The Narrowboat Girl (16 page)

‘Morning, nipper.’ He gave his slow smile. His cap was shiny with minute droplets of rain.

Maryann grinned, overjoyed. She was here – at last!

Joel sat her down inside and handed her a cup of tea and a thick, man-size wedge of bread.

‘I don’t know as I can eat all that,’ she said.

‘I should get it down you. You’ll need it.’

Darius Bartholomew had not said a word in greeting, so Maryann turned to him. ‘Morning, Mr Bartholomew.’

In reply she received a reluctant-sounding grunt from behind the magnificent white beard, but Darius didn’t meet her eye. After a few moments, chewing on the last of the bread, he got up, bending over as usual in the low cabin, stuck his hat on and ducked out through the door.

The joy had faded on Maryann’s face. ‘’E don’t want me ’ere, does ’e, Joel?’

Joel finished his mouthful, ruminatively. You couldn’t hurry these men into speech.

‘’E’s glad of an extra pair of hands. It’s only that, well, living on a boat’s quite a close life, intimate like. It’ll take a bit of getting used to, someone about who ent family. But we’ll manage. Plenty of others do.’

‘I’ll do whatever you want,’ Maryann said desperately. ‘I’ll do yer washing, cooking – anything, only let me come. Don’t send me back ’ome!’

Joel ruffled her hair again. ‘I know yer will. We’ll manage for a round trip. Don’t you fret.’

When Darius came back, Joel went out and spoke to him, the two of them standing over by the stack of firebricks, and when they came back in, Darius nodded at Maryann.

‘Mornin’.’

‘Morning, Mr Bartholomew. I shan’t be any trouble, I promise.’

Darius nodded. ‘Let’s get on then.’

Warmed by her breakfast and by Darius at least acknowledging her, Maryann went with Joel to fetch Bessie from the stable and watched with great attention as he harnessed her up.

They moved round to a new wharf to load up. Maryann stood watching with Bessie munching beside her as a crane lowered the cargo of iron pipes, load by load, down into the
Esther Jane
with much clanking and banging in the morning air. As she waited there it stopped raining and grew lighter though the rising sun was obscured by cloud and the smoke and smuts in the air. Joel went off to pay the toll and Darius went to fill up with water once more. Maryann offered to go, but he seemed not to hear her. She watched his slightly stooped back moving away from her.

At last they set off: Bessie straining hard against the harness to get the
Esther Jane
on the move, her hooves sliding and scraping, easing the boat forwards until it would begin to drift off and gather its own momentum. Joel led the horse, telling Maryann to stay on board with Darius.

She felt her eyes stretching wide to take everything in, thrilled at the boat beginning to start off slowly under her, and so caught up in the sight of the wharves and chimneys and canal cottages sliding past that she forgot to feel anxious standing beside Darius Bartholomew. She felt bubbly with excitement. They were really going, and she could leave it all behind her: home and school and Sal’s disappearance and most of all, Norman Griffin. He’d be livid that she’d given him the slip – there he was commanding her to go and work for him without even giving her a say, and she wouldn’t be there in two weeks after school ended, she’d make sure of that. Miss Bentley was a kind teacher and she’d persuade her somehow to give her her school leaving certificate. She’d cross that bridge when she came to it. But for now, in this one precious week, she was going to learn to work the cut and see something of outside Birmingham for the first time in her life. Up until now she’d hardly set foot outside Ladywood!

She held on to the cabin of the
Esther Jane
, a smile on her lips as she watched Joel stepping along the bank. She took in a great lungful of air. Stinking and smoky as it was, just then it felt like the breath of freedom.

The days that followed she would always remember as the closest heaven ever came to earth. It was the newness of it all, how right it felt – her being on the boat and life opening out in front of her like a picture in a storybook. For the first time in such a long while, she felt safe.

That morning, as they moved south, Maryann watched carefully, drinking in every detail as Joel and Darius manoeuvred the boat through Camp Hill Locks. Gradually the dark city began to fall away, the sun burned through the clouds. They left Birmingham with a cap of cloud over it, but outside the haze cleared and at last the sky was a rich summer blue.

‘Is this the Oxford Canal then?’ Maryann asked, excited.

