Alex Garland - The Beach

I reached into my shorts pocket for a cigarette. I'd taken a new pack — hoping the seal would keep them waterproof — and matches. They were in the plastic film-carton that Keaty used to keep his Rizlas dry. 'This is the most precious possession I have,' he'd said before handing it over. 'Guard it with your life.' 'Count on it,' I'd replied earnestly, imagining a three-hour boat trip without nicotine.

Lighting up turned into a bit of a drama because the matches were a crappy Thai brand and they splintered if you pushed them too hard. The first three broke and the next four blew out in the wind. I'd only taken ten in the film can, and was beginning to lose my cool, when I finally managed to get the cigarette lit up. Jed lit one too, off the end of mine, then we both went back to gazing at Ko Pha-Ngan. Between the blue and the green I could now make out a strip of white sand.

To avoid thinking about the World, I started thinking about Françoise.

A few days earlier Étienne and I had been having a diving competition near the coral garden about who could make the smallest splash. When we asked her to judge it, she watched us both and then shrugged, saying, 'You are both very good.' Étienne looked surprised. 'Yes,' he said impatiently. 'But who is better?' Françoise shrugged again. 'What shall I say?' she laughed. 'Really. You are both as good as the other.' Then she gave us both a little kiss on the cheek.

Her reaction had surprised me too. The truth is, Étienne was a much better diver than I was. I knew that without a shadow of a doubt. He could do effortless backwards dives, swan-dives, jack-knifes, weird twists without a name, all sorts of things. I, however, could only manage a backwards dive with a violent jerk that usually flipped me right back on to my feet. As for who could make the smallest splash, Étienne entered the water as straight as a bamboo spear. I didn't need to see myself to know that I was more like a tree-trunk, branches and all.

So when Françoise said that we were both as good as each other, she was lying. A funny sort of lie. Not malicious, apparently diplomatic, but vaguely puzzling in a way I found hard to pin down.

'West... more... land...' I heard over the noise of the engine. Jed was calling to me, snapping me out of my day-dreaming.

I looked round and cupped my hand to my ear. 'What?' I yelled.

'I'm heading west! There's more open beach to land! Less beach huts!'

I gave him the thumbs up and turned back to the prow. While I'd been thinking about Françoise, Ko Pha-Ngan had got much closer. I could now see the trunks and leaves of the coconut trees, and the mid-day shadows beneath them.

Re-entry

A hundred or so metres from the shore, Jed cut the engine so we could paddle the rest of the way in. The idea was to look like day-trippers but we needn't have bothered. The stretch of beach we landed on was empty apart from a few beat-up old beach huts, and they looked like no one had stayed in them for quite a while.

We jumped out and waded to the sand, dragging the boat by the outrigger. 'Are we going to leave the boat here?' I asked when we were clear of the water.

'No, we'll have to hide it.' Jed pointed to the tree-line. 'Maybe up there. Go and check it out. Make sure this area is as empty as it seems.'

'OK.'

I started jogging up the beach, then slowed to a walk almost

immediately. My sense of balance still thought I was at sea and I was

swaying drunkenly from side to side. It passed quickly, but for a

couple of minutes I actually had to concentrate to keep from falling

' over.

Not far from where we'd landed I found two palms that were far enough apart to let the outrigger through and close enough together to look inconspicuous. Between them was a bush with a large canopy which would cover the boat completely, especially with the help of a few well-placed branches, and the nearest of the ramshackle beach huts was a good fifty metres away.

'Here seems fine,' I called to Jed.

'Right. Give us a hand then.'

Everything would have been much easier if there'd been a thirdperson to help us. With the weight of the engine it took both of us to lift the stern - we had to keep the propeller up to stop it from getting damaged—so the front end kept sliding away from us. It was hard enough on the sand, but getting it over the small grass verge was a nightmare. We had to shunt it in short back-breaking bursts, none of which seemed to take us more than a foot.

'Bloody hell,' I panted, after the boat had swivelled away from the tree-line for the twentieth time. 'Is it always this hard?'

'Is what always this hard?'

'Rice Running.'

'Of course,' Jed replied, smoothing the sweat out of his beard. A stream of oily drops ran down his wrist and dripped off his elbow. 'Why do you think nobody wants to do it?'

Eventually we managed to manoeuvre the boat between the trees and under the bush. After we'd knocked up some camouflage, there was no way anyone would have spotted it unless they were going out of their way to look. We were even worried that we'd have trouble finding it again ourselves, so we marked the spot by pushing a forked stick into the sand.

We were completely exhausted, but there were two consolations. One was that it would be easier getting the boat back to the water, because it would be downhill and the ocean made for a bigger target than the space between two palm trees. The other was that we could treat ourselves to a big meal as soon as we got to Hat Rin.

We set off in high spirits, discussing which soft drinks we were going to order and whether Sprite had the edge on Coke. Jed noticed the couple first, but we were already a fair distance from the boat so we didn't worry too much. As we passed them I looked straight at their faces, not for any reason except to be ready with a smile if they said hello.

They didn't. They kept their eyes pointed at the ground, and by their expressions I could see they were putting the same concentration into walking as I had earlier.

'Did you see them?' I said when they were out of earshot. 'Wasted by lunch-time.'

'Liquid lunch.'

'Powdered lunch.'

Jed nodded, then hawked up and spat on the sand. 'Fucking Freaks.'

An hour later we were walking past rows of busy beach huts and weaving between sunbathers and Frisbee games. I was surprised that people weren't taking more notice of us. Everyone looked so strange to me that I couldn't believe I didn't look equally strange to them.

'Let's eat,' said Jed, when we were about halfway down Hat Rin, so we walked into the nearest café and sat down. Jed looked over the menu while I continued to marvel at our surroundings. The concrete under my toes felt particularly weird, and the plastic chair I was sitting on. It was just a standard chair—the same kind I used to have at school, curved seat with a hole in the back, V-shaped metal legs - but I found it bizarrely uncomfortable. I couldn't work out the right way to sit on it. Either I was slithering down or I was perched on the edge, both of which were useless.

'How the hell do you do this?' I muttered.

Jed looked up from the menu.

'I can't seem to sit...'

He started laughing. 'Does your head in, doesn't it? All this.'

'It sure does.'

'What about your reflection?'

'...How do you mean?'

'When was the last time you saw your reflection?'

I shrugged. There was a make-up mirror near the shower hut which the men used for shaving, but it only showed a tiny area of your face at any one time. Apart from that, I hadn't seen myself for over four weeks.

'There's a sink and a mirror over there. Go and have a look. You'll get a real shock.'

I frowned, suddenly worried. 'Why? Has something happened to my face?'

'No. Just go and have a look. You'll see.'