None of this prepared me for the French canal tunnels, the first of which I encountered at Riqueval, lying halfway between Cam-brai and St Quentin. I had been told, for reasons that I did not fully understand at the time, that one could only go through at midday, so I spent the morning driving the dinghy along with oar strokes that made her skip across the water like a demented frog. To keep time, I sang ‘Green Grow the Rushes, O!’ (I’ll sing you one, O!) at full volume for five miles straight without stopping and arrived at the tunnel mouth ten minutes too late. The fact is that the tunnel, at seven kilometres, is so long that boats must be towed by a special electric tug, which is itself hauled along a submerged chain. As there is no ventilation in the tunnel, no combustion engines can be used. No, nor unpowered dinghies, so don’t even ask. Or at least that was the implication of the look that the guard gave me as I rowed up streaming with sweat and hoarse from singing. The next tow through? À six heures et demi, m’sieur, ce soir.
For the next six hours I sat in the shade of an old garden wall above the canal, dozing, writing letters and consuming a large hunk of strong salami and a bottle of beer. As the hot sun cooled to a fragrant afternoon, full of the smells of grass and horses and warm old brick, the electric tug hummed into sight and I joined three other vessels. We were to be towed through together. There had been much headshaking and Gallic muttering about the dangers of allowing such a small and frail boat to attempt the perils of the Riqueval Tunnel, but in the end I had merrily flung my painter around the stern-post of the last boat and feigned smiling incomprehension at the serious talk going on above me. After a few even more Gallic shrugs, we were off.
There is a scene in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader where C.S. Lewis describes the children sailing into a mysterious island of darkness, which turns out to be the terrible land where dreams come true. Not daydreams, but dreams – and nightmares included. His description of the swift fading of the sunlit world, the draining away of colour and warmth and light, of sea-blues and sun-golds, to be replaced with chilly, black silence, haunted me as a child for many years. This was like that. Very soon the arched end of the tunnel had dwindled to a tiny spot of greeny-white far behind, and then vanished altogether. Above me was the high curved roof of the tunnel, soot-black but smudged here and there with the dead white of some fungus or mould and the odd glimmer of filmy water seeping through the brickwork. The passage of the boats through the tunnel was almost entirely silent, with only the swirl of water beneath the bows magnified and echoing into the darkness, and the steady hum of the electric boat some twenty yards ahead. After ten minutes of this chill and lonely voyage, strung on the end of a long line being towed through the darkness, I dug out my tin-whistle and started playing. Sweet and pure the notes sounded as I played Crimond and Abide With Me, and all the hymns of sorrow and comfort that have ever been written. They echoed away on each quivering cadence and came ghostly back again from the curving walls in a mournful descant. I understood why Orpheus took his lyre into the Underworld. In the darkness, music is the only light.
Two hours later we emerged into the waning light of day. The other vessels detached themselves and hurried off down the canal, hoping, no doubt, to make St Quentin before nightfall. The electric tug vanished back into the tunnel and I was left alone. I found that we had emerged into a steep defile where beech woods marched up either bank in ominous ranks of grey pillars and interlacing boughs. Such beautiful trees, usually, but here they closed in, crowding over the water, tangled blackberry brambles at their feet, and the sky a remote strip of primrose far above. So steep was that unnatural valley that no lingering light of day touched anything but the highest treetops on the further ridge; all was shadowed and chilly and beginning to grow damp with evening dew. My feelings of unease were confirmed when, mooring by the only bramble-free patch of canal side for the night, I discovered a large dead crow lying tumbled in the weeds. Its plumage was glossy still, shot with purple and green, but already there were white maggots in its empty eyes; both Jack and I slept ill that night under the satirical stars. It was the Valley of the Shadow of Death and I did not allow my thin piping to disturb the shadows that night.
