The Time Traveller and the Tiger

by Tania Unsworth

  The lines in Uncle John’s forehead seemed to deepen. He was silent for so long that Elsie thought he wasn’t going to answer.

  ‘I have to keep it because I was the one who killed it,’ he said at last. ‘I shot it when I was twelve years old.’

  Elsie stared at him.

  ‘It was the worst thing I ever did,’ Uncle John said.

  Kelsie soon got the hang of the rodeo. Everyone’s eyes were fixed on her tall grayceful figure as she galloped into the ring and swung her lassoo at a—

  ‘Do you think it hurts cattle when they get lassoed at rodeos?’ Elsie asked Uncle John, as they sat in the living room that afternoon.

  ‘Probably not. I suppose they get rather used to it.’

  Elsie liked the way he didn’t appear surprised by the question.

  ‘But they also do it to calves which doesn’t seem fair,’ Elsie said. ‘Calves must be easy to catch.’

  ‘Calves are pretty nimble,’ he said. ‘I expect they run around a lot.’

  Uncle John seemed to take everything she said very seriously. Elsie liked that too.

  After breakfast, he had shown her around the house, and then they had taken a walk through the village. Elsie couldn’t help her heart sinking at the sight of it. It was so quiet. Nobody stirred to open a door, or raise a window, or stroll down the main street. The only thing that moved was the stream, running under a stone bridge in the village centre.

  They came to a broad, grassy hill sloping above the village. At the base of the hill there was a stretch of railway track, overgrown with weeds and stringy-looking grass.

  ‘Doesn’t the train come through here any more?’ Elsie asked.

  Uncle John shook his head. ‘They closed the line a while back. But it was always a dangerous place. A long time ago, a little boy was killed by a train not far from here.’

  ‘That’s terrible.’

  ‘He was only two years old,’ Uncle John said. ‘He’d wandered off from his babysitter and somehow found his way on to the tracks.’

  Uncle John pointed to a line of trees at the top of the hill. ‘I was walking in those woods when it happened…’

  ‘It must have been awful,’ Elsie said.

  Uncle John gave her a worried look. ‘Well, as I said, it was a long time ago. Perhaps we should be getting back. How does a cup of tea sound? I have three different kinds of biscuits.’

  ‘That’s nice,’ Elsie said, although she felt certain it was only about five minutes since they’d had breakfast.

  ‘You can’t go wrong with biscuits,’ Uncle John said.

  For someone who was so old, Uncle John didn’t own many things. Most people’s homes were full of stuff. Knick-knacks, fancy cushions, souvenirs from places they’d visited. Uncle John’s house was so empty, it made what he did have stand out. A painting of old wooden boats on a river, a framed certificate from when he became a doctor, a pair of curved knives with polished black handles hanging on the wall above the fireplace.

  ‘They’re ceremonial Gurkha knives,’ he told her. ‘My father was presented with them in India. He was in the army, you know.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, a lot of people went into the army in those days.’

  ‘No, why was he presented with them?’

  ‘Oh.’ Uncle John paused. ‘I have absolutely no idea,’ he said.

  After she drank her tea, Elsie went to explore the back garden. It was large, with a lot of rose bushes and a lawn that led downhill to the stream. Elsie stood on the bank, staring at the brown, fast-flowing water. She had hoped she might go swimming, but she saw it was too shallow for that.

  She could paddle at least, although she thought she ought to save that for the next day. There was so little to do at Uncle John’s house that any activity – even paddling – would have to be strictly rationed. And looking forward to something always made it a bit more fun.

  She sighed. Kelsie Corvette never had to invent things to look forward to. Or paddle, for that matter. In chapter fifteen of The Incredible Adventures – for a dare – Kelsie had swum all the way across a lake, and then – for another dare – swum all the way back again.

  Elsie trudged up the lawn. As she approached, Uncle John came out with a watering can. Elsie followed him around the side of the house.

