Clownfish Read online

  “We had them last year,” said Violet. She grimaced. “The teachers went mental. Every wall in the school had a display on it. It was like they were trying to turn the place into an art gallery. A really rubbish art gallery.”

  “Mr Hoskins said we should act like normal,” I said.

  “Our head wouldn’t dare say that,” Violet replied. “The school would be shut down immediately.” She sighed and shook her head. “Our school’s full of lunatics.”

  A customer came in, a woman with a small child in a pushchair, and Violet took her money and gave her a ticket. She did it all so easily, as if she’d been sorting out tickets all her life – I’d have been in a total muddle, I was sure.

  While I waited for Violet, I glanced idly around the foyer. I thought about the two men from the council. What were they here to inspect, I wondered? Was it the health and safety of the fish that they were concerned about, or the people who visited? The aquarium wasn’t dangerous … unless of course you got into the lionfish tank or tried to swim with the stingrays. Then you’d be in trouble. Violet would no doubt add the piranhas to the list of perils but actually piranhas don’t really attack humans, Johnny told me. It’s just a myth.

  A couple more customers came in, keeping Violet busy a while longer. My thoughts wandered back to our inspection: Mr Hoskins telling us all to be ourselves and that everyone was an ambassador for the school. I’m very proud of you, he’d said. I know you’ll treat our visitors with politeness and respect.” And we had, too. The school had been classed “outstanding” and Mr Hoskins had thanked everyone when the inspectors had gone.

  There had been a special atmosphere in the school those few days: a feeling of togetherness, of excitement, of happiness. For an instant it all came back to me, but as if through deep water: the din of the playground, the clatter of the canteen, my form tutor’s voice, Scottish, husky, Ruby’s funny giggle, Tom’s crazy wolf-whistle, the bell ringing for the end of break…

  Another life. Someone else’s life. Before…

  “My mum Skyped me last night,” Violet said, when she’d sorted her stream of customers. “Apparently she and my dad are having a wonderful time.”

  “That’s good,” I said carefully.

  “Yeah, marvellous … for them. Mum hardly asked me a thing about how I’m doing. She was too busy gushing about how lovely the place was where they’re staying and all the fascinating people they’ve met – and the amazing wildlife. Then my dad came on – and what do you think he talked about?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Beetles! I wanted to slap his glasses off.”

  I couldn’t help smiling. But Violet wasn’t amused.

  “What are you grinning about?” she hissed.

  The answer came without me having to think. “My dad wore glasses,” I said simply. “Well, sort of.”

  “What do you mean ‘sort of’?” Violet managed to sound irritated and intrigued at the same time. “Like, he wore them for reading and stuff? Lots of people do that.”

  “No, he didn’t wear them for reading. He wore them for work.”

  “What, at the rubbish dump? Why would you need glasses for that?”

  I shook my head. “He didn’t need glasses. His eyesight was fine. He wore them because he thought it made him look dignified – that people would respect him more if he wore glasses. He never wore them at home.”

  Violet gave me a pitying look. “I know you think your dad was the most amazing person in the world ever, Dak, but you’ve got to admit he was weird.”

  Was Dad weird? No… A bit crazy at times perhaps, but all the better for that. What would Violet say if she knew the truth? I wondered.

  I reminded Dad about the glasses when I visited him later. Like so many things in the house, they’d started off as rubbish. “You found a box of frames at work, remember?” He’d brought the frames back one evening and shown them to me and Mum. There were several pairs – eight or nine at least – in a shoebox. He picked out a sturdy tortoiseshell pair and tried them on.

  Well, how do I look? he’d asked, arms spread wide, beaming.

  You look ridiculous, Bob, Mum had said, but not unkindly.

  You look mad, Dad. I’d laughed.

  That was when he’d first mentioned his idea about wearing glasses to get respect. People look at you like you’re dirt, because you work at the rubbish dump, he said. Except for Charlie. Everybody’s always nice and polite to Charlie. And do you know why? Because he wears glasses. He looks intelligent. He looks dignified. He’d pushed the frames further up his nose. Well, from now on I’m going to wear glasses too.

