DUDLEY & GILDEROY

Front matter

DUDLEY & GILDEROY

A NONSENSE

by

CHAPTER I

The person who imagines that a parrot is a parrot and nothing more will soon find that he or she has made a very great mistake.

A sudden unexpected sweetness stole over the world that morning in early March. It was as though a day, weary of waiting for its fun and glory, had hopped backwards out of its proper place in May. There was an unwonted softness in the air, a radiance of daffodils, a sound of singing. And with this sweetness about dawn came an invitation to adventure. The blood, even in sleep, ran faster.

The country house in Kent, dreaming among its well-kept gardens, was aware of it, although it gave no demonstrable proof. Too sedate and well-bred to wear its heart upon its sleeve, it yet knew a faint tremor through its ancient timbers. The Manor House, of course, was never taken by surprise; but the garden, romping through every wind-torn spring despite Head Gardeners, registered the thrill. The thrushes noticed it, slipping a wilder whistle through their song, and recent arrivals from Africa followed their example. That "wet, bird-haunted English lawn" missed nothing of importance that came at sunrise, before the noisy humans were abroad to smudge the sensitive beauty. And thus it was that even the back-lawn knew. A flock of those brave things that "come before the swallow dares and take the winds of March with beauty," these also were aware of the sudden sweetness in the air. That their golden heads turned towards the Manor House is certain. Four keen, wide-open eyes, at any rate, observed them.

Something, apparently, was astir at the unearthly hour of 5.30 a.m., though it was not the human occupants of the Elizabethan building, and assuredly not the servants. Colonel Sir Arthur and his Lady still slept audibly; Molly, their thirteen year old daughter, at the other end of the house, made no move; the younger children, lying in crumpled heaps, equally held steady; the French Governess showed no symptom of élan; and the staff, as already mentioned, gave no sign. Yet in the room containing the four keen eyes the message of adventure was recognized and accepted, accepted moreover audibly. Through the window, opened two inches at the top, a strange while not unmusical voice greeted the magic with a couple of words that were distinctly uttered:

"Cuckoo! Cuckoo!" floated down across the quiet lawns and flower-beds, though no letter to the press had yet announced the arrival of the migrant. "Cuckoo! Cuckoo!" the odd voice repeated like an echo. It was not quite the authentic note of the romantic robber-bird, nor was it quite the call of a mechanical clock. It was an individual sound.

The Day Nursery, whence it proceeded, lying away from the rest of the house in the eastern wing, held at this early hour two occupants, neither of whom slept; one, a biped, denizen of the air; the other, a quadruped, denizen of the world. The speaker was a West African Grey Parrot, a King Grey Parrot, to give him his full title, with red feathers among the grey, and his name was Dudley; the other was a common red-haired cat with a flat-topped skull, and his name was Gilderoy. Dudley belonged to Molly, Gilderoy to himself, and the Day Nursery was their home, the parrot having occupied it for years, the cat for months. It was, at any rate, their headquarters, and a headquarters, sufficiently prolonged, becomes eventually a home. The two animals were very great friends. In appearance, Dudley was dignified, solemn, austere, aristocratic, his sleek feathers glistened, he was extremely soigné. Gilderoy was —otherwise .

It was to Dudley and Gilderoy that the invitation to adventure came at the hour of 5.30 a.m. on this sunshiny March morning, and when it came Dudley, as usual, was sedately balanced in the middle of his perch in his big handsome cage, while Gilderoy was just rousing himself from an untidy red ball on the carpet immediately below the table. His head was cocked, his torn ears pointed, his eyes, including the patched one that gave him an appearance of squinting, were wide open. His attitude to his feathered friend was significant—he looked up. While not obsequious, since a cat may assuredly look at a King Parrot, his gaze was respectful and interested. The parrot, on the other hand, though aware he was being stared at, did not return the stare. He looked no where in particular. He gazed into space, his face expressionless. His mind, however, was not idle. He was listening.

Each animal, that is, used his predominant faculty, Dudley his acute, amazing ears, Gilderoy his all-seeing, uncanny eyes. What, between them, was neither heard nor seen was usually negligible.

