Tip, Tip, Tinkle

Tip, tip, tinkle. Tip, tip, tinkle. Some would have found the repetitive, tinny chime of the little bell that hung from the budgerigar's mirror intolerable, but to the glassy-eyed old man in the chair this was the familiar lullaby that shooed him into his afternoon siesta daily. Tip, tip, tinkle. Tip, tip, tinkle.

Delicately, precisely the shabby, little yellow bird tapped the mirror twice setting it rocking gently forward and back. It made the old man think of a pavement entertainer he had seen once. Three birds, he'd had. A blue one that careered up and down hitched to a purpose-built brougham and two bright yellow ones that took turns to push each other on a similarly sized down swing.

"You'd have liked that Joe" said the old man as though the bird had been following his train of thought. "A proper mate to push on a swing."

Tip, tip, tinkle. Tip, tip, tinkle. Joey seemed unmoved. Tip, tip, tinkle.

The mirror swung gentle arcs, forward and back. The series of reflections it captured ran like a random snatch of an old film reel. From the old man's afternoon vantage point the clip was always the same: feathery sawdust scattered on the sun-faded red of the floor of the cage, a mercifully brief glimpse of some papery, old codger, and then the long frame, perhaps a whole second, as the mirror travelled imperceptibly across the invisible border between aged magnolia wall and aged magnolia ceiling. Then the green plastic frame with its little round bell would lift to a point just beyond the end of his nose on the horizon and the clip would flick into rewind ...magnolia, age, sawdust.

Tip, tip, tinkle. Tip, tip, tinkle. Steady, relentless. Joey, the silent-movie projector, replaying the same old movie to his faithful audience. Only when the man's eyes finally closed would Joe permit himself to break from this role as post lunch entertainer in chief.

Today, the old man just didn't seem to want to sleep somehow. He was always ready with the odd comment to Joe about this or that; the weather, the way of the world. But eventually he would succumb, tip, tip, tinkle, tip, tip, tinkle, and gradually the downy slumber of afternoon would seep into the folds and creases of the elderly face.

Recently though, there had been more - not resistance exactly, but a keenness to talk, to reflect. As well as Joe, there were other names, some names that made the rusty, old voicebox mellower than Joe had ever heard.

Still, the bird did not desist. The accumulation of passing seasons demanded rest. All creatures knew this, not just Joey. The old man must know too. So why was he blanking the mirror? Tip, tip, tinkle. Ignoring the sleep-now film? Tip, tip, tinkle. Tip, tip, tinkle.

Joey took two deliberate steps along his perch and eye-balled the offender. The interruption in the single note lullaby caused the ageing head to come to attention. The milky irises of eyes that might once have been green or blue, or even hazel, locked on the blinking black buttons that squinted out of Joe's peculiar little pug face.

"Now, look here Joey," any attempt at matter-of-factness in his voice completely overwhelmed by the affection there, "you and me, well we're both getting to that time when, well, when it's just not respectable to keep hanging around like a bad smell." He paused, and chuckled. "I might have grown accustomed, but I can still remember other times and I just know old boys like you and me, well we really get to be a bit whiffy with age."

Joe's head cocked itself in a ratchety movement to one side as he concentrated.

What was that water that gullied in the lines on the man's face? Joe wondered if that was how things ended. Did old things just melt away? Would he?

"I've been noticing you know, and you can't tell me that there's not a few more feathers in that sawdust than there ought to be. I can see it you know. In the mirror, when you push."

The old man sniffed resolutely.

"There's no harm getting a bit sentimental when you get to our age you know." Silently the man chastised himself. As though Joe knew anything about tears, or age, or respectable!

Tip, tip, tip, tinkle...

Knowing the sequence was wrong the old man glanced back at the bird. The mirror had been jostled aside as Joe flew straight past in an apparent attempt to get closer to his companion. A little cloudlet of cottony down escaped in the run-in and floated free of the cage bars to land on the blanket wrapping the old man's legs. The man smiled.

"I daresay you're right Joe. They do say you keep warmer if you snuggle up." And then, as if to explain his failure to release the bird so that it might do just that he added, "But that's for young blood, see? Old, empty, eggshell bones like ours can't even hold the summer sun."

He nodded towards the grimy panes where sunbeams plunged daggers of hot light through the stiff, yellowed nets. Joe's black button eyes followed the nod towards the sunlit glass. "The warm time" thought Joey. Years since, the window had been painted shut to exclude draughts, preserve warmth. The room was dusty dry, the heat that failed to warm the old man and his bird, prickly and stale.

Tinkling, then silence. The little green mirror, sited only haphazardly by Joey's wing had dislodged and slid down the gentle arc of an overhead bar to rest flush against the upright rods. Neither the bird nor the man took any notice. The warm time had brought sleep anyway.

A bright, silver dollar appeared on the wall next to the window; a tiny planet of hot light cast by Joe's mirror. To the naked eye, nothing moved. The irregular breathing of the two slumbering occupants was shallow.

Brought unexpectedly into being, the little looking-glass planet set out on the slow orbit of its singular universe. It edged itself into the window recess, folding into a sharp right angle so that it appeared to cling to the wall for support like some errant cartoon character. Slowly it crept forward, stretching flat again when it reached the stiff lace, discoloured with the residues of years of service. Fake net flowers seemed to thrust their heads hungrily towards their new fake sun, draw new colour from it.

The police report was inconclusive. The fire had started - they didn't know how - somewhere near the window. If there had been more air even the old man's bird might've made it, but these old folk and their draught excluders... They'd both have been goners before there was ever a flame to be seen.

In the clamour of the clear-up afterwards there was no reason why anyone should have noticed a faint and prolonged tinkling as the twisted remains of the little green mirror and its bell were swept away, protesting it seemed, at being ousted from the familiar surroundings where it had played its lullaby for so many years.