High Tea at
the Hilton
She
tingled with
relief and trepidation
as she obediently
folded away
her table and
adjusted her
seat to the
upright position,
properly readied
to land at Bangkok
International.
She looked down,
taking a final
glimpse of the
creased, tatty
photograph she’d
been clutching
for most of
the flight.
Then, having
tucked the picture
safely back
inside her small
Gucci leatherette
handbag (a tacky
souvenir from
her last visit)
she found she
couldn’t stop
mouthing silently
the hand written
message scrawled
across the back.
Finally
the seatbelt
sign was switched
off and each
one of the passengers
leapt to their
feet, eager
to stretch their
stiff aching
muscles. The
flight had been
bearable, just,
considering
she’d been trapped
on the left
by a thin man
in a suit, who
she assumed
to be used to
such long journeys
by the way he’d
managed to nod
off even before
the plane had
left the Gatwick
runway. He’d
continued to
snore and puff
for most of
the last ten
hours, waking
each time the
drinks were
served but never
the meals. To
her right was
an anxious,
agitated father.
“Are
we there yet?”
two voices chimed
constantly.
Each time he’d
reply “Yes,
nearly,” and
poke his tongue
out. Their sticky
faces continued
to appear relentlessly
over the headrests
as their mother
pleaded with
them in turn
to go to sleep
or at least
calm down. If
she heard peek-a-bloody-boo
once more she’d
throttle the
pair of them
and claim diminished
responsibility
on the grounds
of drooling.
Why is it that the last steps of a journey feel like the longest she mused, as she waited for all the people in front to finally locate their oversized hand luggage and file one by one toward the exit and onto the waiting coach. She waited again for the coach to fill like a jelly mould, every last inch of space consumed before carrying them the thirty yards to the terminal doors. There once more she waited as patiently as one could at such times as slowly they congaed their way into the maze of checkpoints where she would queue yet again to have her nine year old passport inspected. Long gone were the braces on her teeth, and the grunge hairstyle had been replaced by a rebellious blonde bob. Eventually she reached the baggage claim, the final hurdle, assuming that her bag would be last to appear if indeed it had reached the same destination. But to her surprise and delight her bag arrived quickly and she could smugly make her way through the green channel and at long last onto the bustling streets of Bangkok.
The air was weighty and damp, pushing against her the way the wall meets a marathon runner, stopping her momentarily, the scorching heat having to jostle its way through the draining atmosphere. She squeezed her eyes tightly against the unaccustomed brightness. She wished she’d put her sunglasses in her handbag but this was not something you thought about on a cold Monday morning in Albert Street, not with a black cab waiting to shatter the early morning silence with an impatient blast of its horn. There was a brooding familiar smell in the air, a fruit she couldn’t remember the name of that locals cooked on makeshift grills out on the roadside, even here at the airport some fifteen miles away from the heart of this seedy and cosmopolitan city. She smiled, remembering the refreshing taste, the hint of the exotic, eager to consume something more nourishing than the bland reheated airline offerings.
Finding a taxi was easy, for the first time on this journey someone else did the queuing, hopeful pleading drivers lined the roadside outside the terminal. She again took out the photograph, preferring it to the buildings and people passing by the window. It was her favourite photo of the two of them, eyes smiling and both laughing. In the spur of the moment he’d just reached out in front of them randomly pointing the camera hoping not to cut off his ears or her carefully preened hair. It was New Years Eve, six long months ago, at one of those overpriced black tie affairs, all silver service and napkins shaped like swans. He’d hated it of course, dressed he said like an extra from a James Bond film.
“Pommes frites sil vous plait,” he demanded in his worst ‘Ello ‘Ello accent whilst deliberately over filling her wine glass. “Merci very much.” She still cringed at the memory of his voice getting louder and louder, he had a built in alcohol to volume meter. As they drew into the city itself the traffic slowed to a crawl and the air became even more sodden with pollution, she closed the open window to try and block it out. All around her Bangkok was springing to life, people thronged outside shops and cafes, selling, touting, begging. Every one of them smiling, but then this was the Land Of Smiles she reminded herself bitterly. She let her mind travel further back, to their holiday last summer, stopping off in Bangkok on their way to Bali. In just two days they’d managed to visit the Grand Palace, home of the disappointingly small Emerald Buddha dressed in his golden robes (their version of Barbie he’d sniggered); Wat Pho and the floating market. They’d hurtled up the many tiny canals on high speed dragon boats and of course, visited the night market in the sultry and disturbing district of Patpong, the very heart of Bangkok’s infamous nightlife. Only on the second evening did she give in and agree to accompany him into one of the numerous gogo bars. His disappointment could only be measured against the boredom etched on the faces of the young Thai girls dancing distractedly before eager tourists, each wearing a number. They didn’t stay long enough to find out what the numbers were for but she thought she had a pretty good idea.
