by Milly Adams
Sid just nodded. ‘Reckon that’s as good an excuse as any. Follow me in, but stamp your boots – well, boot – free of snow before you do.’
The two men sat at the fireside table while Sid mused on the best way of catching up with Marigold. Within minutes they were joined by the missus, which was all the name Tom was given. It was she who said, slapping the table, ‘For heaven’s sake, yer pair o’ slowcoaches. Use the cut, and flag down the next pair as comes along. Yer can send a message by them flyboats to tell ’em to wait at Cowley lock fer this package.’ She pointed at Tom.
Before he could draw breath, Tom was back out in the snow, with Sid in a mackintosh, holding an umbrella and standing on the bank. ‘We’ll flag ’em down with me brolly. The traffic’s been pretty steady, so someone’ll take you on to Cowley, cos yer’ll be too late for Bull’s Bridge. I’ll hail a flyboat to get a message to the girls to wait, though the boys won’t stop to take yer.’
‘Why not?’
‘Ah, the name tells you; they’re young lads carrying beer, or some such, and they just keeps goin’, night and day. They can’t keep it up for too many years, but they make a packet while they do.’
They stood staring towards the east, and within ten minutes a pair, roped abreast, hove into sight. Sid nodded. ‘It’s Steerer Mercy on the Lincoln and Ma on the butty York. You’ll see the boats are red, white and blue, means them are Grand Union Canal Carrying Company’s boats, like most of ’em are, including your lass’s. Not many independents on the cut any more. Mercy’s ’ave had a right quick turnaround at Limehouse Basin, I reckon.’
He waved his open umbrella up and down and received an answering hoot. ‘They’ll pull in, cos if it’s deep enough to moor up overnight, it’s deep enough to pull in. Some edges aren’t. They’ll expect you to jump aboard, but when they see the sticks, they’ll hold ’ard and give yer time.’
‘I suppose “the cut” is the canal?’
‘Yer gettin’ the idea.’
Within another ten minutes Steerer Mercy brought the breasted pair into the frontage, throwing the engine into reverse. The propeller churned the water as Sid pushed and Steerer Mercy pulled Tom on board Lincoln. Ma Mercy called from the butty’s stern counter where she stood, with the tiller beneath her elbow, ‘Who be this, Sid?’
‘’E’s that bit of unfinished business of our Verity’s. He didn’t limp on to the next phone box when he couldn’t get Button A to work, so the least he can do is take the scarf she left on the back of her chair. Or so he reckons. I’ll get the flyboats to take on a message for the Marigold pair to wait at Cowley.’
Steerer Mercy barked a laugh. ‘Best drag that plastered leg on over to the butty with Ma, young ’un. She’ll stuff yer in the cabin, so you can take that scarf off from round yer neck. Pink don’t suit a bloke, not even if ’tis so darned grubby it’s almost black.’
Tom snatched off the scarf and tried to keep out of the way of the tiller. He called to Sid, who was closing his umbrella. ‘Thanks, mate. Really, thanks. I owe you a drink.’
Sid’s bellow reached Tom as he stepped crabwise across to the butty. ‘More’n one drink, laddie, and a couple each for these good people, too. You treat Verity right, now. She’s a keeper, if ever I saw one. Well, her and Polly are, but not sure about that Sylvia. Something going on with ’er; summat deep that makes her right prickly, and I don’t envy them two girls, copin’ with her.’
Tom waved one of his walking sticks towards Sid. ‘Thanks to the missus, too.’
Ma Mercy opened the cabin doors, sliding back the roof hatch. ‘Down you go, laddie. You’ve got it to yerself, because our Sheila’s in the motor cabin with the child. She’ll be lock-wheeling – yer know, walking or biking ahead to get the lock ready, less yer want to do it?’ Her laugh was loud and long. ‘What yer think, me old chap?’ she called to Steerer Mercy, who tipped his finger to his hat, his clay pipe clamped between his teeth. Ma half pushed Tom onto the top step leading to the cabin. ‘Bend yerself and in yer go. Warm yourself, why don’t yer? Sit on the side-bed opposite the range. There’s tea in the pot, mugs in the painted cupboard.’
