Mrs Cooksey was giving little oohs and ahs. ‘You have a real friend now, haven’t you, Bluey?’
Bluey wasn’t listening. He was hurrying away from the wheel to the red-beaked chicken. He pecked at it frenziedly.
‘Just like children,’ Mrs Cooksey said. ‘They’ll quarrel and fight, but they are good friends.’
Life became hard for Bluey. Greenie never stopped showing off and Bluey, continually baited and squawked at, retaliated less and less. At the end of the week he seemed to have lost the will even to protest. It was Greenie now who kept the little trapeze going, Greenie who punched the seed-bell and made it ring, Greenie who filled the room with noise. Mrs Cooksey didn’t try to teach Greenie to talk and I don’t imagine the thought of finger-training him ever entered her head. ‘Greenie’s a big boy,’ she said.
It gave me some pleasure to see how the big boy fretted at the ferris wheel. He shook it and made it rattle; but he couldn’t make it spin.
‘Why don’t you show him, Bluey?’ Mrs Cooksey said.
But Bluey had lost interest in all Mrs Cooksey’s embellishments, even in the plastic chicken. He remained on the floor of the cage and hardly moved. Finally he stood quite still, his feathers permanently ruffled, shivering from time to time. His eyes were half-shut and the white lined lids looked tender and vulnerable. His feet began to swell until they became white and scaly.
‘He’s just hopeless,’ Mrs Cooksey said, with surprising vehemence. ‘Don’t blame Greenie. I did my best to train Bluey. He didn’t care. And who’s paying for it now?’
She was contrite a few days later. ‘It isn’t his fault, poor little Bluey. He’s got ingrowing toe-nails. And his feet are so dirty too. He hasn’t had a bath for a long time.’
I stayed to watch. Mrs Cooksey emptied the glass ashtray of pins and paper-clips and elastic bands and filled it with warm water. She turned on the electric fire and warmed a towel in front of it. She put a hand into the cage, had it pecked and squawked at by Greenie, pulled Bluey out and dropped him into the water in the ashtray. Instantly Bluey dwindled to half his size. His feathers stuck to him like a second skin. He was rubbed with carbolic soap, rinsed in the ashtray and dried in the warm towel. At the end he looked damp and dishevelled. ‘There you are, Bluey. Dry. And now let’s have a look at your nails.’ She put Bluey on the palm of her left hand and held a pair of nail scissors to his swollen feet. A month before, given such freedom, Bluey would have flown to the top of the curtains. Now he lay still. Suddenly he shrieked and gave a little wriggle.
‘Poor little Bluey,’ Mrs Cooksey said. ‘We’ve cut his little foot.’
Bluey didn’t recover. His feet became scalier, more swollen and gnarled. A paper-thin growth, shaped like a fingernail, appeared on his lower beak and grew upwards, making it hard for him to eat, impossible for him to peck. The top of his beak broke out into a sponge-like sore.
And now even Greenie no longer baited him.
In summer Mr Cooksey did something he had been talking about for a long time. He painted the hall and the stairs. The paint he used was a dull ordinary blue which quickly revealed extraordinary qualities. It didn’t dry. The inside of the door became smudged and dirty and all up the banisters there were streaks of sticky blue from the fingers of tenants. Mr Cooksey painted the door again, adding a notice: WET PAINT PLEASE, with the PLEASE underlined three times. He also chalked warnings on the steps outside. But after a fortnight the paint hadn’t dried and it looked as though the door would have to be painted again. Mr Cooksey left notices on the glass-topped table in the hall, each note curter than the last. He had a good command of curt language. This wasn’t surprising, because Mr Cooksey was a commissionaire or caretaker or something like that at the head office of an important public corporation. Anyway, it was a big position: he told me he had thirty-four cleaners under him.
I never got used to the wet paint and one day, as I came into the hall, wondering in my exasperation whether I shouldn’t wipe the paint off on to the wallpaper, the Cookseys’ door opened and I saw Mr Cooksey.
‘'Ave a drink,’ he said. ‘Cocktail.’
I feared Mr Cooksey’s cocktails: they were too obviously one of the perquisites of his calling. But I went in, wiping my fingers on my evening paper. The room smelled of paint and linseed oil.
Mrs Cooksey sat in her armchair and beamed at me. Her hands were resting a little too demurely on her lap. She clearly had something to show.
The cage on the sewing machine was covered with a blue cloth, part of one of Mrs Cooksey’s old dresses. It was late evening, still light outside, but dark inside: the Cookseys didn’t like to use more electricity than was strictly necessary. Mr Cooksey passed around his cocktails. Mrs Cooksey refused with a shake of the head. I accepted but delayed sipping, Mr Cooksey sipped.
Muted rustlings and tumblings and cheeps came from behind the blue cloth. Mr and Mrs Cooksey sat silent and listened. I listened.
‘Got a new one,’ Mr Cooksey said, sipping his cocktail and smacking his lips with a little pop-pop sound.
‘He came into the garden too?’ I asked.
‘It’s a she!’ Mrs Cooksey cried.
‘Pop-pop. Ten bob,’ said Mr Cooksey. ‘Man wanted twelve and six.’
‘And we’ve got a nesting-box for her too.’
‘But we didn’t pay for that, Bess.’
Mrs Cooksey went and stood by the cage. She rested her hands on the blue cloth, delaying the unveiling. ‘She’s the daintiest little thing.’
‘Yellow,’ said Mr Cooksey.
‘Just the sort of mate for Greenie.’ And, with a flourish, Mrs Cooksey lifted the blue cloth from the cage.
It wasn’t the cage I had known. It was a bigger, cruder thing, made from wire netting, with rudimentary embellishments — just two bars supported on the wire netting. And I saw Greenie alone. He had composed himself to sleep. Yellow I didn’t see.
Mrs Cooksey giggled, enjoying my disappointment. ‘She’s there all right. But in her nesting-box!’ I saw a small wooden box hanging at the back of the cage. Mrs Cooksey tapped it. ‘Come out, Yellow. Let Uncle have a look at you. Come out, come out. We know where you are.’ Through the round hole of the box a little yellow head popped out, restlessly turning this way and that. Mrs Cooksey tapped the box again, and Yellow slipped out of the box into the cage.
Yellow was smaller than Greenie or Bluey. She wandered about the cage fussily, inquisitively. She certainly had no intention of going to sleep just yet, and she wasn’t going to let Greenie sleep either. She hopped up to where he stood on his bar, his head hunched into his breast, and pecked at him. Greenie shook himself but didn’t open his eyes. Yellow gave him a push. Perhaps it was chivalry — though I had never credited Greenie with that — or perhaps he was just too sleepy. But Greenie didn’t fight back. He yielded and yielded until he could move no further. Then he went down to the other bar. Yellow followed. When she had dislodged him a second time she lost interest in him and went back into her nesting-box.
‘D’you see?’ Mrs Cooksey said. ‘She’s interested. The man at the shop says that when they’re interested you can expect eggs in ten days.’
‘Twelve, Bess.’
‘He told me ten.’