Narrow Minds (18 page)

‘As far as I can see …' Geoff said and shook his head, ‘… and I'm no mechanic, I need someone like Andy to verify this.' He paused for a moment to think.

I waited for him to finish thinking. He didn't have much chance of getting that help. Andy and Sarah, long-standing friends of ours, were currently cruising around Reading on the Kennet and Avon.

‘Look,' Geoff said and stepped around the tiller and headed toward the engine room along the gunwales. ‘I've checked the level of the oil, it's fine and the oil pump seems to be working as far as I can see and everything seems to be in order.' He stared up at the chimney still attempting to blow chunks of smut into the stratosphere. ‘Well, mostly,' he amended.

I followed his gaze. ‘We really ought to think about either moving or shutting down the engine, that tree's beginning to turn black.'

Geoff waved a dismissive hand. ‘We'll go on.' He took a deep breath and squatting down on the gunwales stared into the noisy engine room. ‘I think that when the engine drops below a certain amount of revs there just isn't enough …' he paused for thought ‘… oomph to get the oil round.' He stood up again and stepped backward on to dry land. ‘Just keep the revs up, don't slow it down too much and we should be fine.' He grinned.

‘Are you sure?' I dropped the throttle back to idle and grimaced as the red light started flashing again.

‘Nope!' Geoff began to untie the ropes. ‘But it's the best I can come up with.'

As he jumped back aboard I eased
Minerva
into gear and watched with a certain amount of trepidation as the red light flicked off again. ‘So what you're telling me …' I said, easing her nose toward the entrance of the tunnel, ‘is don't slow down, go faster.'

‘Yep!' Geoff laughed. ‘But not too fast, or with this engine we could end up with a big bang and bits of unidentifiable coggage and stuff sitting on the bottom of the cut.'

‘Great!'

By the time we had eased our way through the fairly long tunnel it was getting on for about four o'clock. I'm normally quite wary of tunnels, the dark and the cold, coupled with the sounds of water dripping and the reverberation of the engine all serve to disorientate me hugely. Halfway through any longish tunnel I usually begin to hallucinate, especially when the entrance has vanished behind me and the exit has yet to make an appearance. I hear footsteps, odd splashes; imagine that things are looking down at me from the dripping roof. At one point during a trip through Braunston tunnel, I was completely convinced that something has reached up from the water and stroked the back of my leg.

This time however, I was so completely focused on that little red light I didn't notice anything else and it seemed like only seconds before we emerged out of the other end of the tunnel back into bright sunlight.

If I hadn't been so paranoid about that little light it probably wouldn't have taken me so long to notice that it was, without doubt, the most beautiful day. Geoff, who hates navigating tunnels with his poor eyesight, came to take over the steering which left me nothing to do but sit at the bow and watch the world go by.

Classic English countryside grows on the far side of Wast hill, willow, hazel and beech grow both sides of the canal, allowing only the occasional flare of sunlight to hit the murky brown water. When this happens the tops of all the little ripples glow and glisten and, in the wake behind the boat, it looks like a a trail of fire. Looking back down the length of
Minerva
's roof I could see Geoff's eyes hidden by the rim of his big hat, grinning teeth flashing in the sunlight from between the hair of his short beard. It really was idyllic.

Minerva
chugged along at a steady pace sending up short puffs of smoke to mingle with the buzzing gnats that swirled and danced in small clouds around Geoff's. At one point, after a particularly foul emission, I swear I could hear little coughing and choking noises from amongst the clouds of insects. Finally getting the message that being around Geoff's hat was bad for their health they all swirled off to bother some walkers who were seriously lacking in smoke.

The kids came out and joined me and for the next hour, we sat happily watching the world go by. Sam leaning out over the gunwales managed to break the mood entirely.

‘Mum, MUM! Look,' he shouted pointing into the water, ‘look at that, it's a dead badger and it's all puffed up and swollen, oh yeurch!'

Ho hum, time to go and explore the cupboards in search of dinner then, is it?

We moored up for the night about an hour later. This time we knew what we were supposed to do so it was an easy mooring, we all leaped about, banging in mooring pins, tying the boat up and shutting windows in an effort to keep out the ever-hopeful bugs.

The next morning we all gathered around the breakfast table each sleepy-eyed, a little confused and very itchy, we obviously hadn't managed to keep out all the bugs.

‘What happened to all the electrics?' Sam had tried to turn the telly on but had been thwarted by the complete lack of power. ‘It was working last night.'

