Herself is still in bed. I leave her there until eleven these days – what has she got to fill her hours with? And it means I can have my morning in peace. Five days a week, I let myself into the house at nine, make a mug of tea, open all the windows so salt air can run into the cracks of the old rooms and, when the tea is down my neck, I carry the parrot’s cage into the kitchen and start on it.
I unlatch the tiny door now and Elsinore drops to the bottom of the cage.
‘Hellooo,’ he says, primly, ‘hellooo.’
I brush his leavings off the perches and the swing. ‘Hello,’ I reply, and he cocks his dopey green and red head, and scrabbles into the corners, as if afraid of me. ‘Just cleaning, Snootybeak,’ I say. ‘Mopping up your shite, as per.’
Elsinore burbles and bobs, keeping one blank yellow eye on me like some paranoid plotter. He fossicks on while I scrape up his dirt; he plucks at his chest feathers and waggles his body as if preparing to dance.
‘Hellooo,’ he says again, his voice a mimic of Herself’s. She’s a Presbyterian; went to boarding school in England, though she insists she’s Irish, something I’ll never understand.
‘I do not need help,’ she’d said to me on my first day, standing in her hall like a grumpy toddler, arms across her bra-less bosom, with debris and dust up to her ankles. ‘I run my life perfectly well, thank you.’
‘Your GP and the Health Nurse say otherwise,’ I said, ‘and I’m going nowhere.’ She gave into me, there and then; bossy bees just need bossing back, in my experience.
Elsinore makes a frantic jump onto the bars of the cage, as if he thinks I’m going to grab him. Dramatic scut. I scrape with my mini trowel, hoosh his poo onto my gloved hand, and swiff the cage floor with a wet wipe. I fill his dish with NutriBird Tropical.
‘There,’ I say. ‘Doneski.’
He looks at me, all still now and pleased, I suppose, that the most disruptive part of our morning ritual is done. Elsinore enjoys this, I think, me his skivvy, he my feathery overlord. I lift out the ceramic dish he paddles in and empty it at the sink. I turn on the tap and an upward swirr – a re-arrangement of the kitchen air – makes me turn, and I see the lime tip of Elsinore’s tail exit through the open window and make for the sea.
‘Oh God,’ I wail, ‘oh Jesus, oh fuck!’ And I drop the dish into the sink where it cracks in two.
I toss open the back door and dash down the garden after Elsinore, who is flying stupidly along, careening across the top of the rhododendrons like a struggling aircraft. He’s a chronic flier and he circles badly above me, his undercarriage fluffed into ballgown tiers, and I swear the little bugger is smiling. He finds balance and jets off towards the back wall.
‘I’ll murder you,’ I shout-whisper after him, not wanting to wake Herself, safe in slumberland behind curtained windows. She’d have an out-and-out conniption if she knew her precious parrot was outside his cage, never mind roving in the open air.
Elsinore lands awkwardly on the oak tree by the wall, and claws and beaks his way along a branch, giddy on freedom-fumes. I run down and he watches my approach, nodding at me when I stand by the huge trunk and thrash a tea-towel in his direction. He leans forward and peers, mystified, apparently, by my antics.
‘What are you doing, Máirín?’ his eyes say.
‘Poshbeak,’ I call, ‘be a good boy, now.’ He skitters along the branch. ‘Elsinore! Don’t you dare go further. Come back.’ I wave the tea towel again and he retreats. ‘Get down here this minute.’
‘Hellooo,’ he replies, then he looks skyward and spans his wings, revealing two crimson blots, and I’m dazzled for a second by the secret dashes of red he keeps tucked away, by the primal glitter of his beauty. ‘Hellooo,’ Elsinore calls again, lifting off the branch and ploughing towards the clouds over Begg’s villa next door, and over the twin Victorian cottage’s gardens after that, and on over two more gardens while I’m not able to lift my pins, or do anything at all, but gawp.