‘Oh no – we don’t get on the h’Oxford till after Wigram’s Turn – down at Napton. This is the Warwick and Birnigum. We’re headed for a cleaner part of the cut now, you’ll see,’ Joel told her. They referred to ‘Birnigum – that stinking ’ole’ and as they progressed out into the Warwickshire countryside, Maryann could see why. She kept gazing round her, enchanted by the space, the wide, rolling country with its green pastures, black and white cows, its cornfields and snug-looking cottages, amazed at being able to see so
far
, further than she’d ever been able to see in her life before.

She could have sat and stared around quite happily all day, but she was anxious that Darius shouldn’t regard her as a ‘good-for-nothing’ while she was aboard. Also the place felt rather lonely without Ada and Jep and she wanted to keep busy. She asked Joel what she should do.

‘Well, you could give the brightwork a polish,’ he said, pointing to the brass fittings on the chimney, kettle, horse brasses and handles inside the cabin. Since Ada left they hadn’t had the time for ‘prettifying’ the place and the brasses were tarnished. Gladly Maryann set to work until they were smooth and gleaming and she could see a distorted version of her face looking back at her in them. Then she cleaned the cabin, wiping out all the smuts and dust and sweeping the floor. She was small and agile, kneeling to poke right into the corners in a way she could see was hard for big, muscular men. The cabin was so small, yet so prettily decorated inside with its scumbled paintwork, its roses and castles and scrolls, and its shelves of china, that Maryann felt as if she was playing houses. She had to remind herself that this really was their house and that Joel, and certainly Darius, had never known any other home.

In the middle of the afternoon, with Joel’s help, she pulled a bucket of water out of the cut, and with a chunk of soap set to and washed the cabin’s crochet work until she had it looking, not gleaming white, for it was already yellowed with age, but at least a good deal better.

‘Can I hang them out to dry?’ she asked Joel. She always went to him instead of his father, although the two of them were both there in the stern. Bessie knew the routine and plodded along for a lot of the journey without being led.

‘Oh – can’t rig up a line any too easy with a load on,’ Joel said, dismissively. ‘We do that when the boat’s empty, see.’ But he caught the crestfallen look on Maryann’s face. She had so wanted to do something to help!

‘Awright then – I’ll see what I can do. Those little bits don’t need to hang down far, do they?’

Maryann felt Darius’s eyes on her and wondered what he was thinking. She watched nervously as Joel climbed forward over the cabin and made his way along the planks which were laid over the cargo. He was holding a line attached to the cabin and unravelling it. He stretched it across to the low mast at the front and tied it, creating a washing line.

‘There y’are!’ he called to her, scrambling back across the planks.

It was obviously her turn to climb over. Joel handed her some pegs which she put in the bucket. She was glad it was a calm day without wind, and that the boat didn’t have its tarpaulin sheeting on – the planks would be positioned higher, over the top of it, if they had to cover the load. The only time she felt really wobbly was when she straightened up after bending over to pick one of the cloths out of the bucket, almost losing her balance and falling off the planks. It wasn’t far to fall but she was determined not to lose her dignity. Soon, not far above the cargo, the line of crochet work was fluttering like bunting. How pretty it was! Fancy being able to make things like that, Maryann thought. She saw Darius exchange a quiet smile with Joel as she came back to them. Suddenly Darius said, ‘Why don’t you ’ave a sit up there and look round. You’ve bin working enough I reckon.’

She realized he meant she should sit up on the cabin. He said he could see past her.

‘Ooh,’ she said, climbing up. ‘It’s hot up ’ere again!’ The roof of the cabin was baking to the touch in the sunshine. Joel handed her the soaking mop. Periodically, in the heat, they swabbed down the roof of the cabin to stop the heat shrinking the timbers and cracking the paint. Maryann laid her coat on the damp roof and sat feeling the sun blazing down on her skin, screwing her eyes up against the bright sunlight on the water. Life on the cut was so quiet and peaceful compared with home, where there were always factory sounds, the whirring, whining, clanging of machinery, trams and buses and people shouting over all the other racket. Out here there were just the gentle noises of Bessie’s hooves, mostly muffled by mud now they were out in the fields; the boat passing through the rippling water; the creak of the tiller and the men’s occasional speech. Maryann began to attune herself to new sounds: birdsong from across the fields and in the trees, the occasional lowing of a cow, waterbirds quacking away from the boat and the breeze in the grass. There was nothing to look at that was grimy or ugly, just fields, trees and sky, farm cottages and church spires, and the bright paintwork of the boat winding along the ribbon of water. As they glided along, she thought the cut was the most beautiful place on earth.

