THE GOLDFISH MAN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 443, 19 December 1947, Page 21

THE GOLDFISH MAN

A Children’s Story for Adults

| Written for "The Listener" |

by

MARJORIE

WILLIAMS

HERE was, once upon a time, a man who had some goldfish. As a matter of fact, he had only two goldfish, but at times they seemed so different he would call them some. Their names were Jimmy and Oscar. They were given to the man by a little boy called Bertie, or Bertram for long, who lived next door to the Boarding House where the man stayed. The man wasn’t a very old man, but as Bertie was quite little, he thought the man had been at the Boarding House for years and years and years. Bertie’s mother, she thought the man was quite good-looking; but Bertie didn’t really care. Now Bertie was very fond of goldfish; his mother had a great

big pond, full of them, so on the man’s birthday Bertie brought along his mother’s tin billy with two goldfish in it, as a surprise. Of course, the man was very surprised, and thanked Bertie nicely by letting him hayea_ look at his stamp collection. Bertie liked the pink and green stamps. But, you see, as the man

had never been given any goldfish before, he didn’t quite know what to do with them. Before he went to work next day, he put them in the bathroom washbasin, the billy seemed so small, where they looked very happy playing chasing round the plug. However, when the man came home at five o’clock, his landlady, although she was very sympathetic when the man told her he was going to get a bowl for the fish, said she really didn’t like to have live animals around the house, and that Mr. Jackson, who took a drop or two for his lumbago, got such a shock this morning when he went to wash, so would the man _ please mind. ... The man felt rather worried about this. It would be so cruel to give them to the cat, and it would hurt Bertie’s feeling so much if he gave Oscar and Jimmy away. The man hated to hurt people’s feelings: everyone kept hurting his, so he knew how it felt. So. it seemed the only thing he could dc was to take them to the Office. The man’s Office was in a tall building, eight or nine stories high, up in the lift, along the rubber corridor and through the glass doors. It was really quite a nice Office, but although the man had been working there for two or three years now, he wasn’t quite used to it and it wasn’t quite used to him. The man caught the goldfish carefully without splashing too much water on the floor. The landlady didn’t like people who put water all over the bathroom, but ‘it is very hard to catch goldfish without splashing a little water as they are so slippery, you know. Then the man put them back inte Bertie’s

mother’s billy and took Jimmy and Oscar down to the Office the next morning. & % we * HE man felt very shy about the fish, although he tried not to show it. In fact the man really felt shy a lot of the time, but not many people realised this as he would laugh and joke to make everyone believe he wasn’t. But this morning he really felt very, very shy and he said "Good morning" rather impolitely to the Office girls as he hurried across the Main Office. Thev were

laughing, he thought, at Bertie’s mother’s billy that the man was trying to hide under his coat, but it wasn’t that, it was Little Audrey. However, the man soon shut the door of his room, put Bertie’s mother’s billy in the cupboard and set to work. So, you see, no one guessed that in the building that morning, besides five’ thousand files.

Pe ek ninety offices, and three hundred people were two little goldfish named Jimmy and Oscar. At lunch-time, when everybody went off to get pies and cakes, the man put on his hat, buttoned up his brown overcoat, it was winter time, and walked quickly down the corridor to get a goldfish bowl from the fish Supply Shop. I suppose you wonder why the man didn’t ask one of the Office girls to ‘get a fish bowl for him with her pie sand cakes? Well, you see, the man hated to ask people to do things for him. He felt he just couldn’t trouble people, so he went most places and did most things himself, About half-an-hour later he returned carrying a large brown box. The man waited until the two switchboard girls began to talk about knitting patterns again and walked determinedly into his room. He felt rather hot and flustered as he had to chase al! over town for the goldfish bowl, everything is so expensive and so hard to get these days, vou know, but he was very relieved that no one knew about the fish What would everyone think? It was so silly tos&keep goldfish in an office, he thought. When they were in the bow! he would put, them in the cupboard and no one would ever know. But, just as he had picked up Bertie’s mother’s billy, in walked the Office junior wanting her share of the sweepstake ticket. (The (continued om next page)

