Tiger, Tiger

Dennis laughed out loud.

‘Good heavens, Harry, give the poor lad a break, will you! It seems you’ve really got it in for him.’

‘Not at all, not at all! I just think people should show a little bit of resp – Ah, looks as though they’ve finally called it a day!’

Beresford and his partner were leaving the court. The Australian was pumping his partner’s hand in what looked like an exaggerated display of good sportsmanship.

‘Great game, Ron! Let me buy you a drink …’

Dennis and Harry collected their kit and walked out towards the court. Beresford eyed the two of them with a mocking glint in his eye. As he walked past, Harry distinctly heard the Australian say to Corporal Barnes, ‘Strewth, look at these two old buggers goin’ out for a bash!’ Barnes smothered a laugh, but Harry pretended he had heard nothing. He wasn’t going to let the observations of some jumped-up sheep-farmer from the outback make any impression on him. He followed Dennis into the court and closed the metal gate behind him.

Dennis had heard nothing of the brief exchange.

‘Let’s have a quick warm-up,’ he suggested. Then he laughed. ‘I say, that’s a bit of a joke. I’m sweating like a pig now.’ He trotted over to the far side of the court and Harry served a lazy ball over to him. They played for some time in silence. They rarely bothered to score the games; it was playing that they relished, not winning.

The white surface of the court reflected the fierce sun up at them and it was somewhat like playing tennis on a vast electric hot plate. After a few moments their clothes were sticking to them. Harry played mechanically, his thoughts not really on the game.

For some reason, his mind had slipped back to a much earlier memory, a memory of Britain before the last war. He was unsure of the actual year, but it had been a fine summer and there was a tennis court not far from the family home in Sussex. He had been a young man in his twenties then, with no thought of enlisting in the army, no thought of doing anything in particular. His family was rich and landed and though he would never have admitted it at the time, he was a wealthy layabout. Life at his parents’ home seemed to comprise an endless succession of parties, dances, frivolous social functions; and as the potential inheritor of his father’s land and wealth, he was considered very eligible by the young ladies in the neighbourhood and did not go short of female companionship.

But marriage had been the last thing on his mind; at least, until that particular day, the day when they had all gone to play tennis and Harry had spotted an exquisite young female on the court, a frail little thing, dressed in white, who played tennis like nobody’s business. Harry had watched her for ages as she dashed about the court, a look of grim determination on her pretty face. He had fallen in love with here then and there; and when his mother had wandered over to him to enquire what it was he was looking at, he had smiled at her and replied, ‘My future wife, I think.’

Meg. Sometimes in the night, he lay alone in the darkness trying to conjure into his mind, a vision of her face. He could not do it. Her features were soft wax blurred by time. In the end, he would have to switch on the light and fetch her photograph, just to reassure himself that she had existed. It frightened him, this loss of definition. It made him wonder if the past was not just a series of hazy ghosts set to haunt him for eternity …

‘Come on, Harry, wake up! You missed that by a mile.’

‘Hmm?’ The present came abruptly back into focus. Dennis was peering at him over the net.

‘Do you want to rest for a moment?’

‘Certainly not!’ Harry retrieved the ball and stepped up to the serving line. He flung the ball skywards, whipped back his arm to serve. An unexpected pain lanced through his chest, making his breath escape in an involuntary exclamation of surpise.

The ball dropped untouched beside him and he stood where he was for a moment, swaying slightly. He could not seem to get his breath and his heart was thudding like a great hammer in his chest.

‘Harry? Are you alright, old chap? You’ve gone white as a sheet.’

‘Yes, yes! I’m fine …’ Harry stooped to retrieve the ball but as he stood up, the court seemed to seesaw crazily from left to right. His racquet clattered to the ground and he flung out his arms to try to maintain his balance. Suddenly Dennis was at his side, supporting his arm.

‘Here, here, old chap. You’ve been in the sun too long, I think.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ protested Harry feebly. ‘I’ll be fine in a moment. Let’s play on.’

‘I don’t think we better had.’ Dennis was easing him towards the exit. ‘Come and sit down for a while, at least till the feeling passes.’