Now Dudley, it must be admitted, was certainly worth looking at. Having lived so many years in the family, he was part of the household, where he was well-fed, well-cared for and well-loved, especially by his owner, Molly. He knew by heart what Molly thought about him, accepting in his modest way all the great qualities she audibly attributed to him. He especially noted the nice, wonderful things she said, about his mind, his soul, his work, for instance. He also knew, since the child studied the book audibly year by year, exactly what Professor Greene thought about him as related in The Grey Parrot, How to Manage It. If occasionally he disagreed, audibly, with Professor Greene, he was never at logger-heads with Molly. Greene he sometimes could have nipped, Molly he only kissed. For Molly recognized his greatness. Aware of his sublimity, sure that he was "unfathomably wise, "a noble fellow," she was never tired of telling him so.

It was quite natural, therefore, that Dudley knew he was worth looking at this early March morning, as Gilderoy, stretching his skinny legs, peeped up at him. Likewise, he knew that his quadruped friend considered him worth looking at. If he did not move, it was because he already stood in the mathematical centre of his perch, and at the furthest spot from the wide-spaced bars. Remaining motionless as marble, this being the least succulent stone he could think of, he watched Gilderoy steadily with one bright, glassy eye.

Gilderoy, meanwhile, innocent of all wickedness, proceeded to wash. He was evidently in an affectionate and friendly mood. He was peaceably inclined. For, while he washed, he fell to purring softly, and Dudley, noticing the sound though giving no sign that he did so, presently waddled awkwardly along his perch in his best sideways shuffle and began to peck delicately at his seed-box. He looked, using Molly's words, marvellous, lovely, adorable, and his grace of movement was, he knew quite well, incomparable.

The two pets, thus, betrayed certain of their characteristics, respectively, at the very opening of the coming adventure, and before anything unusual happened at all. Dudley was wise, cautious, critical, philosophical, and as inordinately vain as a great soul has the right to be; Gilderoy, opportunist and arriviste, took what came in life, making use of a world he cared nothing about. Aloof, independent, impervious to suggestion, his feeling towards humanity, where Dudley's attitude was one of kindly pity, held a slight disdain. If the parrot was sagacious, tolerant, immensely experienced, his friend, to put it bluntly, was an unprincipled adventurer. Dudley gave it to be understood plainly that what he did not know was not worth knowing; Gilderoy, whose life and nature were one huge secret, gave to be understood—nothing.

Their friendship was at once a puzzle and delight, both to themselves and others. The parrot had not always appreciated the cat, whose first arrival in the family, indeed, he had deliberately ignored. Somehow the beast did not look what Dudley called " qui' ri'." Gilderoy's appearance certainly left much to be desired. Lean to scragginess, his red coat was shabby. A patch of colour over one side of his flat face gave the impression that one eye looked elsewhere. The flat face, too, could bulge grotesquely when he was excited. Both ears were torn into serrated edges. His whiskers sprayed ungracefully. He was, the Nursery decided, "as common as they make 'em," a phrase Dudley easily mastered, and he wore invariably an unpleasantly hungry look. It was some time, therefore, before the sagacious King Parrot included him in his small circle of trusted friends, a circle the Vicar, for instance, had never entered. And even now, as already seen, his love was tempered by a slight occasional anxiety, due to the fact that he, Dudley, must seem uncommonly appetizing at moments. He took his precautions at these moments. Apart, however, from this touch of insecurity, he adored his friend, though, as will appear later, he could not always approve of him.

Gilderoy, on his part, felt for the King Parrot, a sincere friendship that included a touch of respect as well. Though not, it seems, accepting the bird's own valuation of himself, he admitted to some indecipherable superiority in him, such perhaps as a quadruped might feel towards a creature that can use the air. He certainly looked up to him. Towards his grim iron mandibles he showed a hint of reverence; they frightened him. Dudley, however, he had soon decided, was old and tough, how old neither he nor anyone else ever knew, how tough he did not ever mean to know. The cat must be acquitted of mere appetite. All great friendships possess deep reserves, and with both cat and parrot these reserves included the delicate point of age. The past was also thus excluded, Gilderoy rarely referring to his earlier life, Dudley being equally reticent about his own. Each respected, as it were, his friend's wild oats.

