In Search of the Blue Tiger (37 page)

Last night there was a terrible storm, but today it is calm and bright, the air fresh as dew.

Brother Moses and I walk down to the stream behind the hay barns.

I am chewing on a piece of grass that has got deliciously stuck between my teeth. I wiggle the stem with my tongue. Brother Moses is telling me a story.

‘One day, when I was about your age, I was down by the river, just like we are today. I was standing on the bridge over there. There was a whooshing sound and a huge carp sprung out of the water. It twisted in mid-air and bucked like a rodeo horse. Then, just before it disappeared back into the river, it looked me straight in the eye. I blinked and it was gone. When I looked down into the water there was barely a ripple on the surface. The image was strong in my mind, but was it magic or was it real? It doesn't matter. It happened. Like feeling the energy through the bark of a tree. It happens. It was a long time ago. Like I said, I was about your age, maybe younger, but I can remember it like it was yesterday. I went back to that spot many, many times, but as much as I willed it, I never saw that fish or anything like it again.'

I am looking at the bridge, so is Brother Moses. I want to say something, but I forget what it is. Where do the words go to when we forget to say them? I search around in my head, but they are nowhere to be found. There is magic and mystery everywhere. In the simplest things, like words we forget to say.

So I just smile at Brother Moses. He smiles back. Then we both stare at the river, waiting for the carp to spring us a surprise.

‘I have lost all, except what I have given away.' Antony of Bourbon

‘Everything will be fine,' says Brother Saviour, his hand lying gently on my shoulder. ‘I'll be with you all the way.'

I have a key, but we knock on the door. It somehow seems the right thing to do. As if I have already left.

I hear the shuffle and sound of the Great Aunt coming along the corridor. I tense slightly, but then relax as I feel Brother Saviour's hand squeeze my arm.

The door opens and there she is. She is taller and more erect than I ever remember her and her hair is tied tight and neat in a bun. Something in the colour of her eyes makes me think she is wearing make-up, but I can't be sure.

‘Brother Saviour, Oscar, welcome,' she says, the faintest hint of a smile.

Inside she leads us to the kitchen, pours water into the big copper kettle and places it on the lit stove to boil.

‘I'll make us some tea,' she says, busier in the kitchen than I've ever seen her. ‘Sit down, Brother,' she says, gesturing to the table. ‘And you can tell me your plans for Oscar.'

Then she turns to me, retying the apron strings around her middle.

‘Your Mother is not too well, Oscar. She has taken to her bed and will be there for a while. But you need not worry. I'm looking after her. She just needs to rest, to get her strength back,' she says.

We are standing by the kitchen door. I realise this too is unusual: the Great Aunt is standing. And then I notice a smell from the oven of something baking.

‘A pie,' she says, noticing me noticing the smell. ‘You're Mother asked me to bake a shepherd's pie. So I have.'

‘You can go up and see her. She's resting, but wants to see you. The Brother and I will stay down here and talk.'

Brother Saviour smiles and nods to me to go ahead.

Walking up the stairs, the warm kitchen smells following close behind, I feel I hardly belong anymore to this house, barely know what takes place here.

The door to the big bedroom is ajar. I peek inside and there is Mother propped up on pillows, her head to one side, gazing out the open window. It is not the dark scene I had expected. She turns and sees me and half smiles, beckoning me forward.

‘Come and sit on the bed, my little Oscar,' she says, holding out her hand to me.

Her hand is cold, but it's nice to hold it.

For a while she just looks at me. There's the trace of a tear in the corner of her eye, but she doesn't seem sad as she grips my hand. She looks at me for a while, as if she has something to say that's having trouble coming out. At last she speaks.

‘Your Father was a good man, Oscar, never forget that. But he was tormented and torn. He wanted adventure and found much of life just too dull. But he did the best he could and he never forsook us. Whatever else he did, he never forsook us. He was the man he was and he loved us in his own way. In the way he could.'

‘I know that. There's so much I don't know, but somehow I know that,' I say, happy to have found my own words.

‘Somehow I always knew he'd never grow to be old. That we'd bury an empty coffin.'

She reaches to the bedside table, opens a draw and takes out a small leather purse.

‘Here's something I know he'd like you to have,' she says, pulling out a shiny medal hung from a green and purple ribbon. ‘It's the medal he got for his service in Palestine. He was really proud of his time there.'

She hands it to me and I hold it in the palm of my hand, the soft ribbon caressing my wrist.

She grips my hand tighter and strokes and smoothes my hair with her other hand.

‘We'll find a way forward, Oscar. All of us will. You've witnessed things no child should be a part of …' she trails off, momentarily gone from me. ‘You'll look back on all this one day and there'll be stories to tell. Tales of a childhood less ordinary.'

