Smiling Willie and the Tiger

by John Harris

  Polly greeted them coolly when they appeared in her bar. ‘You can’t stay here,’ she announced tartly. ‘I can’t afford you.’

  So Willie and Fish moved into a boarding house at the opposite end of the town from Mrs Dalgetty’s, while the Tiger, with Poll’s none-too-willing concurrence, moved Pansy with a Kaffir house-boy into a small house in Wolfard Lane on the outskirts. Mendel, the diamond buyer, gave him his job and the old lop-eared grey pony back without asking questions and he cautiously took to making his calls once more among the diggings and round the bars before going home at night to Pansy.

  The house he’d rented was nothing much, just the usual box with a stoep and a tin roof that made it like an oven during the day, but it had a bedroom with red curtains you couldn’t see through, gaudy wallpaper fly-spotted round the light, a chest of drawers, half of them without knobs, a brass-decorated bedstead with a turkey twill cover, and an American cloth armchair on the stoep where the Tiger could sit when it was hot. It also had a white-painted fence which made it look comfortable and a couple of whitewashed drain-pipes overflowing with Indian cress set on either side of the gate under the pepper trees, and with the tintype of Pansy’s parents, the china cockerel and the ‘Present from Brighton’ and the cushion cover with the face of Lord Bobs, it managed to look like home.

  Occasionally even, they put the lop-eared pony between the shafts of a trap the Tiger borrowed from Mendel and went like an old married couple for a picnic among the willows by the river where some enterprising individual had taken over a dam built by British troops and, by planting flowers, had converted it to a swimming pool which went by the name of Floral Heights. ‘Three feet up with daisies,’ the Tiger called it.

  He was delighted with his domesticity but he wasn’t always sure that Pansy was. Though she still worked for Poll, her mind seemed to revolve round thoughts of Johannesburg and the plush hotels of Commissioner Street and a box at the opera house. Fifteen thousand pounds was a worrying figure and it was obviously never far from her thoughts.

  ‘You ought to be able to trust me,’ she wheedled. ‘Of all people.’

  ‘I do, Panse,’ the Tiger insisted. ‘I do.’

  Her voice hardened. ‘Then why won’t you tell me where you hid it?’

  The Tiger hedged. ‘Because we all swore this oath,’ he said.

  Pansy looked angry. ‘I’d have thought, what you’ve had from me, you’d be glad to tell me.’

  ‘I will, Panse,’ the Tiger promised.

  ‘When will that be? The day we get married?’

  The Tiger’s hesitation was barely noticeable. He still wasn’t eager to commit himself. ‘Instanter,’ he said stoutly.

  She stared at him. The Tiger still looked like an overgrown schoolboy with his freckled oval of a face and the blinking purple-blue eyes. He wasn’t much to look at, she thought, not even with fifteen thousand pounds behind him. After all, she decided, Willie Herbillon had fifteen thousand pounds behind him and a grand manner to go with it; and Dolly Fish had fifteen thousand pounds and a voice that sent chills up her spine when he talked. She often looked at the picture of the three of them on her bedside table, sometimes – as the Tiger suspected – more often at Dolly Fish than she did at the Tiger.

  Even so – she hesitated – although Fish had a habit of trying to get her into dark corners near Poll’s kitchens, she’d noticed his proposals didn’t include marriage whereas the Tiger was at least willing to accept responsibility for her. To all intents and purposes she was his wife already and it only needed the official clincher in front of a parson.

  She decided it was wiser to forget Fish and bring the Tiger to the starting post. Then if he ever got around to lifting the fifteen thousand pounds he’d buried and anything happened to him – and things had a habit of happening to the Tiger! – his share would become hers.

  ‘I think we ought to get married,’ she announced. ‘Aunt Poll keeps asking.’

  ‘I think so, too,’ the Tiger agreed cheerfully. Talk of marriage always placated Pansy.

  ‘How about next week?’

  The Tiger sat up, alarmed. The following week seemed to be rushing it a little, and it suddenly brought home to him what marriage meant. It was a strange unfamiliar word, final and depressing, and it meant for ever. For richer, for poorer. Till death us do part. Tied down to a dusty little house in Wolfard Lane with a tin roof and a garden full of stones. He felt suddenly as though he’d been sentenced to death.

