Open Writing

“Our neighbour’s got a parrot in the kitchen,” I told my husband.

“Don’t be silly. No way. Not in Pearl’s kitchen.”

“Well it looks like a parrot to me. It’s too big for a budgie or a
cockatiel. It must be a small parrot.”

We craned our necks and hid behind our net curtain as my husband,
Steve, got out the opera glasses. We peered towards their house and
could definitely see a puny parrot in a big cage, fluffing its feathers
in the sun.

Then we laughed. Pearl Ashton-Sinclair was the sort of woman who would
never have a parrot, unless it was an expensive, rare breed. I’d never
been in her home or spoken over the fence, but I did meet her once a
week at the bridge club, and that was quite enough. She regularly
expounded about her blue blood and her life with Daddy in Singapore and
Thailand, prior to marrying the Brigadier. She dressed in exclusive
imported models, her blouses were always of pure silk (she told us so),
her perfume was from exclusive boutiques in Paris or Vienna, and her
hair coloured and styled by Vidal Sassoon’s salon whenever she was in
London. At least four times each year she’d fly to Bangkok to see Daddy
in his teak furniture factory or visit him on his nutmeg plantation
when he had sojourns in Penang. There was nothing ordinary about Pearl.

Our house looked down onto the Ashton-Sinclair residence. We were their
only near neighbours and they owned the largest, most elaborate house
in the street. Pearl Ashton-Sinclair referred formally to her husband
as the Brigadier, never using his first name, so we nicknamed him ‘the
Brig,’ and her, ‘Pearl of the Orient.’ The Brig was large with a waxed
moustache, smoked a pipe, wore a tweed cap, and spoke with an
exaggerated Oxford accent, accompanied by the essential slight lisp. He
also had a wooden leg, acquired as a result of a Pakistani uprising
when he was stationed there with the army, prior to marrying Pearl.

“He should have been awarded a medal,” Pearl once spouted at the bridge
club. “If he’d been an American, he’d now have a Purple Heart.”

We often saw Pearl and ‘the Brig’ reclining on their patio, sipping
their pre dinner drinks. They were bound to be pink gins or Singapore
slings. We visualised the fancy glasses, the lemon twists, the crushed
ice, and could almost taste the cherries soaked in liqueur. We drank
our cheap orange cordial in our dingy kitchen.

“There they are again, out on the patio,” Steve said with a voice
tinged with envy. “It’d serve them right if their blue blood and purple
heart wither in the heat.”

A week later, at the bridge club, Pearl gave her apology for the
following two weeks. Daddy was going to Penang to check on the staff,
and he wanted the Brigadier and her to manage the teak factory in
Bangkok for eight days while he was away. She wiped a tear from her eye
with a pure linen embroidered handkerchief, as she said, “I won’t be
seeing Daddy this time.” And then she left, much to the envy of those
of us with ordinary lives.

Steve and I heard the early morning taxi leaving their house the next
day with them, making their way to the airport. Later that morning I
found a note in our letter box with a house key.

“I forgot to make arrangements for our parrot. Could you feed Poppy for
us? I’ve left plenty of food. She only needs to be fed and watered
every second day. You’ll probably need to clean out the cage by Friday.
She may look small and delicate, but she’s a wiry bird. On no account
take her to the vet. It’s against our beliefs. We’ll be back on the
plane via Sydney, arriving on the 20th at 2.15. p.m. Good luck.”

It was a direction. No word of thanks. I fumed. I don’t like birds
anyway. But I couldn’t let the creature die without proper care. I
begrudgingly unlocked the Ashton-Sinclair’s door, lifted out the cage
with the bird and took it and its food back to our place. It would be
easier to attend to it there.

Our friends shrieked with laughter when they saw our new acquisition,
and then they started commenting.

“It’s very young by the look of it. It still hasn’t got its full quota
of feathers.”

“It’s got beautiful colours.”

“I wonder what sort of a parrot it is.”

“A parrot’s a parrot,” I told them, and they chuckled and teased about
how we’d been tricked into minding the wretched creature.

They felt
that they knew Pearl and the Brig personally as we’d often talked about
our ostentatious neighbours.

