The Last Tiger

  They turned into an avenue lined with mature broad leaf trees. The houses were less concealed than before but still large, with smart front gardens and long driveways.

  ‘This is my road.’

  ‘Bit posh,’ she commented, ‘nice, though. You’re a lucky bastard.’

  There was no resentment or envy in her voice or any suggestion she may feel intimidated. It sounded like a sincerely delivered observation: he was lucky and she hoped he knew it, nothing more.

  ‘I suppose,’ came the reply. Since those first few weeks after moving in, Tuan had given his situation little thought.

  ‘You should see where I’m from, it would make your whiskers curl, Tiger.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ he replied, dropping an arm over her shoulder. A sound came from behind, scuffling feet and equipment. Char half turned, but Tuan raised an arm to prevent her from looking back. ‘Ignore.’

  ‘Oh you doubt it, do you? I forgot you were a tough guy. You know my brother is still after you, don’t you?’

  Taking no notice of her words, Tuan opened the gate and Char followed him up the long garden path to the large front door. Blue.

  One or two voices called out, asking who the girl was.

  ‘Fuck me! It’s quite a place you’ve got here.’ Char said quietly, as he unlocked the door.

  ‘Not my place. Giles’.’

  ‘If he’s your dad, stepdad or whatever, then it’s your place too. God, if my mum could see me now!’

  Tuan laughed, ‘Come in so I can shut the door and get rid of that lot. I’m sick of them. Fancy a cuppa? I tell you what, you go through there, that’s it, to the back garden, and I’ll be with you in a minute. It’s completely private. They won’t see us.’

  Char wandered off as directed, loudly observing that the house was filled only with old things. She let herself out into the garden and lay down under a beech tree.

  Minutes later Tuan joined her. ‘I see you have found my favourite spot.’ He strode over carrying two mugs plus a packet of biscuits tucked beneath his arm, ‘Here you are.’

  She sat up and took her drink, ‘It is so beautiful,’ she sighed. ‘I can’t believe you actually live here. You know, this is what I want, a place like this. Just like this. God, it would be perfect.’

  ‘Go for it.’ Tuan sat close beside her.

  ‘I will.’

  ‘I know.’

  She laughed, ‘No you don’t, little Tigger. You see me like everybody does.’

  ‘And how’s that?’

  ‘Quite pretty but a bit thick and an easy shag.’

  ‘Ooo. That’s sounds good. So when do I get the shag?’

  ‘You know what the rumour is, don’t you? What they’re all saying about that ball of string I gave you? They’re saying there was a condom in the middle, and ever since you and me have been at it behind the gas tanks every lunch time.’

  ‘And we have!’

  ‘Not exactly at it.’

  ‘No, but it’s been very nice…’ he leaned towards her for a kiss.

  Char carried on talking. ‘Yes. But we haven’t been at it. Not like that. Not like they mean.’

  ‘Well, I wish we had,’ his face broke into a broad grin, ‘but wouldn’t we need more than one? I don’t think you can wash them.’

  ‘It’s not funny,’ she giggled.

  ‘Then why are you laughing?’

  ‘It really isn’t funny. Kai actually told mum we were having sex, the little shit, and I had such a lecture. Like I’d be as stupid as she was.’

  ‘And why was she stupid?’

  ‘You what? Like getting up the duff aged fifteen isn’t stupid? And two of my sisters did the same. I mean the exact same thing.’

  Tuan frowned, ‘That’s tough. Aunty Char, eh?’

  ‘For me, condom or no condom, there is no way. Sorry if you thought… you know. I don’t mind a bit of… you know… that… but that’s all for now. Okay? I mean it’s not that I don’t want to because I do. I do want to. But I can’t take the risk. I couldn’t be like that. Like them…’

  ‘Listen. The truth is I would love to have sex with you,’ he moved closer, ‘I mean I REALLY want to. But I understand. And if you change your mind let me know.’

  ‘You’ll know,’ she whispered.

  Tuan steadied his drink on the grass and lay back, sighing. ‘But I can see why you wouldn’t want to risk it.’ He looked at her, ‘it doesn’t matter, honestly.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘So when do you think you will want to?’

