The Beach

  ‘Hey,’ I whispered, propping myself up on my elbows. ‘Do you want me to tell you something funny?’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Infinity. But it isn’t that complicated. I mean, you don’t need a degree in –’

  Françoise waved a hand in the air, tracing a red pattern with the tip of her cigarette.

  ‘Is that a yes?’ I whispered.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘OK.’ I coughed quietly. ‘If you accept that the universe is infinite, then that means there ‘s an infinite amount of chances for things to happen, right?’

  She nodded, and sucked on the red coal floating by her fingertips.

  ‘Well, if there’s an infinite amount of chances for something to happen, then eventually it will happen – no matter how small the likelihood.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘That means, somewhere in space there’s another planet that, by an incredible series of coincidences, developed exactly the same way as ours. Right down to the smallest detail.’

  ‘Is there?’

  ‘Definitely. And there’s another which is exactly the same, except that palm tree over there is two feet to the right. And there’s another where the tree is two feet to the left. In fact, there’s planets with infinite amounts of variations on that tree alone, an infinite amount of times…’

  Silence. I wondered if she was asleep.

  ‘So how about that?’ I prompted.

  ‘Interesting,’ she whispered. ‘In these planets, everything that can happen will happen.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Then in one planet, maybe I am a movie star.’

  ‘There’s no maybe about it. You live in Beverly Hills and swept last year’s Oscars.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘Yeah, but don’t forget, somewhere else your film was a flop.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘It bombed. The critics turned on you, the studio lost a fortune, and you got into booze and Valium. It was pretty ugly.’

  Françoise rolled on to her side and looked at me. ‘Tell me about some other worlds,’ she whispered. In the moonlight her teeth flashed silver as she smiled.

  ‘Well,’ I replied. ‘That’s a lot to tell.’

  Étienne stirred and turned over again.

  I leant over and kissed Françoise. She pulled away, or laughed, or shook her head, or closed her eyes and kissed me back. Étienne woke, clasping his mouth in disbelief. Étienne slept. I slept while Françoise kissed Étienne.

  Light-years above our bin-liner beds and the steady rush of the surf, all these things happened.

  After Françoise had shut her eyes and her breathing had eased into a sleeping rhythm, I crept off my plastic sheet and walked down to the sea. I stood in the shallows, slowly sinking as the tide pulled away the sand around my feet. The lights of Ko Samui glowed on the horizon like a trace of sunset. The spread of stars stretched as far as my ceiling back home.

  In Country

  We set off immediately after breakfast: half a bar of chocolate each and cold noodles, soaked in most of the water from our canteens. There wasn’t any point in hanging around. We needed to find a freshwater source, and according to Mister Duck’s map, the beach was on the other side of the island.

  At first we walked along the beach, hoping to circle the coast, but the sand soon turned to jagged rocks, which turned to impassable cliffs and gorges. Then we tried the other end, wasting precious time while the sun rose in the sky, and found the same barrier. We were left with no choice but to try inland. The pass between the peaks was the obvious goal so we slung our bin-liners over our shoulders and picked our way into the jungle.

  The first two or three hundred metres from the shore were the hardest. The spaces between the palm trees were covered in a strange rambling bush with tiny leaves that sliced like razors, and the only way past them was to push through. But as we got further inland and the ground began to rise, the palms became less common than another kind of tree – trees like rusted, ivy-choked space rockets, with ten-foot roots that fanned from the trunk like stabilizer fins. With less sunlight coming through the canopy, the vegetation on the forest floor thinned out. Occasionally we were stopped by a dense spray of bamboo, but a short search would find an animal track or a path cleared by a fallen branch.

  After Zeph’s description of the jungle, with Jurassic plants and strangely coloured birds, I was vaguely disappointed by the reality. In many ways I felt like I was walking through an English forest, I’d just shrunk to a tenth of my normal size. But there were some things that felt suitably exotic. Several times we saw tiny brown monkeys scurrying up the trees, Tarzan-style lianas hung above us like stalactites – and there was the water: it dripped on our necks, flattened our hair, stuck our T-shirts to our chests. There was so much of it that our half-empty canteens stopped being a worry. Standing under a branch and giving it a shake provided a couple of good gulps, as well as a quick shower. The irony of having kept my clothes dry over the swim, only to have them soaked when we turned inland, didn’t escape me.

