The Edge of Reason Page 23

  “But why?” I said, having told him the whole story again. Explained how Jed must have broken into the hut himself and planned the whole thing.

  “Well, you see the bore is”—Charlie leaned forward confidentially—“everyone who comes in here has some sort of story, usually pretty much along the lines of yours. So unless this bloody Jed character makes a full confession it’s a bit of a sticky wicket.”

  “Am I going to get the death penalty?”

  “Good God, no. Bloody hell. Shouldn’t think so. Worst you’d be looking at is about ten years.”

  “TEN YEARS? But I haven’t done anything.”

  “Yar, yar, it’s a bastard, I know,” he said, nodding earnestly.

  “But I didn’t know it was there!”

  “Sure, sure,” he said, looking as if he’d got himself into a slightly awkward situation at a drinks party.

  “Will you do everything you can?”

  “Absolutely,” he said, getting up. “Yar.”

  He said he would bring me a list of lawyers to choose from and he could make two calls on my behalf, just to give the details of what had happened. Was in quite a quandary. Best person, practically speaking, would be Mark Darcy but really did not like idea of admitting have got into mess again, especially after he sorted out all the Mum and Julio stuff last year. In the end I plumped for Shazzer and Jude.

  Feel like my fate is now in the hands of some fresh-out-of-Oxbridge Sloane. God, it is so awful in here. So hot and stinking and weird. I feel like nothing’s real.

  4 p.m. Very black. All my life I have had the feeling something terrible was about to happen and now it has.

  5 p.m. Mustn’t get down. Must keep my mind off it all. Maybe will read poem, and try to ignore first two lines:

  “If” by Rudyard Kipling

  If you can keep your head when all about you

  Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

  If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

  But make allowance for their doubting too;

  If you can wait, and not be tired by waiting,

  Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

  Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,

  And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

  If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;

  If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;

  If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

  And treat those two impostors just the same;

  If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

  Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

  Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,

  And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools;

  If you can make one heap of all your winnings

  And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

  And lose, and start again at your beginnings

  And never breathe a word about your loss;

  If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

  To serve your turn long after they are gone,

  And so hold on when there is nothing in you

  Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

  If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

  Or walk with Kings—not lose the common touch;

  If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;

  If all men count with you, but none too much;

  If you can fill the unforgiving minute

  With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run—

  Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

  And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

  Poem is good. Very good, almost like self-help book. Maybe that is why Mark Darcy gave it to me! Maybe he sensed I might get into danger! Or maybe he was just trying to tell me something about my attitude. Bloody cheek. Not sure about sixty seconds’ worth of distance run anyway, or if actually want to be man. Also is a bit hard to treat this disaster the same as triumphs as have not had any triumphs that can think of, but still. Will force heart and nerve and sinew to serve turn etc. in manner of First World War or jungle soldier or whatever Rudyard Kipling was and just hold on. At least am not being shot at or having to go over top. And also am not spending any money in jail so actually helping financial crisis. Yes, must look on positive side.

  Good things about being in jail:

  Not spending any money.

  Thighs have really gone down and have probably lost at least seven pounds without even trying.

  Will be good for hair to leave it without washing such as have never been able to do before as hair too mad-looking to go outside.

  So when go home will be thin, with shiny hair and less broke. But when will I go home? When? I’ll be old. I’ll be dead. If I am here for ten years I will never be able to have any children. Unless I take a fertility drug when I get out and have eight. I’ll be a lonely, broken old woman shaking my fist at street urchins who put turds through the letter box. But maybe I could have a child while in prison? I could get the assistant to the British consul somehow to impregnate me. But where would I get hold of folic acid in jail? The baby would grow up stunted. Must stop this. Stoppit. Stoppit. Am catastrophizing.

  But it is a catastrophe.

  Will read poem again.

  FRIDAY 22 AUGUST

  Calories 22, unforgiving minutes filled with distance run 0.

  8 p.m. Women’s Correctional Institute, Bangkok. This morning they came and moved me from police custody to proper prison. In despair. Feel as if this means they have given up on me and accepted I’m done for. Cell is big filthy room with at least sixty women squeezed in. Seems that any power or individuality is being relentlessly peeled away as get filthier and filthier and more exhausted. Cried today for first time in four days. I feel like I’m slipping through the net. I feel like I’m going to get forgotten now and just languish here, a wasted life. Will try to sleep. Would be so great to sleep.

  11 p.m. Aargh. Had just got off to sleep when was woken by something sucking my neck. It was the Lesbian Ring who had got me. They all started kissing and groping bits of me. I could not bribe them to stop because I had already given away my Wonderbra and no way was I going round with no knickers. I could not scream for the guard as that is the worst thing you can do here. So I had to swap my jeans for a filthy old sarong. Although obviously I felt violated, part of me could not help but feel it was so nice just to be touched. Gaaah! Maybe I am a lesbian? No. Don’t think so.

  SUNDAY 24 AUGUST

  Minutes spent crying 0 (hurrah!).

