The Boy Who Swam With Piranhas Read online

  Pancho smiles. “I know the feeling. As for doing it in front of all those folk, it’s only natural to be nervous, and a bit of nervousness will help you to perform. As for changing? What happens is you’ll not be a completely different Stanley Potts. You’ll be the new and the old Stanley all at once. You’ll be the Stan of hook-a-duck, the Stan of the days in Fish Quay Lane, and you’ll be the brand-new Stan who swims with the piranhas. Be all those things together at once, and that’s where your real greatness’ll be.”

  Stan listens to the great Pancho Pirelli. He allows his memories to gather in his mind. He has faded visions of his time as a toddler with his mum and dad. He sees himself walking hand in hand with Uncle Ernie and Auntie Annie by the shipyards and the glittering river. He recalls the fish-canning factory and all the torments there. He remembers the goldfish, the tender thirteenth fish, and Dostoyevsky and Nitasha and the hook-a-duck. He brings them all into his mind and they flow together there. And he brings to his mind the piranha tank and the fish, and their teeth and their graceful dancing. And he realizes that his memories and his mind are astonishing things.

  And he looks at Pancho Pirelli and he calmly says, “I’m ready, Mr Pirelli. Let’s go out to the tank.”

  Suddenly there’s Stan, stepping into the spotlight beneath his name. He wears his cape, his trunks, his goggles. He wears a look of calm determination on his face. There are gasps of excitement and delight. Children squeal.

  “It’s him!” the whisper goes. “It’s Stanley Potts.”

  “Him?” say some. “That scrawny little feller there?”

  “Tha can’t be him!”

  “It is.”

  “He’s too little.”

  “It is.”

  “He’s too scrawny.”

  “It is!”

  “He’s too young.”

  “That can’t be the Stanley Potts.”

  Pancho Pirelli steps into the spotlight at Stanley’s side. The voices hush.

  “This,” says Pancho, “is Stanley Potts.”

  “So it is,” they say.

  “I told you,” they say.

  Pancho raises his hand and there’s silence. He draws aside the tarpaulin, and there they are, swimming through the beautiful illuminated water, the awful fishy fiends, the dreadful devils with teeth like razors and jaws like traps.

  “And these,” says Pancho, “are my piranhas!”

  There are squeaks and squeals and gasps and groans.

  Pancho raises his hand again. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he whispers. “You are about to see something wondrous. You are about to see something that will live for ever in your dreams.”

  More squeaks and squeals and gasps and groans.

  “But first of all,” says Pancho, “you must get your money out, and you must pay.”

  Stan stays standing in the spotlight as Pancho steps into the crowd holding out his velvet bag. Pancho murmurs his thanks as coins drop into the bag. He mutters encouragement. “Dig deeper, sir. Perhaps a little more, madam? That’s better, much better. Oh, thank you, you are very kind.” He voices his disappointment. “Is that really all you will give? You expect so much for such a pittance?” He seeks out the reluctant ones. “I can see you. You can’t escape the eyes of Pancho Pirelli. Money is what we need. Please give it now.”

  Once or twice his voice is raised as if in anger. “Do you realize that a boy is about to risk his life for your entertainment?”

  And all the time the murmurs of excitement grow.

  From the back of the crowd, from the shadows between two caravans, five pairs of eyes watch. Five pairs of eyes that belong to five burly blokes dressed in black.

  “What’s goin’ to happen, boss?” asks one of the blokes.

  “Somethin’ of the deepest darkest fishiness,” says Clarence P. He points to Stan. “I should of knowed what that monster in the spitlight would get up to. We should of put a stop to him way back in Fish Quay Lane.”

  “I can see you, you know,” says Pancho, weaving his way through the crowd towards them. “There’s no need to hide in the dark. No need to be shy, gentlemen.”

  “We is not shy!” says Clarence P. “We is watchin’ with our eyes peeled! We is the envistigators of all things fishy. And there is something fishy here!”

  “Indeed there is,” agrees Pancho. “There is something very, very fishy here.”

  “I knowed it!” cries Clarence P. “It is a nutter disgrace! We is here to put a stop to it!”

  “Put a stop to what?” says Pancho.

  “To what is going to happen!” says Clarence P.

  “And what is that?” asks Pancho.

