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Three Days in Banknock

Lisa Gray

    “Three days in Bangkok! That’s fabulous! You’re so lucky to have a boyfriend who would arrange that for you!”
    Alice gazed at me wistfully, her own small list of unsuitable suitors swimming before her shocked sea-green eyes.
    Three days before I’d have said to her she was better off single. And to stop chasing after men. They were a waste of space.
    But that was three days ago.
    Before Brad had booked this.
    Now Brad had moved from Mordred to King Arthur in my estimation.
    “He must have seen that competition entry on the television. You know the one. Where you text the answer any ass would know, they deduct an enormous amount of money from your cell and you never hear any more!” I said.
    “Don’t tell me you did that?” said Alice, looking at me as if I were an alien.
    “Three days ago I’d have done anything to get away from Brad,” I said.
    Alice looked at me pitifully, unable to comprehend why a woman who has a boyfriend would want to get rid of him.
    “It’s not all roses, Alice,” I tried to tell her, but I could see my sentence was lost in Avalon. “Brad had let me down one time too many.”
    I thought of the long list of disappointments, let-downs and general disregard for my welfare that Brad had shown over the three years we’d been together. But like a lot of women, I’d thought a bad boyfriend was better than none. And I’d had Alice as a friend to confirm that belief for me.
    Not that I was proud of it. I’d always thought of myself as strong and independent. But being with Brad had taught me one thing about myself. I was weak. That was probably why I attracted weak men. When I attracted any. I hadn’t been the sort of girl men were attracted to. And it had never bothered me initially. Men, to me, had seemed an alien species, only interested in food, drink, sex, money, their mothers and fast cars. I, vainly, liked to think I was in touch with higher things. I really couldn’t see why any species with such earthly expectations, who were so easily influenced by outer appearances, should come from behind, rapidly overtake and appear, now, to be in charge. I decided men were weak, unable to stand on their own and full of fear of women. Gathering together in groups. Perpetually putting-down the partners they owed their success to. And patronising any poor, plain looking female who had the courage to ignore them. And women were to blame. Giving away their power for a peaceful, pleasant life. So I was having none of it. And I was quite happy with that. Or so, I convinced myself. Then I’d met Brad. And I became the very thing I’d despised.
    Not that I realised that at the beginning. Someone was attracted to me. I just couldn’t believe my luck. Moreover, he seemed strong. Assertive. In command. And I’d fallen into the cosy comfort of being happy to relinquish responsibility. And I’d become weaker. Lost any powerful potency I’d had through continual put-downs. Isolated myself through his ignorance of me. And sacrificed all my self- assurance. And I’d only realised this three days ago. Three days ago. After that final, fatal comment.
    “You should have been a boy!” he said. “Then you could do what you like!”
    “What makes you think men have the prerogative to do what they like?” I’d retaliated, angry at his announcement that he’d spent the last three weekends, which I’d spent alone and bored beyond belief, travelling the length of the country, tracking the trajectory of the latest unidentified flying object. “Because that’s what it’s like being a man. A man has to be free. Free to pursue his hobbies.”
    “Hobbies!” I said scornfully. “Following fictitious, flying objects in the sky!”
    “Just because you don’t believe in aliens!” Brad broke in.
    “The only alien around here is you!” I said. “You’re not a man!”
    “You’re just jealous you’re not one!” he said.
    “An alien?” I scoffed, though I knew exactly what he meant.
    “No, a boy!” said Brad.
    While I contemplated which misguided, moronic mother had failed to correct this fault in her selfish son, I said, “No, I’m not! Why would I want to be a boy? It’s good to be a girl!”
    Before I’d met Brad I’d always thought so but even to my ears it sounded less than convincing.
    That was when I decided to break up with him. Three days ago. Three days ago. When I’d have said he was a selfish, inconsiderate ass. And I’d wasted three years of my life with him.
    But that was three days ago.
    “This has definitely made up for the rest,” I said to Alice, my eyes shining.
    “I should think so, too,” said Alice. “Three days in Bangkok. What wouldn’t I give for that?”
    “I’ll phone you when I get there and tell you all about it?” I said.
    “Oh, do!” said Alice. “I can’t wait to hear all about it!”
    “I can’t wait to get there!” I said. “Travel’s so exciting, isn’t it?”