Downstairs I can hear the deep voice of Brother Saviour, and, from somewhere from way off in the past, something that lights up Mother's eyes, the sound of Great Aunt laughing.

In Malaya, it is believed a shaman's strong links with the tiger goes beyond the grave. When he dies, the shaman's soul transfers to the body of a tiger. This ensures that the next shaman seeking contact with the tiger-spirit receives the magical knowledge of the first shaman.

I'm sad that I never knew him enough to grieve him. To know what he felt. Tiger cubs know their father even when he's gone. When he reappears on the horizon, passes through the territory, they know who he is, even though he's barely spent time with them. You should know your Father. So, maybe I'll come to know something more of him now he's gone. Some nights I'll feel his arm, heavy and protective, like the time when I was a baby and sick. Father, come back to me, sometime, when you're passing by. Let me know something of you. That will be enough.

Three dead men. Father, Mr Fishcutter, Mr April. Water, fire and water. Three lost bodies. And where do the souls go? If God is everywhere, then so are they. If I touch a tree bark, then the souls are there.

Dear Father,

I wrote a letter to Mr Fishcutter after he died, so I thought I should send one to you too. I don't know quite where you are, and I'm writing this in my new scrapbook in the monastery, so I hope you get to see it. I'm sad about what happened to you, but Mother spoke about you not wanting to get old and lose your strength and she says you would be happy this way. So I do hope it was all okay with you and you like it where you are now. I sat in my bedroom for a while before going back to the monastery. Blue Monkey was there on the window ledge. I told him that I was really happy with the Brothers. I asked him if he would stay on in the house and look over Mother and Great Aunt, now that you and me are gone. To look after them the way he always looked after me. He didn't say anything, but I know he'll be there for them and keep them safe.

I like it here at the monastery and I am learning a lot of new things. One is about time travel. If I get to really work it out I'd like to travel back in time to when you were my age and maybe we could play on the beach. Or if I get to be older before I invent the time machine then I'll come back and meet you on the boat just before the big wave and we can talk about grown-up things and spit into the sea.

Brother Moses (he's very little, I think I'm taller than him and he lived in a basket when he was small) says everything is always the way it's meant to be. I used to wish it had been different in our family and we'd been a bit more normal. Maybe even like in Dilip's house (he's the boy whose father you knocked out in the garden), with cushions with mirrors and little bowls of strange nuts. But I don't feel like that anymore. If it wasn't for you and Mother (and Great Aunt Margaret) and the family we are, then I'd never be who I am. I still love tigers and it would be really great to have a chance to be one in another life. But I'm getting to be happy with who I am right now and I'm looking forward to exploring the big wide world and growing up into it.

Right now I'm being taught by the Brothers here about God and how there's no single answer and how it's for me to work out what it all means to me. So I don't have to worry about Armageddon and all those scary things about demons and stuff. When me and Brother Saviour were working in the strawberry patch (I'm teaching baby strawberries to live on their own) he said maybe demons and sprites and ghosts and fairies and all those things people see are really time travelers in wormholes, which I think are like those you see on the beach when the tide has gone out. They are amazingly tiny and open and close all the time and decay before you can get into them. But it's only a matter of time before we'll be able to go into them. And then, who knows, maybe I'll come back and we can meet on the boat.

Then I can ask you if you thought of me before you drowned. And what it is you want to say to me when I see you on the boat in my dreams.

Anyway, I need to go now. Brother Moses is waiting for me in the library. Bye, Father, and thank you for Stigir, he's the best.

Love from Oscar (your only son)

‘From the wall into the sky,
From the roof along the spire;
Ah, the souls of those that die
Are but sunbeams lifted higher!' Voragine

Stigir and I walk through the orchard towards the gate that opens on to the small windy path that leads to the bay. On our way we check the strawberry bed. The runners are finding their way, stretching their own roots into the soil, almost ready to be cut away from the parent plant. Stigir squeezes under the fence as I push closed the gate. We run down the hill, the sweet smell of the sea enticing us onwards. In no time at all we are at sea level, sand and shells underfoot. At the far end of the bay is a high harbour wall and quayside. A schooner is unloading its cargo and seagulls hover and swoop overhead in anticipation of bounty. At the nearside of the bay is a small pebbly beach, empty save for an overturned rowing boat and the odd shard of driftwood. Stigir stiggers amongst the seaweed and rock pools, unsure as to what he's looking for, but excited to find it.

When I look to the horizon, shielding my eyes from the low-set sun, I see the billowing sails of a huge galleon ship. It stirs in me a memory, a sense of the future. Then the sunlight bounces off the sea and the ship disappears from view. Stigir snuffles around my feet and as I lean down to stroke him I see a beautiful steel-blue pebble, as smooth as a dolphin. I pick it up and put it in my pocket. Once again I scour the horizon – not a mast in sight. Then we bound off down the beach for an afternoon of fun.