Nick Harkaway - Tigerman

There was a sound behind him: a polite scraping of feet. He turned.

The woman in front of him was short and spare to the point of scrawny. The bones in her hips poked at her grey wool gown, and her face was covered in an orthodox veil. A nun of some sort. She prostrated herself, full length, and kissed the stone at the foot of the altar, then rose and met his gaze. She did not speak. He realised that she did not need to. Her presence here was inevitable, while his was surprising. Logic told her he must be seeking something, be it absolution or something more tangible, and he would explain himself.

He cleared his throat, feeling large and intrusive. ‘My name’s Ferris. I’m the British. . well, I’m everything, actually.’ She nodded. Of course, she knew that. His uniform with its flag would tell her what he was, and she could not but know, even here, that there was only one of him. ‘I’m looking for — we’d call them the parish records.’ Her inquiring expression did not fade. ‘Births. Christenings. Deaths. In a ledger. Like a big book. Exactly like, I mean. It is a book. But they call it a ledger, I don’t know why, never thought about it.’ He blathered, and she listened politely. When he ran dry, she nodded, and gestured to a table against the back wall. He saw Bibles. ‘Not, um, religious ones. Not the Book of Kings, or what have you.’ He was relatively sure that was the one where everyone begat everyone else. ‘For local people.’

She nodded again, and then patiently plucked at his hand and drew him over to the table. Her fingers were long and dry, the nails plain and carefully cut. He caught an embarrassing mouthful of her scent, her hair warm beneath the hood of her office. Even nuns were also women, and women sweated just as men did. She had a reassuring odour, like a warm dog or an old vicarage cushion, but beneath it was a whisper of startling femininity that he tried not to notice.

At the table she took the top Bible and opened it. Blue-black leather covers clopped gently against the wood, and the paper rustled. Bible stock, they called it, thin as ricepaper but strong. She turned to the last pages and tapped again, and he realised she had understood him perfectly. Old Bibles had a section at the rear for the keeping of family records. The family Bible wasn’t just a book of God’s truth, it was about where you came from in a more ordinary sense, and who you were because of it. His family had had one, until his father burned it when his mother died and cut them off from memory. Burned it where? The Sergeant wondered now. Not at home. Not on the electric fire. In a bin in the garden, perhaps, or perhaps he’d imagined the whole thing and his sister had it, always had, in some neglected corner of her house.

‘I’m looking for a boy,’ he said. ‘There’s. . he might need my help. Later. When it all. . happens.’ Are you his mother? If I could see your face, I might know. You might be the right age. You’ve got the same colour eyes. He wondered how many women on Mancreu might fit that description. He could hardly ask them all.

She picked up a pen and wrote on a yellow notepad. Her writing was unjoined and simple.

How old is he?

‘About twelve. Between that and fourteen, anyway. I don’t know, I’ve never asked.’

Name?

More unasked questions. ‘He once told me it was Robin. But I think that was a Batman joke. He’s very clever — proper clever. I mean the way some people are and you look at them and you know the sky’s the limit if they can just get on their feet, get on the ladder. One day he’s going to be a lawyer or a businessman or something, I’m sure. Or a cardinal,’ he added, in deference to her habit, and thought he heard a gentle snort, though whether this indicated scepticism or a general dislike of cardinals he couldn’t say. ‘A prime minister of somewhere. If he just gets the chance, you know. I. . I can help with that. Not much, but I can give him a place to start.’ What was it with confessing this plan to random women? He might as well announce it in the paper. But her eyes smiled.

You think he is here?

Her fingers sketched the Bibles, the chapel.

‘It’s all I’ve got. I need to know who he is.’

Ask him.

Well, yes. But. ‘I’m. . I don’t want to bother him. I don’t think he thinks of the island as coming to an end.’ She waited. She did it perfectly, without impatience: a silence which was his to break. Waited. Waited. Waited. He sighed. ‘And. . to be honest, I’m. . I’m afraid.’ Yes, she thought that was a poor answer, and really so did he. All the same, it was true. That counted for a lot.

She nodded. She opened two more Bibles, and laid them out. Boys’ names, families. The right ages. He copied them down.

‘He has someone who looks after him. Someone he trusts, who knows the old smugglers’ paths. You don’t know who that might be?’

She shook her head. He wondered if she would lie. She must have guessed, because she frowned at him, and snorted again.

‘I saw a woman, on the way,’ he said abruptly. ‘Walking in the fields. Is it a good life out here?’

Yes.

‘Do you know who she was? On the mountainside?’ He wanted to know something about this place. He had spent too much time in the port, he thought, had ignored the rest of the island and now he wondered if the rest of the island wasn’t much more important.

She dances in the water , the nun wrote. She is content . She put down her pencil gently. Interview concluded.

She dances in the water. Perhaps that was as good as life got, after all.

The nun walked him out to the Land Rover and stared at the dent, with its bloody scratches. He sighed. ‘Some lads threw a dead dog at my car. Kids on bikes. I haven’t told the old lady yet, the one whose dog it is. Christ, she’ll know by now.’ He heard the blasphemy hang in the air. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean—’

She shook her head to let him know it was all right, then blessed him. Her finger rested solidly on his forehead for a moment, dry and hard. Satisfied, she went back inside. He touched the short list of names in his breast pocket. Something attempted, something achieved. Something actually according to plan. Simple enough.

He wasn’t used to the feeling; recently everything had gone the other way. He found he approved of it very much.

His good mood carried him into Beauville with renewed energy. He told Beneseffe the fish issue had taken care of itself for the meanwhile, and Beneseffe grinned and said yes, he’d heard something about that, couldn’t happen to a nicer person. The Sergeant bought a sandwich and a fizzy drink and walked along the harbour front in the sun. He asked after the names on his list. One of them was gone, they knew for sure, left with his parents in the first days. The other two they weren’t sure about, they’d ask around. He checked with the schoolhouse, too, but no joy. All the educational records, the schoolmistress said, were in storage at Brighton House. He realised he should have known this, could have known if he’d thought to check. It occurred to him that if the boy was in there he might have short-circuited his investigation and saved himself a lot of shoe leather by sitting down like a clerk and going through the records one by one. There couldn’t be more than a few thousand in the right age range. It would have taken — assuming one photo every twenty seconds, which was pessimistic — about twenty hours at the outside.

Well, he would start tonight. If one of the names in his pocket was the boy, good. If not, there was still a good chance that by the end of the week he would have his man.

More progress. Part of him was almost alarmed, but he knew it happened this way sometimes, knew that when it did you had to ride the wave and choose your options well to keep it under your feet. It looked like a sudden turn for the better because humans saw what was in front of them, didn’t look at the time spent getting to a certain point. This was not a day of success, it was the success of many days, the pay-off of effort.