In Search of the Blue Tiger (34 page)

So here we are, Stigir chasing the tiny breakers back and forth, always surprised when they nip his heels or splash his face.

‘Well then, Oscar, how do you like your job in the library?'

‘Heaps. And I've been reading about Saint Augustine,' I say, splitting a pod between my fingers, flicking the peas with my thumb into the huge copper pan with a ping. ‘The saint from Brother Moses' altar. The good Brother has leant me a book all about him.'

‘Excellent,' says Brother Saviour, examining a blackened pod and then tossing it for Stigir to chase.

‘I like the things he did. He was really interested in time. What time is and whether we can travel through time.'

‘And what did Saint Augustine make of it all?'

So I tell him what I've learned. In turn, Brother Saviour tells me about a scientist who reckoned that if we could move really fast and get close to the speed of light then we could travel into the future.

‘Do you think we could really travel through time, Brother Saviour?' I ask.

‘Well, it's a real puzzle. When you think about it we travel faster now than ever before. From one space to another. Like me and you from Tidetown to here. The horse and carriage brought us here much quicker than if we had to walk. So you could say we travelled through time by getting here sooner than we might have done. But, I'll show you one thing that's really amazing,' he says, ‘that kind of proves that time travel can really happen. Some scientists have discovered wormholes that are like secret passages into the future.'

‘Where are they?' I ask, as eager as on the first day at school.

‘Oh, they're so tiny no one has ever seen one and they keep opening and closing before you can get near them. But this is how they work,' he says, picking out a pea from the pan in one hand and a pebble from the beach with the other. ‘Imagine you live on the Pebble Planet and want to travel to the Pea Planet. But it's so unbelievably far away that it'd take you more than your whole lifetime to get there even at the speed of light. Now, imagine the pan is a wormhole. It's a completely new dimension and allows you to get from the Pebble to the Pea without travelling the distance between them. And these very clever scientists have discovered that these wormholes allow you to travel into the future and leave the past behind just as it is. So when you go back it'll still be there.'

‘Like Saint Augustine said all these years ago,' I say. ‘Present past, present present, and present future.'

‘Exactly,' says the Brother, as a single pea pings from his thumbnail and lands at my feet. We both laugh. With my tongue I can feel the wobbly tooth at the back of my mouth: the last of my baby teeth. It is hanging by a single thread and if I twist it I can almost break it free. I like the sharp pain of the sinew as it stretches, hanging on to the end. Something of the sensation of the tooth, the sound of the peas dropping into the pot, and the warmth of the sun, make me feel safe and at ease.

‘If I could time travel, I'd like to go back in time and visit my grandmother in hospital. Then I could ask her about her teeth.'

‘About her teeth?' replies the Brother, looking up from his work.

‘The doctors took her teeth out because she was singing too much and wanted to dance along the country lanes.'

‘Ah,' he says, ‘to stop her dancing and singing. You know, Oscar, when people are different, others find that hard. Great people are often deemed mad because they have imaginations that challenge. Ideas, dance steps even. Then people feel the need to find ways to bring them back to earth.'

‘Like taking out their teeth?'

‘Yes, to free the germs of madness.'

‘And drinking milk?'

‘To weigh them down.'

‘She wouldn't want to smile much,' I say, twisting the tooth with my tongue, rotating it on its thread. With one last flick the cord snaps and the tooth is released. I roll it around my mouth and then swallow it whole, easing it down my throat until it is deep inside of me. I imagine I am inside the big shiny copper pan with all the peas flying around my head like green stars. When I look behind me I can see my house and Mother and Father waving to me. And when I look forward I see the
Cutty Sark,
just like it is on the front of my old scrapbook with the Blue Tiger standing on the deck. It is the way Brother Saviour described time travelling and wormholes. My house and the
Cutty Sark
are times and places apart: like A and B; like the pea and the pebble. And when I look to the side all I can see is the shiny surface of the pan, a copper-coloured mirror, and the image of me looking at me to see what time travelling is really like. There are so many fantastical things in the world. I can't wait to see them all.

Mrs April is in her garden pruning back some old raspberry canes, thinking about the taste of jam. Something in the swish of a low-lying branch that she pushes aside captures her attention. Swish and then silence and then the movement and shudder of the branch. She watches it coming to rest and suddenly she feels unusually alone. She shakes her head to ward off the feeling and whispers something under her breath about being a silly biddy. Then she remembers what it all must have signified. A summer's day. A bicycle ride. Was it her first excursion out with her husband to be? The husband she would grow neither young nor old with. The memory of a hot, hot day, with flies buzzing and the grass long and straw-coloured from lack of rain. In the near distance a small café. Cream tea: scones and raspberry jam. A seed stuck between her teeth. The funny face she pulled trying to dislodge it with her tongue. His smile. The warmth of the sun. The delicious taste of raspberry. The look in his eyes. And the sudden realisation that love could be hers.