‘This is really quite silly … I’m alright I tell you.’ Harry was aware of anxious faces peering at him from the press of tables. He felt totally humiliated, an object of ridicule. He tried to detach his arm from Dennis’s grasp, so that he might walk under his own steam, but when he exerted any effort, the dizziness seemed to get worse, filling his head with a powerful red hum. He felt vaguely nauseous.

‘Here old chap, this way. Our table’s just a few more feet …’

Out of the corner of his eye, Harry could see Beresford and his companion watching the scene with expressions of amusement on their faces. The Australian turned to mutter something to his companion and the two of them collapsed into fits of laughter. Harry wanted to die of shame. He was lowered into a seat and a cold drink was thrust into his hand.

‘How do you feel Harry?’ It was Dennis’s voice, but it seemed terribly distant.

Harry forced a smile.

‘I’ll survive,’ he muttered. ‘Just a dizzy spell, that’s all.’

‘Alright …’ Dennis sounded far from being reassured. ‘I’ll go and fetch your stuff.’

‘But … aren’t we going to play on again, in a minute or two?’

Dennis didn’t answer, he just walked away, leaving Harry to brave the glare of two hundred sympathetic eyes. Harry could imagine what they were thinking.

‘Poor old man. Poor old man. Poor old man …’

And he knew in his heart that he would never have the courage to come to this place again.

Bob Beresford threw his kit bag carelessly into the back of his beaten-up old Land Rover, climbed into the seat, kicked the engine into life and drove away from the sports club, chuckling to himself. Honestly, these bloody old majors who thought they were still fighting a bloody war! Malaya seemed to be full of them. Bob still wasn’t quite sure what to think about Malaya. He missed the social life he had back in Oz, but it was plain that he’d landed himself a cushy number here with the repatriation scheme. The pay was excellent, considering that he only actually worked three mornings a week. The rest of the time was his own and though there wasn’t a great deal to do, he certainly couldn’t complain that he was overworked. The Gurkhas were a likable bunch of blokes who followed their various courses with quiet dedication. They never complained, though, of course, they had every reason to. After fighting Britain’s wars for the last twenty years, they were being surreptitiously swept under the carpet. In similar circumstances, Bob would have been fighting and yelling every inch of the way, but in this instance it was simply none of his business.

As he drove, his eyes kept scanning the screens of secondary jungle on either side for signs of life. It was his old man’s influence that had turned Bob into a keen amateur hunter; Roy Beresford had been an obsessive animal hunter most of his life. He was forever undertaking extensive hunting trips to New Zealand, after deer and boar mostly. Bob had never been old enough to accompany his father, but his earliest memories were of being in Roy’s trophy room, standing beneath the gigantic spread of antlers belonging to a fine stag. Roy had told him the story of that particular hunt a hundred times. Where most children got fairy stories last thing at night, Bob got true-life adventures from his dad and thus, it was easy to see how the hunting bug had bitten him. Bob’s greatest regret was that his father had died of cancer, long before he was big enough to accompany him on an expedition. Since then, Bob had been doing his utmost to wear his father’s boots and the need to do so had become a singular obsession with him. As yet, he had not organized himself into hunting in Malaya. For one thing, the territory was completely new to him and he felt that he would first have to find himself a good guide, someone who knew how to track in such a difficult environment. The land here was, for the most part, covered in thick inaccessible jungle and Bob didn’t much fancy the idea of wandering in there unaccompanied. But most of the locals he had talked to had displayed an astonishing ignorance of their native wildlife. Oh indeed, the Tuan was quite correct. There were tigers and rusa and wild pigs and even the occasional elephant out there somewhere, but why any man should be interested in going after the creatures was quite beyond them. It was part of the Malays’ simple, happy-go-lucky policy to get on with their own lives and leave the beasts of the jungle to do likewise. Bob lived in hope of finding a Malay with a more adventurous policy.

He turned left off the coast road and entered the small estate of houses where the army had allotted him a bungalow. He lurched the Land Rover unceremoniously into the drive, clambered out, grabbed his kit, and entered the house through the open door. Lim hurried into the room at the sound of his arrival.

