Angel Fish

Stuart was cleaning his teeth. He liked to start at the back on the right at the top and work round the whole top row before starting on the bottom. He knew that it was important to be methodical. As he spat into the sink and looked up again at the face of the man in the mirror, he realised that everything was the same as it had been on that first day.

Everything was just the same and everything was different.

Outside, the last stragglers from the mob of hooligan gusts banged against the fences and scattered rubbish across the street. That was the same. He rinsed his toothbrush and dropped it back into the mug. There were two toothbrushes in the mug now. That was different.

The fish sat in its bottle on the little shelf above the sink studying its own reflection carefully in the toothpaste-flecked mirror as if looking for the first signs of aging.

Stuart didn’t know how long goldfish lived for, but he knew that it was at least a year.

He had been brushing his teeth as usual. It was just before eight o’clock. He knew what time it was because he could hear the weather report on the television news. It was autumn and the weather girl was terribly excited about what a stormy night it had been in southern parts and although it would brighten up later on there was still a risk of occasional showers.

He was just beginning to brush the big molars at the back on the right at the top when he heard a most unusual noise from somewhere very close by. It was a resonant wet slap, like someone had dropped an overripe peach into a plastic bucket. He looked round. Nothing seemed to have happened in the little bathroom. Everything was just where it should be. He listened. From the direction of his bedroom he could hear the urgent drumbeat of the eight o’clock news theme tune. From outside there was the hung over surging of the storm-spent wind, but otherwise he could hear nothing.

Then he saw it.

On the closed beech-effect lid of the toilet seat, surrounded by a spray of tiny droplets of water lay a goldfish.

The goldfish looked at him with a single unblinking eye. Stuart thought that it must be dead, but then it arched its body, raising both tail and head upwards for a full second before flopping back down again with an almost inaudible thud.

He looked around in bewilderment, trying to work out where the fish had come from but it seemed almost as if it had been somehow teleported into his bathroom.

His first thought was that the fish had managed to swim up through the sewer and out through his toilet, but the lid was closed, and there had definitely been a sort of splat sound as if the fish had fallen onto the toilet from above.

The window was open a little, letting out the steam from his shower and letting in the wild blusterings of the stormy morning. He supposed that it might just be possible that the fish had fallen from the sky and through the window and onto his toilet. He had heard that sometimes birds caught fish and then dropped them, and on the news site on the internet there were always stories about frogs falling from the sky. And giant hailstones. And snakes.

Stuart put down his toothbrush and put the plug into the basin of the sink. Then he turned the cold tap on full, went over to the toilet and carefully scooped the fish up into his hand.

He stood looking at it as it lay in his palm. It was about the size of his thumb and felt very smooth. It wasn’t exactly warm, Stuart thought, but there was something not-cold about it and a kind of weight that told him what he held in his hand was alive. He realised that it had been months since he had touched another living thing.

The scales of the fish shone white and purple and orange and red through an oily film. It was every colour but gold, he thought. He had never seen a goldfish at such close quarters before. A dark and lidless eye stared up at him expectantly.

He lowered his hand carefully into the water filled basin. The fish floated away from his hand and then swam off, thrashing around as it did so as if to shake out the creases in the delicate sweep of its fins.

Stuart turned off the tap and watched it swimming for a while. Then he realised that he was late for work.

He packed his bag quickly. He didn’t really need a bag he supposed. It was a habit held over from his schooldays. All that he usually took to work was his lunch in a Tupperware box. It would have been as easy to simply carry the box as it was to put it into his faded nylon rucksack. But the Tupperware box was see-through and Stuart thought that it was quite important to keep his lunch private.

He had a long and difficult day at work and by the time he got home he had forgotten all about the fish. It wasn’t until he went upstairs to bed after Newsnight that he remembered it. He went through to the bathroom and saw it swimming around in the sink. It seemed to be quite happy. He knew that he couldn’t leave it in the sink or he would have had to clean his teeth in the bath, or in the kitchen. He went downstairs again to try and find a better home for it.

After rummaging and clattering through his cupboards, Stuart decided that he had very few suitable homes for a goldfish. His lunchbox was probably the closest thing he had to a fish tank, and he needed that for his lunch.

In the end he found a bottle of mineral water that had quite a wide mouth. The bottle was almost empty. He was going to pour what was left away but decided that that would have been a waste, and that the fish might appreciate a little bit of Swiss mountain stream mixed in with the well-groomed, fluoridated water from his tap.

He filled the bottle until it was about two inches from the top and then he took it upstairs to the bathroom.

Catching the fish was difficult. Stuart decided that what he really needed was a net, but he didn’t have a net, or a sieve or anything that was even remotely net-like. In the end he had to carefully drain most of the water out of the sink until the fish was left stranded in a little pool at the bottom flapping hopelessly. Stuart decided that if it could survive being teleported onto his toilet then it could probably manage a little temporary discomfort while he re-housed it.

