In Search of the Blue Tiger (38 page)

Later on I place the smooth pebble on the ledge that is my altar. I move it from here to there, until it settles at the feet of the Blue Tiger, with the small picture of Saint Augustine looking on approvingly from somewhere long back in the past.

I sit quietly. The monks call it meditation. I'm not sure if I do it right, but it makes me feel nice. I just look at the bits and pieces of my altar and imagine how they get on together.

After a while I do a bit of writing in my scrapbook.

Most mornings, before breakfast, Stigir and I go to Open Bay. I'm always hoping the galleon will reappear, but it doesn't. It doesn't matter as we have such a good time there. If I learned the secret of time travel I could meet Father before he was married. On a ship, maybe. I could be a wise old man and tell him a story about how scared children are when their parents tear each other apart. I could pretend it had happened to me, to forewarn him. Maybe he would not have any children, or maybe he would be different. I could buy him a drink of stout in the Sailor's Arms and be like a mate. And he would listen and understand what I had to say and then it would never happen the way it did.

And then maybe I could find Mr April and stop him getting aboard the battleship. I could tell him I was a distant cousin from up North and our relative was calling for him from her deathbed. Then he would live on and Mr Fishcutter would never be able to fall in love with Mrs April and need to be sacrificed the way he was in the village hall. And I would put out the fire in the coach-house and save Great Aunt Margaret's baby. Then I would have a cousin (or would she be an Aunt?) and our family would have been so much happier after all.

Or would we have been? We were who we were and I am who I am. In the chapter I am reading, Saint Augustine discusses the way other people are, and how they eat like he does and grow like he does. He concluded they must have thoughts like he does and says: ‘Even if I am mistaken, I am.' I'm not exactly sure what this means (I'll ask the Brothers), but it makes me think that I'm not the only one who has lived a life like this and it has and will always be a part of who I am now and who I will turn out to be.

I hear the cart wheels on the cobbled stones of the courtyard and the voices of the monks talking over their adventure to the market in Tidetown.

‘Mrs April is here!' I shriek and Stigir pricks up his ears and jumps up from the blanket.

As I turn the corner to the hallway in the main building I see that she has already arrived. Mrs April is standing reading the roll of honour of monks who have spent their days here. She is running her fingers along the embossed gold lettering as if doing so will bring the men alive for her. Then she turns and sees me and smiles, her fingers still caressing the letters like a blind person reading Braille, as if to let go would break a special connection she has made.

When I get close she takes my hand between hers. It feels like a small animal being protected. She squeezes it gently.

‘I'm so sorry to have heard about your Father,' she says softly.

‘It's okay,' I say, and it is. ‘Thank you.'

Just then Brother Moses appears, his mop of bright red hair heralding his arrival.

‘You must be the famous Mrs April. I am Brother Moses and we are librarians in arms. This way,' he says and bows low for us to follow his direction.

In the library, I can see Mrs April is impressed. She runs her hands along the finely embossed spines of the books with relish and admiration.

‘What absolutely beautiful books,' she says, ‘and a simply perfect room.'

Brother Moses looks pleased.

‘Well, I'll leave you two together,' he says. ‘I know Oscar wants to show you what he's been doing while he's been here.'

We sit together in a bay window, overlooking the garden where three monks are hoeing the furrows between rows of broccoli and asparagus.

I show her my new scrapbook.

Her eyes brighten as she sees the picture of the Blue Tiger on the front. I feel proud and happy.

‘What a lovely drawing, Oscar. All your own work?'

I nod and smile.

‘And inside, what have you written inside?'

So, with the sounds of hoes slicing the soil and striking stones, I tell her about tigers and gods and time travel and wormholes and the vast mystery of the world growing around me. And I describe my altar. The way shells from Open Bay sit at the feet of the Blue Tiger. How God is everywhere for me to find. How Brother Moses has taught me that Saint Augustine and Buddha can stand happily side by side.

As always she listens as if she's hearing all this for the first time, never impatient, never mocking; finding pleasure in sharing in my own discovery. I show her my entries on tigers in legend and ritual and read her fragments on shaman and tiger gods, time and time travel.

Brother Moses brings us tea and biscuits and we talk the morning away.

At lunch Mrs April copies me copying Brother Moses. Today's dinner is baked potato, so we all take just the one. It is already coated in grated cheese and parsley, but I follow Brother Moses' example of three spears of asparagus. I notice Mrs April does the same and I feel proud to be showing her something.

We sit and eat our food in silence, though Mrs April's smile says every bit as much as words.

After lunch we take Stigir for a walk outside. There in the strawberry patch Brother Saviour is busy checking the runners.

‘Oscar, Mrs April, it is time,' he says, seeing us approach, waving the secateurs above his head.

‘Oscar, you can free these offspring from their parents,' he says enthusiastically. ‘Just cut here,' he adds, showing me the point at the base of the main plant where I should cut.

