company fish

But as they lowered their glasses and squashed the fiery drink over the back of their tongues, the four men from Global Cleanup saw an impossible thing. They saw Mr Wells’s face go purplish, like a ripe fig. His glass tumbled and rolled over the table, and at the same time he too flopped forward, chest down over the cheque he had been admiring. Four chairs fell over backwards as the men scrambled to their feet. Was Mr Wells having a heart attack? Or a fit? No, this was no longer Mr Wells.

‘My God!’ cried the Global Cleanup Sales Chief. ‘It’s a catfish! And what a catfish!’

All four stared at the broad, blunt, purplish, glistening head sticking out of Mr Wells’s burst white collar. They saw the tiny eyes, which looked like buttons of the same stuff as the skin. And they saw the tentacles writhing round its lips.

Then it lurched, with a ponderous, coiling fling, and there was the whole fish, still inside Mr Wells’s shirt and jacket, lying across the table. His trousers had fallen off, with his shoes and socks. It slammed its tail down hard and gaped two or three times.

One of the four panicked and ran straight at the wall which stopped him with a bang. Then he tried to climb the wall, bringing down a long picture of the factory on top of himself.

At the same time, the other three became aware of screams, shouts, wild commotion in the offices along the corridor. The door clashed open and Mr Wells’s secretary ran in. She was escaping from something. She did not try to explain, she simply screamed. Beyond her, two big sea lions wrestled to get past each other, away down the corridor, bellowing: ‘Woink! Woink!’

Then the secretary saw the catfish and with a wail collapsed on the floor, where she huddled sobbing.

The four men dashed out but then halted at the door. Screaming and sobbing secretaries ran in all directions. Junior executives with staring eyes and strange, wild spiky hair shouted at each other. One embraced a writhing sturgeon the size of himself. He was a man with a cool head:

‘This is Mr Plotetzky!’ he cried. ‘We have to get him to water. Help me get him to the river.’

A first-class idea! The four men from Global Cleanup grasped what was happening. ‘Explanations later!’ cried one. ‘Get Mr Wells to the river.’ They crushed back through the office doorway as a knot of enormous eels burst out from one office and rolled down the corridor, lashing tails.

All over the building, staff were collapsing on to flippers and thrashing about, knocking over waste-paper baskets and filing cabinets.

‘To the river!’ was the cry. ‘Janice! Daphne! Grab a tail will you!’ ‘Jane, can you manage?’ ‘Help, Joanna, help!’

Pandemonium is a poor word for that uproar and confusion. Glass shattered from doors, office furniture staggered and toppled, as slim secretaries struggled with man-sized barbels, carp, salmon and pike, tripping over the litter of empty shoes and tangling, empty trousers. The seals, giant frogs, colossal water beetles helped themselves, and so did the big eels. The factory’s entire office personnel lurched, flopped, thumped and slithered towards the exit. ‘To the river! To the river!’