by Alan Durant
He wiggled with amusement. But I was feeling too nervous to react.
“You’re not going all mute on me again, are you?” he said.
I shook my head. “No, Dad. It’s just that I’ve got something I need to talk to you about.”
“That sounds ominous,” said Dad. “They’re not moving me into the piranha tank, are they?”
“No, nothing like that,” I assured him. A little hesitantly I told him about taking the notepaper from the doctor’s case and about my plan to forge a letter to the school. Dad listened, his delicate fins rippling. “I tried to write the letter last night, but I couldn’t. I felt so useless, like I was letting you and mum down.”
I looked into the tank anxiously, waiting for Dad’s reaction. Dad stared at me with his currant-black eyes and his lips seemed to form themselves into a smile.
“You’re a good boy, Dak, and if I could I’d give you a pat on the back. Taking that piece of notepaper from the doctor’s case was wrong – and you know it. That’s why you couldn’t write the letter. But you wanted to write it for the sake of your family – and nothing is more important than that. Life is about getting your priorities right – and that’s what you’re doing. School is important, of course it is. But right now, it can wait.” He blew out a stream of bubbles. “Anyway you are coming to school, aren’t you?” I frowned. “Aquariums are full of schools – schools of fish!” He wobbled with delight and I smiled with relief. Dad was on my side. “Now, got any food for me?”
“You’ve already been fed, Dad,” I reminded him.
“Call those flakes food?” The clownfish snorted. “What’s in them anyway?”
“They’re called marine flakes.” I said. “I don’t know what they’re made of.”
“Well, do me a favour and try one of the other tubs next time, can you? The one that says Kentucky Fried Chicken flakes. That’d do nicely.”
I laughed. “You really are a clown, Dad.”
“What are you laughing at?” said a sharp voice behind me. I turned to see Violet scowling in the doorway. How long has she been there? I wondered anxiously. Had she overheard me talking with Dad?
“Oh, I – I—” I stammered. “The clownfish is … funny. The way it moves.” I looked back at the tank. “It has a silly sort of wobble like it’s trying to make you laugh.”
Violet slouched over and stood next to me. She glared into the tank.
“Doesn’t look funny to me. Just looks stupid. Fish are dumb.”
“You only say that ’cos you don’t know them.”
“And you do?” Violet sneered. “What is there to know? They live underwater and swim around all day. Big deal.”
“You’re wrong,” I insisted. “They’re amazing.”
“Really?” Violet snorted. “OK, tell me one ‘amazing’ thing about Nemo there.”
“The clownfish?”
“Yeah, Nemo, the clownfish.”
I took a deep breath. “Well, for a start he’s not called Nemo.”
“What is his name then?” Her voice was scratchy with hostility.
I was about to say “Bob”, Dad’s name, but stopped myself. It was my secret and I wasn’t going to share it with anyone – least of all Violet. “He’s a wild creature. He doesn’t have a name. And I’ll tell you something amazing about him.” I pointed. “You see that thing he’s resting in? It’s called an anemone or a sea hedgehog. Its tentacles are poisonous to all fish except the clownfish. Clownfish can settle on anemones and not get stung because their bodies are covered in a sort of sticky mucus that protects them.”
Violet wrinkled her nose. “That’s disgusting! You mean they cover themselves in slime?”
“Uh-huh,” I nodded. I’d hooked her, I could see. Her eyes were less hostile.
“And I’ll tell you something else,” I went on. “They’re hermaphrodites. They start off male but then they change into females.”
Violet was obviously intrigued. “That’s weird,” she said. She thought for a moment, then smiled, revealing two vampire-like teeth at either side of her mouth. “Imagine if your dad suddenly turned into your mum.” All at once her smile vanished. Her pale cheeks flushed. “Oh, sorry,” she muttered. “I didn’t mean… Stephan told me about your dad.”
I shrugged. “It’s OK.”
Violet lifted her head again and the scowl was back. “Anyway, my dad’s an arsehole. I wouldn’t care if he was dead. I really wouldn’t.”
And she stormed away.