  He had gone into a greenhouse. Elsie gasped when she peeped around the door. The greenhouse was as crowded as the main house was empty. She could hardly see Uncle John among all the ferns and leaves. The air was warm and wet and filled with the overpowering scent of flowers.

  ‘Did you… grow all this stuff?’ Elsie asked.

  ‘I don’t really have to do much, apart from watering,’ he said, although there was a pleased look on his face.

  ‘It smells lovely.’

  ‘That’s probably the jasmine,’ he said, showing her a cluster of tiny white flowers. ‘This variety is called “Belle of India”. Over there is oleander, which also has a strong fragrance. My mother used to grow it in our garden. Also, marigolds, although those spread everywhere…’

  ‘Are all these plants from India?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ he said. ‘Almost everything grows there, you know.’

  He put down his watering can and limped to a row of pots on the far side of the greenhouse. ‘These are orchids,’ he said. ‘I’m not having a great deal of luck with them.’

  They weren’t much more than yellowish stalks, Elsie thought, although she was too polite to point it out.

  ‘One of them did produce a bud a few years back,’ he said. ‘So there’s reason to hope.’

  Her mother was right. Uncle John could be stubborn once he got an idea in his head.

  ‘Is there anything in here?’ Elsie pointed to a larger pot, filled almost to the brim with soil.

  Uncle John smiled. ‘Yes. A seed. I planted it more than seventy years ago.’

  Even for Uncle John, this was taking stubbornness a bit far, Elsie thought.

  ‘Shouldn’t it have… done something by now?’

  He shook his head, still smiling. ‘It’s from a rather special plant. They say it only grows once in a person’s lifetime. The seed lies in the ground for decades, dry and seemingly dead. Then it sprouts and flowers all in a single night. I’ve never seen it myself, so I don’t know if it’s true. It’s extremely rare, possibly the rarest plant in the world.’

  Elsie stared into the pot. ‘Where did you get the seed?’

  ‘I was given it by a friend, on my very last day in India. His name was Mandeep. He pressed it into my hand as we said goodbye. It was said to have strange powers, he told me. Its name means “the flower that catches time”.’

  ‘Why did he give it to you?’

  ‘I think he wanted to make sure I would always remember that moment,’ Uncle John said. ‘Not that I could ever forget. He was more of a brother than a friend, you see. You could say we grew up together.’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Uncle John’s eyes were sad. ‘I never saw him again.’

  Elsie’s mother called that evening to see how she was getting on.

  ‘Good,’ Elsie said. ‘We’re watching TV.’

  She had seen the film before, although it still didn’t make much sense the second time around. A lot of men wearing kilts sat in a castle arguing with each other. Then there was a battle in which everyone died except the main characters.

  Elsie wondered if the others knew in advance that they were only going to last three minutes before getting hit by an arrow. She thought they probably did. There was something almost cheerful about the way they yelled as they ran to their doom. As if they knew they had to make the best of it.

  They were like the kids in her school who had to stand at the back of the choir with smiles on their faces, even though all they were allowed to do was hum.

  Elsie knew exactly what that felt like.

  On the first day of rehearsals for the school concert, she had started out in the fron
t row.

  ‘There’s a dark and a troubled side of life,’ she had sung. ‘There’s a bright and a sunny side too.’

  The song began slowly, then built to a rousing chorus. Elsie raised her voice enthusiastically.

  ‘Keep on the sunny side! Always on the sunny side! Keep on the sunny side of—’

  A pained expression crossed the face of Mr Nunes, the music teacher. He gestured for silence.

  ‘It’s a difficult tune,’ he said, looking at Elsie. ‘Perhaps it would be better if you hummed instead.’

  And she had to go and stand at the back with all the other hummers.

  That evening, in chapter twenty-six of The Incredible Adventures a similar thing happened to Kelsie Corvette. Except that out of everyone in the choir, she was the only person who didn’t have to hum.

