Brenda the Tadpole
It was midday and the sky was blue from side to side. The sun shone down into the pond through a colander of leaves. Two moorhens swam around, leaving ripples in the water that carried the light into dark corners at the water’s edge. A frog blinked and slipped into the water with a soft splash. Dragonflies, woken by the warmth, flew backwards and forwards along their territories meeting each other with a fierce clattering of wings before flying on again. Birds came to the edge of the pool to drink and on its surface pondskaters dented the water as they hunted for food.
Below the water was another world, a world hardly touched by wind or rain, a complete universe of tiny jungles and fearsome creatures. Great diving beetles hunted through the roots of waterlilies like lions. Newts paddled through the pondweed like tiny dinosaurs in slow motion, and in a shallow sunlit corner, new tadpoles hung on clouds of soft green slime.
‘Do you like being a tadpole?’ said a young tadpole called Susan.
‘How do you mean?’ said one of her sisters.
‘You know,’ said Susan, ‘would you rather be a tadpole or something else?’
‘Like what?’
‘I dunno,’ said Susan.
‘A filing cabinet,’ said a tadpole called Doreen.
‘What’s a filing cabinet?’ said Susan.
‘It’s that brown rusty thing down there in the mud,’ said Doreen.
‘You don’t half talk a load of rubbish, you lot,’ said a tadpole called Brenda.
‘Oh yes,’ said Susan. ‘And what amazingly important things have you got to talk about then?’
‘Well, what about green slime?’ said Brenda. ‘That’s important.’
‘Go on then,’ sneered Doreen, ‘talk about green slime.’
‘Well, it’s nice isn’t it?’ said Brenda.
‘Is that it?’ said Susan.
‘Er, yes,’ said Brenda.
‘Great,’ said Susan. ‘That’s really important. Green slime’s nice. That’s brilliant.’
‘Well, what about our mummy,’ said Brenda. ‘Why haven’t we got a mummy?’
Doreen and Susan and the other tadpoles looked awkward and confused. It was midday and the sun was as high as it could be in the sky. Bright light shone down into the pond, in some places reaching right down to the mud at the bottom. All the tadpoles wriggled nervously in the sun’s warmth.
‘Of course we’ve got a mummy,’ said Susan. ‘We wouldn’t be here if we hadn’t had a mummy.’
‘The waterlilies haven’t got a mummy,’ said Doreen.
‘They don’t count,’ said Susan. ‘They’re plants.’
‘Maybe that’s what we are,’ said Doreen. ‘Plants.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Brenda. ‘We’re animals and as far as I can see, we haven’t got a mummy.’
‘We must have,’ said Susan.
‘All right,’ said Brenda, ‘where is she?’
‘Maybe she’s not in the pond,’ said Susan.
‘She’d have to be,’ said Brenda. ‘We can’t leave the water, can we?’
The others agreed she was right and so a search was organised. All eighty-seven tadpoles swam round the pond searching for the giant tadpole that would be their mother. An hour later the seventy-four that hadn’t been eaten gathered together in the cloud of green slime.
‘Well,’ said Brenda, ‘has anyone seen our mummy?’
‘No,’ said everyone.
‘Me neither,’ said Brenda.
‘What does our she look like?’ asked Doreen.
‘Like us only bigger, stupid,’ said Susan. ‘A giant tadpole.’
‘How beautiful,’ said Doreen, all dreamy eyed. ‘A huge vision of smooth black loveliness.’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Brenda impatiently. ‘Has anyone seen her?’
‘No,’ said everyone.
They had seen horrid wriggling things with sharp pincers that had chased them out of the shadows. They had seen shiny black beetles swimming through the tiny seas carrying bubbles of air under their wings. They had seen dragonflies creeping down into the water to lay their eggs, and they had seen a giant green toad all covered in bumps and warts lumbering through the bulrushes. In every place there was life, some so small it could not be seen, but nowhere was there a sign of the giant tadpole that would be their mother.
‘Apart from us everything else in this pond is ugly,’ said Doreen.
‘Especially the toad,’ said Susan.
‘Yuk,’ said Brenda. ‘I don’t even want to talk about that disgusting thing, all green and warty.’
‘Yeah,’ said Susan, ‘horrid gherkin face.’
The summer moved slowly on. The giant flowers on the waterlilies opened wide and turned their hearts towards the sun. The bulrushes grew taller and taller, casting their shadows longer and longer across the pond and out onto the grass. All day long the air was filled with a haze of flies. Swallows dived down between the trees catching the flies and dipping their heads in the smooth water. The garden grew fat and lazy. Animals dozed in the midsummer heat of July and those that did move did so with slow deliberation and only in the cool of evening. Under the midday sky, flowers drooped and trickled their pollen into the soft air. It seemed as if everything had slowed down to a complete standstill and the world would stay this way forever.
In the pond life slowed down too. For weeks the sun had shone down into the clear water until it was as tender as a warm bath. Even the darkest shadows under the lilies were warm, and great clouds of tiny water-fleas swam everywhere. The moorhens’ eggs had hatched and as soon as their chicks had been old enough their parents had taken them back to the canal.
In the forest of slime things were happening to the tadpoles. Their soft black coats of velvet had changed to speckled brown and green and strange things were happening inside them.
‘I don’t half feel weird,’ said Susan.
‘How do you mean?’ said Brenda.
‘Well, sort of lumpy,’ said Susan.
‘Do you keep thinking about climbing out of the water?’ said Doreen.
‘Yes, I do. Do you?’ said Susan.
‘Yes,’ said Doreen.
‘Maybe we’re not well,’ said Brenda.
‘Of course,’ said Susan. ‘That’s it. That’s why we’re all off-colour.’
‘I think we’ve got mumps,’ said Doreen. ‘That’s why we all feel lumpy.’
‘It’s more than lumps,’ said Brenda wriggling out from the leaf she’d been hiding behind. ‘It’s legs.’
The other tadpoles looked at her and sure enough she had two tiny legs growing out of her. She had shrunk too. Where there had been a long elegant tail Brenda now had a dumpy stump.
‘Oh, that’s awful,’ said Susan backing away from Brenda. The others did the same and when Brenda stopped nibbling slime and ate a water-flea they all swam off feeling quite sick. But one by one they grew legs and not just two but four, and one by one their tails slowly disappeared and the strangest thing of all was that they all thought they looked rather good.
‘My back legs are so big that I can jump right out of the water,’ said Doreen.
‘My back legs are so big that I can jump right over a mouse,’ said Susan.
‘Jumping’s not so special,’ said Brenda. ‘Anyone can do that.’
‘Oh yes?’ said Susan. ‘And what amazingly special thing have you got then?’
‘Warts,’ said Brenda. ‘Great big wrinkly green warts.’
‘So’ve I,’ said Doreen. ‘So’ve I.’
‘We all have,’ said Susan. ‘We’re all as warty as toads.’
There was a long silence. The tadpoles stood in the mud staring at their feet. They looked at each other and realised that they weren’t tadpoles any more. They looked at the peaceful green toad all covered in bumps and warts lumbering through the bulrushes, the quiet brown-eyed giant they had called gherkin face, and realised that she was the mother they had all been looking for.
‘You know,’ said Brenda later that day when they had all crawled under a big wet stone. ‘When you look at her closely, she really is incredibly beautiful.’
