Nick Harkaway: Tigerman

‘Tea,’ the boy said firmly.

They walked together in silence to the dented, oil-stinking old Land Rover which served as the Sergeant’s official military conveyance. He unlocked his own door and threw the keys across the roof to the boy — if the car had ever possessed a central locking system it was long defunct — who caught them and let himself in, then ducked into the passenger seat and passed them back without looking. The older man felt the keys land in his palm and inserted the right one into the ignition even as his foot pressed the brake. When the engine spluttered a little unwillingly and the cabin jerked they were neither of them caught off guard, and a mutual puff of air through pursed lips expressed disapproval of this automotive weakness.

The friendship he had with the boy was one of a small number the Sergeant had established on Mancreu. He had not expected to find any, but his tenure had endured far beyond original estimates and an infantryman alone was a profoundly unnatural thing. Infantry was by definition an army, a river of soldiers which washed up and over and could not be stopped. It was your family and your friends and the way you lived and most of all it meant you were never by yourself. Somewhat less so for an NCO, perhaps, whose responsibility it was to get the job done, harry and cajole the lads in the right direction, then haul them home again in one piece, so far as any of these things was possible. Rank made you a little bit a stranger, but also gave you new roles to fill: uncle, nursemaid, gaffer, big brother, pastor, best mate and headmaster — that was a sergeant. One thing you never were was short of conversation.

On Mancreu he had no platoon to look after. Brighton House was vast and empty. There were two ballrooms in the east wing, both dim and sheeted. On his third day he had unwrapped a leather armchair in one of the drawing rooms so that he could sit, and discovered over those early weeks that he rather liked the quiet. In fact, he could spend ages in it. He had found it hard at first to listen without tracking things, without placing them and knowing them for friend or enemy, but gradually that automatic classification had faded away and he was left with rustling leaves and waves and a cowbell somewhere far off, and the idling of a fisherman’s outboard in the choppy water beneath the cliff. He walked the endless corridors on the upper floors alone, wondering what the rooms had seen. There was a local bird with a quite infuriating cry like a sneeze, and he amused himself by saying ‘bless you’ whenever he heard it. Occasionally he thanked himself on behalf of the bird. After a while he found that he could forget the clock and even dismiss memory and awareness almost entirely, fade into the scenery and let his senses be everything that there was of him. It was wonderful.

On other days, though, the lack of amiable chatter drove him mad. The sound of his footsteps bounced around inside his head as if he was Brighton House itself, empty and dry and dismal and waiting for a renewal which would never come. He might, from time to time, visit his French counterpart on the island for a drink. Dirac, representing the absence of Gallic interest in doings on Mancreu, was good company, but quite often he was busy because he had several lovers in Beauville and was always on the lookout for more. The Sergeant supposed that this was in keeping with appropriate French post-colonial behaviour, just as walking the beat and taking tea was for himself. All the same, on those Sargasso days he needed company, and — this being the shape of things and he being who he was — it was inevitable that he should have become involved with the Beauville Boxing Club. A boxing ring was a place where strangers could get to know one another, where awkwardness did not figure. You didn’t have to be polite, or funny, or diplomatic. You didn’t even have to be a decent boxer, although he was. You just had to show some good heart and sooner or later the club would take you in or it wasn’t a proper club. There were always personalities, of course, but they came after the boxing, they happened outside the ring. Those things tended to resolve themselves, especially if you didn’t have much to prove.

And it was just as inevitable, given his official position and his advanced age in the eyes of the local champions, that upon his arrival at the cool half-basement which served the Beauville club as its headquarters he should instantly be accorded the status of referee. He had intended to do a little sparring here and there, even arrange some friendly fights to keep himself fresh, but there was almost no one who would get in the ring with him. It was a no-win situation for the younger boxers. If he was a poor fighter, they might lay out the Brevet-Consul, a middle-aged geezer with a dodgy guard and weak ribs. Sure, there’d be no real consequences, but they had no way of knowing that, and in any case it would be a piss-poor sort of victory to carry around. On the other hand it was not impossible — not impossible at all, given the build of the man and the power in his legs — that they might lose, get flattened by a fellow who could just as well be a senior citizen as far as the streets of Mancreu were concerned. Neither option was appealing to the muscular fishermen and farmers who boxed here.

Which left him with Shola the café-owner and Pechorin of NatProMan.

Shola was tall and lean and an outrageous boaster. To hear him tell it he had loved every pretty woman between Bangkok and Tehran and all of them missed him terribly. He dressed like a pirate, or a drug dealer from an old American movie, and he worried a great deal about his hair, but he could hit fast and straight when you weren’t expecting it. He was an enjoyable opponent, filled with humour and ready enough to step back before a bout got past the point of good fun. His torso — like all of them he boxed without a shirt — was enviably beautiful, hard lines and ripples. He spoke with a faint French-North African lilt, but he was Mancreu born, his family washed up in the early 1900s, and a century later they were still here.

His manner invited confidences and friendship. ‘But when will you go?’ the Sergeant had asked, as they soaked in the club’s whirlpool after thirty minutes of ducking and jabbing. By the upside-down logic of Mancreu it was the first question between new friends, like a schoolboy’s ‘what’s your favourite team?’ and with the same cautious offer of alliance.

Shola rolled his head along his endless shoulders, and sighed. ‘No idea. When it is time, you know? When it is good and time. But for me there is nowhere to go, now. No other island like this in all the blue oceans of the world. Caribbean is all over hotels. Maldives are sinking and half of the people want women to wear veils. No music, because that might lead to dancing. I will go to El Hierro, maybe. It’s in the Atlantic. Very long way. But I think when it’s time I’ll go and see El Hierro. Maybe me and that island could fall in love a little bit. Always room for the right bar on the right island. There’s carnival there. And lizards, man! Big lizards!’ He held his hands apart, and grinned.

‘But when?’

Shola shrugged. ‘Not today. There’s still people here today. And not tomorrow, either. I have bookings for lunch. Maybe next week, if I get around to it.’ Which he obviously wouldn’t.

‘Don’t wait too long.’ The Brit abroad is always the voice of caution. Persons of other cultures are known to be undisciplined, prone to leaning out of car windows and cooking with garlic. The Sergeant had shed the perception as far as he could, but the traces of it occasionally embarrassed him even now. He cringed.

‘Lester,’ Shola said happily, ‘you are an old woman. You know that? But you box like a rhinoceros. They teach you that at sergeant school? I think I have broken my hand on your head.’ And then the laugh, a huge laugh which said: yes, of course, I will be your friend .