  He poured himself a stiff drink. ‘Need longer than that,’ he said as casually as he could.

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Month or two.’ To a man on the steps of the scaffold it wasn’t unnatural that he should drag his feet a little.

  Pansy looked indignant. ‘I’ll be an old woman by then,’ she said.

  The Tiger began to look desperate. He swallowed his drink and poured himself another. ‘Where do we get the money to pay for it?’ he asked.

  ‘You’ve got fifteen thousand owing to you. More, if anything happened to the others.’ Pansy seemed to be suggesting that it might not be a bad idea to help something to happen to the others.

  The Tiger glanced about him. ‘Not so loud, Pansy,’ he said. ‘We still have to be careful.’

  Pansy’s eyes flashed. ‘You’re so blinking careful,’ she said, ‘it’s a wonder you know how to get into bed with me.’

  The Tiger grinned and she was a little mollified. ‘Why don’t we go and get that money, Tiger?’ she asked. ‘Just you and me.’

  It was a tempting idea, but the Tiger was no fool. ‘I’d do it,’ he admitted. ‘Honest, I would, Panse. But they’d catch us, sure as sure.’ He indicated the photograph. ‘They’ve both got one of them and they’d cut my bit out and send it to the police if I did. Name, address, mother’s pedigree, where was I born and why. The lot.’

  ‘Anybody’d think they didn’t trust you.’

  ‘They don’t.’ The Tiger grinned. ‘I don’t trust them.’

  Pansy’s shoulders jerked restlessly. ‘A girl gets tired of waiting,’ she said. ‘It’s always jam tomorrow with you. Never jam today.’

  The Tiger eyed her. The gin was beginning to work. It was a warm night and he could hear heavy spots of rain beginning to thump slowly on the tin roof. It sounded like the sudden thud of his heart.

  ‘Oh, come on, Panse,’ he said, bold as brass suddenly. ‘Let’s not quarrel. It makes me jumpy.’

  ‘Yes. Jumpy-into-bed with me.’

  The Tiger grinned. It made him look as fierce as a mad mouse. ‘It’s too hot for clothes,’ he said. ‘Let’s pull the curtains and enjoy ourselves.’

  Pansy watched him as he began to drag at his shirt. ‘You’re as randipoley as a buck rabbit these days,’ she said, faintly shocked.

  ‘Why not?’ the Tiger said. ‘Let’s have some fun.’

  Pansy stared at him as he stood unclothed before her. ‘Fun?’ she said. ‘With that?’

  The Tiger grinned, slender and white as a willow wand. Pansy was beginning to melt, he knew. ‘Got any cham?’ he asked.

  She glanced at him from the corner of her eye. ‘Poll gave me a bottle,’ she admitted. ‘How about ice?’

  ‘You could send the house-boy to the cold-storage plant.’

  Pansy grinned impulsively and began to kick her shoes off. ‘After,’ she said.

  Outside in the slowly falling rain, as the curtains slammed to with an eagerness that clattered the curtain rings, Dolly Fish frowned. He knew what they were up to. Or, at least, he could guess. He was standing under a pepper tree, leaning against the speckled trunk, a dead cigar between his teeth. His arteries swelled and his head went down between his shoulders as a head of steam built up inside him.

  He was filled to the ears with Cape brandy and had been there for an hour, gloomily surveying the lighted window in the little tin-roofed bungalow. Fish wasn’t a clever man and he’d become besotted with Pansy since the fiasco on Poll’s stoep. He had contemplated calling on her when th
e Tiger was out, but the Tiger was more cunning than he looked; he took her to Poll’s in the morning in the little trap behind the lop-eared pony, and she waited for him to pick her up again in the evening.

  The rain fell faster and Fish’s temper grew worse as he remembered all the things the Tiger had called him. He wondered if he could perhaps solve the problem by shooting him when he wasn’t looking. But even Fish quailed at that kind of treachery. He’d probably miss, anyway, he thought gloomily. He’d never had much luck with other people’s wives. Even his hurried departure from Texas hadn’t been because of villainy. His villainy was always small – the size of watches without works – and his disappearance had been occasioned entirely because the sheriff had chosen to come home early to his wife.

