‘It’s not my fault, Arthur.’
‘What do you mean it’s not your fault. Of course it’s your fault, Harriet. It’s always your fault.’
‘How could it be, though. I told Heidi. Over and over.’ Harriet sighs.
‘Oh, you told her alright, the same way you tell everyone in that sad little wilting voice but you didn’t actually stop her, did you?’
‘Come on, love. No need for that tone.’ Harriet strokes Arthur’s head, feels the softness under her fingers.
‘Come on,’ she says, ‘hop down here onto my lap.’ Arthur drops down from the lampshade tassels, spins a couple of times on his thread, and lands gently on Harriet’s brown satin pajama pants. He stretches his eight legs out, doubling in size. She strokes him again. Under his chin. Or where she imagines his chin to be. So soft. Softer than fur. Than velvet. Than the rosebud lips of a fairy or a princess. He looks up at her and blinks. His eyes flash gold ink.
‘If anyone’s to blame it’s you,’ she says under her breath.
‘I heard that,’ he says, jumping on to her arm. ‘There you go again. Passive aggressive blaming. If you’ve got something to say then say it to my face.’ Arthur turns his back, jumps onto the wall behind her, runs up it, lands on the ceiling and then spins down until he’s hovering in front of Harriet’s eyes.
‘Now, he says. You were saying?’
Harriet curls her fingers. Squeezes them into tight fists. Harriet would like to bat Arthur away with a finger, puff him onto the floor with a long hard breath, maybe, dare she even think it, position him carefully under her shoe and then lower her foot, ever so slowly until, with a dull crackle and crunch, he is no more.
‘I was just saying,’ she says, ‘that she’s done it now anyway. What more can we do?’
‘You’re going to let it go then? Our only daughter? Eighteen years old and engaged to that… That…’ He sputters and splutters and spins again. ‘Engaged to that toilet sniffing corpse stomping blue nosed… buzzer?’
‘Arthur, for Christ’s sake!’ The shout is out before she can stop it. The shout with its rush of air, the rush of air that catches Arthur, hurls him tornado style, spinning him across the room until he lands, on his back, on the cat’s purple and green feathered wind up mouse. The cat, waking from her afternoon slumber on the back of the couch, stands up, arches her back, and tiptoes along the back of the couch to have a closer look.
‘Oh Arthur, oh God, I’m sorry, really I’m sorry.’ Harriet is on her feet, walking across the room to pick him up but she’s too late. Arthur has righted himself and has scurried under the low mahogany-stained coffee table just out of reach of Harriet, but not quite out of reach of the cat. Harriet lowers herself onto the floor, lies down, and stares under the coffee table. Arthur’s eyes have turned a shifty shade of zinc green. He doesn’t blink. He bristles. He does a little dance. Two inches away from the stretch of Harriet’s fingers. Always two inches away from Harriet’s stretch.
‘You shouldn’t have said that, Arthur,’ she says, careful to breathe and speak out of the side of her mouth.
‘Always blaming me, aren’t you Harriet. You wouldn’t pick on someone your own size now, would you?’ Arthur scuttles backwards and forwards, jumps, and scuttles again.
‘That’s hardly true Arthur and you know it. Before. You know. Before this this thing I would have said the same. It’s not my fault you had the…’
From the hallway a loud buzz and then a jangle. The doorbell. A muted cheerful female laugh. The metallic scrape of a key in a lock.
‘That’s them,’ she says to Arthur, getting to her feet. ‘For god’s sake be polite. And don’t trap him love. I know it’s tempting. But remember the last time? The damage you did? You’ll only break Heidi’s heart. And you’ll expect me to clean it all up.’
SANDERLINGS 