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At the supper table, Hugo fiddles with the salt shaker wondering how to tell his wife that he will be leaving for a while. They have been eating an ever so lightly seasoned chicken dish, and now Gillian is telling a story about what happened at the Bangkok British Club this afternoon. It seems that Derek Sweeney got rather inebriated and patted Josephine Steven-son's bottom in front of the tennis courts. "Josephine turned puce," Gillian says, with a malicious smile, "and flicked Derek with her racquet."


While Gillian is relating this anecdote, the sound of laughter leaks out from the kitchen where the cook is joking with the maid. They are speaking in Thai which Gillian and Hugo don't understand. Hugo's eight year old daughter Victoria however, can pick up just a tiny bit of this strange complicated-sounding language. "I think they're talking about a fish," she says, her small brow furrowed in concentration. The maid, a little breathless now, stumbles out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel. Her heavy black hair is coiled back into shiny mounds on her head. She has bare wrinkled feet and her clothes are loose and dull-colored and her skin is smooth as rain -washed mud. Now she smiles and bends down to clear away the supper plates. "Brandy?" Hugo says. The after dinner drink and card game has become a ritual part of their marriage. They move to the sitting room with their ice-filled glasses. Sometime after they had moved into the large rental house in Bangkok Gillian began glaring out of the sitting room windows in the evenings, when the sun was going down, as if she were angry at the sandy courtyard for being a sandy courtyard instead of an English country garden. She does this tonight, when supper is over.


"There's no grass," she says, as if she has only just noticed, "none at all."


Hugo reminds her of the jungle, its lush greenery, its profuse foliage. Then he looks down at the coffee table where the cards are laid, and tells Gillian to play her hand. She does, and wins the game. "That's different Hugo," she says after a moment. "You can't go out and sunbathe in it." Hugo clutches his brandy in one hand and gathers up the cards in the other. His legs are slightly apart and the brandy glass rests on one knee. He looks up at her and smiles.


"It's too bloody hot too sunbathe here anyhow."


He looks over at Victoria for support, but she doesn't hear him. Clutching a stuffed gray monkey in one hand, the girl stands patiently at the screened window, gazing out at the empty courtyard where a scorpion moves across the sand. It disappears into a crack in a tall cement wall topped with shards of broken glass. Hugo watches his daughter's eyes travel over the thatched roof of the main house, and its adjoining kitchen. There is a pump attached to the corner of the building that works all day and night, squealing and struggling as it sends pulses of water from the well into the cistern. The child is whispering to the monkey. "Tomorrow we'll go out and play. Tomorrow we'll have a look at the scorpions. You'd like that wouldn't you Georgie?"


"Too bloody hot," Hugo says again. "More brandy, darling?"
*

Gillian was alone thinking - and eating the baked gammon lunch plate at the Bangkok British Club. She did altogether too much thinking these days. After nearly a year in Thailand, she had even begun to wonder if she wasn't going slightly mad. At first it had been a brilliant adventure, and she and Hugo had both made a pact to keep journals to record every glorious nuance of their life together. Hugo's was a simple exercise book from W.H.Smith, and Gillian's was a red velvet hardback. Believing that quotations from the masters would be in order, she covered the pages with bits of Sir Thomas Mallory and Francis Bacon. Then, thinking they were somewhat pretentious, particularly as they seemed to have nothing to do with her and Hugo, she crossed them out. Hugo never wrote down quotes. In fact, he hardly ever wrote. He doodled and scribbled mostly. Anything he did write was virtually illegible because of his appalling handwriting. That very morning, he had left her some kind of note that she had not been able to decipher. She had even showed it to Victoria, but the child hadn't been able to read it either.


"Mrs. Evans?"


Gillian wiped her mouth and quickly looked up. The manager of the restaurant was there, a Thai man with a shiny bald head, and very clean hands.


"You husband called," he said, "it seems he has had to leave at short notice – for the Phuket."


Gillian was irritated, but she tried not to let it show. She thanked the manager rather stiffly and then walked to the phone booth and tried to call Hugo at work. The secretary Wan Pen answered and told Gillian that indeed, Hugo was gone. He had left just before lunch following a phone call that he had taken in private.


"Oh? For how long?"


"Until Monday, Tuesday maybe, he said."