  “Why are you talking to me about glasses?” said the clownfish. “I’m a fish. What would I want with glasses?” He wriggled and pouted. “Unless I wanted to make a spectacle of myself. Get it? Make a spectacle of myself!”

  A giggle of bubbles gushed from his mouth. Yes, my dad was a clownfish all right.

  After helping Johnny with the feeding that afternoon, I went up to the foyer to look for Violet. I found Stephan leaning against the desk with his chin on his hands, his face as droopy as his long moustache. He looked as if the thing that Dad used to say may never happen finally had.

  “What’s up?” I asked. “Is something wrong?”

  Stephan sighed deeply. It was the sigh of a man who’d spent too long in the dark downward and vegetating kingdom of the fish. “It’s a disaster. A total catastrophe.”

  “What is?”

  “Those men I showed around today…”

  “Health and Safety – Violet told me.”

  “Health and Safety?” Stephan grumbled. “They’re hatchet men, sent by the council to ruin me.”

  “To ruin you? I don’t understand. What’s happened?”

  Violet appeared from the office with a face like an angry piranha. “I’ll tell you what’s happened,” she growled. “Those stupid men are trying to close down the aquarium.”

  Stephan said he’d known for days that the inspectors were coming but he thought it would be no more than a routine visit. They might make comments about a few minor issues, but nothing more.

  “But one of the inspectors was from the building department and he kept asking questions about maintenance levels and how often I had checks carried out on the condition of the walls and roof and whether I’d had any work done recently that he ought to know about… It was like I had the place on the market and he was a potential buyer.”

  “And then he found something,” Violet muttered venomously.

  “What?” I asked.

  “A problem with one of the walls,” said Stephan. “The one on the sea side in the main hall. Apparently there’s damp and the structure’s unsound. It’s got to be repaired – maybe even replaced. They’ve given me a fortnight to get the work started or they’ll declare the aquarium unsafe and I’ll have to close.”

  “Oh,” I said. I felt oddly relieved. I’d feared worse. People had walls rebuilt all the time. Our next-door neighbours had had a problem with damp in their wall, and some builders had put up scaffolding and bashed and chipped away – and made the necessary repairs – and after a week or two everything had been fine. “That’s not so bad, is it?”

  Stephan goggled at me as if I’d told him water wasn’t wet. “Not bad?! It’s a disaster, a catastrophe. Those kinds of repairs cost thousands – maybe tens of thousands.” His face sagged. “I don’t have that sort of money, Dak.”

  “But you could borrow it, couldn’t you, Uncle Stephan?” Violet said. “My dad’s always borrowing money from the bank for his silly expeditions. I’m sure they’d lend you some to save the aquarium.”

  Stephan sighed so deeply he seemed to actually deflate. “I already owe the bank a great deal of money. I’m right at the limit. I can’t borrow any more. If they insist on these repairs, I’ll have no choice: I’ll have to close the aquarium. I’ll have to sell the place.”

  I could feel my chest tighten. I felt suddenly hot with panic.

&
nbsp; “You can’t think like that, Uncle Stephan; maybe the repairs won’t be as major or expensive as you think.” Violet was trying to sound reassuring but I could hear the worry in her voice.

  I couldn’t breathe. I had to get outside into the fresh air. I ran across the foyer, pushed open the glass doors and stumbled out into the warm afternoon. I gasped and sucked in air in short shaky gulps. Violet had followed me. “Are you all right, Dak?”

  I still had no breath to speak. Close the aquarium! Close the aquarium! Close the aquarium! echoed round and round in my head.

  Violet put her hands on my shoulders and held them hard. “Slow down, breathe deeply,” she instructed.

  I tried to do as I was told, gradually taking in more air. My gulps grew deeper and steadier. I felt cooler and the tightness in my chest loosened.

  “Phew,” Violet muttered. “You had me worried there.” Her thin, bony face was paler than ever. “I know you love this place, Dak, and you’d hate to see it close, but it’s not life and death we’re talking about.”

