Free Quilt by Nicholas Royle

paradise-haunter, tip-haulage expert, bleacher and scrubber. She is also, this afternoon, chief tea-maker and sommelier of wine, at least until others offer to assist, while the son is still busied with taxiing folk up from the church and overseeing the arrangement of parking. Some people are too nervous to address a word to her, others dutifully say hello and ask where she comes from and what her plans are. She is staying a couple more days, she explains, then must return to her own country.
    With so many strange friends and relations the event is at first, not surprisingly, muted. She pictures a specialist section in a music-store, a selection of soundtracks from funeral receptions from different countries, the English version impressive for the quietness of its opening. Bodies shuffle. Some file through to the kitchen, otherscontend with the dining room. No one can stand in the centre. Voices operate at little more than whispers, amid clinks of teacups and teaspoons, and a furtive crunching of biscuit. But as the scene progresses, it attains a kind of macabre raucousness, rising to crescendos absurdly at odds with the way it began.
    And for him the only thing is to let all the visitors see the pool, hardly difficult as it engulfs almost the entire space of the first room you enter as you come into the house. The surprise on some people’s faces seems diplomatically slight. With others the intake of breath is audible. Of course he misses so much of this initial impact because he is busy with sorting out parking in the drive and taxiing people up the lane, but the sheer size and scale of the equipment alone is evidently a cause for amazement. The aquarium fits into the oak-beamed room with space for a comfortable walkway around, with access to kitchen and drawing room as well as into the stairwell to the upper floor. The table with drinks and food has been set up in the one doorless corner. It is possible to hold a cup and saucer of tea or coffee or a glass of wine close to you and someone else pass without too much inconvenience, but still for at least a handful of guests it must be difficult not to sense that the gangways around the pool are like the space in the earth around a coffin.
    – Well I never, just look at the scale of the thing!
    – Did you know he was interested in aquaculture?
    It’s bigger than the sort of pond children might dream of having in their garden.
    – What’s in it anyhow?
    – Looks like a couple of big rocks and a load of white gravel.
    – Is there something in it?
    – He’s taking after his father, wouldn’t you say? His dad always was making things and installing them somewhere or other.
    – Like something out of Heath Robinson, to be sure.
    – Used to drive his dear old wife round the twist, with that filtering system he set up for the drinking water supply. You’ve seen that, haven’t you? Take a stroll into the kitchen and have a look, it’s still there. Lord knows how many filters and containers he used to purify the water come from a spring in the field above the house.
    – Very father like son, wouldn’t you say?
    – Only look at the size of it!
    – Are there fish in it?
    – What’s this all about?
    Gradually his own voice takes up a place in the room and attention is more sharply focused on the remarkable tank.
    – No, it’s not empty. They are rays, the son explains. There are four of them. They are Potamotrygon motoro freshwater stingrays, from South America.
    His aunt is at him, his mother’s youngest sister, accusing him of being mad as a hatter. He is smiling, speaking quietly, but everyone is listening now.
    – You used to have an aquarium yourself, he reminds his aunt. Though I admit this is something of a departure.
    – Freaky if you ask me, says the aunt, not one to mince her words, and mildly guilty too at the recollection of her own late husband’s insistence on keeping aquarium fish and the palaver of feeding them and cleaning out the water, ensuring