————————————————————

    “Are you all packed?”
    Brad’s voice on the phone was impatient.
    He can’t wait to get me to Bangkok! I thought.
    I pictured the exotic hotel. The luxurious room. The champagne. The chocolate cake. The strawberries. And Brad. How could I have been so wrong about him?
    Still, I thought, I was big enough to admit when I was wrong. Being a girl definitely had some advantages. And Brad now, for the first time, appreciated that.
    I was surprised when he picked me up by car.
    “Aren’t we taking a cab to the airport?” I said, lifting my own suitcase into the boot of the car while Brad sat at the wheel like a rally driver on the briefest of pit stops.
    “The airport!” said Brad, surprised. “What makes you think we’re going to the airport?”
    “Well, that’s where you usually catch a plane to Bangkok!” I said, sarcastically.
    “Bangkok!”
    Brad’s voice was raised.
    “Whatever makes you think we’re going to Bangkok?”
    I turned and looked at his side profile. He was good-looking. I had to admit that. Fair, wavy hair, blue eyes like the Mediterranean, a firm jaw. A fine specimen of white, Anglo-Saxon manhood. If I did think it myself.
    “That’s what you said over the telephone.”
    His laugh was rough, raucous.
    “Not Bangkok! Banknock!”
    “Banknock!”
    I couldn’t hide the shock in my voice.
    “Is that near Bangkok?” I hastened to add.
    He laughed even louder.
    There was no need to laugh at my ignorance, I thought.
    “Hardly!” he said. “Banknock is a village about a hundred miles from here. Near Bonnybridge. Between Falkirk and Glasgow.”
    “You mean we’re staying in Scotland!”
    The exotic hotel faded like a distant mirage.
    And a dried up waterhole muttered.
    “Banknock? I’ve never heard of it! What’s there?”
    “UFOs,” he said. “What else?”
    “UFOs! You mean you’re taking me to spot UFOs!”
    I couldn’t believe it myself. How could he be so selfish? I must have misunderstood him.
    He turned those fantastically evenly proportioned features full face to me.
    “This is no ordinary place to spot UFOs!” he said, like I should try to understand. “This is the area to spot them in Scotland!”
    “I don’t care about UFOs!” I said. “And I don’t want to go to Banknock! I want to go to Bangkok!”
    “In your dreams, sweetheart!” said Brad with the bold brashness of a boy who believed in himself.
    But did I believe in him? Did I believe in boys?
    That was the question.

