When Misty and Trompette had finished talking and some of the work in Trompette’s tote had been carried off and replaced by more wool, she expressed this “Could I? Should I?” thought to them both. From that moment she was never going to leave the shop without a pattern and some yarn—which might well have been her intention in accompanying Trompette in the first place. It was not the shawl pattern or the russet yarn; one was too complicated and the other too expensive, Misty declared. Instead she had everything she needed to knit a little cowl in an earthy ochre color, with a pattern she had been taken through from start to finish to make sure she understood it.
“Trompette will help me if I forget how to interpret it,” she said.
“She might,” said Misty. “But she doesn’t hold with patterns. Trompette just creates, unfortunately.”
“Isn’t that better than copying someone else’s idea?”
“Yes, but if the pattern you’ve created isn’t written down once you’ve done it, you can’t share it. You might not even be able to repeat it yourself.”
“Who wants to repeat themselves?” said Trompette.
“I wish you’d learn pattern notation, though,” said Misty. “And write up the instructions for the things you bring me to sell.”
“It’s too boring. Can’t you work it out backward, as it were?”
Misty shrugged. “I can, up to a point. But I’d rather you did it, so you can make a living as a designer, or something approaching a living.” She turned to Sally. “She’s so talented.”
On the way back to the boat they bought an ice cream from a kiosk near the canal and paused on a bench on the towpath to eat it.
“So what’s stopping you taking designing more seriously?” Sally asked.
Trompette turned to look at her. “You think it’s Billy, don’t you?”
“Is it?”
“No.”
“Then what is it?”
“I know I don’t know enough. I know if I want to be any good, I have to learn, and practice, and experiment and be bold, and then go back from boldness to something bold enough but also strong and honest. Something I can put my hand up to and say ‘That’s me.’ So, all of that, it needs time and money, and in the life I lead now, I don’t have any money and I don’t have the right sort of time. And I can’t work out how to go from the life I lead now to one where I have the money and the right sort of time, and I’m not sure I want to have what I don’t have as much as I want to keep what I do have.”
“What a coherent person you are,” Sally said.
“What a nice person you are,” Trompette said. She picked up Sally’s hand and licked a dribble of ice cream from her wrist.
* * *
SALLY AND EVE WERE PLAYING Scrabble in the cabin. It was a beautiful evening, the sky fading from its daytime blue through the softest range of pinks and reds and grays. But in the end there was no sky at all as the city suppressed whatever remained of dark and light with its nighttime brightness. They had not sat outside because the pressure of buildings and the affront of graffiti on the walls made the interior of the cabin seem much more appealing than it would normally be, as the sun set on a warm day.
Trompette arrived, rocking the boat as she stepped aboard, bringing with her the tinkling sound of two lengths of string with bells tied on to them at intervals. Little, brassy bells.
“You need to tie these to your mooring ropes,” she said. “Come with me and I’ll show you what knot to use.”
“What not to use?” said Eve, who had had a glass or two of wine and was sure, before the interruption, that she had a seven-letter word within her grasp.
“Why?” said Sally.
“So you’ll wake up if anyone tries to untie the ropes,” said Trompette.
“Is that likely?” Sally asked.
Trompette shrugged. “It’s Birmingham,” she said. “Prepare for the worst.”
“Noah would bark,” said Eve.
“Possibly,” said Trompette, “but only if they made a noise. And they might not. Are you coming or not?”
The towpath had taken on a different aspect now darkness had fallen, both more restful and more sinister. The area appeared to be deserted, but there were possibilities in the shadows, too. Apart from the Number One and Grimm there was only one other vessel, a couple of boat lengths ahead of Grimm. Someone was smoking on this boat, body inside, head and lighted tip thrust through the hatch on the side, smoke drifting away slowly in the still air. Eve found herself watching the glow and fade of the cigarette as the smoker breathed in, breathed out, instead of concentrating on the knots Trompette was demonstrating to Sally as necessary to foil the toerags, as she referred to these possibly mythical creatures of the night.
“Wouldn’t they simply cut the rope?” Eve asked. “They could be gone, job done, before we had any idea they were there.”
“No,” said Trompette. “The rope’s too thick.”
“Rumor has it,” Eve said (she was finding Trompette irritating and wanted to get back to the hunt for the elusive seven-letter word), “that they all carry knives capable of killing people.”
“Flesh is easy to cut,” said Trompette.
Noah leaped off the boat and trotted toward the smoker at the hatch, as if he knew just where he was going.
“No-ah!” called Eve. “You’re meant to be guarding us against the urban hordes. Come back!” She was jogging after him, knowing he would ignore her.
He came to a stop where the head of a man was still visible, though the cigarette had gone.
“He’s hoping I’m going to give him a biscuit, I expect,” the man said. He was so deeply in shadow Eve could not have said what age he was, but he did not sound young.
“Have you moored here before?” Eve asked.
“Oh, yes.”
“Is it safe, do you think?”
The man laughed and this brought on a cough, but when he had this under control he said: “You don’t look like the kind of woman who goes round thinking every shadow is a rapist.”
