The Boat Girls (29 page)

‘Were just the same with me an' Saul. Passed each other on the cut – a word an' a wave an' 'e was gone. If we was lucky, we 'ad the same tie-up an' then we could go fer a walk, or ter the pictures.' Molly hitched Abel higher on her hip; her stomach was already swelling with another baby, due in the spring. ‘Yer bin with 'im?'

She understood the meaning very well. Like all boatwomen, Molly loved a gossip. ‘Of course not.'

‘Wouldn't blame yer if yer 'ad. But courtin's different. Gettin' wed. Yer don' know what it's like, livin' on the boats.'

‘We've been working on them for almost a year.'

‘That's not
livin'
on them, like we does. Wouldn't be right fer yer, an' that's a fact.'

‘But I love the boats, Molly. And I love Jack.'

‘I dare say.'

The manager in the company office at Coventry handed Frances a telegram and she tore it open.

Vere wounded on ops and taken to hospital at Northampton. Can you go soonest to see him. Aunt Gertrude.

Ros said, ‘Off you go. Prue and I can manage.'

‘Two-handed? We've never done that before?'

‘We'll potter along slowly. You can catch us up somewhere later on. You ought to go, Frankie. It says “soonest”. That means right now.'

The cross-country train journey took hours. During it, her imagination painted all sorts of horror pictures: Vere hideously burned, horribly mutilated, lying unconscious at death's door – perhaps already dead. At the hospital, she followed a nurse down a long linoleum corridor. Swing doors led off into gloomy wards with rows of beds filled with sad-looking patients. They'd put Vere in a small room on his own at the far end of a corridor. He was lying with his eyes closed, so still and so white that at first she thought he must, indeed, be dead. There was heavy bandaging across his chest and over his right shoulder.

‘He's been sleeping a lot,' the nurse whispered. ‘But I expect he'll wake up now you're here. You won't be able to stay long, though. He's not up to it.'

She sank down on the chair near the bed, numb
with fear. Vere wasn't dead but he was obviously very badly hurt. A chest wound was never a good thing – not from all she'd ever heard or read. In films, if people got shot in the chest, it was almost always the end. She spoke his name and he opened his eyes slowly.

‘Frances? What on earth are you doing here?'

She pulled the chair closer. ‘Aunt Gertrude sent me a telegram. She said you'd been hurt.'

‘Damned nuisance . . .'

She wasn't sure if he was referring to her being there or to being hurt. ‘How are you feeling?' What a
stupid
question.

‘I don't feel anything much. They keep giving me stuff. Where am I, by the way?'

‘Northampton Hospital.'

‘You shouldn't have come. What about those boats of yours?'

‘Ros and Prue are looking after them.'

‘Can they cope?'

‘I should think so. We're quite good at it now.'

‘You're doing a very good job. I'm sorry I tried to stop you.' There was a pause. ‘But I still think you shouldn't be doing it.'

He closed his eyes. She waited but he seemed to have drifted off again, and presently the nurse came back and said that her time was up. Out in the corridor she bumped into an RAF squadron leader whose face seemed familiar.

‘Hugh Whitelaw,' he said. ‘We met at the Ritz, remember? I've come to see how your brother's getting on.'

‘He doesn't look very good. In fact, he looks dreadful. What happened?'

‘His Mosquito was hit by flak, that's all I know. And he managed to fly it back. God knows how.' He took her arm. ‘You don't look so good yourself. There's a canteen here, if you'd like a cup of tea, or something. It might make you feel better.'

He sat her down at a table and fetched her a cup of tea – the stewed kind that she used to dispense from the urn in the Bridport canteen.

‘Cigarette?'

‘Thanks.'

Her hand was shaking as he lit it for her.

He said, ‘Try not to worry too much. Vere's incredibly tough, you know. He'll pull through all right.'

‘We've never got on very well . . .'

He smiled. ‘Yes, you told me when we first met. Big brothers can be a drag – from the best of intentions. He told me once that he's worried about you since your mother died, and that your father isn't up to things. He feels you're his responsibility. Responsibility is a big thing with him, you see. Looking after people he's in charge of. He's a hero to his men; they worship him in the squadron.'