Gillian slammed down the phone. This was the third time in the past year that this had happened.


"Perhaps my dear," Mrs. E.W. Brattle had said over cocktails one evening. "He's having an affair?"


"Hugo? Have an affair? Don't be silly!" Gillian had thrown back her head and laughed.


"Well," Sarah Marsden said, "it's certainly been known to happen. Jeremy Northcliffe's been having an affair for years. Caroline knows of course."


"Well, hasn't she ever done anything about it?"


"No, of course not!" Sarah Marsden said, as if the very idea of it was shocking: confronting one's husband about anything.


"Never underestimate these Siamese women," Mrs. E. W. Brattle said, in what Gillian supposed was meant to be a whisper, "they can be very persuasive – and I daresay some of them are quite striking…"


Gillian had laughed again, a bit too loudly, then turned on her heel and left. "Stupid old bats…" she muttered under her breath.


But now…Now? Hugo would think up some odd little excuse of course, as he had done the other times. "A bit of a hullabaloo down in Mike's district. Seems one of the Thais took a dislike to the new secretary. Had to go down and sort it out." He hadn't called home at all the first time (phones were down, you see), and the second time the call had been quick and clipped. And this time? Blast it! She'd be left alone with that miserable child.


It was a Saturday, and Victoria had eaten early and then gone out for a tennis lesson on one of the Bangkok British Club's fabulous clay courts. Hugo had told his wife and daughter that he would meet them on the cricket field for strawberries and cream after the match, but now obviously, he would not be coming. They had planned on going to the coast that weekend too – something Gillian had been looking forward to all month.


Gillian made her way over to the tennis courts. She was planning on trying to leave Victoria with the Marsdens. Sarah's daughter Selina was in Victoria's class at school, and perhaps Gillian could goad Sarah into finding some reason for Victoria to stay the night. And then, Gillian decided she would jolly well go to the beach by herself, get drunk and perhaps seduce some young Australian traveler. But when Gillian reached the tennis courts, she found Victoria slumped in the shade of a Banyan tree, with the matronly Sarah Marsden fussing over her.


"What's the matter poppet?" Sarah was saying, "do you have a tummy ache?"


"Yes and a headache, and…I need to go to the loo." Gillian and Sarah took Victoria to the Ladies Lavatory where the child vomited copiously.


"Oooh," Sarah Marsden, said, "she sounds dreadful! You'd better take her home and put her straight to bed." By the time they got home, Victoria's face was flushed a deep shade of pink, and her eyes were swollen, delirious – so Gillian called Doctor Glass, and then, suddenly giddy, she looked down at her chipped red fingernails and then at her feet in their high-heeled shoes. On impulse, she reached over and grabbed her handbag, pulling out her compact. She saw that there was not enough powder left to make up her face, and threw it down in disgust. Dr. Glass was a handsome Jewish man who had lived in Bangkok for almost ten years. The expatriate community swore by him. He was brilliant, they said, a veritable wizard.


When Doctor Glass arrived, he took Victoria's pulse and temperature, and then he gave her an injection.


"She's very ill," he told Gillian. "She's got a very rare kind of fever that's been going around lately. The locals call it Red Tick because it all starts with some sort of bite. The child will need to take her medicine regularly, according to the instructions. It's terribly important. Make sure she drinks lots of water too. If she's not better by tomorrow morning, you must call me and we'll get her to hospital immediately." With that, the doctor pushed a bottle of pills and a piece of paper into Gillian's hand, then turned and left. Two of the pills had to be given immediately and the child needed to be fed. Gillian made some soup from a can, and then took it up to Victoria's bedroom. It was a small room, facing West, and there weren't many toys there. Hugo didn't encourage toys. He seemed to think that Victoria would grow too "dependent" on them, whatever that meant. Victoria's breathing was regular, but muffled by the sheet pulled up around her head. A fine mess this is, Gillian thought bitterly, not to mention the indignity of it: first being abandoned, virtually penniless, by Hugo, her husband of nearly two years, and now Victoria coming down with some sort of ghastly tropical flu.


"It hurts, Mummy," Victoria said, gasping a little.


"I know," Gillian said, wondering why the child insisted on addressing her as "Mummy" when just plain Gillian would have sufficed. Victoria's real mother was long dead. She had been struck by lightning at a village fete in Tunbridge Wells. "Poor old girl," Hugo had said. "Bloody awful luck she had."


