you speak English?’ she asked with a friendly smile, and in that simple question you could see that she had been a great teacher.
She had been sick of the school at the end – the lack of discipline, the lack of ambition, the parents who owned more tattoos than books. But the way she looked at that hard little child who was stealing our frisbee made me see that she had loved her job once, and maybe missed it more than she let on.
The boy looked at Tess with his fierce feral eyes.
‘I am an engineer,’ he announced, his voice thin and reedy. ‘I am from Germany. I am from Australia. What time is the train to Chiang Mai? Is there anything cheaper? I want something cheaper. I am a student. I am an engineer. I am Mr Smith. I am Mr Honda from Tokyo bank. Take me to a doctor. My stomach is bad.’
Tess clapped her hands and laughed.
‘That’s very, very good,’ she said. ‘What’s your name?’
But he stared at us silently, bitterly, and it was his big sister calling to him from the boat where she waited with the old man who revealed his name.
‘Chatree!’ she called. ‘Chatree!’
‘Look, you can play with us if you want,’ Keeva told him. ‘But taking something that doesn’t belong to you is basically not cool.’
But the boy had no time for play.
He ran off to join his family. They were getting back in the boat, the man wrapping the egg in some sort of filthy blanket.
I picked up the red plastic frisbee as they pushed off. The turtle swiftly disappeared below the waves, but we watched the canoe for a while longer, the three dark figures bobbing up and down on the empty sea until they were round the bay and out of sight.
‘They wander still,’ said Mr Botan, making it sound as if it had always been that way in the past, and it would be that way forever.
5
We walked back up the green hill to home and every step of the way the sound of Rory’s crying mixed with the evening sigh of the sea.
‘Stop crying,’ I told him, and it came out far too harsh, but tears in my family always filled me with a wild panic.
Keeva threw a thin protective arm around her brother’s shoulders.
‘Crying doesn’t change anything,’ I said, more gently now, although I knew the damage had been done.
‘I can’t help it,’ he gulped. ‘I know it doesn’t do any good. I know that. But I can’t stop.’
‘Why do you cry?’ asked Mr Botan.
He did not know Rory like the rest of us. We knew exactly why he was crying.
‘The egg,’ Rory said, a tear running down one lens of his glasses. ‘The mother. The baby.’
Tess looked at me and something passed between us.
‘Why don’t you boys go to see Daddy’s friend?’ she said, putting an arm around Rory, now smothered in the limbs of his sister and mother. ‘The one with the – what is it?’
Rory’s wet eyes were wide. ‘The gibbon?’ he gasped. ‘The man with the gibbon?’
‘That will cheer you up,’ Tess predicted, and while I got the Royal Enfield out of the shed, she dried his eyes, wiped his nose and strapped him into a crash helmet.
Jesse was standing outside the front door of his apartment. His shirt was ripped open and his pale features were slick with sweat. There were fresh scratches on his forehead. He stared at Rory and me, as if trying to place us.
‘Yes?’ he croaked.
I was silent for a moment.
‘This is my boy,’ I told him. I waited. Nothing happened. ‘You said we could come round,’ I reminded him.
Jesse looked at us wildly.
‘To meet the gibbon,’ Rory added, his eyes blinking behind the glasses. He chewed his bottom lip. I had never seen him so excited.
Behind the shut door we heard the sound of things being smashed.
‘Ah,’ said Jesse, attempting to smile at Rory. ‘Of course. Your little boy. The nature lover. The lad who likes monkeys.’
I looked down at my son and watched his mouth tighten.
‘Gibbons are not monkeys,’ he said quietly, then shot me a look – Who is this fool? ‘Gibbons are the fastest and most agile of all tree-dwelling mammals.’
The sound of breaking glass came from within the flat.
‘Yeah, well,’ Jesse said, passing a hand through his sweat-soaked white hair. ‘Travis – my tree-dwelling mammal – is having a bad day.’ Furniture crashed against the door and we all jumped back. Down the hall a neighbour stuck her head out of her door. A woman in her forties, Thai, frowning at the crowd of foreigners standing outside the noisy apartment. ‘Fine, all fine, all under control,’ Jesse laughed. ‘Sorry about the noise, we’ll keep it down.’
The neighbour went back inside shaking her head and no doubt muttering about bloody foreigners.
‘If it’s inconvenient …’ I said.
My son glared at me – Don’t say that to him. Amazing how much your child can communicate without saying a word.
‘It’s actually really inconvenient,’ Jesse said. ‘Maybe you boys could come back some other time.’
Sounds from inside the flat, although further away from the door. Crash. Bang. A distant screech.
‘How old is Travis?’ Rory asked.
Jesse shook his head. ‘Five, they said in the bar. I got him in a bar. Rescued him, sort of. From a life of depravity. Five or six.’
‘That’s not a bad day,’ my son said. He sighed with the kind of weariness that only a nine-year-old can call upon. ‘That’s sexual maturity.’
Jesse laughed. I had to smile.
‘What do you know about sexual maturity?’ Jesse said.
Rory narrowed his eyes. ‘What do you know about gibbons?’ he said.
It was all silent inside the apartment now. I took my son’s hand but he pulled away.
‘But I want to see him,’ Rory said. He looked up at me. ‘Can we see him?’ He looked at Jesse. ‘Please, sir, may we see your gibbon?’
Jesse listened at the door. Nothing. ‘He’ll take your eyes out, kid,’ Jesse said. ‘He’s gone buck wild in there.’
‘That’s just sexual maturity,’ my son said.
