Tiger, Tiger. Philip Caveney

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ on his mind; at least, until that particular day, the day when they had all gone to play tennis and Harry had spotted an exquisite young female on the court, a frail little thing, dressed in white, who played tennis like nobody’s business. Harry had watched her for ages as she dashed about the court, a look of grim determination on her pretty face. He had fallen in love with here then and there; and when his mother had wandered over to him to enquire what it was he was looking at, he had smiled at her and replied, ‘My future wife, I think.’

      Meg. Sometimes in the night, he lay alone in the darkness trying to conjure into his mind, a vision of her face. He could not do it. Her features were soft wax blurred by time. In the end, he would have to switch on the light and fetch her photograph, just to reassure himself that she had existed. It frightened him, this loss of definition. It made him wonder if the past was not just a series of hazy ghosts set to haunt him for eternity …

      ‘Come on, Harry, wake up! You missed that by a mile.’

      ‘Hmm?’ The present came abruptly back into focus. Dennis was peering at him over the net.

      ‘Do you want to rest for a moment?’

      ‘Certainly not!’ Harry retrieved the ball and stepped up to the serving line. He flung the ball skywards, whipped back his arm to serve. An unexpected pain lanced through his chest, making his breath escape in an involuntary exclamation of surpise.

      The ball dropped untouched beside him and he stood where he was for a moment, swaying slightly. He could not seem to get his breath and his heart was thudding like a great hammer in his chest.

      ‘Harry? Are you alright, old chap? You’ve gone white as a sheet.’

      ‘Yes, yes! I’m fine …’ Harry stooped to retrieve the ball but as he stood up, the court seemed to seesaw crazily from left to right. His racquet clattered to the ground and he flung out his arms to try to maintain his balance. Suddenly Dennis was at his side, supporting his arm.

      ‘Here, here, old chap. You’ve been in the sun too long, I think.’

      ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ protested Harry feebly. ‘I’ll be fine in a moment. Let’s play on.’

      ‘I don’t think we better had.’ Dennis was easing him towards the exit. ‘Come and sit down for a while, at least till the feeling passes.’

      ‘This is really quite silly … I’m alright I tell you.’ Harry was aware of anxious faces peering at him from the press of tables. He felt totally humiliated, an object of ridicule. He tried to detach his arm from Dennis’s grasp, so that he might walk under his own steam, but when he exerted any effort, the dizziness seemed to get worse, filling his head with a powerful red hum. He felt vaguely nauseous.

      ‘Here old chap, this way. Our table’s just a few more feet …’

      Out of the corner of his eye, Harry could see Beresford and his companion watching the scene with expressions of amusement on their faces. The Australian turned to mutter something to his companion and the two of them collapsed into fits of laughter. Harry wanted to die of shame. He was lowered into a seat and a cold drink was thrust into his hand.

      ‘How do you feel Harry?’ It was Dennis’s voice, but it seemed terribly distant.

      Harry forced a smile.

      ‘I’ll survive,’ he muttered. ‘Just a dizzy spell, that’s all.’

      ‘Alright …’ Dennis sounded far from being reassured. ‘I’ll go and fetch your stuff.’

      ‘But … aren’t we going to play on again, in a minute or two?’

      Dennis didn’t answer, he just walked away, leaving Harry to brave the glare of two hundred sympathetic eyes. Harry could imagine what they were thinking.

      ‘Poor old man. Poor old man. Poor old man …’

      And he knew in his heart that he would never have the courage to come to this place again.

      Bob Beresford threw his kit bag carelessly into the back of his beaten-up old Land Rover, climbed into the seat, kicked the engine into life and drove away from the sports club, chuckling to himself. Honestly, these bloody old majors who thought they were still fighting a bloody war! Malaya seemed to be full of them. Bob still wasn’t quite sure what to think about Malaya. He missed the social life he had back in Oz, but it was plain that he’d landed himself a cushy number here with the repatriation scheme. The pay was excellent, considering that he only actually worked three mornings a week. The rest of the time was his own and though there wasn’t a great deal to do, he certainly couldn’t complain that he was overworked. The Gurkhas were a likable bunch of blokes who followed their various courses with quiet dedication. They never complained, though, of course, they had every reason to. After fighting Britain’s wars for the last twenty years, they were being surreptitiously swept under the carpet. In similar circumstances, Bob would have been fighting and yelling every inch of the way, but in this instance it was simply none of his business.

      As he drove, his eyes kept scanning the screens of secondary jungle on either side for signs of life. It was his old man’s influence that had turned Bob into a keen amateur hunter; Roy Beresford had been an obsessive animal hunter most of his life. He was forever undertaking extensive hunting trips to New Zealand, after deer and boar mostly. Bob had never been old enough to accompany his father, but his earliest memories were of being in Roy’s trophy room, standing beneath the gigantic spread of antlers belonging to a fine stag. Roy had told him the story of that particular hunt a hundred times. Where most children got fairy stories last thing at night, Bob got true-life adventures from his dad and thus, it was easy to see how the hunting bug had bitten him. Bob’s greatest regret was that his father had died of cancer, long before he was big enough to accompany him on an expedition. Since then, Bob had been doing his utmost to wear his father’s boots and the need to do so had become a singular obsession with him. As yet, he had not organized himself into hunting in Malaya. For one thing, the territory was completely new to him and he felt that he would first have to find himself a good guide, someone who knew how to track in such a difficult environment. The land here was, for the most part, covered in thick inaccessible jungle and Bob didn’t much fancy the idea of wandering in there unaccompanied. But most of the locals he had talked to had displayed an astonishing ignorance of their native wildlife. Oh indeed, the Tuan was quite correct. There were tigers and rusa and wild pigs and even the occasional elephant out there somewhere, but why any man should be interested in going after the creatures was quite beyond them. It was part of the Malays’ simple, happy-go-lucky policy to get on with their own lives and leave the beasts of the jungle to do likewise. Bob lived in hope of finding a Malay with a more adventurous policy.

      He turned left off the coast road and entered the small estate of houses where the army had allotted him a bungalow. He lurched the Land Rover unceremoniously into the drive, clambered out, grabbed his kit, and entered the house through the open door. Lim hurried into the room at the sound of his arrival.

      Lim. Now there was one of the benefits of living in Malaya. Lim was his amah, slim, pretty, eighteen years old and Chinese. Bob had been quite particular in his instructions to the agency. In the few weeks that he had been at Kuala Hitam, his relationship with Lim had developed beyond that of mere servant and master. She lived in full time, and when the nights were long and lonely, which they invariably were, it was not her tiny room to which she retired, but the Tuan’s. Bob was careful to keep the situation well under control, showing little outward emotion for her. He was well aware that a large percentage of Chinese girls aspired to nothing more than marriage to a white man, shortly followed СКАЧАТЬ