Free In Search of the Blue Tiger by Robert Power

record scratches and bumps. His voice burns a question mark through the cigarette smoke.
    â€˜Oscar? Oscar? A penny for them.’ I hear her voice drawing me back. When she says my name, when she remembers my name, I feel I might faint. She is handing me a small plate from the sideboard. I take it and say, ‘Thank you.’ I keep my eyes low, averted. I stare at the little triangular biscuits. They are covered in a snow of fine sugar. The pattern on the plate is of a rose garden and the biscuits look like large paving stones in it. I rearrange them so they fit neatly together.
    I look up. She is standing by the window. She is the picture I have never seen, in the gallery I have never visited. The room, its plants and gilded frames, its soft fabrics and fresh painted and papered walls, hints of a home I have never had. She pats her hair with the flat of her hand, checking it is in place. A shadow, like a cloak, drifts across her face as she leans forward. Something has taken her attention. Her hand rests gently on the curtain, holding it back to see the street below. She sees something that I can’t see. After a moment she releases her grip on the curtain and turns back into the room.
    Then she smiles again and sits down opposite me, only a small table of tea things between us. Delicate cups and saucers, a sugar bowl, a teapot with a hunting scene racing around it. I follow the horse and hounds as they hurtle towards the spout in pursuit of the fox. At the front of the pack is a man in a blood-red coat. He is straining forward, willing his horse on, keen to kill the quarry.
    â€˜Why are adults like that?’ I ask of her.
    â€˜Like what Oscar?’
    I look at her. I look at the pot: the hunting scene.
    â€˜Why do they chase after animals, kill them, kill each other?’
    We are talking. She and I. This lady librarian and me.
    â€˜Why do they do things the way they do? Why do they say things that make no sense? Calling each other by their animal names.’
    I stop. I feel the guilt of the betrayer. I’ve let out the scent of a secret from the House of the Doomed and the Damned. But Mrs April looks so kindly at me. She sits with her hands in her lap. She is thinking, phrasing a reply in her mind, but letting me talk, encouraging the words to tumble out.
    â€˜I mean, like Great Aunt and Grandmother’s teeth.’
    I don’t really mean Great Aunt and I don’t quite understand what happened with my Grandmother’s teeth. I want to speak about the parents. But I hesitate. Mrs April looks slightly confused, but she nods her head, encouraging me on.
    I stare at the triangular biscuits on the plate balancing on my knees.
    Mrs April leans forward and arranges the cups and saucers, lifting the teapot to pour the tea. ‘Steady boy,’ says the huntsman as the horse lurches forward, nearly losing its footing, then righting itself as the cup is filled.
    â€˜She spits in the fire, Aunt does. Like a cobra, but really she’s a lizard. Not a small one, but one of those big dragon ones that walk on the beaches. The ones that have poisonous germs in their mouths and bites that kill horses. And she gives me chocolate and tells me stories of the coach-house. And when I tell Stigir, he has to walk away and hide. And then she plays with her beads and looks at me like I’m the devil or some kind of were-wolf child …’
    Mrs April looks at me, slightly aghast, as if I have said something to surprise her. I forget: she is not from my family.
    â€˜Have some tea, Oscar.’ She stirs in two full spoonfuls of sugar, then pushes the cup and saucer to my side of the table.
    â€˜Being a child is difficult,’ she says slowly, thoughtfully, ‘but so is being a grownup. Don’t try to understand everything. There’ll be plenty of time for that.’
    Her face lightens.
    â€˜Be a boy, play with your dog.’ She is still holding the spoon, waving it around as she