“He’s called ‘Sir Roger’, according to his papers,” said the young woman, wanting to say something in the parrot’s favour. “We were taught a dance at school called Sir Roger de Coverley. I expect he’s named after that.”
Fat chance, I thought. My Uncle George, the parrot’s former owner, was never a country dancer. He was a diamond robber. A long time ago, in May, 1954, Uncle George and two others held up a Hatton Garden merchant and stole twenty-seven uncut diamonds valued at half a million pounds. Half a million was a fortune in 1954. The advantage of uncut stones — if you steal them — is that they are difficult to identify, so it was also a clever heist. The only blemish on this brilliant crime was that the three robbers were rounded up within a week and given long prison sentences. But the diamonds were never recovered. Two of the robbers died inside. Uncle George served twenty-six years. After his release, he seemed mysteriously to come into money. He emigrated to Spain, the Costa del Sol. It was a wise move. He lived another fifteen years, without ostentation, but comfortably, in a villa, in the company of a señorita half his age.
In my ultra-respectable family, Uncle George was a taboo topic. My father rarely mentioned him, and never spoke of the robbery. I only learned of it after Dad died and I was going through his papers. There was a newspaper cutting about the release from jail of the old diamond robber.
Now my uncle was dead. He’d gone peacefully last Christmas, in his own bed, at the age of seventy-nine. It seemed he’d known his time was coming and he had made appropriate arrangements. This Blue and Yellow Macaw was bequeathed to me.
In January I had received a solicitor’s letter advising me of my legacy. At first I thought it was a practical joke. I was told I must wait six months while the parrot served the six-month quarantine period that applies to all imported animals — as if I was impatient to meet this creature! I hadn’t asked for the parrot. I knew nothing about parrots. I was an actor, for pity’s sake. How would I fit a Blue and Yellow Macaw into my life? The solicitor informed me when I phoned him that he understood parrots make fine companions. As for my acting career, he’d heard that the late Sir Ralph Richardson had kept a parrot, and it hadn’t held him back.
I was in a spot. Only a complete toe-rag would deny an old man’s dying wish. My uncle must have been devoted to the parrot to make arrangements for it to be shipped to England. But oh, Uncle George, why to me?
True, I was the only surviving relative, but I have another theory. Uncle George may have seen me on cable television in the part of a wise-cracking villain in some corny crime series. It ran for some weeks. I think he identified with the part.
The crushing irony of all this was that the rest of the estate, consisting of the Spanish villa and all its contents and enough pesetas to provide many years of comfortable living, all went to the señorita Uncle George had shared the last years of his life with. The parrot came to me, I guessed because Isabella said she’d strangle it if Uncle George didn’t get rid of it.
So here I was at Bird & Board, the aviary close to London Airport. Roger had completed his quarantine and now I had arrived to claim him.
“This is the box he travels in,” the young woman informed me, opening the welded mesh grille that was the door of a sturdy plastic pet-container. It was the sort of box used for cats and dogs, the only concession to Roger’s comfort being a wooden perch fitted some three inches off the floor and much chewed by his sharp beak. “He doesn’t like it much. Would you like me to put him inside?”
“Please.”
Roger had seen the box and was already getting agitated, swaying and ruffling his feathers. The moment the keeper started putting on a pair of leather gauntlets, there was a flexing of wings and a series of blood-curdling screams that started off all the other birds and created bedlam.
“They can be noisy,” she said as if she were telling me something. “Hope you’re on good terms with your neighbours.” Skilfully avoiding the thrusting black beak, she grasped the big macaw by the neck and legs, lifted him off the perch and placed him in the box. “He’ll calm down presently,” she shouted.
And he did. She draped a cloth over the front and the darkness subdued him.
She asked me, “Have you kept a parrot before?”
“No.”
“You’ve got treats in store, then. If Roger gets unbearable, you can always see if one of the tropical bird gardens will take him.”
“Would you?” I asked hopefully.
“Couldn’t possibly. We deal only with birds in quarantine.”
“So I’m lumbered.”
“Try not to think of it that way,” she said compassionately, then added, “That will be a hundred and fifty pounds, please.”
“What will?”
“Roger’s account — for staying here. We can’t do it for nothing, you know.”
“Some legacy!” I said, getting out my chequebook.
“If you do sell him,” she told me, “don’t sell him cheap. They’re worth a few hundred, you know.”
“So I’m finding out,” I told her as I wrote the cheque.
I carried the pet-container to the place where I’d left my car. Heaven knows, Roger had given me no grounds for friendship, but I muttered reassuring things though the ventilation slits. I continued to speak to him at intervals all the way along the motorway. At Heston I stopped at a garden centre and bought some heavy-duty leather gloves.
When I got home and opened the pet-container, it was some time before my new house-guest emerged. Having seen the size of his beak, and read a little about the damage one peck can inflict, I didn’t reach inside for him. In fact, I was extremely nervous of him. After waiting some time, I left the room to get myself a coffee. When I returned, Roger had stepped out to inspect his new quarters.
If nothing else, he had brought some much-needed colour to my home. His back and wings were vivid sky-blue, his chest and the underside of the wings purest yellow, his crown and forehead dark green. Spectacular — but at what cost?
I’d gone to the trouble of making a perch out of beech wood and installing it in my living room. What I hadn’t appreciated was that Roger wasn’t capable of getting up there unaided. His wings were clipped. I wasn’t ready yet to handle him, even with the leather gauntlets. But I didn’t need to bother, because he made his own choice. After a cursory inspection of the room, he decided to occupy the sheet-feed of my printer, which projected at a convenient angle and left just enough room for his long blue tail feathers. He reached it by scaling the waste-paper basket and the top drawer of the desk, using his beak and claws.
Once on his new perch, he established his right of residence by hunching his shoulders, lifting his tail and depositing a green dropping on the script of my next TV part, which I’d left behind the printer. I felt the same way about the script, but I replaced it with an old newspaper.
There was sunflower seed and corn in the feeding bowl attached to the perch. I succumbed and moved the bowl close to the printer. The parrot appeared to have no interest in food. He watched me keenly from my office machinery, I suppose to see if I had plans to eject him. To foster confidence, I removed the pet-container altogether and put it in the spare room.
There is no doubt that parrots are exceptional in their ability to communicate their feelings to humans. They have eloquent eyes that dilate and contract at will. The skin around the face can blush pink. With the angle of the head, the posture of the shoulders and the action of the claws, they can express curiosity, boredom, sorrow, anger, approval, domination and submission. All that, before they let go with their voices. Mercifully, Roger hadn’t yet screamed in my home.