When Stuart dropped me at my father’s
the next morning the house was empty. I
put my bags in the garage and arranged a breakfast. I never cooked when away
and found the process relaxing; brewing fresh coffee, arranging a simple bowel
of cereal and a round of toast. Moving
to sit in the dining room I looked from the window, woods at the back, a stone
fountain my parents had chosen together. ‘What now?’ I thought. I fetched paper and pen and drew up a list of
things to do as I alternated between muesli and toast.
Sign onto the dole.
Call Gareth about the job.
Get Thursdays jobs paper.
Start studying.
It was a cycle I’d repeated five times,
an extended trip abroad, a crash landing back at home, but this time things
seemed easier, a job waiting, a place to live undisturbed. I filled a couple of
days pulling together study materials and when jet lag woke me in the mornings
I ran.
I called Gareth on Wednesday.
“Hey buddy, Paul.”
“Hello sunshine, fancy a bit of work,
got just the thing. I’m coming up from
London next week, I’ll show you the ropes, if you like it, it’s yours.”
I pressed for details but he wouldn’t
give any.
On Thursday making my way upstairs I
felt my knee cap slide out and pop back in.
It reminded me of the injuries that left footballers in agony and I imagined
myself lying prostrate,
crawling to the phone to make a pathetic call for help. I diagnosed it was something to do with the
change in temperature and made an appointment at my local surgery.
Arriving early I took a seat in the waiting
area and noticed the fish tank I’d cleaned during my spell working at the local
aquarium, the year I’d taken my sabbatical from economics and wasted another six
months of my life doing another job I’d hated. I could still feel the walk to
work, the walk of a condemned man stealing every second to be somewhere
else. Hours of my life whiled away
scrubbing algae from fish tanks and bagging fish. It was the first place which to bring me into
contact with Thailand, the owner married to a Thai. I remembered considering how his son must have
felt when his father returned with an order of Koi Carp and a new wife.
There’d
been another guy at the aquarium and I remembered a day when he’d told me how
he used to accompany John on his trips.
Told me how they’d spend a couple of weeks visiting the Koi farms and
how in the future he planned to buy a house there. He couldn’t have been making much money, but
he told me he’d have a mansion, design it himself with a pool. It fitted now, retiring to the life of sweetness.
I wondered whether he was living his dream, or coming to retirement to realize
the dream was all he’d needed.
Seeing my name scrolling across the electronic
board I walked to Doctor Green’s office, knocking and entering as an Indian
reclined in her leather chair. She was
attractive in the way professional women always are, well dressed, educated,
makeup but not too much.
“Good afternoon Mr Adamson.”
I watched as she shuffled my cards and
gave me a once over.
“It says the last time we saw you you
were clinically overweight, do we have the right details?”
I felt a wave of pride, “I’ve lost a
bit of weight, been Muay Thai boxing in Thailand.”
She looked at me again, I had the
impression she was aroused by the idea, local after local passing through
complaining of rheumatism and arthritis and then me.
“You must have lost a considerable
amount of weight,” she continued. “So, what brings you here today?”
“My knee, funny, I didn’t have any
problems in Thailand but it almost gave way on the stairs.”
Leading me to a couch I hopped up and lying
back she rolled my jeans to the knee. It
was erotic, the coldness in her hands, the two of us alone.
“Well, I can’t see anything, I’ll book
you in with the physiotherapist.”
She filled out a card and passed it to
me.
“Is there anything else?”
I took time considering whether to say
anything.
“There’s one more thing, not sure you
can help with this, but….. I just can’t settle down. All my friends are still living around here,
working steady jobs, but I just can’t stop moving.”
As the words left my mouth I knew it sounded
limp. I knew what she was going to say,
I just needed to hear it again, hear someone else say there’s nothing wrong.
“You know, everyone’s life is different
life, there’s nothing wrong with what you’re doing. I’m a doctor, I went to college and now I
spend days handing out prescriptions. If
you’d like, I can give you details for counselling, but I don’t think you need
it.”
“Thanks.”
“Your life sounds pretty interesting,
there’s a lot of people who dream about going to the places you’ve been.”
----------------------------------------------------------
When I emptied my backpack the next day
I picked out my orange notebook and moved to the lounge to scan the pages. I’d managed to sketch out my entire life, not
the details, but the bones were there. I
thought back to my idea about writing a book about fighting, ‘Could I write
something now?’ I thought. ‘Something about a girl like Nen and an ex-pat living
in Bangkok. Combine everything I’ve
experienced and all the questions I’ve tried to answer’.
I opened my laptop and began.
