The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper(23)

The Photograph


THE NEXT MORNING there was a knock on his bedroom door. Arthur was awake but drowsing, wondering if the past twenty-four hours had been a strange dream. The paintings of tigers surrounding him, his orange bedclothes, his throbbing ankle, his scratched arm, all added to the curiousness. He pulled up the blanket to his neck. “Hello,” he called out.

Kate entered. She passed him a cup of tea. “How is my patient?”

He pressed his arm. It stung, but it was a dull rather than sharp pain. When he rotated his ankle it felt stiff rather than sore. Kate’s nursing skills had worked. “Not bad,” he said.

Catching sight of a black lacquered clock topped with a brass tiger on his bedside table, he saw that it was already past ten. The time made him feel disorientated and rather grumpy. His routine had flown out the window again. He couldn’t ever possibly catch up. He liked to plan and know what was lined up for the day, hour by hour, before it started. He was late for his breakfast. He was missing watering Frederica.

He also realized that he had left his mobile phone in his suitcase. Somewhere in the countryside a bush would play “Greensleeves” if anyone rang him. He reached up and winced as he felt bristles poking through his chin. His teeth felt sticky from alcohol.

“I have washed most of the grass stains out of your shirt and brought a fresh pair of trousers for you. I couldn’t repair yours. Graystock doesn’t fit into these ones now. Come down to breakfast when you are ready. There is a bathroom next door so feel free to bathe.”

Arthur preferred a shower, but when he wallowed in the hot water for half an hour his ankle felt even better. He peeked under the bandage on his arm and saw that the stripes had scabbed over.

After getting dressed, he peered in the full-length bathroom mirror. He looked like a presentable pensioner from the waist up, but from the waist down...well! Graystock’s electric blue harem trousers were remarkably comfy—very soft and roomy—but made him look like a Scandinavian tourist.

Kate laid the table in the kitchen with fresh crusty bread and butter and a jug of orange juice. Again the walls of the large room were adorned with photos and paintings of her tigers. An open fire flickered but the room was so large that the heat barely reached them. Outside he could see that the sun hadn’t yet warmed up the morning. Kate wore a tartan blanket wrapped over her shoulders and a long white cotton nightie underneath. “We buy very little meat now, except for the tigers to eat. Graystock would prefer to feed the girls than to feed us.” She laughed as she sat on the bench next to him.

“How on earth did you end up living with the, er, girls?”

“My father was a showman. He traveled with circuses around Italy, France, America. All around the world. And he took me with him. I used to dress up as a little clown. My job was to run in the ring with a bucket of water to throw over the big clowns. It contained glitter really, but always got a laugh from the audience. My father was a drinker. His temper would turn when he hit the bottle. He used to strike me, too. One day, he was training a new tiger cub to perform. It was too young to learn, to understand properly what he wanted. He took up a crop and was about to strike the poor thing. I ran in and scooped up the cub. My father warned that he would beat me, too, unless I let it go. Or else I was to get out of his sight and never show my face again.

“Arthur, I hugged that cub to my chest and ran. I knew of Graystock through friends and I turned up on his doorstep. I was only eighteen. Both Graystock and the tigers needed looking after, protecting. The little cub I rescued was like our first child. We had many more after that.”

“So you didn’t have children of your own?”

Kate shook her head. “I never felt the need to reproduce. I had many friends with babies and I liked to cuddle and rock them to sleep, but it never happened for Graystock and me. I’ve never regretted it. The tigers are my family, though we just have the three adults now. There’s Elsie, who you had the pleasure of meeting. Then there is Timeous and Theresa. Plus... Come over here, Arthur.”

He stood and followed her to a corner of the kitchen to the side of a huge black iron range cooker. There was a large, flat wicker basket full of crumpled blankets. In the middle a tiger cub slept.

Its beauty took his breath away. It didn’t seem real, like a soft toy left there by a child. Except he saw its white chest rise and fall and the corner of its mouth twitch as if jerked by a piece of twine.

“Isn’t he beautiful?”

Arthur nodded.

“He’s been a little under the weather and Elsie is a bit grumpy at the moment, so I let him stay here last night. I kept a close eye on him while I was looking through the photographs for you.”

Now, Arthur had never liked cats. To him they were demanding, crapping things that laid in wait, then leaped and took great delight in digging up his rockery. But this little fellow was incredible. “May I touch him?”

Kate nodded. “Just a little. I don’t want to wake him.”

Arthur tentatively reached out to touch the little tiger’s chest. “Wow,” he said. “It’s so soft.”

“He is three months old now. His name is Elijah.”

Arthur crouched beside the tiger. He could see now why Miriam would be attracted to this place.

Kate laid a friendly hand on his shoulder. “Let’s see if we can find anything out about your wife, shall we?” She pointed to several shoeboxes which sat on the table. “I woke up early so started to browse through some old documents, photos and letters,” she said. “I forgot that we had so many. My husband is so untidy but luckily I like to label things. All my photos have dates on the back.”