The Road to Phuket

Foreword
When Mike called for entrants for the Mom Tri Boathouse short story competition I was a little dubious. I wasn’t keen on the format, having to include key words and phrases, and wasn’t sure what would be a suitable piece for a family orientated resort hotel. Obviously something including a cunnilingus marathon or the joys of waking up with a lady boy after a drunken night on the town wouldn’t fit the bill. It would have to be inoffensive, innocuous...bland?
So for the first time I had to write something that didn’t flow naturally and this is the result. I wouldn’t say I was ashamed of it but just feel a little bit squirmy when I read it.

The Road to Phuket

Bjorn and Britt removed their outer garments, exposing most of their splendidly tanned young bodies to the sun that shone brightly over the magnificent Kata Beach. As they sprawled happily on their deck chairs a waiter from the nearby Mom Tri Boathouse arrived with a cold bottle of champagne in an ice bucket with two glasses and Bjorn turned from his copy of Jake Needham’s new book “Killing Plato” to ...

Charlie sat back from his laptop wishing he had a pen to throw down, fiction definitely wasn’t his bag he thought. Entering this competition had come on a whim and all of his previous literary experience came from writing arrest reports during his thirty five years with the Victorian Police Force. He smile as he recalled that one or two of them had been a bit creative but on the whole he had been an honest cop. At least he had got rid of the competition’s three key words in the opening paragraph he thought ruefully.

His wife Phon arrived with a mug of Chinese tea.
“Who you write too?” she inquired with the smile he loved so much. He always thought she looked like she considered all of life was a huge joke for her benefit. He remembered when they first met many years before; he a young constable on his honeymoon in Thailand, her a teenage waitress at his Phuket guesthouse. Her new husband was a young driver for the car fleet that the guesthouse optimistically described as limousines. The two couples, so different in many ways, had become firm friends over the next thirty years, Charlie and his wife Jean returning to Thailand as often as their finances allowed. Money carefully saved one year, then spent on the holiday the next; a gap when the children arrived then a joyful return as the kids became independent and the nest started to empty.

Then one day he had returned alone, Jean had died in a protracted and painful way the year before and he had take early retirement to help nurse her. Phon, widowed for three years after the same disease had taken her husband, his being caused by the filterless cigarettes he had loved so much, had seen the lost look on Charlie’s face and the way he rose early and walked miles on the beaches and back roads of the island. Returning exhausted and sweat soaked to shower and sleep a couple of hours before going out to wander the night time streets; always ignoring the entreaties of the Bangla Road bargirls to return to the hotel alone.
The day before he was due to leave she came and sat at his breakfast table bringing her coffee. She was Restaurant Manager now and often joined the regular hotel guests for coffee or a drink when they finished eating.
He looked at her in silence as she drank her coffee, she too said nothing, waiting for him to speak and her smile broadened as he blurted out a proposal of marriage, red faced with embarrassment. She leant over and patted his hand “I start to worry I have to ask you Charlie, I so happy you finally get around to it.”
After their marriage she had asked him if they could live in Chiang Rai province, she had inherited a house there, a timber home on a large block that had belonged to her parents. It needed work, a western style bathroom would be added and much paint and many tiles would be applied. She had savings and would retire and they would live comfortably on Charlie’s police pension.

Charlie looked up at her fondly and explained what he was doing. She was amused but a frisson of unease crossed her mind. He was restless, she knew most men were occasionally, with her first husband it was the laughing Isaan girls who worked the bars near the hotel. Every couple of years he would disappear for a week, returning bedraggled and contrite to beg forgiveness. At least it was better than gambling she thought, not many marriages survived a constant flow of money going out the door on cards or dominos.
She knew he liked the village but it was too small to keep him occupied, a holiday was called for and she had spent time on the phone to her friends down south on Phuket. One of the new Hotels being built after the tsunami needed a consultant to train the security staff. Six months work, the wages weren’t much but the hotel provided accommodation and meals and she knew Charlie would leap at the chance.
She would ask him in a way that sounded like it would be a favour to the hotel she decided.

A few weeks later they drove from the village having decided that a weeks travel on Thailand’s good roads would be more enjoyable than the plane flights. The car, an Isuzu diesel, would eat up the miles and they would seek out a comfortable guest house at the end of each day.
The towns and villages flew past along with the occasional major city; they by-passed the traffic chaos of Bangkok and were soon on the narrow isthmus that lead to Thailand’s southern beaches and islands. A week at Hua Hin was like a second honeymoon, the beach and the great restaurants kept them occupied and then they headed down to Phuket, the pearl of the Andaman Sea. As they drove across the narrow causeway Charlie wondered if so much happiness was too good to be true, here he was back at Phuket with the woman of his dreams, how many men his age had the world at their feet like he did?

Phon was also happy but with less than a year to live she knew that Charlie had to be set up so he would get over her quickly. The cancer, the mareng as Thais called it, would take her and she knew she had to arrange an ‘accident’ so she could disappear and become a nun, a mae chii, without his knowledge, and die alone with out him witnessing her suffering. The family had been carefully instructed to place her niece in his path, to comfort him. He was at the age when men needed a younger woman and a new family would soon help him forget his loss.
As they drove along the coast to Kata Beach she smiled, pleased with her own cleverness at how she had assured that the happiness of a good man would continue.

© Julian. All rights reserved by the author.