  All the same, he thought, he might just manage the Tiger. The Tiger looked like a tally clerk in a cemetery. Fish cheered up momentarily, then he began to frown again. In spite of everything he could do, Pansy remained willing only to flirt at Poll’s and would never go further. He had to get her on her own without the Tiger around, he decided. It seemed to need something big. Something important. The sort of thing he had often dreamed about but had never managed to pull off. He wondered if he could rob the bank.

  Lost without his gun, he had bought it out of pawn and taken to wearing it again. Men laughed at him in bars when they saw it, because people didn’t carry guns on their belts in barbaric countries like South Africa, and he’d often felt he ought to shoot a few of them to show what he could do. Instead of which, when he had one drink too many and reached for the weapon, they simply showed him the door.

  He tried a few draws in the darkness. They weren’t very successful because he’d changed the over-loose holster for a tighter one and now the goddam gun stuck so tight he almost pulled himself off-balance as he yanked at it. Bitterly he cursed the fate that had made him inefficient. When the goddam holster was loose the gun flew all over the place and even fell out when he turned. When it was tight the sonofabitching thing wouldn’t come out at all.

  He glanced down at himself. He needed new clothes and a new hat and all he had left was one five-pound note which he called his sinking fund. He had no intention of spending that yet and as he wondered if he could get the new togs on the nod, his thoughts dwelt on the forty-seven thousand pounds buried under the jacarandas at Chichester Junction. He could just do with his share at that moment.

  So long as the Tiger hadn’t got his share as well. His thoughts ran on. He knew he had advantages over the Tiger – better looks, better build, better brain. Well – he paused, knowing his own limitations – perhaps not a better brain. But the Tiger had Pansy and, all things being more or less equal, possession was nine points of the law. Pansy might enjoy his company, but she had her claws well into the Tiger and she wouldn’t let go until she saw a better prospect. Maybe he ought to propose even marriage.

  The rain was falling steadily now and it was seeping through the leaves of the pepper tree. Restlessly, feeling it dripping down his neck, he wondered if it were possible to dig his share up. A spade and a bit of strong-arm work would do the trick quick enough. But when he’d got it out – even supposing the soldiers weren’t waiting for him, as he knew very well they were – how did he get it away without help? It was in coin and weighed at least a couple of hundredweight. It didn’t seem feasible, not even to Fish’s not very astute mind.

  And in the meantine – he shifted inside his wet clothes – the sight of the Tiger wrenching off his shirt and Pansy starting to undo the hooks and eyes of her dress, just before the curtains had clashed to with a noise that was enough to advertise round the whole of Winifred what they were up to, left him with a frozen face and a soul that was stirred to cataclysmic proportions. It was more than a man could stand.

  They were all feeling a little low in spirits that night. The Tiger, with Pansy asleep alongside him, was listening to the rain growling down the spout. The room was as hot as the bowels of hell and he was brooding on the idea of being married. In the bar down the road from Poll’s, with the last of his money gone in a game of poker, Willie was staring into the stark face of poverty.

  Watching his opponents pocket his last sovereign, he had retired to a table in a corner to consider the future, and over a glass of champagne with a lump of ice in it to lower the temperature he began to wonder if he might not help himself to Poll’s carriage and have another try under the jacarandas at Chichester Junction. Just one of the little canvas bags, he thought. Just one! That was all!

  On the other hand, he decided, if it were to prove possible to get one, it would be stupid not to take the lot. His mouth went dry at the thought and he took a gulp at the champagne to calm himself down. He’d need something roomier than Poll’s carriage for that lot, he thought. It was so heavy he’d probably rupture himself lifting it.

  But forty-seven thousand quid! Just lying in a hole at Chichester Junction, rotting for want of spending. He gave a deep sigh and moved uneasily on the chair. It was enough to give a chap burning spots on the mind at the thought of it. He never doubted that one day the forty-seven thousand pounds would be his. Not the Tiger’s nor Fish’s, but William Henry Fitzjohn Herbillon’s. He was by far the cleverest of the three, had devised a scheme which ensured that the other two would never dare take it behind his back, and was quite certain in his own mind that eventually the military would grow bored, give it up for lost and go home. Whereupon, Willie Herbillon would enlist the aid of Dolly Fish and the Tiger, recover the swag and then sit down to consider ways and means of parting the other two from their share. It was so simple it was silly.

