The Boat Girls (6 page)

Years ago, when Frances had been nine, gypsies had trespassed at Averton. They had set up camp in a clearing in the woods, close to a stream, and
she had ridden by on her pony and spied on them from behind a tree. Spied on the dark-skinned, black-haired people in strange clothes with their painted caravans, skewbald horses, chickens and goats and lurcher dogs, the big black kettle suspended on a hook over a wood fire. She'd watched for some time, her heart thudding with a fearful fascination. If they saw her, they might catch her and carry her off against her will to live with them for ever.

She's gone with the raggle-taggle gypsies, O!

Her pony had whinnied at the horses and one of the men who was standing by the fire, smoking a pipe, had turned, caught sight of her and smiled. She'd been hypnotized by his handsome looks and by his smile and by the golden hoop in his ear and the red scarf knotted round his neck. He'd beckoned to her and she'd got off her pony and walked towards him as if drawn by invisible silken threads. Close to, he had been even more handsome. Glossy black hair, dark eyes, teeth gleaming as he smiled and beckoned. The other gypsies had fallen silent, staring as she had followed him up the wooden steps into one of the pretty crimson and green caravans.

My mother said

I never should

Play with the gypsies in the wood . . .

A woman had been sitting inside, stirring something in a pot on an iron stove. She'd worn long black skirts, a yellow shawl and a purple silk scarf tied round her head; there had been golden earrings in both her ears and golden bracelets on her wrist. Her eyes were black as sloes and she'd talked in a strange language as she'd showed Frances the flowers painted over the woodwork, the bunk bed with its patchwork cover, the gingham curtains at the little window above. She'd opened cupboards and then a big locker under the bed, motioning to her to bend down to look inside, just like the witch in
Hansel and Gretel
. Given her a push.

She'd fled in terror from the caravan, bursting out of the doorway, down the steps, past the man, scrambled onto her pony and galloped away.

The memory still haunted her; still made her heart thud faster; still fascinated and frightened her, both together. And she still dreamed of her dark and smiling gypsy.

After a moment, she collected herself and started down the slope towards the wharf.

When she reached the boats, she could see that there were pictures painted on them – pictures of fairy-tale castles, of trees and rivers and mountains – and patterns of hearts and roses and diamond shapes. The company initials GUCCC were written along the sides and the number and
name on the sterns:
Andromeda
,
Auriga
,
Delphinus
,
Libra
,
Pegasus
,
Polaris
. . . all constellations, unless she was mistaken. As she walked along the wharf, searching for
Cetus
and
Aquila
, the women looked up from their washtubs and their gossiping and fell silent. They had lined and dark-skinned faces like gypsies, but they were unsmiling. Neither hostile, nor friendly; they merely stared. The sensible thing would have been to ask them where to find Miss Rowan and her boats, but their silence and their stares were unnerving. One of the dogs ran up and bared its yellow teeth at her. She reached the man she'd noticed standing on the stern. He wore a flat cap and a dark jacket with cord trousers and heavy boots, and his face was sharp as a weasel's. He watched her with the same unreadable stare as the women, and in the same silence. As she passed him, he took the pipe out of his mouth and spat over the side of his boat.

She came across the
Aquila
first, and a woman poked her head out of the cabin doors. She was youngish and wirily built, with short brown hair and wearing what looked like sailor's serge trousers, a navy pea jacket and peaked cap.

‘You'll be one of my new trainees. Come aboard!'

Frances scrambled clumsily over the side, hauling kitbag and bedding bundle after her.
There was no real deck to speak of – just a small well at the stern which also accommodated a large wooden tiller and led to some kind of cabin.

‘Come down backwards. It's easier. Hand me your kit first, though. Thank God, you haven't brought too much. Some of them bring trunks and there simply isn't the room.'

She lowered herself gingerly backwards into the cabin, cracking her head in the process.

