Pond People

‘Bother and blast!’

Sylva joined them for breakfast wearing a petulant frown. She threw a length of fine cord onto the gravel.

‘My favourite necklace is broken.’

Flo picked it up and examined the break.

‘I might be able to mend that for you.’

‘Can you do that – mend broken cords?’

‘Well, Grandad’s the expert.’ Flo passed him the necklace to examine.

‘There in’t any of these stems in the tank.’ He pulled down a branch of the nearest plant to examine. ‘But I’m sure these’ll strip down alright.’

He turned his attention back to the necklace. ‘Not worth mending this one though. Look, it’s breaking up here… and here.’ He handed it back to Sylva. ‘It’s probably time to give up with this one and make a new one.’

‘Me?’

This was clearly an alien concept to Sylva.

‘Or I can make you one if you like?’

‘No – I’d like to do it. Can you teach me?’

Flo was interested too.

‘I’d like to know how to strip the stems. I only ever plaited blanketweed when you taught us before.’

‘Ay. Well, you won’t be finding any of that here, lass. Blanketweed needs sunlight. We’ll go hunt out suitable stems after breakfast, shall we? Once the kiddies out there are off to school. We don’t want to be stripping away our screening at the back here.’

‘If you show me what to collect, we can gather stems for you,’ offered Walter. ‘Can’t we Amber?’

Amber nodded enthusiastically. Molly couldn’t imagine her dragging long stems across the pond floor, but Eddy volunteered to help.

Grandad had spoken more that morning than since they arrived in the tank. Flo beamed her approval to Sylva.

And what else was there to do in this glass box?

‘Count me in with your lessons, Grandad,’ added Molly. ‘I could do with the practice.’

After breakfast, she went to her sleeping hollow among the stems to tidy it while waiting for the children to leave for school. The black goldfish drifted after her.

In the pond, the fish had been part of the landscape – an annoying part during spawning season. In the tank, she got to know them better.

Goldie the fairground fish ignored the mirlings. She bullied the other fish if they got in her way and swam doggedly around the tank all day on her own. Flipper, the dodger-fish, was angry with the world and best avoided, but the black one Beth had named Shadow was an affectionate little fish.

Shadow had taken to Molly and would swim down to nudge her for attention. When the kitchen light went out at night, the little fish settled on the gravel near Molly’s bed.

Although she rarely swam far from cover, Molly felt safe swimming under Shadow’s fin, their darkness merging. She often shared her thoughts with the black fish. Their conversations were rather one-sided. Shadow didn’t understand a ripple of them, but wouldn’t leak them to the other mirlings.

Nobody spoke of the pond.

Molly had tried talking to Grandad. He would shake his head sadly.

‘What do I know about fish tanks, lass?’ And he withdrew again into his own thoughts.

His colour had returned. He hadn’t regained his former chirpiness but when the humans were away at work and school, he would look out into the empty kitchen and sometimes sound like the Grandad they’d known in the pond.

‘You see more if you stay still,’ he pointed out one day. ‘You don’t notice things when you’re zooming around like mayflies.’

Typically, Flash and Eddy weren’t around to hear it, but Amber was. For the rest of the afternoon she sat humming to herself as she watched a water snail creep up the tank wall. She could have concealed herself better, but Molly thought it had to be safer than trailing around after Eddy and Flash.

Whenever Eddy called, ‘Come for a swim, kid,’ Amber would follow. Most of the time, Walter had no idea where his sister was.

He had tried to stop her swimming off until Eddy suggested he come too. Walter’s eyes had brightened at the invitation, but Sylva was close at hand to remind him of some chore she’d asked him to do.

Amber had sung out, ‘I’ll be all right, Wal,’ as she paddled after Eddy.

Molly wasn’t convinced. Walking or swimming, Amber weaved from side to side as if buffeted by currents no-one else could feel. She looked as if a careless tail could flip her out of the water.

But Molly wasn’t their mother. Amber wasn’t her responsibility, and Wally didn’t try to stop her again. Nevertheless, she was reassured to see Eddy waiting for Amber to catch them up and staying with her whenever Flash amused himself dive-bombing the goldfish.

What would happen if the humans saw them?

Come to that, what would happen if they didn’t? Would they be stuck here for the rest of their lives? She’d formed no plans for her life, but she had imagined her aimless future would be in the pond.

