She shuddered. Let the man rest in peace. She didn’t want to think of him again. Ever. But thoughts had a way of returning, whether you willed them away or not.

“‘Smite’ is a glorious word,” she said to Rico. “Think of the act of smiting. Woodcutters, for instance, in fairy tales. Woodcutters were always poor, honest and helpful. Witches were wicked, woodcutters kind. I’ve always thought of woodcutters as having immensely satisfying work. If a woodcutter has an enemy, he has only to imagine a face on a block of wood and split it down the middle. All part of life, Rico. A giant soap opera is what it is, even for kind woodcutters, I expect.”

Rico, unenthused, wandered away, two dark smears of droppings on the floor in his wake. If Gwen were asked to describe the colour, she’d say green-black. He will not soil his food; he will not soil his water. He soiled the floor instead. And the colour had been consistent since the first week of parrot sitting, so she must be doing something right.

She followed him into the family room and watched as he easily flew into his cage and stared out at her through the bars. The positioning of the cage was necessary for Rico’s safety, for his feeling of safety. A parrot will never rest properly in a round cage. He needs security, a wall at his back.

“Got it,” she said. She fastened the cage door. “You’ve had enough of the kitchen, enough of King Arthur, enough of open spaces, enough of life as a soap.”

He cocked his head to the left, his preferred posture, stayed like that for a moment and said, in a calm, quizzical voice, “Whatsamattah?”

These were the first meaningful words she’d heard from him since the day he’d called out, “Save me!”

Now he was on a roll. He straightened his head and ordered, in a deeply low male voice, “Pick it up.” He made beeping sounds as if punching keys on a speakerphone, and then, in her voice, in Gwen’s own speaking voice, he said, “Hello,” and added a word that sounded, in a different octave, like “smite.”

“You—are—astonishing—Rico!”

He puffed his throat and replied with a series of clicks and whirrs as if in perpetual dial mode, this time on an old-fashioned rotary phone.

He began to eat the chop, paying her no attention. As for Gwen, she experienced the short-lived satisfaction of believing she had done something well.

November

Remember, Remember

HAZZLEY

Monday morning, her birthday, Hazzley looked out at giant flakes of falling snow, a scene of luxuriant beauty. She began to strip the bed while thinking of Guy Fawkes.

Remember, remember!

The fifth of November.

She could almost hear the chant in the street, the shrill and deliberate voices of children calling out, “Penny for the Guy?” No fireworks, no bonfires during the war years, when she was a child, but she recalled in detail the excitement of 1945. That year, her fifth birthday coincided with her father’s returning home after the end of the war, a war he did not discuss. Ever.