by Shirley Smith
THERE are some things in life that are best forgotten, not thought about, a chapter closed. But in death, well, that’s another matter.I had to go back to my parents’ house when my father died. Not that he died there. He’d been in a nursing home for a year after my mother’s death and had gradually faded from within like a decaying shellfish, until only the delicate outer layer was visible and recognisable as our Dad. Now, with all his sons and daughters and grandchildren present, he was waiting to make the journey to the chapel of rest. It was natural for us to share some anecdotes about the past.
When we were young we were a large family and not very well up on the social scale. My brothers and I were all dating at more or less the same time. They were older and had done National Service. I was younger and was about to go to university. I was aware of the shortcomings of our financial situation, but I loved my parents dearly and at school always painted a positive picture of life with six brothers and sisters. When girls in my form came back tanned and glowing from holidays abroad my tactic was to project my pale English complexion as the epitome of female beauty. I stressed the fun I’d had going potato picking with my handsome older brothers. My propaganda was so effective I even began to believe it myself.
I was seventeen and we lived in a three-bedroomed semi with bathroom, kitchen and small garden. My parents had the main bedroom and there was a girls’ bedroom and a boys’ bedroom. Codes of working class decency were strictly observed even if they weren’t spelled out. We never appeared before each other undressed and even for the younger ones there were segregated bath nights.
Downstairs, there was a scrub-topped table which was always clean and bleached. The lino was washed twice a day and one of my jobs was to polish the old-fashioned mirror-backed sideboard and the front room piano. The polish was always wax. My mother had a cleaning lady’s job you see and knew how to look after furniture. The polish always came from the Better Ware man, a poor wreck who had been a prisoner of war in Japanese hands. He was often given her last shilling when he came round with his suitcase.
My mother always said that my father’s goldfish were his pride and joy. Sometimes she would tell the lady where she cleaned that he thought more of the goldfish than he did of her. But she always said it with a broad smile, in the certain knowledge that this wasn’t true. However late his overtime made him, my father always dealt with the fish before sitting down to his meal. The aquarium had pride of place on the sideboard and rested on a piece of green baize. My mother tolerated the hissing and glugging of the aerator, his evening trips to the garden to dig for worms and the curiosity of our nosy neighbour, who wanted to know why he dug in the same spot night after night. Sometimes my mother would tell her that he had a body buried there, but again the broad smile would appear, so that it wouldn’t be taken seriously.
The fact was, she felt that a man with seven children, two jobs and an allotment. was entitled to a little relaxation. Goldfish were harmless and could be tolerated. In a male-dominated household like ours, tolerance was a virtue that my mother cultivated with some skill. I resented the nosy neighbour and had no interest in the fish, except that I’d been allowed to name them. ‘Pyramus’, ‘Thisbe’ and ‘Freddie’ were my pretentious seventeen-year-old idea of a joke.
That summer, I’d been able to get a holiday job and some of my earnings had gone on smart new clothes and inexpensive make up. Our nosy neighbour never failed to observe to my mother that I’d gone out looking as if I’d just stepped out of a band box, or what time I’d arrived home.
The fact was, at about the same as the arrival of the goldfish, I acquired my first serious boyfriend. James was a little older than me, nineteen, almost twenty. He’d left school at sixteen to work in the library and was taking exams to qualify as a librarian. He played cricket for the library team and drank beer with his friends, but only when he wasn’t out with me. He was an intellectual, given to moodiness and strange silences which I found difficult to handle. Generally, my supreme egotism overrode any sensitive sulking on his part. I just carried on talking and chatting as though I were with my sisters and he would gradually come round and be friends again.
One Sunday, his mother invited me to go round and have tea at their house. The thought of it was both exciting and unnerving, but also something of an embarrassment and an ordeal. They had a Polished table with a lace cloth and served tinned salmon with wafer thin bread and butter. Afterwards, there was tinned fruit with evaporated milk and a selection of shop cakes. Later, his mother let us have a cup of Camp coffee in their front room, all on our own. I was treated like an honoured quest. James and I necked rather decorously on the settee. But all the time, my scheming, selfish little brain was calculating how I could return the invitation without the personal humiliation of having an aquarium on the dining room sideboard.
