Catching the Sun

‘I wonder how long you stay,’ Mr Botan said, and it didn’t sound so much like a question now, more of a reflection.

‘Well, we’re staying,’ I said. ‘We have no plans to go back to England. There’s nothing for us there.’

I said it with great conviction, but Mr Botan did not look persuaded. He smiled with a bashful courtesy, as if he had heard it all before, and examined his roll-up with great interest.

I live here, I thought. This is my home now.

But I remembered Baxter’s hands on Farren’s throat, and the lies that Jesse had told so easily on the phone, and the lie that I had been forced into myself the moment our plane touched down and they had asked me about the purpose of my visit, and so I did not dare to say it aloud.

‘Your boss,’ he said.

‘Farren,’ I said.

‘Many men like him in Thailand.’

‘Businessmen,’ I said. ‘Many foreign businessmen?’

‘England rich country,’ Mr Botan said. ‘Thailand poor country.’

I laughed and nodded.

‘But there are plenty of poor people in England,’ I said. ‘I was one of them.’

‘Ah,’ said Mr Botan, smiling shyly at the sky, as if we had gone too far. ‘Ah.’

Mr and Mrs Botan. Our neighbours lived from the sea. He caught fish on his longtail and she cleaned it, cooked it and served it on the beach at the Almost World Famous Seafood Grill. He wore the baggy trousers of the Thai fisherman and she was usually dressed in a white apron, as if she was coming straight from a kitchen or soon returning to one. Their lives centred on the few miles of sea and land around Hat Nai Yang, and right from the start they wanted us to see its secret beauty.

‘Many bad people come to our area at this time of the year,’ Mr Botan told Tess the day after the mountain of water had arrived. He rubbed his hard old hands with anxiety. ‘They take great advantage of poor stupid farang,’ he said. ‘Make easy money from the foreigners. Sell them shells. Leaky boat rides. Massage.’ He shot me a meaningful man-to-man look, and lowered his voice to an embarrassed whisper. ‘Love pills,’ he murmured.

Tess looked up from the rucksack she was packing.

‘Oh, I’m sure we’ll be fine,’ she said with a smile. ‘Everybody seems very kind.’

Mr Botan was unconvinced. He had taken it upon himself to protect us from the venal side of Phuket and insisted on accompanying us on our trip to see the turtles lay their eggs.

Rory looked up from his collapsing copy of Traveller’s Wildlife Guide.

‘This is so cool,’ he said excitedly. ‘During mating rituals, the male turtle swims backwards in front of the female while stroking her face with his clawed foot. When he is ready to mate, he climbs on to the female’s shell and grips the rim with all four feet.’

Tess smiled at him. ‘You’re so clever,’ she said.

Rory was too young to know anything about sex. But he knew everything there was to know about mating habits.

It seemed like a miracle that, of all the beaches on the island, the turtles came to lay their eggs on our beach. But Hat Nai Yang was one of the most secluded beaches on the island, visited mostly by locals and only at the weekend, when they spent the day in the shallow waters and the night eating in places like the Almost World Famous Seafood Grill. Those turtles knew what they were doing.

When we got to the northern tip of Hat Nai Yang just as the sun was fading, the beach was deserted. It was Sunday, my day off, but it was that dead part of the day when the swimming was over and the eating had yet to begin. No people. No turtles. We sat on the sand staring out at the empty sea.

‘So basically turtles are like big tortoises, right?’ said Keeva.

Rory looked at his sister as if she was raving mad. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Basically not. They live in the open ocean and the female only comes to shore to lay her eggs. Tortoises are more like – I don’t know – hamsters. Tortoises live in your back garden. Turtles live in the sea.’

‘Well,’ Keeva said. ‘Looks like they’re staying in the sea.’

She picked up a red plastic frisbee and wandered down to the water. Rory pushed his glasses up his nose and anxiously watched the sea.

‘It’s November and they lay their eggs from now to May,’ he said. ‘But they’re dying out.’ He watched his sister throwing the frisbee in the air and catching it as she let the almost non-existent waves lap her toes. ‘No loggerhead turtles for fifteen years,’ he muttered to himself. ‘They’re all endangered, or already dead, maybe even extinct.’

Tess touched his back.

‘One day we’ll see the turtles,’ she promised. ‘One day soon. We’ll keep watching, okay?’

Rory nodded and went down to join his sister. Mr Botan checked his watch, as if he had specifically told the turtles to be at Hat Nai Yang at this time and place.

The children played with the frisbee on the edge of the sea until Keeva got bored and came back complaining of hunger. Her brother followed her and we ate our picnic – Pahd Thai from the Almost World Famous Seafood Grill. The light had almost gone and we were packing up to go home when we saw the turtle.

It was already out of the water and hauling itself across the smooth white sand, looking like the most exhausted thing on the planet. Its head looked a thousand years old and there were tears streaming from its depthless black eyes.

‘Daddy,’ Keeva said, stricken. ‘She’s crying.’

‘No,’ Mr Botan said.

‘That’s the salt gland,’ Rory said, trembling with excitement. ‘It helps the turtle to maintain a healthy water balance when it’s on dry land. Don’t worry, Keeva.’

Mr Botan nodded. ‘Not sad. Not upset.’ His Chinese face grinned. ‘Very happy day,’ he said, genuinely delighted at the sight of the turtle, and not for our sake. ‘Very good luck,’ he said. ‘Very good luck for Thai people.’ He pointed an instructive finger. ‘They are the universe,’ he said. ‘The top of the shell is the sky. The bottom of the shell is the earth.’

We watched the turtle for a while and then we saw the boat. A rough canoe, no engine, containing three shadowy figures. It was difficult to see them in the dying light, but they were coming to land where the turtle must have crawled from the sea.

Mr Botan watched them suspiciously.

‘They are not Thai,’ he said. ‘They are chao ley. They stay close to the shore during the long rains.’

‘Fishermen?’ said Tess.

He laughed shortly.

‘They do a little fishing, but they are not fishermen,’ he said. ‘They look on the beach for anything they can eat or sell or use.’ He spat on the sand. ‘Look at their boat!’

As they landed on the beach we could see that it was a canoe that seemed to have been carved out of some ancient tree. ‘No engine!’ Mr Botan snorted. All the longtails had two-stroke diesel engines. He considered a dugout canoe to be a relic of the Stone Age.

‘They live on the island?’ Tess said.

‘A few,’ Mr Botan said. ‘Down south. All the way down south. On Hat Rawai. They approach tourists with their rubbish. There are others on Ko Surin and Ko Boht. They have Kabang. House boat. Or shacks. They move around the sea.’

‘Gypsies,’ I said. ‘Sea gypsies.’

‘Thieves,’ said Mr Botan. ‘Beggars. Tramps. Some chao ley are not so bad. Almost like Thai. Almost. They get registered. We call them Mai Thai – new Thai. But these are moken. Like oken – sea water. Same name, almost. They don’t even want to be Thai, these moken.’ He clearly took it personally. ‘Anyway,’ he said, looking back at the turtle. ‘They are more Burmese than Thai. Anyway. Mai pen rai. Never mind, never mind.’

The rough boat was being dragged out of the water. There was a man and two children. A girl in her mid-teens and a younger boy who, now I looked at him again, was more like a tiny man than a child. He was not tall but he was broad and the way he moved as he dragged the canoe further up the sand suggested the kind of workhorse strength that you only get from years of manual labour.