Parrot in the Pepper Tree (30 page)

A little knot of spleen was starting to form somewhere inside me. This whole swimming-pool scheme was a balls-up, a failure; I had been gulled, taken for a mug. Here were my family and me standing disconsolately on the edge of an evil-looking basin of water, that even the rankest hippopotamus would hesitate to wallow in, while the architect of this foul scheme was off in the north of England, cavorting with the
houris
of Hull. It was all too galling. I felt suddenly ashamed that I had put so much faith into his prognosis about the dam. Clearly the man hadn’t a clue.

I decided to phone Trev and have it out with him there and then.

‘What do you mean by “that’s supposed to happen”?’ I found myself spluttering, almost as soon as he answered the phone.

‘I mean just that. That the water goes through this stage…’

‘Look, Trev, I’m not an unreasonable man, but I really don’t think it’s too much to ask that…’

‘Just calm down and listen…’ he insisted. I didn’t expect him to be so unruffled and it rather took the wind from my sails. ‘It’s all part of the scheme of things, you see. You have to get through the muck stage for the water to go clear. I knew this was going to happen. Don’t, whatever you do, change the water or you’ll have to start all over again, but watch closely and you’ll see it clearing. It’ll take about a week.’

‘Oh… alright. How’s the course coming on, then?’
 

A week after I put the phone down, the bottom reappeared. You could just make out the lines of the tiles, and not long after, the water regained its original clarity. The fish were fat as balls and the filaments were filthy, but the water of the eco-sphere was clear as air — well, almost. I was over the moon. I even phoned Trev up to tell him that it was working as he had said. ‘Told you so,’ he said. I don’t know what else I expected really.

The pumps hummed quietly to themselves and the solar tracker tracked the sun; the sun’s rays poured down on the stones, slaughtering enemy bacteria by the million. The fish in the filter pond ate anything that erred into their orbit. They were carp, which we learned later are the goats of the fish world and were no good for our eco-system. Carp eat everything — tadpoles, froglets, water-boatmen, dragonflies — they’d eat people if they could.

We had bought five more little carp to keep the original two big ones company, reassured by the man in the fish shop, who said they’d be fine, as fish absolutely never eat their own species. But within a day they had all been wolfed down by the big carp. Don’t be fooled; carp are bad news.

There was something else that we hadn’t put in the calculations about our eco-sphere — something we should, perhaps, have thought of right from the start. The pool was a paradise for frogs. To an extent we had ourselves to blame, as we’d helped Chloë introduce a bucket of tadpoles from the riverbed, thinking it would be good to have a frog or two about the place. But whatever nutrients existed in the pond, they were just what frogs like best, and before long the population had reached critical mass and was forced to send out scouts in search of new waters to colonise. Those that went southwest had a long journey before they reached the river, and the river is a very unreliable environment for frogs anyway; but those that headed northeast soon came back with the news that not four good hops away was a glorious expanse of limpid water, ripe for the taking.

Now I don’t mind swimming in a pool with a dozen frogs or so in there with me — you barely see them — and even twenty frogs would not be unacceptable, though I’m perhaps in the minority here. It wasn’t long, however, before I began to worry that our pool would become a heaving mass of frogs, croaking and copulating. It was a ghastly thought but what could we do? Using some sort of chemical for their discouragement was out of the question because the whole point of the pool was that it should be chemical-free and ecological — well, it certainly was that! Also a chemical deterrent for frogs was unlikely to be beneficial to bathers. So instead, I was forced to devote many hours each day to taking out the frogs and tadpoles.

Of course frog-hunting has its element of fun, and is a very skilled business. Frogs are fast movers and don’t like to be scooped up in a net, and, in our case, returned to a grubby old side-pond. And when I did catch them and return them to their own part of the pool, it didn’t take them long to turn round and hop straight back.

We needed some advice, but when I mentioned my concern on the telephone to Trev, he sighed in resignation as if I were some sort of half-wit. ‘You can’t seriously be bothered by a few frogs in the water! Look how beautiful they are, how gracefully they swim. I mean for heaven’s sake, man, it’s not the Ritz, is it?’ Then he went on to reassure me that the carp could more than manage to keep the population in order.

Chloë, needless to say, was thrilled with the swimming pool. It was a delight to see her spend long summer days playing in the water with her friends, running in and out of the foliage before diving in with the frogs. A shriek of laughter usually meant that Porca had arrived to take up his customary swimming perch on top of Ana’s head, where he would remain while Ana glided carefully up and down.

Not long after the pool was filled I lay floating on the water and looking out across the valley. Ana swam cautiously across to me with Porca. Below us the river snaked calmly along at a rate that would take a millennium to bury our home under its silt.

‘You know,’ I said to Ana. ‘I think Trev may have got it right, after all.’

‘Well, it will be better when we get the waterwheel up and running, she answered.

‘No, I meant what he said about the dam and the water-levels in the riverbed. I really believe he’s right, you know, and the farm’s going to be okay — and the valley, too.’

Ana shrugged. ‘Time will tell,’ she said, and ducked slowly beneath the water, leaving Porca to jump ship with a loud squawk and a flurry of wingbeats.

From deep in the jungle of the pond the frogs opened their throats and croaked a great croak into the warm evening air.