The Dream

3 CRAIG’S BIRTHDAY-1

3 CRAIG’S BIRTHDAYLek and Craig had stopped exchanging presents a decade ago, because Craig could not get into town to buy Lek anything unless she took him, so the parties that she threw were her gift and the cake that he could get locally was his. However, Soom usually gave him something. When she was young, it would have been something like a rose; when she was at university, but ‘hard up’, something useful like a blotter or a desk tidy, but since she had been working they were often expensive and well-thought—out.

At breakfast, she handed him a heavy box containing a set of six exquisitely carved teak bookends depicting the heads of legendary Thai folklore animals.

“They are fantastic, Soom! My best present ever. They will go into pride of place straight after breakfast. Are you still coming on my birthday pub crawl with me?”

“Sure, I’m looking forward to it”.

“Are you coming as well, Lek?”

“No, I can’t unfortunately”, she replied sarcastically, “but Soom said she’d make sure you don’t drink too much for me”.

Soom tried to express in her smile that she had not, but would not openly contradict her mother.

“OK, well, birthday or no birthday, that book won’t write itself, so I’d better get on with it. Thanks again for the lovely present, Soom. I’ll see you outside the hotel between one and two”.

“You didn’t have to say that, Mae. I do wish you wouldn’t drag me into your digs at him”.

Lek didn’t reply, but stood up, gathered the breakfast things and took them to the sink.

“You’d best give Shell her shower and get her ready for school”. Soom got up sadly and went inside.

∞

When Soom turned up at ten past one, she apologised for being late.

“You’re not late, by Baan Suay standards, you’re early”.

“Yes, I know, but I learned ten years ago that lectures started on time, and when I started at the bank I discovered that ‘being on time’ meant getting there ten minutes early. So, sorry for being late”.

“OK, don’t worry about it. What are you having?”

“Mineral water, please”.

“Certainly”, he said ordering it by tablet.

“Cheers”, she said when the drinks arrived, “happy birthday, Dad. Where will we be going this afternoon?”

“Just around the village. We’ll walk up that way, and come back this”, he explained pointing.

When they were between the first and the second venues, Soom asked him a serious question.

“Mum told me last night that you wanted to go home and take her with you. Do you mind talking about that on your birthday?”

“No, not at all”.

“Why do you want to leave us?” she asked as they took a seat.

Craig ordered the same again.

“It isn’t a question of wanting to leave you, Soom, did your mother say it like that?”

“No, but that’s what it comes down to, isn’t it?”

“Only in the sense that, if we go to the UK, we will be leaving you behind, but that is not why I want to go. To be honest with you, I am not looking forward to it at all, but there are things that I have to sort out back there. I also promised your mother fifteen years ago that I would take her there for a few years when you were settled. We will come back”.

“What do you have to do that is so important, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“No, I don’t mind. When I came here, I was still fairly young - don’t laugh, I was, in the scheme of things, but fifteen years at my time of life is a lot of what I’ve probably got left, so I have to make certain preparations. Ones that you will not have to worry about for another forty years or more. Understand?”

“Yes, and you want to take your wife with you?”

“Yes, we are a couple. Wouldn’t you want to take your husband with you, if you were going away for a year or more?”

“Yes, Mum said possibly five years…”

“Yes, up to five years, if your mother wants British residency papers. She wanted them fifteen years ago and hasn’t said she’s changed her mind, but it will be hard on all of us. It doesn’t mean that you can’t visit us though, and I think your Mum can leave the country after two years.

“There are still a lot of details I have to find out. You’ll visit us, won’t you?”

“Yes, if I can… I wouldn’t mind coming with you the way things are going at the moment, but I know that’s not possible”.

“I don’t know, I do know though that a new life for the three of us in the UK was Lek’s dream all those years ago, but I wanted to live here. That’s why I said, give me ten years and we’ll try - that was meant to coordinate with you finishing university, but then we waited to see if you’d get a good job, then you got married, and the Shell came along, but I can’t wait any longer. I’m getting too old. That’s the long and the short of it”.

“I see… Mum didn’t tell me all that…”

“No, well, you know your mother; she thinks it’s my story to tell, so she would just give you the bare bones. Would you really like to live in the UK?”

“Oh, yes! It has been a dream since I first met you. Thinking back on it, Mum never discouraged it either. I used to tell her that I wanted to live in Carnaby Street. Funny, eh?”

“It’s good to have dreams, but now you probably know why Lek didn’t ever discourage them. She thought there was a chance that they might come true one day… perhaps not living in Carnaby Street itself, but in the UK or even London. When she said she wanted to live in the UK, I never said never either.

“Well, this is the start of that process of possibly living in the UK”.

“I wish that I had known. If I had, I might be coming with you”.

“I think your mother allowed you to follow your nose, and you did seem happy, so I can’t fault her for that. I thought the same. Why, is there a problem?”

“Do you want another one here?”

“No, let’s walk on”. Soom paid the bill with Craig’s money at his insistence and they left.

They walked in silence, mainly because Craig didn’t want to force the pace of the revelations. He ordered the same again in the next shop and Soom’s eyes lingered on his for longer than normal when she clinked glasses.

