In Search of the Blue Tiger (10 page)

It is quite dark in the cellar, but I have smuggled a candle and matches from the cupboard under the stairs. When I strike the match and light the wick, Stigir clacks his teeth together in excitement. Stigir is such a good listener. He loves it when I tell him stories from the books I'm reading.

Rummaging in the trunk I pull out my Grandmother's peacock scarf and wrap it loosely around my shoulders. I am off to the Castle of Otranto, I say to Stigir, waving the lighted candle from side to side to create an air of mystery. There are giants in the Castle and armoured statues with eyes that trace your steps and walls that shift and move from Birnham Wood to Dunsinane. Follow me, I add, with a flourish of my scarf, and Stigir trots along behind me. We walk a few steps. I unravel and wave the scarf from side to side. The peacock takes wing. What is this strange creature of the night that switches form from man to beast?

There are shadows on the heath ahead. Stop, it is the weird sisters calling us from the cliffs. Abandon ship, we will be lured and dashed upon the rocks. Out, out, brief candle. I am dead.

I fall to the ground, the peacock floating gently to my side. Stigir licks my cheek and snuggles down beside me. We stare into each other's eyes, seeing who'll be the first to blink. We lie close together, on a dusty old rug, my little blue dog and I. Does he dream of me? I wonder, listening to our breathing. Does he dream of fields and sheep? It is my last thought as I fall asleep and dream myself of Mrs April.

She is under the water, playing chess with her dead husband. His face is white with so much washing. Her heavy linen dress sways like reeds in the current. She holds the black queen in her hand. As she speaks, bubbles flow from her lips. Like pearls. Like pearls drifting in a stream to the surface. Way, way above. Further away than the roof of a cathedral.

‘How can you miss the boat if no one shows you the pier?' asks Mr April, his tears running down his face, mingling with the salty ocean.

‘I will teach you chess,' she replies, holding out her hand, unclenching her fist to show him. ‘Here, look, I have the black queen.'

And they both look at the precious object as if it were their child, their very own baby child. She puts her arms around her dead husband's shoulders and they swim off together, a trail of pearly bubbles whispering in their wake.

‘I will teach you to play. Chess. Chess. Chess,' she sings as they drift away on the tide.

‘Get that dog out of the house,' shouts the Father. He is drunk and in that dark place where evil lives. ‘Yapping around. Get it out before I kick it through the window.'

My Great Aunt is sitting in the alcove with Mother, who is crying but not weeping. I turn to them, but they offer me nothing. Something has gone before.

Then Stigir pricks up his ears, trots to the door and goes out into the garden. I begin to follow him, knowing there is more sunlight out there than ever inside this house.

‘Where are you going?' booms the Father.

I know this is a command to obey. I stop stock-still. His eyes are wild, there's a brown smudge of stout on his cheek. This is a bad sign.

‘What's all this tiger nonsense your mother has been telling me about, that you've been writing about?'

His face is close to mine. I can smell the beer and cigarettes on his breath. But I will stand my ground. Stand up to this huge male.

‘My scrapbook, you mean?' Tears are bubbling in my throat but I'm determined not to let them out, however horrible it all gets.

‘Yes, I do mean. And that librarian woman. What's the use of it all?'

He is grinning at me. The grin that can mean anything.

‘So when I go to see animals in the wild, see them for real one day, I'll know all about them and how to be with them,' I say, as if life in the House of the Doomed and the Damned has not taught me enough about wild animals already.

‘When you go to see them? How to be with them? Who are you? Saint Francis of Assisi?' He laughs, taking a half-smoked cigarette from the ashtray, straightening it out, breaking off the burnt hardened end, then lighting it.

‘You'll be like her,' he mocks, pointing at Mother. ‘Going nowhere and doing nothing. Useless.'

I glance over at Mother and Great Aunt. Mother is hunched over in her seat, but Great Aunt has such a look of defiance in her face. Defiance and anger.

‘I will go,' I say. ‘I will go out in the world and see for myself. One day, you wait and see.'

Father laughs and laughs. I feel a rage take over me. I fly at him with tears spraying in all directions. But there are no claws on my fingertips, no sharpened teeth in my mouth. He laughs all the more as I pound my fists at him. Hail on a mountainside. He barely troubles to fend me off.

‘You're weak like her and you'll go nowhere like her,' he sneers.

I am trapped in this orbit of tears and fists and harsh words. I am only a child, but he laughs at my childness, my weakness. I strike him with all my might, but hardly move the flesh against his bones. Then with one sweep of a mighty forearm he pushes me to the floor.