  Clarence P. narrows his eyes. “Do not try to bumboozle Clarence P. Clapp, Mr Moneybags. I knows your tricks and they will not work with me!”

  Pancho smiles. He moves into the shadows, closer to Clarence P. He puts his arm round Clarence P.’s shoulder. “Do not be frightened, Mr Clapp,” he says. “Or may I call you Clarence?”

  “You may not!” says Clarence P. “Unhand me, Mr Moneybags!”

  “Clarence P. Clapp is never frightened!” says Fred.

  “No?” says Pancho. “Then perhaps he would like to enter the tank.”

  The lads look at Clarence P. His eyes glitter in the moonlight.

  “Unhand me, I said!” he cries. “This is all atishoo of lies and daftness and bumboozlements.”

  “Is it now?” says Pancho.

  “It is. That boy is a devil, and you, sir, is a slippery fish if ever I seen one.”

  Pancho laughs.

  “And them fish there…” says Clarence P., pointing to the tank.

  “Them fish there?” says Pancho.

  “…is not what you said they is,” finishes Clarence P.

  “Not piranhas?” says Pancho.

  “They is not.”

  “Let me clarify, Clarence.” Pancho points towards Stan and the fish tank. “That boy over there is one of the bravest boys you will ever see. And those fish over there are some of the fiercest fish you will ever see. And that brave boy is about to swim with those fierce fish.”

  Fred snorts. “That squirt?” he says. “And them tiddlers?”

  “Yes,” says Pancho.

  “I could ’ave that squirt for me dinna and them tiddlers for me puddin’!” scoffs Ted.

  “And drink the water for me soup!” adds Doug.

  “Perhaps you should try it,” Pancho tells them. “Come with me to the tank. Stick a finger in.”

  “Aha,” says Clarence P. “Do not listen, Lads. Mr Moneybags is trying to tempt you and lead you into fishy waters. It is all tricks and fakery. There is no rhyme nor raisin to it, and we has no wish to take part in such a spectacle, sir. Unhand me and be off. We will be watchin’. One sign of fishiness and we will be down on it like a ton of bricks.”

  The lads laugh and begin to gather around Pancho. “Tiny tiddlers!” they grunt. They’re about to grab him, but he’s gone, weaving his way once more through the crowd.

  “Be strong, lads,” says Clarence P. “We is in one of the world’s dark, dark places. We is in the middle of the land of Rackanruwin. Watch and listen, and learn.”

  The lads peer at Pancho, at Stan, at the crowd, at the fish swimming sweetly in the illuminated tank.

  “One day, lads,” declares Clarence P., “all daftness will be drove out from the world. There’ll be no daft places like this, no daft people like these around us, no daft fishy tanks and no daft fishy goings-on.”

  “That’ll be good, boss,” says Alf.

  “It will,” agrees Clarence P.

  “So there’ll just be people like us?” says Doug.

  “Aye,” says Fred. “People what knows what’s what.”

  “Correct,” says Ted. “Undaft people what knows what’s what in a world what’s got no daftness in it.”

  “Well said, Ted,” says Clarence P. “I couldn’t of put it better meself.”

  For a lad that started off with hardly any family or frie
nds at all, our Stan’s doing pretty well as he stands waiting to dive into the tank. There’s Pancho, of course, weaving back and forth with the heavy velvet bag in his hand. There’s Dostoyevsky and Nitasha watching nervously and proudly from the front of the crowd. There’s the boar man, and the fang lady, and Tickle Peter, and Mr Smith, and Seabrook. There’s the people Stan sat by the fire with as he ate his spud, and all the kids he’s met, and all the folk that have waved and grinned at him and called out his name. And there’s a whole audience of other folk watching him and wishing him well.

  Meanwhile, let’s look back through the shadows to the potholed lane; and here they come, stumbling along hand in hand, the ones who loved him right from the start, the ones who must get here in time to see him perform: Annie and Ernie. They move towards the lights, towards the music and cries and laughter that echo in the air.

  “It’s a fairground, Ernie!” says Annie.

  “So it is,” says Ernie.

  “I love a fair,” says Annie. “And there was a time when you did too. Remember?”

  “I remember,” answers Ernie sadly, thinking of the fair that left the day Stan went away.