Eve realized that, while she couldn’t see him, she was standing in a spill of light from a car park nearby, so he could see her. She wasn’t sure what it was about her appearance that suggested a lack of nervousness—it might only be that she was large, unflatteringly dressed and therefore, presumably, not a target, or it could be that he recognized her as someone who resisted seeing herself as a victim. She liked that.
“You’re right, I’m not,” she said.
“Anyway,” he said. “You’ve got the Hound of the Baskervilles to protect you.”
Eve looked round and saw Noah defecating on the edge of the path. She felt the pockets of her jeans, which were empty.
“I don’t suppose you have a bag I can use to pick that up?” she said.
“Aah, forget it,” he said. “Let the forces of darkness tread in it, if they come. Serve them right.”
* * *
Back on the Number One, the Scrabble game conclusively won by Eve after she had detected that she could make the word “absolved” fit round the “b” of “bacon” with the “d” turning “ooze” into “oozed,” they turned off all the lights and went to bed, neither of them quite believing that Trompette’s precautions were necessary, neither of them feeling quite as safe as they would in the countryside.
“It’s ridiculous, isn’t it?” said Eve, as if they had voiced this thought to each other. “When we moor where there’s no one about, we feel safer than when there are a million people living nearby. You’d think we’d be more worried in the middle of nowhere.”
“Where no one can hear you scream,” agreed Sally.
“Noah would.”
“Yes, we’re counting on you, Noah,” Sally said.
* * *
Eve woke up to the sound of voices. She picked up her phone and checked the time: a little after midnight. She heard the thump of Noah’s tail striking the floor; he, too, was awake, apparently waiting for her to make a suggestion. The voices were
on the towpath, and not particularly close. She crept through to the rear deck, eased the hatch cover back and climbed the first couple of steps so she could see the length of the path without coming out into the open.
There was a group of people gathered around the front of Grimm. Eve could recognize Billy, sitting on the edge of the boat; apart from him, there were two men and a youth. The youth was holding two bicycles by the handlebars. The men had their heads down and were looking at something in their hands; Billy was watching them. Noah whimpered, below her in the cabin, wanting to come past her, but she pushed him back with her foot.
Trompette came out on to the rear deck of Grimm, still dressed as she had been earlier that evening. She turned her head toward the Number One and could not have missed Eve’s head poking through the open hatch, but she gave no sign.
“Eve!” Sally called softly from the cabin. “What are you doing?”
Eve descended the steps. “Sorry. Trying not to wake you. I heard voices, but it looks to be friends of Billy’s and Trompette’s come to call.”
“She told me they might,” Sally said. “She said not to get involved.”
“Get involved?” said Eve. “What did she mean?”
“Oh, Eve,” said Sally. “I don’t know, but Billy takes drugs, doesn’t he? Don’t we know that? So where does he get them from?”
Eve was still fuddled with wine, with the triumph of winning the game, with sleep. So far as she had thought anything, she had thought: “fishing.”
“How come you thought of that and I didn’t?” she said.
“I don’t suppose there was much drug dealing in the corridors of power,” said Sally. “I’ll put the kettle on, shall I? Make a cup of tea.”
“There may have been,” Eve said. “I just didn’t notice. I’m beginning to think I’m not a noticing sort of person.”
“It’s probably because you’re strong-minded. You haven’t needed to creep about keeping an eye out for what’s going to bite you.”
“Strong-minded or stupid.”
From outside the boat came sudden, shocking loud noises—the sound of feet running, of shouting—and Noah started barking as loudly as it was possible for him to bark, almost drowning out the splash of something heavy falling in the water. Then Trompette screamed. It could only be Trompette; no other woman would be able to hit that note of command within a falsetto cry of alarm. When they reached the towpath, Noah, who had leaped out of the boat ahead of them, was chasing a group of figures who were running or, in the case of two of them, cycling away.
Trompette was standing on the roof of Grimm shouting Billy’s name. A man was lying on the bank, face down, and it was only when Eve and Sally reached him, both expecting to find him dead or injured, that they realized he was neither. Rather, he was reaching out his hands to Billy, who was drifting in the murky water of the canal, not struggling, but rocking gently with the ripples caused by Grimm responding to Trompette’s dance of rage or despair on the roof.
The man lying down was trying to coax Billy toward him and Eve recognized his voice as belonging to the smoker she had spoken to earlier in the boat moored ahead of them. She ran forward to where he lay, peering into the darkness where Billy was a paler shape against the blackness of the water. He was not responding to Trompette’s shouts. Eve looked at the edge of the path in front of her bare feet and thought of all the things, organic and inorganic, that her toes would encounter if she slid into the water. She began to wade toward where Billy floated.
Then Sally, who had run back to the Number One, turned its headlight on and lit up the stretch of canal ahead of Grimm. Billy could be seen clearly, floating, his eyes shut and his mouth slightly open, tilting a little toward one side, looking to be at risk of ending up facedown.
The water came up to the top of Eve’s thighs and she let the bottom of her T-shirt float as she held her arms out, ready to correct a stumble. It had become eerily quiet. Noah had stopped chasing the men, who had run away, and was sitting on the bank watching her. Trompette had stopped shouting. The stranger’s breath was wheezing in and out as he lay still with his arms held out in a gesture of supplication.
