Private Dancer (15 page)

Generally speaking, those bars which service the tourist and expatriate community are more likely to insist on Aids testing than those which are frequented by locals. It is thought that this is partly responsible for the rapid spread of the virus through the Thai population as a whole. Statistics suggest that up to ten per cent of Army recruits are now HIV positive and two per cent of women giving birth in Bangkok's hospitals have the virus.

Because of the stigma which is attached to the disease in Thailand, those girls who develop symptoms rarely seek medical help. Instead, they choose suicide. There has been a sharp rise in the incidence of suicide among bargirls over the past five years. Suicide is common among the girls in any case because of the psychologically damaging nature of their work and the tendency for the girls to be addicted to drugs or alcohol, but it is believed that Aids has now become a leading cause of suicides in Thailand. JIMMY Aids? It's an attitude of mind. I've been here for years and I've never heard of a bargirl getting it.

Not from sex, anyway. They test all the girls in the bars and any that are HIV positive are kicked out. It doesn't happen very often, and when it does it's because the girl was injecting drugs. All you have to do is check for needle tracks and you're safe. The idea that you can get it from sex is one of the big con jobs of the age, it's a scare story spread by religious nuts and women who want to scare their men into being faithful. Look, if Aids really was a problem it would have gone through the bars like wildfire. And it hasn't. End of story.

I've never heard of a farang getting it, either. I've been screwing without a condom here for more than ten years and I've got nothing worse than a dose of clap. Okay, I got gonorrhea of the throat once, but that was my own fault. But Aids, no. I took out a life insurance policy a couple of years ago and I had to have a blood test for that and I was clear. No problemo.

The guys in Fatso's talk about Aids a lot, and we're all in agreement. Poofters get it, and intravenous drug users. And there's a good chance that a baby born to an HIV-positive mother will get it. But a good old bonk is as safe as it's ever been. Am I sure? Hell, I'm positive.

PETE Joy said she wanted to go home for a few days to see her father. He was becoming a monk, she said, and she said he wanted to divide up his belongings. I didn't quite understand what she meant. It was something like a will: he was giving his land and the house to his children, almost as if he'd died. “Pete, I think he give house to me,” she said earnestly. “Everybody in my family very angry. I not oldest, but Father love me a lot.”

I tried to get her to explain why her father was becoming a monk, but she just shrugged and said that was what he wanted to do. It didn't make any sense to me. Monks didn't work, and Joy was always telling me how poor her family were. She was equally at a loss to explain why he was giving away all his worldly goods. He was only about fifty-five years old.

Joy didn't seem interested in talking about it, all she wanted to do was to celebrate her good fortune. We went to Zombie and she kept buying drinks for her friends. Well, she ordered the drinks and the chit went into the beaker in front of me, so it was actually me was who was paying.

Joy seemed to take pride from the fact that she didn't have to work any more. Girls would come up and pay their respects and every now and then she pat me on the arm and say “five minutes” and rush off to speak to someone. She was working the room, making sure that everybody knew she was there and that she wasn't working. Now she was a customer, spending money rather than earning it.

Whenever she came back she'd put her hand on my thigh and kiss me on the cheek, marking out her territory, I guess. And whenever another girl sat too close to me or started flirting, she'd speak sharply to her in Khmer. I was flattered by the fact that she appeared to be jealous, and I tried to tell her that there was no need, I only wanted to be with her.

We stayed until the bar closed and then we walked around to the Dynasty Hotel. We made love, but her heart didn't seem to be in it, and later, when she lay in my arms, she began to cough. I got her a drink of water but it didn't seem to help. “I sorry, Pete, I sick,” she said.

She rolled away from me and curled up into a tight ball. I put my arms around her again and held her. She kept coughing. I asked her if she wanted some tablets, I had some left over from the last time I had 'flu, but she said no, she had her own medicine in Sunan's room. I told her that I didn't want her to go, that I wanted her to stay the whole night and she said okay, she'd stay.

The coughing continued, and you want to know the weirdest thing? I think she was faking it. It didn't sound like a genuine cough, you know? And all evening, when she'd been drinking and smoking and talking with her friends, there hadn't been a single cough.