I didn’t see Violet again before the aquarium shut, so I didn’t find out what her dad had done to upset her so much. (Told her not to be so rude maybe?) Not that I really cared – I had enough stuff of my own to think about.
I went to the beach on my way home. The shingle sparkled blue and silver in the late afternoon sun. The tide was bustling in, the waves rushing over each other in a wild babble. A group of small kids were poking hopefully in the shallow rock pools at the water’s edge, a shaggy black dog wagging its tail excitedly on the beach behind them.
I sat on an old groyne that had been softened by seaweed and gazed at the smooth but knobbly slabs of chalk in the shallows, among the green. Suddenly they seemed like grotesque, twisted white bodies and I quickly looked away.
Thoughts bubbled in my head, wild as the waves. So much had happened in the last twenty-four hours – and none of it good. Why couldn’t everyone just leave me alone? Doctors, neighbours, headteachers, angry girls… I didn’t need any of them. All I wanted was to get on with my life, to look after Mum and see Dad at the aquarium each day. Was that too much to ask?
I picked up a pebble and hurled it at a cresting wave. I thought about Violet and hoped our paths wouldn’t cross too often. Luckily for me she seemed much more interested in Stephan’s computer than the fish and I’d be busy a lot of the time anyway helping Johnny. And Johnny didn’t ask questions. All he was interested in was the fish, which suited me fine.
Back home, I decided to give Becks a change of hat. The straw boater was Dad’s preferred summer hat for the bulldog, so I went to fetch that. The boater had come out of the rubbish so was a little battered, but Dad had done his best to restore it, even attaching a bright yellow ribbon round the crinkled rim. (I could hear him now singing as he did it, Tie a yellow ribbon round the old straw hat…) I swapped the Union Jack sun hat for the boater, perching it at an angle on the dog’s head. The effect was ridiculous. Dad would have loved it.
Mum was in the sitting room and seemed a little more herself. OK, she was in her dressing gown not clothes, but she wasn’t in bed or leaping at the ceiling, which had to be an improvement. She was staring at a picture. It was a photo of the three of us on a beach somewhere when I was little. The sand was very white and the sky a perfect azure.
“I’ve never seen that photo before,” I said. “Where was it taken?”
“In France,” Mum replied softly. “On the beach at Le Touquet. The sand dunes were amazing, like whipped ice-cream.” She smiled sadly. “It was a perfect day.”
“How old was I?”
Mum thought a moment. “You’d have been about two, I guess. You and your dad dug for hours in the sand.” She stared at the photo again. “It was a perfect day,” she repeated, struggling to hold back her tears. “I’m sorry, Dak. I want to be strong, I really do.”
I put my arms around her. “It’s all right, Mum.” I hugged her tight until her sobbing stopped.
We ate a proper meal together, the first since Dad had gone. Mum made a cheese omelette and a salad (all from offerings left by Mrs Baxter). We sat and ate it in front of the TV. We started off watching a soap but Mum found it too upsetting, so I changed channels.
It was hard to find anything that wasn’t upsetting in some way, but eventually we settled on a natural history programme about the Antarctic. The Emperor penguins made us both smile – Dad loved penguins and he used to imitate them, waddling and squawking to try to make me laugh when I was younger … especially if I was in a grump about
something. It always worked.
Everything was going fine until the leopard seal arrived and started hunting the penguins. When it caught one, Mum couldn’t watch any more.
“Sorry, love. I’m not feeling too good,” she said shakily. “I’m going to go back to bed.”
I switched off the TV. “Do you need anything?” I asked.
Mum shook her head. “No, thank you.” She kissed me on the cheek. “I’ll be all right. You carry on watching if you want.”
I nodded, but I didn’t turn the TV back on. I had a job to do. I went over and picked up the picture Mum had been looking at – the one taken on the beach in France. If I’d been two, then the photo was nine years old. I hardly recognized myself. My hair was very blond, for a start, not mousy like it was now. My face was rounder too, chubby-cheeked. In the photo Dad had his arms around Mum and me and he was half grinning, half squinting in the bright sunlight. Apart from the fact that he was a bit thinner then and had more hair, he hadn’t really changed much over the years. He looked out at me now, smiling, encouraging.
