Narrow Escape (27 page)

“All the rain and the flood water has moved a huge bank of silt right into the lock.” He grabbed my phone and tapped at it for a couple of minutes frowning in concentration. “Here, look.”

I took my phone and stared at the picture that he'd found. “What exactly am I looking at here?” It looked like a portion of wet sand stuck between two fence rails.

“That's Salters Lode,” he said.

I finally worked out that the lock pound was supposed to be between the two rails I was studying. “Oh good grief, that's not going to wash away, is it.” The silt had completely filled the lock, rendering it completely useless.

Geoff shook his head. “No, they're going to have to dig that lock out before boats can get through,” he said, “and I can't see them doing it until they're sure the weather has improved. That could mean that any one waiting to get through just sits wherever they are for the next four months.”

“Four months?” I couldn't imagine having to keep moving for four months.

Geoff rubbed his forehead. “As the man of this household I'm making a decision,” he announced.

I snorted a laugh. “Yes, dear?”

“We …” he reached over and, grabbing me by the shoulders, pulled me into his arm pit. “… are going to do whatever you want to.”

“Oh great, thanks,” I said.

Geoff laughed and climbed out of the car. “Come on you.”

“Where are we going?” I clambered out and then immediately wished I hadn't, the raw wind took my breath away.

“In search of cake.” Geoff locked the car and, head down against the wind that had sprung up, strode off across the car park.

I scurried in his wake.

Once inside the supermarket we managed to draw breath again and wandered off arm in arm around the shelves picking up nice but nutritionally valueless comfort foods.

“We don't have a choice about that mooring really, do we?” Geoff piled cheese and olives, crackers and salami into the basket.

I shook my head. “Not really, but the only person that suffers is you.”

Geoff shrugged. “Well it's going to be a lot of extra work for you as well because you're going to have to pick up the slack.”

“Hey!” I poked him in the ribs.

He laughed. “I didn't mean it like that and you know it,” he said. “I just meant that you're going to have to do all the heavy lifting, sort out those big gas bottles, run that generator, make sure all the electrics are working, get coal, water, and diesel, and just do all the things that we haven't had to do up till now.”

I nodded. I hadn't really realised how cosseted we'd been on our mooring. Electricity on tap, coal delivered. This was going to be an exercise in really living on a boat, not just playing at it. This was definitely one step into the wilds. For just a moment I had a sudden weird ‘I wish I lived in a house' moment. But after being supplanted by images of the dreaded postman and those terrifying piles of bills the moment passed and my resolve was given a firm talking to.

I picked up a bottle of rum and edged it gently into the basket. “We'll survive,” I said.

The next weekend was one of goodbyes. Bill and Drew, packed and itching to go, pulled away from the moorings with a lot of waving and shouting of insults (mainly from Drew). They weren't going very far but felt that they just wanted to be away. Bill had, unfortunately, been made redundant and I could understand that they wanted to hang on to as much of their savings as possible, especially with Christmas just around the corner. Spending money on mooring fees when they didn't need to was just another unnecessary expense. I didn't blame them in the slightest but I was still reluctant to leave. Seven years on and off we'd been at this very mooring, the idea of having to leave and never come back made me a little sad.

After waving Bill and Drew on their way, Geoff retired back into his engine room. He'd decided that this weekend was his last chance to service the engine and make sure that everything was ready to go. He set about it with a grim determination.

With our destination now set, I decided to sit Sam down and make sure he was all right about going to his new school. We'd been to visit the previous week and, while far more aesthetically challenged than his old school, the teachers were positive and the atmosphere had seemed excellent.

I had been waiting all week for the final realisation and subsequent meltdown from Sam and, when it didn't materialise, I'd decided to push some buttons and see what came out of that fuzzy mass he calls a brain.

It worked out that he was really looking forward to it. He already had friends there at an out-of-school drama club that he attended and, due to a birthday party he'd been invited to, he now knew many of his new peers. He didn't seem worried in the slightest and I came away from the conversation wondering if it was me that had a fuzzy mass and not him. Well, there were always first-day blues to look forward to but, as that wouldn't happen until January there really wasn't anything I could stress about.

If I had to be honest, the change, if there had to be one, couldn't really have come at a better time. Half way through year nine he was old enough to understand why he had to change and see the advantages. He hadn't started his GCSEs and his options were to be decided at the end of this year and would be done at the new school. It could have been so much worse.