————————————————————

    “You should dump him!” said Alice.
    She had surprised me.
    Alice had never been one to advocate dumping a man before.
    “He’s let you down!” she continued. “Again!”
    I cuddled the cell-phone closer to my ear. I didn’t want the other occupants of the washroom cubicles to hear what I was saying.
    “Maybe,” I said. “But then again, maybe not. Maybe it was my fault! I misunderstood what he said on the phone.”
    “I can’t believe you’re making excuses for him!”
    I didn’t want to fallout with Alice. I shouldn’t have phoned her from the gas station washroom.
    If Brad found out he’d be furious. He likened Alice to an insufferable suffragette.
    If only he’d known that she would have thrown herself under a horse for a husband!
    “I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt,” I said. “After all, he’s booked this. So it can’t be all bad!”
    I’d live to regret those words.
    “What’s all that stuff on the roof of the car?” I ventured as I crossed the gas station forecourt and opened the door of the car.
    “That’s the camping equipment!” Brad said.
    “Camping equipment! I thought we were staying in a hotel!”
    My voice sounded shocked even to me.
    “A hotel! Why would we stay in a hotel?” enquired Brad like he’d never heard of such a thing.
    “Because that’s where people usually stay on a holiday!” I replied.
    “This is not a holiday!” said Brad.
    I could see that already.
    “U.F.O. spotters have to stay where they can spot U.F.Os,” said Brad monosyllabically.
    I guess he thought I was an alien who found such things impossible to comprehend.
    “And in a tent I can do that easily. Just nip out and spot the sky. At night-time. Course, during the day, I’ll be at the conference in Bonnybridge.”
    “The conference!” I said, wondering where I’d be.
    “The UFO Conference!”
    He looked at me pitifully.
    “And where will I be?”
    I voiced my thoughts out loud.
    “You can go and do your girly things!” he said with a brush of his hand. Like anything women did was of little consequence.
    I didn’t communicate with him the rest of the journey.
    How do you communicate with an alien?
    I helped him set up the tent on the edge of the village. But only because I didn’t fancy spending the night with no cover. I wondered how Brad would take my refusal of his advances. But I needn’t have concerned myself.
    “I’m knackered!” he said, rolled on his side and promptly fell asleep.
    I awoke the next morning to find him gone, a hastily scratched letter lying where he had been sleeping.
    “See you this evening! Have left you something to read!”
    How kind of him! I thought.
    I was surprised he thought girls could read.
    I picked up the crumpled edition of yesterday’s local newspaper that Brad had picked up at the gas station and began leafing through the pages, wondering what the hell I was going to do all day. I’d already spotted the fact that the village was nowhere near a town of any decent size. And besides which, I had no transportation . I knew without looking outside the tent that Brad had taken the car. I had two options. Explore the village. Or hunt out a bus stop.
    It was a tiny article on page three of the paper that made me go for the first option.
    “LOCAL MAN SPOTS UFO!”
    I read on.
    Now I didn’t really believe in such things but the article made fascinating reading. And I was still mad at Brad.
    Two can play his game, I thought. Imagine how annoyed he’d be if I spotted a UFO before him! He’d have to respect women more, at the very least.
    I wondered if Brad had left the article on purpose for me to read. But the newspaper hadn’t been open at that page and the article was small. I’d almost missed it. Besides, I knew Brad’s opinion of women’s intelligence.
    I pitied any alien he approached.
    It didn’t take me long to track down the house of the man in the article. It was a small village, the street name had been inopportunely mentioned by some rookie reporter and the house itself could be easily identified from the picture of the man standing outside it.
    For a person who usually tells the truth, it was a good lie.
    “Hi, I’m from the London Tribune. I’d like to do an article in our newspaper on your recent sighting of a UFO.”
    The man looked sceptical. No, downright suspicious.
    “I’ve already been interviewed about it,” he said.
    “I know. But that was only a local paper. We think the story is of a significant kind and should get national coverage.”
    “You don’t sound English!”
    The man was a difficult convert.
    “I’m Scottish,” I said but I live in London.”
    The lie was taking off as speedily as a spacecraft.
    “Well, you’d better come in,” he said.
    I felt like E.T. must have when he found a friendly face.
    “You did what!” said Brad when I told him that evening what I’d done.
    I thought he’d be impressed.
    “How dare you interfere in my sphere of interest?” he said.
    “I was just trying to help,” I blustered. “Let you see I was interested in what you were doing. Let you see what women were capable of.”
    “Capable of interfering. Capable of lying. That’s all women are capable of!”
    I wondered if Brad had got his bad opinion of women from his mother. Though I knew she was dead, he never spoke of her. Or was it his father? I’d never met him either in three years..
    “Well, if that’s all the thanks I get for being able to show you the spot where he saw the UFO, I may as well go home now. But I warn you, if I do, we’re finished!”
    The strangest psychic feeling that we were, anyway, descended on me like a disc.
    “You mean you can take me to the very spot!”
    Brad’s voice was unusually excited.
    “Yes. But we have to do it tonight,” I said.
    I could see I and women in general had taken a considerable leap in Brad’s estimation.
    That’s why Brad and I were to be found on a hilltop overlooking the village later that night.
    “It was here!”
    I nodded. I was quite excited myself. But whether it was at the prospect of seeing a UFO or the prospect of all the attention I would be receiving from Brad, I wasn’t too sure.
    “An orange light you say,” Brad said, his eyes never leaving the starless sky.
    Perhaps the prospect of attention was a little premature, I surmised.
    By early morning, as the sun slowly rose, I was right. Neither the attention I was seeking nor a saucer had appeared.
    And Brad wasn’t amused.
    “I think you lied. I think you made that story all up! You didn’t go and interview that man!” he said.
    “I didn’t lie! I did interview the man!”