  Annie holds his hand tighter. “Used to be lovely, didn’t it?” she said. “When we were young ’uns. Spinning on the waltzer, playing hook-a-duck and winning prizes, getting our fortunes told by the gypsy.”

  “‘You will meet a young and lovely lass!’ That’s what the Gypsy said to me. And I did, and it was you!”

  “And she said I’d meet a tall and handsome man. And so I did, and it was you.”

  Ernie smiles, then sighs. “And look what I brought you to, my poor love.”

  “Never worry. It’ll turn out right,” says Annie.

  “Will it?” says Ernie.

  “Yes, it will,” says a voice from behind them. “As long as your hearts are good and true.”

  They turn, and Gypsy Rose is standing there, with the moonlight shining on her and the distant fairground lights flashing behind her. “Don’t worry,” she says softly. “I am no danger to you.”

  Annie steps closer to her.

  “My name is Gypsy Rose,” she tells them.

  “You’re her!” Annie exclaims. “The Gypsy Rose I met at the fair when I was just a girl. But you can’t be!”

  Gypsy Rose smiles. “No, I can’t possibly be,” she murmurs. “Can I? It must be a trick of the moonlight. Do you have silver with which to cross my palm?”

  “We’ve nothing but copper,” says Ernie.

  He’s looking closely at her as well: her face, her figure, the clothes she wears; he’s listening closely to her voice. “It is you,” he whispers. “But it can’t be you.”

  Gypsy Rose smiles again. “Let us say that the moonlight is your silver.” She opens her hand and lets the moonlight fall across her palm. “Thank you for it,” she says. “Now, open your hands and let me look.”

  She reaches out and takes their open hands. She tells Annie and Ernie that moonlight is the purest and most truth-telling light. They look down together at the complicated creases and cracks and bulges there.

  “Oh, you have been through difficult times,” says Gypsy Rose. “Times of trouble and loss and pain.” Her face falls and she groans in disappointment. She turns her eyes to Ernie’s face. “Oh, Ernest!” she sighs.

  “Me?” says Ernie.

  “You have not always been the man you should have been.”

  “But he’s a good man,” says Annie.

  “Is he? Can he be a good man when he has done what he has done?”

  “Yes, he can!” replies Annie. “And he has seen the errors of his ways.”

  “Oh, has he?”

  “Yes. He just turned a little bit … mad for a time. Didn’t you, Ernie?”

  Gypsy Rose watches him. “Well?” she says.

  “It’s true,” he says. “I was led astray. I led myself astray in the search for fame and fortune.”

  “There’s madness and there’s madness,” says Gypsy Rose. “There’s madness that does harm, but there’s also madness that does good.” She stares at their open palms again. “You are searching for something. Or for someone. Am I right?”

  “We had a boy,” says Annie. “A boy with eyes as clear as water and a heart as bright as the moon. Will we find him, Gypsy Rose?”

  “Remember him and look upon the moon,” says Gypsy Rose. “The moon burns brightest when it is filled with our yearning. Stare into the moon and call out with your hearts for your lost boy.”

  Annie and Ernie lift their eyes and stare and yearn, and they see the moon burn brighter. And just a few hundred yards away, their boy, Stan, steps out of the spotlight for a moment. He too stares up into the moon and yearns for his lost family, and the moon burns brighter still. And for a fleeting second they all see one another there, held within the moon’s bright disc, and they call out one another’s names.

  “Come to me!” whispers Stan. “Please come to me!”

  And Annie and Ernie say to Gypsy Rose, “Where will we find him?”

  But Gypsy Rose has gone, disappeared into the shadows and the darkness behind the light. So they take each other’s hand and stumble onwards, hurrying towards the fair. They pass between the caravans at the edge, and slip past the sideshows, and the tent that looks like the world, and the wrestling booth, and the Wild Boar Cookhouse, and they’re drawn towards the dense crowd at the heart of the fair, towards the gasps and laughter and the excited murmurings.

  They arrive at the edge of the crowd; they try to peer through; they stand on tiptoe.

  “What’s going on?” asks Annie.

  “Dunno,” says Ernie. “Can’t see, love.”

  Then they both see. There’s a boy in a cloak standing before a great illuminated fish tank. He’s lit by a spotlight.

  “It’s a boy,” says Annie.