Lim. Now there was one of the benefits of living in Malaya. Lim was his amah, slim, pretty, eighteen years old and Chinese. Bob had been quite particular in his instructions to the agency. In the few weeks that he had been at Kuala Hitam, his relationship with Lim had developed beyond that of mere servant and master. She lived in full time, and when the nights were long and lonely, which they invariably were, it was not her tiny room to which she retired, but the Tuan’s. Bob was careful to keep the situation well under control, showing little outward emotion for her. He was well aware that a large percentage of Chinese girls aspired to nothing more than marriage to a white man, shortly followed by a oneway trip out of the country of their birth, preferably to Britain or best of all, America. It was a part of the Chinese preoccupation with all things Western. Lim’s full name was Pik Sen Lim, but for reasons best known to herself she preferred to be called Suzy Lim. Most young Chinese girls had Western versions of their names and were anxious that they should be used in place of their existing ones. Lim knew too that once his work was finished, the Tuan would be heading home, not to Britain or the United States, but to Australia. Even so, she seemed to have resolved in her mind that anywhere would be preferable to her current home and never lost an opportunity of telling him how much she would love to see the Sydney Harbour Bridge or a kangaroo or an aborigine. But unfortunately for her, Bob was planning to remain a bachelor for many years to come.

She stood now, a smile of welcome on her face, attentive to any needs he might have.

‘Bob want drink now?’ She insisted on calling him by his first name, which had proved embarrassing on the few occasions when he had had company.

‘No thanks.’

‘You take these clothes off,’ she advised him. ‘I wash.’

‘Alright.’ He stripped off his tennis gear without further ado, ignoring Lim’s giggles as he strode naked to his bedroom. ‘I’m going to have a shower,’ he announced.

‘There is letter for you in bedroom,’ Lim called after him.

It was lying on the bedside table, airmail from Australia. He recognized his mother’s laborious handwriting. He picked it up, looked at it blankly for a moment, and then turned to gaze thoughtfully out of the slatted window. He could see next door’s amah, dressed in a brightly coloured san fu, pinning out ranks of billowing washing on the line. Above the rooftops behind her, a lushly forested hillside was framed against a sky that was cloudless turquoise. Bob looked back at the envelope and frowned. He pulled open the drawer of the bedside table, slipped the letter inside with four others, none of which had been read. Then he closed the drawer again and, turning, he went to the bathroom to take his shower.

Chapter 4

Harry prepared himself for bed. He felt fine now, as good as ever. He regretted all the fuss he’d caused at the tennis court earlier that day. The trouble was that the grapevine was so efficient here. Word would soon get around that old ‘Tiger’ Sullivan had had a bit of a turn. Well … let them talk! Why should he let it bother him?

Dennis hadn’t helped matters much, he’d fussed around like an old hen, trying to get Harry to promise him that he’d see a doctor. The very idea! Harry had never bothered with doctors in his life and he didn’t intend to start now. Leeches, the lot of them! Eventually he’d managed to persuade Dennis to push off home and leave him in peace. He felt sad, for he realized that the games of tennis would have to be crossed off his agenda and he did so look forward to them. But pride was a fearsome thing and it would never allow him to revisit the scene of such a humiliation. At any rate, Dennis would be far from keen to get him out on a court again, so there was little to be done in that direction. He would have to take up chess, something a bit more suitable for his declining years.

After all, that was the general belief, wasn’t it? That anyone over the age of fifty was ready for the scrap heap, obsolete, of no use to anybody; what did it matter how much they had achieved in their lives? Let them retire to a grim silent home somewhere and eke out their lives playing chess and doing crossword puzzles.

