In Search of the Blue Tiger (11 page)

I like the black-and-white squares of the chessboard. The feel of the pieces. Mrs April is sitting opposite me. We are chewing dried apricots. I have never had them before, but I love their leathery texture, their sweet juicy taste. I love their newness, their surprise.

I am learning quickly. This chess game. The beautiful symmetry of the pieces.

‘Today I will teach you the en passant rule,' says Mrs April.

I am transfixed by the board, embarrassed at my own ignorance. But she carries on with a gentle lilt to her voice.

‘En passant is French for ‘by the way' or ‘in passing'. The rule allows you to take one of your opponent's pawns as you pass by.'

‘Killing someone in passing. Killing someone in passion,' I say, the words taking me unawares, coming from some place deep inside.

Mrs April seems surprised, but says nothing. She moves one of her pawns to one square away from my massed ranks. Her fingers are long and slender. Her nails have a gloss I've not seen anywhere before. Not the bright red nail varnish Mother puts on when Father says they are going out, but something that shimmers and catches the light. She places her fingertip on one of the white pawns.

‘If you decide to move a pawn two squares on its first move and I have a pawn here,' she says, ‘then I can take your pawn as if it had only moved one square. It takes in passing, because your pawn has passed through the square it can attack. En passant. As it is passing by.'

She looks up at me, moving her pawn back and forward to emphasis the point. Her shiny fingernail: the top of a lighthouse.

I understand.

‘It's like pushing someone over as you run by,' I say, trying my own explanation.

‘Exactly,' she says with a broad smile. I can hear a clock ticking, taste the exotic apricot taste in my mouth, smell the polished wood of the table. A tingling warmth rises inside me. It is happiness.

Then the phone rings and something shifts. The moment fizzles away.

Mrs April stands and walks slowly across the room. On the sixth or seventh ring she lifts the receiver. She says nothing, but her face brightens. I think I can hear the voice of a man, but it is nothing more than a shadow.

‘Now?' says Mrs April. I lift the black king from its square. It is the darkest and most imposing piece on the board. It is solid and heavy. A man. I run my finger over the turrets of its crown. Mrs April turns away from me and leans into the heavy drape by the window.

‘I'm not sure … No, not tonight,' she whispers, wrapping herself up, almost cloaking herself in the plush velvet curtain.

‘On the corner, then,' she says quietly, intending me not to hear. But she doesn't know my hearing, fine-tuned down the years of whispers and eruptions through the walls. ‘In ten minutes,' she says. ‘But I can only stay a short while,' she adds, before gently placing the phone back in its cradle.

She fiddles with her earring and sits down in her chair across the board from me, her army of pieces arrayed before her. She fails to notice the missing king. She seems flustered. She smells different. The skin on her face and neck has reddened.

‘I have to go out for a short time,' she says. ‘Will you be all right on your own?'

‘Yes,' I say, pushing the king's head back into the protection of my fist with my thumb. ‘I can look after myself. I'm often left alone.'

She gets up and goes to the kitchen. While she's out of the room I put the black king back on its square. She may have noticed, but she says nothing about it as she re-enters the parlour, putting a tray on the sideboard.

‘Here are some cheese sandwiches and lemonade,' she says, her words more rushed. ‘But I won't be gone long. You are sure you'll be okay?'

‘I'm not a baby,' I say, moving a pawn here, a knight there; not looking up at this person I no longer recognise. When I do glance up, she is out of the room, standing by the hallway mirror, touching her hair with one hand, putting on lipstick with the other. She has forgotten me. Distracted by the voice on the telephone.

She turns. I stare at the chessboard as if it is where my concentration has always been, there in the landscape of the black-and-white squares and the marauding warriors. I whistle a little tune to myself to show her I don't care. I rest my elbow on the table and my chin on my hand.

‘You practice,' she says as she turns away. ‘I'll be back in twenty minutes … no longer.'

I hear the front door open and close. I listen to her footsteps hurry along the garden path and then go silent. Only then do I look up from the chessboard. The clock strikes five.

Twenty minutes.

The room seems strange without her. Incomplete. Empty.

‘In passion,' I whisper to myself. ‘In cruel passion.'

I walk around the room, picking up objects, holding them, bringing them to my lips, rubbing them against my cheek. A porcelain statuette: smooth as a dolphin. A glass ashtray: heavy and cold as a chunk of ice. I look at the pictures on the wall. Country scenes of haymaking and harvesting. I take one of the cheese sandwiches and begin to nibble its edge. On the sideboard is Mr April, the sailor who never came home from the sea. I stare closely at his face. Gaze into his eyes. I can feel the sun and the ocean breeze, smell the hard metal and oil of the huge ship, hear the noise of the men preparing to set sail. All the while Mr April looks back at me, his eyes trying to tell me something of his hopes and fears.

I look away, back into the room. Outside, night has settled and Mrs April will not be back for twenty minutes.

