“Sucks to you!”

“I deflect it back unto you,” Daffy said, holding out an invisible shield at arm’s length.

“And back to you again,” I said, duplicating her gesture.

“Ha! Yours is a brass shield. Brass doesn’t bounce sucks. You know that as well as I do.”

“Does!”

“Doesn’t!”

It was at this point that Feely intervened in what had been, until then, a perfectly civilized discussion.

“Speaking of parrots,” she said, “Harriet had a lovely parrot before you were born—a beautiful bird, an African Grey, called Sinbad. I remember him perfectly well. He could conjugate the Latin verb ‘amare’ and sing parts of ‘The Lorelei.’ ”

“You’re making this up,” I told her.

“Remember Sinbad, Daffy?” Feely said, laughing.

“ ‘The boy stood on the burning deck,’ ” Daffy said. “Poor old Sinby used to scramble up onto his perch as he squawked the words. Hilarious.”

“Then where is he now?” I demanded. “He should be still alive. Parrots can live more than a hundred years.”

“He flew away,” Daffy said, with a little hitch in her voice. “Harriet had spread a blanket on the terrace, taken you out for some fresh air. Somehow you managed to work loose the catch on the door of the cage, and Sinbad flew away. Don’t you remember?”

“I didn’t!”

Feely was looking at me with eyes which were no longer those of a sister.

“Oh, but you did. She often said afterwards that she wished it had been you who had flown away, and Sinbad who had stayed.”

I could feel the pressure rising in my chest, as if I were a steam boiler.

I said a forbidden word and walked stiffly from the room, vowing revenge.

There were times when a touch of the old strychnine was just the ticket.