THE GOLDFISH MAN

(continued from previous page) man really didn’t believe in gambling, but he didn’t like to feel that he wasn’t a good sport). % * % HE Office junior squealed with delight, why, look at the goldfish, aren’t they just too cute for words (you can use slang when you’re grown up, girls and boys, so don’t worry), she said, but you can’t put goldfish in a bowl covered with sawdust. So she wiped it around with the man’s best tweed scarf, but the man was too shy to tell her so, and poured the fish in with a plop and a splash, The bowl really wasn’t quite ‘big enough for the two of them, but

Jimmy and Oscar were very well-behaved goldfish,,soO they swam round and round, in the way goldfish have to do in round bowls, except, of course, up and down. When. the man saw that they were quite happy he sat down to eat his sandwiches and to read his library book, that is, of course, after he had asked the Office junior, in a joking sort of way, to please not tell anyone about the fish, else they might want to eat them, fish is so scarce these days, you know. But you couldn’t keep a secret in a_ building like that, let alone the -Office junior. So when ‘the intermediate typist came in after lunch for a report the first thing she _ said was,

why,, look at the goldfish and went over to tap the bowl. (The Office junior said ‘she couldn’t possibly keep them in the cupboard, they would die of suffocation). The man blushed and laughed, so silly ‘to keep goldfish in an office, but by the ‘time the senior typist, the junio: typist, the five lady clerks, the accountant, the private secretary, the office boy, the manager, and the caretaker’s wife had all walked in, said. why, look at the goldfish and tapped the bowl, the man felt rather tired of blushing and laughing, so silly to keep ce in an office, ‘so he didn’t. * %* % ROM then on the goldfish bow! sat on the window-sill and Oscar and Jimmy swam round contentedly looking down at the traffic in the street below or listening to the clatter of the typewriters in the Office. Everyone became very interested in them. Sometimes the men made rude remarks about the fish, but most times they asked kindly how they were getting on, and sent their best wishes. The man was so glad that he hadn’t. been nick-named Fishy or Trout, as they called the Boss Tweettweet behind his back, because his wife kept budgies; the caretaker’s little girl, who often came to see them, called him the Goldfish man, but the man didn’t really mind that. Somebody once cruelly told him that Jimmy wasn’t a goldfish at all but just a plain, ordinary carp. However, the man, as. usual,

didn’t like to hurt ‘Jimmy’s feelings, so he still called him a goldfish, which shows what a really sympathetic nature the man had. But! One day something happened. Can you guess? No? Well, Oscar died. On a cold winter’s morning just before eight o’clock, the man was never late, the man found little gold Oscar stretched out on the rubber. floor, lifeless. It was a terrible shock to him, somehow the man couldn’t believe it, but there it was. Oscar was no more. The man picked him up tenderly, put him in a clean official envelope and dropped Oscar into the -waste-paper basket. All the office girls were terribly

sorry. Poor old Oscar, he must have just flipped out accidentally. But somehow the man felt it was his fault, that he was the cause of Oscar’s death, and he was. Oscar had flipped out of his bowl, not accidentally, but on purpose! x * * OU see, it was this way. The man always liked to read at lunch-time, at morning tea he would two-up or Find he Lady with the other chaps just to show he- really. wasn’t a snob. But he looked forward to \lunch-time, when he could shut his door and have a real, good read. When the clock struck twelve the man would put down his pen, get out his grease-proof paper parcel of sandwiches that his landlady had cut for him, from his little brown attache case, sort out his book from under the pile of papers on his desk, then read and eat until the clock struck one. You say, what about feeding the goldfish? Well, at first the man didn’t know what to feed them on, so one of the chaps at the office lent him a magazine on the Care of Goldfish, which said to give them ant’s eggs and worms, that had been dried and salted. But as it seemed such a very messy business treating worms like that, also think how it would hurt their feelings, and as the man didn’t know where to get ant’s eggs from, he apologised to the goldfish and asked them would they mind being fed on egg sandwich? Of course they didn’t,

