Leontyne (6 page)

I wandered through the pretty streets, which were full of the most surprising things. In one shop, which didn't look like a shop at all, I found Willi, who had been a mechanic on a large farm. He agreed to try to mend the
Leo'
s hydraulic pump that lifted the crane arm, and also all the temperature gauges. Talking to him wasn't the easiest thing because he spoke French with the guttural accent of the Flemish. I did discover that he was a pigeon fancier, however, and he mournfully told me of a misfortune that his pigeon-racing compatriots had suffered. Apparently thousands of racing pigeons had set off on some race the previous year and had not been seen since. No one has any idea what happened to them, though it's thought that perhaps they flew into
some freak magnetic field and became disorientated. He finished my job remarkably quickly and left everything working.

While he was still at it, I took the dinghy and rowed round the canals of Bruges. When I started it was calm and peaceful but suddenly the tourist launches started to run: that made my progress uncomfortable because the drivers didn't expect to find anyone rowing round these narrow canals and there was much cursing as they had to slow down to let me pass. The drivers were all the same type, handsome and sporting heavy dark glasses, spouting hackneyed commentary about the buildings they passed, and always ready to give that little extra attention to the lonely female tourist. By midday the town was full. The great landcruisers had brought their load of tourists for the day and they swayed through the alleys being harangued by their group leader. So much information, so many languages, so many heads swivelling to pointed fingers. There does come a point when there are simply too many people in one place at one time.

I tied up the dinghy, and went into the Church of Our Lady to have a look at the splendid Michelangelo they have there. It had been bought by a member of a Bruges merchant family while he was working in Italy, brought home and presented to the church. In fact it is one of the very few Michelangelos that have found their way out of Italy. I found it extremely beautiful and happily paid my entrance fee to have a closer look. What a nice little earner it must be for the church, rather like having
The Sound of Music
in the library of a film distributor.

I found myself walking through the car park to avoid the crowds, when I noticed a mechanical-organ museum. The door was opened by a fresh-faced woman whose gaiety was quite infectious. She took me to her boss, explaining that she was not yet qualified to do the tour. As I was the only person in the museum the tour didn't seem to be very important but there was no way I could see that I was going to be allowed to
wander round this enormous collection of fairground organs alone. As I waited for Mrs Hilbergen to descend from her office, which overlooked the collection, the girl who had let me in started up the largest of the organs with the triumphal march from
Aida
. In that confined space the decibels were all-embracing and it was impossible not to smile: this place is to be strongly recommended when feeling glum. Mrs Hilbergen, a briskly agreeable woman, had been an accountant in Ostend until the company that employed her acquired this collection of mechanical instruments from an enthusiast. She had been put in charge of the place and was turning what could have been a fairly staid exhibition into a place of entertainment. As
Aida
came to an end she started up her most famous organ, the Black Cat, with the ‘Violletten Waltz', and taking me by the hand, suggested that we waltzed on the two-metre-square piece of dance floor. This was not at all what I had expected, and it proved to be very agreeable.

The infectious gaiety of the music and my two companions made the morning rush by, and I was very sorry to leave when a coach party of old-age pensioners arrived from Brussels. As I left, my friends were giving the pensioners a blast of ‘J'attendrai' on the big organ, which had the old boys and girls in each other's arms on the minuscule patch of floor in no time.

They make delicious chocolates in Bruges, mostly by hand. The process is not at all simple. The biggest drawback to making them at home is getting the chocolate to shine. This only happens if the temperature of the chocolate is very, very precisely controlled. A tenth of a degree centigrade can make all the difference between a glistening triumph or what looks like a dusty old choc from last year's Christmas boxes. The other closely guarded secret these
chocolatiers
pass through the generations to each other is the exact blend of cocoa beans. The buying of these beans takes place at the London Cocoa Market and the right blend of bean at the right price
is all important. Once the beans are bought they are sent to an outside factory to be turned into chocolate, as the plant required is far too expensive for the small trader. The chocolate is then melted down to exactly the right temperature and poured into moulds. Once the thin layer of the walls of the chocolate has set in the moulds, the centres are filled with all sorts of delicious things and then another layer of chocolate is poured on the top. Though this may sound frivolous, in Bruges it is a
métier
that is taken very seriously indeed. But alas, chocolates and chips go straight to the hips.