    That much was true, anyway.
    But I don’t think Brad believed me because he bared his back to me the whole night and the next morning he was gone again.
    Things didn’t improve the next evening, even when I produced the man I’d interviewed and he accompanied us up the hill to point out the spot he’d seen the object. The fact all three of us sat there the whole evening and saw nothing didn’t help.
    “He’s lying!” said Brad. “He’s only after attention. They’re all at it! Lying through their teeth so they can get attention from the media!”
    “And you’re the only one in the world telling the truth!” I said sarcastically.
    “In any form of communication, you should always tell the truth,” he said.
    Someone in space must have heard him.
    The third day was as thrilling as the other two had been. Brad was at the conference in Bonnybridge. I contemplated a whole day alone again.
    Why? I thought. Why am I alone? I could join Brad at the conference. So I took the local bus into Bonnybridge, thinking how delighted Brad would be to see me. To see me taking an interest in his hobby.
    It was an insignificant little town. A town like hundreds of others throughout the country. Small, ordinary, safe, secure. A town that, like the others, made up the unassuming backbone of the country. Nothing out of the ordinary about it. Nothing that would indicate extra-terrestrial excitement.
    Which is more than I can say for Brad.
    His reaction was definitely out-of-body.
    “What are you doing here?” he said, his face turning Mars orange. If I’d been from there, he’d have made me more welcome, I’m sure.
    “I thought you’d be pleased to see me. To know I was taking an interest in what you’re doing,” I said lamely, feeling like an alien who’d accidentally accessed Area 51.
    He was spared from answering. Another voice cut him off.
    “So this is what you’ve been hiding!”
    The broad beam of a sunny smile lit up the space in front of me.
    “This your partner, Brad?” said the amiable, American voice.
    “No!” There was a pause. Brad looked at me. “Yes.”
    Which is it? I thought
    But somehow I cared less than usual.
    “Buried in Banknock!” the carefree Californian voice crooned.
    Then those light green eyes looked at me more seriously. Like I was important. Like I knew what I was doing.
    “Best place to be,” he said. “I bet you’ve not been wasting any time there.”
    I looked at Brad. I guessed I’d better keep something secret.
    “I did some interviewing,” I said.
    “Did you now?” he said, sounding generally interested.
    “Any results?”
    It was as if he’d read my mind.
    “Not yet,” I said.
    “And we looked for UFO’s,” I added.
    Something about him made me want to communicate that with him.
    I disregarded Brad’s belligerent face.
    “How about I join you tonight?” he said.
    He addressed Brad but somehow I knew he meant me.
    “Nothing to check out, Chuck,” he said. “You’d be wasting a wonderful evening!”
    “Maybe not!” Chuck said, lowering his eyes to look at me.
    Brad was oblivious.
    And so, on that third evening, three of us stood on the top of the hill, looking for lights in the sky.
    We didn’t see any but the evening had been bright in my eyes. And in Chuck’s.
    “Told you it was a waste of time!” said Brad as the darkness started slipping away.
    “I’d better head back to Bonnybridge,” said Chuck, smiling at me. “But the evening’s been anything but wasted.”
    Chuck handed Brad and me a card each.
    “Give me a call if anything transpires,” he said.
    And then he was gone.
    “I guess we’d better head back to the tent too,” I said, the night suddenly losing its nicety.
    “No,” said Brad.
    I looked at him.
    “I just said that to get him to go. We’ll give it a few more hours.”
    I was tired. I wanted to go home. But Brad didn’t care.
    “I thought you said you didn’t lie,” I said.
    But Brad had no time to respond. A bright orange light lit up the sky and something slowly descended into the forest at the bottom of the hill.
    “Oh, my God! Quick!” said Brad and started running downhill, in the direction of the forest. Without me.
    I ran at his heels. As usual.
    That’s when we saw them. In the forest. They were standing in front of a silver disc that had landed in a clearing. But they weren’t silver. They were green.
    I don’t remember much. I just remember one of them pointing at me. And the most terrible, frightening vibration in the world.
    “Boy?” he said.
    I slowly shook my head, the feeling of fear far worse than any I had ever felt before.
    He looked at Brad.
    “Boy?” he repeated.
    Brad shook his head and raised a finger. He pointed it deliberately at me.
    I shook my head. But somehow I knew the creature knew Brad was lying.
    There was a flash of white light. For a second I was blinded. But all I felt was the ferociousness of fear.
    Then everything went black.
    I found myself on the ground. And when I got up Brad was gone. And so was the spaceship.
    Of course, I phoned Chuck. I didn’t tell him exactly what happened. But I didn’t lie either. That’s one thing I learnt from my relationship with Brad.
    “In any communication, you should always tell the truth.”
    I will tell Chuck.
    In the future. Once I learn a bit more
    But right now it’s good being a girl.
    I’m free to pursue my hobby. You’ll never guess what it is.
    It’s UFO’s.
    Chuck and a few others asked where Brad was.
    I said, “He’s gone off UFO spotting.”
    Brad always liked to do his own thing,” they said. “But he really should have taken better care of you. Why don’t you join us at the conference?”
    I couldn’t refuse. I had to find out more. Now that I had personal experience.
    It’s finished now. but Chuck and I are going back next year. And Alice has agreed to join us. I’ve convinced her that not all men are a waste of space. After all boys aren’t always free to do what they like. Look at Brad.
    No one’s heard from him. I hope wherever he is he’s telling the truth. I’d hate to think what might happen to him if he doesn’t.
    So boys, remember. Always communicate truthfully. Communication is vital. In any relationship. And girls, never feel bad about being a girl. Feel good. There are definitely some plus points.
    Like champagne. Chocolate cake. And strawberries.
    I’m having the lot when I go.
    Where?
    Three days in Bangkok. Not Banknock. Bangkok. Thailand.
    With Chuck.
    Travel’s so exciting, isn’t it?
    I wonder if Brad agrees.

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