One important matter, however, while personal in a very intimate sense, was not included in this reserve—the matter of sex. It affected, chiefly, the parrot: Was Dudley a male or female "King" Parrot? Gilderoy, the family as well, remained inquisitive but uninformed, and if Dudley himself knew he declined to disclose his secret. It was often suggested—by the cat, for instance—that he did not know himself. The mystery, at any rate, was left unsolved till the appointed hour; and Gilderoy, in no faintest doubt about his own sex, used his knowledge to set off against the other's superiority.

For he rather resented this superiority. He twitted his friend occasionally. "I have had families," he boasted, strutting with tail proudly erect. To which Dudley's only comment, too cautious to commit himself, was a plain "Ah!" followed by certain sea-faring nouns and adjectives which may be indicated by "—!" For, in addition to a very large vocabulary and assortment of voices, he possessed the inestimable gift that he could utter "language" so beautifully that it sounded what her ladyship's maid called "reely naice." His "Ah! —!" given invariably in the Vicar's voice, was thus a peculiarly effective comment, as comments go.

On this particular morning, his ears noting the sparkling message of adventure, he had used Molly's silvery tones. His "Cuckoo! Cuckoo!" was, in fact, a signal to his friend on the carpet that something unusual was in the air, and that it was time to be up and doing.

Gilderoy's reply was to stop his washing. He leaped soundlessly upon the table and gazed fixedly at the parrot's smooth and glistening back as the bird pecked delicately at the tiny seeds with his great dark beak. The green eyes held no particular expression, unless perhaps a glint of admiration; he sat quietly staring at the sleek grey back. The bird indifferently continued his early snack, for in any case he always knew what went on behind him.

This pleasant scene remained undisturbed for some minutes. The least acute observer must have realized the subtle understanding sympathy that existed between the two creatures; the intimacy and affection were obvious. Apart from the slight hint of insecurity already referred to —the caution of the parrot, the suggestion of hooliganism in the cat—the friendship was established upon bedrock. "Deathless friends," Molly had described them, and Dudley accepted the phrase in his big way, as for years he had accepted all the complimentary things Molly said about him. For years he had absorbed like blotting paper her flood of generous praise. His great little heart swelled to bursting with the fine qualities and powers she attributed to him in his hearing. He learned them by heart, indeed. It cost him as little effort to remember "deathless friendship," as that his occasional long silences were due to absorption in the profoundest problems of philosophy and life because he was "at Work."

It was after some five minutes' of breakfast that he presently broke in with a further remark, but this time not an audible remark. Both creatures were adept in the art of creating an impression, of conveying meaning by silence, attitude and gesture. Impressions thus produced are an eloquent form of communication; and if Gilderoy could not always catch the precise sense of the spoken word, he never failed to interpret the attitude, as it were, that framed them.

Thus Dudley, using the form of intercourse his friend could not possibly misunderstand, offered his remark, without even turning round. His eyes glanced sideways.

"I am tired of this dowdy room," he announced.

Though he undoubtedly understood, the cat made no immediate rejoinder. Unlike humans, who cannot support a moment's silence in conversation and would rather all talk simultaneously than endure a pause, these animals appreciated intervals and practised them. Long pauses would separate question and answer; a statement might wait half an hour before the comment it elicited. And several minutes now passed in unbroken silence, yet without a sign of such embarrassment as humans know. Dudley's attitude was: "What I have said I have said." The cat, still sitting close to the cage, fell to washing himself again. He purred. A hind leg pointed like a ramrod at the ceiling. Then, presently, he interrupted his washing and looked up with a sudden jerk. The patched eye appeared to be gazing through the window, but actually was fixed on his friend's back. His wireless whiskers twitched:

"Let's go," he replied. He kept one paw hanging emphatically in the air.

Like many important events in life, the adventures of Dudley and Gilderoy had this simple and spontaneous origin. There was no fuss, no elaborate preparation. Sniffing the air, the cat began to knead the table-cloth with all four feet. The bird waddled slowly back to the centre of his perch and thence laboriously stepped down to the floor of the cage. His beak, with its free-moving upper mandible, clutched the bars. The stillness of the house was now broken by distant sounds of thumping on the floor upstairs. A door banged heavily. The servants, perhaps, were getting up. It was time to act. Gilderoy opened the latch of the cage skilfully with one velvet paw. The door stood wide. They waited, staring at it. Dudley cocked an eye.