  After two hours of walking we found ourselves at the bottom of a particularly steep stretch of slope. We virtually had to climb it, pulling ourselves up on the tough fern stems to keep us from slipping down on the mud and dead leaves. Étienne was the first to get to the top and he disappeared over the ridge, then reappeared a few seconds later, beckoning enthusiastically.

  ‘Hurry up!’ he called. ‘Really, it is amazing!’

  ‘What is it?’ I called back, but he’d disappeared again.

  I redoubled my efforts, leaving Françoise behind.

  The slope led to a football-pitch-sized shelf on the mountainside, so flat and neat that it seemed unnatural in the tangle of the surrounding jungle. Above us the slope rose again to what appeared to be a second shelf, and past that it continued straight up to the pass.

  Étienne had gone further into the plateau and was standing in some bushy plants, gazing around with his hands on his hips.

  ‘What do you think?’ he said. I looked behind me. Far below I could see the beach we had come from, the island where our hidden rucksacks lay, and the many other islands beyond it.

  ‘I didn’t know the marine park was this big,’ I replied.

  ‘Yes. Very big. But that is not what I mean.’

  I turned back to the plateau, putting a cigarette in my mouth. Then, as I patted down my pockets looking for my lighter, I noticed something strange. All the plants in the plateau looked vaguely familiar.

  ‘Wow,’ I said, and the cigarette dropped from my lips, forgotten.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘… Dope?’

  Étienne grinned. ‘Have you ever seen so much?’

  ‘Never…’ I pulled a few leaves from the nearest bush and rubbed them in my hands.

  Étienne waded further into the plateau. ‘We should pick some, Richard,’ he said. ‘We can dry it in the sun and…’ Then he stopped. ‘Wait a moment, there is something funny here.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, it is just so… These plants…’ He crouched down, then looked round at me quickly. His lips had begun to curve into a smile, but his eyes were wide and I could literally see colour draining from his face. ‘This is a field,’ he said.

  I froze. ‘A field?’

  ‘Yes. Look at the plants.’

  ‘But it can’t be a field. I mean, these islands are…’

  ‘The plants are in rows.’

  ‘Rows…’

  We stared at each other. ‘Jesus Christ,’ I said slowly. ‘Then we’re in deep shit.’

  Étienne started running back towards me.

  ‘Françoise.’

  ‘She’s…’ My mind was filling with too many thoughts to answer the question. ‘… Coming,’ I eventually replied, but he had already passed me and was crouching over the slope.

  ‘She’s not there!’

  ‘But she was just behind me.’ I jogged to the ridge and looked over. ‘Maybe she slipped.’
r />   Étienne stood up. ‘I will go down. You look here.’

  ‘Yes… Right.’

  He began slithering down the mud, then I saw the yellow flash of her T-shirt in some trees further along the edge of the plateau. Étienne had already slid halfway down the slope and I threw a pebble at him to get his attention. He swore and began making his way back up.

  Françoise had come out into the plateau, tucking her T-shirt into her shorts. ‘I needed the bathroom,’ she called.

  I waved my hands frantically, mouthing at her to keep her voice down. She cupped a hand by her ear. ‘What? Hey! I have seen some people further up the mountain. They are coming this way. Maybe they are from the beach, no?’

  Hearing her, Étienne called from down the slope, ‘Richard! Make her be quiet!’

  I sprinted towards her. ‘What are you doing?’ she asked, and then I’d reached her and was pushing her to the ground.

  ‘Shut up!’ I said, clamping my hand to her mouth.

  She tried to squirm out of my grip and I pressed harder, bending her head back on her shoulders. ‘This is a dope field,’ I hissed, carefully enunciating each word. ‘Do you understand?’

  Her eyes bulged wide and she started snorting through her nose. ‘Do you understand?’ I hissed again. ‘It’s a fucking field.’