Geoff shook his head. ‘I don't know, the batteries should have been well charged yesterday.' He took a last swig of his tea and got up from the table. ‘I'll go and have a look,' he said and with a big sigh, signifying how irritating he found all this, he meandered off back to the engine room. ‘I do wish we hadn't had to leave so quickly,' he said, ‘I really needed more time to go through all this lot.'

I shrugged, we really didn't have a lot of choice if we were going to get the kids to school any time soon.

About half an hour later he returned with some bad news. ‘Quite frankly, we have two problems, the alternator's too small, it must only be putting out about 10 amps, the two batteries are 100 amp hours each so it needs twenty hours running time to charge the batteries so we could do with a nice 40/50 amp alternator. I have a horrible feeling that those batteries are also completely totalled so even if we could put in a huge amount of charge they wouldn't hold it.'

‘We're just going to have to run on the generator,' he muttered and frowned, obviously remembering that he had packed the generator in the back cabin under a large cage of rats and behind our nice new log burner. He looked hopefully at the kettle. ‘Tell you what, make us a cup of tea and I'll try and unearth the genny, but we'll have to find somewhere a little out of the way to moor if we want to use it, it's not quiet.'

I stared out of the window, we were currently moored just past the Brandwood tunnel, there were a fair number of houses around and I couldn't see that we were going to be able to use our generator around here, it was far too built-up. I started gathering up the coffee cups. The kids were going to be upset, they were in for some early nights.

Travelling that day, through the outskirts of Birmingham, I felt uneasy, the tow paths were no longer frequented by joggers and walkers but by small gangs of kids, who lounged, smoking and drinking, under the bridges on the left-hand side of the canal, they either shouted abuse at each other or at us as we chugged slowly past.

Just after a long sweeping turn we came upon some woods on the right side of the canal, a shadowy figure lurked among the trees. With an androgynous style of hair, clothing, and body shape I really couldn't tell whether it was male or female. The figure was squatting on the stones and gravel at the water's edge poking at the water with a stick. As we approached I could make out that it was a young man of around 16–18 years with what appeared to be the worst case of acne I had ever seen.

As his features became more and more defined I realised it wasn't acne at all but a rather large amount of plasters that were stuck on his face. One side sported a beautiful black eye, his nose was swollen and just to complete this picture of pain, his lip was cut and puffy on one side. With his long hair and grungy clothing, he really looked the picture of unloved dejection.

Looking up from whatever he was poking with the stick he noticed me watching him and standing up sauntered backwards into the tree line, where he stood half hidden in the shadows watching
Minerva
cruise slowly past.

I jumped as Charlie joined me at the window. ‘I'm soooooo bored,' she whinged, ‘there's nothing to do and I'm hot.' She looked over at the trees obviously following my line of sight. ‘Mum, MUM! What are you doing,'

I looked down at her. ‘Just watching the trees.'

Charlie looked over at the little copse, if you looked hard you could just make out the figure still standing amongst the shadows. ‘Well that's boring.'

‘Why don't you read a book?'

‘No, they're all boring.'

‘Paint?'

‘Boring.'

‘Watch a DVD?'

‘Oh blah!'

‘Do some cooking? We could make a cake or something.'

‘Do I look like bloody Gordon Ramsay?' Charlie raised her eyes to the ceiling and stood in that amazing ‘young' position of one hip up and one hip down, her whole body stance calculated to irritate any parent within two hundred yards.

‘Don't swear.'

She rolled her eyes again. Obviously I couldn't get any more irritating if I tried. I had a sudden idea, Geoff would kill me later but it was better than being teenaged right at this moment. ‘Tell you what, go and see your dad and tell him you need to learn to drive the boat.'

I held my breath, either this would be a brilliant idea or it would be shot out of a cannon so fast my head would spin.

Charlie narrowed her eyes at me, then grinned. ‘That's a brilliant idea, thanks Mum!' And with a sudden hug and an unexpected kiss she rushed off down the boat screaming, ‘Geoff, Geoff, Mum says I can drive the boat.'

I took a breath ready to shout to Geoff that that wasn't exactly what I'd said and then let it out again. Oh let them get on with it.

Sam, listening to the conversation, watched Charlie shoot past, then putting his book down sauntered down toward me. ‘Can I learn to drive the boat?'

‘Sorry, love.' I leaned down to give him a hug. ‘You really need to be able to see over the roof.'

He frowned. ‘Can I do some cooking then?'

I looked down at my youngest and gave him a big grin. ‘Chocolate or vanilla cake?'

‘Chocolate.' He stared down the boat after Charlie. ‘She doesn't like much any more, does she?' He looked sad for a moment. ‘And she doesn't want to play games with me any more.'