Gillian swirled her spoon around in the soup, and made Victoria open her mouth. She looked terrible: pale and drenched with sweat. Feeding the girl was difficult. Most of the soup trickled over her face and down her neck. "Perhaps tomorrow you can sit up to eat," Gillian said stiffly, wiping the child's mouth with a handkerchief. "Perhaps," Victoria said feebly. "Mummy?" Her voice was weak, but as before, it was very clear.


"Yes?" Gillian breathed. "Would you like some more soup?"


"Stay here, Mummy." Victoria pulled her hand along the covers, but Gillian could not bring herself to touch it. "I feel very sick," she went on. "Sometimes I go far away, and it's lonely there."


Gillian swallowed and shifted slightly. She wished the girl would stop talking. Victoria's sweaty fingers touched hers. She resisted the impulse to pull away.


"You're going to go away as well, aren't you, Mummy?"


"No, I'm not. I'm still here beside you. I won't go away."


But when Victoria had fallen asleep again, Gillian went outside and smoked a cigarette. The sun was setting now, and the air was humid; its weight seeming to rest on the buildings, pushing them further into the ground. Gillian heard the sound of cicadas and smelled lemon grass on the breeze. Palm fronds spilled over the sides of the neighboring enclosure and in the twilight, silver-scarlet chili peppers glowed among tendrils climbing the bare walls.


Damn Hugo! Damn him! What did he mean by going off and leaving her with his sickly child? She hoped his whore would give him some hideous venereal disease.


When Gillian had finished her cigarette, she made herself a drink, and went upstairs for a nap. She lay on the bed – the bed she usually shared with Hugo - in semi darkness, watching the fan whirl around and around overhead. She sat up at one point to brush her hair, then lay back down again. What was the point? She sat up again intending to read some of the P.D. James mystery she had bought at the airport, but could not concentrate, so instead she stared up at the ceiling, at the tiny spiders that ran back and forth. "I should have been the one to do it, she whispered into her Gin and Tonic, "I should have been the one to run away."


And then she felt an overwhelming need to sleep. It would be another few hours before she had to give Victoria her medicine again. She's holding me hostage, Gillian thought sleepily, shackling me to Hugo when I should have been the one to leave. She downed the rest of her drink, set the alarm clock for midnight and then closed her eyes and drifted off into a world of odd shapes and colors, a world of dragons, their bodies encrusted with tiny mirrors, of discarded coconut shells, skull-like, piled up in neat pyramids. And then the alarm was ringing and it was time for the pills.


Victoria was asleep, her breathing loud and labored. There was a sour smell in the room, like curdled milk. Gillian shook Victoria awake and forced the medicine into her mouth. The little girl seemed almost delirious; she kept babbling about Tunbridge Wells, about the fete. She'd wanted to go she said, but Mummy hadn't.


"Ssssh," Gillian said. "Go back to sleep."


As if relieved, the child fell back against the pillows, closing her eyes. And then Gillian went out into the courtyard for another cigarette. As she smoked, she wallowed in regret for the life she'd once had with Hugo: a sunny past with horseback rides and beaches. But Hugo was away now, with someone else, and Victoria was the only evidence that he'd ever existed. Gillian dropped the rest of the cigarette in the dust and opened the front gate, walking out onto the poorer side-road. The barking of dogs grew louder and louder until a group of them were darting about in front of her, moonlight slithering over their skinny bodies, glistening on their quivering muzzles. Gillian walked on, ignoring stares from people clustered around oil lamps or small fires on the ground. The wavering light illuminated an old broken shrine lying on the roadside: tiny violet and flame colored flowers trampled into the earth. There were also trinkets with strange symbols inscribed on them and little Buddhas with long features. Hugo had told her once that these were spirit houses for the dead.


She returned to the house and tried to read her book. As she drew closer to the end, Gillian forced herself to read painfully slowly, afraid of losing the one thread that seemed to connect her to the rational world. Finally, irritated with herself, she put the book aside and set the alarm for four o'clock. But she lay awake for an absurdly long time, tossing and turning, cursing Hugo until she was too tired to even think straight. She was just slipping into sleep it seemed, when the alarm went off and she realized that again, it was time for Victoria's medicine. A nightmare, she thought, a bloody nightmare…


But then Victoria began to cry, a high-pitched and monotonous wail, like the sound of an abandoned kitten. Gillian felt that she had no choice but to go in and check on her. As soon as she entered Victoria's room, the child stopped wailing and said quite distinctly, "Mummy?"