He ducked down the steps, marvelling that Ma Mercy wore only a long skirt and a jumper, with a shawl that was draped around her shoulders and tucked crossways into her wide belt, while he wore his greatcoat and had been freezing. The warmth greeted him, but he could barely stand upright in the smallest room he had ever seen; it could only be nine feet by seven at the most. An oil lamp hung on a peg on one of the walls, which sloped slightly inwards, and on which also hung pierced plates and horse brasses.
Ma Mercy called down, ‘Afore yer settle, lad, toss oop me crochet, if you will, and then pass me a couple o’ teas.’
He found a sort of tangle of wool on the side-bench that she pointed to and handed it up to her, then filled three enamel mugs, added milk and hobbled up the first step with two of them, holding them out to her.
‘Ta,’ she said. ‘When we’re breasted together like this, ’tis easy to pass it to me chap. When we’s on a tow, we has to run along top planks. Your girls go abreast sometimes, like we all do, though it took ’em a while to get the ’ang of it. Go and rest yersel’. We’re pullin’ in at the Grand Union depot at Bull’s Bridge, but someone’ll take yer on to Cowley lock, never fear.’
Tom sat down on the side-bench and stared at the range’s firebox, sipping his tea. He felt exhausted, his leg hurt and itched beneath the plaster, and he thought he was getting chilblains on his thawing toes. He tried to stretch out, but the aisle was only eighteen inches wide. He looked at the pierced plates, and at the cupboard to the side of what looked like a wide bench at the end of the cabin – or was it a bed? They must eat and sleep here, if it was, and he couldn’t quite believe it. A curtain was hooked up at the side, which could be dropped to close it off. He finished his tea and needed a pee.
Ma Mercy laughed. ‘Use the cut, or there’s a bucket in the end store afore the hold, fer yer doings.’
Tom changed his mind and sat back, slipping from his coat and dozing, his mind full of Verity living day after day on a boat like this. Verity, of the soft hands and the life of a lady. He held her scarf. No wonder it was dirty, but now, in the soft light from the oil lamp, he saw that much of it was oil stain, so how would you get that out anyway?
After a few hours he woke again, this time to the sound of the Lincoln’s hooter. Ma Mercy called to him, ‘We’re backing into Bull’s Bridge lay-by. It be the depot for the Grand Union Canal Carrying Company. Right mouthful, eh, but me old chap’s spied Steerer Porter taking off and shouted a word. He’s going to take yer on, so ’e is. So oop yer come, and get ready to step across to his boat, Oxford.’
Tom shrugged into his greatcoat, slung his grip over his shoulder and mounted the steps, dragging his leg behind him. Ma Mercy supported him as he stepped across to the Porters’ motor Oxford, which lay alongside.
Steerer Porter gripped his arm, a pipe between his teeth, too, and his hat pulled down. ‘Right, lad, got ya; we’ll be taking yer on, to make things oop with your lass, or not.’
From the tiny deck, Tom looked about him at what seemed to be hundreds of narrowboats with their butties, moored at a frontage about a quarter of a mile long. Washing hung motionless, as though frozen, from lines strung behind the cabins. Some women were washing over fires on the bank. Everyone seemed so busy, and from the yard that he could see at the end of the frontage came the sound of sawing, banging and the drumming of machinery from the machine shops, and smoke from the chimneys. There were houses set back in the distance on the opposite side and a church spire.
‘What yer lookin’ at?’ A boy of six sat on the Oxford’s cabin roof and stared at Tom, tracing the words of his book with his finger.
How can he sit there, Tom thought, in all this cold? He felt the vibration of the motor’s idling engine. ‘Just getting my bearings,’ he replied, impatient for Steerer Porter to pull away.
The snow was thawing on the roof and fro
m the top of what looked like a brightly painted kettle, next to the boy. But that could be because of the heat of the black chimney, from which smoke curled and to which, Tom now realised with a shock, the boy was chained – like an animal.
