Rosie of the River

by Catherine Cookson

  Bill could not be persuaded to agree. He could not believe that she had forgiven him in so short a time. His feelings were delicate, and once hurt, took time to recover.

  She began to unpack, interrupted by glances through the window. High above them was the neat green and white Commodore public house, while all around lay boats, big ones, little ones, fat ones, and slim ones, berthed so close as to be touching.

  On each side of the Carpenters were the companion boats to theirs, Dogfish One and Dogfish Two. This, Sally found, was very interesting, and she was about to open the cabin door to draw Fred’s attention, when a sailor barged down the two steps almost knocking her over, turned his stern to her, lifted up the step he had just come down, grabbed a handle, worked it up and down a number of times, cried, ‘OK,’ banged the step back again, then jumped back up into the well and disappeared onto the roof of the cabin. She could follow his travels by the sound of his feet just above her head.

  Leaning against the table, she looked down at Bill, who was now on his feet, with his tail hovering at an undecided angle. Like his mistress, he also thought he knew that sailor…But Fred was slimmish, he didn’t possess an outsize in a seaman’s jersey, and he certainly did not possess a sailor’s hat, a real sailor’s hat, either new or old, and the one Sally had just seen was old, very old, and dirty, and spoke of countless voyages.

  She waited, not moving. The door burst open again, and now the sailor grinned at her.

  ‘What on earth?’

  ‘Now, now, now!’

  ‘You look like…’

  ‘Now don’t say it.’

  ‘You look like a bus conductor.’

  ‘What! Have a heart. A bus conductor?’

  ‘Where on earth did you get that hat?’

  ‘Cap, darling.’

  ‘Where did you get it?’

  ‘In Hastings.’

  ‘Hastings?’

  ‘Yes, where we live, remember?’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Well, I saw it in a second-hand shop, and I thought, That’s just the job.’

  ‘But it’s filthy; you don’t know who’s worn it. And you’re the one who won’t even dry your hands on anyone else’s towel.’

  ‘I sterilised it.’

  ‘You sterilised it?’

  ‘Well sort of. I wiped the inside of the lining with disinfectant.’

  ‘You’re mad. How is it that I haven’t seen it before?’

  He grinned. ‘I stuffed it in my raincoat pocket.’

  ‘Where did you get the jersey?’

  ‘I had to buy it.’ His grin broadened.

  ‘But where?’

  ‘Just now. At the Yacht and Caravan Supply Company along the street…it’s a nice shop.’

  ‘But you haven’t had the time.’

  ‘Well, I got it. There’s a spring left in me yet.’

  ‘You are mad.’

  ‘You said that before…and come on and get out of that suit and hat. Come on’—he shook her arm—‘come up on deck. The man’s coming back to show me the ropes. Ropes…that reminds me. How long is it since you did any jumping? You’ll have to jump around for the next week.’

  ‘Jump? Where?’

  ‘Off the boat, of course, with the rond anchor, when we moor. You’ll either have to take her in or jump off, take your pick. So come on now, the quicker you learn the better.’

  She wanted to protest that this holiday was to be a rest, yet the thought was burrowing rapidly into her mind that for the next seven days she’d be alone on a boat on a wide river with Fred, and from past experience she felt it would be only common sense to be ready for all emergencies.

  So, still in her flowery hat and her very plain suit, she went on deck. And there, almost it would seem in the same room, so close was he, was the lean, hungry-looking man, not now dressed as she had seen him, but in a spick and span shirt and shorts; and standing beside him was his wife…Sally had not misjudged him, the woman looked like his wife. And leaning over the side of their boat doing something with ropes was a lanky youth of about sixteen, definitely their offspring. They were all tall and lean and hungry-looking, and she thought that here was another instance of the phenomenon of married couples taking on each other’s looks after having lived together for some time. The evidence of this family resemblance made her more determined still to keep her own individuality and her extra inch from making her appearance like Fred’s.