So every day for the first few weeks the man crumbled a piece of egg sandwich into the bowl and Jimmy and Oscar came racing and sucked in the food with their elastic-sided mouths. But alas, and alas, as the days went by the man forgot. Soon the fish were fed thrice a week, twice a week, once a week, and then, never. However, every afternoon at half-past four the man would remember that he hadn’t fed the goldfish, but by then the Office junior ‘had locked all the tea things away and as the man was so terribly shy he just didn’t like to ask her to open it again for a biscuit. H did not want to trouble her. ; He would worry about not having fed the fish all night, all morning, after half-past four every afternoon, but he always forgot at lunch-time. Jimmy and Oscar would gaze goggle-eyed out of their watery world but would turn away as they saw the man throw the grease-proof paper into the basket without raising his eyes from the book. This went on day after day, the man remembering and forgetting. Why didn’t he ask the Office junior or the caretaker’s little girl to feed them? Well, you see, of course he didn’t like to, people will think I am incompetent, thought the man, if I can’t even remember to feed’ my own goldfish. But this kept going

on for days and days and weeks and weeks until the man could hardly bear to look into the goldfish’s eyes. The man became worried and worrieder and shyer and shyer till he even forgot to feel shy about wearing plus-fours when he was trying to play golf with the boys, or eating an ice-cream in the street, he was so busy worrying about the goldfish, Bo ae * [oes and Oscar saw what was going on and it worried them too, at least it did Oscar. One day Oscar said to Jimmy, this is a man. We cannot make him sacrifice his life for ours, we are but fish, the time has come, for us to go! To tell the truth Jimmy and Oscar weren’t hungry at all, as they were being fed all the time by the Caretaker’s wife when she came in to do the cleaning at night, but the man didn’t know, of course. However, Oscar was really sorry to see the man so worried so he said to Jimmy, Let us jump out and end it all! Jimmy didn’t take any notice, being a carp and not having the noble nature of a goldfish, He couldn’t see why he should have to leave his nice, cold, watery world for the sake of a selfish man, so when Oscar said it again Jimmy flicked his tail and went off to sleep, If people want to have goldfish, they should he prepared to look after them, thought Jim.

This made Oscar feel quite sad, as it is far harder to die by yourself for a good cause than with someone else. But he felt it was his duty. So ore dark night, when the typewriters were shrouded in their dust covers and the moonlight slid up and down on the desk, he flipped out of the bowl! on to the hard floor, % Cow OOR Oscar, he died a hero’s death, but he did not sacrifice himself in vain. The man felt so mortified and distraught, for he thought that maybe Oscar had killed himself because he couldn’t bear to starve any longer, that one great day he plucked up all the courage he possessed, blushed long and loud, and asked the Office junior would she please, if it wasn’t too much trouble, just say if it was, buy a packet of ant’s eggs at the grocer’s shop for the goldfish. To the man’s surprise the Office junior didn’t mind at all, said that’s what my uncle feeds his on, took the shilling and went off down the corridor in a rush, So now, Jimmy swims around the bowl, which is very big for one, and is fed on ant’s eggs twice a day by the Office junior. The man suddenly realised that perhaps people didn’t really mind doing things for him. He asked the senior typist for a rubber.

She gave it to him. He asked the junior typist for neater typing. She gave it to him. He asked the five lady clerks for better writing. They gave it to him. He asked the accountant for more correct balances. He gave it to him. He asked the private secretary for more privacy. She gave it to him, He asked the Office boy for a bulls-eye. He gave it to him. He asked the manager for a rise. He gave it to him. He asked the caretaker’s wife to sweep under his desk. She did. So you see the man found that people are really awfully obliging if only you pluck up enough courage to ask, provided you do it politely. The man became a very big man, and quite wealthy, because he asked cheaper prices than other people, and for a bigger income from his board of directors. He gradually became sa sure of himself that one day when Bertie’s mother came to collect her billie, it had been in the cloakroom cupboard all this time years and years, the man said... Well, they did, and now Jimmy, the man and. Bertie’s mother live happily ever after on Bere tie’s mother’s husband’s insurance. By the way children, if you find a moral in this story like one swall doesn’t make a Spring, etc., don’t worry, It isn’t important. :