Go on, son, his expression seemed to say. Do the right thing.
I went up to my room, took out the headed notepaper and spread it out flat on my desk. Then I pulled Dad’s sweatshirt out from under the pillow, held it against my face a moment or two and took a deep breath. I was doing this for my family, I told myself – and nothing was more important than that. Just like Dad had said. I had to look after Dad – and Mum – and I couldn’t do that if I was in school all day. I put the sweatshirt down on the desk. It made me feel as if Dad was actually there, supporting me.
I practised writing the letter in a notebook, over and over, first in pencil, then in black biro. After a while I knew that I wasn’t really practising any more, I was just putting off writing the real thing. I wished I’d taken more than one sheet of the notepaper in case I made any mistakes, but I hadn’t so I’d just have to get it right first time. I laid the headed notepaper on top of a page of lined paper in my school topic exercise book.
I’d never written anything so carefully before. My hand felt tense but I tried to keep it steady; my tongue stuck out as it always did when I was concentrating really hard. It took me the best part of half an hour and when I’d finished, signing the doctor’s name with a scratchy scrawl, my hands were clammy and shaky.
I cast my eyes over the letter one last time. Was it too neat? Did it look too childish? Would Mr Hoskins be fooled – or would he know it right away for the fake it was? I’d just have to keep my fingers crossed and hope for the best. I fetched an envelope and a stamp from the sitting-room desk, folded the letter neatly, pushed it into the envelope and sealed it shut. And sighed. It was done.
That night I dreamed of being a fish.
I posted the letter on my way to the aquarium, feeling better than I had for days. When I arrived, I found the doors locked. Peering through the glass, I could see that the reception area was full of decorating stuff: a ladder and paint pots and brushes. There were old sheets covering the floor. Stephan had his back to me, talking to a big man in white overalls.
I looked over to the reception desk and was surprised to see Violet staring out at me with what looked almost like a smile. She raised her hand as if to say “hi”, then turned and said something to Stephan – who came over and unlocked the doors.
“We’re shut this morning, Dak,” he said. “I’m having some ornamentation done.” I looked at him blankly. “Come in. I’ll show you.”
I hesitated. “I thought you said you were closed.”
“To the general public, yes, but not to you.”
As Stephan relocked the doors behind me, I looked around, puzzled. “But haven’t these walls just been painted?” I said. I knew they had. Dad had remarked on it the last time he and I had come here together, just a month or so ago. He’d put his hand to his eyes and pretended to be dazzled by the shiny white walls.
“Painting was the first part of the plan,” Stephan replied. “Today Toby here’s going to carry out the second part.”
Violet came over. “So what’s he going to do, Uncle Stephan? Paint little fishes? Or maybe a giant shark?” She said it in a tone that made it clear she wasn’t really interested. I wasn’t sure if Stephan didn’t get that she was being sarcastic or just chose to ignore it, but he responded as if her question was genuine. “No, Violet, he’s not going to paint fish on the walls. He’s going to paint quotes about fish.”
“Quotes about fish?” I repeated, puzzled.
“Yes, quotations from famous people on the subject of fish,” Stephan declared happily. “It’ll give folks something to think about when they’re walking around inside.” I glanced at Violet and she rolled her eyes. Stephan reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. He put on his reading glasses and, unfolding the paper, said, “Here’s one from John Ruskin, the famous nineteenth-century art critic: No human being, however great or powerful, was ever so free as a fish.”
I smiled. “That’s good,” I said. “I like that.” I thought of Dad, flitting about his tank, happy and carefree.
Violet shook her head. “But the fish here aren’t free. Someone caught them, didn’t they? And now they’re imprisoned in this aquarium.”
Stephan looked outraged. “This isn’t a prison! It’s a haven – for fish.”
Violet snorted.
“Have you got any more quotes?” I asked quickly.
Stephan studied his sheet of paper thoughtfully, running his fingers over his droopy moustache. “This is one your dad liked, Dak. I showed it to him when I first had the idea of using quotes… It’s by D. H. Lawrence: To sink, and rise, and go to sleep with the waters…To be a fish!”