‘He walked to the window, gazing out as
the sun rose over the Chao Phaya River.
Turning back he looked at the girl in his bed, the dark silhouette lying
silently, he crossed the room to join her, stroking hair from her face as she
stirred and bending to place a kiss on her brow.’
I stopped, ‘What’s the story? What’s
the message?’ I couldn’t think of one. It
seemed pointless writing without a clear idea.
I’d be writing some crappy Mills & Boon that just happened to be set
in Bangkok. The type of story I’d see
people reading on the train, gripping enough to pass the time, shallow enough it
wouldn’t turn a single cog in the reader’s head, that wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted to write the type of book I loved,
the type which would make me pause to re-read a line, to think about what the
author said and realize he’d changed the way they’d look at the world
forever.
---------------------------------------------------
Going for my job at the weekend I
arrived on a quiet street, fishing the address from my pocket and marching
until I found the building. Entering via
a buzzer I climbed the stairs and heard dance music as I approached the fourth
flight. I paused, ‘Can I do this,’ I
thought ‘A job plucked from the sky, what about doing something ethical’. I
knew once I started I’d feel obligated to stay, what if it sucked. ‘No, I have to’ I told myself. Money running low the job made sense, a few
months of good cash, a job with kept my connection to Asia via Gareth. I met an attractive receptionist dressed in
black and white. It was what I heard
girls describe as accessorised; a black cardigan over a black and white bodice,
black skirt leading to black and white stockings, black and white beaded
necklace with beads growing larger as they descended to her chest.
“Hi, Paul, I’m here to see Gareth.”
“He’s with someone at the moment, take
a seat, I’ll call you when he’s free.”
Moving through an upmarket salon I entered
a lounge filled with bulky red sofas, taking a seat as a pop video played on a flat
screen T.V.. I thumbed through a portfolio
of girls and looked up as a familiar face passed with eyebrows raised.
“Follow me sunshine,” he said after
depositing a couple of customers at reception.
Entering a white office I looked around;
curving desk, computer, vase of flowers brightening a dull grey cabinet.
“Long time no see fella,” he began.
We briefly discussed what we’d been
doing and I commented on how different he looked with hair in place of his
shaved scalp.
“So, the job, piece of piss mate.”
He inserted a memory card and tapped
the keyboard until a series of images filled the screen.
“This my friend, is your office, that
girl just had her photos taken,” he continued pointing at the screen. “Your job
simple, you go through the photos, tell her she looks beautiful, when you’ve
got down to what she wants, quote the price, job done.”
I was seeing his other world now, the
one I’d tried to picture on our visa runs to Burma. ‘I work in a modelling
studio,’ ‘Spend my winters somewhere warm, summers watching the cricket’.
He pointed to a list on the wall, prices
ranging from excessive to outrageous.
“People pay that for photos?”
“Vanity mate.”
I told him I’d never used Photoshop and
he told me that wasn’t a problem.
“I’ll show you a couple of tricks today;
you can pick the rest up as you go.”
He gave me a syrupy feeling as he told
me I wouldn’t need an interview. It was
as if I was somehow insulated from the outside world. Like boxing had made me part a secret
organisation which helped its members in any way it could. It took me back to
something my father had said, ‘You make your own luck in this world,’ and it
was true. Had I not kept searching, not
been desperate enough to go to Thailand and make my plan for The Legion I’d
never even have imagined a life like Gareth’s.
His manner had been the same in Thailand, moving with confidence,
setting those around him at ease. He
seemed to have gradually chipped away until he’d created a life of simple
pleasures, when he got bored he set himself a challenge, seeing if he could
date a girl, an occasional game of poker, but always within limits.
He’d been a bit economical with the
truth describing the role as a graphics artist, it was sales pure and simple; give
a girl a makeover, get her tipsy on Buck’s Fizz, sit her in a room with a
handsome salesman generous on compliments. It was a production line; hair, makeup, photos
and then me, the money taker. It probably bordered on illegality with the
alcohol but that was our world and right now I needed the money.
I watched one of Gareth’s sales, three
girls, none particularly special in appearance.
“Look at that,” he said. “That’s your
Audrey Hepburn shot.”
He took them for every penny, running
their credit cards through the machine until they were empty. Before I wouldn’t have considered a job like
that, but if I was going to be a prostitute for a while, it made sense to a
well paid one. He gave me the next
client and I took a hundred pounds.
It was summer in England, the end of
June and without a car I walked to the station, practising Chinese on the train.
I was in my own world then, back in my Chinese apartment looking down as the
elderly cackled over games of majong, shopping in the markets, chatting up the
baseball capped prostitute in the nightclub.
