the side gate so the machine could lug the granite to the back. Next, we all got stuck in digging the hole for the pond. Hot and sweaty work, it was. Mum sort of hovered in the shade, but men with spades put up an invisible wall. She brought a tray of coffee and Dutch butter biscuits. Everyone thanked Mum politely and Mum said ‘You’re welcome’ politely too. Dad sent me to Mr Rhydd’s on my bike to get 7-Up and Mars Bars. (Mr Rhydd told me it was the hottest day of 1982 so far.) When I got back me and Gordon carted the buckets of topsoil to the end of the garden. I didn’t know what to say to Gordon Broadwas. Gordon’s in my year at school (in a dimmer’s class) and here was my dad paying his dad. How embarrassing’s that? Gordon didn’t speak much either, so maybe he felt embarrassed too. Mum was looking stonier and stonier as the rockery in the garden and the rockery in her blueprint got more and more different. After the pond’s shell was lowered and we stopped for toasted sandwiches, Mum announced she was going into Tewkesbury to do some shopping. As her car pulled out and we got back to work, Dad did a jokey sigh. ‘Women, eh? Banging on about this rockery for years, and now it’s off to the shops…’
Mr Broadwas did a gardener’s nod. Not an ally’s nod.
By the time Mum came home, Mr Broadwas, his sons, Doug and the fork-lift truck’d gone. Dad’d let me fill the pond with water from the hosepipe. I was playing Swingball by myself. Julia’d gone out to celebrate the end of the A-levels at Tanya’s Night Club in Worcester with Kate, Ewan and some of his friends. Dad was nestling little ferny claw plants into the chinks between the rocks. ‘So,’ he waved his trowel, ‘what’s the verdict?’
‘Very nice,’ said Mum.
Right away, I knew she knew something we didn’t.
Dad nodded. ‘The boys didn’t do a bad job, eh?’
‘Oh, not bad at all.’
‘Best garden pond in the village it’ll be, Mr Broadwas said, once my shrubbery’s got a grip. Have a pleasant tootle round Tewkesbury, did we?’
‘Very pleasant, thank you,’ said Mum, as a tubby man with joke-shop sideburns trundled a large, white, lidded wheelie bucket round from the front of the house. ‘Mr Suckley, this is my husband, and that’s my son, Jason. Michael, this is Mr Suckley.’
Mr Suckley gave me and Dad a ‘How do’.
‘That’s the pond,’ Mum said to him, ‘please, Mr Suckley.’
Mr Suckley wheeled his bucket to the edge of the pond, balanced it there, and raised a sort of gate. Water sluiced out, slooshing with it a pair of enormous fish. Not the tiddlers you get in plastic bags from the Goose Fair. These beauts’d’ve cost a packet. ‘The Japanese revere carp as living treasures,’ Mum told us. ‘They’re symbols of a long life. They live for decades. They’ll probably outlive us.’
Dad’s nose looked very, very out of joint.
‘Oh, I know your fork-lift gizmo was an unexpected expense, Michael. But think what we saved by using granite instead of marble. And surely the best pond in the village should have the best fish? What’s the Japanese name for them again, Mr Suckley?’
Mr Suckley emptied the last dribbles into the pond. ‘Koi.’
‘Koi.’ Mum peered into the pond like a mother. ‘The long gold one’s “Moby”. The mottled one we can call “Dick”.’
Today’d been so full of stuff that Mr Suckley should’ve been the end. But after tea I was playing darts in the garage when the back door slammed open. ‘Get a-way!’ Mum’s shriek was mangled with anger. ‘GET AWAY, you dirty great BRUTES!’
I ran to the back garden in time to catch Mum hurling her Prince Charles and Princess Diana mug at a gigantic heron, perched on the rockery. Tea floated out like liquid in zero gravity as the missile passed through a belt of sunlit gnats. The mug exploded when it hit the rockery. The heron raised its angel’s wings. Quite unhurriedly, one mighty flap at a time, it climbed into the air. Moby was flapping in its beak. ‘PUT my FISH DOWN!’ yelled Mum. ‘You damn BIRD!’
Mr Castle’s puppety head popped over the garden fence.
Mum’s staring at the heron, appalled, as it shrinks into the lost blue.
Moby’s flipping in the Day of Judgement light.
Dad watched all this through the kitchen window. Dad isn’t laughing. He’s won.