late, I noticed she wasn’t in the mood for badinage.
Firing a hot look at Eddie, she uttered a choked sob, and retreated back into
the guesthouse.

“This is a real nest of peace and harmony you’ve got on your
hands, here, Eddie. What gives?”

“It all started with yesterday’s champagne breakfast.”

“Champagne breakfast? Don’t tell me...”

That’s right; Trevor’s back in town.”

Trevor Perry, Traffic Engineer and eligible young bachelor
extraordinaire, originally hailing from Norwich, England, currently resident in
Kuwait where, as Trevor would be the first to tell you, eligible young
bachelors can spend only so much time, if they are interested in staying sane
and healthy.

“You’ve got to get married, if you want to spend more than
eighteen months in Kuwait.” Or so he had told us that first time he’d visited Thailand. “It’s not normal. It’s not healthy. Not having any women around. Not available
ones, I mean.”

He arrived with a print-out detailing fifty-five dates he
and his computer had made by correspondence. These ‘interviews’were to be
conducted during a six-week period, both here and in Manila.

Despite his tender years, anyone could see Trevor Perry
was a man of native wit already honed by a rich life experience. It was there
in his far-seeing eyes and in his big red ears, fully arrayed and ever alert to
perils, both those his mother told him about as well as novel opportunities for
disaster too. You could see it in the way he stroked at his upper lip, where
you might also notice there grew a blonde kind-of moustache. It was evident in
the way he outlined with modest authority his computerized plan to achieve
maximum marital bliss and a long and lucrative career in Kuwait all with optimum efficiency and dispatch.

Never mind he’d been delivered by taxi to the Cheri-Tone
Guesthouse instead of the Sheraton Hotel. These things happen. And it could
happen to anyone, he ‘d knocked himself out cold while opening that first
bottle of champagne to celebrate his arrival in the land of plenty. In his
weakened condition, he’d then misplaced his computer printout. Shortly
thereafter, he got involved with a born-again virgin named Legs who used to be
the star dancer at Shaky Jake’s, back in the olden days. He’d had his moustache
removed, and he’d missed his trip to Manila altogether. Finally, he’d returned
to Kuwait a single man still, but, he said, all the wiser for his recent
experiences.

He came back to Thailand several months later.

“You’ve got to get married, if you want to live longer
than two years in Kuwait. Or else it starts to do things to your mind.”

So far as we could see, though, Trevor’s mind was just
about as good as it had always been. He had a new growth on his upper lip and
another, somewhat abbreviated computer printout of dates with him, but he never
got to meet more than a couple of candidates. No matter he was a veteran of
that earlier affair with Legs, he managed to get waylaid, mislaid, and just plain
laid, while he lost his moustache yet again. He spent some time with an
interesting lady who’d learned her English from “G.I., G.I.; many G.I., many
year ago.” Then he’d teamed up with a talented dancer named Daeng who’d finally
told him “Tomollow,/flee!” which in a fit of good sense he had in fact done.
Red, that is.

”No more bargirls,” Trevor had advised us, stroking sagely
at the place where his supposed moustache had been.

“And now he’s back to mount a
third
campaign?” I
said.

“No kidding,” replied Eddie. “Yesterday we had what has
become the traditional champagne breakfast to celebrate his arrival.”

Trevor had decided to trim his sails this time, and he
intended to interview a mere half-dozen ladies, prime candidates all. He’d
decided to scratch Manila altogether, and concentrate his energies here. “’It’s
a mistake to overextend yourself,’ he informed us, and he got no argument,”
Eddie told me.

Lek and Meow had been quick to offer him their patio as a
kind of office. They told him it’d be better that way, because then they could
keep an eye on proceedings, giving him the benefit of their familiarity with
Thai culture not to mention the insights of their feminine intuition. Not only
that, but they could keep his strength up with that fantastic noodle dish Meow
makes — he remembered, the one he just couldn’t get enough of?

“It doesn’t take your feminine intuition to guess who they
were really planning to keep their eyes on,” Eddie said. “I noticed Meow was
getting pretty silly even before she’d had a taste of the bubbly. Something
about old Trev’s mere presence in Bangkok seems to give her problems with
hormonal balance and everything. Trevor, mind you, doesn’t seem to notice a
thing, in all his youthful wisdom.”

I reckoned Trevor’s sensitivity probably came from all the
gazing sternly off into the distance he liked to do.

“Before long,” Eddie continued, “the champagne was gone,
and everybody was in a good mood. In fact, I was in such a good mood I told
Trevor to come with me to Boon Doc’s and say hello to Leary for old time’s
sake.

“Everybody was happy to see Trevor, especially Dinky Toy.
Next thing you knew she had Trevor in something that looked a lot like a
half-nelson, and I guess she was whispering sweet subversions in his ear,
because one minute I was talking to Leary, and the next I looked around for
Trevor and he was gone.

“That just about sobered me right up. Lek and Meow were
already kind of unhappy I’d taken Trevor out to a bar in the first place, what
with him only twenty-four years old and so clean and polite and everything. And
now I’d misplaced the young scallywag. No problem, I thought — all I have to do
now is misplace myself, probably permanently. Maybe go down to Singapore and ship out as an able-bodied seaman. But what I really did was stay at Boon
Doc’ s a while and drink beer. And I waited for Trevor to come back. Big Toy
and the other girls said they’d seen Dinky Toy and Trevor leave together, but
they had no idea where they’d gone.

“I even phoned the Cheri-Tone to see if he’d wound up back
there. Lek told me he hadn’t, but he’d better, and soon, if I knew what was
good for me. Well, he hasn’t shown up, and she was right, it hasn’t been good
for me.”

“So he’s with Dinky Toy!” I said. “But that’s not what
Trevor says he wants. She’s
older.
And somewhat more experienced, you
could say.”

“That’s right,” Eddie replied. “And that’s not even to
talk about Leary’s Law.”

In the course of Trevor’s quest for the helpmate his
lifeplan demanded, and upon the advice of the eponymous Leary himself, he had
adopted Leary’s Law as a maxim. Not the prime law itself, actually, which is
quite simply * Never get married’, but rather its chief proviso: ‘Never get
married; but if you do, make sure she’s an orphan.’

“Dinky Toy’s got more brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts,
and cousins than she has snapshots of men who got away,” Eddie continued,
somewhat unkindly, “and that’s more than just a few.”

“So what’s Trevor doing with her, then?”

“Are you kidding? Leary’s Law, computerized shopping
lists, carefully selected criteria of the ideal wife — this is all whistling in
the wind. You take one nice single young man of Trevor’s age and background,
not to mention wisdom; you take a guy like that and you get him engineering
traffic in Kuwait for — what is it now ? — two and a half years; you bring him
to Bangkok and you feed him champagne for breakfast and then a double gin and
tonic for lunch; you let Dinky Toy catch wind of all this and let her get
within range when she’s had a good sleep and she’s wearing her new dress...”

“I see what you mean,” I conceded. “But now it seems Meow
is also dead keen on this specimen, though Trevor hasn’t noticed this state of
affairs as yet. Why don’t you do your little sister-in-law a favor and set him
straight? She isn’t exactly an orphan, but the family’ s not that big. And
there’s always you to take some of the heat off.”