Wendy Perriam (5 page)

At 9.05 it was over. Gloom descended like a dust-sheet. Miss Lineham disappeared and was stiff and grey again by the time she re-emerged. Mr Chivers drooped in his room, dressing-gown atop his pinstripes. The one-bar fire was removed on March 1 and did not reappear until the last day of October.

“Overheating the system can be dangerous, Mr Chivers.”

“Yes, Miss Lineham.” Three inches of snow outside.

Mr Chivers sat and read. (TV and radio were forbidden in the house.) He bought every aquarist magazine on the market and squandered his Christmas bonus on a
Pictorial Encyclopaedia of Tropical Fish
. Invariably he turned first to the angelfish, studying their breeding habits, learning their Latin names. He traced their showy outlines on sheets of greaseproof paper and coloured them in with a set of Woolworth’s crayons. And when at last he fell asleep, marbled bodies and gossamer tails plunged through the spaces in his purple candlewick nightmares and turned them into gleaming silver mesh.

SILVER JUBILEE FESTIVAL OF ANGELFISH

April 15-21

Mr Chivers was reading in bed, his torch concealed beneath the blankets. (“Lights out at eleven, Mr Chivers. Electricity is not a gift from God.”) He peered more closely at the print: a full-page advertisement in the glossy new issue of
Fishkeeper’s Weekly.
Never before had so much money and attention been lavished on the species. An eccentric Yorkshire millionaire with a passion for
Pterophyllum scalare
was sponsoring a festival in Doncaster, devoted exclusively to angelfish: special breeds, rare specimens, unheard-of colours, generous prizes. All the local pet shops and aquaria had promised back-up displays and exhibitions for the week of the festival. Yorkshire would be awash in angelfish.

Mr Chivers had never been up north. His Easter holiday was due; he was tired of Littlehampton. He placed the magazine underneath his pillow and lay back contentedly. He would book on Inter-City direct to Doncaster and spend an enchanted week among the angels.

*

April 22. Mr Chivers alighted at King’s Cross with an empty wallet and a suitcaseful of dirty shirts. His soul was still in Doncaster. On the tube he plunged through rocky clefts and tangled weed. His suburban train was packed with angelfish. Ghostly albinos plopped between the pages of his newspaper; aggressive all-blacks jostled his elbows and bumped against his knees; foamy lace angels swooped past the windows and swam along the rails. When he got off, water-snails were clinging to his suitcase, bubbles streaming from his nose.

“I took the liberty, Mr Chivers, of moving you to a different room. A new gentleman lodger has arrived who particularly requested a location facing front.”

He jumped. Her voice had startled the rare and fantastic Liu Keung angelfish, which he had just persuaded to nuzzle at his hand. “Yes, Miss Lineham,” he muttered automatically. He was admiring majestic marbled torsos, the damask splendour of stately tails.

She ushered him into a cold cramped cubicle that looked out across the dustbins. He saw only verdant water-fern reflecting the light from darting silver fins.

“As one of my longest-standing lodgers, Mr Chivers, I knew I could count on your co-operation. The new gentleman is decidedly artistic and requires a room with good light. I also took the opportunity of replenishing your Airwick and have added the £1.20 to your rent.”

“Thank you, Miss Lineham.” He hardly heard her close the door. He was smiling at two flirtatious silver veil-tails rubbing noses on the ceiling. Their spiky backbones gleamed alluringly through the diaphanous silk of their flesh. He sank smiling on to the bed.

Two hours later, Doncaster was fading. Supper had been sausages - the cheaper beef variety with a high percentage of rusk - and mortar-mix potatoes. Mr Chivers discarded a lump in his custard, swilled down the jam-less jam tart with tea, then returned upstairs to the beige disapproval of his new backroom.

Silver fins and shot-silk tails had vanished, blue water leaked away, leaving only sludge-coloured lino, and purple crocheted water-lily leaves stranded on bare wood. All his possessions had been lined up in rows like orphans awaiting transport to an institution. His chewing-gum was confiscated, his thirteen books (eleven of them on fish) banished to a damp cardboard box marked “‘No Deposit, No Return. Lemon Barley Water.”

He changed into his pyjamas and sat staring at his bunions. Miss Lineham would have thrown his feet away if he had been rash enough to leave them in his room. Miss Lineham liked things straight. In his jacket pocket was the crumpled entrance ticket to the festival. He dropped it in the waste-bin.

