Leontyne (23 page)

I strolled round to the harbour master's office and was invited to visit the works at the end of the canal where they were putting the finishing touches to one of the vast locks. I climbed down into the lock which was completely empty and found myself one hundred feet below the top. At one end of the lock were a number of small furry bodies spreadeagled on the floor. They were voles which had probably been making their journey along their accustomed routes and had fallen into this vast hole by mistake and perished.

This vast project, linking the North Sea to the Black Sea, through linking the Rhine to the Danube, has been under construction for many years and is now due to open in 1992. The political problems that made the Germans fear that the Eastern Bloc countries would dominate the freight rates of Europe if they let them pass through the canal and their country have largely disappeared, and the opposition of the Green parties has been to some extent silenced, so perhaps this time a project might open when the authorities say it will. The canal requires a vast amount of high-level water to replenish it when the huge locks are opened and shut and so two immense artificial lakes have been created on an arid plateau nearby. This source of water is sufficent to generate enough electrical power not only to pay for the running of the canal but over the years it will also pay for a large part of the construction cost of the canal. Each time the locks are opened only 40 per cent of the water is lost to the next level: the remaining 60 per cent is pumped into huge holding tanks ready for the next ship to pass through.

I was pleased to learn from the people showing me round that the Green Party had forced them to make some concessions for having driven this vast scar through one of the most beautiful parts of Europe. They showed me some ponds beside the canal which they said were resting places for ducks. To my untrained eye they looked just like lay-bys on
main roads. I suppose that in fifty years' time, when the countryside has healed up a bit, this method of moving huge quantities of heavy merchandise will be a great deal better for the environment than moving it by road or rail, but at the moment it is a matter of faith to be able to visualize the finished product.

All the earth-moving equipment used in the construction work is enormous, and on the sector they were excavating when I was there they had built a substantial hill about half a mile from the canal: so substantial that the day after my visit, there was a heavy rainfall and thirty million cubic metres of mud and stones slipped like a vast lake of custard into the valley below. The sides of the canal were made with stones and nuggets of concrete over which was sprayed liquid concrete. On top of that were placed wire netting and more liquid concrete. The final stage was large aggregate and asphalt placed on the sloping sides. Imagine how it annoyed the construction company to have to stop and make a dent in this orderly progress to construct a lay-by for ducks.

The day came for the lift and we took the boats from where we had moored to their appointed place – only to find it occupied by a German barge which had to load a cargo of nuclear-reactor parts which had been brought by heavy lorry from Austria, and were to be shipped to Rotterdam by barge and then to who knew where. The skipper explained that there was a problem: one of the bridges under construction that we had passed under near Würzburg had collapsed, killing a number of workmen, and the river was closed to all traffic until further notice. No one knew how long that might be. His contract was only for delivery of the goods so if he could not get through he would lose the work, which had naturally made him rather glum. The cranes and the heavy lorries were assembling and very soon there was a large group of people trying to sort things out. The drivers of the heavy lorries from Austria wanted to go home but could not because they could not unload their crates. The two lorries
that had come to carry the boats off could not be loaded because the German barge was in the place where the cranes had been set up. Finally a small red car arrived full of fairly disreputable men who appeared to be the agents for the nuclear parts and told the barge to move while we were loaded.

I must say that I was extremely anxious when the barge was lifted out of the water because the stitching of the yellow strops began to pop in an alarming manner, but the melancholy crane manager and his calm, gum-chewing crane-drivers took no notice. With infinite care they lifted the old girl out of the water and jibbed their cranes round in perfect unison until they had the barge directly over the waiting lorry. Once the barge had been correctly positioned on the lorry and the amount of overhang had been carefully measured, the vehicle was moved out of the way to make room for the other one which would carry the
Leo
. When both vehicles were loaded, the mournful man explained that we had a problem because we were above the regulation height for the police permissions that he had obtained. I never got to the bottom of why this had happened but in any case it meant that we had to take down the entire crane arm on the barge, and cut down our blue flag board as well as a number of other bits such as the handrail between the two boats. The lorry drivers were most sympathetic, realizing that we were in the grip of a bureaucratic muddle, and soon cut off the offending bits that could not be dismantled.

My main preoccupation once the problem of the height had been solved was unblocking the outside of the sewagetank drain which had got firmly blocked by earth, and other more unpleasant substances, when we ran aground from time to time. Now the
Leo
was out of the water I had an opportunity to tackle the problem. Through fatigue or sheer stupidity I was of course standing under the drain when it finally disgorged itself, much to the amusement of the drivers.

As I paid the mournful man the £4500 this lift was costing, he told me a story which perhaps accounted for his perpetual gloom. He told me that he had only once been to London, to sell a very large nineteenth-century French painting owned by his family, at one of the leading London auction rooms. When he had arrived, he took the painting to the auction rooms to be told by the expert for that type of painting, a certain Anthony Blunt, that it was a fake. Blunt added that he had just sold the original to a client in America. A few days later, after having seen the sights of London, the mournful man went back to the auctioneers to collect the painting, but it had mysteriously disappeared. The auctioneers were eager to pay out the insurance money, which was only a fraction of what the painting was worth, he said, for he had no doubt that his was the original. He left in a fury and later accepted the insurance money feeling the British had done him down.

The police, for whom we were waiting to inspect the load, arrived just as the sun was setting. The bargeman who had been held up by the collapsed bridge had, by now, loaded his huge boxes of nuclear spares and was waiting for news of the repairs to the bridge. Suddenly all the measurements were done and the convoy set sail, as it were, down the motorway with Ray driving the 2CV while I drove a hired car with a huge flashing sign, fixed by magnets to the roof, to warn people that a very heavy convoy was on the move.

