The Last Tiger

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ Bee asked.

  ‘I was thinking about the Steps, actually,’ he said, honestly.

  ‘Oh. Them.’ It wasn’t scornful, but Tuan felt a slight sting at the dismissive tone.

  ‘Yes, them.’

  ‘So what’s next? First you played in the jungle. As we all know, you then ate a live capuchin. Then you discovered that you didn’t know everything, even though there is not much sign that you have really learnt that because you’re still a know-it-all, after which you bravely rescued me from conversation in a library. It’s going well. Step five is…?’

  ‘Good to hear you taking it so seriously,’ he laughed, heartened that she had at least remembered all that had happened, even if she couldn’t respect it.

  ‘Of course.’ A flare of mischief travelled her face.

  His own face straightened. ‘Do you really see it all that way, Bee? Like a joke?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Bee!’ Tuan was prepared to nag to get the desired response.

  She groaned and shook her head, ‘Of course I don’t, you twit! I’m teasing. So what’s next?’

  ‘Really, really not a joke?’

  ‘Really, really. God! It was a joke. Sensitive or what.’

  ‘Prove it.’

  ‘What?’

  He smiled, ‘Prove it, Belle. I want to know if you have any idea of what I have been through, of the things that are important to me.’

  ‘Belle is it?’

  ‘It’s the only way to make you listen to me.’

  ‘I always listen. But I didn’t think the Steps were that important to you anymore.’

  ‘I never said that. Ever.’ He tightened, a young buck offended.

  After a long, eye rolling, sigh, Bee indulged him, ‘Okay. Step One, you left behind childish ways; Step Two, you sacrificed your own feelings for those of another; Step Three, you opened your mind; Step Four, you overcame fear. Satisfied? So, Step Five is…’ She peered at him over the top of the mug clasped in her hands, protection against the now cooling wind that had started whipping strands of hair across her face.

  Tuan sat in contented silence, offering no reaction, as was so often his way when happy with a response. A blackbird raced across the lawn in determined bursts, pausing here and there for the sake of caution, odd feathers lifting in the breeze. Tuan watched, marveling at the matt black of its plumage.

  ‘Well? What is it then? Is it to eat a blackbird?’

  He reached across and squeezed her knee with a finger and thumb, just behind the joint for maximum discomfort.

  ‘Ow! Stop it! Now you’ve made me spill my drink!’

  ‘Serves you right.’

  The bird hurried for cover, sheltering beneath the low branches of a mature camellia.

  ‘So?’ continued Bee, ‘Step Five?’

  ‘Step Five? I don’t know,’ he lied.

  ‘Yes you do, you know them all.’

  ‘So do you, apparently.’

  ‘Only what you have done so far. Come on, spit it out.’

  Tuan continued to watch where the bird had been, choosing not to look at Bee, ‘Step Five: to understand love and loyalty.’

  The words were solemn, and it was obvious to him that Bee was fighting the urge to laugh.

  ‘Love and loyalty, eh?’ she squeaked.

  ‘Love and loyalty,’ he repeated.

  She shifted in her seat a little. ‘And?’

  ‘And it’s done already.’

  ‘Done? I knew it! Step Five was, rather than Step Five is…?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You sneaky git. So for you to say I don’t know was a bit of an understatement? What we civilised cultures often refer to as a lie.’

  The attempt at levity floundered. Tuan saw nothing funny in the remark. ‘Maybe,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Maybe? I think you should tell me more. Like what does done actually mean? Your new head teacher, Mister Baxter, says done is what a turkey is…’

  ‘Complete. It means complete.’

  ‘I see. Seems you keep realising you’ve achieved a stage without even trying to.’

  ‘And what does that mean, exactly?’

  ‘Nothing. Only that… well… it isn’t much of a ritual that way, is it?’

  ‘How can it be a ritual with no one to guide me, with no one to set me a task, no one but myself to see I complete it? I’m not sure it has to be that way, in any case.’ Hurt sounded.