Nothing left but bed. He slunk into the bathroom to clean his teeth; stopped dead in his tracks. Something was dangerously different - the toilet seat was up! In all his years at Miss Lineham’s he had never seen it left up. If some new inmate in his foolishness forgot to replace the cover, Miss Lineham would dart into the bathroom after him and snap it severely shut. Four or five repeats and the tenant was completely cured. Candlewick became part of defecation.

The same with toiletries. An untrained lodger’s first few breakfasts were often egg-and-flannel or sausage-and-loofah; the table littered with hang-dog razors and confiscated shaving sticks. Cure was always swift, or had been up till now. Mr New-Boy Gordon had been in residence a week, so what was his orange flannel doing draped across the bath - flagrant, dripping, not even folded? Miss Lineham was at home, so why had she not removed this blushing flag of revolution? Why had no contemptuous note been pushed beneath the offender’s door? As far as he could ascertain, she was still in her right mind, watching him at supper with her usual gimlet eye.

“Since you appear to be having so much difficulty, Mr Chivers, in disposing of your second sausage, I shall apportion it to Mr Gordon in future.”

He saw the offending sausage, wreathed in Colman’s mustard and Miss Lineham’s smiles. She never smiled. Mr Chivers clutched at the basin for support. How could he have been so blind? The new Artistic Gentleman had changed her, found the flinty remnants of her heart and swathed them in his shameless orange flannel. A raw recruit, an upstart, stinking out the house with aftershave, taking artistic licence with the purple candlewick . . .

Mr Chivers strode back to his room and stared in fury at the Stag at Bay. One picture per room. ‘Nothing, I repeat nothing, is to be stuck or pinned on to lodgers’ bedroom walls.’ He hated stags: all that vaunting headgear. It had been a Victorian flower-girl in his previous room - tiro Gordon’s room - with nothing on her head but blonde curls and a circlet of roses; a froth of white pantalettes cascading beneath her skirt.

Opening the wardrobe, he surveyed his row of ties, all limp, all drably coloured. He took out a bar of Cadbury’s Wholenut chocolate, hidden in a slipper; put it back again. Wholenut was the riskiest confection on the market. If you bit into a hazelnut, it made a crack to wake the dead. And Miss Lineham was very much alive. He had noticed it at supper. She had hovered over Mr Gordon all through the bread-and-butter pudding, offering him jersey cream from a silver jug. Melamine and custard had always been the rule.

He could hear her now, her brown no-nonsense lace-ups phat-phatting from kitchen to hall. He sprang up from his chair. Feeding time! Every night at Doncaster he had tuned in, in mind and spirit, to that magic ritual, hearing Miss Lineham’s fin-enchanted voice winging after him on Inter- City. “My pretty angels, my pretty, pretty angels.”

He crept to his bedroom door and opened it a crack. Useless. His new room was stuck away around a corner, excluding him from the mysteries of the tank. No longer could he peer down through the banisters; he was shut out like a pariah.

He heard the brogues shuffle to a stop and then the sound of voices. Voices? He slunk from his room to the landing, but he could see only squiggled lino and stripy wall. His full-frontal view of the hall had departed with the roses and the pantalettes.

He tiptoed along the passage and round the corner to the top of the stairs. Miss Lineham was there in the hall, the radiant feeding-time Miss Lineham, lingering almost coquettishly by the tank. But she was not alone. Standing beside her - unnecessarily close, in fact - was Mr Basil A. F. Gordon; black eyes, white hands, topiary moustache. A spruce white handkerchief burst into late-spring flower from his breast pocket; his trousers were dove-grey (and tight), his jacket softest suede, the colour of muscovado sugar. Mr Chivers clenched his fists. Never before had any mere man, let alone a lodger, been allowed to share in the holy rites. Yet now four hands were trailing in the torrid water, two heads joined as one, two infatuated shadows embracing on the wall behind.

The largest angelfish was nibbling at Mr Gordon’s index finger. Mr Chivers could feel the throb and tingle in his own. The new Artistic Gentleman was making stylish patterns with rose-coloured shrimp flakes on turquoise water. All three angels swooped to the surface and kissed his hand. Mr Chivers’ palms vibrated with the tiny pressure of their worshipping mouths. Miss Lineham was pointing at a fin. He could hear nothing but a tantalizing murmur, as she confided those intimate details always denied to him - the personal histories of the angelfish, their weaknesses, their gender, their little fads and foibles. He could see her pale mouth opening and shutting almost in time with theirs, the flush on her opalescent skin, the glint in her strange gold eyes. “My pretty angels,” she was murmuring. “My pretty, pretty angels.” But it was Mr Basil Gordon who had put that extraordinary girlish tremor in her voice.