‘You absolute prick,’ I say, to his perfect green back, watching his majestic, crazy toss above the shrubs and lawns, on his unexpected tour. ‘He surely won’t land in the Lottos’ garden,’ I murmur. But, of course, Elsinore does. He snags himself on one of the Lotto couple’s wanky steel trees that perform a lightshow at night, the branches changing from blue to orange to purple and back again.
When Herself first saw those trees, she turtled her mouth and said, ‘Terribly tacky,’ and, for once, I agreed with her.
I mither, stand on tiptoe, and stare along the line of back walls. I’m stumped. I should be in the kitchen now, taking out the box of Ready Brek, putting the brown teapot and the Aynsley cup and saucer on the tray. I should be anticipating my walk up the stairs to Herself’s bedroom with Elsinore’s cage; my second walk up with the breakfast tray. And her calls of ‘Pretty Elsie, pretty poppet’ and the parrot’s reward to her with an indifferent, well-to-do ‘Hellooo.’ Better yet, I could be lying on the sitting-room floor now, under the aisle of sunlight that stretches from the altar of the window these mornings, that warm, blessed beam that aids my daydreams of a quietly handsome, caring man who might enter my life and pull me towards a better one.
I shove all of that into the charnel of my mind. I step first into the belly of the wheelbarrow, then haul myself onto the recycling bin and, from there, to the top of the wall. My stomach and head jig, but I hold up my arms and brazen my chest, and let on to myself that the wall is the park railing I could run as a kid, as tightrope dancer, as Olympian gymnast. I tuck the tea-towel into the waistband of my jeans, stick out my arms again, and teeter along Herself’s back wall to the next one, and the next – not doing too bad, in fact – until I get to the Lottos’ place. From his steel perch, Elsinore gives me the gimlet eye and scampers further along the branch, his feathers catching on metal leaves, which only seems to delight the little fucker, because he babbles, stretches his green body, and turns clean away from me.
I crouch on the Lottos’ wall and hiss loudly, ‘Elsinore! Come. Here.’ I click my fingers. ‘Look at me! Come to me, Poshboy. Here now. Tss-tss. Prettybeak. Tss-tss. Good boy.’
The parrot lifts a scaly leg, wriggles it, and moves farther along. I straighten up and turn my head to look at the Lottos’ house – no one on the road knows them, just that they scored in the Euromillions, bought the site, and built their glass and metal box-tower, that looks not just stupid, but ugly as old shoe leather. I shake my head and puff air through my lips.
‘Your parrot?’ says a voice below me, and my heart stutters so fast I nearly collapse off the wall; I wobble hard and have no choice but to leap down into the Lottos’ garden, near where the voice rose from.
Mrs Lotto is stretched out on a wooden chaise longue, in a short white nightdress and cork-bottomed sandals.
‘Yes, my parrot,’ I squawk. I suck my lip. ‘No, not really, actually. But, yes.’
She nods, takes off her sunglasses. ‘We’ll have to catch it. Her.’ She frowns. ‘Them?’
‘Him. Elsinore.’
‘Oh,’ she says. ‘Elsinore. Hamlet’s castle.’
‘Is that right?’ I say.
She gets up, puts down the book she’s been holding, a beaten up yoke, like something out of a skip, and she smiles. I smile back. I’ve never seen Mrs Lotto before and, in my mind, she’s always been an ancient, Botoxy, gold-dripping thing. But this woman is thirty-odd, has long, messy hair, and speaks softly and with care, like the shy girls I tormented at school.
‘Elsinore backwards is Eron Isle,’ she says.
‘Imagine that,’ I reply, and I’m sorry my voice comes out flat and bored because, actually, this is just the kind of nonsense that occupies my own mind. ‘Erin Isle,’ I say. ‘Ireland,’ and we smile at each other again.
Elsinore, too long ignored for his own liking, crows and flies off the tree; he heads towards the glass facade of the tower-house. I gasp, sure his beak will smash into the panes, and I imagine trying to explain all of this to Herself. But Elsinore glides upwards – suddenly expert – and disappears through a dark hole at the top of the building, and it’s as if the house has opened its mouth and gulped down the bird.
