Free The Birdcage by John Bowen

cage, and extended a finger, clucking at Fred as she had heard Mrs. Halliday cluck. Perhaps he only wanted to be noticed. It was a Saturday morning, and she had plenty of time to fraternize withFred, if that would cheer him up. But Fred, uncheered, stayed where he was, and would not approach her finger.
    Well, she would take no notice, and she would do the washing-up. Living alone, she washed-up once a day. The door of the cage was left open, and Fred might come out, and hop around the kitchen if it would do him any good. He could get the feel of his new home. Did lovebirds have a sense of place in that way? Pigeons did. If Fred were a pigeon, he’d have been out of that cage, and through the window, and tapping at the door of the Beaufort Street flat by now. Except that the window was shut. She opened the window.
    Silly things one did. Fred was not a pigeon, and would not go home by himself. And as for Norah Palmer,
she
would not go round, cage in hand, and return Fred to Peter Ash. That would smack too much of an excuse, and she had determined to keep the break clean, and save herself pain. If Fred liked to go on home … but he was not a pigeon. Not a pigeon. A little excitement stirred in her stomach. She did not know why; there was no reason for it. She repressed the excitement, concentrating her attention on a pan in which eggs had been scrambled with tomato. Behind her there was a stir of sound from the cage.
    She would not look round. Fred’s feet were tiny; she could not possibly hear them pattering on the table-top, and if she thought she did, that was her imagination. She rubbed at the pan with a Spontex cloth until it was clean, and set it on the draining-board. The excitement in her stomach shifted ground, and ran lightly up and down her backbone. About a bird! It was neurotic. One got into neurotic habits, living alone; she would have to watch that. She turned round to prove to the excitement that it was quite wrong about Fred, but there was Fred on the table, flexing his wings like one who has lost the habit of flyingand is a little nervous about starting again. “Go on, you fool,” she said. “They’re not clipped.”
    Fred remained where he was. They stared at each other, the bird and Norah Palmer. Perhaps he did not like to be watched. She understood that. If he thought he might be going to make a mess of flying, he would not want her to watch him. She turned back to the sink, and emptied the soapy water from the bowl. There was (she was sure of it) a whirr of wings, and a flutter at the window, as if he had made a clumsy landing. So she could look now. And there he was, sure enough, at the open window with his back to her.
    He was free. He could go if he wished. No cage enclosed him. He could go anywhere.
    Fred walked through the window and out on to the roof. He would not risk flying again immediately, it seemed, not in the open air. He picked his way over the roof like a bare-footed bather over pebbles. How typical! All this time he had refused his good birdseed, and now he was making straight for an old soggy crust of bread, thrown out for the pigeons. Purple head, and green wings shading into purple again at the tips—how beautiful he was; and he was leaving her. He had reached the crust, and pecked and pulled at it, looking, with his big head, his puffy parrot-jowls and his hooked red nose, like a jobber in a City chop-house.
Capitalist
! Norah Palmer said to herself fondly—and there, sure enough, on the roof above him, brown-suited and resentful, was a starling.
    The starling was angry. It was joined almost immediately by another, and the two of them set up an indignant chattering. They’ll come out on strike in a minute, Norah Palmer thought, and bring all the starlings of the square out in sympathy. There was a third. And a fourth. A pigeon plopped on to the roof beside Fred, took a peck at thecrust with him, and flew off again. No guilt by association there; the pigeon knew he was in dicey