“We can’t do nothing,” said Eve.
“We could just walk away,” said Sally.
But she did not walk away. She stayed where she was, watching Eve climb onto the rear of the boat, which rocked gently, and inspect the fastenings on the solid little door leading off the platform where the driver would stand, holding the tiller, if the boat were moving. Eve abandoned the back and went to the front, an open well protected by a canvas cover held taut with studs. She began to unclip these, one by one, and Sally, seeing this was going to be a slow business, went to help her. When they had released one side and folded the cover back, Eve climbed into the well. The doors at this end had glass in them, a scaled-down version of the doors you might find leading into a conservatory at a stately home. The dog began to howl again, on a more tragic, personal note. Eve took up a heavy metal tool lying on one of the benches that lined the wall and broke the glass. It became eerily quiet.
“What’s happening?” asked Sally, from the towpath.
“I’m reaching in to release the … Oh! Quick, catch him!”
Seconds later Eve was splayed awkwardly across the side of the well, Sally was once again in a sitting position on the bank, and a bundle of black-and-white fur and floppy ears had already passed the bridge and was accelerating down the towpath.
“Bugger,” said Eve.
Sally lay flat on her back and began to laugh.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know it’s not funny, but I woke up this morning determined to stop being so bored and boring, and not to keep on doing the same things I always do. And look, something has happened to me that has never happened before. Quite spontaneously.”
“Breaking into a boat and releasing a manic dog has never happened to me before, either,” said Eve, “but I was just racking it up as another experience in a totally shitty day. You must be the sort of person who always looks on the bright side.”
“I don’t, usually. But today, I’m embracing change. For a change.”
“I don’t mind embracing it, but I do like to have a choice of whether to change or not. When someone else decides for you, it’s harder to look on the bright side.”
Eve was still sprawled in the well, wedged against a gas bottle with a couple of folding chairs impeding her feet. Her orange bag had fallen on its side and hanging out of it was a plastic notice which read: Constructed from Production Parts.
Sally, reaching down a hand to help her up, asked what it meant.
“Nothing at all. It is meaningless. That’s the point. Constructed and produced are synonyms. It is meant to imply that the parts are not prototypes, but prototypes are produced, as well. Sorry, I’m being cross and pedantic. More importantly, what do you think we ought to do now?”
* * *
THEY WERE SITTING ON THE benches in the front well discussing the options—whether to run away, like the dog, or to run away but leave a note; or whether it was imperative to take some positive action, such as chasing the dog or seeking out the owner—when they became aware of a rhythmic sound coming closer. Looking out from under the awning they could see a figure advancing toward them along the towpath. An exclamation mark: tall, narrow, black and slightly menacing. The sound was the steady thud of wellington boots, the regular smack of a leather satchel against a waterproof coat, and an underlying whistle of breath drawn in and let out.
They scrambled out of the boat and stood waiting for this finger of doom to pass by. It didn’t. Setting down the satchel on the ground, the woman—for close up she was recognizably though unconventionally female—looked from one to the other. Her face was the color of marmalade and so mapped with wrinkles it was hard to see how any cosmetic enhancements, in the unlikely event she wanted to apply them, could be smoothed on to its corrugated surface. Her lips were thin and appeared, until she opened them to speak, like one more set of horizontal wrinkles.
“You’ve been on my boat,” she said. “You’d better explain why.” The voice was an audible version of the face.
“I’m afraid I’ve broken your door and let the dog out,” said Eve.
“There didn’t seem much else we could do,” said Sally. “It was howling.”
The boat owner opened her mouth a little wider and bared a set of uneven teeth. She ran a gray, textured tongue over them and nodded.
“People who think the dog is howling because it’s in pain,” she said, “usually report me to the RSPCA, or the Canal and River Trust, or the Environment Agency, or the police, or anyone else they can think of who might be interested in giving me grief. It makes them feel righteous and it passes the problem on. I like your approach better. If the dog’s in pain, smash a way in and sort it out. I like that. I’d say you cared more about the dog and less about the law. I like that, too.”
