story
MR WRONG BY TINA FAULK
W
hen Henry came into my neighbour Sally’s life I knew from the moment I met him he was wrong for her. Sally is a sweet, kind woman though perhaps a bit vague and forgetful at times. She’s been on her own for well, as long as my family moved next door, so, what, five years. You get to know a person in that time. I knew Sally as well as know, well, almost everyone in the street. Who uses their noisy leaf blower on the weekend, who has a dog, whose kids have to leave early for sports on Saturdays. You know the kind of thing. Henry had a dog, one of those small, yappy monsters. Don’t get me wrong, I actually like dogs, mostly ones like the big boofy choc Lab two doors down the street. Bailey is a real dog. Bailey he likes to snooze, which I understand. I do quite a lot of napping myself. But Henry’s dog was a pest. Hairless, which most dogs aren’t, and a snappy biter, the way most small terrors – yes, I know it’s terrier, but I call ‘em terrors, because they often are. This one was a terror. Capitals. No, I didn’t want that kind of terror living next door to me. Anyway, I noticed Henry turning up regularly on weekends to take Sally out. Usually it was a day trip, because she’d pack a lunch basket. I notice these things, because well, you do, don’t you? I spend a lot of time in my garden, just listening. And watching. When I’m not napping. That way, you really get to know what’s happening around you, don’t you think? And then suddenly, everything changed. I didn’t understand what was going on at first, and then I did. People stayed at home and there were much fewer cars on the road outside my house. Even the leaf blower stopped working for about three weeks. Children stopped going to school 34 TVO
and everyone seemed to be buying up big from the local supermarket down the road. But Henry didn’t stop visiting Sally. He and his yappy dog moved into Sally’s. I didn’t realise it had got that far. Poor Sally, she was never really very assertive and in this situation, she really needed to be. Henry was doing a lot of sitting in Sally house. And now I knew what was happening. Lockdown. Everyone spending time at home. And the terror in the garden next door to me. Well, before Henry and his terror could really dig themselves in at Sally’s very comfortable townhouse, with its pretty rambler roses and herb garden, I knew had to do something. It didn’t take long. All I needed to do was slip in and sit down in Sally’s sitting room, in the chair Henry usually sat in, when he and the terror had visited. Also the sofa, for good measure. And Sally’s mum’s tapestry footstool, with the nasturtiums. Ditto the window seat. And then I waited for them to come back after their shopping expedition, loaded with food, food for the terror, and yes, rolls and rolls of toilet paper. It only took about 40 minutes for the sneezing to start. Sally was worried, of course she was, and Henry, between sneezes, his eyes watering,
kept telling her that no, of course it wasn’t Covid, it was his allergies playing up. He didn’t understand, really, how it could happen this time of the year, it was only usually in spring… The next couple of days the sneezing got worse. Worse and louder. Sally was beginning to get some slightly hostile looks from the neighbours and Henry was making daily trips to the chemist for antihistamine medication. Romance died in a welter of allergic reaction sneezing and watering eyes. When Henry finally decided to leave, I think Sally was secretly pleased. She’d realised he was a difficult, demanding man, and hadn’t really, truly, admired those tedious bush walks. She helped Henry, still sneezing, pack his car with his possessions and the terror hanging his head out of the window. I watched them drive off from where I was, sitting in the sun. Sally smiled and gave me a friendly pat. “Of course you didn’t have anything to do with it, did you?” Who, me? Of course not, I could have told her. I’m only the next door cat. “Ed - Apologies to Tina for running this last month and crediting it to another writer”.
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