Next morning the steep beechwood defile continued unbroken for another five kilometres. There was a hint of thunder in the air and the sullen leaves hung lifeless on the beeches’ coppery tracery. Then I came to the entrance of the next tunnel, the Tunnel de Lesdins. Here there was no sign of a tug, no guards, no notices – just a single set of lights showing green, and the small familiar grey box housing the electronic eye at the tunnel’s mouth.
I stopped, pondering. What was meant to happen now? There was no evidence of a tug, so it seemed that one could not expect a tow. But how long was the tunnel? And what happened if I met another boat coming the other way? But no – surely if there was a green light at this end, there would be a red one at the other end? Of course it would be safe.
Two crows dropped heavily out of a nearby beech tree and flapped away down the gorge croaking. The water steamed in the hot morning sun. Flies danced.
Unless …
Unless that green light was simply left over from the last boat to go through from this end … and … think now … the system was now set equally biased to either end. It would wait for the first boat to enter in either direction and only then trigger a red light at the other end to stop oncoming traffic. In which case … er? … I was still alright. I should stop shilly-shallying about and just go.
A large fish turned lazily in the scummy water, breaking the oppressive silence with a soft flop. The ripples spread sluggishly and died.
Yes …
Unless … hmmm. Unless, as was most likely from the experience of the past few days, my little wooden craft failed to trigger the electronic eye and so register my presence in the tunnel, in which case I was fair game to be turned to pâté by anything that came along in the next hour or so.
Hmmm. There was nothing for it. I would just have to take a deep breath, trust to luck and row like blazes.
Cranking up Crimond, I entered the tunnel.
The Lord’s my-y Shep-he-erd, I ’ll not want;
He ma-akes me down to lie,
In pa-a-stures green, He lea-ea-deth me,
The qui-i-et wa-ters by
Black walls, white mould, seeping damp again, but this time, Into the Darkness every hundred feet or so, a yellowing light bulb dimly illuminating the tunnel and, disconcertingly, the alarming state of the ceiling and rotting walls. I had preferred complete darkness. Every now and then there would sound above the hollow clop and creak of the oars the distant spatter of falling water. It would grow nearer and louder, and then I would be right under it, freezing water clattering in a chilly rope from a crack high above in the curved ceiling and drenching me for a second or two. Then the strong notes of Crimond or the Passion Chorale would go oddly squeaky for a moment and the lyrics would switch from the profound to the profane.
It was hard to estimate how long the tunnel was, or how fast I was moving through it. One of the major disadvantages of rowing as a means of propulsion is that one travels through life backwards, and I was forever craning my neck around to see if in the darkness ahead there was that which I feared most: the steady light of an approaching barge. On the other hand, one of the major disadvantages of always craning one’s neck around to look ahead in a rowing boat is that you never spot the barge rapidly approaching from behind.
Or at least I never spotted it until I heard it, and that was very nearly too late. There it was, a yellow light coming up behind me and growing rapidly and steadily bigger. I glanced around. The exit was in sight but only just, a tiny half-moon of daylight seemingly three hundred miles away. To my right was a concrete ledge that acted as a sort of rough towpath through the tunnel, but it had along it an ancient, rusted railing, and besides, was hardly wide enough to pull Jack onto even if I could have got her over the waist-high rail on my own. There was nothing for it but to row, and row like buggery.
It did not look happy.
I, on the other hand, despite the shaking limbs, the sobbing breath and the sweat-stinging eyes, was just about ready for another verse of Crimond.
Et in Arcadia Ego
’Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness, –
That thou, light-wingèd Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green and shadows numberless,
Singest of Summer in full-throated ease.
—JOHN KEATS, Ode to a Nightingale
In St Quentin I visited a bookshop and the only two titles I could find were The Tempest and a book of Keats’ poetry. These I bought, determined to defeat the boredom of rowing by learning some verse off by heart. As I rowed out of the town the next day, I had the Keats propped on the back thwart and started with Ode to a Nightingale. My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains my sense …
From St Quentin onwards, the countryside became utterly lovely. I rowed through a Pre-Raphaelite landscape where the dog roses dropped blushing petals on the water, where flag-irises stood in yellow fleur-de-lis along the banks, where elderflowers frothed like heads of sparkling champagne on every bough and each new bend of the tranquil waterway cried out for a drowned Millais Ophelia or a Lady of Shalott swathed in tapestries aboard her tragic barge.
