An Angel with a Gun Read online

  An old lady who was nearly bent over at 90 degrees from the waist and had weathered skin from a lifetime of hard work in the baking sun shuffled forward. She had to use two walking sticks to stop herself from falling over. She managed to lean on one of her sticks and put her arthritic and twisted hands together in a wai. When she spoke I could see that she only had one tooth.

  She looked about 150 years old, but I guessed that she could have been anything between 60 and 90.

  “If you stay I will help you clean the place up” she said, with desperation in her voice.

  “Anyone! Anyone at all can help!” I said, hoping for some volunteers who were slightly more able bodied.

  “My name is Porn” persisted the old lady. “I have a strong heart and a good brain and I can help you. I have a saddle that I can wear on my back that I use to carry things. If you will stay then I will help you. Buddha has sent you for a reason.”

  I smiled and nodded my acceptance, but I realized that this lovely old lady must have been at least 80 years old and I had already decided in my own mind that, no matter what, I would always make sure that I didn’t overload her saddle too much and certainly not in the heat of the midday sun!

  I replied to everyone in the crowd, which now numbered about 30 people. They all looked like poor desperate people. Some of them were dressed in little more than rags. Most of them had no shoes. Their bodies were dark brown, almost a rich mahogany colour, baked each and every day in the tropical sun.

  “I am your new monk. I have travelled over 6,000 miles to be here and I intend to stay. I intend to build a school and teach your children. I intend to rebuild this temple and make it a temple to be proud of. A temple for people to come to, pray and learn, find peace and happiness - a place to eat, a place to celebrate. This will be a place of safety and a place for blessings and festivals. This will be a place for hope and for a future. I will need help to do all these things and for anyone who wants to help me to work to build this temple I will be able to pay only 50 baht (£1) a day. It will be a lot of hard work. I will start to make this place a temple that we can use starting tomorrow. Anyone who can offer skills and is prepared to work hard with me is welcome to come along. Please spread this message. I believe that together we can make a difference. I believe that we can do this. I believe we can make things better. I believe……..I believe for every drop of rain that falls a flower grows,……I believe that somewhere in the darkest night…….A candle glows,……” I realized that I had run out of things to tell them that I believed in and was now breaking into song, with lyrics I couldn’t really remember from an old song. I couldn’t really remember, so I stopped talking.

  ***

  In life some people wait for things to happen, some people make things happen and some people, like me, say ‘What the fuck just happened?’

  My name is Steven West. I make more mistakes than most other people and I get more things wrong than most other people. If there is a ‘wrong end of a stick’ then I’m always the person who gets it. I am fast approaching 40 years old, but I look a lot older and I am a Buddhist monk. I’m not a very good one if truth be told and I was sent to a place called Khanchanaburi in Thailand, near to the border with Myanmar(Burma). If you want to know how I ended up as a monk in Thailand then perhaps you should read my first book called ‘The Flower Girl’, because it’s a long story!

  I’m sorry, but I really have to go back once again to my childhood to put the last part of my story in perspective. I’m not an expert, but I have always thought that a lot of my problems in my adult life were as a result of my childhood and I need people to understand this. So, at the risk of repeating myself, I was an only child born to elderly parents who didn’t really want me. I didn’t realize that they didn’t want me until I was an adult. I just thought that all children were treated like me. I didn’t realize that other children were loved by their parents. Nobody tells you these things when you are a kid. I was never blessed with love, luck or good looks, but I’m happy. Both my parents are dead. My mum died when I was 10 years old and my dad died about a year ago. I used to work in a factory making plastic mouldings, but then I had my first ever holiday in Thailand and fell in love with The Flower Girl. Her name was Pin. I got arrested and charged and went to prison for her murder, but I didn’t do it. When I was released I went back to England. I then went and stayed in a Buddhist temple where I studied Buddhism and the Thai language before I was sent to Khanchanaburi to look after a long forgotten and badly run down temple. I think that during most of my life people have considered me as pretty stupid. I just consider myself as pretty unlucky, probably too trusting and too honest. Although I do accept that I am pretty stupid.

  I think the best place to start this part of the story is about 3 years ago when I was released from Phuket Prison as an innocent man and sent back to England. There was no doubt about it, when I arrived back in England I was a changed man. Thailand, prison and Buddhism had had a massive impact on my life. I think I knew before I even stepped off the Thai Airways 747 at Heathrow Airport that I would be returning to Thailand. I certainly knew that I could no longer carry on working at the plastic mouldings factory and that was before I discovered that they had already sacked me during my enforced absence in Thailand.

