In the Mouth of the Tiger by Lynette Silver Page B

wicket this innings. We need only one more wicket and the match is ours.’
    Tim suddenly got to his feet. ‘Come on, Nona. The way Denis is bowlingthis’ll be over in a minute or two. Let’s get down to cheer the lads off the field. They’ve made history here today.’
    I was suddenly as keen as Tim to be in at the death, and we scurried back through the deserted club rooms, down the staircase, and out onto the padang. Quite a crowd had gathered, perhaps a hundred or so, and I could feel electricity in the air. Only moments before everybody, including most of the players, had seemed to me to be half asleep. Now every movement on the field was invested with drama and significance. Someone failed to field a ball cleanly, allowing the batsman to score a run, and the whole crowd groaned with despair.
    We worked our way through the crush of people to the fence just in time to see Denis begin his next over. This close to the action, everything seemed to be happening much faster. When Denis bowled, the ball flickered down the wicket like a red sun-flash, and I felt quite sorry for the poor batsman. He managed to keep the first few balls out of his wicket, but then one rose sharply off the pitch, catching his bat high on the blade. The ball sprang back down the wicket, seemingly clear over the bowler’s head. But Denis leapt up and backwards to take the catch, dragging the ball down clutched in his left hand. The crowd about us went wild, even Tim doing a jig, then catching me up in his arms and swinging me around in glee.
    By the time the crowd had settled down the players had reached the little gate in the fence beside us, and were standing back in a half-circle to clap Denis off the field.
    So that’s how I first saw him in real life. Striding towards me, his dark red and blue Selangor cap in his hand, his hair tousled and his shirt half open.
    I knew him immediately as the man from my dream, and stared into those level grey-blue eyes I knew so well. For just a moment our eyes met.
    And then he looked straight through me, unrecognising, and was gone.

Chapter Five
    D enis’s failure to recognise me came as a huge shock. I recall that I stood gaping after he had passed, quite unable to believe it, and that the feeling of unreality persisted for the rest of the afternoon. I had tea with Tim on the verandah, enthusing with him over the Selangor victory. I drove home with him, making bright conversation. I kissed him goodbye with affection and promised to meet him the following weekend. But all the while my head had been whirling and my heart tearing itself apart in my chest. As soon as the green Triumph had pulled away I rushed inside to my room, buried my face in my pillow and burst into tears. I must have cried for hours because I recall looking up eventually and being surprised how dark it was outside. I looked across at the pressure lamp I had kept on my bedside table since Penang, and at my little ivory tiger, and was caught by another storm of tears.
    I had built my new, confident life around a firm belief that someone fine loved and believed in me. I had seen that man, recognised the familiar level blue-grey eyes, the line of his mouth with its hint of a smile, the angle of his shoulders – and he had looked straight through me.
    I remember being so angry at one stage that I sat on the side of the bed and stamped my feet so hard they hurt. Rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat – I had to keep pounding to mask the pain and disappointment. I took up the little ivory tiger, tried to break it from its black onyx stand, then flung it from me with all my strength.
    The next thing I remember was my mother sitting on the bed by my side, looking at the thermometer. ‘One hundred and two degrees. You are a very sick girl, Nona. I must call Dr Lowe at once.’
    My fever reached one hundred and four that night, and I heard themtalking, as I lay pretending to be asleep, of calling an ambulance. But in the