Gilderoy jumped down upon the carpet.

The parrot's moment of hesitation passed. He stalked clumsily sideways through the open door, and a few seconds later, using beak and claws, he descended the table leg and reached the carpet beside his friend. The creatures stood gazing at one another in silence. It was an important, even a dramatic, moment. Who was to lead the way? Whoever went first would, of course, be first to meet the dangers.

"You look best from behind," observed Gilderoy admiringly. "Your back view, I consider, is lovely."

Dudley preened himself.

Moving forward very slowly, he turned towards the Nursery door, leading the way with complete self-confidence.

CHAPTER II

The Grey Parrot in captivity is a veritable proteus … a very sensitive creature … with surprising sharpness of intellect. … It is intensely sociable in disposition, and will mope if left much to its own society.

The servants, who had thumped the floor and banged a door, having evidently thought better of it and gone back to bed, the biped and quadruped left the Day Nursery and walked along the passage to the top of the staircase without the smallest difficulty or interruption. Where they meant to go was not yet clear. The first move, at any rate, was to get out of the house.

Side by side, they descended the broad stairs, crossed the great empty hall, still dark and smelling unpleasantly of stale tobacco, and went quietly along the corridor that led towards the pantry and the servants' quarters.

Here they paused a moment, looking quietly into each other's eyes. Their next step was important. The pace of a party is the pace of its slowest member, and Dudley being a slow mover, they had taken ten minutes to reach this point. Though Gilderoy could have covered the ground in a few seconds, he had regulated his speed tactfully, keeping behind his waddling friend. Time was passing. Another thump and bang in the distance warned them that a servant had now decided, after all, to get up. There was a sound of sulky footsteps on the kitchen stairs. The moment for decisive action had arrived. For some time, therefore, the pair stood motionless, staring into each other's eyes.

"Let's get along," signified Gilderoy at length, yet making no move himself. He turned his eyes in the direction of a narrow skylight overhead.

Dudley, of course, had noticed it long ago. He also noticed the admiration still in the cat's expression. He would continue to lead. Using a chair, a hanging cord, a convenient shelf with precious china on it, and an iron bar, he fluttered up awkwardly, scrambled through the skylight, crossed some slates, descended an ivy-clad wall, and proceeded to march proudly, if clumsily, down the gravel drive in the direction of the lodge gates. The warm early sunshine pleased him. It was good to be out. He moved at his very best pace.

"You waddle," remarked Gilderoy, his tail in the air like a ramrod. He made himself very big and protective. "I'm behind you, remember."

"My wings," replied Dudley some twenty yards later, "are clipped and I possess two feet!" He stalked on. "I only need—two," he added presently. There was a touch of grandeur in his attitude. After another twenty yards he disposed of this idea of protection too. "I see out of the back of my head," he reminded the cat. But he did not say it sharply. Noblesse, he remembered, always obliged. To put the other in his place, and pay himself a neat compliment at the same time, was quite sufficient. "And it's a nice warm morning," he concluded, saying the words aloud in his soft gabbling little voice.

He used, that is, the method these two friends adopted to avoid unpleasantness. At the first sign of a disturbance it was their habit to change the subject. A squabble between them was thus invariably nipped in the bud. They never quarrelled. The cat, his eye on a thrush a hundred yards ahead, agreed about the nice, warm morning, and stalked along stiffly with a restraint that was evidently a self-imposed effort. He would have liked to dart and rush. The next moment, indeed, he did so. Springing furiously at a pine tree, he suddenly flew ten feet up the trunk, claws spread, tail whirling, teeth bared, and looking fiercely over his back with flattened ears as though the dogs were at his heels. For two minutes he clung to the tree in this spread-eagled fashion, then dropped to the ground again as though nothing had happened, and continued his stiff, slow walk beside his friend. Neither thrush nor parrot had shown a sign of being disturbed by this impressive performance. Gilderoy's active body needed the relief of a romp, no more than that.