  I dropped my head again, shut my eyes. But it is, I thought. That’s exactly what it is.

  The next day a builder came in. He agreed with the Health and Safety inspectors: the wall was in bad shape. It was letting in water and needed a lot of repairs. It should really be replaced, but at the very least it needed repointing and plastering.

  Stephan reported all of this with gloomy resignation to Violet and me and we listened in equally gloomy silence. There didn’t seem to be anything to say – nothing constructive anyway.

  The following morning Stephan received the builder’s written report along with his quotation for carrying out the necessary work.

  “Ten thousand pounds!” he groaned. “Where am I going to find ten thousand pounds?”

  Violet and I looked at him helplessly. It was like there had been a power cut and the emergency generators hadn’t kicked in. There was nothing we could do.

  The mood of gloom affected Johnny too. He wasn’t his normal self that afternoon when we were feeding the bass. Even his quiff seemed less bouncy than usual.

  “Poor fish,” he muttered. “Who knows what’s gonna happen to them if we have to shut down the aquarium.” He shook his head grimly. “It’s a tragedy.”

  I felt my stomach lurch. “It mustn’t happen. We can’t let it.”

  “There ain’t much we can do to stop it,” Johnny replied. “We need a blooming miracle.”

  A miracle? I thought. Well, miracles did happen. Wasn’t Dad turning into a clownfish a kind of miracle? Weren’t those baby seahorses surviving in the breeding tanks a miracle? We just needed one more. Though right now it was hard to see where it was going to come from…

  When I visited Dad, I didn’t mention the aquarium’s problems. Usually I liked to tell him my worries, but there was nothing he could do about this – and it would only upset him.

  “How’s tricks?” I asked, copying one of his own special phrases.

  Dad flapped his little fins vigorously. “Tricks, tricks? I’m not a flippin’ seal, you know.”

  “You are a clown, though,” I reminded him. “You’re always joking around.”

  His little mouth opened and shut in an unamused pout.

  “Come on, tell me a joke,” I prompted. “And not that one about rays and flounders.”

  Dad gave a pleased little wiggle. “OK, here’s one for you. What do you call a deaf piranha?”

  “I don’t know, what do you call a deaf piranha?”

  “Anything you like, ’cos he can’t hear you.”

  I smiled weakly.

  Dad tried another one. “What’s a sea monster’s favourite meal?”

  “I don’t know, Dad, what is a sea monster’s favourite meal?”

  “Fish and ships.” The clownfish quivered with laughter. “Get it? Fish and ships!”

  “Yes, I get it.” I shrugged. “It’s just not that funny.”

  “Not that funny? Not that funny?! How can you say it’s not funny?”

  Now I’d upset Dad – and I’d so wanted not to. “Well, it’s a bit funny,” I conceded. “Maybe I’m just not in the mood.”

  I knew I’d made the right decision not to tell him about the problem with the aquarium wall. He didn’t want to hear difficult stuff. He never had when he was a man – so why would he now that he was a fish?

  I searched for something cheerful to say. “Mum seems to be getting better.”

  “Oh … good,” said the clownfish vaguely. “What’s the matter with her?

  “Dad!” I exclaimed. “She’s been missing you, of course. She thinks you’re dead.”

  Dad darted away then suddenly swished back. “You mean you haven’t told her that I’m … a fish?”

  I shook my head.

  “Don’t you think it’s time you did?”

  “I didn’t think she was ready. She’s been really ill, Dad.”

  “Oh.” His head wobbled. “Well, there’s not much I can do, is there, in here?” His black beady eyes seemed without expression. “Well, send her my love – and look after yourself.”

  Then he turned again and swam away. I opened my mouth to say, “Goodbye,” but closed it again when I heard footsteps clacking on the stone floor behind me.

  I turned to see Johnny there, frowning. “I thought I heard voices,” he said.

  I tensed. Then forced a smile. “It was just me, talking to the fish.”

  “I reckon you’ll get a lot more sense out of them than those muppets from the council,” Johnny muttered darkly. Then with a shake of his quiff, he walked away.