That night I pulled into a little village in a clearing in a forest and moored up next to a tiny white cruiser. As I was preparing my awning for the night, the owner of the cruiser came down from his house across the grass, introduced himself as Jean-Philippe and, almost inevitably it seemed, invited me to dinner with his wife, Valérie, and Lucat, their eleven-year-old son. Lucat, a keen naturalist, was fascinated by my little flag depicting Jack de Crow, so in the course of the meal we discussed in halting French the differ-ences between jackdaws and crows, ravens and rooks, with the aid of a large and colourful bird-book. The flag in question had been sewn for me by my mother and showed a heraldic crow on a yellow background holding in its bill a golden ruby ring; it flew proudly from my stays to show the wind direction. The design was based on the Ellesmere College crest, depicting the Raven of St Oswald holding his royal ring, but of course also representing the original Jack de Crow, my tame and thieving jackdaw of many years ago. So crow or raven or jackdaw, all these possibilities were earnestly explored over the steaming cassoulet and good red wine at Valérie’s table.
Once my halting French caused some confusion. When asked by Jean-Philippe where or how I slept at night, I tried explaining about my sleeping arrangements and my mattress by replying, ‘Ah, c’est bon! Ce n’est pas un problème. La nuit, je suis très confortable parce que … um … j’ai une …what’s the word! … une petite maîtresse.’
Amid Valérie’s stifled mirth, Jean-Philippe explained to me gently that the word I was looking for was ‘matelat.’ My choice of ‘maîtresse’ could well lead to some interesting questions. Where, for example, would she live during the day?
And some weeks later, when I was asked the same question, I got it wrong again. This time I remembered not to confuse mattress with mistress, but in casting around for that final word I hit triumphantly upon ‘matelot.’ The admission that what kept me happy and comfortable at night was the presence of my own little sailor boy left most people hurrying away determined not to enquire any further into my sleeping arrangements.
Two days later I sailed into the city of Rheims, arriving by chance in the middle of a waterways festival celebrating one hundred and fifty years of the French canals. There were boats and barges of every description ploughing up and down the canal, banners hung out to welcome visitors from all over Europe, and large marquees set up along the banks. I was pleasantly surprised by the reaction to my little boat: cheers and waves from people drinking champagne aboard a VIP ship, and blasts on the hooters and horns of each vessel that sailed past. When I tied up at the marina, I was greeted by a chain-bedecked official resembling Hercule Poirot, who earnestly shook my hand, kissed me on both cheeks and handed me a glass of champagne, waving aside my questions about mooring fees. Proudly he called some colleagues over and pointed excitedly at my two flags, the Union Jack and, oddly enough, the Jack de Crow pennant, and I explained that yes, I had come from England.
‘Oui, oui, d’accord!’ he cried, embracing me once more. ‘From England, oui, c’est vrai! And especially for our fête des canals, non? C’est magnifique!’
‘Well, I didn’t actually know about this festival but –
’ ‘Non? Mais oui, monsieur, you play ze little jest on us, I zink. How can you not know about ze great festival of Rheims, and you wiz ze little flag of our great city flying oh so proud ’ere on ze brave little boat, non? Quel honneur, m’sieur, quel honneur!’
Only then did I look more carefully around me at the banners and pennants and flags that fluttered and cracked in the rising breeze. Every one of them bore a strangely familiar design: a heraldic black crow bearing in its bill a ruby ring. This, I found, was the ancient crest of the city, immortalised in Southey’s poem The Jackdaw of Rheims, telling the tale of the theft of the Cardinal’s ruby ring by one of Jack de Crow’s ancestors. It was clear that Jack and I were meant to be here.