  ‘Tuan. Bloody hell!’ She hit him and then lit the cigarette that until now had been tucked behind her ear.

  ‘Ow! Sorry.’

  ‘Anyway, it’s not about wanting to. Of course I want to. I told you. I wouldn’t let you touch me if I didn’t want to. It’s about more than that.’

  Tuan nodded in agreement, but he had no idea what she was talking about or what it was she objected to when it was so obvious they could have sex safely. After all, she was happy enough to let him explore every part of her body, exchanging interest willingly. The afternoon was not turning out exactly as he had hoped.

  As if she had read his thoughts: ‘In a couple of months I’ll be the age my mum was when she got pregnant with my sister. She thought she was being careful.’

  ‘But we would be careful.’

  ‘We don’t need to be, it’s not happening. Not yet.’

  Tuan felt slight encouragement from her final two words. It was so frustrating, he thought, wanting to be with her so badly while only having tastes of what it might be like. It wasn’t enough. He wanted to be inside her. It wasn’t as if he was desperate. He was having regular sex with a girl in Year thirteen and had been for the last six months. It was just that Char was so sexy.

  ‘Change the subject,’ Char said. ‘Let’s see your room, then. I’ve heard all about it.’ She stood up and tried to pull him with her.

  ‘Can’t we finish our drinks first? We have a whole afternoon.’

  She sat back down, close to him. ‘What does it feel like knowing this time next year you’ll be finished?’

  ‘Finished?’

  ‘Exams and stuff.’ She inhaled deeply from the cigarette, before stubbing it out.

  ‘Oh, that. Good I suppose. Although I’ll stay on for my A levels.’

  ‘What, at that crappy school? You should go to a sixth-form college, it’ll be loads more fun.’

  ‘You only just started that,’ Tuan said, indicating the extinguished butt.

  ‘I’m cutting back. First step is to smoke less of each one.’

  Gently Tuan pulled her into a lying position, and rolled on top of her, his elbows resting either side of her shoulders. He could feel her breasts pressing against him. ‘Good. I’m glad. So tell me about you? When the time comes, in two years? I know you hate school, but if you want a place like this you’ll need some money. A shit load of money, actually, and that means you’ll need some decent exams.’ He kissed her softly, hoping to encourage intimacy.

  ‘Guess I’ll have to marry a millionaire,’ she whispered, kissing him back. ‘Or work really, really, really hard and buy it for myself!’ She laughed, and heaved him off.

  ‘I’m not a millionaire,’ he said, deflated.

  ‘Did I mention your name?’ Sitting up and straightening her clothes, Char opened the packet of biscuits and offered him one, ‘The way I see it is I need to find something I really like doing and stick at it. Doesn’t matter what it is, as long as I can make it my own and go for it. That’s what you have to do.’

  ‘Like?’

  ‘Maybe hairdressing. And I know how that sounds to someone like you, someone with all this, but I could do it. You know? Take a proper course, find the right place to work, work really hard until I can open something up for myself. And then expand. It’s so obvious. I fucking hate school. All I want to do is get on with my life.’

  ‘Go for it.??
?

  ‘You keep saying that.’

  ‘Because I mean it.’

  ‘I hope so. You know what Tuan, any successful person I’ve read about – yes, I do read – they all, and I mean all, have worked and worked and worked their backsides off. It’s so simple. You just need an idea. And a goal.’

  ‘It’s hard.’

  ‘Not for me, it won’t be.’

  ‘You’ll need to study.’

  ‘No. I need to get out to work.’

  ‘Shall we go upstairs now?’

  ‘I said I wasn’t ready!’

  ‘I didn’t mean that. You said you wanted to see my room. And I want to show you something. I need your opinion.’

  Digestive biscuit clamped in her mouth, Char jumped up and followed Tuan into the house and up the broad staircase to his room.

  Once there, she immediately walked to the French windows and let herself out onto the small balcony. ‘I was looking at this room from down there, thinking how amazing it would be to have a bedroom with a balcony. And it’s yours. You are one lucky bastard.’