‘Uh,’ I say. ‘Oh.’
Mrs Lotto puts her hand to my arm, a gentle touch of fingers heavy with turquoise and silver. ‘That’s great,’ she says, ‘he’s safe inside with Bubby.’
‘Bubby?’ I squeak.
‘My husband. Come on, we’ll go up.’
I trail her along a gravel path, across a terrace, and through a barn-sized kitchen to a hall, where a spiral staircase corkscrews upwards. Every object and surface inside the tower is reflective and spotless and alien. It makes me wonder – again – about all the people who live around here, and their innate ability to have money, gain money, snag spouses, and live well, while I snuffle through an endless plod of landlords and crap jobs, loans and scrimping, and inevitable ghosting by lacklustre, undeserving men, time after time after time.
I follow Mrs Lotto higher and higher; I explain that the parrot is not mine but Herself’s and that’s why I’m so tizzied. ‘I need to get him back before she wakes,’ I say. ‘She’d be really upset.’ This woman understands entirely.
The walls around the staircase are hung with outsized paintings of girls with their faces obliterated by slashes of black, and there’s a ginormous chandelier made up of long mirrored icicles. I stop to stare at one of the pictures; it’s ugly beyond comprehension, muddy and angry – rich people stuff.
‘Bubby’s art,’ Mrs Lotto says. ‘He’s a genius.’
I nod and, after a few more steps, find my eyes level with the landing and her husband’s bare ankles, buttermilk pale under a sprackle of golden hairs.
‘What’s the story, Booboo?’ he calls. ‘A green parrot flew into the studio a few minutes ago and you’ve got a stranger on the stairs.’ He laughs gleefully. ‘It’s all kicking off today!’ He hoots, cackles, claps his hands. ‘I love it!’ He beckons me. ‘Come up, come up, eh…?’
‘Máirín,’ I say. ‘I need to get the parrot home.’
‘Yeah, sure, deadly. Get a box, Boo,’ he says to his wife.
‘A box?’
‘Box, basket, suitcase. Anything.’ She blinks. ‘For the bird,’ he says. ‘Quick sticks, missus!’
His wife disappears through a doorway, and I troop behind the husband into his lofty studio to search for Elsinore. The place is a ruckus of easels, trestle tables, books, paper, brushes, pots, and walked-in paint. We barely fit. But it smells like a schoolroom, and I like that, and its glass walls make it brighter than bright. The bird could be anywhere. Bubby Lotto dives in, pulling at stacks of canvases and crates, and calling, ‘Cheep-cheep, come on, little parrot.’
I shake my head and pick my way through the mess, looking for a hint of green. ‘Elsinore,’ I say. ‘Time to go.’
The bird flashes across the room and lands in the corner, on the top edge of a painting – another face-slashed girl – and he starts to preen, carefree and comfortable in this unfamiliar space. I nod at Bubby and he winks. I glance away and hook my eyes, instead, to the windows and the glint of the morning sun on Dalkey Bay. Herself’s house is too low for a proper water view – we only glimpse a sliver of blue – but the Lottos have an astonishing glass roost here, that looks full over the near shore, the teeny island and its Martello tower, and the wide sea beyond.
I look back and see Bubby opening the belt of his paisley dressing gown. Is he going to strip? Lasso Elsinore? I stare but he only wiggles his long body and re-closes the satin belt tighter; he sighs, and I think how content he must be in himself to do such an intimate thing with me here, a woman he’s never met. He pulls a vape from the gown’s pocket and puffs, releasing blueberry smoke into the studio.
‘You like?’ he says, nodding towards the sea view.
‘I do.’
Elsinore hasn’t moved and Mrs Lotto returns with a child’s red fishing net on a stick, a mild, pleased look on her face. Her husband laughs and kisses her head.