  Being of a forgiving nature, and preferring to get along with people, even to the extent of overcoming her prejudices, she was about to bestow on the lanky family a smile, when the lady, after one long, significant stare, turned on her heel and went below. She was followed immediately by her husband, leaving only their son to stare. And stare he did. There seemed to be nothing he hadn’t inherited from his father, and Sally had an uneasy feeling that his staring wasn’t without point. She and Fred, there was no doubt in her mind, had been under discussion, and she thought, tartly perhaps, that the tall man had used her as a parable to press home the facts of life.

  She wrenched herself from the youth’s fixed stare and turned her attention to the wheel.

  An engineer from the boatyard had arrived on board and was instructing Fred on the equipment.

  ‘This,’ he was saying, ‘is simple. Can you drive a car, sir?’

  There was a slight pause. Then, ‘No,’ said Fred truthfully.

  ‘Well, that doesn’t matter. This top lever here is the throttle, and that knob below is the ignition switch. And that one there is the self-starter. And this lever is the choke. And that little one above is your cockpit light. This here is your gear lever. It’s detachable, look, and lifts out easily. Your petrol switch is down there, under the locker. There’s your Calor-gas tank under the back seat. Your clean-water tank’s in the bows; and that’s the lot, sir. If you don’t mind I’ll leave you a minute, but I’ll be back to take you out.’

  He jumped onto the quay; and, dazed, Sally went below.

  Pretending not to be confused, Fred followed.

  ‘Did you get all that?’ he asked.

  ‘No. Did you?’

  ‘Of course.’ He laughed. ‘And don’t look so green. Put your faith in the skipper.’

  She sat down heavily. ‘I wondered, when I was doing it,’ she said, ‘what prompted me to make a will and send it to my sister.’

  ‘You didn’t! You’re not serious?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘You haven’t much faith in me, have you?’

  Gone was the jolly boy, and back was the serious, harassed, middle-of-term schoolmaster. And looking at his face she felt mean. Why had she tried to spoil his fun?

  ‘Oh, darling.’ She was on her feet. ‘It’s just that you get so excited about things—no-one would believe it—and then things happen.’

  Somewhere between the top of the roll-neck jersey and the lower peak of the cap, she kissed him, aware all the while that the schoolmaster’s face did not suit the naval rig-out.

  ‘Don’t you think I’m entitled to let up sometime? I’d go bats if I didn’t. Forty weeks of youth a year make an old man of even the youngest of us.’

  ‘Oh, I know, darling. Come on, I’m sorry. Enjoy yourself.’

  The wife—or mistress—was thrown aside: she was the mother now, coaxing, pleading. ‘I’ll tell you something,’ she said. ‘You don’t look a bit like a bus conductor. It suits you.’

  The faintest of smiles appeared.

  ‘Honest?’

  ‘Honest.’

  Suddenly they laughed and threw their arms about each other, and kissed again; and even as their lips met, they turned, forced round by a feeling of intrusion. And there, wearing varied expressions, was the entire Lean family looking at them through the two sets of windows.

  ‘That,’ Sally said, jumping back, ‘has torn it. They think we aren’t married. I can tell by their faces. Why can’t we behave like ordinary people?’

  Fred bellowed with laughter, his equable temper e
ntirely restored. ‘Let’s keep them guessing. You know, deep in my subconscious I suspect I’ve always wanted to be the kind of fellow who runs a mistress as a sideline.’

  ‘Fred!’

  ‘All right, Sal.’ He shook his finger at her. ‘Don’t forget you’re the one who enjoys plays and novels about the wiseness of being frank…The Wiseness of Being Frank.’ He laughed. ‘That’s a good one…nearly up to The Importance of Being Earnest.’

  Running mistresses as sidelines, and everything else, was at this instant swept away from Sally’s mind as she yelled, ‘Bill!’

  The cry had been torn from her when, like a streak of lightning, Bill’s heavy body flashed out of the cabin. At just a little below lightning speed, Fred followed.

  It was the tackle which more than anything else had earned him his place in his college’s rugger team at Oxford, and he had almost lost the technique through disuse until they had acquired Bill. But during the past eighteen months he had put it into action so often that now his practices amounted to a couple a week.

