Wendy Perriam by Wendy Perriam Read Free Book Online

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