‘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. Nothing might ever have been so. I might not have known the great thing that came to pass. I might have taken home Mr Reuben’s baccy and gone upstairs to my dear ma and things would have gone altogether differently.
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