  I wasn’t expecting much of a reception from my dad when I arrived home and I wasn’t disappointed. I had no doubt that dad loved me in his own special way, especially since my mum had died, but he had difficulty showing emotion. Well, towards me anyway. When I had left for Thailand it was my first time going abroad. It was the first time that my holiday hadn’t consisted of two weeks in a mobile home in Wales, drinking tea with my dad and listening to the rain clatter on the caravan roof. We would read magazines, newspapers, books and drink tea and discuss what we were going to have for lunch or dinner. It might not sound very exciting and that’s because it wasn’t. But it was an annual event and I always looked forward to the holidays in Wales with my dad. I always hoped that we might do some sort of bonding, but we didn’t. In between drinking tea and reading I would also go swimming in the holiday park swimming pool. I usually had the pool to myself, because it wasn’t heated and was usually freezing from the cold British summer. I would stay in until my lips turned blue and I was shivering too much to swim. I’d also sunbathe in my duffle coat if the weather was good enough. At 10am every morning I’d walk along the beach and nip to the local shop for everyday provisions like milk and bread. Dad just liked to relax in the caravan. We used to play hide and seek for hours, sometimes all afternoon. Dad was great at hiding and I could never find him. After four or five hours he would get bored and come back to the caravan by himself - usually smelling of beer and cigarettes. I think he must have been hiding in the bins behind the pub. I don’t think he had ever got over the death of my mother. She died when I was ten years old and she was his one true love. In many ways she was his life and when she died he was never really quite the same. Although he did spend more time with me, we never really bonded the way most fathers and sons do, but he never beat me as much as he used to when mum was alive. When I was in trouble in Thailand I had spoken to my dad on the phone and he said that he loved me. It was only the second time in my life that he had ever actually said it and it meant so much to me. I thought about his words many times when I was in prison in Thailand and again on the flight when I was on my way home. But I knew that it was very unlikely that he would repeat them when I got home. I knew there would be no hugging, but I thought he might be interested to hear all about my adventures in the Land of Smiles. I was wrong. He simply opened the front door of the council house where I had spent my entire life, after I had spent a few moments knocking, my suitcase at my feet and suntan and mosquito bites still fresh.

  “Do you want a cup of tea, son?”

  “Thanks dad. I’m happy to see you again.”

  “Yes. Well, I did warn you about going to T
hailand!”

  “You warned me about Thai Brides and ladyboys.”

  “It’s all the same son. You won’t be going back there then! Next year we’ll be back in the van in Wales I expect.”

  He shuffled into the kitchen to make the tea. I wanted to tell him all about Thailand. There was so much to tell. It had been exotic and exciting and it had been a wonderful tropical adventure. But I knew that it would just be a wasted story trying to tell my dad, he wouldn’t be listening. As I watched him make the tea I already knew that I would be returning to Thailand as soon as I could and I knew that I would never sit in a caravan in Wales listening to the rain ever again. I hated the way dad made tea. It just tasted like hot sweet water. He had made it the exact same way for as long as I could remember and I had never had a cup that I had enjoyed. But I had never ever bothered to say anything and, after the first sickly sip, he would always ask ‘OK?’ I would always reply ‘lovely’. He poured the boiling water over the tea bag waiting in the cup. He would then use the back of the spoon to squeeze the bag against the side of the cup before he fished the bag out and squeezed it between his fingers into the cup before tossing the still steaming bag onto a saucer full of dried up bags. (He used them to add to the compost heap in the garden). The bag would only ever be in the hot water for 20 seconds at the most. Just enough to colour the water really and certainly not long enough to add any taste. Then dad would heap two spoons of sugar into each cup and add milk before he stirred, always anti-clockwise, which I had never seen anyone else ever do. Then he would tap the spoon twice on top of each cup to knock off any residue. He handed me my cup of tea and I took a sip of the hot sweet drink.

  “OK?” he asked.

  “Lovely” I replied.

  We drank our tea in near silence and I started to wonder if he was actually waiting for me to tell him all about what had happened in Thailand. I mean I had been arrested for a murder that I hadn’t committed after all! I had been to prison and I had met a ghost, a famous writer and one of my best friends was a ladyboy. My other best friend was a half Thai, half English police detective who had tried to send me to prison forever. Oh! And I had fallen in love for the first time. The whole thing had been a massive adventure and the most amazing time in my life.

  “Do you want to hear all about what happened in Thailand dad?”

  “No. Not really, son. Do you want a fig biscuit with your tea?”

  “No thanks.” Actually I hated fig biscuits as much as I hated the tea, but again I had never said anything. Just like the tea I pretended I enjoyed them, always too worried at hurting anyone’s feelings. That is pretty much how I had spent my entire life - always worrying about other people and their feelings while my own feelings were crushed and trampled each and every day. Except when I was in Thailand. Something happened to me in Thailand and, as I sat in our kitchen at the same Formica table where I had sat since I was able to sit, I had the overwhelming urge to say something.

  “I don’t think I can just go back to work at the factory, dad.”

  “You’re right son. You can’t. They sacked you.”

  “Oh!”

  “Maybe they will take you back now that you are not a murderer anymore.”

  “I don’t want to go back dad. It’s all different now. I’m different now. I need to find myself.”

  “OK son. Put your dirty washing in the machine and then you can have a look for yourself. I’m going to have a nap upstairs.”

  He shuffled out of the kitchen with his tea. Welcome Home Steven West!