  Bill did not like being caught by the tail. Sally thought much of his sensitivity must be stored in that section of his body, for he always responded very quickly when it was grabbed as Fred grabbed it now. His reaction was to sit down and try to return the compliment. But a yell of ‘No!’ from his master had up to now turned the grab into a nibble, which had been fortunate.

  She was unable to get out of the cabin because her husband’s feet, heels up, were blocking the doorway. But leaning over him, her hands on the floor, she could see all she wanted to see.

  The Lean family had a dog. It was a black nondescript mongrel, and it was standing, forepaws on the rim of their boat, looking calmly down on Bill in all his humiliation, and it wore exactly the same expression on its face as the one which was prevalent on those of its owners—curiosity coupled with disapproval.

  ‘Come along, darling,’ Sally coaxed anxiously. ‘That’s it, be a good dog.’ The tone she used to Bill caused the boy’s mouth to open, his mother’s to close tighter, and his father’s to pull in at the corner.

  But Bill’s reaction was more disturbing. He barked.

  Now Bill rarely barked during the day. Even when he went into a fight it was accompanied only with a low growl. They had always tried to stop him barking; for his bark was one of the most head-splitting, piercing sounds known to man. And now, even though he was being held firmly by the collar and both of them were yelling, ‘No!’ he gave it full rein, and such was its force it caused the Lean faces to screw up in protest. Not so that of their dog. For it answered Bill with a shrill piping yap. This seemed to act on Bill as a spur, for his bark became louder and more piercing, if that was possible. Then horror on top of horror: gradually from every part of the Broad, so it seemed, a dog joined in the chorus.

  ‘Out of the way!’ yelled Fred, as, tugging with all his might, he pulled Bill down into the cabin again. But this did not quieten Bill’s voice, and Sally implored him from her knees, where her husband had thrust her, ‘Bill. Bill, darling. Oh, Bill, give over.’

  ‘I’ll Bill him…Shut up, you damned animal!’ Apparently deafened by his own voice, Bill did not hear that of his master, and was only silenced when Fred, pulling the strap off a case, brought it smartly down across his nose. Sally, too, winced at the sting, but it did the trick.

  There was silence, at least in their boat. But now they could hear more clearly the noise coming from outside and from all around. It was fantastic. Every note and shade of dog bark was in full blare.

  Fred, darting from one window to the other, cried, ‘My God! Look at them! It’s like Crufts afloat.’

  Sally looked. There must have been about fifty boats all told on the Broad, and on the decks of four out of five of them was a barking dog. Some were racing around cabin tops with their owners scrambling after them; some were being pushed into cabins; some were being hit on noses as Bill had been; one she saw swimming around its boat. The peaceful, sunlit water was now a troubled dog-ridden sea.

  There was a knock on the cabin door, and the engineer, smiling broadly, for which the Carpenters blessed him, said, ‘You ready for off, sir?’

  ‘Yes, yes, the sooner the better. This damned beast started something.’

  ‘Oh, that’s nothing…very funny, in fact. I’ll say, though, he’s got some bark, never heard a better. Well, now, sir, you know where the bilge pump is.’ He pointed to the steps. ‘And that’s where you turn your petrol on. D’you remember? And now for your oil—most important this.’

  He lifted up the top of a box that looked like a seat and exposed the engine.

  ‘To the left, sir, right down this side is your oil. Pull this out, wipe it, stick it back again and it will show you your oil level.’ He held up a slender steel stick and, thrusting his arm down among the machinery, he pushed, then pulled, and held it up covered for about two inches from its end with oil.’

  ‘Keep it like that, sir, and it’ll be all right.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘And now we’re off,’ said the engineer.

  ‘And not before time.’ The voice, unmistakably from Manchester and female, came from the cabin of the next boat. ‘Bringing a great murderous animal like that on a boat! If ever there was a pair of questionable customers…and her decked out as if for the Queen Elizabeth.’

  ‘Ssh!’

  It was a male ‘Ssh!’

  Sally reared. ‘How—how dare she?’ That anyone should question their respectability was bad enough, but that it should be done in a Manchester accent, a common Manchester accent, was unforgivable. Fred a maths master, a beloved maths master at a grammar school, a kindly, boyish, inoffensive dear, and she, the owner of a ladies’ dress shop, and what was more than that, a good housewife, cook and gardener…Questionable customers, indeed!

