In Search of the Blue Tiger (27 page)

The phone stays silent. He has not arrived and he has not called. Mrs April stands in the doorway of the sitting room, staring at the telephone, willing it to ring. Not even the hurly-burly and ding-a-ling-ling of the fire engines echoing from the other end of town tempt her to leave her house, to abandon her vigil. She twirls the long necklace around her fingers and sucks at the tiny pearls. She holds one between her teeth, resisting the impulse to bite through it. To break the thread and release the beads, to see them jump and leap to freedom. She turns her head and looks in the hallway mirror. The face looking back is forlorn and unloved. The calm green of her dress belies the sadness of its wearer. She sees herself alone. Alone in this large house; waiting to be rejected, but waiting in anticipation nonetheless.

Maybe Father and Mother and the Great Aunt sacrificed the baby. They were always saying how bad everything was. Maybe this would change if they killed the baby girl for their demon Gods.

It is later in the afternoon, long after the bells of the fire engines and police cars have fallen silent. Stigir and me have been in the woods, watching from a distance. We saw the roof of the old hall catch fire and collapse, the jets of water from the fire hoses twist and curl their way into the flames. The policemen came and went and came back again. The klaxons and bells signalling their arrival and departure. I saw Mrs Fishcutter and another woman. I think it was Sister Olga, but I couldn't be sure, standing and staring at the smoking remains. Mrs Fishcutter, a handkerchief to her face, was being supported by her friend as she stood looking at the scene. We were too far away to see her expression, but at one point she slumped to one side and had to be led away to a bench near the gate. Groups of onlookers, all townspeople, had gathered to witness the spectacle. But the fire was short-lived. The wooden building, all but destroyed, smouldering, charred and hissing, and the crowds petered away.

Now, as the dark begins to stretch across the town, we stand outside the house of Mrs April. Stigir and I, on the pavement, under the canopy of a huge horse-chestnut tree. The curtains are drawn, but I know she is inside. I must tell her what has happened. Before she hears the news from someone else who understands nothing of a kite in the air, a rook on the rampage, the neck of a swan.

So we knock on her door. Something is hurried on the other side. The movement from the hallway, the sudden twist of the latch. The door is pulled open. Mrs April looks startled, surprised.

‘Oh, Oscar, it's you … come in, come in. And Stigir,' she says, composing herself.

I notice the lipstick. It is bright red. So is the varnish on her fingernails. But she beckons us into the house. It is warm and inviting. Safe after the outside.

She follows me and Stigir into the the parlour. But she is looking strangely at me.

‘Oscar, what on earth has happened to you?' she asks.

I look down at my clothes. I am coated in mud. I catch my face in the mirror. It is smeared with smoke and tears, tears I don't remember crying. Stigir lies down by the fire and begins to sleep. Mr April smiles at me from the picture on the sideboard. I know he knows I've done right. I fancy he winks at me, and the big battleship behind him hoots a ‘well done'.

‘We were in the play,' I say, staring down at my shoes. One lace is undone. ‘There was God, and I was Abraham, and Stigir was the ram in the burning bush. And I knew before any of them told me it would turn out different. That I would never give Stigir his cue.'

Mrs April takes me by the hand. Gently, she guides me, bids me to sit on the sofa.

‘Now sit down and explain to me what happened.'

Her voice is so kind, like it always is. Like when she asked me to take cake with her and when she quizzed me about the colours of tigers.

‘What play, Oscar? What happened in the play?'

What is in the room? What is it Stigir sees, as he lifts his head from the rug by the fire, that I sense as Mrs April squeezes my muddy hand. Is it the baby? Is it Blue Monkey carrying the baby in his arms, brushing past me, between me and the photo of the dead sailor husband?

I try to explain to Mrs April. To tell her what I know of love, of animals that are people and how people become animals and how demons roam where you least expect them. How Father told me it was for love that things happened the way they happened. Of the kiss in the alleyway, of Perch and of Carp, the fire in the coach-house, the speckled scarf and the flames embracing the altar. I cry tears now as I tell her. And the babe nestling in the arms of Blue Monkey cries for her mother. The babe, who has been so alone and lost all these years, cries and cries for her mother.

Mr April reaches out from the photo on the sideboard. He reaches to me, reaches for my heart from the depths of the ocean, where the seagrasses caress his face like the loving touch of his young bride.

I sob for all the nights I heard the sounds and all the stolen hours of the small boy alone in the empty dark. Mrs April holds me close and tight and rocks me to and fro in her arms. The smell of the scent of her: a healing balm. She asks me no questions, but something tells me she knows something of what has happened. And something tells me she will understand and will love me through it all. For I am but a small, crying child, tripping and tumbling in this terrifying business of meeting life.

