Alex Garland - The Beach

'Hey,' he said, not looking round. 'You took your time.'

I couldn't answer at first because I was hyperventilating.

'What were you doing back there? You've been ages.'

'Drowning,' I finally managed to say.

'Yeah? You know anything about engines? I've tried to get this going but I can't.'

I splashed over to him and tried to haul myself on to the rock, but I was too weak and I slipped back into the water. 'Didn't you hear me?' I panted.

'Sure.' He started absently running the blade of his knife against his beard, as if he were shaving. 'Now, I know it's got enough gas because the tank's full, and I know the Swedes said they had it running the other day.'

'Jed! I got stuck in some air pocket with more exits than...' I couldn't think of anything famous with a large number of exits 'I nearly drowned!'

For the first time Jed looked at me. 'An air pocket?' he said, lowering the knife. 'Are you sure?'

'Of course I'm fucking sure!'

'Where?'

'I don't know, do I? Somewhere... in there.' I turned back to the black entrance of the cave and shivered.

Jed frowned. 'Well... that's pretty weird. I've been through there a hundred times and I've never found any air pocket.'

'You think I'm lying?'

'No... And there were several exits?'

'Four at least. I could feel them and I didn't know which one I should take. It was a fucking nightmare.'

'So you must have strayed down a split off the main passage. Shit, Richard, I'm sorry. I honestly didn't know that could happen. I must have been through there so many times that I automatically follow the same route.' He tutted. 'But it's amazing. Everybody on the beach has swum through that cave and no one's ever got lost.'

I sighed. 'That's my fucking luck.'

'Bad luck, all right.' He held out a hand and pulled me on to the rock.

'I might have died.'

Jed nodded. 'You might have. I'm sorry.'

A voice in my head was telling me that I ought to lose my temper, but there didn't seem anything to lose my temper at. Instead I lay back and looked up at the clouds. A silver speck was threading a vapour trail across the sky and I imagined people inside peering out of the windows, watching the Gulf of Thailand unfold, wondering what things could be happening on the islands beneath them. One or two of them, I was sure, must be looking at my island.

They'd never have guessed what was happening in a million years. Thinking this, I managed a dizzy smile.

Jed brought me back to earth by saying, 'You smell of sick.'

'I've been swimming in the stuff,' I replied.

'Your elbow's bleeding too.'

I glanced down, and at once my arm began to sting.

'Jesus. I'm a wreck.'

'No.' Jed shook his head. 'It's the boat that's the wreck.'

The boat was twenty feet long and four feet wide, with a single bamboo outrigger on the right-hand side. On the left side it was lying flat against the rocks, tied up, protected by a line of buffers made of tightly rolled palm leaves. It was also protected, and hidden, by the mini-harbour formed by the entrance to the cave.

Inside the boat were some of the Swedes' fishing implements. Their spears were cut longer than ours and they had a landing-net, I noticed enviously. Not that we needed a landing-net inside the lagoon, but it would have been nice to have one all the same. They had lines and hooks too, which explained why they always caught the biggest fish.

Despite what Jed had said, I took to the boat immediately. I liked its South-East-Asian shape, the painted flourishes on its prow, the strong odour of grease and salt-soaked wood. Most of all I liked the fact that all this stuff was familiar to me, remembered from other island trips in other places. I felt pleased to have a store of memories which enabled me to feel nostalgic about such exotic things.

Collecting memories, or experiences, was my primary goal whenI first started travelling. I went about it in the same way as a stamp-collector goes about collecting stamps, carrying around with me a mental list of all the things I had yet to see or do. Most of the list was pretty banal. I wanted to see the Taj Mahal, Borobudur, the Rice Terraces in Bagio, Angkor Wat. Less banal, or maybe more so, was that I wanted to witness extreme poverty. I saw it as a necessary experience for anyone who wanted to appear worldly and interesting.

Of course witnessing poverty was the first to be ticked off the list. Then I had to graduate to the more obscure stuff. Being in a riot was something I pursued with a truly obsessive zeal, along with being tear-gassed and hearing gunshots fired in anger.

Another list item was having a brush with my own death. In Hong Kong, aged eighteen, I'd met an Old-Asia hand who'd told me a story about having been held up at gunpoint in Vietnam. The story ended with him having the gun shoved in his chest and being told he was going to be shot. 'The funny thing about facing death,' he'd said, 'is that you find you aren't afraid. If anything, you're calm. Alert, naturally, but calm.'

I'd nodded vigorously. I wasn't agreeing with him out of personal experience. I was just too thrilled to do anything but move my head.

The dope fields had fitted neatly into this category of the list, and so did the air pocket. The only downside was that I wasn't able to claim being alert (naturally) but calm, which was a line I fully intended to use one day.

Twenty minutes later I was ready to get going.

'Right,' I said, sitting up. 'Let's start up the engine.'

'The engine's fucked. You can't start it. I think we might have to go back and get the Swedes to sort it out.'

'Sure I can start it. I've been on this kind of boat loads of times.'

Jed looked doubtful but gestured for me to give it a try.

I crawled into the boat and slid down to the stern end, and to my great delight I recognized the engine type. It was started like a lawnmower, by winding a rope around a flywheel and giving it ahard tug. A closer look revealed a knot at one end of the rope and a groove in the wheel for it to fit into.

'I've tried that fifty times,' Jed muttered, as I put the knot in place.

'It's in the wrist,' I replied with deliberate cheerfulness. 'You have to start slowly then snap it back.'

'Uh-huh?'

When I was ready to pull I gave the engine a last cursory check. I wasn't looking for anything in particular but I wanted to give the impression that I was, and my shallowness paid off. Almost obscured by layers of grease and dirt I noticed a small metal switch with 'on/off' written beneath it. I glanced backwards over my shoulder and discreetly flicked it to the correct setting.

'Here we go!' I shouted and gave the rope a yank. Without even a splutter the engine roared into life.

West More Land

At the point we set off, noisily chugging out from the mini-harbour in a cloud of petrol fumes, I was keen to get to Ko Pha-Ngan. Although I'd been told it was past its best, Hat Rin still had a slightly legendary reputation. Like Patpong Road or the opium treks in the Golden Triangle, I wanted to know what all the fuss was about. I was also pleased to be doing something important for the beach. I knew that Sal appreciated my volunteering for such an obviously unpopular task, and I felt like I was involved in something serious and worth while.

But an hour later, as the shape of Ko Pha-Ngan was forming on the horizon, my keenness began to be replaced by anxiety. It was the same feeling I'd had under the waterfall. I was suddenly aware that encountering the World would bring back all the things I'd been doing such a good job of forgetting. I wasn't exactly sure what those things were, because I'd forgotten them, but I was pretty convinced I didn't want to be reminded. Also, although we couldn't really talk over the noise of the engine, I sensed Jed was thinking along the same lines. He was sitting as rigidly as the choppy motion of the boat would allow, one hand gripping the tiller, keeping his eyes absolutely fixed on the island ahead.