1. Ods' Home Sod.
Near by the river Bogle lies the city of Bogleside, a picturesque little ant heap of roads and cottages sprawled just a pleasant stroll from its watery namesake. It is the colourful, friendly kind of place you might find in a storybook, abounding with quaint buildings, delightful carriages and likeable people; a vibrant orchard of happiness basking in glorious sunshine. In every aspect it tells a tale of prosperity and domestic content, enjoying blue skies, good position and lush pastures for the tame, lazy herbivores ambling on the slopes of the valley.
As do the better cities of its kind, Bogleside has its charms and its quirks, both of which are represented in the naming of its streets. The citizens are in the habit of choosing names which characterise their streets, such as The Kilnway, which boasts more potter’s shops than any other. Two. This practice one imagines to be a modest charm. Then there are the likes of Stringline Road. A stringline is just that – a string stretched between two points by a mason to give him a very straight line, yet Stringline Road is as bent as a two-penny thief, a state of affairs which contradicts the overall philosophy of a stringline, and therefore may be taken as a modest quirk.
In a house set upon Stringline Road lived Ods Fobwotj. He was forty-something years old, nearer to fifty than he’d readily concede, and had lived in that house for more than twenty years. Filly Fobwotj, his wife, had lived there about four years less than that, before taking sole possession of their dry goods store and moving into the rooms above it, leaving Ods with the house. He would not have it that they were divorced, legally or otherwise. In his thoughts his wife and he had merely undertaken a shift in relative positions, and Ods still considered himself the admiral of his familial fleet. He held to the belief that Filly and he had only temporarily separated. Filly, though, knew that the ship had sailed while he’d been splashing about, oblivious to the turning tide, but then she also knew that he could be blindly stubborn about some things. She knew with iron certainty that he could be stubborn about fish ponds, for example, as that very issue had been a pivotal factor in their nautical disparity.
It had started innocently enough. Doesn’t it always? At first he’d built a fish pond because it was an attractive feature that could be made small enough to be manageable in the narrow context of their back yard, though Filly would have preferred a summerhouse. She had previously seen a belvedere, which is a summerhouse on an eminence, on the lawn of a large estate on Silk Drive and had been pleasantly affected by it. Now, it may be that a summerhouse of usual dimensions, especially a belvedere, would not do within such close margins, and it is surely true that a small fish pond was the more practicable choice in the circumstances, but the memory of the summerhouse on an eminence prompted Filly to smile from time to time, more so than the thought of a fish pond. Ods failed to notice.
So Ods built his first fish pond. He dug a hole, lined it with clay, walled it with rocks and topped it with paving bricks. He painted the walls and floor with a thin, bituminous resin and allowed it to dry thoroughly. He spread a layer of mulch and pebbles across the bottom of the pond and filled it from the brook behind the house. He netted tadpoles and aquatic insects and dug up water plants and put the lot in the pond. When those things were settled, he caught twenty or thirty baby fish half the length of his finger and released them in the pond. They did quite well.
Now and then Ods would notice a tiny pair of nostrils breaking the surface of the water in his pond, for on rainy days turtles had wandered up from the brook to holiday in the fish pond, and Ods thought this was delightful. He soon changed his mind. Because of their shells and motionless habits, the baby fish mistook the turtles for stones and hid beneath them, and the turtles graciously made breakfast, lunch and dinner of the little fish. Soon there were no fish and Ods was peeved. He captured the turtles and returned them to the brook, resisting the temptation to blame them for being themselves.
Ods restocked the pond with fingerlings and for a few weeks all was well, but a single rainy weekend invited the turtles to restock the pond with themselves. They may have been the same turtles gratefully dining at Ods’ unwitting expense, or they may have been different turtles exploring the world beyond the brook, for who knows what adventurous little hearts turtles may have? Whatever the case, they successfully digested all the fish before being discovered and returned to the brook, this time with chagrin, which is more acute than peevishness. It was too Late in the season to restock the pond again, for the juvenile fish had migrated to the lakes or fallen to predators so that they were few and far between in the brook. Besides, it had become apparent that the pond would have to be turtle-proof, and maybe just a hair wider. In disgust Ods emptied the water from the pond and filled it with dirt, thwarted for the moment. Filly had nothing to say.
The next year he tore up the old pond and built a new one, though Filly would have preferred a summerhouse or even a flower bed in its place. She simply wasn’t thrilled with fish ponds. He did make her a garden bed, but it was a long, skinny arrangement running along the fence and, honestly, a sad, second-rate effort. It was about then that Filly started becoming grumpy any time they talked of fish ponds or flower beds, and Ods started being somewhat defensive, and soon they didn’t talk of either. Some time after that, they weren’t talking of anything as much as they had.