“That woman deserves a lesson,” said my brother, Alan. “Or a fright.
She gets things too easily. I hate that.”

“Don’t be so mean,” I said, and then a spark of mischief fired my mind.

“What could we do?”

“You know that anonymous ‘dob in a criminal’ campaign?”

“Yes, but she’s not a criminal. She hasn’t done anything illegal.”

“Her names Pearl isn’t it?”

We laughed. “That’s not her fault.”

“I know what we’ll do,” he said. “Why doesn’t one of us ring up the
Customs or Police and say there’s a man with a wooden leg, smuggling a
valuable pearl from the orient into N.Z.? That’d be a laugh. And then
they’d get their baggage done over. That’d bring them down to earth.”

“And her expensive perfume might be confiscated.” I sniggered as I
thought of them being frisked. She might even have to remove those
glossy white dentures of hers or have her hair ruffled, and the Brig
might have to remove his leg, and have his pipe tapped and his
moustache searched . . . “

The orange cordial we were drinking suddenly developed a potent quality
and we became almost paralytic. My stomach muscles ached. Steve almost
fell off the stool, he laughed so much, and that bird at last gave a
minute snort of recognition as it shook its head from side to side.

The Ashton-Sinclairs didn’t come home, as expected, on the afternoon of
the 20th. We waited till almost dinner time and then, suddenly, the
driveway next door was filled with vehicles and people. Men in uniforms
were searching around the garden and we could see others inside the
house pulling aside curtains and shifting furniture. One man was
turning the patio furniture upside down, and shaking the padding of the
seats.

“They’re not Police,” I said, as I peered through the opera glasses,
“but some of them have stripes on their arms.”

“They could be Customs,” Steve said. “Heck. Do you think that brother
of yours was serious, and went ahead with that pearl idea?”

“I hope not. Surely not. But something pretty serious is going on.
Let’s find out. Steve, you carry the bird back, and I’ll follow with
its food.”

Poppy screeched loudly as we walked along the neighbours’ driveway.

A Ministry of Agriculture employee rushed forward. “What are you doing
with that bird?”

“We’ve been minding it for Mrs. Ashton-Sinclair while she’s in
Thailand.” The official looked so serious that my heart gave a lurch.

“I’ll take it,” he hollered, and grabbed Poppy’s cage. He called to the
others, “Bingo! Look what I’ve got,” then turned to us again. “We’ll
need to get a statement from you tomorrow, but in the meantime, give me
your name
address and phone number and don’t leave your property.”

“We’re neighbours, we’ve done nothing wrong. We’ve only been minding
the bird. What’s going on?” I asked.

“Calm down. You’re neighbours, you say. Friends, too?”

“We’re not exactly friends, but we do know them. What’s wrong?”

‘I suppose you’ll read it in the paper and see it on the television
tonight, so I’ll give you the gist of things. Your neighbours made a
confession at the airport.”

“About what?” I asked.

“We had an anonymous tip-off from a member of the public about this
couple. The informant said they were smuggling jewellery, pearls in
particular, but this is much, much, bigger than that. They’ve been
caught bringing in rare parrot eggs. The Health Department’s worried
about psittacosis, and that’s risky for everyone and a threat to our
country’s livestock industry.”

Poppy gave another shriek.

“Looks like an exotic Brazilian flat topped parrot you’ve got there,”
said the MAF man. They fetch big bucks on the black market. We’ll need
to organise a medical for you both and for anyone else who’s been in
contact with that bird.” He turned to the officer in charge, “I’ll get
this chick checked first and then into quarantine.”

The television news flash that night told about a married couple
arriving from Thailand. The woman had 26 parrot eggs strapped to her
chest, and her husband had another 15 eggs packed inside a wooden leg.

We caught a glimpse of Pearl and the Brig as they were escorted away.
Their faces and parts of their bodies were obscured under the temporary
suppression ruling, but I could still recognise that 100% silk blouse.

Steve looked down onto the Ashton-Sinclairs’ house and said soberly,
“We used to have a neighbour, who used to have a parrot in her kitchen
. . .”