  ‘There’s an en suite through there.’

  She headed into the bathroom. ‘Oh my God, all this, just for you? I have got to have a pee in here.’ She shut the door, ‘You know what?’ she called above the faint sound of tinkling, ‘maybe I will sleep with you, if it means I can always use this bathroom.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘No, not really. God you can be stupid sometimes.’ She came out, drying her hands on her skirt. ‘Oh my God! What the fuck are you wearing?’

  ‘The thing that first inspired me about clothing. I saw it in a book Bee was looking at, and had it made.’

  Char sat down on the edge of the bed, staring.

  ‘Well? What do you think?’

  ‘I think you look like a right twat.’

  ‘I thought you’d say that. Now go back into the bathroom and wait until I call you.’

  She obliged, and when finally she came back out she had nothing new to add, apart from saying he would have to find a lot of courage to go outside dressed as he was. Still wearing his beloved frock coat, far too small for his rapidly growing frame, he also wore a loose collarless black shirt, more of a blouse than anything, and tight black trousers.

  ‘Take the jacket off,’ she instructed, and he did. ‘Put it on again.’ Again, he did as she said. ‘Actually it looks quite good, in a way, for a designer, I suppose. Be better if the coat fitted.’

  ‘I’m having a new one made.’

  ‘And you really plan to start wearing these things? You won’t exactly blend in, will you?’

  ‘I don’t care,’ he said, ‘I mean, I did a bit, when I first got it, but now it feels right. If I want to design clothes then I have to be comfortable wearing them myself, don’t I? And let’s face it; the press will never stop following me. Ever. They may as well have something interesting to talk about.’

  ‘Big head. Interesting?’

  ‘Char. Look at me, I am never ever going to look like you.’

  ‘I should bloody hope not,’ she covered her cleavage with her fingers.

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  She agreed with a smile, and stood up to inspect the full picture, ‘Your hair is getting too long.’

  ‘I like it long. Long is how hair is meant to be, that is why it grows to the length it does.’

  ‘Hang on a minute,’ she said, ‘I didn’t say you should hack the whole lot off, just the ends. They’re splitting and making it all look really ragged and dry. Why don’t you let me trim it a bit? Tidy it up?’ He looked reluctant so she added, ‘It would suit your clothes better if your hair didn’t look like it belonged to a fucking wino. Is that clear enough?’

  ‘Okay, okay. You win. Now?’

  ‘Now. Take your stuff off, I’ve got some proper scissors in my bag.’

  ‘In your bag?’

  ‘Yeah. I cut hair at school, you know. Pays for me ciggies.’

  ‘You do? I had no idea. When?’

  ‘Apparently when I’m not shagging you behind the gas tanks. Now get your coat off and sit on that stool in the bathroom. Come on, I haven’t got all day.’

  ‘What do you charge?’

  ‘Not a question to ask a girl with scissors in her hands. Come on, I want to go back outside now so let’s get on with it.’

  ‘I’ll show you some college prospectus’s I got, later on,’ he said, assuming her interest, as she started to tame his thick black hair.

  *

  When Giles arrived home he could hear laughter coming from upstairs, and after setting his briefcase in the study, placing his newspaper in the conservatory and putting a full kettle on the range he followed the noise. He hoped what he thought he was hearing wasn’t so, and that the boy was not entertaining a girl in his bedroom. He was tired. The thought of tackling Tuan was too much. Even the stairs seemed too much, but it would have to be done. Outside the door he paused, listening for an indication of what was occurring within, then he tapped, spoke briefly and without waiting for a response, entered.

  Through the open bathroom door, he could see Tuan sitting on a stool with a towel wrapped around his shoulders and behind him stood a girl Giles could only assume was Char Williams. He had met her before, briefly, but nothing was certain. He could not keep track of young people’s faces when everything else about them changed so regularly, and with her extra-blonde hair extravagantly pinned and twisted and curled the face could have belonged to anyone.

  ‘Oh, hi there Dad. Just in time to see Char give me a hair cut.’