As I lay next to her, I couldn't get the thought out of my head that she was pretending to be sick so that she didn't have to stay with me. But that didn't make any sense. If she didn't want to be with me, why come and see me in the first place? If there was somewhere else she wanted to go, all she had to do was to say so and I'd go with her. It couldn't be that she wanted to sleep in Sunan's room, because she said it was a slum, and my room in the Dynasty costs a thousand baht a night.

I turned and looked at her. Her thick black hair tumbled over the pillow and she'd pulled the sheets up around her neck. Her body shook as she coughed again and I stroked her shoulder through the sheet.

“I sorry,” she said.

“That's okay.” I cuddled up to her and tried to sleep. It was impossible. Every two minutes or so she'd cough. Then she started tossing and turning. I tried to ignore it, but her coughs just got louder and louder. Eventually she sat up.

“Pete, I want go Sunan's room,” she said. “I think I sick.”

I offered to take her home, but she shook her head. “No, I want you to sleep.” She slipped off the bed and wrapped a towel around herself. “I phone you tomorrow, okay?”

I watched as she pulled her knickers on under the towel. She turned her back on me and put her bra on over the top of the towel. It always made me the smile the way she became suddenly shy when she got dressed. Being naked never seemed to worry her when we were in bed or making love, but afterwards, of after she'd showered, she insisted on covering up as much as possible. Once she'd fastened the bra she pulled the towel down, turning so that her back was to me. She put on her jeans and shirt before facing me again. I got out of bed. “I'll go back with you,” I said.

Joy shook her head. “No. You sleep. I want go alone.”

I didn't know what to say. Did she mean that she wanted to go alone because there was something there she didn't want me to see. Someone? Or was she being considerate? I couldn't tell, I really couldn't tell, and that's what worried me. If she loved me, why didn't I trust her? And if she didn't love me, why couldn't I tell if she was lying or not?

She walked over and put her arms around me, then rested her head against my shoulder. I stroked the back of her head. “Why can't I come with you, Joy?” I asked.

She coughed. "Sunan's room very small, Pete. Have many people sleep there. Sunan. Apple.

Bird. My cousins. Friends of Sunan."

“Who's Bird?”

“Brother.”

“Same mother, same father?”

Joy nodded. Thais have a tendency to be vague about family relationships. Any close male relative was a brother, and even a second cousin could be referred to as a sister. Bird wasn't a name that she'd mentioned before.

“Sunan's room very small and sok-ka-prok,” she said. Sok-ka-prok. Dirty.

“But I want to see where you stay,” I said.

She shook her head determinedly. “When I have nice room, you can come stay with me,” she said. “You can stay with me all the time.” She hugged me, tightly. “I go now, okay?”

“Okay,” I said. It was pointless arguing with her. She kissed me on the cheek and I opened he door for her.

“I see you tomorrow, okay?”

“Okay.”

She coughed again and waved as she waited for the lift to arrive.

The next day I got a phone call from Alistair that knocked me for six. The guy who was doing the editing of the London edition had left the company. Apparently he'd been offered a big jump in salary by some American operation and he was only giving Alistair a month's notice. The fact that he had more than double that in holidays owing meant that he left immediately, and that had given the company a major headache. The edition had to be with the printers within the next eight weeks and the guy hadn't exactly been working overtime, and Alistair wanted me to fill the hole. I argued with him for almost half an hour but there was no shifting him. He wanted me to go, and the company wanted me to go. The only one who didn't want to go was me and nobody seemed to be taking any account of how I felt.

Mind you, after I'd hung up the phone and thought about it, it did make sense. I still had my flat in London, and I knew the city probably better than anyone else in the company. It would have been difficult to throw someone else in at the deep end, so I guess Alistair was doing the right thing. I'd done the first London edition about five years previously, so most of the work would involve updating my own copy. I doubted that it'd take a full two months, though I didn't tell Alistair that.

I'd arranged to see Joy in Zombie at nine and when I got there she was drinking Heineken with Sunan, Apple and Wan. I told Joy I needed to talk to her and we went to a German restaurant down the road from Nana Plaza. She sat and listened as I explained that I had to go back to England to work on the guide book.

She reached out and held my hands. “You not come back?”