*

“May I help you, sir?” enquired the salesman.

“Yes,” said Mr Chivers. “I want three angelfish. One gold, one silver, one marbled black and cream.”

“Certainly, sir.” The salesman led him over to the corner. The fish were smaller than Miss Lineham’s.

“Don’t worry, sir; they’ll grow to fit the tank.” He made a little flurry with his net. “You’ll be wanting a tank as well, I presume?”

Mr Chivers shook his head. “You’ve got a tank? Right, how about a heater? Or a piston-pump? Or an under-gravel filter unit?”

“No,’ said Mr Chivers. ‘Thank you.”

“All right for fish-food, are you?”

“I won’t be needing food.”

“Growlux lighting? Stimulates plant life. Choice of blue or green.”

“Just the fish,” Mr Chivers repeated. He carried them on the bus in a polythene bag fastened with a rubber band, his capacious sponge-bag under the other arm. People stared.

“Not so bright this morning, is it?” remarked the woman at the public baths as she handed him his ticket and his towels.

He didn’t answer. He needed all his concentration to conceal the bag of fish beneath his raincoat. His usual cubicle was free. He double-locked the door and slipped the polythene bag into the basin. He didn’t release the angels; time enough for that. First, he ran his bath, tipping in almost half a bottle of Blue-Mist Foam, so that azure bubbles frothed above the sides.

Next, he unwrapped his plastic duck, followed by his sponges, brushes and flannels, then turned back to the angelfish, wrenching off the rubber band and tossing the bag on to the floor. It landed on its side, jarring the writhing bodies. Slowly, the water leaked away. The fishes flowed out with it, slithering on the shiny tiles. The gold angel twitched and palpitated, leaping six inches in the air, then somersaulting down again with a piteous splat. Mr Chivers paused a moment to admire the markings on the marbled angel, almost identical to Miss Lineham’s specimen. Its mouth was opening in a wordless plea, its feeble tail flailing on the tiles.

He climbed into the bath. The water was armpit high; the overflow gurgling down the pipe. He picked up a sponge and slapped his thighs with it. He stuck a crooked foot through a tower of foam. The bubbles were so profuse you could lose whole limbs. Steam was rising from the water, falling again in streams of condensation down the walls. Leaning over the edge of the tub, he saw the silver angelfish plunging and zigzagging in a frenzied attempt to reach the water, its gills pistoning in and out in panic, its eyes almost starting from its head.

Mr Chivers began to sing. The marbled angel had fallen into a drain-hole and was floundering on its back. Mr Chivers loofahed his upper arms. The soap was lost and melting at the bottom of the tub. He stretched and yawned in the benison of steam, watching the fishes all the while. The marbled angel was growing feebler now. Its mouth gaped open, as if it had been unhinged; its eyes were glazing over. He ran more water, laughing aloud as the hoarse hot tap thundered between his feet. Every time he moved, the bubbles frothed and flurried over the sides. He turned on his belly and lost his chin in foam. The silver angel was only a pale splodge on the tiles, its gills shuttered and inert. The gold angel continued fighting. Its leaps were lower now, but it still did its best to save itself, panting with each agonized contortion.

Mr Chivers wallowed in his tub, rocking to and fro, so that the water sloshed and seesawed from one end to the other. A deep pink glow emblazoned him from brow to bunions; bubbles pricked and popped along his limbs. When he sang, the words resounded off the walls, adding a choir and organ to his voice. The brave gold angel was singing along with him. He could see its mouth gasping open, wheezing out the words, its once majestic tail trailing like a broken rudder. The other two fish were motionless. Only their eyes stared upwards, as if they were praying for deliverance.

He pulled out the plug, listening to the water chuckle down the waste-pipe. As he stepped out on to the tiles, he was careful to avoid the corpses pathetically marooned there. He dried himself on stiff municipal towels, which he then flung wet and soggy into a corner. Picking up the three small bodies, he placed them in the toilet bowl. They floated on the top, their eyes beseeching, their colours as yet unfaded. There was a flicker of life in the golden angel still. It twitched in shock as it felt itself fall on water. Slowly, it spread its tail and jerked its fins, struggling between triumph and extinction. Mr Chivers stood above it, legs astride. He watched the jet of urine strike and shatter it. Three broken bodies whirled and plummeted in their porcelain goldfish bowl, colliding with each other as the gilded waterfall spewed on.