Tribal tiger head design

It is a carved cedar head, no bigger than a grapefruit, painted with black lacquer in the bold tribal pattern your grandfather copied from a tin sign above a Liverpool tobacconist he never bothered to explain. The stripes run from brow to jaw in thick, hooked bars, and the mouth hangs open over two pale fangs. Men pass it, touch the ears, and walk on. You have started to think it is waiting for a particular customer, and you have started to think that is nonsense, because you are wet and it is nearly midnight.

At ten to twelve a woman in a green oilskin stops beside her shopping trolley. She does not look at the bin bags. She picks up the tiger, turns it so the lamp catches the lacquer, and says her brother used to draw these on the back of exercise books until the headmaster confiscated every one. She asks what you want for it. You say a pound, because that is what your grandfather would have said, and she laughs, presses a fiver into your palm, and tells you to keep the change for the bus.

When she has gone, you find the tarpaulin has drained into one cold pool above your head, and the rain has stopped as if someone turned off a tap. Under the lamp the tiger's stripes shine wet and black, and the open mouth holds a little of the light. You tip the water off the edge, fold the canvas, and tuck the fiver into the tin with the pound coins. Tomorrow you will carve another. The stripes are easier to keep in your hands than to sell, and you have never once been able to say no to a bored tiger.