His plan to become an accountant hadn't changed and with the new school specialising in Business and Enterprise, rather than the science and languages that he was used to, he was excited and keen to change. I was definitely the one dragging my heels.

“Mother, you're fussing,” he said.

I remembered the bullying he'd taken when, in his first year of high school, his classmates had found out that he lived on a boat. The comments had ranged from speculations about his cleanliness to the possibility that his family were a bunch of thieves and scroungers. It had taken the full and furious might of the entire year staff to put a stop to it. Unlike his sister who put a stop to all comments in her own furious way, Sam was a much more gentle soul and took the comments very much to heart.

I watched him walk away down the boat. Older now, he slouched along, baggy jeans trailing along the floor, oversized hoody with skulls and roses emblazoned on the front and long hair that, hanging way beyond his shoulders filled the hood and fell over his face. He might be able to take the new school in his stride but I had to wonder how the new school would cope with him. He certainly didn't fit in with the general masses, he looked like some rock and roll dropout. His uncanny ability to work through any maths problem with an air of ease and enjoyment only added another layer of oddness to the child.

As I was contemplating all this his father stepped through the door and I had to smile. Sam was almost exactly like his dad had been in his younger days, right down to the hair and the love of maths. I grinned and relaxed, being a little ‘odd' had never done his father any harm. Slow to anger, friendly, helpful, and meticulous almost to the point of having obsessive compulsive disorder. Both of them dealt with life quite well even if they did sometimes appear to be studying it from the outside. Geoff, feeling me grinning at him looked up with a frown.

He put on a worried look. “What have I done now?”

“Nothing at all,” I said and put my worries about Sam's future aside. “Tea?”

Chapter Twelve:
With Boat All Poised And Farewells Said, The Only Way To Go's Ahead.

December the 6
^th
and with no excuses left we finally made the decision to go. The boat had been ready for at least a week. The engine had been serviced, all the electrics were ready, and even Geoff's mad smoke removal device seemed to be finally working as he planned.

We'd meant to leave the previous weekend but unfortunately the first test of our diesel generator had not gone well at all.

With baited breath we'd stood in the rain and watched as Geoff brought the big generator to life. It had coughed and spluttered for a couple of seconds and then settled down to a deep and even tone.

“Well, that works well.” Geoff grinned at the big engine as it vibrated gently on a specially created plinth above our big boat engine.

I coughed and waved a hand back and forth. “Smells evil,” I said. “Aren't those exhaust fumes supposed to be outside the boat?”

“Aha!” Geoff's grin stretched wider and he pointed to a small white switch set high amidst the silver ducting that now ran from the generator to a hole that he'd cut in the roof. “This is test number two.” He reached up and, with a firm finger, flicked the switch on.

Nothing happened. Geoff frowned and peered into the ducting. “Dammit all,” he muttered.

“So, back to the drawing board then, yes?” I coughed and decided that fresh air was rapidly becoming a necessity.

My husband ignored me and, flicking the generator off, he began taking things apart.

I left him to it. I have found that standing around and asking questions tends to make him a little testy. The best thing I could do to help was to go and put the kettle on.

As I stepped inside the boat, the smell of exhaust fumes was really quite revolting and despite the sub-zero temperatures I opened every window and door. Sam and Mortimer decided that they'd be safer playing ball and wandered off to run themselves into warmer oblivion.

Geoff came in about an hour later. “I've found the problem.” He sat down and studied the fire which was blazing away quite merrily. “It's really cold in here,” he said.

I peered at him from under a blanket. I'd also got on three jumpers, two pairs of socks and I'd stolen a pair of his thermal long johns. “I had to open all the windows because the boat was full of diesel smoke when I came back in,” I said.

“Oh.” Geoff looked a little crestfallen. “Well, I think I've fixed it now.”

“Are you sure?”

Geoff opened his mouth but didn't say anything. He stayed that way for a moment and then gave a brief nod. “Ninety per cent,” he said.

“So we have a ten per cent chance of dying of carbon monoxide poisoning, do we?” My teeth were chattering.

Geoff nodded. “I don't think I want to trust this system without replacing our carbon monoxide detectors.”

So that had ended the possibility of leaving that day.

A week later and the boat was finally declared ready to go. The little boat was tied firmly alongside and all that we had was either in a new storage unit or crammed in or on top of the boat. I felt a sad sense of déjà vu. We'd done this before when we'd sold our last boat. We'd said goodbye to everyone and puttered away, but even then I had the hope of coming back one day and, sure enough, return we had. This time there was no chance of coming back and, even if we could, the community that made the life so good was now scattered up and down several different waterways.

