Tiger, Tiger

by Philip Caveney

  “Excellent! I will, of course, give you a mention in the article.”

  “Really? You know, I’ve always wanted to see my name in the Straits Times. I was beginning to think I’d have to wait to see it in the obituary column.”

  Marion tilted back her head and laughed happily. She had a bright, infectious kind of laugh and Harry found himself chuckling, too. He watched her for a moment as she inhaled thoughtfully on her cigar, staring out across the lush garden.

  “I must say you have a delightful little home here,” she observed. “How long have you been a widower now?”

  The frankness of the question shocked him momentarily.

  “Seventeen years,” he replied tonelessly. “But how did you—”

  “I always make a point of finding out about people,” she replied. “Part of my reporter’s training. Actually, it’s interesting. I was widowed myself, six years ago; so you see, we’ve got a bit in common.”

  There was a brief, rather uncomfortable silence, but luckily it was effectively broken by the entry of Pawn carrying a tray of tea and biscuits. She placed it reverently on the table, all the while grinning happily at Marion. She was clearly waiting for an introduction.

  “Er … Pawn, this is Mrs. Burns. She’s a writer for the newspapers.” Harry mimed the action of opening and reading a newspaper to make the point more clear, and Pawn grinned even more and bowed low. “This is my amah, Pawn,” he told Marion.

  “Hello, Pawn. I’m pleased to meet you.”

  “Hello, Missy. I hope you like tea.”

  “I’m sure I will.”

  Pawn moved backwards into the house, bowing and grinning at regular intervals.

  “She’s a funny old coot,” explained Harry, as she disappeared into the house. “But a great worker and a marvellous cook.”

  “She’s obviously a treasure. Shall I pour?”

  “Oh, yes, please do.” Harry watched as she stubbed out the butt of her cigar in the ashtray and picked up the silver tea pot. She had small, dainty hands that belied her somewhat unfeminine appearance. Harry found himself thinking that she was the kind of woman a man felt he had known for a long time, even on first meeting. Harry was usually rather formal and uncomfortable with strangers, but with Marion this was certainly not the case. She struck him as being a very interesting character, and he found himself wanting to know more about her. He picked up the stub of her cigar and examined it carefully. It was of the small, mild Dutch variety, the kind of thing that one usually smoked with coffee.

  “I like Havanas myself,” he murmured. “Perhaps you’d like to try one of mine?”

  She shook her head.

  “No thank you. I’m sure it would be too strong for my taste. But you go ahead if you’ve a mind to, it won’t bother me in the least.” She smiled. “A lot of men don’t like the fact that I smoke cigars,” she observed. “They feel threatened, I think.”

  “Rather strange attitude,” said Harry, reaching for his cigar case. “Good lord, if a woman can smoke a cigarette, she can have one of these. You can smoke a pipe for all I care!”

  “Now that would cause some controversy!” She sipped experimentally at her tea which she took without milk or sugar. “This is delicious.”

  “It’s Darjeeling. I acquired a taste for it when I was out in India.”

  “I must say, you’re not like most military men I’ve met. Some of them are so set in their ways! Are you planning to head back to England when it all folds up here?”

  “Oh no, I rather think I’ll be staying on.”

  “Good. That’s refreshing. I hardly seem to meet anyone these days who isn’t looking forward to ‘dear old Blighty.’” She grimaced. “Personally, I don’t think I could stand the climate anymore. I’ve lived here most of my life and the thought of returning to cold, blustery Scotland would be most unappealing.” She switched the subject back to more immediate problems. “I expect it will take me two or three days to put the article together. Can you recommend a hotel in the area?”

  Harry frowned. He struck a match, lit his cigar and inhaled thoughtfully.

  “Well now, that might be a problem. I really don’t know anywhere nearer than Kuala Trengganu and to be honest with you, I’ve no idea how good the amenities are.”

  “Hmm. Well, perhaps you’ve a spare room here that I might commandeer for a few days?”