Steerer Porter called across to his butty, Cambridge. ‘Ready, Missus? There bain’t be room for abreast, going through the locks. Won’t get ’em gates hard back against the lock walls, for the ice.’
‘Aye, let’s be off.’ Mrs Porter was standing at the tiller, her shawl wrapped around her and tucked crossways into her belt, just as Ma Mercy had worn hers.
Tom felt awkward, standing about like a spare part on the motor’s deck. He edged up hard against the cabin, trying to keep out of the way, but Steerer Porter said, ‘Yer need to be on the butty, lad. ’Op on now, while we’re alongside.’
Tom half laughed. ‘Hop’s a bit far-fetched – I’ll have to drag this damned leg.’ He struggled over onto the butty, and immediately Steerer Porter untied the ropes lashing the butty and motor together and set off, slowly. A boy of about eleven emerged from the butty cabin and, to Tom’s amazement, leapt onto the cabin roof and almost danced along the planks that lay over the top of the tarpaulin-covered cargo, jumping down out of sight at the front end.
Ma Porter said, ‘My chap’ll throw the tow-rope to ’im as he eases out from t’lay-by, and the lad’ll put it over the stud on our prow counter and my chap’ll tow us. The counter’s what a landsman would call a deck.’
Tom felt the butty Cambridge jerk as Oxford took up the tow. The lad ran back along the planks and jumped down onto the deck – no, not deck, what did she call it? ah yes, the counter – and disappeared into the cabin, slamming the door behind him. Tom looked ahead as Steerer Porter towed them past the depot yard, and he studied the small boy chained up, who was coughing. Mrs Porter touched Tom’s arm.
‘It’s what we do to stop ’em falling into the cut. Though I s’pose you’d call it the canal. Jimmy has a cold, but wants to be out in the air. Soon ’e’ll be able to help with the locks, but for now we ’as my brother’s lad, Bobs, who be our runabout. He’ll do what Sheila did on t’Mercys’ boat yer’ve just left, and what yer lass’ll be taking ’er turn doing – lock-wheeling or, to you, opening and closing them locks. Lots of locks there are too, my lad.’
Tom steadied himself on his sticks as Oxford and Cambridge set off along the cut, passing the moored narrowboats and then the yard. Mrs Porter nodded. ‘You get yourself in t’cabin with Bobs, why don’t yer? You been in the wars, I reckon – the real wars – but if yer can get from one boat to another, yer can find another telephone box.’
Tom shook his head, angry at the nagging that all these people were doing. He was here, wasn’t he, trying to catch Verity up? He struggled to keep his voice level, but failed, his headache roaring again. ‘Nothing so brave. I was tipped out of a jeep in an accident and have two weeks’ sick leave, then I’ll be back, in the office if I have to, until I can get this plaster off.’
Mrs Porter nodded, raising an eyebrow at his tone, and he felt embarrassed, but still angry, because what the hell was he doing, rushing about the canal and getting a load of grief for not finding another telephone, when Verity …? Oh, but it wasn’t canal, was it; it was the bloody cut.
Mrs Porter urged him, ‘Get yourself down them steps then. Our Bobs’ll be back doing his lessons on the cross-bed, so you take the side-bed.’ She watched as a boat rushed past, fully laden.
Tom asked, ‘Is that a flyboat?’
Ma Porter nodded. ‘’Spect they’re carrying a message to your lass.’
‘She’s not—’ He stopped. Just shut up, Tom Brown.
Again Tom found himself negotiating steps down into the warmth. He hoped the flyboat did carry a message for Verity, because now he really needed to see her, to stop all this ‘big bad wolf’ gossip, and then he could bugger off. He was tired, cold, his leg ached, his toes were frozen what’s more, and he hadn’t eaten since yesterday and was starving, and he’d damn well had enough. He saw, suddenly, the ARP warden’s face, the loss that had drained the light from his eyes when he mentioned his dead wife, and he sank back against the cabin wall. What if Verity …? He couldn’t bear the thought. In fact it was all such a muddle that he couldn’t bear to think about anything any more.
