In Search of the Blue Tiger Read online

  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?

  ‘You looking for doubloons?’ he says, as I stare at the ground, the cracks in the paving slabs harbouring ants and succulent blades of defiant grass. I hold out my hand. I feel the enormity, the warmth and strength of his palm. I find myself walking beside him. Up towards the town, my eyes tracing the cracks in the paving stones, Father in my hand, home from the sea.

  Father returns to shore with tales of parrots and pirates. He is back in the habit of kissing Mother on the cheek before he goes to bed. Great Aunt spends most of the time in the coach house, and when she comes to dinner the colour fades from the room.

  So this one cold November night, we sit by the fire as it crackles and splutters the secrets of caves. Father turns to me and I think he is about to tell me it’s time for bed, but instead he says, ‘We feel it might be nice for you to have a dog. It might help bring you out of yourself.’

  Bring me out to where?

  But I’ve always wanted an animal. A seahorse or an eagle; but mostly a tiger. Ever since that trip to the circus I wanted a tiger, at least until I grow up to be one myself. The adults always said animals were more trouble than children, so I never really thought I could have one for my own up until now.

  Next day we go to the market and I choose the first dog I see. It is blue and black like bruised plums. No dog has ever shown such colour to the world. He will be the Blue Dog for my Blue Monkey and both will be my true friends. Father says I can have his big leather strap for a lead, the one he used to hoist around forest trees when he cut wood for the sawmills in the old days. The one he uses to hit me with when he thinks I am bad. But it is thick enough and long enough. Besides, the dog doesn’t seem to mind the buckle digging into his neck.

  I am cock-a-hoop coming back from the pet shop, my dog in tow. When we walk by the coach house I see the heavy velvet curtains (always closed, no matter how much the sun shines) twitch open and I know Great Aunt Margaret is watching events unfold. The curtains flick shut. I hear doors slamming, pots flying and the murderous scratch of the needle across the record, until Caruso and the Pearl Fishermen fill the air. But nothing can dampen my spirits. Nothing at all. No hint of blackness, nor cloud of flying ants, can shadow my happiness as the plum-coloured dog strains at the end of the thick leather belt and bites out at the long strands of grass growing between the cobbled stones of the yard.

  THREE

  OSCAR STARTS HIS SCRAPBOOK

  ‘He was a scholar, and a ripe and good one.’ Shakespeare

  This is Tidetown, first settled by the Vandals scouring the coastline for monasteries and abbeys. The invaders liked the bay nestled in the cliffs and the gentle meadows and woodlands sloping down to the rivers and lake of the valley. The Tidetown of today has its inns and its gossip, its church and its scandal. Most of all it has its fishermen, no longer in the longboats of the Norsemen, but in trawlers and schooners. There are the boats, bells tinkling as they rock to and fro in the safety of the harbour walls.

  Let’s take a walk to my house. Start at the old oak, where last Sunday, after Chapel, despite the Reverend Barkham’s sermon, Molly Melsher kissed Barney Butcherhook on the lips, welcoming him to a world more succulent than the lamb chops he lusted after for lunch. Turn your face to the wind, it sweeps in from the North-East no matter what the compass says, then make your way down past the Old Buttery, where urns clatter in the gale and the cockerel scratches in the dirt. Mind the thick brambles as you duck your head to meet the coastal path. Then follow the tracks alongside Jacob’s Farm. Veer left at the far corner of the farmhouse (that’s where Jacob fell off his ladder, broke his back and spent the next thirty years in the bedroom above, listening to the rustle of the trees, looking out the window for the hearse to arrive). Climb over the stile at the bottom of the field and then look down the lane straight in front of you. There it is. Grand enough, don’t you think? Solid grey stone and small arched windows. The House of the Doomed and Damned, where human lives are played out in the day and the animals come out to prowl at night.

  It is morning.

  Mother and The Great Aunt are sitting in the kitchen when I come in with the dog.

  ‘What are you going to call the dog?’ asks Mother, trying to be animated, trying to pull herself from the glue of her unhappiness.

  I had been thinking about it during the night. When I awoke it came to me in a flash.

  ‘Tiger, I want to call him Tiger,’ I say excitedly.

  Great Aunt sucks her teeth. I sense there is something about the dog troubling her, something it signifies that she disapproves of.

  ‘You can’t call a dog Tiger,’ she hisses over the noise of the steaming kettle, her eyes fixing on me.

  ‘A tiger is a wild cat. Even a cat called Tiger is wrong. Am I right?’ she asks, throwing a glare at Mother, the heavy cloth of her skirt shifting like the tide on a pebble beach.