  You are so good you make the rest sound dingy, Mr N said. A look of awe crossed his normally critickal features. Your voice could tame the heart of even the most savidge beast it makes me want to cry from happyness…

  In the film, the men in kilts were still fighting. Elsie glanced at Uncle John in the armchair opposite. He looked as if he had fallen asleep.

  ‘Uncle John?’ she whispered.

  He gave an odd, startled sound that made Elsie feel embarrassed and sorry for him at the same time.

  ‘Just resting my eyes,’ he said. He looked at the slow-ticking clock on the mantelpiece. ‘Perhaps it’s time to turn in.’

  ‘Okay,’ Elsie said, although it was only eight-thirty.

  There was a group of photographs arranged next to the clock. She saw a familiar face. ‘That’s Mum!’ she said. ‘And me when I was a baby.’

  ‘It was taken just after you were born,’ Uncle John said.

  Her mother looked as if she had fallen downstairs, Elsie thought.

  ‘Those are my parents,’ Uncle John said, pointing to a faded, yellowish picture. They were standing stiffly side by side, the woman dressed in white, the man in a belted jacket, his eyes hidden under the brim of a rigid, bowl-shaped hat.

  ‘It’s a solar topee,’ Uncle John told her. ‘We had to wear them in India, whenever we went out.’

  ‘Who’s that?’ Elsie pointed to the only other photograph on the mantelpiece, a black-and-white portrait of a young woman sitting on top of a gate. She was wearing a flowery dress, very narrow at the waist, and old-fashioned shoes. Her hair had been set in neat waves, although a strand had come loose in the wind, and her hand was raised as if to brush it off her face.

  It was a lovely picture, partly because the woman was so pretty, but mostly, Elsie thought, because she seemed so fun. She looked as if she was about to burst into laughter or jump up and do a handstand on top of the gate.

  ‘That’s Colleen,’ Uncle John said.

  There was such meaning in his voice when he said the name that Elsie was suddenly sure this was the girl her mother had told her about in the car. The one Uncle John had wanted to marry.

  ‘I haven’t seen her in nearly sixty-four years.’

  ‘Why not?’

  He glanced away, his mouth tight. ‘The little boy who was killed by the train was her nephew,’ he said. ‘She was the one babysitting him that day. Her family left the village shortly after, and never came back. Too many memories, I suppose.’

  ‘You could try looking her up on Facebook,’ Elsie ventured, in an effort to lift his spirits. Old people liked looking up other old people on Facebook.

  He looked at her. ‘Yes, there’s always that,’ he said with a smile.

  She followed him as he went up the stairs. The door to the spare room was still closed. Elsie thought of the tiger’s glass eyes, pinned in sightless gaze on the other side.

  ‘Uncle John, can I ask you something?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘If killing that tiger was the worst thing you ever did, why did you do it?’

  He nodded, as if he’d been expecting the question. ‘I didn’t think the tiger was going to be there,’ he said. ‘I ought to have done. I’d been tracking it all morning. But somehow, I didn’t believe I’d actually find it. And suddenly there it was. It wasn’t looking at me or going anywhere. It was just standing. As if it was in a dream… or I was.’

  He paused. ‘It wasn’t until I heard the shot, and saw it go down, that I fully understood it was real. Does that make sense to you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Elsie said.

  ‘That’s a good answer,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure it makes sense to me either.’

  The problem with going to bed early, Elsie thought, was that you woke up early too. It was still dark, although when she looked through the curtains, she could see dawn wasn’t far away. The sky was growing grey above the distant woods.

  She put on her clothes and crept downstairs, pausing at every creak in the floorboards. In the kitchen, she hesitated, wondering if she could make a cup of tea. The kettle was already on the stove. It was one of those old-fashioned stoves that you had to light by hand. Elsie fished in the drawer for a box of matches before realising that she hadn’t filled the kettle. She picked it up and took it to the sink.

  The kitchen was at the side of the house. Through the window above the sink she could see the path and the front of the greenhouse, the panes bright with early morning light.