‘Lie down and sleep, little boy, my little Oscar,' says Mrs April, as she settles me on the sofa. She strokes my hair, as dirty and matted as it is. She hums me a lullaby. Something in the softness of her singing, the coolness of her hand on my brow, lulls me into deep velvety sleep.

‘'Twas but a dream; but had I been there really alone; my desperate fears, in love, had seen mine execution.' Herrick

Down on the quayside it's colder than the ice in the crates. The screams of the seagulls are muffled by the bitter early morning wind. They sweep by in convoys, picking fish scales and slivers of flesh from the paving stones and the steps leading down to the boats.

On the air, every word freezes like frosted glass. You can see it from the mouths of each and every fish-packer. Nouns and verbs crystallise as they slip off the tongue, slide from the lips, then splinter and fall to the ground. A passing bird may catch one in its beak, mistaking it for a morsel, and take it high above the waves and the outhouses, the cranes and the fishing boats bobbing in the harbour. A ‘fool' or a ‘damn', a ‘silk stocking' or a ‘cottage pie', is let slip from the beak of a bird as it gulps in the air and peels away to make another assault, a downward spiral in search of scraps.

‘And what,' says Mrs Giblet under her breath, where no seabirds roam, holding onto words for all they are worth, ‘do you make of all this talk of sacrifice and ropes and children with flaming torches?'

She says all this to Muriel Innard. Neither woman looks up from the job in hand. The cold wet fish slipping and sliding in their grips. To be scaled and filleted and then tossed in a single movement to the coffins by their benches, nestled in ice, freshly dead eyes staring up to the stars above.

‘Daughters sacrificing a father, have you ever heard of such a thing?' says the second woman, her bloated fingers slimy with the blood and sheen of her work. ‘While we women sacrifice everything for our children and when they've gone and done with us we're left here to skin the fish for their dinners. Sacrificing the fingers of our hands so they can be fed.'

‘Blood is thicker than water,' the first woman says. ‘It's not natural. A child spilling her father's blood.'

‘The strangest of religions,' says the second woman, bracing herself against the cold icy blasts of the fish sheds, who each Sunday prays to angels and virgins to ward off the fires of hell.

At that moment, a tern, seeing the sparkling ice-droplets caught in the morning moon, swoops and spears them on the wing. Soaring high away to her nest on the South Bay cliffs, the tern feeds her hungry chicks on ‘sacrifice' and ‘daughters'. In the nest that night her babies sleep sound and contented, a sea of words swirling above their heads, peppering their dreams.

They look at me through the little spy-hole in the cell door. First one eye, then another. Some muffled conversation in the corridor, then another eye appears. I don't have to look at them to know they are looking at me. The guard says it is only for a short while that I will be held here. Just for the time of the trial. I even heard one say, ‘It's for his own protection.' But that's fine by me. I can hear the flap sliding back and forth. These adults don't know what to make of me. They think I should be frightened, should need to be looked after and comforted. But all the while I lie on this little bed like a prince in a castle. How can they know how safe I feel here? Here, in my priest-hole.

I first found out about priest-holes at school. It was during a wet lunchtime when I was in the library, looking at a book about medieval castles. On one page was a plan showing the thickness of the castle walls, describing how secret passages often ran through them. Sometimes there were priest-holes, tiny rooms built into the walls, so priests could hide if the castle came under attack. For nights after, I imagined myself to be the priest hearing the marauding Vikings battering the walls of the castle. The huge fortified door would splinter and, just as they rounded the corner to plunder and massacre, the screams of their bloodlust curdling the air, I would climb into the priest-hole, pulling the hidden door closed. They would never know I was there, though I could hear them rumbling past like an avalanche.

The spy-hole flaps open. Another eye stares into my sanctuary, amazed at the small boy who rests so peacefully in the little room in the attic of the town's only courthouse.

Maybe Armageddon will be late and I'll get old and die before it happens. So then, if Jehovah is not pleased with my sacrifice of Mr Fishcutter, I'll get a second chance. I hope I will know what I know this time next time.

These are some of the things I will do differently.

I will run away to sea to be a cabin-boy, if I get a yearning, and take my dog with me.

I shall ask Great Aunt where she was when the baby died and I'll cuddle the baby when she's resurrected for her second chance.

Here are some of the questions I want to ask Jesus when he comes back to look after us all.

Will everyone come back at the same age they died?

If they are very old will they be in good health?

If we have 1000 years to show Jesus we are good, when do we stop growing old and at what age are we grown up?

When the Devil is unleashed at the end of the 1000-year reign of Jesus will there be animals and demons and other sorts of things to confuse and test us?