  “Well, er … there is a spare room, but—”

  “Oh, but of course, I could hardly impose on you that way. No doubt, you’d be worried about what your neighbours might have to say.…”

  “Not at all! I don’t give a damn what my neighbours think … it’s just—”

  “Well, that’s settled then! I’ve only one small suitcase and a typewriter. I must say, it’s very hospitable of you.”

  “I … er … yes … right.” Harry was slightly dazed by the skill with which she had handled the situation, but he couldn’t honestly say that he wasn’t looking forward to having a little company. “Well … I’d better tell Pawn to tidy the room out a bit. It hasn’t been used for a very long time.”

  “Now, don’t go to any great trouble on my behalf,” she told him. “Any old corner will suit me, so long as there’s a place to stretch out and a roof over my head. You know, Mr. Sullivan, I’ve slept in some strange places since I started this job, I can tell you!” She gave that infectious laugh of hers again, bright, bubbly, appealing. Harry felt the corners of his lips rising almost involuntarily.

  “Well, I’m sure Pawn will make it comfortable for you. Perhaps you’d like to have some dinner with me later on?…” He asked the question cautiously, afraid of being rejected, but she looked genuinely pleased at the prospect.

  “Yes indeed, that would be lovely.”

  “Oh … good. I’ll get Pawn to cook up something special for us. I hope you like Malay food?”

  “Nothing better.”

  “Right then. If you’ll excuse me for a moment, I’ll just pop in and get things organized. Do help yourself to more tea.”

  He got up from his chair and hurried into the house. In the sitting room, the large electric fan was whirring purposefully around, fighting a losing battle with the humid air. Harry found himself thinking wryly about this strange, forceful newcomer, Marion Burns. What an extraordinary creature she was, only here a few minutes and already she had wangled free accommodations for herself, but the strange thing was, that Harry had let her get away with it. Furthermore, he felt not the slightest bit put out by the incident and was actually looking forward to finding out more about his unexpected guest. He had to admit to himself that he found her very interesting, and it was a plain fact that he had not been interested in any woman since Meg had died.

  He found Pawn on her hands and knees, scrubbing the already sparkling tiles on the kitchen floor. She glanced up in surprise as he came in, for the kitchen was a place that he very rarely entered.

  “Ah Pawn, leave that for now please. Something more important. The Missy will be staying for a few days—”

  “Missy stay here?” cried Pawn delightedly. “With you?” she added hopefully.

  Harry cleared his throat.

  “The Missy will be sleeping in the spare room, Pawn, so would you please make sure that it’s clean and tidy?”

  Pawn grinned and nodded.

  “Yes, Tuan, I clean very well. I start now!”

  “Just a moment, there’s something else. Will you stay a little later tonight and prepare dinner for the Missy and me?”

  “Dinner? Oh Tuan!” Pawn clapped the palms of her hands to her face. “There is not much food for me make good dinner!”

  “Oh, that’s alright.” He put a hand on her shoulder to reassure her. “I’ll give you some money and you can take a taxi to the nearest market and get whatever you need to make a special meal. Now don’t worry about the expense, you get the best there is, alright?”

  “Oh yes, Tuan! I get very best!” Harry took his wallet from his back pocket and handed her two
fifty-dollar bills. She stood staring at them for several moments almost in disbelief. “There is plenty here, Tuan,” she said at last. “This will buy wonderful dinner for you.”

  “Good. And if there’s any change, perhaps you might like to buy that nephew of yours a little something.”

  Pawn’s grin faded and she shook her head.

  “He not deserve anything from you, Tuan. That boy promise me he come see you before, but he not come again. I am ’shamed of him. Now all he want do is talk ’bout hunting, be like Tuan Beresford.”

  Harry frowned. “I expect it’s just a phase,” he murmured sadly. “Anyway Pawn, there’s lots to do and not much time to do it. You’d better run along to the taxi rank now.”

  “Yes, Tuan, I go now. Clean room when I get back. Can I stop at kampong on way home, tell family I shall be late?”

  “Yes, surely. Don’t forget now, get the best you can buy!”