  Much more cheerful since sleep. Think will find Phrao. Phrao is my friend as she was transferred at same time as me and I lent her my Wonderbra. Even though she has no breasts to put in it she seems to like it—she is always walking around in it saying “Madonna.” Cannot help thinking it is cupboard love or underwear drawer love but beggars can’t be choosers and it is nice to have a friend. Also do not want it to be like when Beirut hostages got out and it was obvious no one really liked Terry Waite.

  You see, you can get used to anything if you try. Am not going to give in to being all mopey. Sure they must be doing something at home. Shazzer and Jude will be organizing newspaper campaigns like for John McCarthy and standing outside the House of Commons with banners with my head on, holding up torches.

  There must be something I can do. It seems to me if getting out depends on catching Jed and extracting a confession then there ought to be a bit more bloody effort put into catching and extracting.

  2 p.m. Hurrah! Am suddenly most popular girl in cell. Was quietly teaching Phrao words to Madonna songs as she is obsessed with Madonna, when a little group started forming round us. Seemed to be considered some kind of goddess as knew words to Immaculate Collection all the way through. Ended up being forced by popular demand to perform “Like a Virgin” standing on a pile of mattresses wearing the Wonderbra and sarong and using a Tampax as a microphone at which poi
nt the guard started shouting in a high-pitched voice. Looked up to see the representative to the British consul had just been let in.

  “Ah, Charlie,” I said graciously, getting down off the mattress and hurrying towards him, whilst trying to pull the sarong up over the bra and retain my dignity. “So glad you’ve come! We’ve got lots to talk about!”

  Charlie did not appear to know which way to look but seemed to keep plumping for the Wonderbra direction. He brought me a kit from the British Embassy with water, biscuits, sandwiches, insect repellent, some more pens and paper and, best of all, soap.

  Was completely overcome. Was the best present I had ever had in life.

  “Thank you, thank you, I can’t thank you enough,” I said emotionally, on the verge of flinging my arms round him, and taking him roughly against the bars.

  “No problem, standard issue, actually. Would have brought you one before but all the bloody totty in the office kept woofing the sandwiches.”

  “I see,” I said. “Now, Charlie. Jed.”

  Blank stare.

  “You remember Jed?” I said in a Listen-with-Mother voice. “The guy who gave me the bag? It’s very important that we catch him. I’d like you to take down lots more details about him and then send me someone from the Drug Squad who can spearhead the search.”

  “Right,” said Charlie seriously yet at the same time deeply unconvincingly. “Right.”

  “Now come along,” I said, turning into a Peggy Ashcroft–style figure from the last days of the Raj who was about to rap him over the head with an umbrella. “If the Thai authorities are so keen to set an example over drugs that they’re locking up innocent Westerners without trial, they’ve got to at least show an interest in catching the drug traffickers.”

  Charlie stared up at me thickly. “Yar, right, right,” he said, furrowing his brows and nodding heartily, not the faintest glimmer of understanding illuminating his gaze.

  After had explained it a few more times Charlie suddenly saw the light.

  “Yar, yar. See what you mean. Yar. They’ve got to go after the guy that put you in here because otherwise it looks as though they’re not making an effort.”

  “Exactly!” I said, beaming, delighted at my handiwork.

  “Right, right,” said Charlie, getting to his feet, still wearing his very earnest expression. “I’m going to get them to get moving on this right now.”

  Was watching him leave, marveling at how such a creature could have risen through the ranks of the British diplomatic service. I suddenly had a brain wave.

  “Charlie?” I said.

  “Yar,” he said, looking down to check that his flies weren’t undone.

  “What does your father do?”

  “Dad?” Charlie’s face brightened. “Oh, he works in the Foreign Office. Bloody old fart.”

  “Is he a politician?”

  “No, civil servant actually: Foreign Office.”

  Checking swiftly that the guards weren’t looking, I leaned forward.

  “How’s your career going here?”

  “Bit bloody static, to be perfectly honest,” he said cheerily. “Black bloody hole of Calcutta, unless you get down to the islands of course. Oh sorry.”

  “Wouldn’t it be really good for you if you pulled off a diplomatic coup?” I began temptingly. “Why don’t you just give your dad a little call . . .”

  MONDAY 25 AUGUST

  100 lbs. (attention-seeking thinness), no. of—oh fuck it, brain has dissolved. Good for slimming, surely.

  Noon. Bad, low day. Must have been mad to think I could influence anything. Am bitten to death by mosquitoes and fleas. Am nauseous and feeble with constant diarrhea, which is difficult in view of potty situation. In a way is quite good, though, as light-headedness makes everything unreal: much better than reality. Wish could sleep. So hot. Maybe have got malaria.

  2 p.m. Bloody Jed. I mean how could anyone be so . . . ? But mustn’t hold on to resentments or will harm self. Detach. I do not wish him ill, I do not wish him well. I detach.

  2:01 p.m. Bloody fucking dog pig black-livered bastard from hell. I hope his face gets put on a porcupine.

