Paper Tiger

Tippoo’s Tiger, a prize exhibit in the Victoria and Albert museum, had inspired Richard to write his book.

This mechanical wonder, that growled as it dug its claws into a red-coated soldier, had once belonged to the Sultan Tippoo of Mysore, who was killed fighting the army of the British East India Company. I’d watched Richard go bald and myopic as he wrestled with his account of the gallant Sultan’s life and times, filling every inch of space in his tiny flat with books and photocopies, maps and pictures, piles of correspondence and stacks of typescript.

That still left, up on his wall, the old poster for a production of King Lear, with his name proudly included in the cast. Someone else in that cast list was now a star of stage and screen. It hadn’t happened for him.

Richard reached for my bottle on the floor, where the lino curled up at the edges. ‘I mean,’ he said, ‘what have I got to lose?’

Not his hair, I guess.