  “It can’t be!” gasps Ernie.

  “No!”

  “It is!”

  “It is!”

  “Stan!” they call. “STAN!”

  But their voices are lost in the clamour of other voices that start to echo through the air.

  “Stan! Stan! Stan! Stan!”

  “What’s he going to do?” cries Ernie.

  The pair try to squirm through the people standing in front of them. “It’s our boy,” they keep saying. “Please let us through to our boy.”

  But their progress is slow. The people are packed in so tight.

  “STAN! What are you going to do?”

  “This is the moment of truth!” announces Pancho Pirelli.

  The crowd quietens.

  “You see before you,” says Pancho, “a boy who was raised by the shores of the Orinoco.”

  “We see what?” says Ernie.

  “The Orinoco?” says Annie.

  “Will this extraordinary boy dance with the piranhas?” says Pancho.

  “Will he what?” says Ernie.

  “Or will he be gobbled up before your very eyes?”

  “WHAT?” yells Annie.

  “WHAT?” yells Ernie.

  “STAN!” they yell together. “STAN! IT’S US!”

  But the crowd is agitated again. They’re muttering and shouting. They’re pushing closer to the tank. Annie and Ernie still can’t get through.

  “That’s our boy!” they cry. “Let us through to our boy!”

  And others around them are saying, “He’s just a lad. He’s just a skinny, scrawny little kid. How can he do a thing like this?”

  “He can’t!” say Annie and Ernie. “He’s just an ordinary little lovely lad.”

  Inside himself, Stan isn’t skinny or scrawny any more. He’s brave and strong and poised at the edge of something marvellous. He takes off his cloak. He starts to climb the ladder. The fish swim upwards. Stan pauses at the top. He lowers his goggles. He raises his hand to wave and the crowd turns silent except for a pair of horrified voices.

  “STAN! STAN! WHAT ON EARTH ARE YOU DOING?”

  Stan stops dead an
d listens. He lifts the goggles and scans the crowd. And he sees them, waving desperately at him, trying to make their way to him. They call his name again and again. His heart is filled with joy.

  “Auntie Annie!” he shouts. “Uncle Ernie!”

  “DON’T DO IT, SON!” yells Annie.

  “GET DOWN, STAN!” yells Ernie.

  Stan laughs. He pulls the goggles down again. “Don’t worry!” he calls. “I’m doing it for you!”

  “We don’t want you to do it for us!” yells Ernie.

  Stan laughs again. “Watch!” he calls.

  He spreads his arms wide. He leaps, brings his hands together, curves forward and down, and makes a perfect dive into the piranha tank.

  The fish part, as if they’re welcoming one of their own into the shoal. They swim downwards with Stan as he completes his dive. They swim upwards as he kicks himself up from the bottom of the tank. They behave exactly as if it’s Pancho Pirelli or Pedro Perdito in the water with them. Stan spins, and they swirl in perfect order around him. He hangs still at the centre of the tank and they separate into perfect groups on either side of him. He sways and they sway. He dances and they dance. He swims to the surface, gulps air, and swims back down again. He gazes out through his goggles and they gaze back at him.

  O my companions, he whispers inside himself.

  O our companion, he hears.

  He tumbles and somersaults and twists and is at home in there with the lethal piranhas in the floodlit water.

  The people watch in wonder. They gather closer, closer. They’ll see this in their dreams for ever more. And Ernie and Annie are mesmerized, their fears turning to excitement and joy.

  “Look what he can do!” they tell each other. “That’s Stan,” they tell the people all around them. “That’s our precious boy!”

  “Oh, wouldn’t his mum and dad have been proud?” breathes Annie.

  Stan swims upwards and gulps air again. He swims back down again. He thinks of the thirteenth fish and the thirteenth fish’s companions. He has a vision of a tin marked Potts’s Gorgeous Glittering Goldfish. He sees the tin opening, the lid curling back, and a dozen goldfish pour out from it, in a burst of brilliant flickering gold, to swim with him and the piranhas. And as they swim there in perfect order, the savage piranhas, the timid goldfish and the scrawny boy, Stan looks out through the wall of the tank and sees his friends and his family, all blending into one: Dostoyevsky and Nitasha, Pancho Pirelli, Auntie Annie and Uncle Ernie.