A Tiger in Eden (2 page)
Hey, put your top on love, I says, quite angry, you’re scaring the weans.
What’s that, she goes.
You heard me, I says, cover up, that’s not appropriate here. I could see Tanya’s eyes narrowing. She was pissed off and all and I was glad I said something. But then this English bitch puts her hands on her hips and starts staring down at her tits like they’re the best invention since ashtrays on motorbikes.
It’s perfectly natural, she goes, I’m proud of my body and I don’t care who sees it. It’s not my fault you’re a prude.
Love, you don’t have a fucking clue about me, I says. Now, you’re offending this family so either put your T-shirt on or fuck off and eat somewhere else, all right?
Course the fella steps forward then and tries to act like a hard man, which was pretty difficult for him with his aul annoying sing-song southern accent. You got a problem, mate? he goes. I nearly burst out laughing. Tanya put her hand on my arm, not because she didn’t want me to get into a fight but because she’d already seen my
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tattoos and worked out I was a mad cunt. She knew I’d burst his gob.
Youse are the ones with the problems, I goes, what’s wrong with you? Show some respect to the locals that are having to put up with ye. Now do the right thing and put your top on darlin’, and as for you big man, take a seat and we’ll all be friends. You don’t want to go down the other road with me.
If they’d an ounce of sense that would of been the end of it but they were young and they didn’t like me telling them what to do even if it was the right thing. The girl with her tits out goes, fuck you, Paddy, and I saw red. I threw my plate of rice in her face, it wouldn’t of been sore or nothing I just wanted to embarrass her the way she was doing to the family. Tanya put her hand over her mouth trying not to laugh. The lad ran forward to take a swing at me but he was hopeless. I didn’t even move, I just let him hit me, sure his punch was piss-weak. My granny used to hit me harder than that when I was a wean.
I stood up then and popped him one in the mouth, not even hard like, I was just playing ‘cos I knew he was just a dumb kid. He went down like a ton of bricks. His lip burst on his teeth but sure it looked worse than it was. He rolled around squealing, holding his face like he was appealing to the ref for a penalty. The girl just stood there, fried rice dripping all over her stupid tits. You, I says dead loud to her friend, sure she near jumped out of her skin, put the T-shirt on her, gather your man there and away to fuck the lot of ye.
Right enough she jumped to it.
When are youse leaving, I goes to her as she pulls the top on over her stunned pal.
After the weekend, she says, shaking.
Wrong answer, I goes, try again.
Tomorrow? she stammers.
If you hurry up, there’s a ferry going back to Krabi tonight, I says, I advise you to be on it. I don’t want to see your faces round here no more.
The one with the rice on her gob still had a wee bit of fight in her and she goes, we’re going to tell the police about you.
This is Thailand, love, I says to her, catch yourself on. I could drag the three of youse out to sea, hold your heads down three times and bring them up twice and sure the peelers wouldn’t say nothing. Show some respect in the future and you won’t get into trouble. Youse are lucky I’m in a good mood otherwise this might of ended much worse for the three of ye today. Now go on.
Off they went with their tails between their legs. I apologised to the family that run the place but the father was slapping me on the back like I was a hero or something, he said I’d make a good Muslim. Aye, I says, just pay us back in beef massaman and I’m sorted. The funny thing is, the whole time I was thinking how fucking weird was that. Tanya, I goes, you’re a bad influence on me, sure that’s the first time in my life I told a girl off for getting her tits out. That’s contrary to my nature.
Tanya laughed and winked at me. Plenty more tits in the sea, she goes.
I tell you what, I fairly missed Tanya after she was gone back to Australia. Sure I learned more from her in those two weeks than I had in years at school back home. It was dead sad when she had to go. I was never pals with someone so young who knew so much about the world. It was an eye-opener for me and I decided to watch out for others like her. I felt like I was from some fucking backwater compared to her.
She gave me her address in Cairns and said I should come out and see her when she next had holidays, that we’d go diving on the Barrier Reef. It sounded like another planet. I told her I’d try and I put it to the back of my mind to have an aul think about.
Thailand was all very well, but I couldn’t stay here forever without going mad. I was starting to get a wee
taste that there might be other places I wouldn’t mind seeing. I’d just have to work out how to do it without getting pulled up by the peelers. I couldn’t exactly jump on the aul British Airways wearing a false beard or something, that wasn’t going to cut it like.
Me and Tanya hung out the whole day together on her last day. She comes round to my hut dead early, it was still dark outside but it was a hot night. I put a towel round me and opened the door wondering who the fuck it was. She squeezed in and says, are you awake?
Aye, sure I had to get up to answer the door, I says, what’s wrong?
Nothing, she goes, I just want to go for a walk on the beach when there’s no one about, watch the sun come up on my last day.
Right, I goes, sure what time is it?
Tanya just shrugged. What does it matter, she says, throw something on, I’ll cover my eyes.
I wasn’t bothered if she saw me in the buff or not but I turned my back and put my aul blue shorts on. I was just pulling them up over my arse when she whistles. I looked back and she was peeking through her fingers and laughing. Aye, give us a break, I says, sure it’s early and it’s a bit cold in here. It wasn’t cold at all, I was half asleep is all and I was talking shite.