The other major pastime in Belgium is drinking beer, of which there are untold varieties – some stronger than Scotch whisky, or so it seemed. After a glass, I found myself talking to the most beautiful girl in the land as she leant across the counter at the Café Vlissinghe, where she was helping her mother who had been running the place for the last forty years. She was well over six feet tall and built extremely neatly. Her husband, who was an engineer on a supertanker, was due back the next day after six months at sea and she was positively purring with expectation. ‘
Leontyne
, what a beautiful name' she sighed, when I told her the name of my boat. I fell for her, her pub and for Belgium at that moment, which was probably what the mischievous monks who brewed the dark and dangerous beer I was quaffing had in mind.

The elegant carillon towering over Bruges has forty-seven bells and is the biggest in the world, according to the carilloner, Aimé Lambaert. Aimé also confided that his friends called him ‘Lovely' – odd, as he looked like Abraham Lincoln and was a muscular man from playing his carillon and climbing the 365 steps up to the loft two or three times a day. He sits at his machine, which looks like a loom, and hits the keys with the sides of his hands. He told me that he heard the music through the vibrations in his arms, because his loft is below the belfry. When he plays, the keys that he
hits pull down wires attached to the clappers inside the bells. He obviously felt extremely powerful up there in his loft, spreading his magnificent peals over sleepy Bruges. In the belfry itself there is a huge bronze drum made in the seventeenth century, with small pegs in its perforated surface like an enormous musical box. Aimé Lambaert changes these pegs every two years so that the bells play a different tune on the hour. When the drum plays, the bells are struck by hammers on the outside, which makes a subtly different sound to that made by the clappers.

It all sounded powerfully perfect to me as I watched Bruges' big parade on Ascension Day. The parade itself was a pleasantly homely affair which had attracted thousands of tourists from all over the world. Religious in content, it revolved round the usual tales and the parading of an authentic relic. This was carried in turn by a group of elderly high priests, who were only able to carry the heavily ornate gold casket for a few steps before passing it on to one of their colleagues. Somehow the parade organizers were able to cope with this stopping and starting and kept the parade moving forward. As the relic came through the main square under the carillon, Aimé Lambaert had his bi-annual treat and pealed the victory bell (what Belgian victory was commemorated by this bell was not explained).

The
Leo
was now beginning to work as she should: the oil and water gauges had been fixed by Willi, and I had bought a new outboard engine with a little more power for the dinghy. Ray was still in London when I set off on a sparkling spring day for the south. As I glided past the fortress towers of old Bruges, I watched a family of tiny moorhens being shepherded by their mother as they bobbed about in the
Leo'
s wash. The time I had spent in Bruges had been full of interest, but the joy of being on board the
Leo
again and under way on such a day had me singing tunelessly, songs
of my youth. The excitement of adventure and not being certain where or how the day would end still caught me by surprise.

Soon after midday, an incident occurred that raised the adrenalin to almost unacceptable limits. A pusher barge with a large tow was coming towards me and from behind a Dutch barge was hurrying down the canal. The Dutchman decided to overtake just as the other barge was passing. There wasn't really enough room but in spite of a lot of horn blowing on my part, the Dutchman pushed past; as he did so the turbulence sucked the
Leo
on to him and even though I slowed down, I was stuck to him and drawn alongside in some horrible marine embrace until we had passed the other barge. We parted, shaking fists at each other. Just like motorists, I thought. The trouble with dreams of vengeance on canals is that you inevitably meet the offending barge at the next lock, when you have to be ready with the customary cheery wave: I couldn't pointedly shut the wheelhouse door to show ill humour, since I had to steer from the deck.

