Free Mr. Chartwell by Rebecca Hunt Page A

hummed quietly as he attended the leg. He gargled through the sweeping tongue and it was dramatically unpleasant.
    Esther eavesdropped from her bedroom. More repulsive humming. She was reassured. A very tentative reassurance, which strengthened into mild confidence. She experimented with shut eyes until her eyes allowed themselves to remain shut.
    “… God.”
Black Pat had stopped, the thing on his leg forgotten. “I can hear you snoring, you know.” He had something else to add. “It sounds like a tractor driven by pigs.”
    Esther’s eyes boggled open, now open forever. She took sipping breaths with a straw-hole mouth and tried to be noiseless.
    Black Pat snickered at the floor and rolled as a horse rolls, heaving his body from the neck. The momentum rocked him over to his other side. With a bluesy grunt he relaxed his muscles into sleep, his ear creasing back to reveal its beef-pink lining.



CHAPTER 15
    7.30 a.m
.
    E sther peered over the banister and looked for Black Pat. Not seeing him, she stood on her toes, leaning farther, the weight on her stomach. Then, envisioning her death from a collapsing banister, dead on her own stairs, Esther dashed to the bathroom. Locking the door, she went to do the morning analysis of her face. The mirrored cabinet above the green sink described a worried face drawn around a dark migrainous point in the centre. Without ever having worn earrings, Esther imagined earrings and wondered if this would improve things. Now she tried out a grin, grinning at the mirror, changing the angles of her neck.
    The grin died in a frown. She noticed an object balanced on the sink’s ledge, a stick bound with one of her tea towels. The unbound stick was a wooden spoon, also belonging to her.Esther looked over at the door. The bathroom was suddenly infected with the mysterious and foul habits of Black Pat.
    An ear to the door, she heard silence. Maybe he was still asleep? Another problem arose. With clothes still in the bedroom she would have to chance a wet sprint in a towel.
Better to get the clothes first
, thought Esther.
Yes, get the clothes and do the whole procedure in here
.
    Seconds later she returned hugging an armful of clothes: a mustard cardigan and a cream-and-blue day dress patterned with kaleidoscope fractals. Screwed up in one prim fist she held a pair of underpants. Black Pat turned from the sink. With a thump of cloth everything fell to the floor. Up came his paw, a merry salute. Esther mutely debated the right response.
    A patch of the mirror had been wiped clear. Black Pat was holding the wooden spoon, rewrapped with the tea towel. Rubbing his teeth with it, he worked against the enamel, pushing it around the gullies of his mouth. Cheeks stuffed, he said something unintelligible.
    “What?” Esther bent and scraped together her clothes.
    He did it again, a string of vowel sounds, an interpretive paw swinging between the sink and the bath. Then he let out a towel mouthful of laughter, a spray of froth landing over the tiles.
    “That’s my tea towel, I hope you know.” Esther’s clothes were in a bundle around the humiliating pants. “And that’s my spoon.” Moodily she said, “I cook with that spoon.”
    He removed it. “Not now it’s my toothbrush you don’t.”
    “Your toothbrush.” Esther talked disapprovingly to her ankles.
    Black Pat developed a disapproval of his own. “Dental hygiene is important. I aspire to have the smile of Tess of the D’Urbervilles.”
    This was intriguing enough. Esther forgot her ankles. “Tess of the what?”
    “The D’Urbervilles. Thomas Hardy wrote that she had a smile like roses full of snow.” He shuffled his head about. “I paraphrase. It was something similar, perhaps that. Either way, a nice smile.” He lifted the skin of his muzzle to show her, flaunting hooked fangs in a mossy mass, some damp grey, some dappled brown, a few in curving tusks.
    Esther took in the exhibition of teeth. No roses of snow, it was a split