Elaine and Dion had decided to stay until the very end and they waved us off as we pulled away from our mooring for what would be the very last time. There were lots of shouts of ‘see you in a couple of weeks' but it didn't really matter, we knew that change had been thrust upon us once more and, like the last time, we either rolled with the punches or we went down because of them.

At least the problem of dying by slow asphyxiation had been abated. My clever husband had installed a fan (stolen from a defunct fan heater!) inside a long piece of ducting which, when turned on, pulled all the smoke away from the generator exhaust and out of the chimney that he'd created. It
was
a little Heath Robinson but it worked very well and the shiny new carbon monoxide detectors that I'd installed at both the front and the back of the boat gave us happy green flashing lights even with the generator under full load. He might be a bit vague at times but you have to love a man that smiles every time he watches puffs of smoke appear from a chimney.

I'd never run two boats together before and was surprised at how easy it was. I'd been imagining that
Minerva
would pull to the left or would be difficult to steer. She
was
a little heavier on the steering but she coped very well and with the ropes untied we pushed her and her cling-on away from the bank and headed out toward the river.

As we travelled past I noticed that the marina was a sad sight. Most of the boats had now left and the odd boat still moored along the river looked like a retired street fighter's remaining teeth. There were no cars in the car park and, with winter making everything look sad and unloved, the whole place was just desolate. It looked so gloomy and forsaken that I had to work quite hard not to think bad thoughts at the people that had brought this change about.

My gloomy introspection stayed with me until I discovered that standing with one foot on
Minerva
's gunwales and one foot on
Hedgepig
's was like very safe surfing. I had great fun watching the water whoosh below my feet as the two boats meandered along side by side. Ah, it's the little things that make life worthwhile. Sam came and joined me and Geoff laughed as we decided that singing Wipe-out by the Beach Boys was definitely the way to go.

It took us five hours to get to the turning down the little river that was to be our home for the next four months. The journey was grey and uneventful. It shouldn't really have taken that long at all but with the swollen river running against us and poor
Minerva
dragging a recalcitrant butty it made the going far slower than it should have. There were no locks and no thrills. The river beyond Ely isn't the most exciting place in the world and the landscape mirrored both the sky and our mood. Flat, grey, and decidedly soggy.

Eventually we slowed to make the right turn into the creek. I peered up at the bridge by The Ship Inn, it looked very low. Turning back to Geoff who was standing on the plate I pointed up at the bridge. “Bit low, isn't it?” I had to shout over the sound of the engine, the water and the wind that had picked up over the last half hour.

Geoff grinned and nodded.

Well, either he knew that we'd have the clearance we needed or he hadn't heard me and was just smiling and agreeing in the same way he used to when we had a motorbike.

He slowed further and I peered up at the underside of the bridge. It really was far closer than I was comfortable with. I tried to ignore its looming presence. Geoff never left these details to chance, he would have checked the height, I hoped he had. Having to buy a new chimney (again) was never going to be high on my list of fun things to do.

There was no problem with the chimney – Geoff had already removed the stack. The bridge cleared the little collar by at least twelve inches. It was a real shame, however, that the television aerial was at least eighteen inches higher than anything else. It wouldn't have been so bad if the aerial had hit the edge of the bridge, bent, and collapsed on top of the boat but it didn't. Being of fairly springy metal, it hit the edge of the bridge and was dragged along the horizontal concrete support, shedding little metal tines as it went. I winced, not because of the rain of metal that was bouncing all around me but because of the noise. Like someone with very long nails attacking a blackboard, it slowly scraped, screeched, and screamed its way across the concrete support at the near side of the bridge.

I breathed a sigh of relief and tried to get my teeth unclenched as the concrete ended and there was a gap. The aerial sprang into the gap and then hit the next support (steel) with a loud shuddering ‘Boi.oi.oi.oi.ng!' that sent the pigeons roosting in the darkness of the uprights bolting, panicked and screaming, into the air. A rain of pigeon poo spattered the front deck along with a few more bits of metal. ‘Boi.oi.oi.oi.ng!' the aerial hit the next support and ‘Boi.oi.oi.oi.ng!', the next and the next and the next, still occasionally shedding the little bent tines that were supposed to pick up the television signal. Eventually there was only the other horizontal concrete support to go and sure enough it scraped and wailed its way across that, ending with another happy ‘Boi.oi.oi.oi.ng!' as it sprang out from under the bridge and into the open air again.