“That’s great!”
“Here’s one: Fish are best in batter with chips,” Violet said. “That’s a quote from Violet McGee.”
Stephan frowned but wasn’t put off. “This is my favourite: I often sigh still for the dark downward and vegetating kingdom of the fish…”
“That’s creepy.” Violet pouted.
For once I agreed with her. Something about it made me shiver. The words were beautiful but made me uncomfortable. “I prefer the other ones.”
“I prefer mine,” said Violet. “At least it makes sense.”
Johnny had the morning off and there weren’t any jobs for me to do. I wanted to go and have a chat with Dad, but Violet decided to attach herself to me. She wasn’t nearly as grumpy as she’d been the day before – at least not to start with – but she still wasn’t my idea of the perfect companion. She wasn’t interested in fish for a start.
I showed her the lionfish with its amazing lacy flippers and deadly-poisonous spines. “What a stupid name – it doesn’t look anything like a lion” was all she said. The golden pufferfish didn’t fare any better (“Looks like he’s swallowed a lemon”), or the longhorn cowfish (“Nothing should be allowed to be that ugly”) or the glass catfish (“That’s just freaky – why would you want to show off your insides?”).
She wasn’t impressed by facts either. I told her that if starfish lose a leg they can grow another; that the Chinese softshell turtle can wee through its mouth; that a hagfish can fill a whole bucket with slime in a minute… She just screwed up her face and said it was gross.
The only time she showed any real interest was when we came to the piranha tank. “They look so mean,” she said approvingly.
“You should see them at feeding time,” I told her. “They go crazy. The food’s gone in seconds. Sometimes they go so crazy they bite each other. That’s why some of them, like that one there—” I pointed— “have got a bit of their tail missing.”
Violet stared into the tank in dark fascination. “I bet they’d rip us to shreds if we fell in there.” Her tone was of admiration rather than fear. “Some beetles are like that. They can strip a carcass in no time at all.”
“Are you interested in beetles?” I asked, surprised.
“My stupid dad is,” Violet s
cowled. “He’s obsessed with them. That’s why I’m here. He’s gone on one of his trips to Africa to study some rare beetle and my mum went with him.” Her scowl deepened. “They wouldn’t let me go.”
“Is that why you’re so angry with your dad?” I said. “It’s not that terrible.”
Violet glowered at me. “You don’t know anything about it! I told you, my dad’s an arsehole. He doesn’t live with us any more – he split up with my mum.”
I was confused. “But they’ve gone to Africa together?”
“Don’t remind me!” Violet snapped. She waved her hand angrily in a flash of turquoise. “He can’t make up his mind, can he? He thinks maybe he’d like to come back.”
“Wouldn’t that be a good thing?” I suggested hesitantly.
Violet’s cheeks flushed as if they were about to catch fire. “I wish he would just leave us alone.” She sighed deeply. “Look, I’m sorry about your dad, Dak, I really am. But if he was anything like mine, then you’re better off without him. Dads just mess up your life.”
I didn’t know what to say. There didn’t seem to be anything I could say that wouldn’t just upset Violet more, so I shut up and looked at the fish.
Violet’s bluntness didn’t bother me. It was actually quite refreshing. No matter what she said, she couldn’t upset me. She didn’t know what I knew. She didn’t know Dad was here, a clownfish. She wasn’t interested in my life – she was only really interested in herself. And that meant she wouldn’t ask me awkward questions.
I went down to the beach on my way home and looked out over the sea to the horizon. The water was flat and green and there was not a boat to be seen. Everything was so still and calm. If I closed my eyes I could feel myself disappear, become almost nothing – like a grain of sand.
Almost. But not quite. A worrying thought popped into my head: what if the Head, Mr Hoskins, read my letter and decided to ring Mum to see if there was anything he could do to help. He might do that, he was a nice man – and the thought made me panic for a moment or two. But then I remembered that Mum never answered the phone these days. She let it go to answer phone and asked me to check it in case there was anything urgent. If Mr Hoskins did ring, his message would end up there.