I kneel down and carefully cut the runner free from the parent.

‘Now the other end,' he says, pointing to the fledgling plant.

I make a similar cut at the base of the fresh new strawberry plant, the life-giving runner no longer binding them, its task performed.

Mrs April and Stigir look on. I feel as if I am the novice priest performing an ancient rite.

‘And now for kite flying,' says Mrs April, holding the folded blue kite aloft, and off we go down the hill and well-trodden path to Open Bay.

‘How much has happened since that autumn day on Boxton Hill, when we first went kite-flying together, we three,' says Mrs April as the kite jumps on the back of the wind and soars in an upward spiral. Stigir leaps into the air in a vain attempt to catch the kite, already far out of reach.

The wind is wild and unpredictable, swirling in from the open sea, catching the headland, then swooping up and around the cliff-tops.

I do my best to tame the kite as it jerks and gyrates. But the wind is in a mocking mood, dropping and surging at will. Just when I think I've mastered it, the wind hurls in from the west in a sudden upward gush, catching the kite totally unawares, sending it crashing against the cliff wall, where it tangles itself, fluttering and flapping, in the branches of a box elder that has made its home twenty feet above us.

‘What a pity,' says Mrs April.

Stigir barks a command for the kite to free itself.

‘I'll get it,' I shout, and before she can object I'm clambering up the cliff, like a mountain goat.

‘Be careful,' she says, as all adults must, gasping, her hand to her mouth. ‘Please, Oscar, do take care.'

Only move one limb at a time, I remind myself, and you can't fall. Who told me that? Who taught me? And never grip anything that can come away in your hand.

I choose my hand and foot holds carefully and I am soon high above Mrs April and Stigir, who watch my progress from the beach below.

I like it up here, inching my way closer to my goal. Over my shoulder I can see the bay give way to the open sea. There's peace and quiet up here, even as the wind whistles around me.

I dig my toes into a small ridge and haul myself up the last few feet by grabbing the thick anchoring root of the elder tree that snakes out of the soil in search of droplets of sea spray.

The kite and branch are within grasp. Steadying myself on the ledge, I reach up to grab the string, but a gust of wind flicks the kite upwards. As if in a tease, the kite shakes and flutters, before catching a thermal and circling away from the clutches of the tree. Its leap to freedom makes me smile. I watch it hop and skip into the sky, its deep blue sharp against the milky white clouds. It loops and accelerates out to sea. In its wake I fancy I see the outline of the galleon on the horizon, a puff of sails. But as I squint my eyes, the kite hurtles back inland and there is nothing but the wide expanse of water.

Down below Mrs April shields her eyes from the afternoon glare, just like she did that day long ago in the park.

‘Are you all right?' she calls. ‘Please come down now.'

‘I will, I will, but the kite, it's free,' I shout back, seeking it out against the deep green of the woodlands fringing the shore. There it is, tangled in a tall cypress tree, its end pointing downwards. My eye follows the line and I see a chimney pot poking out above the trees. Tantalisingly, it appears and disappears as the trees bend and sway in the wind. But it's there, a mysterious house hidden in the woods. An adventure to be had.

As I stretch my neck to see more (the outline of a roof, some broken tiles), the ledge beneath my feet disintegrates, sending clumps and clods of soil banging and bouncing and avalanching down to the beach. My heart jumps a beat, but I dig in and steady my feet. There's a gasp from down below, but I wave to show I'm okay. Carefully, I make my way back down to the base of the cliff, retracing my steps, the kite and chimney pot receding from view.

‘Looks like the kite had had enough of being tied down,' laughs Mrs April.

‘It seemed happy in the sky,' I say, the ruined rooftop at the fore of my mind.

Stigir snuffles around my ankles, eager to play.

‘You two go off,' says Mrs April. ‘I'll set up a base camp while you explore.'

Mrs April watches them head off to the shoreline, the boy and his dog. She smoothes out the rug on the sand, weighing it down with the picnic hamper. As she sits down she feels the tiredness creeping over her. There's a buzz to the salty sea air and a warmth to the sun that has edged out from behind the clouds. Oscar and Stigir play and gambol at the water's edge. She watches them for a while, her mind settling to the lap and lisp of the waves.

Something of the sound of the pebbles rattling on the beach brings Mr Fishcutter to mind. And then Mrs Fishcutter, standing by the counter one summer's morning. Mrs April was on her way to the library, having taken an unnecessary detour in the hope of spying her lover. She'd looked in the window of the shop and there was the other woman, scrubbing blood from the large wooden cutting block. Their eyes met for an instance and both seemed to know what was already known.

The age-old dance.

The rhythmic sounds and peaceful warmth entice her to lie back on the sand.

She dreams of Tidetown and all its folk and its library full of stories and images from its long and little history. She flutters between the folds in the curtain into dreamworld and gently meanders through her sleeping mind.