I gave him a cuddle. ‘Don't worry, tomorrow she'll change her mind and it will all be different again.'

For the next hour, we made cake. Well, I made cake, Sam licked the bowls and the spoons, covered our pathetic excuse for a kitchen in flour (it actually made it look better), dropped one of the eggs and ate most of the chocolate but we had fun and that was the main thing. As the resulting pale brown mush went into the oven Sam scampered back to his book, thoughtfully giving me space to tidy up. I had just finished when the phone rang.

‘Hey, Mum.'

Aha! Child number three. Sticking the phone between ear and shoulder, I put the kettle on. ‘Hi Amelia …'

I didn't get time to say anything else before she was off, giving me all her news and as usual talking nineteen to the dozen.

‘I got in at college, I've left work, I've got a job at the local pub, I'm moving again and I'm taking my motorcycle test.'

Grinning at her excitement, I settled down at the dinette to await the kettle boiling, I had a feeling this bout of change was going to take some time to explain and from past experience it was better to just sit still and let her blather.

Later that evening with all the kids asleep, Geoff and I were curled up on the futon with a last cup of tea. After talking to Amelia there had been thirteen locks which, for once, we had managed to do as a family. Charlie and Sam had both put on inches since the last time we'd attempted a lock so had been most useful at the gates. Geoff and I had had almost a peaceful passage watching the children bound on ahead to set the water level. I did have the feeling that while they enjoyed today they might well have a very different view after the next one hundred and twenty-four locks that we had to face before we got back to our mooring. I could see that Geoff and I might well have to enjoy it while we could because either tomorrow or maybe the day after the children were going to be conspicuous by their absence.

Chapter Eight
Off the Beaten Track

A
RRIVING THE NEXT DAY
at the Hatton locks, we stopped very early in order to visit Hatton Country world. Any place that offers shopping, rides, a soft play park rigging thingy, a pub and animals was really good for all of us. Checking out Google maps it looked as though it was only one field away, an easy walk, so putting our best foot forward we hit the English countryside.

An hour later we had worked out that Geoff was very good with a compass, Charlie was really, really unlucky with prickly things and Sam could be counted on to find every rut and pothole then fall down it. However, spurred on and succoured by the idea of shopping and a hot lunch we persevered.

Hatton Country world is a strange little space, there are lots of little sheds that sell crafty type items, shoes, clothes, danglies, pictures and all that sort of thing. Further on there is a farm park with rides, animals to pet, sheepdog displays and other exciting things such as a Guinea Pig village. There is also a large pub situated between the two areas, a huge generic pub, not unlike a Wetherspoon, the meals aren't great but they're adequate and the beer is, well, nothing special to be honest, but it lives up to your expectations of a place like this.

By the time we had shopped, eaten, played on the rides, laughed at the guinea pigs, been terrorised by the goats and done all the things that were available, we were exhausted and the day had slipped away. Loaded down with all sorts of goodies we weren't really happy to contemplate the cross-country trek back to
Minerva
.

Halfway back Geoff decided that he was unsure of his bearings and asked Sam if he could look at the compass just to make sure we were heading in the right direction. A blank look came over Sam's face. ‘Compass?'

‘Yes, Sam.' I poked him gently. ‘You wanted to carry it, you promised that you would look after it, you said you were going to put it somewhere safe.' Sam continued to look blank so I tried again. ‘Did you put it in your pocket?'

Sam shrugged unconcernedly. ‘I haven't got it.'

I stared around at the area where we were standing. Tall grass surrounded us on all sides serving merely to hide from view the vast expanse of featureless fields that stretched into the distance. I squashed a sudden desire to turn Sam upside down and shake him until either a compass or some sort of brains fell out.

‘Right.' Geoff grabbed Sam's arm. ‘Come on, you, up on my shoulders, have a good look over the grass and hedges and see if you can spot the river.'

Sam nodded and Geoff hoisted him aloft.

‘Can you see it?' Geoff winced as Sam grabbed his hair.

‘See what?' Sam laughed, he was enjoying the height immensely.

Geoff gritted his teeth and staggered slightly. ‘The river,' he said, ‘look for the tops of chimneys or painted boats or anything.'

Sam stared vaguely back the way we'd just come and then shouted cheerfully, ‘Nope can't see a thing.'

‘Oh for God's sake.' Charlie put her bags down and yanked on Sam's leg. ‘Let me have a look, honestly you couldn't find your own arse with both hands.'

‘Charlie!' I put my bags down as well, the handles were beginning to cut into my fingers and I was sure I just felt a spot of rain. ‘Don't be so rude.'

Geoff swung Sam back down to terra firma and hoisted Charlie up. ‘So what can you see?'