  While he was still brooding, Joey da Costa appeared.

  ‘Hello, Willie,’ she said. ‘You out on the ran-dan?’

  Occupied with his problems, Willie didn’t hear her and her voice rose. ‘Well, don’t look so egg-bound,’ she said. ‘Say something!’

  Willie looked up. ‘Turned out nice again,’ he offered.

  She sniffed. ‘That the best you can do?’

  He smiled. He hadn’t seen her for a long time. ‘How about “Have a drink?” Sarsaparilla? Ginger beer? Two penn’orth of gin?’

  He gallantly bought her a Rhynbende with his last few coins and raised his glass. ‘Good health and bad habits.’

  She giggled. ‘I may be bad,’ she said. ‘But I wish I was worser.’

  She took a sip at her gin, holding the glass with a daintily curled little finger.

  ‘What do you think about the war?’ she asked.

  ‘Not much,’ Willie said.

  ‘It’s nearly over, they say.’

  ‘Don’t affect me. To show I have no ill-feeling, I’ve always sympathised with both sides.’

  ‘It’s going to feel funny all the same.’

  ‘We’ll need pluck to carry on.’

  ‘You’ve got that,’ she giggled. ‘I bet you’ve plucked everybody in sight. You married yet?’

  ‘A wife’s dangerous. Best to take some other feller’s. How about you? Are you married?’

  ‘I’m on winking terms with a few.’

  ‘Be a good catch, Joey.’

  ‘For a fisherman!’ she eyed him. ‘I’ve got some cham at home,’ she offered.

  He was just about to point out that he was broke when the door opened and Fish appeared. He seemed depressed and Willie noticed he was wearing his gun again.

  ‘Fancy meeting you,’ Joey said coldly.

  Fish studied her. She wasn’t Pansy, but there were black wet curls round a damp golden face and she was round and firm in the right places. He felt his heart skid suddenly under his shirt and began to feel better at once. Joey caught his glance and she was experienced enough to know what it meant. She looked at Willie. She didn’t like Fish very much.

  ‘You in the money, Willie?’ she asked hopefully.

  Willie smiled sadly. ‘Looking for work and praying I won’t find it.’

  Joey returned his smile with equal sadness. ‘I once had a boy friend used to
look for work.’ The jokes came without hesitation, as they always did. ‘Never found it. My first cousin he was. Hope he’s the last. Sorry you’re so down-in-the-mouth. Them high-class relations don’t seem to be looking after you, do they?’

  ‘You choose your friends, old dear. With relations you have no choice.’

  She glanced at Fish. ‘I expect you’re broke, too,’ she said.

  Fish eyed her for a moment, then he drew a deep breath. ‘I got some dough.’

  Willie looked shocked. That Fish could have money when no one else had seemed the height of treachery.

  ‘How much?’ he demanded.

  Fish was on the point of producing the five-pound note when he thought better or it. ‘Some,’ he said.

  Joey looked sadly at Willie. ‘Business is business, Willie,’ she said. She turned to Fish. ‘You feeling frisky? I’ve got the booze on ice.’

  Fish grinned and gestured towards the door. The rain was coming down in torrents now.

  Joey smiled and flourished an umbrella. ‘I got a gamp,’ she said.

  Ten

  Like filings drawn to a magnet, they all came together for breakfast in the bar at Poll’s. There was only one other customer, a shifty-faced man in a dusty suit who looked as though he’d arrived in the area with something illegal to sell.

  Fish was soured and spent. The visit to Joey’s hadn’t helped and the cheap champagne she dispensed, on top of the brandy he’d drunk earlier, had knotted his stomach. His clothes were stiff with damp and wrinkled because he’d slept in them. His tongue felt like flannel; his teeth, as he tried to work his lips down over them, seemed to be coated with grit; and he had to hold on to the side of his head because it felt as though it were about to fall off.

  He had scared Joey with his passion and she had flung him out into the storm as soon as she could, and he was in a desperate mood when Willie appeared, carrying the paper that Joby, the porter, touched by the sunshine in his smile, had found for him.