Miss Rowan was heaving her luggage onto a side bunk. ‘This is the butty cabin. It's a bit bigger than the one on the motor because there's no engine – that's why I use it. I sleep on the cross-bed. You can have this one here, if you like. The other two trainees will have to go on the motor. First come, first served.'

Frances rubbed her head, looking round. The gypsy caravan had been very similar but this was even smaller – no more than a few feet square, not much more than five feet high, and every inch put to use. The walls were lined from roof to floor with cupboards and stained with brown varnish. The cross-bed, breezily referred to, was invisible. Every shelf was crammed full, something hung on every hook and over every rail, and a miniature cooking stove was scorching her left trouser leg. But it was the brass that she noticed more than anything; it winked at her from every side. Brass
knobs and handles and rails and hooks, and brass without any purpose other than to adorn – old horse brasses, old brass door handles and old brass bed knobs.

‘It's traditional,' Miss Rowan said. ‘The boat people love their brass. So do I. You can put some of your stuff in that long cupboard above the bunk and there's a locker underneath, as well as the little cupboard there at the end. Keep the space under it free, though, so you have somewhere to put your head at bedtime. While you're getting yourself sorted out, I'll make us a pot of tea.'

Frances emptied the kitbag contents into the long cupboard and into the locker which was already partly occupied by a frying pan, tins of evaporated milk, sticks of firewood, a bottle of disinfectant, bars of soap, and what looked like a car battery. The small cupboard was useful for the oddments – her alarm clock, sponge bag, hairbrush and comb. Miss Rowan, meanwhile, had put the kettle on the stove, taken mugs off their hooks and lowered a hinged panel, revealing shelves stuffed with canisters and tins and an assortment of crockery.

‘Our larder. I'm afraid the milk's tinned. Do you have sugar? Take a pew on the coal box there.'

She sat down on the lid of the coal box, which
did double duty as a step. Miss Rowan had fixed the hinged panel so that it was propped on the edge of the side bunk.

‘Our table.' A spare plank of wood fitted neatly across the cabin's width. ‘My seat.' She poured out the tea into the thick china mugs. ‘I think we'll manage quite well, don't you? By the way, which trainee are you? What's your name?'

‘Carlyon.'

‘I meant your Christian name. We always use those on the cut.'

‘Frances.'

‘I'm Philippa, but everyone calls me Pip. Cigarette?'

She accepted the Players and puffed away, though she had hardly ever smoked before. It was snug in the cabin and, after a while, she found that it no longer seemed quite so claustrophobically small – as though the space had somehow magically expanded around her. Pip talked about the trip they were to do, taking a cargo from the docks all the way up to Tyseley near Birmingham, then onwards to load the empty boats with coal from one of the coalfields around Coventry for dropping off at canal-side factories on the way back.

‘It'll take us at least three weeks from start to finish, I'm afraid, as this is a training trip. An experienced crew could manage it in about ten
days and the real boaters in a week, but then they've been doing it all their lives.'

‘The real boaters? You mean the people I saw just now on the wharf? They didn't seem at all friendly.'

‘Some of them are and some of them aren't. We're a bit of a mystery to them, you must understand that. They know nothing about us or our world. Their whole lives are lived on the cut – it's always called the cut, by the way, never the canal – and that's all they really know. The cut, working the boats, their own very particular ways and customs. It's important for us to respect them. After all, they've been here for a long time – two hundred years or more. We're the newcomers who have to learn to fit in. They can teach us a lot, if they're minded to, and help us when we get into trouble, which we often do. Sometimes, but not very often, we can even do
them
agood turn and they never ever forget that.'

‘I got the impression that they resented us.'

‘Who wouldn't? A lot of strangely dressed young women, playing at boats, shouting at each other in la-di-da voices, doing everything all wrong, and getting in their way and holding them up. I don't blame them, if they do. And, by the way, never call the boats barges or the boaters bargees, and never go on board without their permission, or look inside their cabins, or even
lean against one of their boats, and never be overfamiliar, especially with the men, and never
ever
compare them with gypsies. It's a great insult.'

‘I thought that's what they were, at first. They look awfully like them.'

