The Wedding Party by H. E. Bates Read Free Book Online

get out!’
    An improbable figure of a man about forty, in grey slacks, pale green shirt and brown sandals performed a strange sort of spiralling act in the centre of the lawn, his large green butterfly net swivelling over his head, and then came to an abrupt and distressful halt, panting.
    â€˜Oh! pardon me. Excuse me. You haven’t seen a budgerigar by any chance, have you? A blue one. It’s my wife’s. It flew over your garden fence just now—’
    â€˜Oh! tell it to the marines!’ Mr Daly shouted and then turned sarcastically to Mrs Daly, whispering, ‘Says he’s looking for his wife’s budgerigar—’
    â€˜Well, perhaps he
is
—’
    â€˜Budgerigar or no budgerigar,’ Mr Daly shouted, ‘I damn well won’t have you trampling all over my place! Get out of it!’
    â€˜I’m certain it’s in here. I
know
it’s in here. It’s probably hiding among your roses—’
    â€˜Keep off my roses, damn you!’
    â€˜Don’t get so worked up,’ Mrs Daly said. ‘If he has lost it why don’t you go down and help him find it—’
    â€˜Me?’ Mr Daly said, his voice bleakly choking. ‘Me?’
    â€˜Yes,’ Mrs Daly said, ‘the poor little thing. It’s probably terrified to death.’
    â€˜Let it be terrified!’
    â€˜It’ll probably get caught by the cat or something. That would be horrible. All those precious blue feathers all over the lawn. Tell him you’ll go down and help him.’
    â€˜I’ll tell him no such thing,’ Mr Daly said. ‘Who the Beelzebub do you think I am? Go on – get out of it! Go and hunt your blasted budgerigar somewhere else! It’s probably flown home to Mamma anyway by now. There, there, diddums lose ums Mamma then, sweetie precious? Did budgums think ums—’
    â€˜You really are rude,’ Mrs Daly whispered. ‘If you won’t go down and help him I will.’
    â€˜Then you’re a mug,’ Mr Daly said. ‘That’s all I can say.’
    â€˜Don’t call me a mug.’
    â€˜Every man’s got a right to call his wife a mug if she turns out to be one.’
    â€˜I don’t want that little bird killed in my garden,’ Mrs Daly said. ‘It would be on my conscience for ever.’
    â€˜Conscience,’ Mr Daly said. ‘Conscience? Hell, I’m going back to bed.’
    As Mr Daly crawled like a growling dog under the bedclothes Mrs Daly got out of bed and started to put on her dressing gown, a petunia pink silk one, and her bedroom slippers, which were also pink and lined with pure white fur. With incredulous irritation Mr Daly stared at her over the edge of the sheet, telling her abruptly that she was mad.
    â€˜Well, that makes two of us,’ she said. ‘And anyway if youwere anything of a man you’d go down and help and let me stay in bed.’
    â€˜Snap, snap!’
    â€˜Snap, snap! yourself. Perhaps one day you’ll lose something and you’ll be glad of someone to help you find it.’
    â€˜Lose what for instance?’
    â€˜Oh! anything.’ Mrs Daly wrenched open the bedroom door with vigorous impatience. ‘Me, for example. You never know.’
    â€˜Suffering cat-fish,’ Mr Daly moaned, ‘suffering cat-fish.’
    Out in the garden the man in green shirt and grey slacks was gazing in dispirited fashion at the upper branches of a large laburnum tree, where the blue budgerigar was perching with unfluttering indifference in the morning sun.
    â€˜Winkie, Winkie!’ he called and clapped his hands in gentle reprimand. ‘Winkie – pay attention. Listen to me. You must come home. Do you hear? – you must come home to breakfast.’
    At the conclusion of this sentence he turned to find Mrs Daly at his side. The unexpected sight of her in dressing-gown and nightdress quite unnerved him, so that he flushed slightly and