The card sat propped importantly on the mantelpiece next to Ma’s hairbrush and a jug of wispy black feathers, and when Mrs Regan’s son Jud came home from work he read it to us.
Charles Jamrach Naturalist and Importer of Animals, Birds and Shells
The first time I saw Tim Linver he was standing out in our street shouting up at the house.
‘Jaffy Brown’s wanted!’
It was the morning after my great encounter. I was standing in the room of Mari-Lou and Silky, who knew nothing of my adventure, the tops of my toes still burning and my plasters turning dirty and raggy. Mari-Lou, unlaced, fat brown breasts spilling, counted pennies into my palm for the fried fish stall, and a penny for me for going. Mari-Lou wore her hair very black with scarlet roses at the sides. Elaborate crinkles sprouted round her eyes, and a great round belly stuck out in front and carried her forward. ‘Now, Mister Jaffy,’ she instructed, ‘no brown bits. Yah? No brown bits and a nice big pickle, and no you sucking on it.’ Her rouge was faded. The mountain of silk that was Silky was sitting up in bed with her two thin breasts drooping down to her waist. They’d have their fish supper in bed and be snoring deeply in half an hour.
And the cry came: ‘Jaffy Brown’s wanted!’
I went to the window and looked out with the pennies warm in my hand and there he was. Older, bigger than me, different as could be, straight goldy-haired, pretty and girl-like of face. Tim Linver. It was late morning, the street thronged.
‘Who wants him?’ I shouted.
‘Jamrach wants him,’ he said. ‘Come down.’
‘What about our cod, Mister Jaf?’ Mari-Lou’s long red claws dug into my arm.
‘I’m going!’ I cried and bounded down the stairs.
The boy came forward. ‘You him?’ he asked gracelessly.
‘Yes.’
‘I’ve got to get you a raspberry puff,’ he said morosely. ‘Jamrach said.’
The raspberry puffs in the windows of the pastry cook’s shop I walked past every day on Back Lane were beyond me. The berries bled juice through their hairs. The furrowed cream was pale gold, the pastry damp with sugar.
The tiger had opened magical doors.
‘I’m running an errand,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to get fish.’
‘Well, I’ve got to get you a raspberry puff and take you to Jamrach,’ he said, as if that was far more important. ‘Getting the special grand tour, you are. See all the wild animals?’
Mari-Lou leaned out of the window. ‘Off you go and get that fish, you, Mister Jaf!’
‘What’s it like getting eaten?’ the boy said.
‘Eaten?’
‘You’re eaten,’ he said, ‘so they say.’
‘Do I look it?’
‘It’s all around that you’re eaten,’ he said, ‘eaten up and just your head left on the stones.’
I saw it, my head on the stones. It made me laugh.
‘Just your head,’ he said, ‘and your hands and feet. And some bits of bone, I suppose, gnawed ragged.’
‘Didn’t hurt a bit,’ I said.
Mari-Lou threw a bottle at my head. It missed and smashed in the gutter.
‘Two ticks,’ I said to the boy. ‘Wait.’ And I ran all the way to the fried fish stall and all the way back.
Mrs Regan was just taking up her post on the doorstep and looked disapprovingly at my filthy feet as I shot past her. ‘You’ll get blood poisoning, you will,’ she remarked. I pelted upstairs and shoved the steaming bundle into Mari-Lou’s eager red claws. Mari-Lou and Silky liked their fish drenched till it was soggy. My eyes stang from the vinegar. I’d forgotten the pickle. You’d have thought I’d robbed a cripple. I had to give them back a penny, but I didn’t care. Wild animals were roaming in my head: lions, tigers, elephants, giraffes. I was going to have a raspberry puff and see the animals.
The boy was still there when I reached the street, hands deep in his pockets, shoulders high. ‘Come on,’ he said, and I followed his straight, insolent back down through the crowds between the market stalls till we came out on Back Lane, where he barred me from going with him into the shop with one movement of his arm and not a word. Himself, he went in and requested one raspberry puff to eat now please, Rose, darling, as if he was a man. I did not know then that he was only a year my senior and thought he must be at least eleven.
I could see Rose through the glass, a nice smily girl with flour dusting her eyelashes. Then he strolled out, looked up at the sky, handed me a raspberry puff nestled in a little napkin for me to hold to keep my fingers clean. Not that they were clean in the first place.
There he stood with his hands in his pockets and watched me eat the raspberry puff. The first bite was so bitterly sweet the corners of my mouth ached. So beautiful, a film of tears stung my eyes. Then the pain dispersed and there was only delight. I had never tasted raspberry. Never tasted cream. The second bite was greedy and gorging, stopping my mouth up. He had eyes like a statue. Never moved. He’d probably never had a raspberry puff himself. He was better dressed then me, shoes and all, but still, I bet he never ate a raspberry puff in his life.
‘Want a bit?’ I said.
He shook his head sharply and made that banning motion with his arm again, smiling a little, proudly.
The smell hit me first, a good thrilling smell, stronger than cheese. Then the noise. We came in from the street to a lobby where coats were hung, and boxes and great sacks stored, and a green parrot leaned over me and peered into my face. It looked as if it knew something funny.
‘She speaks,’ said the boy. ‘Go on, Flo, say: “Five pounds, darlin’.”’
Flo cocked her head sharply, shifting her gaze to him in a sympathetic way but saying nothing.
‘Five pounds, darlin’! Go on, you stupid bird.’
She blinked. He made a quick sound of disgust and led me to an open door from which a smog of dark smoke was visibly spreading into the hall.
‘Here he is, Mr Jamrach. He’s had his creamy doodah.’
I followed him in. The great, red-faced Jamrach came down through the murk with a smile and cried: ‘Ha! Jaffy Brown!’ He punched me gently on the shoulder. ‘Did you have a good supper last night?’ He bent down with his face so close I could count the red veins in the whites of his eyes. The air was heavy, lush and rotting, filled with traces of bowels and blood and piss and hair, and something overall I could not name, which I suppose was wildness.
‘Mutton stew,’ I said. ‘It was lovely.’