  ‘Laugh at it, honey. We know how funny it is.’

  ‘Funny! Funny!’ Sally’s voice was a squeak.

  The engine gave a phut-phut-phutting sound. Concerned only with the boat, the engineer moved the lever forward, stroked the wheel, and they began to glide slowly out past the Mancunian contingent.

  Fred was standing by the engineer’s side, and just as their stern left the bows of Dogfish One he quoted in a quiet but clear voice to no-one in particular, ‘Odi profanum vulgus et arceo.’

  Fred was proud of his knowledge of the classics and more so his knowledge of Latin. As it wasn’t his subject he didn’t need to know it, for who wants to improve on Latin from their schooldays? Sally got tired of Latin tags, because she didn’t understand them, but from the length of this one and from certain of the sounds that had become familiar she knew it was the one about abhorring the unhallowed mob and holding it aloof. And this was one of the rare occasions on which she was glad her husband knew so much.

  Her chin went up. She smiled a superior smile, thinking, that puts them in their place, even if they don’t know it, when, like a blow in the neck, came the words, still in broad Manchester, ‘Horace, Book Three, Ode One.’

  She remained stiff and straight. That horrid, spotty boy! Just likely scraped through to a grammar school! And of course he would have to know that very quotation. Book Three, Ode One! Horrible individual!

  They circled the Broad, then came back towards the quay again. But the engineer left them before they reached it, jumping onto another craft on which were three scantily dressed girls. One in particular, Sally noticed, had lovely long brown legs, and blond hair falling straight on to her shoulders. She lay looking down on Dogfish Three from her vantage point on the cabin top, then suddenly, to Sally’s amazement, she gripped her knees in her hands, pulled them up to her chin, rocked herself, and laughed.

  Fred looked towards her, and to his wife’s further amazement and indignation, his laugh joined hers.

  ‘It’s your hat, dear. You’ve still got it on.’

  ‘My hat?’ She touched it. ‘What is there to laugh at in that? If I want to keep it on I’ll keep it on, all night if I
like.’

  She was angry. Fred, a very dry-land sailor, could dress up ridiculously, and no-one thought him funny, whereas she, wearing an ordinary hat, was laughed at. She stood her ground, and refused to scuttle below and strip off her clothes to conform with the semi-nudity around her.

  She stood staring over their cabin top, until the laughter was no longer to be heard. As she stared she became aware of the ripples parting from their bows, and her thoughts were dragged from herself to take in the fact that Fred was alone at the wheel. The boat was under his control, and they were moving smoothly over the water.

  Slowly the yachts and cabin cruisers slid away from their sides, together with the gaily flower-decked quayside, and the sun did not seem to be only touching the ripples on the surface, but to have buried its gold deep in the water. They were floating over a sheet of molten metal.

  Sally’s temper could not withstand it: ‘It’s beautiful,’ she exclaimed softly.

  ‘You’ve seen nothing yet…Now what is he up to?’

  The latter part of the remark was meant not for Bill, as one would have expected, but for a cruiser ahead of them, which was weaving first to the right and then to the left.

  ‘What’s he playing at?’

  ‘He looks as if he might be trying to avoid those things bobbing about in the water. They might be danger signals.’

  ‘They’re not, they’re buoys for mooring to.’

  ‘Oh.’ Already Fred knew.

  They passed the weaving boat, and she saw at once the cause for its unsteady course. The wheel was changing hands a little too often: in fact, a whole family of six was crowded round it, father acting as instructor.

  ‘Fool!’ growled Fred.

  She glanced at him. He was no longer the jolly boy, nor yet the serious schoolmaster. Another man had been born: the captain on the bridge. Meekly, she went below.

  Bill was lying beneath the table, with his eyes popping and his ears up. He rushed at her but was pulled up by his lead. She could see that the throbbing of the engine, which sounded much louder in the cabin, was not to his liking. He nuzzled her hand, butted her with his head, and made another attempt at galloping.