"Ah!" said Dudley, when his friend caught him up again. He had used the interval to advance.

"We shall get there some time, even at this pace," said Gilderoy.

"Where?" enquired his companion.

"Where we're going to," came the rather tart reply. And, having now reached the lodge gates, they again paused and gazed into each other's eyes. The white country lane stretched in both directions as usual. At this early hour it was still deserted. Dudley, standing at right angles to it, examined it, owing to the position of his eyes, in both directions simultaneously. His companion, wholly indifferent, fell to washing an inaccessible region of his back. The windows of the Lodge were shut tight. No one was astir. And the bird shrank back a trifle towards the covering protection of the hedge where the wild roses shone. There came over him the fact that he had escaped from his safe, comfortable home. He realized it, realized that he was no longer in captivity. There were no bars about him, no little dish of seed or tin or water, the swinging bit of soft wood his beak plucked to pieces and played with was missing, so was the clean coarse gritty sand his health demanded. There was no perch along which he could retire. He took another step backwards towards the comfort of the hedge. Gilderoy, for the moment, had unaccountably disappeared. The ancient bird felt suddenly lonely. A sense of insecurity stole over him.

Gilderoy, of course, would come back in a moment, he knew; he was merely scampering after a bird or mouse, but in the meantime the sense of insecurity was undeniable. Yet this, apparently, was all he felt. He experienced no regret, no compunction, his unceremonious exit from home caused him no pang. His world, the cat's world too, did not include regret; escape was natural to it. He thought of Molly a moment—he could go back to her when he wished; he thought of others, of Colonel Sir Arthur, for instance, of the Governess—he need never see them again. The one called him a "damned squawker," the other was always saying "Tais-toi, Tais-toi, donc! " Beyond these cursory reflections, however, his mind did not trouble with the past. Like all animals, he concentrated on the present, and the present just now not being all it might be, he cast about for something to alleviate a certain strain he felt. Spontaneously, he chose a whistle—the only tune he knew. The opening bars of Lead Kindly Light ran down the hedge and past the shining roses. It was a very low soft whistle, hardly audible a yard beyond his beak.

In the middle of which Gilderoy, with a scattering leap, was beside him again, appearing from nowhere, and licking his chops as though he had never been away.

"Come on, you! said the ginger cat impatiently. The bird noticed at once that his bolshevik face wore a slightly different expression. The cheeks bulged a trifle more. There was something inside him that was not there when he disappeared a moment before.

"Ready," returned the parrot, relieved to have him back, while thinking at the same time what a dreadful thing he was to look at. He began to move slowly away from the hedge behind him, but the rough ground was not easy for his little feet and the claws kept catching. His advance was circular rather, remembering that Gilderoy watched him.

"Where to?" he enquired casually, his head wrenched sideways at an extraordinary angle.

"London for me," replied Gilderoy with decision.

His friend took the Vicar's voice. "Quaite," he agreed, and marched on ahead in the thick white dust of the deserted lane. He was Leader still. He moved at a proud pace that rather endangered his balance, but could not affect his courage.

"Gilderoy watched him. "D'you know where you're going? he flashed with his whiskers, not stirring an inch himself.

"Er—not exactly," the bird replied, indifferently. He did not stop. "London anyhow," he added.

"Wrong direction, then," Gilderoy informed him bluntly, as he stood there sniffing the air with little twitching jerks.

Dudley turned in a slow circle till he faced the other way. "For where?" he asked again gently.

"Train," said the cat, watching him with steady eyes. "You walk like nothing on earth," he commented, as his friend, turning another half-circle, drew alongside with his odd waddling gait.

"Yes, train," agreed the bird. He made a gesture that signified he was of the air and walking was a concession merely. And the pair stood motionless in the sunshine, as though nothing in the world mattered but being exactly where they were, and as though no adventure had begun at all.

Each creature, none the less, was active mentally. Their minds were extremely busy. Since they stopped all outward signs of communication, however, each kept his reflections to himself. It was a moment of privacy.

