Roll Over Roly - Anne Fine [3]
“Faster!” the parrot repeated. “Faster, you dozy lump!”
“Be quiet!” Rupert snapped.
“Get on with it!” Gordon snapped back, and swivelled on his perch to keep his eye on the vacuum cleaner as Rupert pushed it up and down. The parrot wasn't helping, Rupert couldn't help noticing. Each time Rupert cleaned a perfect stripe of carpet, he kicked more grit out between the bars, to mess it up again.
Rupert was irritated. “Stop that!” he told Gordon. “How am I supposed to clean up around you if you keep kicking down more?”
Gordon just blinked at him.
Rupert worked faster, up and down. The parrot waited till he'd almost finished, then kicked some more mess out between the bars.
It floated down to the carpet.
“Stop it!” Rupert said sharply. “Just sit and behave, please!”
Still blinking insolently, Gordon kicked more. “Quickly!” he screeched. “Faster! Faster!”
Rupert switched off the vacuum cleaner and put his hands on his hips. “Listen,” he told the parrot. “This is not my idea of the perfect day. It's bad enough having Great Aunt Ada telling me what to do and how to do it. ‘Make sure you go in straight lines! Up! Down! Up! Down!’ But I'm certainly not taking orders from a parrot.”
Gordon said nothing. Only blinked at him.
Rupert waited.
Gordon was silent.
Rupert waited some more.
Gordon just blinked.
“Right then,” said Rupert. “If that's
fully understood, I'll get on with the vacuuming.”
Just at that moment, Roly's head appeared at the window.
“Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!” Gordon screeched like an express train.
Roly turned and fled.
“Rubbish!” Gordon squawked contemptuously. “Absolute rubbish!”
He tucked his head under his wing, and refused to come out again.
5 Bad Habits Are First Cobwebs
AN HOUR LATER, it slipped out again:
“I'm bored.”
“When I was your age,” said Great Aunt Ada, “I had a box of buttons and a cotton reel to play with. And I was never bored.”
“Blimey!” said Rupert.
“Set a brave soldier to guard that tongue, young man,” Great Aunt Ada warned. “Bad habits are first cobwebs, then cables. Haven't you got a book?”
“I've finished it.”
“Then I'll find you another job.”
This time, it was windows. He enjoyed
that more. She didn't have any of the fancy blue cleaning sprays his parents used. She just filled a rattling tin bucket with warm, soapy water and gave him a strange, furry leather cloth that felt all slimy in his hand when it was wet, but worked like magic. He made the glass panes sparkle. Rupert worked steadily round the house, window by window, taking care with the china ornaments inside and the flower beds outside.
Roly stayed locked in the kitchen, barking like a fiend.
After a while, Great Aunt Ada poked her head out of one of her freshly gleaming windows, and said, “That dog of yours certainly knows the best way to get in the neighbours' Book of Sinners.”
Rupert couldn't help sighing. Much as he adored Roly, the noise was getting on his nerves as well.
“I can't do anything with him,” he said forlornly. “He just doesn't care.”
Great Aunt Ada said darkly:
“Don't Care was made to care.
Don't Care was hung.
Don't Care was put in a pot
And boiled till he was done.”
Rupert was glad that he and Great Aunt Ada had got to know each other a little better. Because it was the second time that day she'd mentioned cooking his pet.
6 Life Is a Splendid Robe
“REST TIME,” DECLARED Great Aunt Ada when the plates were cleared away. “Gangplank up. Batten the hatches.”
“I don't have rests,” said Rupert, quite astonished.
“I do,” said Great Aunt Ada, as if that settled it. Rupert remembered his mother's words: “People her age grew up in a different world. They're simply not used to children arguing back. They think it's rude. So, whatever she says, just go along with her, and we'll be back at half-past four to rescue you. It's a promise.”
“Right then,” Rupert told Great Aunt Ada. “Rest time it is.”
She found him one or two things to keep him amused through his quiet time. One was The Giant Book of Battles. (“Your Great Uncle Percy lost a finger in