“We thought it might be dying,” said Sally.
The old woman shook her head. “He was showing off, that’s all. I’m the one who’s dying.”
She picked up her satchel and stepped onto the rear of the boat, unlocking the doors.
“Well, I should give you some money to have the glass replaced,” said Eve.
“It’s not worth it. The cost of repairing anything on a boat is higher than you could believe, given everything is so small and should logically be cheaper. I’ll probably nail a bit of wood over it until I come across a piece of glass the right size.”
“We could come in and sweep up the mess,” said Sally.
“You can do that, yes. And you can have a cup of tea with me. I’d like that. I’ve taken a fancy to you already.”
Inside, the boat was sparse, neat and workmanlike. The cabin they entered as they descended the steps from the rear deck was the kitchen. It had a cooker and cupboards, a table and two benches, a plastic washing-up bowl in the sink and a kettle on the hob. There were no ornaments and no ornamentation. The wood-paneled walls were empty except for a map and a row of hooks from which hung a torch, a whistle, a dog lead and a first-aid kit. The old woman reached into a cupboard and handed them a dustpan, brush and bucket; they carried these through the boat, accepting shared responsibility for the mess, or a shared reluctance to stay alone with the owner in the kitchen.
The second cabin had a board attached to the wall, which might have been a bed or a couch though it had no covering to make it inviting to sit on or lie on, with lockers underneath. There were three shelves containing books. Between this and the next cabin were a washbasin and a cubicle with a door, which was shut. In the front cabin were two slatted bunks covered in rough blankets, tightly tucked in; these blankets represented the only soft surfaces on the boat. Sally and Eve swept up the shards of glass from the otherwise clean floor and returned to the cabin, where the old woman relieved them of the pan and brush, the bucket and its contents, disposing of them behind the cupboard doors.
“My name is Anastasia,” she said, laying out three white mugs and three teabags, and indicating they should sit down on one of the benches. The kettle whistled throatily.
“Oh,” said Sally, “what about the dog?”
“He’s called Noah and, before you ask, it’s got nothing to do with boats. It just begins with the sound I find myself shouting most often.”
“No,” said Sally. “I meant, shouldn’t we be worried about where he’s gone? Go looking for him perhaps, or report him missing?”
“Look,” said Anastasia, lining up the teas on the table, “stop worrying about the dog. Nothing will happen to him. That dog will be dogging me to the end of my days and beyond, I shouldn’t wonder. He will come back. Not many certainties in this life, but that’s one of them.”
“Oh,” said Sally. “My name’s Sally.”
“Eve,” said Eve.
“Sally,” said Anastasia. “And Eve and Anastasia. An E and an A and an S. Which spells SEA, I suppose. Not much sense in that. A Y would be handy, to make us EASY. You don’t have any friends called Yolanda you could introduce?”
“My middle name is Yasmin,” said Sally.
“Perfect. Here we are, then: Easy!”
The tea was so strong Sally and Eve took small sips, letting the tannin into their systems in gradual doses. Anastasia drank hers like a pint of beer, in large gulps, with relish.
“Actually,” she said, putting the empty mug down, “I may not be dying. Dying may not be inevitable. There is a chance that what’s wrong with me now can be made to go away and I may still have the opportunity to die later, of something else. But making the effort not to die would be quite complicated and I’m not sure I can work out how to accomplish it. So it might be easier to go for it, and die from what I’ve got now.”
“And what is that?” asked Eve.
“They don’t know exactly, or they do know and they’re not going to tell me until they have scanned it from every angle and have biopsy results on anything they can scrape or squeeze or slice out of me. That, you see, is the problem. In order to have a chance of not dying, I have to keep going back for this appointment, that appointment, this procedure, that procedure, such-and-such an operation, belt and braces, follow-up treatments. And to do all that, I have to stay here.”
