no no his eyes are open, look, he’s … there, fine boy, let me feel … no no no you’re all fine …
he’s dead he’s dead he’s dead …
there you come, son …
here you come …
And I am born. Wide awake sitting up on the pavement, blinking at the shock of the real.
A man with a big red face and cropped yellow hair had me by the shoulders. He was staring into my eyes, saying over and over again: ‘There, you’re a fine boy now … there, you’re a fine boy …’
I sneezed and got a round of applause. The man grinned. I became aware of a huge mob, all bobbing their heads to see me.
‘Oh, poor little thing!’ a woman’s voice cried out, and I looked up and saw her at the front of the crowd, a woman with a startled face and mad wiry hair, wild goggly eyes made huge and swimmy by bottle-bottom spectacles. She held a little girl by the hand. The crowd was like daubed faces on a board, daubed faces with smudged bodies, bright stabs of colour here and there, scarlet, green, royal purple. It heaved gently like a sea and my eyes could not take it in, it blurred wildly as if blocked by tears – though my eyes were dry – blurred and shivered and whirled itself around with a heaving burst of sound, till something shook my head awake again and I saw clearly, clearer than I had ever seen anything before, the face of the little girl standing at the front of the crowd holding her mother’s hand, drawn sharp as ice on a mess of fog.
‘Now,’ said the big man, taking my chin in his fist and turning my face to look at him, ‘how many fingers, boy?’ He had an accent of some kind, sharp and foreign. His other hand he held up before me, the thumb and small finger bent down.
‘Three,’ I said.
This brought another great murmur of approval from the crowd.
‘Good boy, good boy!’ the man said, as if I’d done something very clever, setting me on my feet but still holding me by the shoulders. ‘Fine now?’ he asked, shaking me gently. ‘Very fine, brave boy. Good boy! Fine boy! Best boy!’
I saw tears in his eyes, on the rims, not falling, which seemed strange to me as he was smiling so vigorously and showing a perfectly even row of small, shiny white teeth. His wide face was very close to mine, smooth and pink like a cooked ham.
He hoisted me up in his arms and held me against him. ‘Say your name, fine boy,’ he said, ‘and we’ll take you home to Mamma.’
‘Jaffy Brown,’ I said. I felt my thumb in my mouth and whipped it out quick. ‘My name is Jaffy Brown and I live in Watney Street.’ And at the same moment a dreadful sound rose upon the air, as of loosed packs of hounds, demons in hell, mountains falling, hue and cry.
The red face suddenly thundered: ‘Bulter! For God’s sake, get him back in the crate! He’s seen the dogs!’
‘My name is Jaffy Brown,’ I cried as clearly as I could, for by now I was fully back in the world, though my stomach churned and heaved alarmingly. ‘And I live in Watney Street.’
I was carried home as if I was an infant in the arms of the big man, and all the way he talked to me, saying: ‘So, what will we say to Mammy? What will Mammy say when she hears you’ve been playing with a tiger? “Hello, Mammy, I’ve been playing with my friend the tiger! I gave him a pat on the nose!” How many boys can say that, hi? How many boys can go walking down the road and meet a tiger, hi? Special boy! Brave boy! Boy in ten million!’
Boy in ten million. My head was swelled to the size of St Paul’s dome by the time we turned into Watney Street with a crowd of gawkers trailing after.
‘I been telling you what might happen, Mr Jamrach!’ shrilled the bespectacled woman with the little girl, bobbing alongside. ‘What about us? What about us what has to live next to you?’ She had the Scots burr and her eyes glared.
‘The beast was sleepy and full,’ the man replied. ‘He ate a hearty dinner not twenty minutes since, or we’d never have moved him. I am sorry, this should not have happened and will never happen so again.’ He knuckled a tear from the side of one eye. ‘But there was no danger.’
‘Got teeth, hasn’t it?’ cried the woman. ‘Claws?’
At which the girl peeped round her mother’s side, clutching onto a scrap of polka-dot scarf wrapped round her neck and smiling. It was the first smile of my life. Of course, that is a ridiculous thing to say; I had been smiled at often, the big man had smiled at me not a minute since. And yet I say: it was the first smile, because it was the first that ever went straight into me like a needle too thin to be seen. Then, dragged a bit too fast by her wild-eyed mother, she tripped and went sprawling with her hands splayed out, and her face broke up. A great wail burst out of her.
‘Oh, my God,’ said her mother, and we left the two fussing at the side of the road and went on through the market stalls to our house. Mrs Regan was sitting on the top step, but jumped to her feet and stood gaping when she saw the band of us approach. Everyone babbled at once. Ma came running down and I threw out my arms for her and burst into tears.
‘No harm done, ma’am,’ Mr Jamrach said, handing me over. ‘I am so sorry, ma’am, your boy was scared. A dreadful thing – a weakness in the crate, come all the way from Bengal – pushed out the back, he did, with his hindquarters …’
She set me on my feet and brushed me down, looking hard in my eyes. ‘His toes,’ she said. She was pale.
I looked wonderingly at the gathering crowd.
‘Ma’am,’ Mr Jamrach began, reaching into his coat and bringing out money. The girl and her ma were back. She’d scraped her knees and looked sulky. I saw Mr Reuben.
‘I got your baccy,’ I said, reaching into my pocket.
‘Why thank you, Jaffy,’ Mr Reuben said, and gave me a wink.
The Scots woman started up again, though now she’d changed sides and was defending Mr Jamrach as a great hero: ‘Ran after it, he did! Never seen anything like it! Grabs it like this, he does,’ letting go of the little girl’s hand to demonstrate how he’d leapt on its back and grabbed it by the throat, ‘sticks his bare hands right down its mouth, he did. See. A wild tiger!’
Ma seemed stunned and a bit stupid. She never took her eyes off me. ‘His poor toes,’ she said, and I looked down and saw them bleeding where they’d been pulled over the stones, and it brought the realisation of pain. I felt where the tiger had made my collar wet.
‘Dear ma’am,’ Mr Jamrach said, pressing money into Ma’s apron, ‘this is the bravest little boy I ever encountered.’
He gave her a card with his name on.
We ate well that night, no hunger sickness for me. I was very happy, filled up with love for the tiger. She washed my toes with warm water and rubbed them with butter she got from Mrs Regan. Mr Reuben sat in our room sucking on his pipe, and all the neighbours jostled at our door. It was like a carnival. Ma was tickled pink and kept telling everyone, ‘A tiger! A tiger! Jaffy got carried off by a tiger!’
The tiger made me. When my path and his crossed, everything changed. After that, the road took its branching way, willy-nilly, and off I went into the future. It might not have been so.