Gillian clenched her teeth. "Yes?" The child was staring at her, wide-eyed and flushed, and something in her look made Gillian feel suddenly humble. Her throat grew hot, her eyes watered and then she exclaimed, "Victoria! How do you feel?"


The child's brow wrinkled and she answered in a small, clear voice. "A tiny bit better," she said falteringly. "Good," Gillian said but not as briskly as she'd intended. Gently, she touched the child's forehead and took her temperature, which was slightly lower than it had been a few hours before.


"Is it nice outside?" Victoria asked.


"No."


"Not at all?"


"No. It's far too hot and sticky," Gillian said, her tone now appropriately crisp.


"What a pity," Victoria said mournfully, but then she seemed to relax, and shut her eyes. For a while, Gillian studied the motionless body lying under the blankets and felt a sickness rise up her throat. Nevertheless, she did manage to catch a few hours of sleep, awoke at eight for Victoria's next dose of medicine, and managed to communicate that she wanted the maid to bathe the child. Victoria's temperature was completely back to normal.


"I feel a bit tired and hungry," she said, "but ever so much better!"


And Gillian knew that she should be jumping for joy at the news, but she felt strangely dull inside. She was thinking about this when the maid came in with a vat full of cold water and a powder that smelled of pine needles. The scent made Gillian want to weep with homesickness for England. She snatched at the maid's sleeve, pointed to the medicine and to the clock, and then she went back to her room where she cried herself to sleep.


Gillian slept for eight hours straight, and awoke in the middle of the afternoon feeling utterly refreshed, tingling with an unusual power. And she had an idea – a wonderful idea. In an hour or two, she would take Victoria to the Phuket. They would find Hugo – it wouldn't be difficult – there were only two decent hotels in the place. Gillian would catch him red-handed, and, with Victoria there, Hugo would have to comply with Gillian's wishes. Money, a holiday on her own, a plane ticket home.
*

Victoria is looking out through windows at the road rushing by, at the red and white Coca-cola signs written in funny Thai letters, at the pinkish gray cloud that seems to hang over the city, at the hordes of motorcycles with their dark-haired ragged riders. She sees vendors with piles of coconuts, bunches of bananas, little three wheelers with pink and green canopies, a man selling wreaths of sopping jasmine, a clutter of little shops, more and more cars and motorcycles, scrawny palm trees and puddles of stagnant water. And then the clouds are building, and the air looks thick and soupy. The wind has begun to howl, dragon-like pushing gauzy ripples of dust through the streets. Victoria cranes her neck and sees the chauffeur's eyebrows, his black eyes in the rearview mirror. The chauffeur is a fat man. He's a nice man who sometimes lets her stop to buy red-bean ice cream from the shop at the end of the road. He speaks to her in Thai because she has begun to understand. But now the chauffeur looks tired, oh so very tired. She watches the tight skin around his eyes crease up when he yawns, she sees his eyelids start to close, again and again. And then his eyelids close halfway, and she wonders if he is dreaming of the maid, who is his wife, grating coconut in the kitchen. Perhaps he is dreaming of Gillian, or maybe of the scorpions that run about in the courtyard. And then the car is moving very quickly, curving and swerving and then Victoria feels herself turn upside down very quickly. She has bumped her head hard, against something sharp. She hears Gillian cry out, the sound of breaking glass, and then everything goes purple, and orange like flames and finally – black.
*

Hugo is almost back in the city when he sees the traffic slowing down in the opposite lane. For fifteen minutes the car slides forward, painfully slowly, until he sees the source of the trouble, an accident. There is no real way for an ambulance to get through – the road is too congested. The car, a sleek black thing, like the kind his company uses, has turned over and there is broken glass everywhere. A group of men are bending over the wreckage, shouting to one another – as if they are trying to help. Hugo keeps his eyes fixed on the back of his driver's neck, the tail lights ahead of him. He wants to get home. He has decided to confess. Tonight, he thinks, I will tell her everything, and then she will be free to go if she likes – absolutely free.

---

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