“Surely you must stay here, then. At least until you have a clear diagnosis and understand your options,” said Sally.
“I can’t,” said Anastasia. “I can’t afford to. If I stay, I have to pay for a mooring, if I can find one, or keep moving between temporary moorings, and I haven’t the money for the one, and who knows when the invasive this and the radiated that will make me too weak to manage the other. Plus, I’ve got the boat to look after. To get all the certificates needed to renew my license to be on the canal, I have to have the engine serviced and the bottom blacked. I can’t afford any of that either, but I know someone with a boatyard in Chester who will do it for me for free, but I need it done by the second week in August. It would take me at least four weeks to reach Chester from here, and that would be without any rest days, so I need to start now. There it is. If I want to live, I have to stay here. If I’m going to carry on living the way I do, I have to go to Chester.”
“There must be some way round this,” said Eve.
“Oh, there is. I need someone with nothing better to do for, let’s say, the next three or four months, and a house I can borrow to live in while they take the boat to Chester and back for me.”
“And you don’t know anyone like that?” said Eve.
“With a house and time? Not likely, is it?”
“I don’t have anything better to do for the next four months,” said Sally, “but there’s someone living in my house.”
“You couldn’t do it alone anyway,” said Anastasia. “I can, but you couldn’t.”
There was the slightest sound from the rear of the boat, a mere hint of a tap or a scratch. Anastasia sat up and turned her head. It was the dog, returning with as little noise as possible.
Once fully in the cabin, he turned out to be a medium-sized, terrier-like animal with a rough whitish coat with black blotches, long legs, a barrel-shaped body, floppy ears, extremely bright brown eyes and a swirl of black on his face that looked remarkably like a question mark.
“Yes?” said Anastasia. The dog lay down, put his head on his paws and raised one eyebrow and ear, then the other. “You know what I think.” The dog appeared, with a judicious blink, to acknowledge that he did, indeed, know what she thought. Nevertheless, she told him, in a bellow that made Eve flinch and Sally, already uneasily shifting on her seat, jump. “You’re a complete disgrace. Why anyone who had the first notion of dog breeding wouldn’t have seen you for the disaster you are at the outset and hit you on the head with a spade I JUST DO NOT KNOW. I’m going to do it myself, one day. One day.”
There was a watchful silence for a moment, then Noah subsided onto his side and went to sleep, almost immediately starting a chorus of whiffling snores that formed the background to the conversation.
“As it happens, I have a flat I live in alone,” said Eve. “And in truth, I’m not sure I can think of anything to stop me using the next four months to travel about on the canals.”
“Am I right in thinking,” said Anastasia, “that you have absolutely no idea how to drive a boat? Have either of you ever set foot on a canal boat before your assault on the Number One?”
“No,” said Eve.
“Nor me,” said Sally.
“But you expect me to trust her to you, do you?”
“No, of course you couldn’t,” said Sally.
“Hang on,” said Eve, “I’m getting confused. Didn’t you tell us only a minute ago that you needed someone to do you a favor, and now you’re talking as if you would be doing us a favor.”
Anastasia sucked her teeth and slowly unbuttoned the waterproof coat she was still wearing.
“I suppose you could do it together, if I taught you the basics. But are you good enough friends to put up with each other?”
“We’re not friends at all,” said Sally.
“We’ve only just met. Rescuing your dog,” said Eve.
“That is probably all to the good,” said Anastasia. “You could be most of the way to Chester before you found out how annoying the other one is.”
There was a long pause. Then Anastasia began to smile; although the corrugated severity of her face meant it was not immediately clear that this was the expression she had in mind.
“I’m not at all sure…” said Eve.
“What about the dog?” asked Sally.
“He’d come with you.”
“This is ridiculous,” Eve said. “You only met us five minutes ago and you don’t know the first thing about us. Wouldn’t you want to check on us in some way? Make sure we’re not alcoholics or drug dealers or something?”