She straightens up and rubs her back, thinking a nice hot bath would help the day along. Then she realises how much she misses Stigir. Of course, she was happy to hear that Oscar was allowed to have him in the monastery, and it gave her great pleasure to learn from Brother Saviour how well Oscar was settling in. But nonetheless she felt sad to see Stigir walking away up the path and just now she would have liked to clap her hands and see him scuttle out from the shrubbery and into her arms.

‘Maybe I'll get myself a dog,' she thinks. ‘Why ever not?'

‘But first a hot bath,' she says out loud, ‘and a nice cup of tea.'

I am nearly asleep, happily tired from clearing leaves in the orchard, when I hear a tap on the window.

‘I have something special to give you,' comes the familiar voice of Brother Saviour.

I open the door and he hands me a small object wrapped in cloth.

‘I've carved this especially for you. I'd love to wait with you and see you open it.'

He stands by the door as I sit on the edge of my bed and unfold the package. The mysterious object rolls in my hands as the cloth unfurls until the small wooden figure lands in my lap.

It is a beautifully carved tiger, painted blue, with darker blue and white markings. It is the most wonderful of gifts. I can barely find the words to thank Brother Saviour, but I do.

‘Thank you, so much,' I say quietly, ‘it is lovely.'

I place the Blue Tiger on the window ledge above my table. When I stand back to admire it I realise that I have begun to build my own altar, to find my own way to God. I take the candle from my bedside and place it next to the Blue Tiger. With Brother Saviour quietly watching me, I walk outside to the cloister, pick up a small smooth stone, pluck a daisy from the lawn, bring them back inside and place them on the ledge. Taking the matchbox from my drawer I light the candle and step back. Here is my altar: unique, spontaneous, and complete as summer. I close my eyes and something wells up inside of me that I push back down. But as I look up at the altar, noticing how the light illuminates the scene, the feeling re-emerges.

I need to tell someone.

For the first time ever I trust a man enough to tell.

So I do.

It comes from the core of my being in a gush. Brother Saviour closes the door, sits on the bed next to me and listens. He says nothing, then listens some more. He is gentle when I sob and holds me tight, still attentive even when my words are muffled against his chest.

He puts his hands to his face, a cross between prayer and surprise. He looks at me kindly, his gentle eyes searching around the room for the words he wants to use.

‘Oscar,' he says quietly, when I finish speaking sometime later, ‘I've heard other boys tell me stories like yours. You have seen things that no small child should see.'

He strokes my hair. Not the way he does when I'm playing well at tag, but gently and calming. We are quiet together for a moment and I feel sleepy and safe. I hear his voice, as if it is coming to me in a dream.

‘We live by the sea and grow up with tales and sights of shipwrecks. But if that's all you ever know of the sea then you can't ever see its beauty, its gift, its life. You have to grow to trust that the sea can be vast and safe and beautiful. If you see too many shipwrecks as a boy, then there's a chance you'll grow to be a man who finds calm and peace elusive, hard to come by.'

He looks intently at me. The candle throws shadows from my altar: the Blue Tiger taking shape on the wall.

‘Do you understand what I am trying to tell you, Oscar?'

‘Yes, I do,' I say, ‘I really think I do.'

I get to talk about so many things here. Brother Saviour tells me to find my own God. He says it's up to me. To show me the way forward I light a candle at my altar every day. I place it in front of the Blue Tiger. I found an old padlock on the beach at Open Bay today. Me and Stigir go there a lot. The padlock I found had Chinese writing on it, so I figure it must have come from an old pirate treasure chest. People are always talking about all the shipwrecks that lie off the coastline. When I lit the candle I thought of Mr April, Mr Fishcutter and the Great Aunt's baby. I asked the Blue Tiger to use his strength to guide and protect them, wherever they are and whatever they are doing. And I said I was sorry for whatever I had done to hurt or displease them. If my God lets me come back to earth after I die I still want to be a blue tiger. Brother Moses says none of us knows what God really is, so anything is possible. So it is possible that when I die I can be a blue tiger in another life. It's just as possible as anything else I suppose, and that's good enough for me.

I like the food the monks make, especially the rhubarb crumble. The sharp taste of the fruit and then the sugary bits on top. Yummy.

‘Not waving but drowning.' Smith

‘Do you want to know the truth, or shall I tell you what really happened?'

The Mother wakes with the words somewhere very close by. Closer than the pillow at her ear. The space beside her is empty, her husband over the sea and far away, her son elsewhere and out of mind. Outside, as dead as the night is, the rumblings of a storm rattles at the window.