  6 p.m. Result! Result! An hour ago the guard came in and hustled me out of the cell. Fantastic to get out and away from the stink. Was taken to a small interview room with a wood-effect Formica table, a gray metal filing cabinet and a copy of a Japanese gay porn magazine, which the guard hurriedly removed as a short, distinguished middle-aged Thai man entered and introduced himself as Dudwani.

  He turned out to be Drug Squad and a pretty hard nut. Good old Charlie.

  I started on the details of the story, the flights Jed had arrived on and probably left on, the bag, the description of Jed.

  “So surely you can trace him from this?” I concluded. “There must be his fingerprints on the bag.”

  “Oh, we know where he is,” he said dismissively. “And he has no fingerprints.” Ieuw. No fingerprints. Like having no nipples or something.

  “So why haven’t you captured him?”

  “He is in Dubai,” he said dispassionately.

  Suddenly I felt really quite annoyed.

  “Oh, he’s in Dubai, is he?” I said. “And you know all about him. And you know he did it. And you know I didn’t do it and he made it look as though I did and I didn’t. But you go home to your lovely saté sticks and wife and family in the evening and I’m stuck here for the rest of my childbearing years for something I didn’t do just because you can’t be bothered to get someone to confess to something I didn’t do.”

  He looked at me in consternation.

  “Why don’t you get him to confess?” I said.

  “He is in Dubai.”

  “Well, get somebody else to confess, then.”

  “Miss Jones, in Thailand, we . . .”

  “Someone must have seen him break into the hut or broke in for him. Someone must have sewn the drugs into the lining. It was done with a sewing machine. Go investigate it like you’re supposed to do.”

  “We are doing everything we can,” he said coldly. “Our government takes any breach of the drug codes very seriously.”

  “And my government takes the protection of its citizens very seriously,” I said, thinking for a moment of Tony Blair and imagining him striding in and coshing the Thai official on the head.

  The Thai man cleared his throat to speak. “We . . .”

  “And I am a journalist,” I interrupted him. “On one of Great Britain’s top television current affairs programs,” I said, trying to fight back a vision of Richard Finch going “I’m thinking beer-drinking snails, I’m thinking skateboarding ducks, I’m thinking . . .”

  “They are planning a vigorous campaign on my behalf.”

  Mental cut to Richard Finch: “Oh, Bridget droopy bikini hasn’t come back from her holiday, has she? Snogging on the beach, forgot to get the plane.”

  “I have connections in the highest ranks of government and I think, given the current climate”—I paused to give him a meaningful stare, I mean the current climate’s always something, isn’t it?—“it would look very bad indeed in our media if I were imprisoned in these frankly appalling conditions for a crime I plainly and by your own admission did not commit, while the police force here are failing to enforce their own laws with their own people and properly investigate the crime.”

  Gathering my sarong around me with tremendous dignity, I sat back and gave him a cool stare.

  The official shuffled in his seat, looked at his papers. Then he looked up, pen poised.

  “Miss Jones, can we go back to the moment at which you realized your hut had been broken into?”

  Hah!

  WEDNESDAY 27 AUGUST

  112 lbs., cigarettes 2 (but at hideous price), fantasies involving Mark Darcy/Colin Firth/Prince William bursting in saying: “In the name of God and England, release my future wife!”: constant.

  Worrying two days with nothing. No word, no visits, just constant requests to perform Ma
donna songs. Repeated reading of “If” only means of keeping nerve. Then this morning Charlie appeared—in a new mood! Extremely earnest, top level and overconfident, with another kit containing cream cheese sandwiches that—given earlier flight of fantasy about in-jail impregnation—found self not really wanting to eat.

  “Yar. Things are starting to move,” said Charlie with the heavy air of a government agent burdened with explosive MI5 secrets. “Bloody good actually. We’ve had movements from the Foreign Office.”

  Trying not to think about tiny top-level turds in boxes, I said, “Did you speak to your dad?”

  “Yar, yar,” he said. “They know all about it.”

  “Has it been in the papers?” I said excitedly.

  “No, no. Hush-hush. Don’t want to rock the boat. Anyway. There’s some mail for you. Your friends got it to Dad. Bloody attractive actually, Dad says.”

  I opened the big brown Foreign Office envelope, hands shaking. First was a letter from Jude and Shaz, rather carefully written almost in code, as if they thought spies might read it.

  Bridge,

  Don’t worry, we love you. We’re gonna get you out of there. Jed tracked down. Mark Darcy helping (!).

  Heart leaped. Was best news possible (apart, obviously, from ten-year jail sentence being lifted).

  Remember Inner Poise and diet potential of jail. 192 soon. Repeat do not worry. Girls on top.

  All our love,

  Jude and Shaz

  Looked at letter, blinking with emotion, then tore eagerly at the other envelope. Maybe from Mark?

  Was written on reverse of long concertina of views of Lake Windermere and said:

  Visiting Granny in St. Anne’s and touring the Lakes. Weather a bit mixed but super factory shops. Daddy has bought a sheepskin gilet! Could you call Una and check that she’s put the timer on?