Under the Duvet Read online

  ‘When GI Joe hear he coming to Cu-chi, he know he will never be going home!’ he grinned.

  Standing in the sun-dappled glade, I stared at the man – his wiriness, his incongruous strength and his defiant cheeriness – and I suddenly understood why the Americans, for all their superior fire-power, hadn’t had a prayer.

  It was a horrible conflict, and Vietnam suffered appallingly, but my heart went out to the American soldiers – teenage conscripts for the most part – who were sent to fight this unwinnable war.

  I was exhausted after the tunnels and I wanted to go back to the hotel and sleep and forget, for a while, about man’s inhumanity to man, but Binh was all for bringing us to the war museum.

  ‘There are some very good photographs,’ he tempted, ‘of deformed babies. Their mothers were bombed with agent orange.’

  ‘Ah no, thanks.’

  ‘They are really excellent,’ he insisted.

  ‘No!’

  Disappointed and sulky, he took us back to the city in silence.

  Just before we got out of the van, I turned to Binh and asked him why everyone kept laughing at me.

  ‘They say you are like a doll,’ he said – perhaps over-diplomatically. ‘They are calling you Barbie.’ Hmmmm. Then he added, ‘They say your eyes are very round.’ Now we were getting to the truth of the matter. ‘And,’ he went on, ‘your nose is pointy.’

  ‘And me?’ Himself asked.

  ‘They say you are like Licha’d Ge’e.’

  ‘Richard Gere? Well, that’s pretty good.’

  That night we took our courage in our hands and decided to have dinner at one of the many outdoor food stalls. We chose one of the more high-rent establishments – as evidenced by miniature white plastic chairs scattered around the stand:Himself’s knees ended up at around the same level as his ears and my bum got so wedged that when I stood up the chair came with me. The food was lovely, though.

  The following morning I woke up early and decided to get my hair done – the way you do. Well, the humidity was playing havoc with my frizz and I’d had a successful blow-dry in Bangkok and I’d made the mistake of thinking that just because the two cities were only a couple of hours apart, they were similar…

  ‘I’m off to get my hair done,’ I told Himself, who replied, ‘Fine,’ mostly because he was still asleep.

  It was only eight-thirty but already it was so hot and humid it was like breathing soup. I made my way along the broken-down pavement to where I’d remembered seeing a hair salon the previous day. The road was lined with stationary cyclos, with piles of bodies asleep in them.

  No sooner was I through the door of the hairdresser’s than the two women working there doubled over in hysterics. Old pointy nose strikes again. Once they’d recovered themselves they were charm itself and bombarded me with questions: Why was I in Vietnam? Who was I with? Did I like it?

  Eventually they began washing my hair – with bottles of water. They were running a hairdresser’s salon and they had no running water. Immediately I thought of the men asleep in their cyclos. When did they get to wash themselves?

  Meanwhile, back at the hotel Himself was now fully awake and not at all happy. Thoughts – probably entirely unfounded – of me being kidnapped and sold into white slavery propelled him, in a bit of a panic, on to the streets. Just in time for the cyclo men to wake up and begin trying to sell him things. When he tried to explain that he didn’t want to buy anything, that he was looking for someone, an amputee asked who.

  ‘A woman,’ Himself said, about to describe me.

  ‘A woman!’ the amputee said joyously, grabbing him with his good arm (well, his only arm). ‘M’sieur, come with me, I can get you a woman.’

  ‘No, I’m looking for my wife!’

  ‘A wife! Yes, m’sieur, we can get you a wife.’

  When I finally got back to the room, Himself was in a right fouler. ‘I was worried sick about you and I nearly had to marry someone else!’

  Well, after all that hullabaloo, there was nothing for it but to go shopping. But we were a long way from a Karen Millen. Instead we went to the market, an enormous indoor affair that sells everything from desiccated snake to exquisite, hand-painted lacquery. The heat, the noise and the smells were so intense I actually thought I might faint. And then something happened that can only be described as serendipity: right next to the dried monkey penises, I stumbled across a stall selling shoes. Now, in the normal run of things, I am becursed with strange, stunted feet, so that I find it almost impossible to get shoes small enough to fit me. But because Asian feet are smaller, there were tons of beautiful shoes all in my size. I was in shoe heaven.

  Previously unpublished.

  The Simon Community of Ireland

  The Simon Community is a voluntary organization that has been working alongside homeless people in Ireland since 1969. Due to the current housing crisis, the need for our services is greater than ever before. About 100,000 people around the country are in housing need, waiting for their name to move up to the top of the ever-lengthening housing waiting list. According to official Government statistics, 5,234 people were homeless in Ireland in March 1999. The Simon Community helps about 3,000 homeless people each year in Cork, Dublin, Dundalk and Galway and we are only one of the agencies providing services to homeless people. We estimate that the real number of people experiencing homelessness each year is probably closer to 10,000.

  The Simon Community’s mission is to develop preventative strategies that will divert people from becoming homeless; to campaign for the right to appropriate accommodation and responsive services; and to provide quality care, accommodation and services that support and empower people who are homeless, marginalized, vulnerable or socially excluded. Our services include soup runs, street outreach, emergency shelters, work and training projects, transitional accommodation, supported housing projects, and resettlement assistance. Our campaigning activities range from making policy submissions to Government, to raising awareness about homelessness through publications and speaking engagements, to commissioning research studies.

  The voluntary nature of the Simon Community and its ability to adapt to the ever-changing needs of people who are homeless enable us to respond to these needs in a compassionate, caring and effective manner. Although state funding for services such as ours is on the increase we rely heavily on voluntary fundraising. We are very pleased to receive the support and endorsement of our work evident from Marian Keyes’ donation of the royalties from the sales of this publication to the Simon Community. We would like to sincerely thank Marian and take this opportunity to thank so many people across the country for their continuing generosity and support of our efforts to combat homelessness.

  Conor Hickey

  On behalf of the Simon Community of Ireland

  28–30 St Andrews House

  Exchequer St

  Dublin 2

  Tel: 01 671 1606