In Search of the Blue Tiger (2 page)

Be wary of people. They are unpredictable and may do you harm at any moment.

Enjoy the beautiful things in the forest.

Don't try to eat a porcupine.

Look out for loose leaves on the forest floor: they might be a cunning cover for tiger traps, and tiger traps are deep and wide and have spikes at the bottom of the pit.

Keep close to your parents: they will protect you and look after you and care for you and love you and cuddle you until you get big.

Be careful of snakes in the grass. The ones with the nicest patterns and prettiest colours are the most dangerous.

NB (which stands for Nasty Beasts, I think): this is not always true. Black Mambas are plain blackish and very dangerous. (Tip: if chased by a black mamba run perpendicular, which means at right angles, to the direction they are heading. They get angriest if you are in the way of their hole in the ground. If you stay in the way, or run towards the hole, the snake will bite you and you will be dead.) Spitting cobras are not nicely coloured either (NB: wear sunglasses). Just beware of ALL snakes.

I get a real surprise one break-time at school. I'm watching a spider winding a wasp up in the corner of a web. I sense someone is close by. When I turn around, there's Carp Fishcutter staring straight at me, with her twinny sister, Perch, standing a couple of feet behind. I think I'm the only one at school who can tell them apart. It's nothing to do with how they look, more to do with how they speak, how the air is around them, and how each makes me feel.

In the faintest of whispers Carp, who is the more powerful of the two, says to me: ‘When Jehovah let Adam and Eve into the Garden of Eden he told them to give all the animals names. And they did.'

She looks at me for a second or two more, then she and Perch walk off to continue their circuit around the perimeter of the playground. They are both as tall and slender as pencils, with perfectly straight coal-black hair stretching down their backs like capes. Their skin is as pale as their eyes are dark. Today they wear identical bottle-green cardigans and grey pleated skirts. On their heads they have woollen berets, with matching scarves knotted at their necks. They walk close together and their arms remain still by their sides. I see they are as much in their own world as I am in mine.

I feel warm and excited. I can hardly believe they have spoken to me. I feel an enormous smile spreading over my face. When I turn back to the web I see that the wasp is now safely cocooned and the spider is eating the head of a bluebottle as it struggles to free itself from the sticky silk threads. The more it struggles, the more it is trapped.

No one knows I'm here. The Mother and Father are too busy tearing each other apart. The Great Aunt will be listening, flicking through her rosary beads. So when I ease open the cellar door and creep down the stairs to my hiding place none of the three will have noticed my empty bed. First, I count to twenty-five for luck and then push the little buds of cotton wool into my ears. Next I nestle into the cosy space under the floorboards and pull the blanket over my head.

The gaps in the planks let light through from the kitchen above. All around me, like the walls and turrets of a miniature castle, are my piles of books. Some are from the library in town. Others, my favourites, come from the chests and trunks I found when I first explored the cellar. The Mother said they were leftovers from her father's library and I was not to touch them. When I first came down here she wagged a finger and said I was to stay out of the cellar, as there were rats and dust and spiders. But I have claimed this space as my own. No one seems to care much where I am in the house, so if I'm down here I am as much out of the way as any place else.

There's nowhere I'd rather be than amongst these dusty books of adventure and King Arthur, the sea and Captain Bluebeard, the prairies and Custer's Last Stand, and of boys who run away to sea, who hide in barrels and munch through apples until the smell of the salt air and the rocking of the ocean tell them they are too far from shore to be sent back home.

The first book I open is precious. Its cover is leather, and, as always, I read the inscription on the first page. It is beautifully written in maroon ink. ‘To Reginald, on his 9th birthday, love as always, Mama xxx.'

I imagine my great-grandmother sitting at a desk, composing the words of love, dipping a nib in an inkwell, making the marks on the paper, waiting for them to dry, wrapping the present in gift-paper and then tying a bow.

I open the book to the page I have marked with a ribbon and begin to memorise the next Proverb.

‘How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity? And the scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge?'

‘I won't speak for the rest of you, but he's driving me to distraction,' says Great Aunt Margaret, who lives in the old coach-house across the lawn. ‘With his moods and tantrums, his fads and fancies. His crazy ideas. I heard him say the other day he wants to be a tiger. The boy should be seen to.'

‘Where do you think he gets it from?' whispers Mother as she listens to her Aunt's rantings, the dusk settling into the drawing-room like a tide.

‘I'll swing for him one of these days,' continues the Aunt, ‘I see that Father in him, those black moods, that mop of hair. You wait and see,' she warns, looking with contempt at her seated niece, who averts her eyes. ‘He'll turn out much the same and do much the same. Better off at sea, all of them. Men. Under the waves, fish nibbling at their eyelids.'

Mother holds her hands in her lap, staring down at the thread and tapestry of the carpet. She says nothing. The Aunt takes up a seat in the large bay window looking out over the herb garden, waiting as expectantly for her tea as for her prediction to come true.

