Water Like a Stone

by Deborah Crombie

  Kincaid introduced himself and Kit, adding, “Are you certain? If it’s an imposition—”

  “No, really, it’s all right. It’s nice of you to ask. Sometimes it’s a bit like living in a fishbowl. People peer in your windows from the towpath without so much as a by-your-leave. Have you ever been on a narrowboat before?” she asked Kit.

  “No, but I’ve seen them. The Grand Union Canal runs right behind the supermarket where we shop at home. In London,” he added, flushing a little at her attention. “Notting Hill. The supermarket’s across the canal from Kensal Green Cemetery.”

  “Oh, yes.” Annie Lebow nodded in recognition. “The Paddington Branch. A nice mooring spot. I stayed there for a few weeks once.”

  “On this boat? You took this boat all the way to London?”

  “We’ve covered a good part of England, the Horizon and I. I can show you a map of the waterways, if you’re interested. Come aboard and I’ll make us a cup of tea when you’ve had a look about.”

  Kincaid let Kit climb aboard first, noticing the length of the boy’s legs as he stepped up from the towpath and jumped easily into the well deck. When had he grown so tall?

  “…the hull is steel, of course,” Annie was saying. “Wooden boats haven’t been built since shortly after the war. The Horizon is fifty-eight feet long, rather than seventy, but like most narrowboats is only seven feet wide. The traditional boats were usually seventy feet in length, but there are locks on the system that won’t take a boat longer than fifty-eight feet, so a seventy-footer can limit your cruising.”

  As she spoke, she led them through the doors and down two steps into the main cabin. Kincaid ducked automatically, his head just avoiding the low ceiling, then gaped. He was as enchanted as Kit.

  The boat’s interior was paneled entirely in lustrous wood the color of pale honey, and illuminated by recessed lighting set into the ceiling. A stove was tucked into one corner of the cabin on a tiled platform, while the living area held a small cream-colored leather sofa and matching armchair positioned on a colorful handwoven rug. Bookshelves and storage cupboards had been built into every available nook, and the bits of free space on the walls held china plates with laceware rims. Interspersed about the shelves were a few pieces of traditionally painted canalware, the bright rose patterns of a dipper and water can fitting surprisingly well with the contemporary furnishings.

  Beyond the sitting area, a dining table extended from one wall, flanked by two banquettes. The far seat backed up to the galley. And what a galley! It was state-of-the-art, down to the curved granite worktops and oval stainless-steel sink. Kincaid whistled in admiration, thinking of the money required for fittings of this caliber, while Kit muttered “Wow” under his breath. “It’s bigger inside than it looks from the outside,” he added, still sounding awed.

  “A bit like Alice in Wonderland, isn’t it?” Annie nodded towards the bow. “She only has a foot of draw, but that space beneath the waterline does make a difference. “Go on, see the rest while I put the kettle on.”

  As they slipped past her in the galley, Kincaid noticed a book on the work top. It was an old but well-preserved copy of Narrow Boat by Tom Rolt, a volume he remembered seeing in his father’s shop.

  The bathroom was as elegant as the lounge and galley, even equipped with a small bath, and the bedroom held what looked to be a full-size bed covered with a crushed-velvet counterpane in dusty mauve. It seemed a surprisingly feminine touch for the woman they had met, and roused Kincaid’s curiosity. Her nightstand held a few contemporary novels and a much-thumbed copy of another canal book, The Water Road by Paul Gogarty, a well-known travel writer. Kincaid had to resist the temptation to lift the book and flip through it himself.

  Beyond the stateroom they found a neatly fitted engine and workroom, and the hatch to the stern deck. All in all, it was a very tidily laid out and maintained setup. It made Kincaid think of Gemma’s old flat in her friend Hazel Cavendish’s garage, and he could imagine the boat’s appeal. If, of course, one were resolute in resisting the accumulation of things, and solitary by nature. There was no obvious provision for guests, although he suspected the dining banquettes converted into a bed.