The next time she saw Amber and Eddy swimming up to meet Flash, she couldn’t stop herself reminding them to be careful.

She was beginning to sound like her mother.

One afternoon the children’s father brought home a carrier bag. It bore a drawing of a strange fish, with oversized fins and a smile that Molly thought wasn’t at all fishlike.

‘You’ve been to the pet shop again,’ said his wife.

‘It’s a proper aquarium shop near work,’ he said. ‘I just went in to have a look around.’ He showed her a small box. ‘These are brine shrimps. A treat for the fish.’

He’d never fed those to the pond fish. Molly wondered how they’d taste.

He dipped into the carrier again and brought out a clear bag of water. In it wriggled two fat fish with big fins. One fish was orange and white, the other, black.

‘These fantails are better for an indoor aquarium.’ He lifted the lid of the tank and floated the bag on the water.

His wife came to look at the fish in the bag, close enough for Molly to hear the strange tutting sound she made. As she moved back, she raised her eyes to the ceiling, but Molly couldn’t see what she was looking at.

Father took out another clear bag, this time with plants in. Mother shook her head and went back to the cooker while he took out the last item: a roll of paper. Unrolled, it became a picture of rocks and pond plants, which he slid behind the tank and fastened to the edges.

Something about the dark waterscape was reassuring. Molly felt less exposed, even though Father’s hand invaded the tank several more times while she watched from under the bridge. He removed any clumps of waterweed that were looking ragged and positioned the new plants.

After he’d admired his handiwork and taken his tea into the other room, the mirlings discovered that one of the new plants tasted good, and that two brine shrimps made a meal for them all. In fact, the dried delicacies lasted well, becoming softer and less salty after a soak in the tank. Along with algae scraped from the stones, they were a welcome addition to their diet on the days Mother forgot to feed flake to the fish.

Father remarked one day that baby fish would be big enough to spot by now if they were still alive and said they had probably been eaten by the goldfish. To Molly’s relief, Andre gave up his search for them.

To cheer the boy up, Father revisited the aquarium shop and arrived home with a bag of small silvery fish that darted together around the aquarium like a single shape-shifting fish. Father told the children they were mountain minnows.

The minnows reminded Molly of the clouds of birds that flocked across the sky together at the end of summer, high over the cooling pond.

The tasks of feeding and tank cleaning had passed to Mother, since Father sometimes worked away for several days. It was she who cleaned the filter every week and scraped algae from the tank walls although, fortunately, she didn’t scrub algae from the stones.

It was she who vacuumed the gravel with a syphon – a fat rigid tube that attached to a thinner flexible one and tumbled the gravel, sucking out debris.

The mirlings learned to keep their distance from this.

It was, of course, Eddy who ventured too close to the fat tube and was sucked inside with the gravel. Horrified, they watched him tumble with the stones before being syphoned up the narrow tube and out of sight.

Flo and Amber were inconsolable.

Flash swam up in a bid to discover where Eddy had gone. Molly felt useless.

Mother finished vacuuming and took the bucket to the sink, but Flash reported no sign of Eddy.

All Molly could do was listen as Flo assured Amber that of course Eddy would find a way back to them. Unless he managed to find his way back to the pond.

Flo’s eyes met Molly’s over Amber’s head, seeking similar reassurance that Molly wished she could offer.

Mother returned later to top up their water level. Molly heard a whoop from Flash as Eddy was unceremoniously poured back into the tank.

‘I thought I was done for,’ he admitted when he had got his thoughts in order.

’I shot out of the tube into a bucket where I couldn’t breathe properly. I’d had the water knocked out of me by the tumbling, and the bucket was thick with muck sucked out of the gravel.

‘Breathing got easier as the sludge settled at the bottom. I was sitting on it, certain I was about to become a snack for a sewer rat, when the bucket started to tip. I realised the top layer of cleared water was being tipped into a plastic bowl.’

He shuddered. ‘I couldn’t be sure the water would go back in the tank, but I knew the muck wouldn’t, so I swam for it.’

After that, Molly looked for Amber whenever the vacuum tube appeared, but Eddy was always there before her. She would hear his, ‘Come on, kid,’ and she knew Amber would be safe away from the vacuum.

She only hoped Flash’s little fan club were keeping well hidden from Mother while she vacuumed. They didn’t want Andre resuming his hatchling hunts.