Tears were trickling down her cheeks. ‘I've been pretty foul to him, one way and another. Now he's going to die and I won't get the chance to be nicer.'

He handed her a very clean handkerchief. ‘He's not going to die, Frances. He'll go on bossing you about and you'll go on being foul to him – until you get married and he can hand over the responsibility to somebody else.'

‘He won't approve of my husband at all.' She mopped at her cheeks.

‘You've someone in mind?'

‘Yes. And he'll disapprove like anything.'

He found her a room in a hotel for the night – a depressing place with elderly residents dozing in wing chairs and run by staff almost as decrepit – and then took her off to dinner in a nearby pub. After a large gin and tonic she began to perk up.

‘Do you mind telling me the latest war news, Hugh? We don't hear much on the cut.'

‘I assume you know that President Roosevelt has been re-elected?'

‘No. I'm afraid not. What else?'

‘Let's see . . . RAF bombers sank the German battleship
Tirpitz
.'

‘We haven't heard that either.'

‘Our army has been doing amazingly well in Burma.'

‘That's wonderful.'

‘And the Yanks have been steamrollering across Europe.'

‘So the war'll be over soon, won't it?'

‘Don't count on it. We've still got a good way to go, I'm afraid. In Europe and the Far East.'

‘How much more?'

‘Impossible to say. Will you stay on your narrowboats until the bitter end?'

‘Yes, of course.' She twiddled her glass. ‘Actually, I might stay even longer. Perhaps for ever.'

He didn't ask why, which saved her having to lie about it in case he spilled the beans; he wasn't the sort of person it would be easy to lie to. Over dinner, she took a closer peek at his face. Grey eyes, firm mouth, strong chin, but marked with the same lines and shadows as Vere.

She said, ‘Do you fly Mosquitoes too?'

‘I do, indeed. Fantastic planes. Mostly made of wood, you know.'

‘
Wood!
Isn't that a bit dangerous?'

He smiled. ‘War
is
dangerous.'

‘Vere will never tell me exactly what he does.'

‘I can't tell you either, I'm afraid. But it's all pretty routine and boring.'

She didn't believe him for a moment. It was hideously dangerous – whatever they did – and he could easily be killed doing it.

‘Don't forget about my parents' house at Stoke
Bruerne,' he said when he dropped her back at the depressing hotel. ‘If you're ever in need of some decent food and a bed. Havlock Hall. It's easy to find.'

She stayed in Northampton for two days, spending most of the time at Vere's bedside. It would be a long haul, the hospital doctor told her. A large piece of flak had entered his chest and done a lot of damage. But there was every chance that he would make a full recovery – eventually. Predictably, Vere, whenever he woke up, still tried to give her orders.

‘Time you went back, Frances. There's no point in hanging about here.'

‘I'm not hanging about. I'm making sure you're all right.'

‘Well, I am – as you can see. I'm in perfectly good hands, and you're needed on your boats. You're the captain, or whatever it's called. It's your responsibility.' He shut his eyes again.

She caught the boats up at Berkhamsted, where the railway passed close to the cut and the station was only a stone's throw away. She wriggled through the fence onto the towpath and presently
Orpheus
and
Eurydice
came trundling along in smooth and stately fashion towards her – Ros steering the motor, Prue the butty. She wasn't quite sure why but the familiar and beautiful sight made her start crying, and when they saw her face
they thought, at first, that it was bad news until she tried to explain.

They'd been quite OK, they assured her, except for getting stemmed up once, but the Quill brothers had come along and given them a snatch.

‘The
Quills
?'

‘They were charming about it – for them,' Ros said. ‘And we gave them mugs of tea as a thank-you. We're all friends now.' She put an arm round her shoulders. ‘I'm so glad Vere's going to be all right.'

THE BOY HAD
been standing on the towpath by the top lock when they came in – not a boat child but one from some nearby slum. He was about the same age as Freddy, but without Freddy's lively spirit. His hair was dull and matted, his face and hands filthy, his eyes wary, his clothes like rags. He followed Prudence around as she drew the paddles.