Gareth staying a couple more days he continued to show me the ropes and
I made some decent money. Gradually working
out a pitch, I used techniques I’d picked up charity fundraising to meet
objections and played on my looks. I
felt like a Jedi Knight who’d turned to the dark side. Most of the girls knew what it was about, and
if they didn’t, they did by the time they left.
It was the universe at work, right now I was selling vanity, perhaps in
the future I’d be building more wells in Africa.
Paid on commission I worked out my ten
percent would net me a couple of hundred pounds a day. It was the most I’d ever made and I began
considering what I’d do with it, ‘Buy that condo in Hillside 4?’ I thought.
----------------------------------------------------
On Monday, told I wouldn’t be working
until the following weekend I used my free time to formalise my plans. Working four days a week I reckoned on saving
a thousand a month. Eight thousand
banked by December I’d resurrect my degree, get my books and get back to Thailand. My university offering exams at any British
Council around the world things finally seemed to be falling into place. I thought back to the book I’d read about how
when you set out after something forces conspired get you there. It seemed right, but perhaps more could have
been said about the bendy path, the fact that for all we plan the road that
finally takes us is more winding than we could ever have imagined.
My future would lie somehow in Asia. I’d felt it my first time in China, a place
where I was supposed to be, perhaps my role to connect East and West. I envied the explorers who’d gone to places
for the first time, but in a sense, the modern world was more exciting, the
rise of the Asia tipping the global balance at an unprecedented pace, I could
explain it, tell people why their jobs were drifting overseas.
“Well, you get paid £20,000 a year,
right?” I’d say. “There’s a guy in a
place called Guangzhou, China who went to university too, in fact, he’s got a
doctorate versus your bachelors. His
parents used to earn £1000 a year and now he’s been offered your job on £4000,
he’s taken it.”
“But, I’ve been with the company five
years.”
“You want loyalty? I’m sure your boss
is a reasonable guy but what are companies designed to do? Maximize profit of
preserve job stability? Growth and profit every time, read any textbook, the
bigger the takings the more successful the company. They give your job to the guy in Guangzhou and they just
reclaimed £16,000 a year.”
“So what do I do now?”
“I don’t know, but I can tell you this,
the worlds moving towards a kind of perfection.”
“Eh.”
“An evolutionary perfection, you know
evolution, cave man to modern man? Well,
it’s the same with your job, we had an idea that happiness would spring from
material wealth so we got busy creating this global economy. You got your house your car, now it’s the
turn of the guy in Guangzhou
to get his, any good with your hands?”
“I like gardening.”
“Perfect, a bit of sustainability, have
a go at gardening, we’ll always need gardeners.”
“You see, it’s just a philosophical fix
you need, you just have to see things as they are. Once we’ve got through getting everyone their
material happiness we’re going to sit back and enjoy it.”
“Does that mean I can go fishing?”
“Why not, eventually we’ll get a
machine doing your old job so you can travel to Guangzhou and go fishing with
the guy who just took your job.”
“So, who’s in charge, I mean, who’s
going to make all the decisions once all this technology’s running things.”
“You know, I might just have been
whistling in the wind here, we’ll probably keep ourselves busy for another
thousand years with new things to be busy about.”
My work never starting until midday I
had time to get back into my studies in the mornings and plenty besides, and
considering the besides my diaries returned to my thoughts. ‘I could write them up,’ I thought, ‘a period
of consolidation, a record of my exploring’.
“Those belonged to your great, great grandfather,”
they’d say. “You’ve heard about him?”
“He travelled all over the world, dad
told me he married a Japanese woman.”
“That’s right, he was a remarkable
man. He wrote books and gave lectures.”
“Dad said he was a businessman.”
“He was, and a very successful one too,
he became famous for Fair Trade. Do you
know what Fair Trade is?”
“No.”
“It was an idea to pay a fair price for
goods in the developing world so children could afford to go to school.”
“Where’s the developing world?”
“Well, it used to be that countries
like China and India were very poor, we called them developing while they
working to become a country like England.”
“But, aren’t they the richest countries
in the world?”
“They are now.”
“Dad said he was a playboy, what’s a
playboy?”
“I think you’re too young to know what
a playboy is, but when he was younger he liked to have fun. He wanted to experience everything life could
offer, I think he did.”
On Tuesday I ate a lunch of sandwiches
and moved to the garage rummaging through my box. My clothes aside, it contained everything I
owned; the books I’d read, my photographs, ornaments I’d picked up or been
given along the way and near the bottom I found my diaries. Half a dozen, each dated on the front, my
first trip around the world, India, teaching in China, Thailand. Moving to the lounge I sat on the Lazy Boy
and placed them on the armrest. It was
the first time I’d opened them in four years and I began at the beginning. I was back in Beijing, feeling the heat of
the day, re-joining the conversations I’d left.