‘So would we if we'd spent all our lives in the open air, living on a boat and always on the move.'

‘You mean, they actually
live
in a tiny space like this? All the time? Don't they have homes?'

‘The boats are their homes. They're born in them, they live in them and they die in them. And they bring up their families in them. Some of them have as many as twelve children, though they don't usually all survive. Don't ask me how they manage to cope, but they do. Most of them keep their boats neat and clean as a whistle – others don't, it has to be said. They live with their work and it's a very tough life, especially for the women.' Pip drained her mug. ‘Drink up and I'll give you a tour of the boats.'

A metal bowl with a wooden handle, known as a dipper, was unhooked from the wall and the mugs rinsed out in a few inches of water poured from a can. Water, Pip explained, was precious. The boats carried big four-gallon cans on the cabin roofs. There was no convenient tap to turn on and the cans had to be refilled at water taps along the
canal that were, Pip said, few and far between. The dipper apparently did service for washing many things – vegetables, dishes, clothes and themselves. Water used for cooking was kept for boiling eggs, egg water for making tea and cocoa.

The motor,
Cetus
, lay alongside the butty,
Aquila
. At first sight, there had seemed little difference between the two, but Frances soon learned otherwise. For a start, the tillers were quite different – the butty's a long, thick piece of wood, curved and tapered like a steer's horn, while the motor's was metal banded in red, white and blue paint and bent like a swan's neck. On the motor, the steerer stood on a flat counter at the stern, not down in a well as on the butty, and the propeller blades and helm were protected by fat rope fenders hanging at the stern. The cabin on the motor was even smaller to allow space for the engine housed beyond the bulkhead, but otherwise it looked much the same as on the butty. She inched her way after Pip along the narrow gunwale that led round the edge of the cabin to the engine-room doors, where she was shown the shiningly kept green National diesel engine and, not so shining or impressive, the enamel bucket that served as the lavatory.

‘You empty it over the side into the cut,' Pip said cheerily. ‘Bucket-and-chucket. A bit primitive, but you'll soon get used to it.'

The gunwale came to a stop at the end of the engine housing and, to go further, they had to climb up onto the roof which also accommodated an old and rusty bike. Beyond and below lay the yawning chasm of the empty cargo hold. Pip's lecture continued.

‘Both of the holds together can carry up to fifty tons. When we're loaded up, you'll see how low the boats go down in the water. Right now, they're riding high.' Pip glanced sideways at her. ‘Think you can walk the plank?'

The hold was divided into three by wooden cross beams placed across the width of the boat. Supported by these, a long and sagging pathway of single planks ran from the cabin roof to the fore-end of the boat. There was, Frances saw, no other way of getting there. She gritted her teeth. ‘I'll try.'

It was a terrifying journey. The planks were no more than a few inches wide and the only handholds along the way were the uprights fixing them to the cross beams. If she lost her balance on the stretches in between, she'd fall straight into the bottom of the empty hold, a good eight feet below. And, just to add to the fun, the planks bounced up and down as she walked. The idyllic recruiting picture hadn't shown any of this, nor had it been mentioned in the interview. She made it to the far end and turned to watch
Pip run across after her as easily as a tightrope walker.

The top planks had finished at a tarpaulin-covered framework called the cratch – another test in the obstacle course. She followed Pip round a narrow gunwale, clinging to the tarpaulin strings, until they finally reached the fore-end deck where an iron hatch covered a snake pit of coiled ropes and straps. There was also a headlight mounted on an iron stand.

‘Not allowed to use it except in tunnels,' Pip said. ‘Blackout regs and all that. Same on the cut as everywhere else. Well, now that you've done all that, let's go and have some dinner in the canteen. They call it dinner – remember that – not lunch.'

The depot canteen was crowded with workmen and wreathed in cigarette smoke. A wireless was going at full blast with a comedian telling jokes to roars of audience laughter. There was a long table down the centre and smaller tables at the sides, where the men were sitting and eating from plates piled high with hot food.