Fish out of Water
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday May 30, 2015

Hope is two goldfish pootling in a plastic bag of water.

Small daughter and I stood transfixed in the pet shop. A wall of fish tanks glowed in iridescent greens and blues. A dozen filters hummed a soporific tune. Everywhere we looked, fish were darting hither and yon, their coruscating skins a riot of colours.

In the nearest tank, an orange pipsqueak swayed his translucent tail and lazily glided towards his watery window. Squishing his little fishy lips against the glass, he ogled us with globular eyes.

“That’s the one!” shouted five-year-old daughter, jabbing her finger against the tank. The goldfish didn’t flinch. I took that as a sign of emotional resilience.

“I’m gonna call him ‘Finger’” she said. “Fish Finger for short.”

“Shouldn’t your brother name him?” I said. “After all, it’s his birthday.”

She ignored me, and resumed skipping sideways along the tanks, pressing one eye against the glass when a fish caught her fancy. A teenaged sales assistant in khaki uniform shadowed her like a prison guard.

Daughter let out a shriek. She jabbed at a corner where an odd-looking goldfish was poking around in a weed. “Look! He’s got an orange raspberry on his head!”

“It’s a lionhead,” said the fish curator flatly, barely disguising his contempt.

He turned to me, twirling a net the size of a fly swat.

“She’s not going to bang on the tank at home?”

“Oh, no” I reassured him. “They’ll be in a bowl.”

I pointed at Finger, still staring at us from his window seat. “Can we have that one?” I said. Then I singled out the Lionhead with orange beanie from his myriad strange-hatted siblings. “And that one.”

Back in the car, my youngster cradled her brother’s birthday fish, each plastic bag knotted, but now dangerously close to horizontal.

I drove home timorously, weaving around corners and crawling over speed humps trying not to verify Newton’s first law of motion.

“Finger’s making my hand look bigger,” called my daughter from the back seat, inspecting her palm through the prism of the bag. I tried to explain to her the theory of refraction and how water can magnify images by deflecting light rays but she had the attention span of a goldfish.

“Mum! Finger just touched my finger with his tail. Hey! That’s two times I said Finger!”

Her newly 8-year-old brother was ecstatic with his new pets. He christened Finger’s playmate Flip.

For the next hour, boy glued himself to fishbowl. Finger and Flip played tag for his amusement, ducking between the plastic fronds of their underwater palm tree. At bedtime, he reluctantly wished them good night. Ten hours later he was scurrying down the stairs to bid them top o’ the morning.

After two days, I wondered if our aquatic guests were enjoying their celebrity? Did they mind the constant gawping; the succession of school-children pressing curious faces against their bowl, who banged and tapped knuckles against their glass and dipped grubby fingers in their pond?

For all I knew, our fish felt liberated. Perhaps they thought they were swimming in the sparkling waters of Lake Victoria? After all, food was abundant. Every day, delicate wafers appeared as if by magic on the surface. Life in the goldfish bowl was good.

On day three, we awoke to find Flip swimming backstroke. His tummy looked distended as he took his reverse constitutional around the palm tree. Teenage son caught my eye, smirked and swiped his index finger across his throat. I shot him a warning glare. “He’s fine,” I announced for 8-year-old’s benefit. “Flip’s just swimming upside down for fun.”

Popping home at lunchtime, I noticed Flip had mastered sidestroke, but didn’t appear to be enjoying it. I pleaded with him to buck up for the sake of the birthday boy, but he just looked at me, fins trembling. (No-one feels as helpless as the owner of a sick goldfish.)

It was dark when the kids and I stormed in the door after sport. Flip was lying on the rainbow-coloured gravel, motionless.

“He’s dead! He’s dead!” wailed eight-year-old.

“He can’t be dead,” said his sister, screwing up her face with surprise. “His eyes are open.”

Her brother was inconsolable. “Don’t worry,” she said, throwing a comforting arm around his waist. “He must have banged his head on the glass.”

I shepherded my birthday boy into the kitchen for grief counselling while his father spooned Flip out of his bowl and wrapped him in paper towel. I could make out the impression of Flip’s damp orange body inside his papery bier, like the Shroud of Turin. My husband sidled to the toilet to give him a burial at sea.

RIP Flip.

We’re heading back to the pet store today. Flip’s under warranty (I think).