We walked along the beach past all the huts right down to the end where you sometimes saw a couple of ancient Thai fellas fishing off the rocks. The sky was all purple and the sun was just starting to peek its wee head
over the horizon. I hadn’t seen the sunrise sober before in my life. It was dead quiet with only the sound of the waves sucking at the sand, no birds or nothing. Tanya sat down on the sand with her legs crossed like she was meditating or something but she was just staring out at the colours on the horizon with a smile on her face. She was fucking lovely at that moment, I’ll always remember it, her face in profile against the rocks.
It’s funny how the aul memory works. Sometimes that’s all I ‘member about a person is just one clear image, the rest all sort of blends together into more of a feeling than anything else. Maybe that’s all you need is those photographs in the mind. When you’re older, I suppose that’s all you have. I’ve got loads of them already but they’re not very nice most of them, I don’t like thinking about it. It’s all the bloody faces of Catholic lads I done over and worse. Don’t even get me started on our Mark, I’m trying to block that out completely, those are not good memories to have.
Tanya stood up then and pulled her blouse off. She never wore a bra ‘cos she had quite small wee breasts but I’d seen her wearing a bikini for going swimming. She had nothing on underneath this time. As she pulled the blouse off over her head I could see her hairy armpits. I’d seen them a couple of times by that stage and at first I was a bit disgusted but now I was sort of curious, it was a bit of a weird thing to see on a woman. I know it’s natural and everything but I just wasn’t used to it. No way the girls back home would ever not shave their
pits. The fisherman pants were off next and there she was in the nuddy right next to me. She had a big hairy triangle between her legs too. I was a bit shocked at the sight of it even though I suspected she was like that as I’d seen wee hairs sticking out the side of her bikini bottoms when we’d been swimming. Without a word she walked down to the water and ran into the sea. The arms went up above her head and she dived into the waves. She had a big tattoo on her lower back, one of them tribal ones. It made my aul Loyalist ones look like shite.
There was something beautiful and free about our Tanya that I’d never seen in a woman before. It’s like she was living in her own world and wasn’t carrying around any aul hang-ups from the past. Everyone I knew was fucked up and I started to think maybe that was just home, maybe it didn’t have to be like that.
I took the aul shorts off and ran into the sea as well. Tanya swam over, came up behind me and gave me a hug. I could feel her wee body pressing into the back of me. Her arms was round my chest and her chin was resting on my shoulder as the two of us watched the sun coming up over the ocean. There was still a wee bit of that phosphorescence stuff floating in the water, sure you could see it glowing whenever you kicked your feet or your hands.
I’ll miss you, Tanya, I says, what am I going to do after you’re away?
She plants a wee kiss on my neck. I could feel myself shaking but it was maybe just the cold water.
You’ll have some other girl in your bed next week, she goes.
I haven’t had you in my bed yet, I says.
You never asked, she goes, biting me on the shoulder all playful.
Is that all it would of took, me asking?
Hmm, she goes.
Right, I says, feeling like a right dumb cunt for not saying nothing before, well what are your plans for your last day?
Oh you know me, she says, I’m not much of a one for making plans.
Right, I goes, well can I make a wee suggestion?
Just a wee one then, she laughs. I knew she liked me saying wee.
I turned round in her arms then so I was facing her. She was a lot smaller than me and I could feel her fanny hair rubbing against my stomach under the water. Needless to say she was giving me the horn like nobody’s business.
Come here and I’ll whisper it in your ear, I says.
She turned her head so I could put my lips up close to her ear. The sea was turning a weird turquoise sort of colour.
What do you say we don’t bother getting dressed the rest of the day?
A naked day, she whispers back into my ear.
Aye, we come back here tonight and swim in the same spot.
I wanted to put the lips on her real bad but she let go of me then and says, come on, if we want to avoid putting our clothes on we better run back along the beach before anyone wakes up and sees us.
That broke the wee romantic moment but it was a bit of fun getting back to shore and charging down the beach trying not to laugh and wondering if any early risers would see us. My aul knob was an early riser himself, sure I’d never run with a hard-on before but it went down soon enough. We went back to Tanya’s hut and by that time I was getting used to walking around with nothing on but as soon as we were inside I couldn’t stand it no more and I pulled her in to me and started snogging the face off of her.
Go easy, she says, your stubble’s dead sharp, you’ll give me pash rash.
What’s that, I says.
She laughs then and goes, never mind, come to bed.
Music to my ears, I says.
And that’s the way it was, all day. We must of done it six or seven times, I didn’t think that was even possible. You hear stories that women who don’t shave stink but it’s not true, the smell of her was gorgeous, so it was, I was licking the sweat right off of her.
In between times when we were lying on the bed recovering she would pick up the guitar and sing me a wee song. I never heard the like of it. Some of them were hers and some of them were more famous ones but her own versions of them. She played this dead slow version
of ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’ that was brilliant, I nearly bawled, so I did. But the best was a song called ‘Summertime’. Tanya says it was from some aul opera by Gershwin but her favourite version was by Ella Fitzgerald. I never heard of either of them but the way Tanya sung it naked sitting up on her knees with her head all bowed to one side, I could’ve died right there and then in that hut and my worthless fucking aul life would of been complete enough.
I still think about her sometimes. She pops into my head when I’m not expecting it and all of a sudden I’m back on that beach watching the sun come up or lying on her mattress in the hut, watching a wee bead of sweat running down her arm. Wherever I am fades away into the background and I feel an aul pang of regret as she leans down to me and goes,
Hush little baby, don’t you cry.
I hope she’s all right. Knowing our Tanya, she’s probably sitting on some beach down in the Australia right now, singing her songs to some other fella, the two of them warm and happy and free.