The Parrot Who Only Said Pardon

Pedro the parrot could say one word.

"Pardon?"

That was it. Just that. He said it when you came in and he said it when you went out. He said it when you gave him a grape and he said it when you did not. He said it, most of all, when you were in the middle of saying something important.

"Pedro, it's time for..."

"Pardon?"

"It's time for..."

"Pardon?"

"BED, Pedro."

"Pardon?"

Milo, who was six, had lived with Pedro his whole life and had never once finished a sentence in the same room as him.

"Why can't he say something useful?" Milo asked his mum. "Like 'hello'. Or 'goodnight'. Or 'yes, Milo, that is an excellent idea'."

"Pardon?" said Pedro, from the curtain rail.

"He says what he hears," said Mum. "Grandpa used to say pardon all the time, because Grandpa didn't listen. Pedro learned it from him."

"Pardon?" said Pedro, proudly.

That night, Milo could not get to sleep. He had tried lying on his left side and his right side and his tummy and his back and a sort of diagonal that his dad said was not a real side. Nothing worked. His head was too busy.

So he started talking. Quietly, to the ceiling. About the day, and the thing at school, and the boy who had said the thing, and what Milo should have said back but had only thought of in the bath.

"And then he said my drawing looked like a potato," Milo told the ceiling.

"Pardon?" said Pedro softly, from the top of the wardrobe, where he slept.

Milo sighed. "He said my drawing looked like a potato."

"Pardon?"

"He SAID," said Milo, louder, sitting up, "that my drawing..." and he stopped. Because saying it the third time, it did not sound like much. A potato. So what. Potatoes were fine. Some of his best drawings had been potatoes.

"Pardon?" said Pedro.

"Never mind," said Milo, and lay down.

"Pardon?"

"I said never mind. It doesn't matter."

"Pardon?"

"It doesn't MATTER, Pedro," said Milo, and heard himself, and for some reason that made him laugh, which let a bit of the busy out of his head.

He lay there. The room was dark. On top of the wardrobe, Pedro shuffled his feet on the wood.

"Pedro," whispered Milo, "I'm a bit worried about tomorrow."

"Pardon?"

"I said I'm a bit worried about tomorrow."

"Pardon?"

"I'm a bit..." Milo yawned, enormously. "...worried about..."

"Pardon?"

"...I can't remember what about."

"Pardon?"

"Nothing," said Milo, very sleepily. "Nothing at all."

There was a long quiet. Milo's eyes were shut. The busy had all gone out of his head, said three times each until it was too silly to keep, and there was nothing left in there but soft dark and the feeling of the pillow.

"Goodnight, Pedro," he murmured.

And from the top of the wardrobe, in the smallest voice a parrot has, Pedro said the only word he knew, and for once, it was exactly the right one.

"Pardon?"

But Milo was asleep, and did not answer, and did not need to.