He scooped it up again very carefully. The fish stopped flapping and thrashing when he took hold of it. As the water drained away through his fingers, the fins of the fish became smoothly flattened against its body, turning it into a sleek copper ingot. He offered the fish up to the wide mouth of the bottle and it slipped easily through it and plopped into the water. After a moment of frantic twirling the fish regained its balance and began to patrol its new home.

Stuart put the bottle on his bedside table and got ready for bed. After he turned the light off he lay looking at the fish in the bottle. Light from the numbers on his radio alarm clock shone on the awkward angles of the ribbed bottle and scattered through the water. The fish seemed to be hanging motionless in space, striped in green light and green shadow. It hardly moved at all except for the slow bob-bob-bob of its breathing and the occasional deft flick of a fin that held it fixed there.

‘Good night,’ whispered Stuart, and then he went to sleep.

He dressed quickly and quietly, listening to the dying surges of the storm as it staggered up against the house like a drunken reveller with a new best friend. He looked at the green numbers on his alarm clock in the half dark of the still-curtained bedroom. If he hurried, he might be back in time to make breakfast. He knew that it was important to make the most of this time he had before everything changed completely again, even though he was looking forward to this change more than anything.

He looked at the fish that was looking back at him from where the bottle was standing on the chest of drawers next to the television. He smiled at it. The fish said ‘bob’. He pulled on a thick sweater and then picked up the bottle. It was cold to the touch because it had spent the night in the back porch. He had only brought it in so that he could have it in the bathroom with him while he cleaned his teeth.

He left the darkened bedroom and closed the door quietly behind him.

Stuart wasn’t really close to anyone. He had seen that some people seemed to be very close to other people, but in his experience and on further reflection he had decided that all of that was just for show. He had had a girlfriend for a little while, a year or so ago. She had worked in the office next door to his and sometimes he would see her in the canteen. One lunchtime they had arranged to meet up on a Saturday and go to a stately home near to where Stuart lived. He was a member of the National Trust and could get in for free. He offered to pay for her ticket. He supposed that it was a sort of date. Over the next few weeks they went to a few National Trust properties. After they had visited the house and grounds Stuart and his girlfriend would have tea and cake in the cafeteria and hold hands. On the last two occasions they had kissed in the car park and then, for a reason that seemed so slight that he could no longer properly remember it, they had stopped going out to National Trust properties. He almost never saw his girlfriend in the cafeteria any more, and when he did she was always surrounded by a large group of her friends who sometimes gave him strange looks, and always seemed to be laughing at something. Stuart thought that sometimes that thing was him.

At the office where he worked they were all great mates. Stuart knew that was the case because everybody was always saying how they were all great mates. Stuart had never been invited round to the house of anyone that he worked with and he had never invited anyone round to his. In fact no one in the office had ever invited anyone else in the office anywhere, but they were all still great mates.

Stuart worked in an office where some people sold things and some people worked out exactly how much had been sold of what kind of thing and how much more they needed to sell. That was what Stuart did.

On the morning after the fish had arrived on his toilet, Stuart decided to put the bottle with the fish in it into his bag along with his lunchbox and take it to work. When he got to work he put the bottle on his desk between his computer and his in-tray, but he left his lunchbox in the bag.

‘You want to put that in a bowl, or a tank more like,’ said Dave Dash who worked at the next desk and who was one of the people who sold things.

‘It’s all about the surface area of the water see? You need to get air into the water.’

‘He likes it in the bottle.’

‘Told you that did he?’

Stuart didn’t reply, but instead went back to working out how many things they needed to sell. When Dave Dash went for lunch, Stuart took the cap off the bottle.

Normally, he didn’t do very much at the weekend – there wasn’t really very much that needed doing – but on Saturday he woke up feeling quite happy and an idea occurred to him.

He took the bottle and the fish and drove up to the National Trust stately home that was nearest to his house. It had extensive grounds and gardens. About fifteen minutes walk away from the car park down a long and winding gravel path and on the edge of a pretty patch of woodland was a large pond. It was man made, but it looked quite natural. In the pond, in the summer, you could see large orange fish weaving their way between the weeds.

Stuart sat on a bench by the pond and took out the bottle with the fish in it. He put the bottle on the bench beside him and smiled. It was good to get out.

The next week at work seemed to pass by very quickly. The fish sat on his desk and said ‘bob’ when people tapped the bottle.

On the following Saturday, Stuart and the fish went back to sit on the bench by the pond.

