The Paper Cups on the Lifeguard Chair

The town pool at Harlow Gate opened every morning at seven. Every morning Bashir climbed the tall white lifeguard chair at the deep end and checked the water. For six years it had been the same. The surface had stayed level with the tiles. The lane ropes had floated in straight lines, and the only drama had been the occasional lost swimming cap.

Then, one Tuesday in June, the water was lower.

It was not much. A thin dry band of tile, about the width of a hand, ran above the waterline. Bashir stared at it from his chair. On Wednesday, the band was wider. By Friday, there was a clear step between the pool and the edge, and the swimmers had started to notice.

"Is it supposed to look like that?" asked a boy, dangling his feet over the side.

"Absolutely," said Bashir, who had no idea.

On Monday morning he called the council, and the council sent Wanjiru.

She arrived in a van full of pipes and gauges, wearing orange overalls. She had the expression of a person who had solved every kind of leak and expected this one to be no different. She walked once around the pool, tapped the walls with a small hammer and listened to the pumps for a long time.

"Nothing is leaking," she said at last. "The drains are sealed. The filter room is dry. Evaporation might take a centimetre in a hot week, not twelve."

"Then where is it going?"

"That is the interesting part." She wrote a number on her clipboard and underlined it twice. "I will run a pressure test tonight. If the water is still dropping tomorrow, I will need to open the floor."

Bashir winced. The pool had only just been repainted, and the council had been telling him about the budget for months.

He locked up at eight. Wanjiru stayed behind, determined to catch the pool in the act. She sat on an upturned crate by the filter room with a flask of soup and a torch. Bashir meant to go home, but at the door he remembered that he had left his water bottle on the chair. He went back to fetch it.

The pool hall was dim and very quiet. The only light came from the underwater lamps, which painted wavering patterns on the ceiling. At the top of the chair, where the stack of paper cups usually stood next to the first-aid box, something was moving.

It was small, no larger than a cat, and almost the same colour as the water. Its arms were thin and long, its fingers were webbed, and its eyes were two round points of silver. It held a paper cup in both hands. As Bashir watched, it dipped the cup into the pool, lifted it and drank with a long, happy gulp. Then it did it again.

Bashir did not shout. He did not move. After a minute he heard footsteps, and Wanjiru's torch swung through the doorway.

"I found a tiny crack in the pump housing, but it's not—" She stopped.

The creature lowered its cup and looked at them. It was not frightened. It simply seemed embarrassed, like a customer caught trying a free sample twice.

"Do not tell me," Wanjiru said slowly, "that I need to put that in my report."

"I don't think anyone would believe it," said Bashir. "But look at the cups."

The stack on the chair, normally forty cups high, had shrunk to six. The rest lay in a ring around the creature's feet, each one empty and dry on the inside.

Wanjiru sat down on the bottom step of the chair. She was a practical person, and practical people always begin with the smallest fact. "It is drinking the pool," she said. "A cup at a time. That is the whole leak."

"Why here?"

"This pool was built over a spring. I saw it on the old survey." She pointed toward the car park. "They sealed the spring with concrete forty years ago. Maybe it has been thirsty ever since, and nobody noticed until the water table dropped."

The creature made a small sound, somewhere between a hiccup and a bell, and set its cup down very politely.

Bashir looked at the chair, then at the tap by the first-aid box. Then he thought of the long row of cups on the shelf in the staff room. A plan came to him, plain and almost boring, and he knew right away that it would work.

"We cannot stop it from drinking," he said. "But we can give it somewhere else to drink from."

It took them an hour. Bashir carried cups from the staff room in stacks of fifty. Wanjiru filled them from the tap with a jug, working in her overalls like a woman at a very strange party. They lined up two hundred cups along the edge of the pool, on the steps of the chair and on the diving platform. Each one was full of clear tap water. The creature followed them from cup to cup, silent and delighted, touching the rims with one finger as if it were counting.

When the last cup was filled, it took the first one, tipped its head back and drank. Then the second. Then the third. It moved down the line without hurrying, and the level of the pool did not move at all.

"It will need a refill every night," said Wanjiru, rubbing her back. "I can fit a small tank under the chair, with a tap at the bottom. Nothing too obvious. The council will think it is a drinking fountain."

"They'll be very proud of me," said Bashir. "A lifeguard with an excellent drinking fountain."

The creature finished the line, set the last cup carefully upright and slid over the edge of the pool without a splash. For a moment a pair of silver eyes shone under the surface, and then they were gone.

Wanjiru collected her hammer, her flask and her clipboard, and crossed out the underlined number. On her way to the door she stopped and looked back at the glittering pool, the lines of paper cups and the tall white chair.

"Next time," she said, "tell it to ask for a refill before it empties the deep end."