GETTING THE BIRD.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 171, 21 July 1936, Page 19

GETTING THE BIRD.

(By ERIC HARDY.)

IN the small, square kitelien and living room the form of a workman loomed through the rays of the two guttering candles upon a deal table covered with a once white linen tablecloth. The relics of supper lay 011 the tablecloth, and amidst them stood a bird's cage. The scarlet handful of fire, relic of a nobler blaze, reflected its own genial colour upon whatever it could, reach, and made the drab interior of this working-class home cosy and alluring with its flickering, dancing beams that every now and then outshone the candles. The portrait of a soldier in khaki hung over the mantelpiece: the remnants of the evening's washing hung beneath; a black and tan torn cat sprawled 011 the peg-rug, receiving the full warmth of the embers. On triangular shelves in one corner stood bread, bacon, cheese, a few spare cups and saucers, mostly chipped and ol varying patterns, and on the lowest shelf a Bible, an old newspaper, and a bow and fiddle. These, with a couple of rough chairs, a broken bacon rack, and a small sideboard, completed the furniture of the place. • » • • The man's attention had long beer fixed upon something held between the fingers of his left hand, and which periodically fluttered frantically for a moment, till he dropped the small brush in the other hand, when the fluttering ceased. Then he picked up the brush and resumed his interest in the object. The man was painting a brown bird yellow and when a woman came down the creaky staircase that twisted round like woodbine or convolvulus climbing uy a thorn hedge, and began to move tin remains of the supper, he did not raise his head nor pause one moment in hi? work. "You an' your birds; you'll be the death of me," was the woman's retort when a tug at the table-cloth brought a curse from the man at the other side. "If you get copped doing that, it'll serve you right. I've told you, Bill, and I'm having no hand in it." Bill sneered. "Why, Martha. What's wrong, anyway? It's a regular custom among them ther Cockney fellers ter paint their sparrers like canaries, and sell 'em. So why shouldn't Ido it? No one'll know the difference —least not till I'm back home. And it's only once in a way.. "Every morning for the last week I've hiked out to the common and stuck me nets and tethered me decoy 011 the far side of a whin bush, and not a blinkin' Untie or a pink came down, even when I took crumbs and baconrind and scattered about the nets, like what you reads in books." Having said sufficient, in his mind, to justify his deeds in his wife's eyes, Bill Rimmer continued with his painting. It was true he had spent every morning for the past week, from daybreak until half an hour after, in bitterly coid weather trying to net a greenfinch, a linnet, or a chaffinch, birds invariably known' as (>ccn linties, brown linties and pinks respectively to the labourer ana- lie had returned home for work empty handed each time. He worked for a local "rag-ta™ butcher" —a buyer of butchers' boneanel carcasses, dead horses and such like, whicli were sorteel out or boiled down for fats and other things to be sent to the tanneries—and for this Bill Rimmer received 33/ a week. He therefore considered the birds of the common, which fetched the birdcatchers half-a-crown apiece behind Liverpool market, a legitimate means of his adding some 15/ a week to his meagre wage to keep the homestead together. • • » • No w r onder he was dejected at his week's fruitless efforts. In his disappointment, he caught a hen sparrow in the street, bought an assortment of paints that looked canary yellow, and proceeded to turn the drab-brown, proletariate bird of the slums into the golden-yellow aristocrat of caged birds. That was where his wife came in. She did not mind his early morning decoying. Even if he was caught it was hardly likely he would come off worse than * losing his nets and being fined five bob by the local magistrate. But selling a sparrow for a canary! When the man rose from the table and took away the little wood and wire bird cage, the work was complete, and the sullen hen sparrow perched on the only perch in the cage —it was too small to have a "darkest corner," otherwise the bird would have sought its sanctity —occasionally pecked at its ruffled, yellowed plumage and then obviously wished it hadn't. The work was considered a success, and even if the bird had not a song, it had the colour that would do for a canary in the flickering flames of the oil flares amidst the crowds in the allev behind the market, where the cage birds were sold on Saturday night. Rimmer had often board about this habit of "faking" canaries, but he bad never tried it before.'"' His wife was frequent in her advice that he would deserve all he got for it! • • • • Came Saturday night in Market Street. The crowded alley swarmed with all sorts of bargainers and bargain seekers. Musty books, yapping puppies, patent medicine, squawking ducks and hens, corn plasters, old clothes and all the concoctions that go to make a Paddy's Market were being sold from barrows and trucks and very insecurelooking trestle benches. The alley was crowded with a seething mass of men, women and children, the air rang with the jargon of bargainers shouting their wares, and th'r great, naked flames of the only luminants, burning rags jammed down the spouts of oil-cans, sent a pother of smoke like a fog to add to the stench of paraffin. ' At tlie top end, the bird corner, men and Youths stood beside rows and rows of tiny cages full of fluttering finches frantic before the dazzling naked flames that blurted forth from the paraffin burners tied a'ti various places along the rows. Standing at intervals were individuals selling odd lots —here a litter of puppies a man exhibited in his cap, there an elderly dog on a string, with an obvious look that "the seller was not its legiti - mate owner—and amongst these people stood a man trying to sell a canary. He was Bill Rimmer. Knocking off ! after the afternoon's work—there were no half-diys in his job—he had promptly repaired 'o the market with his bird, ready if", the evening crowd.

(SHORT STORY.)

Seeing that the prize Norwich songsters were offered at ten-and-six the clicapest, he thought seven-and-six a good start for his single bird. But those he chanced to stop were .sceptic. They wanted to know why it was not singing, why it was cheap, what was wrong with it, and passed on. Kimmer had been forced to bring his price down by sixpence in the hope of selling to some strange visitor looking for a cheap pet, and now he had reached,a crown. • • » » As the darkness of the evening wore 011, and the crowd grew denser and more excited, Rinimer's coniideiice rose. He raised his voice more frequently 111 competition with the tradesmen. He stopped each passerby, appealed to them, and lauded the merits of a prize mule in the moult. She would be topping when she grew her new feathers. As his conlidence grew, so did the bird's powers. It became a cock. From a cock it becamc a roller. There were 110 limits to its capabilities. At last someone decided to buy it. A foreign seaman had inquired of its price, plainly declared he knew nothing about canaries and had not had one before, but that he had come to buy a pet. The sale was made, and Rimmer pocketed two bright half-crowns, told his customer how he would enjoy his purchase when it came into song, and as soon as they parted, hurried away from the market street as though some secret danger lurked there. Martha seemed surprised that he had sold the bird at all, and breathed a sigh of relief to see him back again. And Kimmer, with the jeering laugh of man predominating over woman, threw the , two half-crowns 'on the sink-board, where stood his wife. "Anything wrong with it now?" he 1 exclaimed in his act. The coins rolled on the flagged floor, where they landed with a dull thiul. ' Martha and Bill both noticed that. Bill picked one up and bit it. "Well : I'll be —!" he stammered, "they're— , duds! The fraud!"