Tiger, Tiger Read online

  He turned left off the coast road and entered the small estate of houses where the army had alotted 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 one-way 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 sound. 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 wellbeing 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 exhaltations 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.…

  Lim stirred in her sleep beside him and became aware of his wakefulness.

  “Bob not sleep?” she murmured, her own voice a dreamy slur. “You want me fetch drink … you want . .?” But then she was gone again, submerged in the pool of slumber from which she had but briefly surfaced. Bob smiled. He closed his own eyes, tried to settle back down, but then the noise came again, long, constant, not a mechanical sound at all. It went on for some considerable time, repeating at regular intervals, and then at last it stopped abruptly, as though the animal responsible had called it a night and had drifted away in search of sleep.

  “Wish I could bloody well find some,” thought Bob, but he knew only too well that once disturbed in this way, he would lie awake till dawn, thinking bad thoughts. Thoughts of his father who lay dead in the cold earth and of his mother, whom he had abandoned because she had remarried. Bob had worshipped his father. He could never bring himself to understand how should could have forgotten him so readily; worse still, how she could have chosen a no-account bank clerk to take his place. Well, Bob had fixed her wagon, right enough. It didn’t matter how many letters she wrote him, he was just going to let her stew in her own juice along with the bloody little twerp she called her husband. Some people might think of it as rough justice, but then, they hadn’t known Roy Beresford. They hadn’t known the sort of man he was.

  Bob fumbled around on the bedside cabinet until he found his cigarettes and matches. The brief flare of light as he struck a match, lit the room with a strange glow. He lay, staring up at the ceiling, smoking his cigarette and occasionally glancing at the red glowing tip of hot ash as it burned steadily downwards in the darkness.

  CHAPTER 5

  HAJI WOKE with new spirit. His hunger was satisfied, his pride restored. He was once again a killer of flesh. He emerged from the thicket where he had been resting and stretched himself luxuriously for a few minutes, aimless for the time being, for he knew that there was another dinner stored safely away which he could go to whenever his hunger returned. Some monkeys in a nearby tree shrieked an a
larm, and he noted with satisfaction that there was a new respect in their manner.

  He strolled off along a well-worn cattle track, moving gracefully and stopping from time to time to spray the trees and bushes with the aid of a scent gland beneath his tail. This was simply a way of marking out his territory. The secretion, mixed liberally with urine, possessed a powerful stink that could linger for weeks, provided it did not rain. Now that the urgency of his hunting had, for the time being, been dispelled, he travelled with the air of a sophisticated landowner surveying his property. Even the dull pain in his injured leg was temporarily forgotten. The sun was rapidly gaining in heat and Haji could hear the curious maddening song of a brain-fever bird in the treetops to his left. The track led down a slope to where a sluggish yellow river wound its way between sandbanks and boulders. Without hesitation, Haji plunged into the water, glad of the chance to cool off. He submerged his body completely, leaving just his head sticking above the surface. The water was wonderfully cooling, especially to the wound on his leg and he would have been content to remain there for the rest of the day; but after an hour or so of lounging, his keen eyes caught sight of a telltale swirl in the water that spoke of a large crocodile nosing his way. Haji had no real enemies in nature, unless of course, one counted the Uprights, who could be dangerous when roused; but he knew well enough that the only other beast likely to try and attack him would be a crocodile. Stupid and brutish creatures, they tended to go for anything that moved and in their natural element, water, they were unbeatable. Haji, perhaps wisely, decided to curtail his bathing session and move on to new pastures. But he waded out with dignity, refusing to hurry himself, even though the crocodile’s snout was no more than a few feet away from him when he finally clambered back onto dry land. He half turned, directed a threatening roar at the pair of beady eyes surveying him from the surface of the water, and the crocodile thinking better of his own motives, dropped from sight and looked elsewhere for a meal. Haji growled and shook himself to remove the water from his fur. Then he went on his way, moving along beside the river for some distance. He could see the brilliant blue flash of kingfishers as they skimmed down to touch the surface of the water and occasionally, there would be the curious wriggling wake of a long sea snake that had journeyed in from the coast.