  ‘I didn’t mean anything by it. It was just an observation.’ Bee’s cheeks grew pink.

  He nodded vaguely, and threw the now cold dregs of his drink on the lawn, ignoring the spray of brown milk as it blew back over them both.

  ‘So, Step Five is complete? And so… who is it?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I hear there’s a gorgeous female tiger at the zoo… ‘ The pinkness deepened.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  He tutted, and shook his head.

  ‘I just wondered who the lucky person is, that’s all. And it’s completely complete, is it? If you know what I mean. You’re not… wondering about it, or in doubt. You actually do know?’

  ‘Of course.’ He turned to face her, ‘It’s someone who has been very important in my life, and been with me all the way through everything. That someone has opened my eyes, allowed me to see what love really is.’

  ‘Wow.’ Bee’s cheeks looked on fire.

  ‘I know it absolutely, although I think most people would consider my feelings totally undeserved, but I’m certain.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Giles. He has not been a good man all his life, I know that. But… I dunno, he really feels like a father, you know? I love him, and feel loyal to him. And even though he was so wrong before, I can see where he was coming from, why he took me. I had no future. And he’s been good to me, and caring. Anyway, the point is, if I can feel that for him then surely I understand both love and loyalty. It’s about removing judgment and embracing the whole. Isn’t it?’ The final question was rhetorical.

  Bee was silent, redness gone, face suddenly pale.

  ‘Bee? What’s wrong?’ Tuan could see something had changed. ‘Your hands are trembling. Look at that.’ He reached out and touched her mug, as if it might somehow help steady things. ‘Are you cold?’

  ‘A bit, but I’m fine,’ she said, softly. ‘Tuan, can I be honest?’

  ‘Always.’

  ‘I can’t help finding it weird. I don’t understand why you have forgiven him so easily.’

  ‘Easily?’

  ‘Okay. Not easily. But you have done what I haven’t been able to do, or Mum or Dad, or Pappy, yet you were… are… the victim. And what if he’d turned out to be a perv, would you feel the same way then? Could you then remove judgment? How would you then embrace the whole, how would anyone?’

  ‘Don’t be an idiot, Bee. You may as well say ‘what if he’d murdered my family’, or ‘what if he chopped off his mother’s head and put in a display case.’ He isn’t, he hasn’t and he didn’t. Love is within the bounds of what is real, Bee. At least, it should be.’

  ‘What is real is that he kidnapped you, Tuan.’ It was blunt.

  ‘And has been apologising for it ever since.’

  ‘Well, I think maybe you don’t understand love at all.’

  ‘Or you don’t. It’s about maturity, Bee, personal growth.’

  ‘Not something you’re short of.’

  He squeezed her hand, ‘You really are shaking. You feeling ill?’

  ‘Just tired I think. I didn’t sleep much.’

  ‘Bad dreams?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Usual.’

  ‘The man?’

  ‘No. The beach. But I don’t think it’s that. I’m feeling a little bit odd, I suppose. Coming down with something. I think I’ll go now.’
r />   ‘Already?’

  ‘Big day tomorrow. I need an early night.’

  ‘Bee! It’s not even lunchtime. Maybe you’re hungry, I’ll get you something, see how you feel then.’

  ‘No, I’m sorry. I’m really not feeling too good, actually. There’s a bus in fifteen minutes, I can get it if I go now.’

  ‘Let me see.’ Tuan reached for her forehead but she ducked away from his hand, stood up and walked off. Bemused, he watched her go.

  ‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ she called over her shoulder. ‘First day of school is always a biggy, but you’ll be fine. Especially someone as mature as you.’

  The trail of words began in the garden and echoed inside the house, finally severed by the closing of the front door.

  Tuan picked up the two mugs and went back inside, wondering what was wrong with Bee that would make her feel ill so quickly, disappointed that she had gone. Then he remembered his rumpled clothes, and strode up the stairs to set things straight.