Arriving at the Siam Welcome Guest House, or more accurately a hostel with pretensions, her excitement started to be matched by a nagging anxiety wagging an I told you so finger at her. Waiting once more for her passport to be checked and credit card to be swiped, she was eager to get into her room, to shower and change, and finally be on her way to meet him. Tea at the Hilton, his letter had said, in an ironic reference to their very first date. He’d tried so hard to impress her right up until he saw the bill then his eyes nearly popped out of his head.
“We’ve only had tea and cakes,” he’d gasped.
They split the bill, it was the least she could do.
She’d need to take a taxi, only monks carrying small alms pots walked anywhere in the oppressive sun and even they would accept lifts from people eager to curry favour from Buddha, or karma, or whatever. At least in a taxi there would be air conditioning and she’d stand a chance of looking her best. Three months apart is a long time and it would place a strain on any relationship. Even if you were engaged to be engaged, that’s what he’d said at New Year, you still needed time together. She didn’t subscribe to the theory of absence making the heart grow fonder, she saw absence as a wedge driven into what had started just as a tiny crack and now she longed for shared space and time. Her shower had chased away the cobwebs woven by her body clock and she stared approvingly at the mirror, applying just the right amount of lip gloss (she’d listened enough times to his views on tarty looking women, less is more he insisted, except where beer was involved apparently) then she slightly adjusted her hair which infuriatingly fell immediately out of place, defying her travel straighteners.
Even with the taxi windows firmly shut she could sense that smell again and feel the air pressing against her like a sweaty commuter on the London underground. They crawled through the almost grid locked city and she envied the couples weaving in and out of the traffic balanced on motorbikes and scooters, some passengers riding side saddle in their tight mini-skirts. No one seemed to wear helmets, she supposed that this was because there was nowhere to fall with the roads being so jam-packed with cars, buses and those curious tuk tuks, half motorbike half rickshaw filling the spaces cars couldn’t squeeze into.
As her journey neared its end she noticed how time, which had been dragging and stalling for weeks was now suddenly racing. Her head spun as if she’d stood up too quickly. She’d longed for and dreaded this moment for weeks, practising what she might say and preparing for how he might look. Would she even recognise him? For the first time since she stepped off the plane she felt a shiver.
There was a greyness about this place, something was missing. It was hope. She’d stepped through the back of the wardrobe, leaving behind the Land Of Smiles but this wasn’t Narnia, this was a much darker place. Sitting down as instructed on a tiny plastic chair, her muscles immediately recalling ten hours trapped in the tiny plane seat, she played with her hair distractedly, even now still searching for the right words, the precise things to say. Her anxiety started to turn into frustration, why was it taking so long, where was he? He will come, won’t he? Then, as she tried not to look at her watch for probably the ninety ninth time, she heard a foreboding clunk and the heavily reinforced door started to groan against its hinges.
He appeared, slowly being led, his head bowed and hands together as if immersed in silent prayer. He didn’t swagger in his normal ungainly way, instead he almost slid along the far wall, one shoulder higher it seemed than the other, replacing his lop sided grin. Getting closer she could already see that his face was drawn, creased like the photograph she carried with her. He’d lost weight. Gone were the sparkles in his eyes and the boyish charm that she’d come to expect and so often regret. His spirit had been quietened, she surmised that this place must do that to everybody eventually. He sat down silently opposite her, his eyes not meeting her longing expectant gaze but fixed somewhere beyond focus. Closing her eyes, she breathed in deeply and reached out to lift the old fashioned plastic telephone receiver with one hand. Pressing her other palm against the glass partition which separated the guilty from the free, promise from despair, she blinked away a moment of uninvited tears and whispered; “It’s going to be all right.”