That night I stopped at Kortrijk, where Ray rejoined me. We moored next to a barge with swaying palm trees painted on the hull, which announced itself as the
Waikiki Disco
. I had a quick look to see whether I would be awake all night with the rhythm of the South Seas but clearly the proprietors had either fallen on hard times or it was too early in the season for grass skirts. Next to the bridge ahead of us was a mobile
frites
shop. It was clearly very well thought of as streams of expensive motorcars drove up for their portions of
frites
cooked in rendered horse fat. Wandering round this prosperous town and gazing into several shop windows, which were devoted to silver golf balls turned into lighters
and other icons of our consumer society, I found myself quite suddenly in the quiet courtyard of a
Béguinage
. The Beguines were an order founded in England in the middle ages, for girls of families who could not afford to pay the dowries that the nunneries required to shelter their daughters. The girls who went to a
Béguinage
were subjected to a regime very similar to a nun's except that every day they went out to work, always in pairs, in the local community.

As I walked round these calm and beautiful courtyards, I realized I was being watched furtively by a pair of black beady eyes concealed in the shadowy doorway of the chapel. I approached, but as I did so I heard the faintest scuffle, and their owner had disappeared by the time I reached the door. Intrigued now, I went to have a look in all the doorways, until I found one that had the sounds of an harmonium coming from it. I knocked and a tiny Beguine opened the door. She told me that she and the pair of eyes I had seen were the last two Beguines in Kortrijk, in this establishment which had been here for at least four hundred years. She was very frail and so asked me into her tiny cell so she could sit down while she told me of her work and her life. She was practically blind now but she had such a sweet smile that it was a pleasure to listen to her telling her life story.

She had come to the
Béguinage
when she was eighteen in 1939, and giggled as she told me of the first veil she had to wear as a novice, which was so restricting that she was only able to look forwards. No glancing out of the corner of her eye. She told me proudly that her grandfather had been in the special French Unit of the Papal Guard, of how she had learned to play the guitar and harmonium to entertain the sick and how happily she had given her life to the service of God and his creatures. The
Béguinage
was now occupied by elderly ladies who had come to spend the rest of their days in a sheltered environment, and she left me to go and see that they were comfortable. This tiny, cheerful person had a profound effect on me and as I left and walked back to the
Leo
past the shops with the gold dinner services, I wondered at the state of our society today and how long it would be before some greedy property developer would put forward a proposal to turn the
Béguinage
into a block of offices with a hostel for old people beside it.

Puzzled by Kortrijk I left through the centre of the town along a beautifully built brick wall by the canalside. The bricks in Belgium seem to be smaller than the good old London stock brick. I hope this splendid piece of canal construction does not get swept away by the enlargements that the Belgian government is making to the waterways system. In the heat of the day, we came to a lock alongside which an enormous new lock was being built, big enough for ships of 1300 tons, and which would do away with four of the existing locks. Either the Belgians have found a cupboard full of Common Market money, or they must very sensibly believe that there is a future for cheap transport by water. The system these new locks use is worth recounting: the locks themselves are so vast that, when they are emptied, an enormous cubic metreage of water is lost, which causes serious problems for the reaches further up the canal or river. The modern systems have enormous electrical pumps which compensate for this by pumping the water out of the lock and into tanks nearby, or into the upper reach. When the lock is filled again the water is pumped back into the lock.

The portly lock-keeper who showed me round this marvel told me of a Czech friend of his who had recently taken his car to the USSR. Normally a sober person, this friend had returned with over ninety tickets for motoring offences. Apparently the Soviets had decided that he was a person worth keeping an eye on and had placed a bug on his car. The friend could not imagine why, in the middle of nowhere, a traffic policeman would invariably spring out at him and hand him a speeding ticket. Apparently he did not have to pay the fines, but it made him extremely cautious.