But Ods had some success with his new pond. It was half again as big as the first and had a good, high brick border to keep out turtles. He laid the bottom of it with mulch made of gravel and herbivore dung and dead leaves, making sure the leaves were dry and brown, for he’d learned that these were good for the plants and little animals that lived in water. He filled the pond with water and stocked it with plants and fish, and thought that a good day’s work. But the leaves weren’t as dry and old as they should have been, and still carried enough sap to turn the water the dark colour of strong tea overnight, presenting Ods with a pondful of pale, floating little fish bellies in the morning. He’d poisoned the poor little blighters. Chagrin was no longer adequate. He progressed to anger, and angrily emptied the leaves and tainted water from the pond. He filled it anew and restocked it with fish, yet again.
They did quite well for a while. For a few months he fed his fish and watched them slowly grow. They were difficult to spy due to their inclination to keep to the shadows and hide any time he approached, but Ods was patient and often caught sight of some when he fed them. But after that few months, his pond was so richly grown with green slime that he couldn’t see the bottom of the thing, let alone any fish, so Ods built a little fish trap. It was a good tap and it worked, and Ods used it once a week, just to reassure himself that he still had living fish. At first he trapped many, but he found that he was catching less and less fish every week till there were none at all in evidence. For eight days in a row he caught none. What had happened to his fish? Had they taken ill and died? Had they been eaten? Perhaps the green slime had smothered them. He tried the trap one last time, but to no worthy end. There was not a single fish to be seen.
Dismayed but relentless, he punched a large hole in the bottom of the pond one afternoon to drain it, so that he might have a good look inside and learn what had killed his fish. The following afternoon Ods examined his pond expecting to find some lurking menace in lieu of fish. But there were many fish! Damn! Dead fish. There were thirty-odd of the little blighters lying on the pond floor, waterless and baked by the midday sun. They hadn’t vanished from the pond at all; they’d simply grown wise to the trap and avoided it, lurking around the rocks under a quilt of green slime. The facts of the matter hit Ods like a slap in the mouth. Fish were too stupid to recognise and dodge a trap. Weren’t they? Needless to say, it was too late in the year to restock the pond. He emptied it out, tore it up and started again.
His third pond was the sum of careful, thorough thought and skilful work. It had the look of a rock pool with a gravel bottom and artfully positioned stones and water plants that created the feel of an aquatic garden. In the heat of his constructive fervour, a lightning bolt of inspiration struck upon a vision of a windmill, revealing it as a sacred artefact in the hidden grotto of Ods’ pond-building fantasies. And Lo, Ods did build the hallowed windmill, and it was pretty damned good. It pumped up water from a screened outlet in the pond then down a short waterfall broken by shallow rock basins filled with gravel, which cleansed the water of detritus so beautifully that one must marvel at the sublime efficacy of it. It was skilfully made and useful, yet from Filly it brought biting remarks about belvederes and flowers, through no fault of its own. These remarks Ods endured with calm, husbandly fortitude. He was determined to triumph in all spheres of fish keeping, and was sadly unwilling to admit that he’d dismissed his wife’s interests in favour of his run-amok hobby. He should have realised that his misplaced priorities would one day bite him in the backside, but he didn’t see it coming.
The pond was an unbridled success. The windmill pumped water with dignity and style and the gravel busily scrubbed it clean before returning it to the pond, every drop bright and clear. The plants grew in good health and made a nice little garden for the fish, and the fish thrived or throve, as you please, and all was right in the world of fish keeping. Of course, Filly avoided Ods and looked unhappy by then, but he knew she’d move past it.
She didn’t. On the seventeenth birthday of their youngest, Wajfol, he got himself an apprenticeship with Danfla Limq, which was an excellent position for Wajfol, as Danfla was a very good carpenter. Months later Wajfol moved into lodgings of his own, leaving his parents in their house with no buffer between them. Soon after he’d gone, Filly insisted they sit down and have a serious talk, through which she was earnest and patient and frustrated, while Ods was evasive and fairly quiet. It proved fruitless. The next day Filly moved out, with a few tears and fewer words, just enough to tell Ods that she was taking the business and living quarters for herself, and that if he didn’t like it he could try his luck with the magistrate. Or since he was so fond of his damned fish ponds he could build them for a living. Ods protested strongly and tried to stop her, but he was too late. Filly was gone by nightfall and finished with him.