When I’d finished reading I began
typing up my first trip, I typed for five hours and continued every day for the
next three weeks. The routine never changed,
beginning after breakfast, taking a short time to settle and once I started I
was lost in my memories. I re-read and
edited for another few weeks before printing.
It was interesting, maybe only for me, but I felt I’d captured my
experience; the feeling of freedom when I’d left my office job, touching down
in Beijing, evening voices in the hutong.
I gave it to my grandfather hoping somehow they’d be understand me better,
see where my desire to explore came from, what I did with my time.
Sitting in Starbucks the following week
I considered what I was doing, ‘Am I writing?’
I thought. From what I’d read there
seemed to be two kinds of books. Fictional
entertainers people passed the time with and the type I read, stories which
softened the delivery of ideas, books with messages and answers; non-fiction,
philosophy, self-help. Occasionally I enjoyed a novel too but only when I had
the sense it was based on true experiences.
It seemed that even if you wrote fiction you had to have experienced what
you wrote on some level. The author of the
Life of Pi couldn’t have written as he did without investigating the religions,
without his study of philosophy and the three toed sloth. In his mind’s eye he’d been on a lifeboat
with a Tiger named Richard Parker.
I thought about what I’d valued in them,
it was the useful things, the questions they’d answered, a connection when
someone who’d experienced something I’d felt, books had given me companionship. When people wrote for money they were another
sort of prostitutes, but those who wrote for themselves reached out to the things
they cherished, things that didn’t have to be marketable, just human. Things the writer had to share before they
burst like a dam inside him, plumbing the fringes of life and each time
returning to make the world a little clearer.
It wasn’t like speaking; it was
reflective, taking time to consider what was most important and the best way to
say it. How did you write? What turned a
person into a writer? I’d travelled with Will McEwan in China.
“My father’s a writer,” he’d said. “You
might have heard of him, Ian McEwan.”
“No, haven’t heard of him.”
“He won The Booker Prize.”
“Oh,” I had heard of that.
He’d told me his father was a virtual
recluse, locking himself away for hours on end.
So what made an Ian McEwan? Visiting a bookshop the next day I found
myself in the writing section, a small yellow title catching my eye, ‘How to be
a Writer,’ it read down the spine. Four
inches tall I thumbed to the contents, the writers schedule, how to write a
novel, what it was like to be a full time writer. I paid and moved to Starbucks. It was my sanctuary, my lounge from the time
I bought my coffee till the moment I left.
It was quiet at home but there was something about being around other people. I opened the book and flicked through, stopping
at the daily routine.
8.30 a.m. Get up
9.00 a.m. Go jogging
10.00 a.m. Breakfast
11.00 a.m. Write
1.00 p.m. Lunch
2.00 p.m. Edit what you wrote in the
morning.
4.00 p.m. Do whatever you’ve got to
do.
‘That’s the dream,’ it said. Then it went into the reality, the success
pyramid, not many people making it, how it was tough, how you shouldn’t give up
your day job. It talked about the keys
to making it when you were starting out; write rubbish, write every day, just
keep writing. When it described the
process it talked of sculpting, chipping away until you created what you were
looking for. It seemed to mirror the
process I’d performed with my life. My
exploring, my questions, my reading, people who did those things were
writers. I remembered back to the self
help book I’d read, ‘For those of you who can’t settle on a career you might
want to consider becoming a writer’. My
whole journey seemed to have led me down the path, I’d chased truth, followed
my instincts and writing was the crystallization.
It would be my religion, my daily practice,
my writing muscles becoming gradually stronger through constant
repetition. I had a momentary lapse
considering how it would have been better if I’d decided to write at eight
rather than twenty eight but writing wasn’t like that. I sensed it was something you started after living,
something which crept up on you when you were ready. I thought back to one of the last
conversations with Suzy.
“I’ll come to London with you,” I’d
said. “Get a job, any job, at least we can be together.”
“But you don’t even know what you want
to do,” she’d replied.
I sat back and sipped my coffee looking
down at the shoppers. I’d found a role
which gave me a licence to explore. No
compromise, no commitment to another’s ideas, a place where I could connect
with all that lay within reason and all which lay outside. Where philosophy became too inhuman, where
practical life became too mundane, it was the bridge. When people asked what I did I’d say, ‘I’m a
writer’, even if I wasn’t paid, even if no one read it, ‘I’m a writer’.
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