It took us about five hours to cover the hundred or so kilometres to Regensburg, the furthest point north on the Danube. When we woke in the morning we found ourselves on the side of a dock full of barges from the Eastern Bloc countries. The East had really begun. I watched a Rumanian bargeman feeding his chickens that he kept in a hutch on the deck. The Germans said they kept livestock on board because they could not afford the price of German food but it may have been because they liked fresh eggs. The Germans seem to resent the way the Rumanian government has put a price of £12,000 on anyone of German origin who wishes to leave Rumania. So, if you had a German mother-in-law in Rumania, you'd have to decide whether £12,000 was worth it!

The lorry drivers were very keen to put the old
Leo
back together again in just the state they found her and managed to persuade the dock engineers to lend us their welding gear. By breakfast time all was back as it should have been and a fresh coat of paint had been brushed over the black weld marks. We then went round to the works canteen in the docks, a splendid place with jolly waitresses, whom the lorry drivers chatted up and who produced an extremely filling goulash soup with frankfurters, a dish which seemed to span the ethnic frontiers. Once the gang had breakfasted, the unloading began and the operation went with typical German efficiency: suddenly we were actually floating on the Danube.

The first person from the world of Regensburg to visit us was a Hungarian: Hungarians are nearly always first when
someone new and potentially interesting turns up in town. The young man who arrived had been educated at Harrow and consequently spoke perfect English. He had been sent by his boss, Captain Ott, who arrived soon afterwards with instructions on how to complete our papers to proceed down the Danube. He told me that Regensburg had been one of the centres of the salt route when salt was brought from the Far East; the caravans crossed the bridge that had stood in Regensburg for centuries.

Captain Ott was one of the many men that I was to meet who had worked on the Danube all his life, and was a true romantic. He had literally run away to sea when his father, also a Danube captain, had forbade him to. He had become the youngest captain in service anywhere on the Danube and had many a story to tell of a certain Captain Frolich with whom he had worked as mate and who was later to be our pilot. He told of derring-do, of manoeuvring a vast bridge into position with a series of barges and tugs, and the delights of his favourite haunts which I suspect only the Danube sailors know of. Captain Ott had been offered a job in the front office of the shipping company he worked for because of his expertise in knowing just how far a barge could be loaded at any season. This required a very expert knowledge of the water levels up and down the Danube and the length of the voyage. If the barge was overloaded and he knew that two days before it had rained heavily in the mountains he could gauge whether there was a chance that the cargo would get through with the draught it had or whether it would have to be unloaded into smaller craft.

The trade on the Danube was very much controlled by the Soviets, who manned their craft with service personnel so there was no question of having to make a profit in commercial terms. The Soviets were the main suppliers of coal and coke to the great Austrian steel works at Linz. If the Austrians ever fell out with their big Russian brothers they would have a thin time of it indeed. Most of the barges that came up the
Danube from the east were without motors and therefore had to be towed by huge tugs that varied enormously in age, but, however old, were still capable of making considerable headway over an eighteen-kilometre current with a string of 3000-ton barges behind them. Because of the length of the tows it was necessary for the barges to be manned and to be steered all the time they were under way, so that the tow could negotiate corners successfully.

It was a bit like the boyhood of Raleigh as Ray and I sat and listened to Captain Ott talking about his life on the Danube. He told us of how, when he had decided on the advice of his wife to take the job in the office, he had hidden his car behind a tree to watch his beloved ship steam off down the Danube for the first time without him in charge, and had shed a tear or two. I do not believe that any modern woman can ever understand the romance that a boat has for a man. How can they? Men do not understand it themselves, but there is something there which most women fear and distrust; they fear the seductress over whom they have no control who gently rocks their men to sleep at night and leads them into distant temptations and out from under their thumbs.

In order for us to leave the harbour, Captain Ott had arranged for an enormous man, the skipper of a barge from the company that Ott worked for, to pilot us the ten kilometres to the centre of Regensburg, which I thought was hardly necessary. I was wrong, for the current was extremely strong and we made very little headway: it took us a full two hours to get up to a berth next to a Rumanian tug that was waiting for its barges to be unloaded before taking them back to that sad benighted country.

We tied up and Ray went back to the harbour to collect our little car so that we could load it on board the next day before the pilot arrived. It was clear to me that the journey to Vienna was going to be very swift indeed and there would be no sense in leaving the car behind and coming back to collect it
later. I went to chat to the crew on the Rumanian tug, taking them a pack of cigarettes which I swapped for some eggs from their marine hencoop. Later, the captain, an incredibly thin man in a well-worn suit which he had clearly just taken from storage, came on board the
Leo
with a bottle of Rumanian-type champagne. He welcomed us very charmingly to the Danube, expressing the hope that we would have many wonderful memories, and then began to tell us of his life on the boats. Rumanians who are permitted to travel outside their country are rare indeed and these boat people are among the privileged few. We did not speak of politics at all, but, after he left, having told us where his favourite mooring places were, I noticed that when he got back to his tug he was grilled by one of the crew. I wondered which one of them was the secret service man. I am afraid I am naive enough not to care and tend to take people as I find them.

Ray had parked our car next to a fine fifteenth-century salt storehouse, about fifty yards from where we had moored. After all the excitement of our first day on the Danube, I, at least, was dead to the world but woke at dawn to find that the
Leo
seemed to be in the midst of a crowd. I pulled on an anorak and went up on deck to find the most astonishing scene of devastation. The salt storehouse, after surviving five hundred years of war, plague and pestilence, had burned down during the night, leaving vast smouldering timbers pointing like great black fingers to the sky. People stood around in the cold morning light looking stunned, while the fire brigade and the police cordoned everything off. I woke Ray, who had also managed to sleep through the whole event, and asked him exactly where he had left the car.