‘Give yer an 'and, miss.'

Children could be an awful nuisance and it was dangerous to let them get too near. ‘I can manage, thank you.'

‘'Elp yer wiv the gate.' He set his hands on the beam and leaned his skinny frame against it. His boots were split open and tied on with string.

She hadn't the heart to chase him away and he stuck to her like a burr, all the way down the flight of locks. At the bottom she gave him a biscuit from her coat pocket. He crammed it in his mouth, swallowed it almost whole.

‘Can I come wiv yer, far as Shrewley. I won' be no trouble.' His eyes pleaded.

‘What do you want to go there for?'

‘Me gran lives there.'

‘Don't you have a home here?'

He shook his head. ‘I run away. Me dad thrashes me.'

‘Didn't your mother stop him?'

‘She's dead.'

She looked at him unhappily. ‘We can't take you. I'm so sorry.'

‘Please, miss . . . I got nowhere else ter go.'

He followed her down the towpath. Every time she turned round he was still there.

Frances said, ‘I suppose we
could
takehim . . . it seems awful to leave him here.'

They stared at the child with his sad eyes and in his pitiful state; he was shivering with cold.

Ros smiled at him kindly. ‘What's your name?'

‘Billy, miss.'

‘Billy what?'

‘I forgot the rest.'

He was probably terrified that they'd give him away to some authority.

‘Do you know where your grandmother lives at Shrewley?'

‘Yes, miss. I bin there once when me mam took me. I can find it.'

In the end, they gave way and Billy scrambled
eagerly onto the butty. Cleaning him up was a hopeless job, but they fed him thick slices of bread and peanut butter and gave him hot cocoa. By the time they reached Shrewley it was getting too dark to go in search of the grandmother so they tied up before the tunnel and shared their supper with him. It was like feeding a starving animal.

Frances tried some more questions. ‘What's your grandmother's name, Billy? Mrs what?'

‘Dunno. I calls 'er Gran.'

‘Does she live in a house?'

‘A little 'un. Right by the water.'

‘Does it have a number? Or a name?'

‘Dunno. But I knows what it looks like.'

They opened a tin of rice pudding for him and he scoffed the lot, then half a packet of biscuits.

‘He can sleep in the side bed on the motor,' Frances said. ‘We'll go looking for the grandmother first thing in the morning.'

She dragged out blankets and a spare pillow. He crawled into them, like a creature bolting into a safe burrow. She drew the blanket up over his shoulders and tucked it gently round him.

‘Sleep well, Billy. We'll find her for you.'

But he was already asleep.

In the morning they washed his hands and face in warm water and gave him breakfast – porridge with treacle and evaporated milk and a precious boiled egg with more slices of bread. Ros stayed
to look after the boats while Frances and Prue set off with Billy. They walked along the towpath, past a long row of cottages, stopping at each one. The boy kept shaking his head until, finally, they came to one on its own with a front door of faded blue.

‘This is Gran's.'

‘You're sure, Billy?'

‘Yes, miss. I remembers the door.'

Frances knocked, waited and then knocked again. The door was opened by an old woman – a sour-faced creature in hairnet and curlers, indignant at being disturbed.

Billy gave a loud wail of disappointment. ‘She ain't me gran.'

Prudence took his hand in hers. ‘This little boy's looking for his grandmother. He thought she lived here.'

‘Must've been Mrs Smith. She died last summer. Ilive 'ere now.'

They walked back to the boats, Billy between them, and Ros took him down into the butty cabin and gave him some more biscuits.

‘We can't possibly keep him, Prue,' Frances whispered. ‘It's not like a stray dog, or something. We're going to have to call the police.'

‘But they might send him back to his father.'

‘I know. But we still can't keep him.'

‘Couldn't we look after him, between us? He
could live on the boats and we could take turns to have him home for leaves.'

‘It would be kidnapping – against the law.'

‘Not if he wanted to stay with us.'

‘It doesn't make any difference. He's under age. He doesn't belong to us.'