Harry frowned. My God, he was feeling bitter! Everybody went through it eventually, why should he be any exception? He undressed slowly, hanging his clothes in neat ranks over the back of a chair. Then turning to look for his pyjamas, he caught sight of his naked reflection in the wardrobe mirror. He froze, momentarily horrified by this vision of stark skinny manhood. Lord, the ravages that time made upon flesh and bone! It turned muscle to folds of saggy flesh, etched itself deep into hollows and crevices, stretched dry parchment skin tight across sharp bone ridges; and worst of all, it shrank you, turned your atoms in upon themselves, until you were literally a flimsy parody of your former self. Harry’s gaze moved quickly over his own reflection, from head to toe, pausing only over some particularly harrowing feature. The rib cage, over which the flesh was as thin as an excuse; the forearms, two lengths of knotted sinew from which the hands dangled like ungainly flippers. He glanced sideways to the dressing table, where a photograph of himself stood. It had been taken during the war, shortly after his arrival in Burma. It showed a tall, suntanned individual in khaki battle-dress, his muscular arms crossed over his chest, a mischievous grin on his handsome face. His hair was a series of thick black curls that had yet to be taken in hand by the regimental barber and he had not yet decided to grow the moustache that would later become a permanent feature. He moved over to the photograph, picked it up, examined it more closely. A dark rage flared up in his heart. Why, he was unrecognizable! His mother, were she still alive, would not recognize the hideous, shrunken wretch that he had become. With an abrupt movement, he snatched the picture up, with the intention of flinging it across the room; but in that same instant, his rage died, he felt vaguely ridiculous.

‘Bloody old fool,’ he murmured softly. He replaced the photograph carefully on the dressing table. After a moment’s thought, he laid the picture face down on the polished wood, reasoning to himself that if he did not look at it again, it could not antagonize him.

He moved back to his bed, found the pyjamas he had been looking for, and dressed himself in them. He did not look in the wardrobe mirror again that night.

The hunger that Haji felt in his belly was now a scream, a wide gaping scream that begged to be crammed tight-shut with a plug of raw, bloody meat; yet even in the midst of his hunger, he kept control. As he crept through the darkness, every sense stayed alert. His pupils had dilated to their fullest extent, enabling him to see quite clearly. He was patrolling the road just below Kampong Panjang, for into his head had come the idea that here his luck might change. His usual fear of the Uprights had been made more flexible by the current predicament in which he found himself. He worked his way along a monsoon ditch at the base of a short decline which led down from the road. The night was fine and clear and, for the moment, silent save for the steady background of insect noise. Patches of vividly coloured wild orchids perfumed the air. Haji began to think that he had made a mistake coming here. There was no movement amongst the trees and bushes, only the soft sighing of a night breeze. He paused for a moment to listen, his head tilted to one side. Now, he could faintly discern another sound, rising gently above the noise of the wind. Distant, mournful, it rose and fell in a cadence. Haji waited. The sound gradually became clearer. It was an Upright, coming along the road, singing. Haji dropped low on his belly and crept silently up the slope to peer over the rise.

An Upright cub was strolling towards him. More interestingly, the boy was leading a skinny white cow on a piece of rope. All this Haji saw in an instant and then he dropped down again, to glide along the ditch, so as to come up again behind the cow. The nearness of the Upright cub made him nervous, but the prospect of the cow’s red flesh was too tempting a proposition for him. He stole along for twenty yards or so, then waited for a few moments, his ears alert to the sound of bare feet and hard hooves on the dry dirt surface of the road. At last, he turned and moved swiftly up the bank, until he was crouched on the edge of it, some ten yards behind the Upright and his cow. The beast’s flanks waddled in invitation. Haji began to inch forward.

The cow became abruptly nervous. She snorted, pulled back on the rope. The cub stopped singing, and turning he yelled something at the frightened creature. He began to tug at the rope, but the cow would not go along. She began to low in a deep, distressed tone, wrenching her head from side to side. Haji, afraid of the sounds attracting more Uprights, launched his attack, taking the intervening gap at a steady run. Glancing up, the cub saw Haji and gave a scream of terror. He stood transfixed, still clutching the rope.

Haji launched himself onto the cow’s back, his claws extended to grip the animal’s shoulders. At the same time, he bit down into the nape of the cow’s skinny neck with all his force, his great yellowed canine teeth crushing nerves and blood vessels. The combined weight and impetus of his leap bore the cow, bawling and squealing, to her knees. Haji swung his weight sideways, twisting his prey around, while his jaws took a firmer hold on the creature’s throat.

