Undo

When I was small, my dad ran a pub for a few years. It was a pretty standard country pub. Open 10am to 10pm Monday to Saturday, 12pm to 2pm and 5pm to 7pm on Sundays. There was a wide verandah around the first floor, shading the footpath. Three doors facing the street - one for the barber's shop, one for the pub's main hallway, the last for the public bar.

The public bar was tiled and faced the street, the only women who entered it were barmaids. Fourex on tap, rum and gin in the optics. There were bottles of sherry and port and a shelf of ageing Bols liqueurs - mostly curdling advocaat - reflecting into a drunken, smoky eternity in the spotted bevelled mirror against the wall.

The bar had a shiny brass footrail with small metal bins that tucked in under the rail, snug to the bar. I used to have to fill them with sand. By closing time, they were filled with fag ends and plugs of rollie tobacco, burnt matches and scrunched up Tally-Ho papers. The detritus of the day's session.

The bar smelt good early in the morning, after mum or dad had hosed it out and had run over the tiles with a mop doused in neat Pine-O-Kleen.

To get to the lounge - which was where the ladies took their gin and squash - you walked down the ancient, crackly lino in the main hallway, past the barber's, skirted the wide silky oak stairs and through a multi-coloured plastic strip curtain.

Beyond the lounge, the pool table and the jukebox was the kitchen - a massive room with a huge wood-fired range, a long set of presses filled with crockery and cutlery, a large wooden table, scrubbed white from almost a century of use, and a walk-in pantry.

The pantry was cool and dark. Shelves up to the ceiling. On the floor stood drums of flour and sugar, rolled oats and a bin for stale bread (we made our own breadcrumbs with a mincer - a fun but dangerous job). Above the drums was a shelf with smaller containers - bakelite canisters for loose-leaf tea and tea bags, coffee powder, cereals and the like. Next to them there were packets and packets of biscuits for smoke-oh.

In the corner of the pantry, there was a tower of pink and yellow wafers for puddings. Neon bright, cardboard wafers. Something to add a touch of city slicker sophistication to a bowl of ice cream.

Mum, dad and I lived upstairs. Mum and dad's room seemed massive. It was our living room and their bedroom, all in one. It had French doors opening out on to the verandah, overlooking the main street. Dad's aquarium stood next to the doors, near the telly and the old sofa.

He had goldfish - a couple of black, frilly-finned, boggle-eyed beauties, some larger orange versions of the same and a few standard goldfish. They had a pirate's chest, a bare-breasted mermaid, a tiny underwater castle and a diver to keep them company. It looked like a good life.

If mum and dad were busy with the pub and my grandad couldn't take me, or it was after kindy hours or I wasn't at my cousins' place, tied to a tree in a game of Cowboys and Indians (I was the youngest and the smallest, I was always the Indian), I'd perch next to the aquarium and watch the fish. I'd take a pile of books, drag an old bar stool next to the aquarium and sit with my books, as close as I could. I thought the fish might like the company.

One afternoon my grandad collected me from kindy. We'd had our lunch together with Aunty Vi, the pub cook - a sandwich made from doorsteps of fresh white loaf and roast beef from that day's counter lunches. I was shooed upstairs to have an afternoon camp while my grandad and Aunty Vi went out to the back verandah for a smoke and a chat over mugs of stewed milky tea.

I climbed the main stairs up to mum and dad's room - it always seemed to take an age to go upstairs. It was easier to go down. If there wasn't a grown-up about, you could slide down the bannisters.

I went in to their room - it was a hot afternoon, I wasn't sleepy at all. I pulled my bar stool over to the tank and looked at the fish. I wiggled my fingers in the water and the fish came swimming up, thinking there were fresh flakes on offer. They suckered at my finger tips. Poor things, they never had Aunty Vi's roast beef sandwiches and sarsparilla cordial for lunch, they had fish flakes. Boring.

I sat for a little while, thinking about the food I ate and the food the fish ate. It didn't really seem fair. Our dogs got bones and the offcuts from the sides of beef my uncles cut up for freezing. The cats got liver and kidneys and bowls of hot, frothy milk, fresh from the dairy cows. The hens ate like feathered royalty - chook mash as well as potato peels and tea leaves, carrot skins and bits of beetroot. Even the canary and the budgies got a break from bird seed - pieces of apple, a carrot, some celery.

The fish needed a treat. They had to have a treat.

I took off down the back stairs to the kitchen. My grandfather and Aunty Vi didn't notice me. I crept into the kitchen through the back door. The last of the beef stood on a carving dish, cooling. No, beef was no good, the fish had no teeth. They wouldn't be able to chew it.

I walked into the pantry and looked around. Tea? No, that would be silly. Sugar was definitely out as well. Milk arrowroot biscuits might work, but I knew Aunty Vi counted the packets and would notice if one went missing. I turned and saw the wafers.

Perfect.

I grabbed a packet and scooted back up the stairs.

I remember opening the packet and laying the wafers on the surface of the water. Yellow, pink, yellow, pink. It looked pretty. The fish swam up to investigate.

Then the dye in the wafers started leaching into the water. Little poisonous curlicues of yellow and pink spinning lazily in the water, fanning out like filigree. I knelt on the bar stool, my stomach knotting and churning, my eyes prickly hot with tears. I tried to scoop the soggy, washed-out wafers from the tank, but they fell apart in my hands.

One by one, the fish started to float upwards.

I killed them. I killed them all.