Every so often another boat would appear, coming from the opposite direction, and the boats would pass one another a few inches apart in the middle of the channel, the boatmen exchanging a ‘How do!’ or more if they were better acquainted, as they often seemed to be. A couple greeted Darius and Joel with, ‘We ent seen you for a bit!’

She was still sitting dreamily on the cabin roof that afternoon when there came another, incongruous sound advancing towards them, a ceaseless ‘phut-phut’ getting louder and louder, until round a bend in the cut they saw a vessel coming along with smoke streaming out from it.

‘See that?’ Joel shouted up to her. ‘That’s one of they moty boats!’

As it drew closer Maryann saw it was towing a butty, both of them clothed up with tarpaulins over the cargo so she couldn’t see what it was. The noise it made seemed extraordinarily loud after all the quiet. The family aboard all waved and shouted greetings, trying to make themselves heard over the engine. Maryann turned to watch it disappear behind them and saw that Joel and Darius were doing the same. Darius was shaking his head as if in disapproval at this noisy ‘moty boat’.

Joel leaned over to her. ‘You don’t get many of them down the h’Oxford,’ he said. ‘The locks’re wider down ’ere to London.’ On there, he explained, the boat could tow a butty through all in one go, whereas on here they had to pull them through the narrower locks one by one and it all took time. Maryann was learning that the one overwhelming command on the cut was ‘keep moving!’

That night they tied up near a pub called the Cape outside Warwick, a little distance after the long flight of locks at Hatton which Joel told her were called the ‘Steps to Heaven’. There were three other boats tied up there too. Once Bessie was fed and stabled, Joel, Darius and the other men caught up with the gossip in the pub. Maryann sat out on the bank and played with two little children from the other boat and their mother seemed grateful to have them occupied while she got on. Joel and Darius came back with groceries they’d bought from the pub.

Maryann bedded down on the side bench again that night, as she had before when she slept on the
Esther Jane
, and watched Joel ready himself for bed. She was lulled by the reassurance of his presence, his huge shadow moving round the cabin. Neither of the men undressed much for bed. They left their boots by the door and took off their jackets, undid their belts which they fastened at the back to keep the buckles from digging in when they bent over, and unfastened a few buttons. Both of them lay to sleep in shirts and their thick, corduroy trousers.

Before he lay down, Joel stepped over to her. ‘You tired after your first day, Maryann?’

‘Ummm.’ She smiled sleepily up at him. His face was in shadow. ‘It’s been
bostin
– the best day ever.’

He patted her shoulder and she could hear the smile in his voice.

‘Night – young nipper.’

The bed creaked as he lay down beside his father.

Maryann wanted to lie awake, to hear the sounds of the countryside at night, but she could scarcely manage it, she was so exhausted after all the new sights and a day in the fresh air. Everything smelled different. There was always the smell of the canal all round them. The sounds of family life from the boat moored behind them were dying out. Her mind passed over the day they’d had, what she’d seen, how she’d learned the way a boat manoeuvred through a lock. Something screeched outside. She imagined the
Esther Jane
from the outside, under the stars, resting on the black water. And then she was asleep.

Seventeen

Soon after the
Esther Jane
set off again the next morning, they passed through Warwick and later that morning, the stately, calm town of Leamington Spa. As they approached each town, buildings and roads grew up along the cut, shutting out the view, and with more people about there was a sudden sense of bustle.

When they reached the lock at Radford Semele, Joel said, ‘’Ere – you give me a hand this time.’

The day before he had told her to stay on the boat at most of the locks, but today he took her with him and showed her how to attach the windlass and turn it to open and close the gates. Maryann watched with intense attention, all her senses alert to learning to do everything as quickly and as well as possible.