At least she was looking in the right direction.

‘Nothing, the hedges are too high, can I stand on your shoulders?'

I intervened. ‘I'm not sure that's a good idea, you'd be ever so high.'

Charlie gave me an airy wave then, after kicking off her trainers, she pulled off her socks. ‘I'll be fine.'

Geoff gave a strained shrug and held his hand up for her to hold on to; I wandered over and held up a hand for her to hold as well. I have to admit I'm always quite impressed with her dexterity, within seconds she was standing on Geoff's shoulders, grabbing either his hand or mine as she wobbled backward and forward. Poor Geoff had broken out in a sweat despite the rapidly dropping temperature.

‘Oh I see the river.' Charlie pointed, her sudden movement causing Geoff to stagger sideways. ‘It's just beyond that hedge.'

‘That's great, come down now.' I held up my hand for her to hold on to, with luck it would create some stability in Charlie's trapeze antics.

Ignoring my hand she settled back down to sit on Geoff's shoulders again. Once again the movement caused him to stagger away from me, as he did so his left foot slipped on a rut in the field and he started to fall.

There were screams and a certain amount of swearing as Geoff and Charlie both ended up in a pile on the floor, Geoff was fine, he'd landed on Charlie, Charlie on the other hand was horribly winded and had landed directly on her bottom so had some blossoming bruises to contend with.

After picking her up and dusting her down we headed in the direction that she had indicated. The gentle rain picked up pace causing us to do the same and eventually we pushed through a section of hedge that had obviously never been intended to be a door and staggered out on to the tow path.

By the time we got back to the boat we had been bitten by unidentifiable flying and crawling things, scratched, grazed and grated by hedges that objected to our forcing both ingress and egress. While shouting at Sam for falling a short distance out of a small tree, I had stepped backwards and fallen down a tractor rut and had twisted my ankle, Charlie's bag of ‘interesting farmhouse chutneys and jams' had split, spilling the contents into long grass, forcing her to scrabble around in an effort to locate them all.

We made a sad little sight as we got back to the boat, me, limping and leaning on Geoff, Sam bending down every other step to scratch at his insect bites and Charlie, one leg and an arm covered in mud, bringing up the rear. She was desperately trying to keep all the preserves in a sad scrap of plastic that was once a carrier bag and looked very much like a woman trying to put an octopus into a string bag. All of us were soaked to the skin. Coming in the other direction were a couple we had had a quick chat with while waiting to get served in the restaurant.

‘Hello,' the woman (I think she'd said her name was Mary) took a long look at our dishevelled appearance, ‘you look like you've had an exciting time.'

I looked down at myself. Covered in dust from walking along dry fields, the rain had created muddy streaks and run down my legs and arms (I had no doubt my face was equally creative). ‘Hmm, we decided to take the cross-country route home from Hatton World.' I shrugged and grinned. ‘We only got slightly lost.' I winced as my injured ankle gave a twinge. ‘And slightly damaged.'

‘Wow, you're brave.' She pointed back along the path. ‘We thought we were taking a chance walking along the nature trail.'

‘The Nature Trail?' Charlie peered around me to give Mary an ominous stare. ‘What Nature Trail?'

‘There's a nature trail that runs between Hatton Locks and farm world.' Mary made a wry face. ‘Oh dear, I take it you didn't know.'

Charlie dropped the jars and the sad, broken bag onto the floor. ‘No we didn't know.' She glared up at me. ‘Fancy that, a nice saunter from there to here, with signs and flat path and all that sort of thing.' She gave a jar of Ginger and Rhubarb jam a vicious kick sending it off into the bushes. ‘And even if we did know we wouldn't have used it because that would mean you wouldn't be able to torture us with a walk in the bloody wilderness.' Pushing past me she stamped on up the towpath toward
Minerva
.

We all stood in a group in slightly embarrassed silence. Sam, bless him, broke it with a quote from a film that he had enjoyed. ‘Teenagers.' He nodded sagely. ‘They're all completely mental.'

There really wasn't anything left to say after that so nodding our goodbyes and gathering up our errant conserves we wandered off in Charlie's angry wake.

She was waiting for us as we arrived, as
Minerva
was locked there was no way she could have got inside, as we opened the doors she stepped in and with a certain air of controlled fury walked over to the box that contained all the animal food, grabbed some treats for her rats then picking up the keys on route headed back out. We watched her as she walked back along the path toward the back of the boat. Nothing was said.

It occurred to me at the time that keeping a wild animal in an enclosed space required a fair amount of specialised licensing and wondered whether a teenager suffering from demented mood swings should have the same consideration or at least a heavily fortified cage.