  Then Étienne was behind me, pulling at my arms. I dropped Françoise and, for a reason I still don’t understand, I lunged for his neck. He twisted behind me and wrapped his arms around my chest.

  I tried to struggle but he was too strong. ‘You idiot! Let me go! There are people coming!’

  ‘Where are the people?’

  ‘On the mountain.’ Françoise whispered, rubbing her mouth. ‘Higher.’

  He looked up to the second plateau. ‘I can’t see anyone,’ he said, easing his hold on me. ‘Listen. What is that?’

  We all went silent but I couldn’t hear anything except blood pounding in my ears.

  ‘Voices,’ said Étienne quietly. ‘You can hear it?’

  I strained to listen again. This time I found it, distant but getting clearer.

  ‘It’s Thai.’

  I choked. ‘Fuck! We’ve got to run!’ I clambered to my feet but Étienne dragged me back down.

  ‘Richard,’ he said, and through my fear some part of me registered surprise at the calm expression on his face. ‘If we run we will be seen.’

  ‘So what do we do?’

  He pointed to a dark copse. ‘We hide in there.’

  Lying flat against the earth, peering through the mesh of leaves, we waited for the people to appear.

  At first it seemed that they would pass us out of sight, then a branch cracked and a man stepped into the field, close to where Étienne and I had been standing a few minutes before. He was young, maybe twenty, with a kick-boxer’s build. His chest was bare and etched with muscle, and he wore military trousers – dark-green and baggy, with pouches sewn into the legs. In his hand was a long machete. Slung over his shoulder was an automatic rifle.

  I could feel Françoise’s body pressed against mine – she was trembling. I looked round, somehow thinking I might calm her, but I could feel the tightness in my face. She stared at me, eyebrows raised as if she wanted me to explain. I shook my head helplessly.

  A second man appeared, older, also armed. They stopped and exchanged a few words. Though they stood more than twenty metres away, the curious looping sound of their language carried perfectly over the distance. Then another man called out from within the jungle and they set off again, vanishing over the ridge, down the slope we’d originally come from.

  Two or three minutes after their sing-song chatter had faded away, Françoise suddenly burst into tears. Then Étienne started crying too. He lay on his back and covered his eyes, his hands bunched into fists.

  I watched the two of them blankly. I felt in limbo. The shock of discovering the fields and the tension while we’d been hiding had left me empty. I just knelt on the ground, sweat running from my hairline and down the side of my face, and thought of nothing.

  Finally I managed to gather my wits. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Étienne was right. They didn’t know we were here, but they might find out soon.’ I reached for my bag. ‘We’ve got to leave.’

  Françoise sat up, wiping her eyes on her mud-streaked T-shirt. ‘Yes,’ she muttered. ‘Come, Étienne.’

  Étienne nodded. ‘Richard,’ he said firmly. ‘I do not want to die here.’

  I opened my mouth to speak but couldn’t think what to say.

  ‘I do not want to die here,’ he repeated. ‘You must get us out.’

  Falling Down

  I must get them out? Me? I couldn’t believe my ears. He’d been the one who’d kept his head when the dope guards were coming. I’d lost my shit. I felt like saying, ‘You fucking get us out!’

  But just by looking at him I could tell he wasn’t about to take control of the situation. And neither was Françoise. She was gazing at me with the same scared, expectant expression as Étienne.

  So, not having a choice, it ended up being me who took the decision to go on. In one direction there were gunmen, walking along the tracks we had ignorantly assumed were made by animals. Perhaps they were even on the way to the beach and would find a chocolate-wrapper or footprints that would betray our presence. In the other direction we didn’t know what we might find. Maybe more fields, maybe more gunmen, maybe a beach full of westerners, and maybe nothing at all.

  Better the devil you know is a cliché I now despise. Hidden in the bushes, shivering with fright, I learnt that if the devil you know is the guard of a drug plantation, then all other devils pale in comparison.

  I have almost no recollection of the few hours after leaving the plateau. I think I was concentrating so hard on the immediate that my mind couldn’t afford space for anything else. Maybe to have a memory you need time for reflection, however brief, just to let the memory find a place to settle.