  When they returned to the galley, Annie had shed her jacket and was pouring hot water into mugs. “Here, take your things off,” she said. “Just toss them over the sofa. I’m afraid there’s no such thing as a cloakroom here.” The cabin, with both radiator and woodstove, was warm, and Kincaid was glad to slip off his coat and scarf.

  “You’ve even got a bath in your loo,” blurted Kit, when he’d added his own anorak to Kincaid’s. “What do you—I mean, you don’t just flush it straight into—”

  Annie Lebow came to his rescue matter-of-factly, as if discussing the disposal of sewage was an expected part of everyday conversation. “There’s a holding tank. Marinas usually have pumping stations where you can clean out. Nasty job, but it goes with the territory.” She set their mugs on the dining table, along with an earthenware sugar bowl and milk jug, then retrieved a map from the nearest bookcase.

  The map, like the Gogarty book, was well used, the edges tattered and the creases worn thin. Annie motioned them to sit on one side of the table, but rather than joining them, leaned over from the table’s end and spread out the map, facing it towards them. A network of broad multicolored lines snaked across central England. Kincaid quickly found the burgundy thread that represented the Shropshire Union Canal.

  Following his gaze, Annie touched the central section of the Shroppie, then traced a path north to Manchester and Leeds, then south again, down the Trent and Mersey Canal to Birmingham, and beyond that, London. “I’ve done the circuit several times in the last few years,” she said. “And the Llangollen Canal, of course, down into Wales, but I seem to keep coming back to where I started. Homing instinct, I suppose, like a pigeon.”

  “You’re from this area, then?” Having added milk to his tea, Kincaid sipped it carefully, feeling the welcome warmth begin to thaw him from the inside out. “I thought I recognized a local accent.” As he looked at Annie Lebow in the warm light of the cabin, he realized she was younger than he’d first thought, perhaps only in her early fifties. Too young for retirement, certainly, and he wondered how she could afford the life she led, not to mention a boat of such quality.

  “Southern Cheshire, near Malpas,” she answered readily enough, but went on quickly, as if it were a subject she didn’t want to pursue. Tapping the map with a neatly trimmed fingernail, she said, “There are so many miles of navigable waterway now, more than anyone could have imagined thirty or forty years ago, when the canals were in their worst decline. Of course, it’s almost all pleasure traffic now. The working boats are a thing of the past.”

  “Is that such a bad thing?” Kincaid asked, hearing the obvious regret in her words. “Surely it was a hard life, and the boat people uneducated and illiterate, as well as poor.”

  “A hard life, but a good one,” Annie said, suddenly fierce. “They had their independence, and the Cut. Very few would have chosen to give it up.” Then she shook her head and gave a rueful laugh. “But you’re right, that’s rich, coming from me, with all this.” She swept a hand round, indicating the boat and its fittings. “Imagine that the living space for an entire family was seven feet by seven feet, a good deal less than the size of my sitting room. The rest of the boat would be taken up with the cargo. Imagine no electricity, no hot water other than what you could boil on the range, no plumbing”—here she smiled at Kit—“no refrigeration, and the women had to help their husbands with the locks and the cargo as well as caring for their children.”

  “No baths?” Kit quipped. “No school? That doesn’t sound half bad.”

  “You could probably adapt. After all, the Idle Women did, and most of them came from comfortable homes.”

  “Idle Women?”

  “During the war the government recruited women to work the narrowboats. They were anything but idle—the nickname came from the I
W badges they were given by Inland Waterways when they finished their training. No one had ever seen all-female crews before. They caused quite a sensation, but it wasn’t long before they earned the respect of the traditional boaters. For many of them, nothing else in their lives ever equaled the experience.” Once again a hint of wistfulness echoed in her voice, but she went on with another flash of a smile at Kit. “One of the best-known female trainers was called Kit, like you. Kit Gayford. You should read about her sometime.”

  “Are you here for long?” Kincaid asked, and saw her hesitate briefly before she answered.

  “A few days, I think. I don’t keep to a fixed schedule. That’s one of the perks of the boating life. You?”

  “Just until the New Year. No perks in my job, I’m afraid.”

  “What is it you do?”

