She had what one could only describe as working class feet and a tight derriere. Dressed as she was in a white skimpy top and minimalist matching shorts, he was sure his blood pressure had initially attained, and then exceeded, world criteria guidelines.
He had left with the driver from Nighi Son to Thanh Hoa an hour previously. It was that hot season in Vietnam where nothing seemed to move in the countryside outside.
Glimpses of water buffalo cooling off in muddy pools, flame red trees in full bloom, conical hats on diminutive old ladies squatting in the shade of their shops, and the eternity horizons of rice fields, occasionally merging into hazy distant wooded limestone uplands.
He saw her and her two kids as soon as he stepped from the car at the Big C supermarket. Pizza and shopping was on the agenda. The kids were excited and she was playing it cool.
Life deals up some strange cards. She had first contacted him on social media when he was back in the UK.
It was the eyes that did it, and even now they were difficult to describe. Neither activated nor dull; yet there was in their rich brown colour and oriental calmness, an acceptance of all that life had to throw at you. It was only when they had actually met up that other aspects became apparent. There was, what looked at first like a shyness and reluctance to face square on. Then one got a glimpse of teeth that were not quite what they should be. It dawned, that this girl had spent a life looking away, never openly smiling and hence the facial restraint.
But in the hotel the week before, there had been a tenderness and an almost spiritual peace of lying naked in the arms of one another.
Antony Bourdain who died this week wrote once that "Travel changes you. As you move through this life and this world you change things slightly, you leave marks behind, however small. And in return, life - and travel - leaves marks on you. Most of the time, those marks - on your body or on your heart - are beautiful. Often, though, they hurt."
I had been lucky. But then my travels had always been akin schoolboy adventures and the memories had nearly always been “beautiful.”
RIP Antony.
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