  What I do have is a couple of snapshot images: the view from the pass looking back on the dope fields below us; and a more surreal one – surreal because it’s a sight I could never have seen. But if I close my eyes I can see it as clearly as I can see any image in my mind.

  It’s the three of us making our way down the mountain on the far side of the pass. I’m looking from behind, so I can only see our backs, and the image is elevated slightly as if I’m standing further up the slope. We don’t have our bin-liner bags. My arms are empty and outstretched, like I’m trying to steady myself, and Étienne is holding one of Françoise’s hands.

  The other strange thing is that beyond us I can see the lagoon and a white smear of sand over the treetops. But that isn’t possible. We never saw the lagoon until we reached the waterfall.

  It was the height of a four-storey building – the kind of height I hate to stand upright near. To gauge the drop I had to crawl to the cliff edge on my belly, afraid that the sense of balance which allows me to stand on a chair would desert me and I would lunge drunkenly forward to my death.

  On either side the cliff continued, eventually curving around into the sea, then, unbroken, rejoining the land on the far side. It was as if a giant circle had been cut out of the island to enclose the lagoon in a wall of rock – just as Zeph had described. From where we sat, we could see that the sea-locked cliffs were no more than thirty metres thick, but a passing boat could never guess what lay behind them. They would only see a continuous jungle-topped coastline. The lagoon was presumably supplied by underwater caves and channels.

  The falls dropped into a pool from which a quick-flowing stream ran into the trees. The highest trees were more than equal to our height. If they’d been a little closer to the precipice we could have used them to get down – and getting down was the big problem. The drop was too sheer and too far to consider climbing.

  ‘What do you think?’ I said, crawling back from the cliff edge towards Étienne and Françoise.

  ‘What do you think?’ Étienne replied, apparent
ly not yet ready to let control pass from my hands.

  I sighed. ‘I think we’ve definitely found the right place. It’s where Mister Duck’s map says it is, and it fits Zeph’s description perfectly.’

  ‘So near and so far.’

  ‘So near and yet so far,’ I corrected vacantly. ‘That’s about it.’

  Françoise stood up and stared over the lagoon towards the seaward rock-face.

  ‘Perhaps we should walk around there,’ she suggested. ‘It may be easier to climb.’

  ‘It’s higher than here. You can see where the land rises.’

  ‘We could jump into the sea. It is not too high to jump.’

  ‘We’d never clear the rocks.’

  She looked irritated and tired. ‘OK, Richard, but there must be a way down, no? If people go to this beach, there must be a way.’

  ‘If people go to this beach,’ I echoed. We hadn’t seen any sign that people were down there. I’d been carrying an idea that when we reached the beach we’d see groups of friendly travellers with sun-kissed faces, hanging out, coral diving, playing Frisbee. All that stuff. As it was, from what we could see the beach looked beautiful but completely deserted.

  ‘Maybe we can jump from this waterfall,’ said Étienne. ‘It is not so high as the cliff in the sea.’

  I thought for a moment. ‘Possibly,’ I replied, and rubbed my eyes. The adrenalin that had kept me going over the pass had faded and now I was exhausted, so exhausted I couldn’t even feel relief at having found the beach. I was also dying for a cigarette. I’d thought of lighting up several times but was still too jumpy about who might smell the smoke.

  Françoise seemed to read my mind. ‘If you want a cigarette, you should have one,’ she said, smiling. I think it was the first time one of us had smiled since leaving the plateau. ‘We saw no fields on this side of the pass.’

  ‘Yes,’ Étienne added. ‘And maybe it can help… The nicotine… It helps.’

  ‘Good point.’

  I lit up and crawled back to the cliff edge.

  If, I reasoned, the waterfall had been pounding down into the pool below for a thousand years, then it was likely that a basin had been eroded into the rock. A basin deep enough to accommodate my leaping into it. But if the island had been created relatively recently, maybe the result of volcanic activity two hundred years ago, then there might not have been time for a deep enough pool to have formed.