He had often thought about getting a new bottle, but this one was doing fine. He had to give it a thorough clean out every week or so, but the fish appeared to enjoy time out in the sink. It was still early and so he tried to be very quiet as he tiptoed out of the house. He had forgotten about the baby car seat that was sitting on the floor of the porch waiting for him to fit it and he tripped over it, thumping and clattering as he steadied himself against the wall. The fish sloshed around woozily in the bottle and Stuart chuckled to himself before unfastening the chain on the door and letting himself out into the wild freedom of the storm’s after-party.

The alarm went off at half past seven just as it did every morning. Stuart reached out and pushed the snooze button. A design limitation of the microcircuit timer inside the clock meant that he now had exactly nine more minutes to sleep, just like every morning.

But Stuart did not go back to sleep because this morning he did not have to get up. There was no work to go to. He opened his eyes and lay looking up at the ceiling for a while and then he turned and looked at the fish. The fish looked quite contented. It was hanging motionless about two thirds of the way up the column of water. When Stuart looked at it, it blew him a kiss.

In November, the company that he worked for was bought by another company. In December, the new company decided that it was much too big. It sold another part of itself and then it made everybody in Stuart’s office redundant.

He thought about going away for Christmas, but there was nowhere to go to. Instead he stayed at home. He watched the television and read about goldfish on the internet. He read that it was important to keep them in a big tank where the temperature was carefully maintained and there was lots of weed and things. But Stuart knew that his goldfish liked being in the bottle and decided not to get a tank.

One night, he ran a very cool bath and he didn’t put any of the blue stuff that turned into foam in it. When he was in the bath he carefully lifted the bottle from the floor and into the water with him. He turned the bottle on its side and lowered it beneath the surface of the water. He gave the bottle a gentle squeeze and the fish came swimming out into the bath with him. He watched it as it nosed around the edge of the bath and explored the strange shape of its new world. They stayed in the bath together until Stuart had grown quite cold and he began to shiver.

When the New Year came, he stopped setting his alarm clock. He woke up later and later each morning and went to bed earlier and earlier each night. One day it was nearly noon when he first opened his eyes. Stuart got up and decided that he would go to the stately home where the big pond was.

It had been a very cold winter. There had been a little snow, but mostly the days had been simply cold – a piercing, grinding cold that could not be ignored. When he reached the pond he found that it had frozen over. He sat down on the bench and looked at the frozen pond. The fish sat in the bottle on the bench beside him, just as it usually did. He could see that the ice had formed only a thin skin on the water and he knew that he would be able to break it easily. He decided that it was good that the pond was frozen. It meant that he would become numb and that meant that it would all happen much more quickly. He stood up and began to scoop handfuls of gravel from the path and into his pockets. Rocks would probably have worked better, he thought, but there were no rocks by the pond. When his pockets were full he kicked over the scoop marks in the gravel. He didn’t want to make a mess.

He walked to the edge of the pond and looked across it. Far away on the other side the tangled black limbs of a naked wood stood against the white sky. It looked like a great scribbling out had taken place there, as if some huge mistake had been angrily and clumsily obliterated. He heard the crows in the wood calling to each other, their cold voices echoing in the still air as they carried across the hard flat surface of the pond.

He took a step forward, and then another. He felt the cold as pain in his feet as water spilled over the tops of his shoes. Hard edges of ice rubbed at his ankles. He looked down and saw where the water he had displaced had slopped up over the frosted ice and fouled it with a black slick of rotting leaves and pond muck.

He began to shiver.

He steeled himself to take another step forward. Then he looked back at the fish in the bottle on the bench. It occurred to him that if he made it out into the centre of the pond, and if the weight of his waterlogged overcoat and the gravel in his pockets pulled him under and if the cold of the water stilled his arms and his legs and the thoughts in his head – it occurred to him that the fish would die too.

It would sit in the bottle on the bench until the water in the bottle froze, as it surely would. If, on the other hand, he brought the fish with him, and set it free into the icy water of the pond then he knew that the sudden change in temperature would kill it too.

He had read about that on the internet.

He stood in the freezing water for a while, looking out at the dark wood and watched as his breath condensed and the white sky begin to turn grey and yellow as it gathered the weight of winter to itself.

He did not want the fish to die. He turned and walked out of the pond and then he picked up the bottle with the fish in it and went home. The bottle was on its side and wedged between the dashboard and the windscreen with a road atlas. Stuart thought that it was important that the fish could see where they were going.

The roads were quiet and looked scruffy after the storm, strewn with leaves and rubbish. Track five of the Classical Moods CD began. It was Bach. He had discovered that the fish liked classical music and Bach seemed to be its favourite. It gave a playful skip and flicked its tail, swimming backwards and forwards from one end of the bottle to the other. Stuart wondered, as he often did, if the fish recognised the road and knew where they were going.

He hoped so.