“Of course I'll be back,” I said. “Two months, that's all. Maybe not as long as that.”

“I want come with you,” she said.

“Impossible,” I said. I would have loved to have taken her with me, but it would have taken months to arrange. Thai girls generally have a bad reputation with immigration authorities. It's partly because so many go abroad to work as hookers, but also a high percentage of marriages between farangs and Thais end badly. The embassies don't make it easy for Thai girls to get visas. They have to have a sponsor, they have to show that they are gainfully employed and have money in the bank, and that they have family. Basically, they have to prove that they'll be coming back to Thailand. It would take three or four months, and Alistair wanted me in London by the end of the week. Even if I applied for a visa that day, I'd be back in Bangkok before her application was even considered, never mind approved. According to Big Ron there were people who could arrange it, for a “fee” of twenty thousand baht or thereabouts, but even that would take several weeks.

“I'll telephone you every day,” I promised. “And I'll write to you.”

“And I write to you every day,” she said. She held my hands tightly. “Pete, I not want you go.”

“And I don't want to go, but I have to. It's work.”

Her lower lip trembled. “I think you forget me.”

“Never,” I said. “I'll never forget you, Joy.”

“When you go?”

“Two days.”

Tears welled up in her eyes. “I think you not love me any more.”

I moved around the table so that I could sit next to her and hold her hands. I told her that she was the only one that I loved and that there was nothing for her to worry about.

“What you want me do, Pete?”

I said that I wanted her to go back to Surin and stay with her father until I returned to Bangkok.

“Okay, I do for you,” she said. “I get bus tomorrow.”

I kissed her on the cheek. “Don't worry,” I said.

“What I do for money?” she asked.

I told her I'd give her ten thousand baht before I went and I'd send her another ten thousand baht in a month.

“I have good idea,” she said. “You can give me two months money now. Then maybe I can do business in Surin.”

“Business?”

“Maybe buy something. Then sell.”

“Like what?”

She shrugged. “Shampoo. Clothes. I can buy Bangkok and sell Surin. Make profit.” I thought about it for a while, then shook my head. “I know you, Joy. If I give you two months money today, you'll spend it all tomorrow. Then you'll have no money. Better I send it to you when I get to London.”

For a moment I thought she was going to be angry at me, but then her face broke into a grin.

She began to laugh.

“What?” I asked.

She gripped my arm with both hands and rocked backwards and forwards as she laughed.

“Pete, you know me too well,” she said. “You know what I do.”

“Yeah, I know. When you have, you spend. If you have ten baht, you spend ten baht. If you have a thousand baht, you spend that.”

She laughed even louder and people at other tables turned around to look at her. She put her hands over her mouth and tried to stifle her giggles.

“What time do you want to go tomorrow?” I asked.

“Have many buses to Surin. Ten o'clock. Midnight.”

“Which one do you want to get?”

“Midnight VIP bus, I think.”

“Okay. We'll come here tomorrow and have dinner, and I'll give you ten thousand baht.”

“Thank you, Pete,” she said, and brushed my neck with her lips. “Thank you for everything you give me.”

We went back to my room at the Dynasty Hotel and this time there was no coughing fit after we'd made love. She'd stayed the whole night, her arms wrapped around me as if she was scared that I'd be the one to disappear.

ALISTAIR I wasn't being completely honest with Pete when I told him that he was the only one who could sort out the problems we were having with the London edition. There were plenty of guys we could have sent in, but I recommended Pete because I thought it would do him good to get out of Thailand for a while. I'm not saying he was going the same way as Lawrence, but I just had the feeling that the place was starting to get to him. He was meeting all his deadlines, just about, but his work didn't have the same flair. His prose was flat, it was as if he was going through the motions and when I spoke to him about it he got all defensive. I figured a few months back in England would do him the world of good. He kept talking about his girlfriend, Joy. Joy did this, Joy did that, and he didn't seem to be ashamed of the fact that she was a dancer in a go-go bar. I can't imagine anyone in Hong Kong admitting that their girlfriend was a dancer. They'd be too embarrassed. Pete kept saying that she didn't go with customers anymore, but even so. I mean, she was a hooker, effectively, and he was talking about her as if she were the girl he was going to marry.