Smoking Poppy by Graham Joyce (the read aloud family .txt) 📕

‘Stop thinking about it,’ Mick said, trying to track the airstream of the fan with a lazy and contemplative swivelling of his chin.

‘I can’t.’

‘Difficult,’ Phil said, ‘to not think about it. The father encounters the daughter in prison, so to speak.’

So far Mick’s way of dealing with Phil and his double-talk was to ignore him completely or to make a tiny shake of his blond curls every time Phil spoke. His disappointment on discovering that there was to be a third member of the party was still advertised in his face. ‘That’s why you’re so tetchy,’ he said to me. ‘Because you keep thinking about tomorrow. Try to relax. Both of you.’

The trouble had started even before we got on the plane at Heathrow. To begin with Mick wound me up by continually mis-pronouncing the word ‘Thailand’. He and I were in the duty-free buying cigarettes for Charlie when he’d said, ‘While we’re in Thighland are we going to spend any time in Bangkok?’

‘What? Why would we do that?’

He’d shrugged his shoulders, casual. ‘Supposed to be a fun place, Bangkok.’

‘How do you mean, “fun”?’

‘Where they all go, like.’

‘Where who goes?’ I knew exactly what he meant.

He stuck a finger in his ear, pretending to shake his earhole free of wax. ‘Sex tourism.’

‘You mean you’d like to go there?’ I remember smiling, encouraging.

‘Just have a squint at what’s going on, like.’ And he winked at me.

I laid a carton of Marlboros back on the shelf and turned to him. ‘I’m not going out there for sex tourism,’ I said evenly.

‘No, I didn’t mean—’

‘I’m going out there for one reason and one reason only, and that reason is Charlie.’

‘No, you’ve got hold of the wrong end of the—’

‘This isn’t a jaunt or a holiday or your chance to get your fat leg over, I’m going because my daughter, Charlotte, is rotting in a filthy prison in a place called Chiang Mai.’

‘Keep your hair on, Danny—’

‘We’re not going to look at nude women dancing round poles and sticking ping-pong balls up their fannies, so if you’ve got any of that in mind you go your own way as soon as we land in Bangkok, right?’

Then he started getting angry. ‘Calm down, for Christ’s sake! Look at the state of you! I was only saying—’

‘I know what you were saying and you’re not on.’

‘— that there are things to look at while we’re there and you don’t have to walk the length and breadth of Thighland with a face like a bag of spanners. That’s not going to help Charlie, is it?’

I stormed from the duty-free shopping zone in search of the suddenly preferred company of Phil, concluding what was the first of our many disputes over the next few hours. And here was Mick chugging beer in a Chiang Mai bar after his appalling behaviour, telling me to relax. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘we’ve got to find somewhere to eat.’

Eating was the last thing on my mind. The heat had drained my appetite, and even if it hadn’t the million and one pavement cafés and street vendors hadn’t helped. Everyone in Chiang Mai and his sister and his sister’s boyfriend was in the chomping business, from the classy silver-service eateries down to the fruit-laden bamboo mat in the rat-snarling gutter.

‘What do you fancy?’ I said. ‘Dog in cashew nut sauce or monkey with mango?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Mick said. ‘It’s just like the Chinese takeaway, or the curry house. Isn’t it, Phil?’

Phil cleared his throat, touched his nose and refused to take sides.

Fine for Mick. In fact he was in his element. Back home he loved nothing better than Indian or Chinese food, whereas anything remotely spicy makes me sweaty and nasty. ‘I’ll find something back at the hotel.’

‘Phhhht,’ Mick went in disgust. ‘Phhhht.’ He knew that all the hotel offered in the way of food was a bar with complimentary crisps and peanuts in bamboo dishes.

But I knew better than to try to come between Mick and the imperative of his bowels. He made it quite clear on the plane that, even if he were to be denied the fleshpots of Bangkok, he was going to more than compensate his belly with whatever culinary adventure might be on offer. He had the cabin crew running back and forth to the galley for the entire flight in the service of his belly. From the moment we boarded the plane he started. When we were waid by one of those stunningly beautiful and self-effacing air hostesses, Mick touched her elbow and said, ‘Now, don’t pray to me darlin’, just fetch the gin.’

The trouble with Mick is that when these women smiled back at him, he actually thought he was making a big hit. He didn’t understand that it was in their culture to smile, to be compliant; he was too accustomed to the contrary and disagreeable nature of Western women.

‘I’m in here,’ he whispered to me as we took our seats on the plane. ‘These girls think I’m a god.’

‘It’s called a wai,’ I remember telling him.

‘A what?’

‘A wai. When they put their hands together like that.’

‘A what?’

‘Don’t take the piss.’ I should have known it was going to be like that not only for the duration of the flight but for the entire period we spent in Thailand. He would summon a hostess, put his hands together under his nose and offer a deep, fulsome wai and then would whisper to them confidentially, ‘See that tiny little dinner you just brought me? Do you think you could find me another one?’ And it would work every time. Another thing he found hilarious would be to catch my eye, and thereafter wai me as a prelude to breaking wind. Then he proceeded to get rip-roaring drunk.

Meanwhile in the bar the giant fan nudged the dirty warm air hither and thither. ‘I’m fucking starving,’ Mick roared. ‘Let’s eat.’

We made to pay for the beer; or at least