He hadn’t been back to the pond until the spring. It seemed like a different place entirely. The pond itself was edged with lush green plants and was busy with life. Little birds skipped across the water catching insects. On the shore opposite to him were ducks and dozens of tiny ducklings. Beneath the water he could see tadpoles and tiny wriggling things that were the beginnings of all sorts of much bigger things. And he could see the fish, cruising peacefully between the ragged green columns of weed.

He knew that it was important that he come back to the pond. To acknowledge to himself what had happened here.

Nearly happened.

He had brought some sandwiches and a flask of coffee. Although the sun was very warm, there was still a chill in the air and a gusty wind that could make you shiver. On the horizon he could see the wood, now lush with foliage that seemed to shimmer green and white as the wind moved through its tops.

Someone sat down at the other end of the bench next to him. Stuart glanced quickly at the stranger and slid as far as he could across to his own end, drawing the fish with him.

He felt a little uncomfortable. He had wanted to enjoy his sandwiches and the sun on his own – or at least with just the fish for company. He decided perhaps that he would go for a walk around the pond and come back later.

He stole another hurried glance to see if he could discover how long the stranger would sit here. He saw that the newcomer was a young woman. She had brown hair and was wearing a bright coloured jacket of the type people wore when they went walking in the mountains. She had opened a bag of crisps and was eating them. She looked at him and met his gaze before he could look away again.

‘Is that your fish?’ she asked.

He nodded.

‘What’s he called?’

Stuart shrugged. ‘He’s never really needed a name. I mean, he’s the only fish I’ve got.’

She nodded.

‘I had a fish once,’ she said. ‘I’m Andrea. Would you like a crisp?’

Stuart took a crisp from the bag. It was salt and vinegar flavoured.

‘What was your fish called?’ he asked.

‘Stuart,’ she said.

This was the last time this year that he would come to the old house and the big pond. He didn’t want to see it again in winter – to hear the coarse language of the crows and to look out at the blank page of the ice. In the spring he would come here again with Andrea. Maybe they would come on their anniversary. He began to plan it in his head. He would bring a flask of coffee and a packet of salt and vinegar crisps and they would sit in the sun on the bench and look at the pond and talk and laugh.

He put the bottle and the fish in the big inside pocket of his coat. The pocket was supposed to be for maps. His coat was quite new. It was brightly coloured and was of the type that people wore when they went walking in the mountains.

He showed his National Trust card to the man in the little wooden hut and walked along the gravel path that led to the pond. The woodland looked battered and ragged and the trees still seethed and hissed in the unsettled air.

He reached the pond and sat down on the bench. He took the bottle out of his pocket and put it down on the bench next to him.

He sat looking at the view for a while, and then he picked up the bottle and walked down to the edge of the water. He put his hand into the water. It was cold, but not icy cold – the same temperature as the water in the bottle where he had allowed it to stand in the unheated back porch overnight.

He unscrewed the cap from the bottle and then, very slowly and very carefully he lowered it beneath the surface of the pond, watching as the dark and matter-flecked water of the pond spilled over the lip of the bottle and began to mix with the clean water inside it.

He held the bottle on its side and watched the fish as it swam backwards and forwards in the swirling water. As the fish nosed up to the mouth of the bottle, Stuart squeezed gently and watched as the flashing copper body slipped from the bottle and into the peaty darkness of the pond. The fish did not pause, or turn around. It flicked its tail once, twice, three times with a dramatic flourish and then headed down into the darker water and the swirling weed.

Stuart emptied the water out of the bottle and then squashed it flat and carefully screwed the cap back on. He stood, looking down into the water but could see nothing but the dark weed. After a while, he set off along the gravel path that led around the pond and back to the car park.

As he neared the spot where he had seen the family of ducklings in the spring he felt something passing over him as if a shadow of silence had been cast into the quiet breathing of the day. He looked up and saw grey, silent wings unfolding across the water and then rearing up as the heron slowed and came to rest on the shore of the pond in front of the bench. It strutted out into the pond – fussily lifting its feet far out of the water in its purposeful progress. As he watched, the bird stopped and became absolutely motionless for what seemed like only a second, before it struck at the water, a blur of grey and white. Stuart stood transfixed, unable to think or feel anything.

From out of the pond, between the two parts of its powerful beak, Stuart saw the heron draw something that wriggled and twisted – something that flashed in the low autumn sun. It was orange and white.

And gold.

The heron stretched out its wings and shook them before rising into the air with a single graceful stroke. With one gentle beat after another it rose higher and higher and soared silently above his head. He turned to watch it as it passed. He thought at first that the bird had swallowed the fish whole but then he saw that it was still held fast there and that its tail was arching and flopping at him as it flew off into the storm struck sky.

Stuart waved goodbye too.