  THE AMAZING TIGER BOY AND HIS TAMER

  Bee should have been with him, she had promised, but the man-boy with a face covered in stripes began his first day of formal schooling alone. He was not upset that she had failed to meet him, just disappointed not to see her. He gave no consideration to the fact that the day before she appeared to be sickening for something, or that she might be running late and would catch up if only he could find a safe place to wait. He thought only of the fact that it was she, and not he, who had judged handholding necessary. He could not see the point. He had tried calling and then given up.

  The nerves of the previous day had been left there, and Tuan woke up feeling confident. On leaving home, he discovered that very few journalists were waiting on the pavement outside. Compared to recent times the street was deserted, its emptiness lacking only cart wheeling tumbleweed and the distant bong of a solitary church bell to give it mood. A lecture from Giles regarding safe conduct failed to evoke any reflective thought about what might lay ahead, too busy as Tuan was fiddling with his iPod. Consequently, on seeing an empty street, he did not think for a moment that the pack had simply decamped to the school. In distinct contrast, the increasingly disgruntled neighbours had observed the change and understood the respite would soon be over; the press would undoubtedly return. They knew that someone as special as Tuan would never be left alone, that his entire life would spent in the public eye, and even if he finally moved on theirs would be a street forever branded and toured as the Home of the Tiger Boy.

  *

  At the school gates Tuan was instantly recognised, despite the thin cotton scarf obscuring most of his face, and as the press closed in, so he hunched against them, ignoring the hand that wrenched his cover clean away. Eyes down, lips sealed, he began making his way through them all in a slow and guarded manner. As a result of Giles’ risky attempt at creating normality by projecting the very same, Tuan had no special protection, and no welcome arranged to greet him at the gate, as they might a more willing celebrity. He cut a reticent figure and a paradox, for even as his vanity continued to grow exponentially still he could find no comfort in public attention.

  Identity revealed and his dislike of crowds unchanged, Tuan bolstered himself and, with extra effort, pushed on through. Flashing cameras and hollering voices pounded, but soon enough he found himself on the other side of the school gates. There, the constant calls for a comment on this, or a thought on that, bounced off as no more than wasted breath: he was safe, free of the crowd. He could breathe.

  The school was shabby. Built during the nineteen seventies it had the look of many schools from that era, of apathy and failure. To show resolve and pull away from years of neglect, the beginnings of an upgrade was in progress, although only in areas visible from the road. Red brick and big windows stood where once faded blue panelling and crooked window-blinds offered a disheartening hint of what lay within, of what still stood at the back. Giles had sniffed in disgust at the sight of the place, finding fault every step of the way. If the teaching had not been well rated and the staff so amenable, Tuan knew he would not have been allowed to come.

  A peculiar silence gathered as he strode up the steps and into the wide straight corridors of the building’s interior, pale and polished, smelling of antiseptic and feet. For a time, the fading cry of pleading journalists was the only sound chipping the quiet. Tuan felt the rise of anxiety as he stared at the masses, but students conveniently began falling away on his approach, giving him room to walk. No one crowded in for even those he’d already met via Bee, would not so much as look at him in a way that dared risk an exchange. As he and his space moved through the throngs of children and young adults, he felt their curious eyes rested upon him only after he had passed safely by. More than one girl that morning was surprised to feel something other than fright at the sight of him, he could tell. It made him smile inside. But all were cautious. He knew the rumour of monkey eating had not died with the revelation of his life’s story, and to many, Tuan remained a figure of fear, youthful minds preferring to believe in unruly desires rather than the more explicable truth, despite their equal drama. His appearance readily matched that of a blood thirsty and wayward brute of fantasy. Someone hidden behind him amongst the masses dared call out a jungle cry. He ignored it, its passing reaffirming the depth of silence it had broken.

