Tiger Island, page 37
He sipped his tea and waited for Robin, bursting to present his vision to the one person he really wanted to share it with.
Robin came in through the bedroom door and stopped, struck by the chill on her naked skin. She looked across the big room to the open balcony door and the tall figure beyond it. A full-length mirror reflected her own slim figure as it hesitated. Had she looked she would have seen a thing of silver and pale gold. Like a Cellini nude; like Titania, Queen of the Fairies. But she did not look. She stared at Richard, struck by the way his body seemed a thing of shadow. Even in the light of the fat moon, he seemed cloaked in shadows; and the image was striking enough to call to her mind the games she had played with Daniel Huuk. For if she was Titania, ill met by moonlight, then there, outside the window watching his kingdom of the sea, was her Oberon.
But then he turned and the light caught his face. Robin knew that expression all too well of old. He had some scheme afoot and was bursting to share it with her. And the revelation drove out all thoughts of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but not all thoughts of Shakespeare. She knew how things would go now. He would tell her of some madcap scheme and she would demur, but supportively, loving the boyish enthusiasm, supporting his vision, for things usually turned out well enough in the end, but fearing that he would dash off again aboard some ship, to some far-flung comer of the earth, about some mad adventure, leaving her here. Alone with the twins.
The phone call had been their school. She must pick the pair of them up in the morning; a measles epidemic had broken out at Amberley. No more love in the afternoon and no more nude tea-making for a while. But she knew that the brief idyll would not have lasted in any case. Everything about Richard’s dark vibrancy told her that, and she shrugged to herself and stepped forward.
As she moved, he saw her and she saw his lips begin to move, his enthusiasm spilling out even before she was within earshot. And she saw in his eyes the threat of distances and separations once again.
But she thought to herself, ‘Sigh no more, lady, sigh no more, men were deceivers ever; one foot in sea, and one on shore, to one thing constant never.’
And she smiled.
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Acknowledgements
This novel was originally going to start with pirates. It now opens with Sindbad because I chanced upon Tim Severing wonderful The Sindbad Voyage. Sindbad’s presence gave me the idea of reinterpreting his First Tale from 1001 Nights having the ocean rising instead of the island sinking — and so the tsunami arrived; and with it the final shape of the plot.
Much research went into Sindbad’s literary background, but it was Mr Severin who introduced me to the ‘real’ Sindbad the Sailor. Drake’s adventure is based absolutely on historical fact. He did run aground on a rock pinnacle within sight of land. He did dump ballast overboard (but no treasure) and the wind did change at once. He did go at once to an island (Crab Island) but he met no tigers or tsunamis there. Also, as he had taken the outward passage, these things happened to him well south of the Rifleman Bank — and, indeed, well south of Java and Sumatra as well. To those interested in Drake’s subsequent adventures I can do no better than to recommend Garett Mattingly’s The Defeat of the Spanish Armada; my personal favourite of all works of Tudor maritime history. More details of the circumnavigation itself are available in Alexander McKee’s The Queen’s Corsair.
The island itself became influenced — as did at least one of the characters upon it — by Lucy Irvine. Anyone who finds Sally Alabaster too good to be true is referred to Ms Irvine’s Castaway — as is every other armchair adventurer who reads this. I would like to thank Sybil Woolfson for permission to use an agreed romanticisation of her name - I don’t know how the Sergeant became nick-named Sally when she started out as Sybelle, Sybil; I hope you don’t mind.
As always, I owe a debt of gratitude to Steve Sawyer and Jenny Fenn, librarians at The Wildernesse School, and to the staff of the public libraries in Sevenoaks, Douglas, Castletown and Port Erin. I also owe thanks to John Wright and Paul Clark of the Geography department at the Wildernesse School who found me facts about modern China and tsunamis and showed me where to find more. I must also thank Roger Hood for trying to get the old laptop to run Works for me and I do not know what I would have done when it crashed had not Alec Rodden made me free of his own computer from 6am until 4pm every day for a month. You and Joan were lifesavers, Alec; I really cannot thank you enough.
It was the old Pirate Ship team who updated me on the Far East — Richard Atherton’s travel notes from Singapore to Western Australia; Ann and Graeme West’s holiday records; Kendall’s tourist documents; Simon’s maps and charts (ameliorated as ever by charts and Admiralty Pilots from Kelvin Hughes Ltd); and this time particularly I must thank Carey and John Bower for the (hopefully) telling little details about the MTR and especially the Macau jetcat.
Finally, I must thank my armaments officers without whom these books would lack a little something, to say the least. Peter Scurfield who, even from the depths of Fujayra, had input into Meltdown’s tank battles and Tiger Island’s hardware alike — but most especially, thank you Dale Clarke for breaking into busy film-schedules arming sets and series from GoldenEye and Rob Roy to Richard III and The Saint to advise me on a range of matters but most especially and effectively on the Russian BTR 80 Amphibious Armoured Personnel Carrier.
Peter Tonkin, Sevenoaks and Port Erin, 1996
Peter Tonkin, Tiger Island