‘You’re gas, Boo,’ he says, taking the net. Then swiftly, dexterously, with not a flurry from the bird, Bubby reaches out and scoops Elsinore into the net and, grabbing two bulldog clips, seals it shut. ‘Success,’ he says.
The parrot lies snug and tranquil in his mesh prison, and he looks at Bubby with adoration in his amber eyes; his grey beak-tip pokes through a tear in the netting and Elsinore jiggles his tongue like a pervert.
‘He’s actually flirting,’ I say, laughing. ‘The devil.’
‘Good man,’ Bubby says. ‘I’ll take it.’
Mrs Lotto giggles and blows a kiss at her husband, and I look at this couple, a coil of envy snaking in my gut for their youth, their wealth, their devotion, and their awful, brilliant home above the bay.
‘Have a cuppa with us, Máirín,’ Mrs Lotto says. ‘We have pastries. Come on now, you deserve a treat after all this.’
‘I should get Elsinore home,’ I say.
‘Fruit, Máirín!’ Bubby cries. ‘Please join! We have kiwis. Fresh pineapple.’
‘No, no,’ I say, ‘not today.’
Though truly I’d be willing to stay and eat with them, to stay in their glass tower forever, in fact, under the light of their love, perched by these high windows, tracing the back and over of boats and ships in the bay, watching the white-tops and black storms, witnessing the sun’s molten goodbyes and hellos.
Instead, I hold out my arms for the parcelled parrot, and I take him to me as gently as a baby, though earlier I wanted to snap his stupid neck for being such a consequence of a creature.
‘Take him to his mother,’ Mrs Lotto says, worrying her lip with her top teeth. She slides her hand into her husband’s, and I see the tender rub of his thumb across her knuckles.
Elsinore twitches inside the red net, disgruntled now, presumably, to find himself in my charge again. Bubby drops his wife’s hand, comes behind me, and puts his arms around me.
‘Hold still, Máirín,’ he says. I clasp my breath like a purse, feel the heat of his front all along my spine, and hear a clip-clip sound. Bubby holds up the stick he has snipped from the net. ‘Easier to carry now,’ he says.
Mrs Lotto steps forward and pets Elsinore’s head, she stoops and kisses his red crown, then the three of us wind down the spiral stairs to the front door. I hold the bird close to my chest, sensing the Lottos’ eyes on my back as I wait for their electric gate to slide open so I can leave their property. I walk up the road to Herself’s and let myself in. I get Elsinore back into his cage, smooth his ruckled feathers with my hand, fasten the wire door, and carry him up the stairs. Herself is just stirring. I put the birdcage on the bedside table, open the curtains, and watch Herself turn to see the bright feathers, skull cap, and mad eyes of her favourite being.
‘Elsinore got out,’ I say, thinking it better not to hide anything. I let up the blind and silver light fills the room and fills me too.
‘Out? Oh naughty Elsie. Silly, bold, pretty poppet,’ Herself says. ‘And you got him back, Máirín, all by yourself?’ she asks.
I pause. ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Yes, just me. I retrieved him.’
‘Hellooo,’ Elsinore calls. ‘Hellooo, hellooo.’
‘Hello, darling,’ Herself says, poking a finger through the cage bars.
I look out the window at the slice of sea visible from this room. I see the glistening wake of a ferry, taking people on fresh journeys, perhaps to new lives in exotic elsewheres, or to short, hedonistic respites from reality. I finesse the tie-backs around the curtains, settle the loops into their hooks. I turn to the bed.
‘Happy?’ I ask herself.
‘Very,’ she replies, and I smile.
‘Bye bye, Elsinore,’ I call, leaving the pair together. ‘Behave now.’
‘Hellooo,’ Elsinore trills after me. ‘Hellooo.’
I trot down the stairs, lifeblood beating up through my feet and on up into my body. ‘Hello,’ I say to myself, as I fill the kettle at the sink. ‘Hello, me.’