"It's going to be difficult, rather," the red cat was thinking, "this trip of ours. He's such a slow mover. He's fussy too, and his shape is a bit conspicuous." He purred gently, aware that his own appearance was perfection. His heart warmed towards his pal at the same time. "And his sex," thought ran on, "I'd like to know that!" A protective sense, never experienced towards humans, stirred strongly in him. He put all his very best into his friendship with the parrot. His patched eye glanced towards him admiringly. "Has useful ears, anyhow," he concluded. "Male or female isn't so important perhaps—in a bird." He gave a tiny sneeze.

Dudley, too, for his part was thinking deeply, and his thoughts were concerned, chiefly, with the appearance of this common cat, his companion in adventure. Whilst himself an aristocrat in every meaning of the word, he was not a snob, thank goodness. There was something in cats that he really respected and admired, something mysterious and queer and strange, but this particular cat. … He searched for terms that should be accurate yet fair, and did not find them. Something let out of a bag hardly met the case. Comparing Gilderoy's shabby looks with his own immaculate appearance, he deplored both his manners and his coat. At the same time he admired what he honestly could—speed, silence, sight. "Hideous," he concluded, "perhaps sometimes dangerous, but I love him."

Each, having thus finished his own private reflections, respectively, turned round and began to communicate openly with the other.

There was an immense satisfaction, evidently, that they had left the Day Nursery, for both had grievances, it seemed. Dudley was sick to death of being called "Pretty Polly" in an affected voice, of being assured a hundred times a day by all sorts of people that he wanted a cracker, a thing he never did want. Gilderoy, for his part, was weary of being lifted up in sections with all his feet hanging in empty space. And both were tired of hearing the children talk about an owl and a pussycat who went to sea in a pea-green boat. Tired to death they were of this nonsense. It was time, they felt, that mention was made of a parrot and a cat. For parrots and cats were notoriously enemies, whereas this pair was friendly. But no one spoke of it. And to be taken for granted like this month after month was more than they could have put up with a moment longer.

The pair of rascals, thus, had a satisfaction in escaping, and they now communicated this happy mood to one another. They did so, looking about them over the sunny green fields starred with buttercups and daisies.

Now, communication between them, be it explained once for all, was so rapid, comprehensive, adequate, that it easily surpassed the capacity of ordinary language. Human beings, having gradually invented a series of not always musical sounds to convey what they know possess none, of course, to convey what they do not know. For the experiences of non-humans they have no words. Hence, purring and a parrot's gurglings, since they refer to another order of experience, remain, for humans, indecipherable. Into these and other gorgeous sounds, however, these creatures project their own wisdom, their inanities, their thoughts and feelings, with consummate ease. They understand one another. Gesture and attitude, the shaking of a feather, the twitching of tail or whiskers, the cock of head or angle of neck, the flick of an ear, even the movement of agile claws and toes—these largely took the place of clumsy words. Thus, while Dudley and Gilderoy now gazed into one another's eyes, apparently uncommunicative, they were actually exchanging ideas of this high, but above all different, order. These ideas, none the less, must here be interpreted in terms humanity understands:

"Let's get on," remarked Gilderoy.

Dudley bowed his head in agreement. "Now, what do you know about trains, for instance?" he enquired sweetly.

"Enough," admitted the cat, "to take one."

"Which?" practical Dudley wanted to know.

"The first we see," was the reply. "They all reach London, I've heard, sooner or later." He glanced down the lane to the left.

The parrot, too, glanced down the lane, but to the right. He was not going to look foolish by taking the wrong direction a second time.

"Then please carry me," he signified. "The dust bothers my toes rather."

"Hop on!" agreed the other, lowering his scrawny back to an easy position. "And don't scratch or tickle."

Dudley, without further ado, fluttered on to the red back, raising a cloud of dust as he did so, and the pair then raced down the long hill towards the station. The cat went at a good speed, though out of consideration for his friend's disabilities, hardly his top speed, and the bird held on and kept his balance without undue loss of dignity. The wind blew out his tail feathers grandly.

"It's a pity you can't see me," proclaimed the tail feathers. "I look well behind, in front, and sideways too!"

Instead of answering, however, Gilderoy increased his speed, till at last the parrot felt obliged to comment audibly on this increase.