Eve, after no more than a few steps, was within reach of one of Billy’s floating arms. She made sure her feet were flat on the bottom, well spread, and then she touched his hand.
“Billy,” she said. Like an echo, Trompette called “Billy!”
Billy gulped; took in a breath, let it out again noisily. Opened his eyes. Eve took hold of the hand nearest her, which curled round hers. She tugged.
“Come on,” she said. “Time to get out of the water. Are you going to stand up or do I have to tow you to land?”
Billy struggled for a moment then stood up, and immediately staggered, beginning to fall backward, and Eve grabbed for the other hand to keep him upright. He had something clasped in his other hand, a package of some kind, and resisted Eve’s efforts to wrap her fingers round his, so she took his wrist and they stood, both swaying slightly, inches apart in the bright beam of the Number One’s light. Eve could see Billy’s face clearly. His eyes and now his mouth were open but she doubted if he was seeing her.
The water around them began to move, to lap and slap against them, and Eve had a moment of panic when she thought they were both certain to fall back into it; although Billy’s right hand would not let go of the package to grip hers, his left was now clenched round her right hand and if he fell, she knew she would, too. She risked a look round to find the source of the commotion in the water and it was the stranger, wading slowly toward them. His head and neck declared him to be a thin man, a man in middle age with hair gone entirely from the front of his scalp but still flowing in lengthy wisps down to his collar at the back. His body, though, was fat.
He seized hold of the back of Billy’s shirt, keeping him upright, while Eve pulled in the direction of the bank. Step by perilous step, the three of them moved to within reach of Trompette, down from the roof, and Sally, who dragged Billy onto the gritty path. The stranger rested, still standing in the canal, until Eve and Sally gave him a hand each and almost lifted the dead weight of him onto dry land.
Trompette was crouched over Billy. She seemed to be working on his clothing or his chest, but when she had time to look, Eve saw that all Trompette was doing was trying to force the fingers of Billy’s right hand loose from round the package.
“Do we need an ambulance?” Sally asked.
“No,” said Trompette. “Not for him, anyway.” She poked Billy in the ribs and he groaned. “He’ll come down soon enough. He hasn’t overdosed. Not yet.” She looked round. “I don’t know about Thad, though. He looks to be in bad shape.”
Eve thought she had referred to the stranger as “that,” which struck her as unfriendly, in the circumstances. It was only later she found out his name.
“I’m all right,” the man said, although his labored breathing suggested otherwise. “Just let me rest.”
Trompette had finally loosened Billy’s grip and had the package free. She stood up and walked away from him.
“What are you going to do with that?” asked the stranger.
Billy groaned and started to roll over; Eve stepped over him quickly to prevent him falling back into the canal.
“I haven’t decided,” Trompette said.
“Perhaps these nice ladies could look after it for you,” said the stranger.
“No,” said Trompette, and almost simultaneously Sally said: “No.”
Trompette jumped onto Grimm and came back with two towels and without the package.
“Here,” she said to Eve, who only now understood how wet, cold and slimy she was. With the other towel, Trompette began to pummel Billy’s head, scrub at his chest, his arms and legs, while he howled from time to time, but otherwise put up with her attentions.
“Can you help me get him aboard?” she asked, when she’d finished. Between the three of them they wrestled him upright and this time, as if taking the package from him
had returned him to some awareness of his surroundings, Billy managed to put one foot in front of the other without stumbling.
“Go to bed,” said Trompette. “Keep the dog in.”
Eve took a step toward the stranger, still hunched over on the towpath.
“Come on, you’ve done enough,” said Sally. “Follow Trompette’s orders.”
Eve realized her legs had begun to wobble and she needed more than a towel to feel dry; she needed to take her T-shirt and leggings off. She needed to lie down in the dark. The kettle, which Sally had filled before the drama started, was put on the hob at last and Eve drank her tea in bed, barely keeping her eyes open long enough to finish it.
* * *
THE BOAT ROCKED AND THE bells on the mooring ropes jingled merrily. Sally was already rising through the layers of sleep when Noah began to bark and someone banged on the doors at the rear of the boat. She opened her eyes to see lights moving and the slow, revolving, blue flash of an emergency services vehicle somewhere out of sight.
There were three people outside, two men and a woman, and by the time they had come down the steps in turn, warning her to control the dog, they filled the space. When Eve came through, the smallest of the three retreated up the steps to leave room for her inside. They were all wearing, as the police do nowadays, not just a uniform but power packs of equipment. Pockets and belts strapped to their bodies. The two men wore short-sleeved shirts and were altogether too large, too solid, too hairy to suit the sparse, unchallenging surroundings. Sally found she was holding her breath, keeping herself within the smallest scope possible to avoid actual physical contact.
They made a note of her name, Eve’s name. Their dates of birth. Their addresses. As she named 42 Beech Grove, Sally had an urge to smile at how silly it sounded, and how unlikely it was she would ever have lived there.
The Narrowboat Summer Page 19