Quietly, stealthy as a thief, I head for the stairs and the mysteries of the rooms above. I hold onto the banister to steady myself. A floorboard creaks. I stop dead still. I am on the half-landing. There is a window looking out over the street. Across the road, I see two figures in an alleyway, partly lit by a streetlamp. They hold my attention, for they are kissing.

The woman pushes the man away. She looks around, anxious, agitated. It is then, as she sweeps her hair from her face, looking this way and that up the road, that I realise it is Mrs April. She stands to one side, gesturing with her hands as she talks. The man moves into view. I follow the ballet of the lovers, tripping in and out of the streetlight. He is wearing a speckled scarf and a dark overcoat. He is tall with jet-black hair.

And then suddenly, with a snap, I know him. I know who this man is. I see him in his shop, bending over the chopping board, over the scales from the rainbow trout Mother has just bought. I see his thick black hair falling forward as he works. Behind him is the speckled scarf hanging from a coat-hook on the door. Yellow, with small black dots, like a poisonous snake. A speckled band. Yes, the man kissing Mrs April is Mr Fishcutter, the fishmonger. Mr Fishcutter, the father of Perch and Carp.

I press my nose to the glass of the window, watch my breath spread along its cold surface, obscuring the scene below. I rub a tiny eye-hole in the condensation. When I peer through it they are gone. The yellow light from the street lamp illuminates the wall where they stood and kissed, like a spotlight.

I feel a hollow inside me. Like the small hole I peer through, I feel small and glass and empty. Once again I breathe on the window. The hole closes over. But the strange feeling inside me lingers on.

Be careful, Mrs April. You have been lured into the night. Where men turn to wolves and worse. You think I am a child, but I know more of these things than you. I will find a way to protect you.

Away from the half-landing, away from the window, I push open a door and enter a new room. It is Mrs April's bedroom. I almost gasp at the secret of it. I, Oscar, am standing in Mrs April's bedroom. Some part of me tells me to flee, but I stand my ground. There is her bed. A beautiful powder-blue eiderdown, embossed pillowcases and, amidst it all, her night dress. It is draped across the bed as if she has just floated away, leaving her form behind.

Downstairs the clock strikes the quarter. I move to the bed. Bending down, I close my eyes, pressing my cheek against the silkiness of the garment. It is like saying a prayer. The hollowness leaves me. I feel comforted and at peace. I linger, dream-like. I climb on to the bed and lie next to the shell of Mrs April. I am safe. No dangers lurk nearby. I place the palm of my hand on the soft material. Gently, so as not to crease or crumple it.

There is a sound from downstairs. A key turning in a lock.

I sit up. A door is opened and closed. Footsteps. Mrs April. Without making a sound, I ease myself from the bed to the floor, tiptoe out of the room and into the bathroom. I pull the door closed and silently push the bolt into its latch.

‘Oscar,' a voice calls. Mrs April's voice. I hear her mount the stairs. ‘I'm back. Are you alright, Oscar?'

Behind the closed door I smile. I smile a sense of power. The bathroom is bright. She taps on the door. Gently.

‘Oscar, are you in there? Are you okay?' she asks.

‘Yes,' I say, but she can't see my smile. I see my refection in the small round mirror on the wall. I see the smile on my face. I smell the sweet scent of the soap in the dish on the rim of the large claw-footed bath.

‘I'm just washing my hands,' I say, turning the big brass tap, watching the water twine and twist against itself and then flow freely.

In Malaysia it was common to place the dead body of a shaman in a tree. This was so he could turn into a were-tiger, or else for his tiger familiar to visit him and release his soul. The last shaman ever to be placed in a tree became a tiger with a white patch on its shoulder, caused by rubbing against the tree. Shortly afterwards a shaman was buried, but escaped his grave. He turned into a one-eyed tiger, the injury resulting from his struggle to free himself from the tomb.

Next day in the playground I look away, but I can feel their eyes on me. It's as if something is binding us more and more together. But it confuses me and makes my cheeks blush. It's to do with me and Mrs April and them and Mr Fishcutter. They stand silently by a netball post, looking in my direction. I sense their attention. They stand and stare. They are two years older than me and much taller. They are identical, but Perch always stands on the right, Carp on the left. They are walking towards me and I wish Blue Monkey were here to help me understand.

The Twins tower above me. They have a presence that is unnerving. They stare at me, but never quite look at me. As if something distracts them, something elsewhere holds their attention.

‘We have some things more to say to you,' says Carp.

‘We'll tell you when,' says Perch.

Just then the playground lady blows the whistle and we stop doing whatever we were doing. Carp and Perch stand as still as always. On the second whistle they turn on their heels and head for the girls' entrance to the school building. They float just above the ground, like a pair of seahorses, otherworldly, oblivious.

In many legends around the world the were-wolf is cursed for some reason or other, so that during the time of a full moon he is unable to stop or control his actions.