‘Get out, get out the lot of you!' he yells, his laughter abruptly gone. ‘I've had enough of you all, you useless collection of gobshites!'

Mother and Great Aunt move quietly off to the kitchen. I go out into the garden, slamming the back door behind me, the glass panes rattle and shake. I search the orchard for Stigir, but he is nowhere to be seen. I go to the gap in the fence to see if he is in the meadow, but there is no sight of him.

In the air is the sweet smell of wet grass. There is a light rain washing over me like a baptism. I turn my face to it and close my eyes to the world of men. I will see the real wild world outside. I will.

Female tigers fight each other for food. Men tigers fight for the ladies. Tigresses have a small home, about six to eight square miles, to hunt in and raise cubs. A male tiger will have about two to seven female tigers in his territory. This never overlaps with another male's territory. Younger, single male tigers wait in the forest for the chance to take over a territory. Or else they just wander around alone.

The big church is at the top of the hill. Walking up the winding path I can see the town sitting below it, at its mercy, praying nightly for forgiveness of sins yet to be committed. The sun is setting over the cliff, hiding away from the dusky shadows cast on the vestry walls.

Standing at the door of the priest's house I take a deep breath, like when, for a dare, I first jumped from the top of the old slate quarry into the broiling sea below. Closing my eyes, I knock on the door, the heavy brass knocker weighty in my hand.

Through the thick wood of the door I hear the shuffling of feet, a groan or two and then the clank and turn of heavy keys. Images of Jack and boy-eating giants leap to my mind, but I stay firm. The door opens and a head appears. It's the old priest, the one with four white hairs wrapped over and smoothed down onto his glistening scalp. A wrinkled hand reaches up from behind the door, making sure the few long strands are neatly in place. There's someone else behind the door, but I'm not sure who.

‘Boy?' says the priest-head.

‘I have some important questions. Questions I want to ask you.'

‘Questions?' he asks. ‘What important questions?'

I sense I won't have the chance to ask too many, so I take a deep breath and blurt out the most important of all.

‘Will God let me be a tiger?'

‘A tiger?' he squeals, as if one were about to spring on him.

‘Yes, I know God can do miracles,' I say quickly, before the priest-head disappears. ‘But I wondered if I was good and prayed, if he'd let me be a tiger and be really strong.'

The eyes in the head dart up and down and from side to side. There's a shuffling sound from somewhere behind the door. The priest opens his mouth, but no words come out.

‘Like in the Book of Proverbs,' I say to fill the silence, concentrating to get the words right. ‘It says that “a righteous man regardeth the life of his beast: but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.” And I wondered if the man could have the life of the beast?'

We look at each other. I'm not sure what I mean, and, by the look on his face, I don't think he knows either.

‘I'm memorising Proverbs,' I say, to try to help. ‘And I read the Bible.'

‘Sunday School,' smiles the priest-mouth, relieved to find an answer at last. ‘Go to Sunday School on Sunday.'

‘But …' I say.

‘No buts,' he protests. ‘Sunday School on Sunday. Now be off with you and your important questions.'

And he shuts the door and I stand alone, no more wise as to the wisdom of men and the nature of God.

Walking down the hill I turn and look back to the spire of the church.

‘I will find the questions and the answers,' I shout to the sea and the cliffs.

And I close my eyes, remembering the exquisite space between the top of the sheer slate cliff and the water, so very far below. How, as small as I was then, as scared as I felt, I stepped out and jumped. How time was held, how the air rushed by, how deep it was falling under the waves, and how precious the rise to the surface, to break the water's surface, to see the brightness of the sky above.

‘Life is a kind of chess, in which we have points to gain, and adversaries to contend with, and in which there is a great variety of good and ill events that are, in some degree, the effects of prudence and the want of it.' Franklin

Blue Monkey watches over the sleeping boy and his sleeping dog. From the shelf where he stands he can see the garden outside. A cat walks along the top of a wall; a wood pigeon settles on the branch of a walnut tree. Blue Monkey looks down at the boy as he turns in his dreams. This small child, who an hour ago cried himself to sleep, telling Blue Monkey of his fears and hopes, sadness and joy, and of the blood on the wall in the passageway. On the floor is the scrapbook, open at a page showing a colourful map of blues and greens and broad swathes of deepest orange. Outside the night stretches across the sky. Inside, Blue Monkey maintains his vigil, one eye on the moon, the other on his charge.