I realised that his tea party would be a hard act to follow. For a start, James had no brothers and sisters. My mother had no tea set, only six best cups and saucers which never left the china cabinet. Tinned salmon was out of our price range and shop cakes would be dismissed as ‘All sawdust’. It would be home made fruit pie and custard.
The younger ones were not a problem. They would have had their tea and be cleared off to bed. The older ones would have a field day of micky taking and mocking jokes. But even they would have to go off on their own dates eventually. No, the overriding embarrassment for me would be that wretched aquarium looking totally incongruous on the old fashioned Edwardian sideboard and gurgling intrusively over any polite conversation. My God, it would be unbearable if James should suddenly lapse into one of his enigmatic sulky silences. The goldfish would dominate the room.
I find what happened about the fish almost too painful to dwell on now. My mother gave permission for a return invitation and a couple of Sundays before James came to tea I made my plans. While on polishing duty, l deliberately flipped one of the goldfish on to the floor and let it gasp and wriggle for a long time while I worked on with the polish. Later, I picked it up with a large spoon and dropped it back into the water. No one noticed. Dad was at the pub. Mother was cooking Sunday lunch, the older ones were out and the little ones were at Sunday school. When he inspected the fish, all Dad said was, "Hello. What’s happened here?"
He gazed at Pyramus with such concern I could hardly bear it. I kept my eyes glued to my homework book and feigned concern when at last I had the courage to look up. The fish was listing to one side with dull eyes and languid fins, obviously dying. After lunch, he took it out and threw it away.
On Wednesday it was his darts night and the same treatment was accorded to Thisbe. If my mother knew that the sideboard was getting an extra polish, she never said anything. I had bought a packet of mixed tea assortment biscuits out of my wages and she had organised a white table cloth, newly washed and starched, and a quarter of boiled ham. In spite of her declared belief in the value of education for the working classes, there was an unspoken feminine collusion on ‘operation tea party’. In my mother’s opinion, it was only natural that a girl of seventeen should be interested in a future mate. No amount of education could alter that and she felt it was her duty to help this process along.
In the past, my father had always mended our shoes and cut our hair, but now I was able to cut my own. I used two mirrors and relied on the strong natural curl to hide the mistakes. On Friday night, standing before the sideboard mirror and holding the hand mirror from mother’s dressing table, I pretended to be finishing my hair-do. I furtively flicked Freddie out of the water. He squirmed and popped his eyes while I gathered up the hair trimmings and hung about, waiting for him to die.
My father said very little about the loss of the last fish, but I knew how sad and disappointed he was. I felt like a murderess. I WAS a murderess, and for the rest of his life, I could never bring myself to mention it. But no confession could ever wipe out what I’d done and he never took any interest in goldfish again.
The tea party, however, was a great success and after I left university James and I got married. Years later my little son found the dusty aquarium in the shed and his grandpa let him take it to school to make a terrarium. Even then, I couldn’t say anything. There are some things we just have to put in the lumber room of the mind and not think about.
Now we were gathering for the final goodbyes, my family and I, sorting out who was going in which car to the crematorium. The funeral directors had carried out my father’s coffin to the hearse and the wreaths were all in position.
Afterwards, over sherry and sandwiches, decisions had to be taken about the house and furniture. The sideboard, looking smaller now and rather dusty, stood in its usual place. One brother, middle aged, fiftyish, had been given power of attorney for my father’s few remaining belongings. The brothers discussed house clearance and estate agents.
While they talked, I stared at the mirror-backed sideboard. For a few moments they all disappeared and I saw the aquarium again. It was on its green mat, still complete with the fish which were all alive. As I gazed, my long-standing guilt and unease vanished. I suddenly felt completely and utterly at peace and, in spite of the sad occasion, almost light hearted.
"I’d like the old sideboard," I said out loud to my brother. "Let me have that. I promise I’ll take good care of it.".
~The End~
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