The Gates of Ivory. Margaret Drabble

tell if this memory is sweet or sour. Her narrative tone is light, neutral, quizzical. With her chopsticks she picks up a carved star of radish and a green frond, and nibbles, delicately, with her small even white teeth. He imitates her, less elegantly. He feels large and red like Uncle Mort.

      ‘The village change,’ she says. ‘The population grow. More and more babies. No contraception, in hills. My mother have six babies. More and more farmers sell land. More tenants. The people are still very very poor because the land is bad and no investment. Harvests very bad in 1960s. Forests disappear. Toads disappear. Bamboo is cut back. More and more poor people. No money to buy machinery. Bullock and buffalo is only labour. One pair of bullock cost 10,000 baht.’

      She pushes a dish of rice towards him, helps herself to a piece of fish.

      ‘Average income, annual, per household, 10,000 baht.’

      She pauses, lets him try to work this out.

      ‘Emerges,’ she says, ‘Ricardian rent.’

      He is arrested with a morsel dangling from his chopstick somewhere near his chin.

      ‘Excuse me?’ he says.

      ‘Emerges,’ she says, firmly, ‘Ricardian rent. David Ricardo. British economist. Theory of rent and wages.’

      ‘That’s what I thought you said,’ said Stephen, returning the morsel to his plate in order to reorganize himself.

      ‘Yes,’ she continues. ‘No capital for development. My brothers work for wages. They work like buffalo. There is no money, no work in village. My auntie makes good money. Is now the time of the women.’

      ‘The time of the women?’ he echoes, stupidly.

      ‘The time of the economic power of the women. I watch, I learn. When fifteen years old, I win beauty contest. I very pretty child. The children in our village not so very pretty, but my family very pretty. My auntie very pretty when she young.’

      This calm self-appraisal is clearly part of her lesson in the economic development of north-eastern rural Thailand, but nevertheless Stephen feels it requires some acknowledgement. He gallantly remarks that she must indeed have been a very pretty child, as she is now a very beautiful woman. A fleet little sequence of expressions dimples rapidly over her face in response: pleasure, coquetry, a bridling modesty, an irritated dismissal of a diversionary tactic, and a renewed pleasure and amusement.

      ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Very pretty. An asset, prettiness. My capital. At this time, the girls begin migration. To the big cities. To Bangkok. In 1974, Americans leave. My auntie, she go to Bangkok. The girls work in coffee shops, in massage parlours. Big business tourism begins now. These girls send big money home. The villagers buy bullock, they build new houses. The men labour like bullock. The women labour like women. There are stories of great riches. Fairy stories, like this fairy story I tell you this night. Eat, eat, you do not eat.’

      ‘I am too enraptured by your story,’ he says, but at her persuasion heaps more little titbits into his porcelain bowl. She continues to pick, lightly, with her imported lacquered Chinese chopsticks, as she speaks.

      ‘My auntie very clever woman,’ she says. ‘She give me good advice. She teach me accounts.’

      ‘Excuse me,’ Stephen again interrupts. ‘May I ask you a question?’

      ‘Please.’ She smiles graciously, but manages to imply it would be better if the question were pertinent.

      ‘I just wanted to know how many years’ schooling you had,’ said Stephen, humbly. The question is acceptable.

      ‘Four years elementary,’ she says. ‘Education good investment, but slow return. No time to wait. So only four years elementary. Then I learn from Uncle Mort and Auntie.’

      ‘Did they teach you about Ricardo?’

      ‘Of course not, Mr Stephen Cox, of course not. They peasant people. Uncle Mort also peasant person. And not very intelligent. Auntie very intelligent, but peasant person.’

      Suddenly she giggles, relents, changes demeanour, strokes his hand.

      ‘You storyteller, you say. You know how to tell stories. Not to hurry. But you want me hurry. You want me tell story quickly. All right, I tell you. You want to know how I know Ricardo? You want to miss five years’ story? Okay, I tell you. I meet Ricardo with American economist. He writing book on Thai economy. He interview me. I get to know him very well.’

      A look of nervous distrust must have entered Stephen’s transfixed gaze, for she adds quickly, ‘But he gone now, gone long long ago, gone back to University of Princeton. He finished. He very nice man, very useful man, but he finished now.’ She pauses, reflects. ‘Very useful man,’ she repeats, ‘but not rich. Not like business clients. He count change, he bargain. He – what you say – he make deal.’ She laughs, a clear, delighted laugh. ‘He economist,’ she repeats, inviting Stephen to share her enjoyment of this eccentricity.

      ‘I get it,’ says Stephen.

      ‘You spoil story,’ she says. ‘I try to tell with much suspense. My days in coffee shop with auntie, my days in massage parlour, my days in own parlour. My beauty queen titles. Miss Banta, Miss Udon Thani, Miss Thailand, Miss Asia, Miss World, Miss Universe. My empire. My business investments. I make much money now, Stephen. I wear diamonds and rubies and sapphires.’

      ‘You mean those are real?’

      ‘Oh yes, they real.’ She flashes them at him. ‘I like real. I like real things. I not like pretend.’

      ‘And how long did this economic miracle take you?’ he wants to know.

      She tells him he wants to know everything too quickly. She recommends a little more of the prawn. She decides, generously, that it is his turn to speak, and asks him about his own career. Has he too won prizes?

      ‘Oh yes,’ says Stephen. ‘I too won a prize. The beauty prize of novelists.’

      ‘And are you rich?’

      ‘Well,’ he says, ‘by my standards, by British standards, let us put it this way, Princeton economists earn good salaries.’

      His response is too oblique for her. She ignores it.

      ‘Britain is poor country,’ she informs him. ‘Post-industrial country. You import from Japan, from Korea, from Thailand. You no more manufacturing. You cooling, we heating. You protectionist now. You senile now.

      ‘So, you are poor man, Mr Stephen Cox. You Trocadero man, not Oriental man.’

      Stephen protests, mildly, for his own honour rather than that of his nation.

      ‘No, I am not poor,’ he says. ‘I have enough money for what I like. I like to be here, so I am here. I am a free man. I can choose. Freedom is riches.’

      She looks at him as though he has missed some basic point of logic.

      ‘What your income?’ she asks. He evades, elaborates.

      ‘I have no family, no wife, no children, no dependants. I own no house, I spend little money. I am a success.’

      She looks unconvinced.

      ‘I am a celebrity,’ he continues. ‘Of a sort.’

      She raises, very slightly, both plucked and arched eyebrows. He sits before her, a man in a white suit, from an old, old country, far away.

      ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I am not as much of a celebrity as Joseph Conrad, Somerset Maugham, Barbara Cartland and Pett Petrie, but I am a celebrity nevertheless.’

      ‘Explain these people, please,’ she says. So he explains the celebrity ratings of the Authors’ Lounge. She has never heard of Pett Petrie and Barbara Cartland, but Conrad and Maugham have, like David Ricardo, entered her personal Hall of Fame. She expresses indignation at Stephen’s omission from the Drinks of the Month, and says she will have a word with the