  Mother looks up from the porridge she is mixing.

  ‘Yes,’ she replies with resignation in her voice. ‘You can’t call a dog Tiger. It’s wrong.’ She turns her back to me, whisking with a vengeance. ‘You will have to think of another name.’

  I leave
the two women and go into the garden where the dog is kept in the shed. He is whimpering.

  ‘Don’t worry, little dog,’ I say as I undo the latch to open the door, ‘I’m here now. Everything will be all right. We’ll find you a name, Tiger. People are like animals. Mother’s a cowdog and Father’s a pig. They think I don’t know. So if people are animals, can’t a dog be a tiger?’

  And I tell him about the wisdom and stories in libraries and how I’ll find out all about tigers in there, so I’ll be well prepared if I ever get to be one, the bluer the better.

  Later that morning we walk to the library in the square. Dogs are prohibited, so I tie his lead to a railing, give him a square of chocolate, and tell him I’ll be back soon and not to worry.

  Inside, an old man sits at a table by the window, peering through a magnifying glass the size of a plate at the open pages of the town’s only newspaper. He looks up at me, inquisitively. I know I’m in the wrong room, but I think it’s the right place for what I’m after. Then he glances over to the librarian who is seated behind a huge desk. The librarian, an elegant-looking woman with sapphire earrings, beckons me towards her. I feel a shiver move up and down my spine as I imagine her as the witch and me as Hansel, the wooden chest behind her a smouldering oven.

  ‘Little boy,’ she says, ‘this is the adult library.’ She stresses the word ‘adult’. ‘The children’s library is along the passage.’

  She points to the exit and I follow the line of her outstretched finger, realising I am being returned to a world with animal friezes on the wall and thin tall books with pictures on their covers.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I say to the man behind the desk. ‘I’m looking for books on people that are animals and animals that are other animals.’ He looks at me a bit sideways on, like a parrot that doesn’t quite understand. So I try to make it easy. ‘They were showing pictures at school. About India. They showed a man dressed as a tiger. He was a sort of witch-doctor tigerman. Have you got anything like that?’

  ‘Hmm … ’ He sounds more confused. After a pause, he looks at me and asks ever so slowly, ‘What is your favourite animal?’

  ‘Tigers.’

  ‘I think you should start with tigers. Over by the wall,’ he says, picking up his rubber stamp for support, ‘under “wildlife”.’

  I tiptoe across the room. There amidst the books on monkeys and penguins, crocodiles and rhinos, are tigers under ‘T’. I pull the first book from the shelf. I open it up. My heart leaps at the pictures of the huge, majestic cats. Page after page. A tiger stalking through tall dry grasses. A tiger chewing over the carcass of a deer. A tiger leaping across a jungle stream.

  I reach for the next book and then remember my little dog. I quickly take a third book from the shelf and hurry (as quietly as possible) to the desk to get them stamped. The librarian takes my tickets, stamps the books, then pushes them back to me. All those tigers moving about: the black, the amber, the white stripes. But no blues. Settling them under my arm, I hurtle along the corridor, crash through the front doors (what can they do to me now, if I make a racket?) and fly out onto the street.

  There he is, waiting. His tail wags and he jumps up at my legs. Tiger books under my arm, leather lead in hand, we walk back home together.

  That night I read until the candlelight dies. I tear up thin strips of paper to make bookmarks of my favourite sections. I look up to the top shelf, where Blue Monkey sits between my wooden yacht and accordion.

  ‘Blue Monkey,’ I whisper quietly, so not even the curtain can hear a word, even though it flutters gently in the air, hoping to edge closer to us, ‘they won’t let me call the dog Tiger, but we’ll find a way.’

  Blue Monkey says nothing, but I know he is on our side.

  When I fall asleep, with a picture of a Bengal tiger open on my chest, I dream I am looking down on myself. I am the small boy asleep on the bed. The book looks grander. Its edges are gilded with gold. The colours of the picture look like they’ve been touched by the sun. The hues of the tiger’s fur shimmer in bright tangerines, coal-blacks and crisp snow whites. Its eyes are a sparkling jade green. The room fills with the tiger. I sleep deeply in a creamy world, protected. A peace which no storm nor shipwreck from outside or inside the house can disturb. In my dreaming I sense an understanding of this toing and froing of animals and people, how Father can be a pig and Mother a cowdog and Great Aunt a huge lizard.

  When I’m a tiger I’ll be able to eat Father when he’s a pig.

