All Your Crabs in One Bucket

Nineteen crabs, and every one of them had a name.

'That's Gary,' said Kit, pointing into his bucket. 'That's Gary Two. That's Small Gary. And that one's Admiral Pebble, and he's in charge.'

The rock pools below the harbour wall smelled of salt and old rope and something green that had been lying in the sun too long. The tide was a long way out. Weed lay flat over the rocks like wet hair, and every pool held its own small piece of sky. Asha crouched beside one and watched a shrimp, clear as a fingernail, flick under a ledge and vanish.

Kit had brought one bucket. When Asha had asked him how many he'd bring, he had looked at her as if she'd asked how many heads he wanted. It was red, with a crack by the handle mended in Dad's black tape, and he had set it on a flat rock at the edge of the biggest pool, where he could admire it between catches.

Jonah had four. They were small and blue, a pound each from Penny's Pocket, and he had dotted them along the rocks in a wobbly line, a few crabs in each. He was wearing his cagoule, of course. It was sunny.

Ravi sat on the bottom step of the harbour wall with his hood up and his phone, for once, in his pocket. Above him, on the wall itself, Mrs Oddie sat on a folded tartan blanket with a flask of tea and the tide table open on her knee. She had not said a word about buckets. She was just watching.

The wave came from nowhere.

It was not a big one. It slid in over the rocks with a lazy, slapping sound, the first one with the turn of the tide behind it, and it reached the red bucket and simply pushed.

The bucket went over. Nineteen crabs hit the rock at once and ran in nineteen directions, sideways, scuttling, into weed and cracks and the deep green dark of the pool.

Kit stared at the empty bucket rolling gently in the foam.

'Admiral Pebble,' he said faintly. 'Come back. You're in charge.'

Asha looked along the rocks at Jonah's line of blue buckets.

The wave had reached them too. It had slopped round the first one and rocked it, so that seawater ran over the rim and two crabs went with it, down a crack and gone. The other three buckets sat higher up, on a ridge of barnacles, and the water had only licked at their bottoms before sliding back. They hadn't even wobbled.

Jonah crouched and counted. He did it properly, tapping the side of each bucket with one finger.

'Four,' he said. 'Three. Five. And that one's got two now, instead of four.' He sat back on his heels. 'Fourteen. Twelve left.'

'You lost two,' said Asha.

'I lost two.' He didn't sound very upset. He dropped a scrap of dog biscuit into the nearest bucket, which was a thing Asha decided not to ask about.

Kit had climbed onto a rock a little way off, a round grey one with a smear of yellow lichen on top, and sat on it with his knees up and his back to everybody. He had taken his sandwich out of his coat pocket. It was cheese and pickle, and at some point that morning it had been sat on, and then dipped in a pool while he reached for Gary Two. The bread had gone the colour of porridge.

He ate it anyway. Slowly. Staring at the sea as if the sea owed him money.

'You all right, Kit?' Ravi called from the step.

'No.'

'Want a crisp?'

'No.' A pause. 'What flavour?'

Ravi held up the packet. Kit turned his head just far enough to see it, then turned back to the water.

'I'm not talking to the sea,' he said, with his mouth full. 'And I'm not talking to buckets.'

Up on the wall, Mrs Oddie unscrewed the cup from her flask and poured a little tea into it. The steam curled away towards the lighthouse. She looked at the red bucket rolling in the shallows, then along at Jonah's three dry blue ones, and then, for rather a long time, at Asha.

Asha climbed the slimy steps and sat on the corner of the tartan blanket. It was damp. Mrs Oddie didn't seem to notice.

'Go on, then,' said Mrs Oddie.

'Don't keep all your crabs in one bucket,' said Asha. 'So I should have more buckets. I've already got five companies.'

'Five buckets. And how many companies do you suppose there are in the world, that sell pieces of themselves?'

Asha chewed the end of her plait. 'Fifty?'

'Thousands, dear. Tens of thousands.' Mrs Oddie sipped her tea. 'You can't carry tens of thousands of buckets. You'd need a lorry.'

Down on the rocks, Jonah was moving a blue bucket further up the ridge. Kit was still eating porridge.

'You know the pick-and-mix at Penny's Pocket?' said Mrs Oddie.

Asha did. It cost £1.20 for a hundred grams, and Kit always filled his bag with nothing but cola bottles, then felt sick by Harbour Lane.

'Suppose someone made you a bag with one of everything,' said Mrs Oddie. 'One cola bottle. One shrimp. One of those dreadful liquorice things. If the cola bottles turn out to be stale, you've only got one. That's what they call an index fund. A bag with a tiny piece of nearly every company in it.'

'So it can't go wrong.'

'It can go down. The whole sweet shop can have a bad week.' She tapped the tide table. 'But no single sweet can sink you.'

Asha thought about that. It was better than buckets. It was also a bit boring, which she suspected was the point.

'There's a catch,' said Mrs Oddie. 'Somebody has to make the bag, and they charge for it. That's the fee. Think of it as a hole in the bottom. A good bag has a pinprick, and you lose one sweet in a thousand each year. A bad one has a hole you could post a crab through.'

'Why would anyone buy the bag with the big hole?'

'Because the man selling it,' said Mrs Oddie, 'usually has a very nice coat.'

From the grey rock, without turning round, Kit said, 'I'd still pick all cola bottles.'

Mrs Oddie made the new list that evening, after closing, in her careful bank-clerk handwriting on the back of a seed catalogue. It had one line on it.

THE WHOLE SWEET SHOP FUND (pretend). Thousands of companies. Fee: a pinprick.

'You put the whole thousand in,' she said, sliding it under Barnaby. 'All of it. Then you leave it alone, which is the hard part.'

Asha wrote it in the paying-in book.

Sat 19 Apr: Whole Sweet Shop Fund £1,000.00

Then she left it alone. This was harder than it sounded. On Tuesday the man on the radio in Dad's van said something about oil prices in a worried voice, and on Wednesday the headline in the paper said SHARES SLIDE, smaller than MARKETS TUMBLE but with the same sort of face. Asha read it twice. She did not run across Gull Street in her pyjama top. She went to school and did fractions with Mr Achebe and only thought about it four times.

On Saturday Mrs Oddie lifted Barnaby's corner and slid out the list. Dividend lay across the counter on top of the seed catalogue. He moved one ear.

Sat 26 Apr: Whole Sweet Shop Fund £978.00
Down £22.00

Asha looked at it for a long moment. Then she turned back three pages to February, to her five buckets.

Sat 22 Feb: £860.00
Down £140.00

'Same sort of week,' said Mrs Oddie. 'Different bag.'

Twenty-two pounds was still twenty-two pounds. It still made a small cold feeling in her stomach. But it was the size of a wave that licks the bottom of a bucket. It wasn't the kind that knocks it over.

'It's boring,' said Asha.

'Yes,' said Mrs Oddie, pleased. 'Barnaby, she's got it.'

The orange tree had no buds. Asha checked twice.

When she got home, Kit was waiting on the stairs in his seagull pyjamas, though it was four in the afternoon. He had a leaflet from Penny's Pocket folded very small in one hand. NEW! GOLDEN GULL SERIES!

'Asha,' he said. 'Hypothetically. How much would you lend me?'