  I looked around the kitchen. Everything was so familiar to me and had been there from my childhood. Every piece of furniture and every single utensil were as least as old as me - most of them even older. Nothing had changed and nothing had been replaced. One of the kitchen windows was cracked. I had accidentally done that just before my mum died. The glass had never been replaced. That crack in the window was now thirty years old. I searched my mind trying to find some happy memories but, if there were any, they were hidden too well for me to find them. I had always understood my place at home and how everything worked. But out in the wider world it just seemed to be made up of mistakes and misunderstandings. Now of course I realized that none of it was my fault. It was the result of being kept locked away at home with elderly parents who were ill equipped to raise a child, even if they had wanted one in the first place - which they didn’t.

  I had no extended family. No aunts or uncles. Nobody. I was kept inside at home like a pet and I remember that I used to sleep a lot. My first interaction with other children was when I started school at five years of age and they all seemed to know so much more than I did. With every interaction, every experience, every new day, I started off with a blank canvas. The trouble was that the canvas was just as blank by the end of the day. I had no pre-conceived ideas or thoughts about anything and it made me vulnerable. It made me look stupid even though I wasn’t. If people had explained to me what was expected or what was supposed to happen then I think my life would have been easier and a lot more interesting and fun. But I always had to guess what was going on and I usually guessed wrong. People always seemed to expect some level of intelligence or experience that would have been normal for a person of my age. But the trouble was that I didn’t have any of either.

  Not long after I started school at the age of five a Doctor came to the school to examine the kids and give inoculations. Nobody explained anything about it to me. I had taken a letter home to mum and dad one day, mum signed it and I had to take it back. A week later the Doctor arrived at the school. During the morning some rumours spread around the kids that the Doctor was going to be injecting some of the children with poison. I had always had the feeling that I was a nuisance to my parents at home and I spent the morning terrified that they had agreed to let the Doctor kill me with poison. I spent the morning just praying that they hadn’t. When it was finally my turn to be taken into the execution room….I mean the examination room, I was so scared I could hardly talk. I had to undress in front of the Doctor and a nurse and one of the female teachers. I hated it! The Doctor examined my eyes and ears and listened to my chest. He examined my feet and he watched me walk around in a circle. He pressed my tummy and looked in my mouth. All that was OK I guess, but then he grabbed my testicles and gave them a squeeze.

  “Does that hurt?” he asked.

  Now, I didn’t know what the correct answer was supposed to be. Yes it did hurt, but if I told him that then would it mean that something was wrong with me? I didn’t want to find out that I had some terrible testicle hurting disease and I was scared. In my mind I had worked out that pain can never be a good thing and I was still deciding what to tell him when he squeezed again and it made me feel sick.

  “Does that hurt?” he repeated.

  “No” I lied.

  He took a firmer grip and crushed them in his grown up hands and I’m quite sure he gave them a twist and a pull too. I nearly fainted with the pain.

  “Does that hurt?”

  “Yes” I gasped and he let go. I realized that I had simply answered wrong in the first place. All along it was supposed to hurt, but nobody told me. So I got the answer wrong by trying to guess what they wanted to hear and it caused me a lot of pain - all because nobody explained anything to me. Another misunderstanding that caused me a lot of pain was when Nora, The Nit Nurse, came to the school for the first time. She set up a desk at the front of the class and, one by one, we had to go to the front of the class and she examined our scalps. I didn’t know who she was or what she was examining for. Two boys were taken out of the class by Nora’s assistant straight after the examination, and I was one of them. When we were returned later we had had our hair washed as some kind of reward. Now, in my mind, I thought that we were the only two in the whole class who had passed the test. I was sort of proud, looking at the other children sitting there
as having failed, even though I didn’t know what the test was about, or how I had managed to pass it. We were all given a letter to take home to give to our parents. I still couldn’t read, so I don’t know what it said, but when I got home and handed the letter to my mum she asked me about it.

  “What happened when the Nit Nurse looked at your head?”

  “They took me out of the class room. There were only two of us who passed the test and they washed my hair.” I was hoping that mum would be proud of me, but she was so angry. She started shouting and screaming that I was a dirty child and she beat me with the broom handle all the way to my bedroom, where I stayed until the next morning with no food. Again, at the time, I had no idea what had gone wrong. It seemed to me that I just wasn’t as good at life as everyone else. My best friend at school was Mary, but she didn’t know it because we never spoke.

  The only reason she was my best friend was, because just like me, she was an outcast. Mary was from a big family. She had ten brothers and sisters and they were very poor and usually smelled very bad. I knew that Mary wet the bed because she always stank of stale urine. Nobody else would sit next to Mary, so I had to. When we walked with the teachers anywhere we had to walk in twos and hold hands. Again, I always had to hold Mary’s hand because nobody else would go near her. So, even though we never spoke to each other, I always thought that Mary and I had an understanding. Nobody else understood us, but we understood each other. Mary and her ten brothers and sisters were the only kids in the school who got free school dinners. Everybody else had to pay. I thought it was great getting free dinners, but I know that Mary was ashamed.