“I think Mike’s up to his old tricks again, Dad…”

“Is that what that phone call was about yesterday afternoon?”

“Yes… it was from a ‘well-wisher’. She said that Mike was having an affair at the bank…” She dabbled at her eyes with the collar of her blouse Thai country style.

“I’m sorry to hear it, but it may not be true…

“With his record? How many chances would you give someone? Two or three? Five or six? More? I’m fed up with it, Dad. Wouldn’t you be?”

He only nodded, once.

“I love Shell more than anything else in the world, but she is the only good thing that ever came from meeting Mike and his family. I cannot say that I wish I’d never met him, because of her, but… Oh, sometimes it hurts so much!”

Tears were flowing freely down her face, but only her eyes showed her internal pain. Craig wanted to cross the table; sit next to her and put his arm around her. However, he knew that if she was anything like Lek, she would not approve of having attention drawn to her plight; so he just sat and watched her regain control of herself, while thinking that he could happily beat Mike to a pulp for doing this to such a lovely person just because he could.

He watched her open her phone and push buttons, and thought she was using it as a tool to distract herself, but she said, “Look, Lizzie’s been spotted. Someone has posted a picture of her in their garden. The girl’s name is Ice, but I don’t know which one she is. Still, it means that Lizzie was alive, er, twenty-four minutes ago. That’s good news isn’t it? Look, here is Ice’s photo of her… It’s pretty good”.

Craig took the phone and studied the photo, hoping to give Soom time to recover. He could see her dabbing at her eyes over the top of the screen.

When she was done, he handed the phone back, “She’s beautiful”, he said, “I hope I get to meet her”.

“I didn’t tell Mum that I’d control your drinking today…”

“I know, your mother’s been trying for fifteen years and hasn’t got anywhere. It’s just one of her jokes… I knew that, I’m sorry that you didn’t”.

She smiled for the first time in an hour and it melted Craig’s heart. He had never known that platonic love could be so beautiful.

Craig drank up and they moved on to the next shop. As they walked down the road side by side, Craig was able to put an arm around her shoulder and give a squeeze of support without attracting attention and she put an arm around his waist for a second too.

“Thanks again for coming with me; it’s much better than being on my own”.

“I am enjoying our chat as well. Maybe you’ll allow me to come with you next year too”, she asked.

“Of course, any time you like”, he replied. “How about Christmas Day? That’s usually the next one”.

“I can’t tell if I’ll be free yet”.

“No, of course not… well, if you are, you’ll be welcome. Well, here we are at the next one. I usually sit here”.

Soom went inside and returned with a duster.

“The bench is very dusty”, she remarked cleaning it. The owner came out carrying the drinks.

“Please, sit inside. Here very hot for beautiful lady”.

“He always tries to get me to sit inside with him and watch TV”, said Craig, but I like to watch people going about their daily business…”

“He’s showing concern for me. Most young women would not want to sit in the direct sun and get brown skin, because it is common. Only farm workers get brown skin. People who have good jobs have white skin, but you have to take care of white skin very carefully when you are Thai. It is all right for you, your skin is naturally white. It hasn’t gone brown even after fifteen years and you don’t take care of it at all”.

“No, sorry, I wasn’t thinking. Do you want to go inside?”

“No, I’ll get one of those wide-brimmed straw hats that field workers wear. That will be enough for the next couple of hours. I put some cream on before I came out”.

“That hat really suits you. I hate to use the word, but you look cute”.

“Thank you, but why don’t you like that word?”

“I can’t tell you, but I don’t. OK, I’ll try. Americans use it in the sense of ‘pretty’. You are pretty, but I was only trying to say that the hat suits you. I know it’s not a very good explanation, but it’s all I’ve got at the moment.

“Have you ever spoken to Mike about living abroad? Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to bring his name up”.

“It’s all right. I don’t know whether he’s done anything wrong yet. No, we never talk about things like that. We both have our jobs and then there’s Shell… It would mean a lot of disruption. It is easier to stay where we are, I suppose, and keep doing what we’re doing. I will probably still be saying that until Shell finishes university in twenty years time. Then I’ll wait until she gets a good job, and gets married, just like you did, and then I’ll be a grandmother, and won’t want to go. That’s what normally happens to people, isn’t it? How did you escape that cycle?”

“I don’t have a good explanation for that either. I just didn’t get involved in the rat race or playing happy families, until I met your mother, but I was fifty by then. It wasn’t a conscious decision, it just happened to me. There’s nothing wrong with either lifestyle, it’s just important to pick the one that suits you. Marriage and family suit most people, then they need a house to live in and a job to pay for everything. One thing leads to another.

“I didn’t get married and didn’t have any kids and didn’t even particularly want any. Some of my friends only got married because they wanted children, but I was never like that and couldn’t understand why they were. Does that make sense?”

“I suppose so, but I always wanted children too”.

“But I didn’t have that urge, that paternalistic urge… However, since I have been married to your mother and got to know you, and think of you as my daughter, I have been able to see why other people think like they do. For example, I know that I will miss you terribly when we go to the UK… Shell too. Now if I think like that, it must be really, really difficult for your mother. I understand that better now than I would have before”.