  “Civil servant,” Kincaid said quickly, and saw Kit’s startled glance. “Quite boring, actually.”

  He tried to work out just exactly what had prompted him to fudge the truth. It was not that he suspected Annie Lebow of criminal pursuits—and his instincts in that department were well honed—but that he still sensed a watchfulness, a wariness, about her, and he didn’t want to rupture the fragile connection they’d made.

  But even his innocuous response seemed to startle her. She stared at him for a moment, the pupils in her green eyes dilating. Then she stepped back and began folding the map without meeting his gaze again. Kincaid had the distinct sensation of walls going up and alarm bells ringing, and all the camaraderie of moments earlier dissipated like smoke.

  When Annie had tucked the map back into its spot in the bookcase, she picked up her barely touched tea and set the mug in the galley sink. The message couldn’t have been clearer if she’d shouted.

  “Um, I suppose we’d better be going,” Kincaid said into the awkward silence. As he stood, he glanced at the window and found an acceptable excuse. “The light’s fading. If we’re not careful we’ll be blundering home in the dark. Thanks for the tea and the hospitality.”

  Kit looked disappointed, but set his mug in the galley without protest.

  “I hate winter afternoons, they draw in so early,” murmured Annie, almost as if she were speaking to herself. She stayed at the sink, rinsing cups as Kincaid and Kit put on their coats, but when they were suitably bundled up she wiped her hands on a tea towel and followed them up into the foredeck.

  The pale blue dome of the sky had flushed a translucent rose and the light breeze had died, leaving the air utterly still. The boat’s mirror image gleamed on the surface of the canal, near and yet enticingly distant. Kincaid had turned to thank their hostess once more when Kit spoke.

  “Can I see where you steer, before we go?”

  “Kit, I don’t think—”

  “No, it’s all right,” said Annie, her mood seeming to shift once again. “You can go along the edge—it’s called the gunwale. But be careful not to slip. The canal’s not deep, but the water’s very cold. You can freeze more quickly than you’d think.”

  “I won’t fall in.” Kit grinned at them, then turned and walked lightly towards the stern, his trainer-clad feet sure on the narrow ledge of the gunwale, one hand outstretched so that his fingertips traced the edge of the boat’s roof.

  As Kincaid made an effort not to hold his breath, he heard Annie’s quiet chuckle. “He’s a natural. And it helps to be young.”

  When Kit had reached the stern and jumped into the well deck, Kincaid said, “Still, accidents happen. My sister told me a boy drowned along this stretch of the canal recently. He must have been about Kit’s age.”

  “Is this curvy thing the rudder?” Kit called out, his hand on the swan-necked tiller.

  “It’s called the elum, in boating language,” answered Annie. “Probably a corruption of helm,” she added to Kincaid as Kit poked happily about in the stern, examining the ropes and fenders.

  Then, to Kincaid’s surprise, she said softly, “I might have seen him, the boy who drowned. I was moored not far from here, down near the Hurleston Reservoir. Just at dusk, a boy came running along the towpath. His clothes were wet. He almost ran me down, and he looked…wild. Distressed. But I never thought…It never occurred to me that it was anything more than kids playing pranks. I moved the boat up to Barbridge that night, and the next morning I left early to cruise down the Llangollen, so I didn’t hear what had happened until several weeks later. If I had known…” She shivered, crossing her arms over her breasts, and Kincaid realized the temperature was dropping rapidly as the sun set. He could smell the damp rising in tendrils from the water’s surface.

  “There’s no way you could have known what would happen,” Kincaid assured her. He shook his head. “A bad business altogether. Apparently, my niece knew the boy. They were at school together.”

  “Difficult for her,” agreed Annie. “Has she—”

  “It’s brilliant,” called Kit, coming back along the opposite gunwale, interrupting whatever question Annie had meant to ask. He was almost running now, as confident as a tightrope walker.

  “Your boat, it’s brilliant,” he repeated when he reached them. “Or I should say ‘she’s brilliant,’ shouldn’t I? Is she easy to steer? And how do you manage the locks on your own?”