  The door of the greenhouse was slightly open.

  It wasn’t important, Elsie thought. Then she remembered Uncle John’s struggle with the orchids. The delicate plants might be damaged if they got chilled. She slipped her bare feet into her trainers, grabbed her jumper hanging over the back of a chair and went outside. It was colder than she expected. She hurried down the path.

  A broom that had been leaning against the side of the greenhouse had slipped. The handle was wedged half-in, half-out of the door. Elsie bent to pick it up, opening the door wider, and casting an anxious glance inside.

  The damp air had a milky sheen, the plants shrouded in a light mist. She straightened up, staring. Through the fronds of palm and trailing fern, she had a clear view to the other side of the greenhouse, to the orchids and Uncle John’s empty pot.

  It was no longer empty.

  Elsie approached it, wondering if she was mistaken. But it was the same pot, the same glazed sides and weathered rim. Two broad, waxy green leaves had appeared from the dry earth. Between them, a solitary flower, shaped like a lily.

  It was blue, the way hills are blue. When they are so far away, they have almost turned to sky.

  She had to tell Uncle John. She had to run and get him out of bed. But Elsie couldn’t move.

  The flower had a single petal, curled in a spiral. The more Elsie stared at it, the more it reminded her of those optical illusions which always – no matter how hard you try – lead your eye right back to where you started. What made it more confusing was that instead of growing darker towards the centre, like most flowers, this one grew lighter.

  Perhaps that was why it seemed so much bigger on the inside than the outside, she thought.

  The flower had a strange scent. Elsie didn’t know what it reminded her of, or even how she would describe it. It was both extraordinarily sweet, and extraordinarily bitter. Yet instead of cancelling each other out, each element seemed only to increase the strength of the other…

  She had to get Uncle John. She had to fetch him now.

  Elsie bent her face close, inhaling the scent again.

  The flower that catches time.

  Could that be what she was smelling? Elsie wondered. Could it be time itself?

  PART 2:

  The Flower that Catches Time

  1946. CENTRAL INDIA.

  Everything was the same. Except there was more of it.

  It was warmer, and ten times brighter, and the plants on all sides seemed to have grown clean out of their pots. The ficus shrub on Elsie’s right was as tall as a tree. She took a step backwards.

  It wasn’t as tall as a tree. It was a tree. There was another behind it. Uncle John’s orchids
had escaped and were running up the branches. A bird whistled.

  Elsie felt a stab of alarm, thinking of it trapped against the greenhouse glass. Then she saw there was no glass. She whirled around. There was no broom handle holding the door open. No door either. Only a track curving away, dappled with the shadows of trees.

  The plants weren’t from India. They appeared to be actually in India.

  It was very quiet. The steady rasp of insects and the trill of a far-off bird only intensifying the silence.

  Elsie’s eyes widened, her gaze darting from tree to tree, her mind paralysed by disbelief. Then she took a juddering breath and tried to gather her senses. She knew she wasn’t dreaming. But perhaps it would be best to tell herself she was. It was all a dream. Waking up, filling the kettle, seeing the open door of the greenhouse…

  Something stung her arm. She slapped it automatically.

  ‘Ouch!’ she said out loud.

  It was a very life-like dream, she thought, examining the spot of blood above her elbow.

  She heard a steady, drumming sound. Someone was running down the track towards her, although they were moving so fast that, for a second, she couldn’t make out who it was. Then she saw a boy. He stopped and stood still, staring.

  He was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, khaki shorts and woollen, knee-high socks. A bag was strapped across his chest, and a rifle hung from his shoulder. But what Elsie mostly noticed was how thin he was. He could have run a finger around his shirt collar without once touching his neck. The widest parts of his whole body were his knobbly knees.

  ‘What on earth are you doing?’ he said.

  Elsie didn’t know how to answer this.

  The boy stepped forward. He was carrying a hat. It looked like the one in the photograph on Uncle John’s mantelpiece.