  Pawn bustled away to collect her shopping bag and parasol. Harry smiled at her eagerness to please. He wandered back to the verandah, humming softly to himself. Emerging into the glare of daylight, he saw to his surprise that both the rattan chairs were empty. For a moment, a dull sense of shock hit him and various irrational ideas flashed through his mind. Marion had panicked. Rather than go through the ordeal of having dinner with a dry old stick like Harry, she had made an escape and was now driving back to her newspaper offices, hell bent for leather. Worse still, she had never existed, she was a figment of Harry’s lonely imagination, the inevitable result of years of living alone. Or she was …

  The gate clanged open and to his relief Harry saw Marion coming back along the drive, holding a small case and a portable typewriter. Harry strode down the steps of the verandah, hurried up to her, and relieved her of the luggage.

  “Thank you kindly, sir! I thought I’d just get my things out of the car.…”

  “Certainly. We’ll put them on the verandah for now, until your room’s ready. Pawn has promised to make us something really special tonight.”

  “Lovely … ah, don’t look now, but I think your neighbours are having a good look at us.”

  Harry glanced up just in time to see a curtain swish back into place in the front window of the house next door.

  “Damned impudence!” muttered Harry blackly.

  “Inevitable though.” Marion smiled. “What are they like, your neighbours?”

  Harry stepped up onto the verandah and put down the luggage.

  “I’ve no idea,” he replied truthfully.

  “Then you’ve not lived here long?”

  “About eighteen years.”

  Marion raised her eyebrows. “Well … then your neighbours must be fairly new. Are they?”

  Harry shrugged. “I think they’ve been here … oh … five or six years.” He had never stopped to consider the matter before, but it did seem a ludicrous state of affairs. “I tend to keep myself to myself,” he added, by way of explanation.

  “That’s no understatement by the sound of it,” observed Marion. She followed him up onto the verandah and settled down again in the same chair she had occupied earlier. “At our time of life, we have to be careful,” she observed. “After all, no man, and no woman, for that matter, is an island. A person could get terribly lonely out here, you know.”

  Harry nodded. “I have a few good friends,” he said. “But sadly, most of them will be heading back to England in a very short while.”

  “You should move out to Kuala Lumpur, Harry. Things are a little faster there. There’s more to do.”

  “Well … I’m not so sure about that. I’ve never been much of a one for socializing. Too fond of my own company, that’s the trouble.”

  Marion nodded.

  “I used to be that way, until after my husband died. When you’re married, you’re rather spoiled for company … but of course, since then, the newspaper work has helped to introduce me to any number of people. And now there’s nothing I hate more than my own company. Friends are very sacred and important and the older you get, the more important they become.”

  Harry frowned. “Well, that’s your opinion.”

  “I think it’s most people’s opinion. But strangely enough, a lot of elderly people become frightened to admit how lonely they are. Perhaps it makes them feel too vulnerable, somehow.”

  Harry coughed nervously, taken somewhat aback by the accuracy of the observation. Marion noticed the discomfort she had caused him and quickly switched the subject. She took a small notebook from her jacket pocket.

  “I suppose we could start right away,” she suggested. “For starters, let’s be specific. Can you tell me anything about our man-eater, for instance?”

  Harry frowned again.

  “Precious little in the way of facts … of course, I could speculate until the cows come home. But if we’re going to begin with what I know for sure, then there isn’t much to tell. To begin with, he’s old, which in tiger terms will mean that he’s anything over ten years; but from what I’ve seen myself, I’d put his age at around fifteen years, which is quite exceptional for an animal living in the wilds.”

  “You keep saying ‘he.’ What makes you so sure it might not be a female?”

  “Oh, there’s no doubt about it. I’ve seen the tracks. He’s an old gentleman and furthermore, he’s badly wounded in his right foreleg, makes him walk with a pronounced dragging motion. I imagine it must slow him down considerably and that’s no doubt one of the chief reasons why he’s become what he is.”

  “Does there have to be a reason?”