  Annie answered with indulgent patience. “Most people overcompensate when they first practice steering, but you develop a feel for it after a bit. As for the locks, it takes a bit longer on your own, but you get used to it. And often there are other boaters to help, or bystanders.”

  Then she seemed to hesitate, as she had when she’d first asked them aboard, but as she studied Kit’s eager expression, she gave an almost imperceptible shrug and went on quickly. “Look. You could come back, if you like. We could take her down to Hurleston Junction, through the locks. You could even steer a bit.” With a glance at Kincaid, she added, “You and your dad, of course, and your mum, too, if she’d like.”

  Giving no sign that he had noticed the reference to his mother, Kit looked up at Kincaid with an eagerness that was almost painful. “Could we?” he asked. “Could we come back? What about tomorrow?”

  Kincaid remembered his mother telling him they’d planned their annual Boxing Day lunch for the entire family at the Barbridge Inn, the pub just round the junction from Annie’s mooring. “I think we could work that out,” he said, willing to juggle activities in order not to disappoint Kit. But even as he agreed, he felt a fleeting twinge of discomfort as he realized that Kit seemed more at ease with adults than with his cousins. “It’s kind of you,” he added to Annie. “If you’re certain—”

  “It’s not kindness, it’s pure selfishness,” Annie said, with a grin for Kit. “I don’t often have a chance to indoctrinate a future boater. But you’d better be careful—before you know it you’ll be booking family narrowboat holidays.”

  “Holidays? Really?” said Kit. “Where do you—”

  “Enough.” Kincaid gave his son a little push towards the towpath. “We really must go. Gemma and your grandmother will be sending the dogs for us.”

  Not only was the light fading, but the reminder of the next day’s plans had made him think of his sister. The worry that had been lurking in his subconscious now rose to the surface, nagging at him. Had he dismissed Juliet’s disappearance from her in-laws’ too readily?

  He’d asked Gemma to ring him if they heard from Jules, but he knew the mobile reception was spotty this far from town, and he might have missed a call. He was suddenly anxious to return to the farmhouse.

  Kit glanced up at him, and seeming to sense his impatience, thanked Annie Lebow with commendable good manners.

  “See you tomorrow, then,” she called out cheerfully as they jumped to the towpath.

  But as they turned away, an impulse made Kincaid glance back. She stood at the Horizon’s bow, watching them, with a stillness that was unnerving in its intensity. She might have been enveloped in ice.

  Then she broke her pose, lifting her hand in farewell. He returned
the salute, chiding himself for being fanciful, but as he walked on, her image lingered as if burned on his retina.

  Annie Lebow had a rare confidence and a physical assurance as she moved about her boat, as well as an obsessive enthusiasm when she talked about life on the Cut—a portrait of a woman who had found her place in life. But beneath that veneer, he sensed a melancholy, a shadow of longing. What had been denied her—or what had she denied herself?

  Picking the locks on Piers’s drawers had been easier than Juliet had expected. Sifting through his paperwork had been much more difficult. It wasn’t that it was disorganized, but rather the contrary—everything was kept in meticulous order and seemed quite aboveboard.

  After a quick recce, she started with the first client file, reading carefully through each share and unit-trust statement and all the associated correspondence before going on to the next heavy folder.

  She grew absorbed, unaware of time passing, and it was only when she glanced absently at the window that she saw the light had begun to fade. Fighting a sudden surge of panic, she took a breath and reached for another file. She couldn’t quit, not yet. Urgency gripped her. She might never have another chance at this.

  A car door slammed in the street and Juliet jerked, spilling pages across the desk. She listened, but no footsteps approached. Closing her eyes for a moment, she calmed her racing pulse. A few more minutes, and then she would go.

  Then, as she gazed at the papers spread across the green baize of the blotter, something caught her eye. She recognized the share issuer, a German high-tech company that Caspar recommended to his own clients, but something didn’t seem quite right. She checked the corresponding record of payment again, and frowned. Quickly, she switched on Piers’s calculator and entered the amount in euros, then figured the exchange into pounds sterling. “Bloody hell,” she whispered. The amount paid to the client was off by a good 10 percent.