‘Where's the tea?' she booms. ‘I come over here to keep you company. You have nothing to say, you have no opinion and there is nothing to eat or drink.'

The folds of skin on her neck and chin wobble like a giant iguana.

‘I want cake,' she roars, ‘tea and cake!' And she claps her hands as loud as she can, as if she expects the door to open and a maid to magically appear, wheeling in a tea trolley laden with confectionary. Instead, Mother hands her a plate of cakes from the sideboard.

Minutes later, her mouth full of chocolate éclair, fresh cream foaming from the corners of her lips, she glares across the room at her sister's daughter.

‘He's right that husband of yours, you're useless, you're no use to anyone. No wonder he goes off to sea at every chance. No wonder he does what he does when he comes back. No surprise the boy is turning crazy.'

Then she falls silent, letting her eyes do the work, her fingers flicking through her rosary beads as if she were at the guillotine.

‘More tea, Aunt?' says Mother.

It is approaching winter and the room darkens, but neither moves from where they sit to light a candle.

‘Every gift which is given, even though it be small, is in reality great, if it be given with affection.' Pindar

It is early in November and the town readies itself for the weather. Down by the quayside the fishermen join forces to patch up the harbour wall. They tell each other stories of perfect storms, waves to swallow cities and shoals of cod colouring the sea like snowfields.

Father is a seafarer, a trawler-man. Sometimes when he is away at sea, sketching the line of Moby Dick under the surface of the Berring Sea, or fending off the marauding pirates in the Azores, I go down to the quayside to watch the ships being loaded, the seagulls swooping and screeching, the water lapping reassuringly against the seawall. Some days, I sit with the oldest fishermen as they mend their nets. I listen to their stories of press gangs and galleons. I am spellbound, clutching my knees, entranced by the tales. The sounds of the cudgel on unsuspecting flesh and the rhythmic beat of the drum as the oarsmen plough through the waves ring through my mind. Other times, more often alone, I imagine myself as the boy Christopher Columbus, watching the masts of the tall ships creeping over the horizon. I put aside disbelief and knowledge, clear my head, and take on the role of discovery. ‘Eureka,' I shout, as the body of the ship follows the mast into view. ‘The world is round! Listen everyone, I've discovered the world is round!'

Waiting for him. On the dockside. Father returning from the sea. The cold never gets to me, nor does my runny nose. I rattle the buttons of my cuffs across my nostrils like a true sailor and spit at the seagulls. There is always something to watch. To watch out for. Brigands and smugglers, sharks and typhoons. And always the sea, up and down and side to side, rippling and yawning, diving and hiding.

When news comes that Father's ship is near to shore I rush down to the quay, my eyes fixed to the magic line where the sea meets the sky, where dreams emerge. I mouth the songs he sings after the taverns close and before the blackness sets in. Standing on the jetty, I am never more alone. Imitating his voice, trying to remember the words. A sadness surfaces, mixing with the sea-spray to sting my eyes. I watch the ship grow bigger, the birds circling around it becoming more like gulls than gnats. I sing to myself.

‘Have you heard about the big strong man,
who lived in a caravan,
have you heard about the Jack Johnson fight,
where the great big Negro fought the white?
Well I've got a little one to beat the rest,
that's my cousin Sylvest.

Got an arm like a leg,
got a row of forty medals on his chest,
big chest.
It would take all the army and the navy
to put the wind up Sylvest …'

Looking out over the sea I think of Mrs Magrath in her black crocheted shawl. I sing the two verses I always remember.

‘Mrs Magrath, the sergeant said,
would you like to make a soldier out of your son Ted?
With his scarlet coat and his big cocked hat,
now Mrs Magrath wouldn't you like that?
with-a-tor-ra-ah-fol-de-doddle-da-tor-ri-tor-ri-tor-ri-ah …

Now Mrs Magrath lived on the same shore
for the space of seven long years or more.
Until she saw a big ship coming into the bay,
sure that's my son Ted won't you clear the way
with-a-tor-ra-ah-fol-de-doddle-da-tor-ri-tor-ri-tor-ri-ah …'

Waiting, I think about one of the books I'm reading. It's the story of an old man who lives alone on an island. He makes friends with crabs and lobsters, and slings hammocks between palm trees. I like the way he uses the shapes of the clouds to remember things that happened to him when he was little.

I see it now, the ship. I see him now, the Father. The heavy wet ropes are thrown to the landing stage. Men with wrists and forearms of steel twine them to the moorings. I wonder why I am the only one here. Small and wet and expectant. The men file past me, heavy kitbags slung over their shoulders. Some ruffle my hair as they hurry on up the jetty, calling me ‘kiddo' and ‘young-fella-my-lad'. Father comes into view. Standing in front of me. What is it, this hold he has over me? What is it he does to me?