At last, the cub had the presence of mind to relinquish his grip on the rope. Half-deafened by Haji’s bellowing roars, he stumbled backwards, away from the nightmare that had suddenly engulfed his most precious possession. The cow was kicking feebly, her eyes bulging as the tiger’s jaws throttled the life from her. The cub tripped, sprawled on the road, and the shock of the fall finally returned his voice to him. Screaming with terror, he staggered upright and began to run in the direction of the kampong.

Haji was intent on his kill. The cow’s struggles were becoming weaker and Haji’s mouth was filling up with the delicious taste of hot blood. He gave a couple of powerful wrenches from side to side, in order to hasten the end. At last, the cow gave a final convulsive shudder and was still. Anxious to waste as little time as possible, Haji swung the creature around and began to drag it, in a series of violent jerks, towards the bank. In doing so, he displayed the awesome power that tigers have at their disposal. It would have taken six strong Uprights to even move the cow three inches to left or right, but within a few moments, Haji had dragged the white carcass across the road and had dropped it over the steep bank. Once there, he leaped down beside it and began to jerk it along, deeper into the jungle, pulling it between bushes and over rocks, an incredible task. The cow’s long horns were jamming in roots and behind tree trunks and Haji had to keep backtracking, in order to release them. He went on, though, covering an amazing distance over such difficult terrain. In this matter, Haji displayed the characteristic guilt that tigers always felt when they had killed a domestic animal or, for that matter, an Upright. He dragged the kill much further than he would have had the beast been his natural prey, a wild pig or a rusa. Despite his awful hunger, he rejected two perfectly good feeding spots and did not call a halt until he was a mile and a half from the scene of the kill. At last, he dropped the cow in a sheltered hollow, where there was a flowing stream in which he could slake his thirst. He then settled down to eat.

As was always his habit, Haji began with the rump, tearing ravenously at the soft flesh and ripping it away in huge mouthfuls, which he virtually swallowed whole, such was his haste. His feasting was accompanied by a series of hideous noises, slurps, grunts, the dull crunching of brittle bones. As his hunger diminished, he began to take more time over the meal, savouring the raw meat and chewing it more thoroughly. From the rump, he moved to the thick flesh between the cow’s thighs and then he tore open the stomach, spilling the entrails onto the ground. These he also devoured, but then he paused in his eating to drag the cow forward a few yards, thus leaving the foul-tasting rumen pouch safely out of the way. By the time his appetite was truly fulfilled, he had eaten almost half of the carcass. He crept over to the stream and drank deeply, lapping up the water with his great, rasping tongue until his stomach was bloated. Then with a deep rumble of satisfaction, he strolled back to the carcass, walked proudly around it a few times, then backed up to it and with his slender rear legs, he began to kick dry grass over the remains. He did this for several minutes, but turning he saw that the white hide was still clearly visible. He went over to a thick clump of ferns, tore them from the ground with his mouth and turning back, deposited the whole clump on top of the dead cow. He paraded around the slain beast again, critically surveying his handiwork. He paused a couple of times, to kick more grass over it from different angles. At last, satisfied with his efforts, he moved away from the kill and sat, licking contentedly at his bloody paws for a while. For the first time in days, he felt content, and he shaped the feeling of well-being into a loud blasting roar of triumph, which echoed in the silence of the night and sent flocks of slumbering birds flapping from the treetops in alarm. The sound of his own voice pleased him, and he sent another roar close on the heels of its predecessor, then another, and another, great sonorous exhalations that could be heard for miles in every direction.

Then, well pleased with himself and his night’s hunting, he sauntered away to find a secure place to sleep for the night.

A distant sound woke Bob Beresford from a shallow, dreamless sleep. He lay for a moment, staring up at the darkened ceiling and wondering where he was. For a few seconds, he had the fleeting impression that he was aboard an aeroplane; but then he realized it was just the noise and the cool breeze from the large electric fan above his head. It had not been that noise that woke him though. He lay still, listening intently, and after a couple of minutes he could discern the sound again – a long, mournful wail, distorted by distance. It might have been anything. A locomotive horn, perhaps, from the iron mine over at Padang Pulst …