After Rheims I travelled south-east on the Canal de l’Aisne à la Marne, passed through the Tunnel de Mont Billy and onwards to Châlon-sur-Marne, and thence rowed up the Marne system to Vitry-le-Françoise. There I turned eastwards onto the narrow Saulx and rowed on through Sermaize, Bar-le-Duc and Ligny, climbing steeply to cross the last watershed before the long descent to the Rhine Valley. Here, at the top of the range, I plunged through the last tunnel, that of Mauvage, and descended swiftly to Toul and – oh, sweet relief! – the head of the Moselle River. Those twelve days were spent almost entirely in rowing, entirely in fine weather, and entirely in a daze of beauty, Keats and birdsong. What else is there to say?
Well, the windmill I saw for starters, just outside Rheims, perched on a gentle rise striped with the green and golden rows of vines and cut through with the zigzag line of a white and dusty road. Then there were the midday stops when the sun had grown too hot for rowing and I skinny-dipped in lonely bends of the River Saulx that ran alongside, just down the canal bank. Here the water was fast flowing and greeny-jade over amber gravel, and cool on the skin. I clambered out of the river naked and watchful, up banks of comfrey coarse as sandpaper, there to lie in deep beds of tickling vetch and loosestrife and dry out in the May sunshine. Sometimes on the outskirts of a village where I had just lunched on a metre-long sandwich and a bottle of beer, I pulled my mattress out and spread it beneath a shady walnut tree and dozed for an hour or so while the noonday sun declined to a tamer heat. There were tall poplars along the bank now, and every one of them was shedding a gentle snow-gale of drifting white down, making breathing a hazardous occupation. Soon the dinghy was full of fuzzy fluff and I was in danger of choking if I breathed incautiously.
There were days when I stopped rowing and rested, especially as in this part of the country the canals close on Sunday. Sunday also happened to be market-day in many of the little towns and villages, so I would spend a mildly irritable day moving from café to café in search of a quiet corner to sit and write letters while outside in the market squares there would burst a profusion of colour and noise and smells: roast chickens, flaky buttery pastries, barrows of peaches and nectarines and deep bloomy plums, racks of cheap gaud
y clothes and everywhere the relentlessly cheery drone of accordion music over loudspeakers. ABBA was also very popular in that corner of France, played day and night, and any form of creative thought in the form of letter writing was effectively quashed. Add to this the presence of loud French youths in combination with those rattling, thumping table soccer games, and Sunday was the noisiest day of the week. I had become so accustomed to the silence and sweet birdsong of woods and meadows that my temper frayed readily at the clatter of radio-tuned humanity enjoying itself. I had become a cantankerous hermit.
On the fourth day of June I came at last to the little town of Demanges, the last before the Tunnel de Mauvage. This would take me through the last great watershed before the land slopes gently away to the Moselle valley and thence to the Rhine. Here I was told, however, that ‘le Directeur’ would not permit me to row through the tunnel, or be towed. Reluctantly it was agreed that I might walk through the five-kilometre tunnel hauling Jack behind me. How I would do this, though, I was not sure.
I went to sleep that night on the grass of a secluded bank by the canal and watched a spider perfectly silhouetted shuttling to and fro between the mast-top and hoisted gaff. She was spinning an invisible web against the deepening blue sky, entrapping only the faint stars, diamonds in new constellations. Seeding grass stems nodded above my head, likewise silhouetted, as delicate and finely drawn as a Chinese print. They stirred and bended in the faintest of river breezes. In an ash tree nearby, there was a sudden rush and trill of song and with a jolt I realised that it was a nightingale. I had never heard one before, but my mind had been full of the very thought of them for years – not only the famed Keats but all the other niches in myth and literature that this beloved bird has held. For a few minutes I listened in rapture, carried away by the perfect poetry of the moment.
The Unlikely Voyage of Jack de Crow Page 24