I looked up at it and sighed. The aerial resembled nothing more than a demented steel Christmas tree, one that had been left up until about February. Bent and naked, all it needed was some frayed tinsel and a couple of broken baubles and it would have been perfect. I looked back at Geoff.

“Whoops,” he shouted. “I forgot about that.”

No kidding? The neighbours in front of us, when we met them, seemed nice but due to the weather nobody really wanted to hang around and chat. The neighbour behind us, I'd already met and quite frankly she was terrifying.

Janis is what I would class as a ‘real boater'. Standing about five foot ten, she dresses for the weather and pays not even lip service to the idea of ‘fashion'. Her naturally curly grey hair is usually caught up in a ponytail from which it spends its days trying to escape. You can always hear her coming due to the very serviceable and heavy boots she favours. Slightly older than myself, she takes no nonsense from anyone and in no way suffers from my vagueness and my psychotic need to worry and fret. If I needed help she would be high on my list of ‘capable people'. Since the sad death of her husband several years previously, Janis has been running two boats, completely alone. One boat, the larger of the two, is her living accommodation and the other, an overflowing workshop is where she creates elegant soft furnishings and cratch covers for boaters up and down the system. Highly trained and very professional, it's no wonder she has a waiting list for the work she does. I have to admit to being a little in awe of her. She's totally independent, the very idea of needing help is complete anathema to her and she is everything I like to think I could be but know full well that I would never even have the guts to do half of what she does.

We'd been moored for about a week when she came stamping around to ‘sort out a problem'. I'd been expecting her. The moorings were so close together that when our two boats were parked in front of her two boats she couldn't get out. Unfortunately there wasn't really much we could do about it and, rather than have Janis angry at me I'd resolved to ask the landowner if we could move further down and get out of her way.

When I suggested this to her she looked at me as if I was insane.

“Well, I don't want you to do that,” she said. Standing on top of the decking, with her grey hair once more creating a windswept halo around her head, she glared down at me.

I felt as if I'd suggested a ridiculous project to a headmistress and had to get a firm grip on myself. “Well I'm not sure what we can do,” I winced and waited for her to beat me to death with her barge pole. “How about if we move
Hedgepig
further alongside
Minerva
? If we tie her to the front of our boat rather than at that back you'd be able to see around both boats and you'd have far more room to manoeuvre.”

Janis flattened her lips and stared at me. “Yes OK,” she gave me a huge and genuine smile. “That's a great compromise, thanks.”

“Oh.” I was just about to start explaining myself again when I realised that she'd agreed. “Great,” I said. “I'll move her now.”

“No you won't,” she said. “Move it later, coffee?”

My mouth and my brain tripped over each other and I found myself nodding. “That would be lovely.” I managed to stammer out.”

Trying to describe her to Geoff later I was definitely failing to find the right adjectives. “Imagine the outcome if Camilla Fritton …”

“Who?” Geoff looked completely nonplussed.

“The headmistress of St Trinian's.”

Geoff sniggered and nodded.

“… and Attila the Hun got together and had a child, I'm fairly sure the outcome would be Janis or someone very like her.”

Geoff leaned back on the sofa. “Jolly hockey sticks with an axe?” He shook his head and howled with laughter.

As I got to know Janis better I found out that my initial thoughts about her personality had been way off base. Yes, she had a ‘can do' attitude and yes, not much scared her but she had a sense of humour second to none and a wry view of the world that was both refreshing and catching. I was very pleased that we'd managed to end up with her as a neighbour. She seemed to put up with us as well, she also learnt to deal with Mortimer's over-affectionate nature and he, like the rest of us, would rapidly subside when she turned her steely gaze in his direction.

Being out on a ‘wild' mooring was quite new to me and it certainly took a little time for me to get myself in gear and sort myself out. There were so many things to do to keep the boat running and, due to Geoff's increased travel time and decreased daylight as the year drew to a close, I found myself trying to juggle all of them.

Bags of coal were no longer delivered but had to be collected and then manhandled (or in this case woman-handled) up a flight of steps and then along a quarter mile stretch of bank to the boat. Gas and diesel also had to be collected. Luckily there was water but as the weather became colder we just knew that the water would freeze and we'd be left with nothing.

One Saturday afternoon I was staring out at the horrible weather. Horizontal sleet carried on strong winds battered the boat and I really didn't want to go outside. I'd been putting off turning on the generator all morning but I knew that any minute now the batteries would run out and I'd be forced out into the cold.