“Here’s the thing,” said Anastasia. “Most of the people I know in the boating community are alcoholics or drug dealers or simply wasters. But they do know how to handle a boat. So of course I have thought of asking someone I know to take the Number One to Chester for me, while I live in his or her boat here in Uxbridge. Now you two turn up; never seen you before and you don’t know how to handle a boat. But from where I’m sitting, I don’t have either of you down as abusers of any kind. So as I see it, I have a choice between tapping a competent person I wouldn’t want on the Number One, or two total incompetents, who haven’t given me any reason to object to them. And, let’s face it, that is one more choice than I had earlier today.”
“We’re an unexpected gift,” Sally said.
Eve turned sideways and looked at Sally. “Are you seriously thinking of doing this?” she asked.
“I have no idea. It’s too much for me to think about. But I’m definitely not doing it on my own.”
Anastasia and Sally looked at Eve. Noah stopped snoring and raised his head an inch or two and looked at her, too.
“We could think about it,” Eve said. “Put a plan together. Work out the details.”
“We could,” said Sally. “Think about it, I mean.”
Anastasia went beyond a smile into something that seemed to be laughter.
“Easy,” she said.
* * *
EVE COULD THINK OF NOTHING at all to think about. The bend ahead was five hundred yards away and it would take about ten minutes to reach it. Between now and then, there was nothing that clamored for attention. No change in the trees growing down either side of the canal; no hazards that would challenge her ability to remember to push the tiller to the left to move the boat to the right; no plans to make for what would happen next. That morning she had woken on the hard bed made up on the bench in the middle cabin, conscious of not having decided, the night before, what to wear. The anxiety was acute until, wide awake, she realized it was irrelevant. She had no need to worry because she had almost no clothes to choose from and it mattered not at all what she wore. Nor could she think of anything else to worry about. It was worrying.
Hearing the chink of mugs as Sally came through the cabin with two cups of coffee, it occurred to her that she might wo
rry about how long it would take her to find this stranger intolerable. What would be the amalgam of habits, opinions, idiosyncrasies and character defects which made everyone she had ever known impossible to live with, sooner or later. But for the moment, she had not spotted what these were, and there was, therefore, no point worrying about it.
* * *
It had taken ten days from meeting Sally and Anastasia to this, the first day of the journey. The decision, in retrospect, had been made in those ten minutes on the Number One, but Eve was a planner and she had nothing but contempt for people who rushed into things without taking the time to think them through, weigh the advantages and disadvantages, map out the steps, make contingency plans for the most likely risks along the way. So while the idea of moving out of her flat and onto a boat had seemed like a gift, the present she most needed—that is, a chance to walk away, avoid making any other decisions, silence the analysis of the past that would not let her sleep at night, yet to reach out and accept it without further thought—was beyond her.
She had gone home along the towpath and washed the mud off her new shoes. Then she went through the bag she had brought from the office and threw out the frog, the postcard, the faded headscarf, the filthy mug and the damaged letter opener. She looked at the two things left, the framed photo of a team-building adventure and the stolen notice about production parts. Then she threw out the notice: its internal inconsistencies were symptomatic of the circulating arguments running around her head, the apparent logic that appeared to lead to a reasoned conclusion that turned out to be the same place as the start. She kept the photo, as a fitting memento of the uniformity of the society she had left, and a happy reminder that she did not exactly match, was not truly one of them.
That sorted, she opened her laptop and began to put together the Easy Plan, as a way of reaching a conclusion on whether it was or wasn’t a stupid idea. She laid out the milestones on the critical path, studying the implications of each—how hard would it be to achieve, how serious would the result be if it were not achieved, or if its critical success factors could only partially be met. At the end of this, late at night, with the last glass from a bottle of Chilean Merlot at her elbow and the street outside her open window quiet at last, she went over the results and realized there was nothing to stop her from agreeing to the plan. There was no step she was unwilling or unable to take. This moment was the high point of the next ten days.
The Narrowboat Summer Page 2