  I have some pocket money stored in matchboxes, under the bed, out of harm’s way. Next morning, the colours from my dream still in my mouth, me and the dog go to the bookshop near the church. On the shelves of red exercise books, rolls of stickytape and brown envelopes, I see what I have come for. Stretching high, I take down the large scrapbook: the last of its kind, waiting alone next to a dusty pile of wooden rulers. It has a picture of a tea-clipper called the Cutty Sark on its cover, sails billowing, carving its way through the ocean with a purpose. Blues and whites, wood and rope, wind and sea and spray.

  We hurry home, fancying the big sailing boat is beneath us, rather than tucked under my arm. Me as the captain; the small blue dog, tugging at his lead, the first mate at the helm. ‘Aye, aye, cap’ain, land ahoy,’ he yelps, as we round the corner of the lane, set course for the orchard, and bob through the hole in the fence leading to the garden. We get some nibbles from the kitchen and spend the rest of the day in the shed amongst the hoes and pitchforks, broken fruit boxes and rusty nails.

  The scrapbook is oblong, the pages spacious. I turn the front cover.

  ‘It’s rounded the Cape of Good Hope,’ I announce to my dog, as the Cutty Sark disappears from sight.

  My books are piled beside me. My fountain pen is filled with fresh maroon ink, waiting amidst the pencils, sharpener, rubber, ruler, and oil pastels. I’ve always written on bits of paper and on the backs of old envelopes the grown-ups leave lying around. But now I have my own scrapbook. A reference book for my life. It needs a title.

  The Life and Times of Oscar Flowers. The Chronicles of the Doomed and Damned.

  On the first page of my scrapbook I write the heading in big block capitals.

  ANIMALS (ESPECIALLY TIGERS), PEOPLE & OTHER INTERESTING THINGS (LIKE THE COLOUR BLUE) BY OSCAR FLOWERS

  I copy pictures from the textbooks, using the box of pastel crayons I was given for my birthday. I draw intricate margins of hatchwork around the edge of every page. The first letter of each chapter I decorate like I’ve seen in ancient books. I read out my very first entry to my Tiger dog knowing somewhere in here we’ll find his true name. And other things. He sniffs around, nosing through the piles of junk and disorder in the shed, feigning lack of interest. As I read about the animals of the jungle, I sense I’ll learn more about the wildness around me.

  This is my scrapbook. It is not to be read by anyone in this house. You may have seen other things I have written, about being a tiger or about the colour blue, or about me standing at the bus stop watching people waiting for a friend. These will have been on odd bits of paper and envelopes and do not count. But this is my personal scrapbook and it is out of bounds and cannot be read by any person in this house. If you do, your eyeballs will melt and trickle down your cheeks like treacle.

  If you are not a grown-up from this house and are reading it now, you might wonder why I am writing this. These are my thoughts and my family history. I will be dead and there are clues here that will help you understand my life.

  Mostly my scrapbook is about animals & (this is called an ampersand: which I like very much) the people in this house & HOW PEOPLE CAN BECOME ANIMALS, though that is not really fair to animals, as they are often much better than people. But it is also about other things that interest me.

  Like my favourite colour: Blue

  And my lucky number: 25

  Later in the week I head back to the library to find out more. The dog likes the pavement outside the building where he waits. Passersby stroke
his head and rub his tummy. Sometimes they even give him chocolate, which I know he enjoys very much.

  Inside, the same scruffy man in the children’s library takes back my returned books.

  ‘I’d like some books on animals and people,’ I say, not sure quite what I’m looking for.

  ‘Animals and people,’ he repeats. I wonder if he might be a parrot in his spare time.

  He consults the index catalogue, and reports there are no books on people and animals. Today he wears a big floppy jumper, with fraying cuffs and ink stains on the sleeves. I feel brave. I hold up my scrapbook, like a shield, saying it is a project I am doing. He pauses for a second, the sails of the Cutty Sark flapping in the gusting wind as I wave the book above my head. He looks at me quizzically, a bit amused. Then he tells me to inquire at the reference section of the adult library.

  ‘It’s across the corridor,’ he says, waving a hand in the general direction. I notice his fingernails are broken and the skin bloodied. Maybe he’s not a parrot, but an owl returned from a night swooping and scratching through the hedgerows. Wise and sleepy in the library by day; alert and predatory in the woodlands by night.

  I stride confidently up to the reference counter.

  The same lady as before looks me up and down. She is sharp and bright-eyed, more like a heron than an owl. Again, I hold up my scrapbook. The Cutty Sark heads for her: a pirate ship in pursuit of bounty.