  ‘Quite,’ was all Giles could think to say as he tried not to observe the girl’s too short skirt and tight blouse masquerading as school uniform.

  He retreated, excusing himself with the offer of tea, sliding away, shutting the door. He was a little shaken by what he had seen, not by the skirt or the blouse but the whole scene: a semi naked man having his hair cut by a woman in his mother’s old bathroom. Hadn’t Tuan been a boy just a few short years ago? Wasn’t Char only fourteen? Maybe she was fifteen. And what now? Should they speak later about busty girls in tiny skirts cutting the hair of near naked men in bathrooms attached to bedrooms, or should they be talking about relationships and commitment? And why exactly was the boy so popular with girls? In the paper, Giles noted, was an article claiming that young men were having stripes tattooed all over their bodies. Worse still, some girls suffered to have them decorating their inner thighs, and higher. Whatever was the world coming to? To see his discovery, the culmination of his life’s work, his own son, held up as an idol made him feel no better than when he read articles damning the boy as an animal.

  Publicity served only to remind Giles what it was he had sold. Sponsorship from the medical profession was one thing, but that was not all he had accepted in those early days when he felt only the overwhelming orgasmic explosion of blinding success and greed. There were others, some on the fringes of medicine others in the heart of commerce and now they wanted their pound of flesh. It seemed all too suddenly they were getting hungry and where once they waited, now they stalked, drooling at the sight of ripening stripy skin. Sometimes it was not such a worry, on those days when Giles felt it obvious the boy was beginning to enjoy the limelight. Anyone could see Tuan adored clothes and he was fast becoming one of the vainest people Giles knew, and so to think of him advertising products or designing clothes or whatever it was he would end up doing did not seem quite as criminal as at other times. But when those other times came, when Giles thought of skin care companies and tooth care companies and all the others that longed to see some return on their investment, he wanted to cry.

  *

  ‘Blimey he’s changed.’ Char remarked, ‘is he alright?’

  Tuan did not reply, oblivious to it all. He sat comfortably, enjoying the feel of light fingers as Char combed and trimmed, deciding that in future his father must wait outside until told to come in. Inside the house
at least, the balance of power was shifting.

  COMING OF AGE

  The festive season was over. Christmas had come and gone in mild greyness, a thin flurry of fat snowflakes arriving some three days late, which to the dismay of every child melted away to nothing where it fell. New Year staggered by in the usual fashion, a revelation for the lucky few and a new start for some, but generally bringing only customary anticlimactic disappointment for most. For the many choosing fashion over warmth, New Year’s morning rang in an icy desiccating wind, splitting lips and knuckles, cutting to the bone as it briskly siphoned moisture along with the last of the festive spirit.

  After too many days, the biting chill of this persistent northeasterly finally gave way to calmer weather, and although the air remained cold the sky was as clear and blue as a fine summer’s day. What was left in the wake of the ferocious front was a land purged, leafy remnants of the long mild autumn swept away leaving a world scoured and cleansed, if not somewhat naked. And so on the day they gathered, all were relieved at the change, some taking it as a sign from above and others as nothing more than happy coincidence.

  In the shadow of ancient Yew trees the remains of the first winter frost lingered neatly, a perfect sprinkling of glistening white against glossy green grass, its very presence accentuating the recovered stillness and a welcome return to peace. Those already congregated in patches of morning sunshine turned from their conversation to watch as the hearse and limousine slowly drew up, followed by a long cortege that peeled away into the main car park.

  More and more cars crunched a path across the compacted gravel, each unloading somberly dressed individuals, who, after silently straightening jackets and dresses and slipping on thick coats, pulling on gloves and patting pockets, took a sober moment to look beyond the immediate and consider what fitting words they might say. If it were not for the press lining adjacent streets, the atmosphere would have had all the composure deserving of any funeral.

  At the self-assured gesture of an elegantly dressed director, the mourners filed into the church, and as they seated themselves, so the richly elaborate coffin was drawn out of the hearse and upward onto four broad shoulders. The young Minister waited at the door, bible in hand, and as the bearers approached so he stepped to one side, allowing the coffin to be carried forth for all to see.