Throwback Thursday! ‘The Seven Swans: The Sword and Pikestaff Mystery’ by Mel Anastasiou

Unshaven, unwashed, and sixty years old, I stood on the canal bank with my toothbrush in my hand. The sun was about to rise above the willow trees that flanked the canal and the little river that ran parallel to it. Behind me stood the derelict Seven Swans public house. I had in the past few days lost my wife Angelica to my best friend, but the Hertfordshire pub, with its mouldering beams and rubble-strewn interior, was mine now. It was just about all I had in my falling-to-bits life.  

I walked a quarter of a mile down the canal path looking for a place to cross to the river to splash water on my face and brush my teeth. I wouldn’t wish canal water on  my worst enemy or best friend — the same person, by the way. A timber lock gate afforded me a crossing. With care for my back, I hunkered down in the ferns and grasses at the river’s edge and dipped my toothbrush into the river water. I brushed my teeth without toothpaste and spat into the ferns. I looked at my reflection as the water stilled. 

“Bloody hell.” 

A tiny speckled fish skittered towards me beneath the surface of the water. I could almost have touched it, and indeed I reached out with the end of my toothbrush to connect with another living soul in my rough Hertfordshire paradise.

It darted just out of my reach.

“Do you see that willow tree, my boy?” I asked the fish. “The one by the rowans? To my right, on your left.”

It rippled its dorsal fin towards me.

I leaned over the water, my shadow nearing him. “There’s a great nasty heron in there, and it’s got his eye on one of us. Better find a rock.”

Unfishlike, it stayed put, even when my shadow covered it. The willow tree on my right rattled and rocked as the heron burst forth. I wiggled the handle end of my toothbrush in the water and the fish scuttled off. The heron pumped mighty wings and sailed away over the treetops.  

My first thought was that it was a shame that no great big toothbrush, appropriately sized for the hand of Fate, would dip down and stir my existence into happier lines. On the other hand, I was tired of being rescued — by Al Anon, by Angelica’s parents, by Angelica herself from time to time. It felt good to rescue somebody else, to be the hero, even if only to a speckled fish.