Alex Garland - The Beach

'With a lamé dress?'

'Yes! My God, she was so beautiful!'

'She was.'

'Anyway, Richard. Come to the restaurant.' He reached out a hand and hauled me up. 'I think we have a boat to take us into the marine park.'

The man was the Thai version of a spiv. Instead of being lean and weasel-like, with a pencil moustache and a flash suit, he was short, fat, and wore drainpipe marbled jeans tucked into giant Reebok trainers.

'Tha' can be arrange',' he said, quoting from the universal phrase book of the entrepreneur. 'Of course, yes.' He grinned and made an expansive gesture with his arms. Gold sparkled in his mouth. 'No' difficul' for me to do tha'.'

Étienne nodded. So far he'd done all the bargaining, which was fine as far as I was concerned. I don't like dealing with money transactions in poor countries. I get confused between feeling that I shouldn't haggle with poverty and hating getting ripped off.

'Actually, my frien', your gui' book is no' correc'. You can stay Ko Phelong one nigh', two nigh' — is OK. Bu' this island you can only stay one nigh'.' He took Étienne's book and laid a chubby finger on an island close to Phelong.

Étienne looked at me and winked. From my memory of Mister Duck's map, which was back in the beach hut, our island was the next one along.

'OK,' said Étienne, and lowered his voice conspiratorially, even though there was no one around to hear. 'This is the island we want to see. But we want to stay more than one night. That is possible?'

The spiv furtively looked over his shoulder at the empty tables.

'Yes,' he whispered, leaning forward, then looked around again. 'Bu' is mo' money, you un'erstan'.'

The deal was eventually struck at 1,450 baht, diligently knocked down from 2,000 by Étienne. At six the next morning we were to meet the spiv in the restaurant and he would take us to his boat. Only then would we pay him the money, a point Étienne wisely insisted upon, and he would take us to the island. Three nights later he would come back to pick us up—our contingency plan in case we got stuck there.

That left us with only a couple of problems.

If we made it to the next island along, we would be missing when the spiv came to collect us. To deal with this, Étienne invented a story about some other friends we were going to meet there, so we might come back early — no cause for alarm.

Another difficulty was how to get from the drop-off island to the beach island. We could have asked the boat to take us directly there, but not knowing exactly what we were going to find on the beach, we didn't want to blunder in on a motor boat. Anyway, as the beach island was out of bounds to tourists, we thought it better to start out from one we were allowed to stay on - if only for one night.

Étienne and Françoise seemed far less concerned about this last step of the journey than I was. They had a simple solution — we would swim. By examining Mister Duck's map and the map in their guidebook they'd decided that the islands were roughly a kilometre apart. According to them, that was a manageable distance. I wasn't so confident, remembering the diving game from the day before. The tide had pulled us a long way down Chaweng beach as we swam. If the same thing happened between the islands, the length of the swim could effectively double as we corrected and recorrected our course.

The final problem was what we would do with our bags. Again, Étienne and Françoise had worked out a solution. Apparently they'd done a lot of planning last night while I was getting stoned. Later that day, sitting in the shallows with the wash collecting sand around our feet, they explained.

'The backpacks will not be a problem, Richard,' said Françoise. 'Actually, maybe they will help us to swim.'

I raised my eyebrows. 'How's that?'

'We need some plastic bags,' said Étienne. 'If we have some plastic bags we can tie them so water does not enter. Then... they float. The air inside.'

'Uh-huh. You think it'll work?'

Étienne shrugged. 'I think it will. I saw it on television.'

'On TV?'

'It was The A-Team '

' The A-Team? Oh, that's great. We'll be fine, then.'

I lay back in the water, propping myself up on my elbows.

'I think you are very lucky to have met us, Richard,' Étienne laughed. 'I think without us you could not reach this beach.'

'Yes,' Françoise said. 'But also we are lucky to meet him.'

'Oh, of course. Without your map we could not find the beach either.'

Françoise frowned, then smiled at me. 'Étienne! We are lucky to meet him anyway.'

I smiled back, noticing as I did so that the bad mood I'd been carrying all morning had completely lifted. 'We're all lucky,' I said happily.

Étienne nodded. 'Yes. We are.'

We sat in silence for a few minutes, basking in our luckiness. Then I stood up, clapping my hands together. 'Right. Why don't we go for a long swim now? It could be a practice.'

'It is a very good idea, Richard,' Étienne replied, also standing. 'Come on, Françoise.'

She shook her head and pouted. 'I think I will stay in the sun. I shall watch you two strong men from here. I will see who can swim the furthest.'

Doubt flickered in my mind. I looked at her, trying to see if her words were as loaded as they appeared. She was watching Étienne as he made his way into the sea, giving nothing away.

'That's it, then,' I thought. 'Just wishful thinking.'

But I failed to convince myself. As I waded after Étienne, I couldn't help wondering if Françoise's eyes were now on my back. Just before the water became deep enough to swim I needed to know, and glanced behind me. She had moved up the beach to the dry sand and was lying on her front, facing the land.

Just wishful thinking after all.

Eden

Sunset was spectacular. Red sky gently faded to deep blue, where a few bright stars already shone, and orange light threw elastic shadows down the beach as people strolled back to their huts.

I was stoned. I'd been dozing on the sand with Françoise and Étienne, recovering from our epic swim, when Sammy and Zeph turned up with half an ounce of grass wrapped in newspaper. They'd spent the day at Lamai hunting for their lost room key and found it hanging on a piece of driftwood, stuck into the sand. They'd bought the grass to celebrate.

'Someone must have put it there knowing we'd come looking,' Zeph had said as he sat down beside us. 'Isn't that such a decent thing to do?'

'Maybe it was a stupid thing to do,' Françoise had replied. 'Someone could have taken this key and robbed your room.'

'Well, uh, yeah, I suppose.' Then he'd looked at Françoise, obviously taking her in for the first time, and given his head a little shake. I think he was clearing a mental image that had just appeared. 'No, definitely. You're right.'

The sun had begun its rapid descent to the horizon as the grass began to take hold. Now we all sat, watching the colours in the sky as intently as if we were watching television.

'Hey,' said Sammy loudly, breaking us out of our reverie. 'Has anyone ever noticed that if you look up at the sky you can start to see animals and faces in the clouds?'

Étienne looked round. 'Have we ever noticed?' he said.

'Yeah,' Sammy continued. 'It's amazing. Hey, there's a little duckright above us, and that one looks like a man with a huge nose.'

'Actually, I have noticed this since I was a small child.'

'A small child?'

'Yes. Certainly.'

Sammy whistled. 'Shit. I've only just noticed it. Mind you, that's mainly to do with where I grew up.'

'Oh?' said Étienne.

'See, I grew up in Idaho.'

'Ah...' Étienne nodded. Then he looked confused. 'Yes, Idaho. I have heard of Idaho, but...'

'Well, you know about Idaho, huh? There's no clouds in Idaho.'