  I breathed deeply, relieved. My secret was still safe.

  Mum was up and dressed when I got home. She’d even brushed her hair and put on a little make-up. She hadn’t done that for ages. I was pleased to see her looking so much better – but it was hard, too, because she kept asking me questions about the aquarium and I really didn’t want to talk about that.

  My head was whirring. I just wanted to be on my own to think. If the aquarium had to be sold or shut down, what would happen to the fish? What would happen to Dad? Where would he go? He might be transferred to some other aquarium miles and miles away, somewhere where I wouldn’t be able to visit. He’d be really miserable and lonely… I pictured him swimming round and round with no one to talk to, nobody to laugh at his jokes…

  I felt sick with anxiety. Everything been looking up until the inspection. Now it all seemed to be falling apart.

  I was glad when Mum suggested that I go to the chip shop to get dinner. She also suggested we share a piece of cod but I told her that now I spent so much time at the aquarium I couldn’t eat fish any more.

  I didn’t tell her the main reason: that Dad – her husband – was a fish. I couldn’t, no matter what Dad said. I still didn’t feel the time was right.

  It was a relief to get out of the house but my thoughts were all over the place. I felt weighed down with the secrets I was carrying. I was already keeping a huge secret from Mum and now I was keeping one from Dad too. I was doing it to protect them both – like I was the parent and they were the children, but I didn’t know how much longer I could keep it up.

  I passed Mrs Baxter in the street, but didn’t stop. The last thing I wanted right now was to face her. She called out to me, but I put my head down and kept walking.

  When I got to the chip shop I couldn’t go in. From the doorway I saw the coated fish behind the glass of the hot cabinet, battered and eyeless. The heat and the smell of fat frying was too much and I had to turn away quickly into the open air.

  I leant against the shop’s window sweating, gasping, feeling like I was going to be sick. Sinking down until I was sitting on the pavement with my head bent forward, I tried to take deep breaths like Violet had told me.

  “Dak?” I didn’t respond at first because I thought the voice was inside my head. “Dak?” The voice was louder now and turquoise-nailed fingers reached for my shoulder.

  This time I knew it wa
s real. I looked up blurrily. “Violet,” I croaked.

  “Are you all right, Dak?” she asked. Her concern didn’t last long. “You look like a tramp down there.”

  I smiled weakly. “I felt a bit faint. But I’m better now.”

  “You’d better get up then. You’re blocking the pavement.”

  “Yeah, sorry.” I pushed myself up. Violet was staring at me, waiting for an explanation. “I came to get some sausages and chips. But I suddenly felt faint and couldn’t go in.”

  Violet looked confused. “You are strange, Dak. You cope really well with something huge like your dad dying, but you freak out about going into a fish and chip shop.”

  I shrugged. “I suppose I’m just worried about the aquarium.”

  “You worry too much,” Violet said. Then she smiled broadly. “Anyway, I’ve got a plan.”

  Violet went into the chip shop and got my order. Then she told me about her plan as we walked along together. It was simple, she said. We’d start a campaign to save the aquarium.

  “We’ll get up a petition, and contact the press, and maybe even raise funds.”

  “What, you and me?”

  “Exactamento! We’ll get Uncle Stephan and Johnny involved too, of course, but we’ll do most of the work. What do you think? Brilliant, eh?”

  I wasn’t quite sure what to think. Only hours before Violet had seemed as depressed and defeated as me, but now she was back to her sparky, decisive self: Violet, the phenomenon.

  “My dad does stuff like this all the time,” she went on confidently. “He’s involved with loads of campaigns to save beetles and termites and creepy-crawly creatures that you and I have never heard of but are essential to the world’s eco-system apparently. You just have to make people believe that what you’re campaigning for is amazing and indispensable.”

  I looked at her doubtfully. “I believe that. But you don’t. You don’t really like fish.”

  Violet frowned. “That’s not the point. It’s the principle. People who are interested in fish should have the right to see them in the aquarium. Imagine what a fuss there would be if the local football stadium was shut down.”