The next morning it was cold, really cold, the sun had disappeared and grey clouds hung heavy over our little travelling party.

Geoff watched me unearth woollies and socks for a moment while drinking his tea. ‘Just for once,' he said with a grin, ‘I think I'm going to pre-empt what you're going to say.'

‘Oh yeah?' I forced my head through the neck hole of my thick grey fleece.

‘Hmm.' He stared out of the window, the canal wandered off through the dew-covered trees, a dull brown ribbon cutting off toward the distance. ‘Isn't it about time I started to get that fire in.'

I studied my socks, then began to force them over ice-cold clammy toes. ‘We've obviously been married far too long and need to get an immediate divorce.'

‘Tell you what.' Geoff gave me one of those grins that tells me something horrible is coming. ‘You and the kids run her today and I'll build the fireplace, what do you reckon?'

‘I knew there was going to be a catch.' I laughed and wandering over to the cooker began to boil water for a thermos of tea.

Actually we didn't really have a bad day at all, Charlie had decided that being a sulky angry teenager was far too much trouble and spent the day leaping around the locks with Sam, the sun came out at about one and Geoff emerged carrying a picnic and more tea. It was a lovely day but by the time we moored up near Lapworth junction north we were all very tired.

Geoff however hadn't been a slouch and had built a nice plinth, painted it, covered the plinth in tiles and had backed the whole corner in fireproof board.

It looked a little odd without a fire in place.

‘I don't think we'll go anywhere tomorrow,' Geoff said. He looked up from the computer where he'd been checking the weather, ‘I think I might want to put that fire in.'

‘Really.' I frowned over his shoulder. ‘Why so quick?' I stared at the screen. ‘Oh dear, that's not going to be good, is it.'

The weather site he was looking at showed a huge black band of cloud coming in, there seemed to be no back end to it.

‘Oh dear,' I muttered again, wondering where we'd stored the waterproofs. ‘When is that due to hit us?'

‘Well, this is a long-range weather forecast.' Geoff shook his head. ‘The temperature's going to drop really quickly as well.'

‘Yes, but when?' I clasped my hands around my nice warm mug.

‘A week maybe.' Geoff frowned. ‘You know what these things are like, it could be tomorrow if it speeds up or next week if it slows down, you can only really rely on the weather forecast for today and you really might as well just look up at the sky to see what it's doing.'

The next day gave no sign of the weather changing and we woke to clear blue skies. Geoff began to doubt. ‘Maybe we ought to push on,' he hemmed and hawed.

‘No, I've told the kids we're staying here today, and while you're fiddling around drilling holes in the roof, we're all going out for a walk along the path and seeing what we can find.' I looked up from packing yet another picnic. ‘Besides which, they'll go mad if they have to stay in this hot boat, let me run some energy off them while we still have good weather.'

Geoff tilted his head and listened as, outside, Sam screamed at Charlie and Charlie screamed back, it was a good job there wasn't anyone parked near us. He nodded. ‘Maybe you're right.' He looked out of the window. ‘And it's a good place to run the generator. There's no one around for miles.'

‘Sorted.' I hefted the bag. ‘Do you want help with anything before I drag the horrors away?'

‘Actually,' Geoff said as he rolled a shoulder and winced, ‘could you help me drag the fire out of the back cabin and around to the front deck.'

I sighed and put the rucksack back down. ‘Of course, darling.' I gave him a bright smile which didn't fool him for a second, ‘I'd love to.'

A cast-iron log burner filled with firebricks, grate and other bits and pieces, weighs a lot, an awful lot. Between us we managed to inch it off the back of the boat, on to the tow path and carefully walk it the seventy foot to the front of the boat.

We stared at the raised sides of the bow. This was not going to be easy.

‘How the hell are we supposed to lift it over the gunwales then down into the front deck?' I stared at the high sides before me.

Geoff frowned, then his expression cleared. Wandering over to the fire he began to dismantle it. Out came the firebricks, the grate, the riddling ring thing that allows all the ash to fall through the grate. Out came the ash pan, these and a few other little bits and pieces soon made a small pile on the gravel.

The kids were given stern instructions to not touch any of it then we headed, with a not significantly lighter lump of iron toward the boat.

It was decided that Geoff should stand in the front well and reach over the side, this would allow his greater strength and reach to pull straight up and all I would have to do was push and guide.

While Geoff climbed on to the boat I leant the fire on my knees, it was standing half on and half off the bank. After a couple of moments my knees began to feel the strain so reversing the tilt I leant the top of fire against the boat ready for Geoff to hoist it aboard.