  Tuan sensed the stares and read the hush for what it was and no more, for while animal-like instincts were a dominant feature of his personality, the human failing of paranoia was entirely absent. As he moved on through noiseless corridors he heard the slow rise of discussion far behind, whispers becoming louder until gradually the soundless vacuum trailing in his wake filled with the roar of excited and youthful chatter. He had arrived, he had shocked, and now, for the moment, they were satisfied. But soon the interrogations would begin, he knew. All it would take was one person to find the courage to speak, just as Jan had in the library. He wondered who would be the one to take the initiative, when they would do it and what guise it would take. Would it be one of the older boys, several years older than him despite their more youthful appearance, huddled nearby and staring aggressively? Or one of the younger children with their high pitch squeals under whose awe-filled gaze he had so often found himself once Jan had broken the spell. Whatever lay ahead he knew no one would simply introduce themselves as a matter of courtesy. They would require a pretext of some sort and he looked forward to discovering what that excuse would be.

  As directed, Tuan followed the signs for the Headteacher’s office and knocked. A voice beckoned him. On entering, he was faced with a young woman sitting at a large desk and for a fleeting moment, she failed to hide her surprise.

  ‘You don’t look like a mister,’ Tuan said.

  ‘No,’ she smiled, ‘the Head will see you in a moment, he’s just finishing a call.’ She indicated the closed door behind her. ‘He won’t be long. Take a seat.’

  Tuan did as instructed, and sat in a softly covered chair beside a water dispenser. He took a drink, thirsty from feeling on edge, and then gulped down a further two cups. When eventually the Head emerged, the bell had already sounded the start of the school day.

  ‘You must be Tuan,’ The tall man said, as he strode forward and thrust out a hand, ‘I can’t tell you how pleased I am to meet you at last!’

  ‘Thank you. You too, Sir.’

  ‘Bit of a handsome devil you are, aren’t you? Just as I’d heard. I can see a trail of year sevens and eights following around after you,’ he laughed. ‘Probably nines, tens and elevens as well!’ He turned with a serious face to his secretary, ‘Not you though.’

  Tuan could not formulate an adequate response, distracted by the man’s sentiment as well as the strong West Country accent, so similar to one or two of the staff at Whitegate, people he missed.

  He smiled and saw the Headteacher’s eyes dart a glance at his teeth.

  ‘I don’t bite, Sir,’ he said, sheepishly.

  The Head laughed,
‘Of course you don’t, and I’m very pleased to have you here. Any problems, you know where my office is. Anytime. Now, the day has begun and I suppose I should take you along to your class. You’re our only new pupil so I am glad you already have some contacts at the school. New pupils often band together, you know, but it’s much better to seek out friends amongst the masses, you sometimes find your real feet… the firm ones… sooner. Your tutor is Miss Waters. She has your timetable. Come along now. I think a number of people are very eager to meet you.’

  *

  Bee made it to school with exactly three minutes to spare, racing through the sprawl of journalists without a thought. She was hot and flustered, and not in the right frame of mind for the first day back. Year nine was going to be her year, she had decided. At least that was the plan. It would be the year she knuckled down, made choices, starting as she meant to go on. This was not an auspicious beginning.

  She flung herself through the classroom door and was relieved to discover the day was yet to begin, although Miss Waters shot a sharp glance. Making her way to a seat saved by a friend, Bee hung her bag on the back of it, wrestled off her coat and jumper and slumped down.

  ‘Bad morning?’ asked her friend.

  ‘Something like that. Can you believe the bus broke down?’

  ‘Not really.’

  Bee knew this girl, Anne Marie, was inclined to think the worst of everyone and so took no notice. Feeling far too hot to be sat in a class of thirty or more students, she began unpacking a few things. ‘Where’s Tuan?’

  ‘Not here yet.’

  ‘Not here?’ Bee was alarmed.

  ‘Well, he’s here, at the school, but he hasn’t come to class yet. I saw him go to Baxter’s office. You should have been here, Bee, it was amazing.’