  “Oh yes, absolutely. Contrary to what many people may have told you, a healthy tiger would never dream of attacking a human being. It’s not their style. They have their natural range of prey and they prefer to stick to it. Let’s say that they’re traditionalists. Tigers, like all other wild animals, have a natural and perfectly understandable fear of mankind. The only difference between your average tiger and our man-eater is that the latter has managed to conquer that natural fear, and you can bet that the major factor involved was the prospect of slow starvation if he didn’t adapt.”

  Marion nodded. “So why hasn’t he been caught yet?”

  “Well, you see, already we’re into the realms of speculation. I imagine his great age hasn’t dulled his wits in any way; on the contrary, it will have made him cunning in every sense of the word. The mistakes of youth have all been made long ago and luckily enough, he’s survived them. He’s not about to start making any more at this stage of the game.”

  Marion smiled. “It sounds very much to me as if you admire the tiger,” she announced.

  Harry nodded slowly.

  “Admire him? Yes, I suppose you could say that,” replied Harry thoughtfully. “He’s survived a long time, in a world where survival for creatures like him is becoming increasingly difficult.” He sighed. “Tigers and dinosaurs. There’s not much room for either of them in this new Malaya they’re building…”

  “Dinosaurs?” Marion looked puzzled. “I’m sorry, I don’t follow.”

  “Oh, forgive me. Just something a friend and I were talking about. Nothing really … but you know, I can remember this place when it was nothing but a few huts and brick buildings perched on the edge of the jungle. How quickly it grew. Estates hacked out of the forest; the British needed homes for their troops, who was going to tell them that the jungle should be preserved? So in went the bulldozers and the trees came down like ninepins. Wrong, all wrong. I couldn’t see it then, of course. You don’t, when you’re a part of it all.” He frowned, shielded his eyes from the sun. “Now here we are, years later and there’s precious little jungle left to cut down. The British are leaving, but the process will go on. The Malays have learned from our glorious example. Every time I go out, it seems there’s a new building under way, a new road being constructed. And every day they cut a little deeper into the green, whittling away at it, destroying the habitat at a terrific rate. Progress, they call it. If the animals of the jungle cou
ld speak, no doubt they’d come up with something far more appropriate.”

  “Basically, you’re an ecologist,” observed Marion.

  “No.” Harry chuckled, shook his head. “I’m a dinosaur.”

  “What is all this dinosaur nonsense?” pleaded Marion.

  “Oh, nothing. Just a little foolishness. But tell me, Miss Burns, do you think this article you’re writing will make any difference to what’s happening here?”

  Marion shook her head. “I lost that kind of naivety years ago,” she replied. “But somebody might stop to think about it for a few moments. That’s got to be worth something surely?”

  Harry did not offer a reply. He relit his cigar, which had gone out some time before, and sat quietly gazing out across his garden like a king surveying his domain. Marion stared at him for a few moments, but he had temporarily retreated to a world of his own making.

  The sun was warm, and it was very quiet in the garden.

  CHAPTER 23

  MELISSA STROLLED aimlessly along the road, her head down, her gaze fixed thoughtfully on its sunbaked surface. Her recent dip in the swimming pool had only served to cool her for a brief while. She had gone but a short distance in the direction of home and already she felt sticky and uncomfortable. There had been nobody at the pool she recognized, but she had been grateful for that. She had simply floated on her back in the cool, blue-green depths and let her mind empty itself of all the nagging worries that had so recently assailed her.

  She was glad that she was no longer feuding with Uncle Harry. Looking back she could scarcely believe that she had treated him so abominably; but he had been very kind to her the other night—cheerful, open, and so forgiving it had made her feel ashamed of herself. And to think it had all happened because of that stupid obsession with Bob Beresford, that ridiculous bet she had taken on with Victoria Lumly. How could she have allowed herself to be—

  “Hey there? Want a lift?”

  Melissa nearly jumped out of her skin. The vehicle had come up behind her but she’d been so lost in her thoughts that she hadn’t even noticed it. She spun around and found herself staring into the tanned and smiling face of Bob Beresford.