Bobs was sitting on the wide bed at the end of the cabin, and the range was belting out warmth. Tom sat on the side-bed opposite the range, wriggling out of his coat, removing his cap and dropping his grip onto the floor. ‘Hello,’ he said to Bobs.
The boy just grunted, then muttered, ‘Got me readin’ to do, before I sees Verity and Polly at Tyseley Wharf. They’ll have more lessons for me. Verity, she does reading; Polly, she do numbers this time, but they change turn and turn about.’
Tom stared at the boy. ‘Verity does?’
Bobs looked up. He sucked his pencil and then bent down, writing some words in a little notebook. ‘Course she do – she’s right clever, they both is. I writes what I don’t understand, then they tells me what it means.’
Tom reached into the pocket of his coat and touched her scarf. Who the hell are you, Verity Clement?
After a moment Bobs said, ‘You all right, Mister?’
‘Course I am, Bobs, but I didn’t know she …’
Ma Mercy called down. ‘Bobs, yer give that Tom some bread, and there’s pheasant left from last night. Reckon he needs feeding, cos there were a bit of a snarl bursting out from ’im a minute ago, so ’spect ’e’s got an empty belly, and no one can sort ’emselves out on a parcel of air where food should be.’
‘Pheasant?’ Tom was amazed, although he seemed to be feeling that rather a lot recently.
Bobs was busying himself at a small table he’d made by pulling down a cupboard front, to the right of where he was sitting. ‘Saul, one o’ the boaters, snared it as ’e went along t’cut; or were it Thomo, Ma?’
Ma Porter called down. ‘Saul it were, yer lass’s friend’s chap, young Tom. Now, get some food in yer, and yer’ll feel a bit more straight in yerself, I reckon. ’Spect yer ’ead fair beating, too. This’ll sort it.’
Bobs handed him a thick-cut sandwich, and Tom crammed in a mouthful, then gulped down the tea that Bobs also gave him, thinking he’d never felt so hungry in his life. He took another mouthful of sandwich and then a gulp of tea, and again, and again, until both were finished. Bobs was back at his books, but came and took the plate and mug. ‘Yer feeling less snarly, is yer?’
Tom had to laugh. ‘Yes, much less snarly. I’m sorry,’ he called to Ma Porter.
‘Ah well, can’t do enough for our lasses.’
Bobs said, ‘They saved our Jimmy when ’e fell in the cut, yer see; they jumped in, got themselves perishing, unhooking him from the propeller deep down. They pumped his chest, they did, to get t’water out. And your lass paid, so she did, for Jimmy in hospital, but she ain’t got money now. ’Er ma put a stop to it when they ’ad a barney about something ’er mum said to some young bloke that were a lie, or so the cut talk says. ’Spect that was yer, cos yer a young bloke and we’re right miffed with you for not seein’ ’er when yer said yer would.’ He sucked his pencil, looked at his exercise book, then up at Tom. ‘She and Polly wanted Saul’s lad, Joe, to read, yer see, and Jimmy too, so they does me as well. Gives us opterns, or some such.’
Tom’s mind was clearer now, his head more settled and the snarly was on its way out, he thought, as he tried to concentrate on what Bobs had said. And as he slowly disentangled the words, he found that his heart was full.
Bobs repeated to himself, frowning, ‘Gives us opterns? Opsins?’
Tom thought a moment, then said, ‘Gives you options, I reckon you mean.’
Bobs looked up and grinned. ‘That’s the one. I knows what it means, but can’t rightly remember ’ow it goes. Anyway, them lasses said just t’other day that they ’ad wanted our Jimmy to like books, and to read, cos they’d saved ’is life, so they must take some share of respo …’ The bo
y stopped, and tried again. ‘Responil …’
Tom swallowed – ‘responsibility’, yes, that was the word. He didn’t speak because he wasn’t sure his voice would work, knowing now that Verity was a girl who had become a woman, one who deserved to be loved; and it must be by him, because his love for her was roaring again. What’s more, it was more than time he behaved like a man, not the boy who’d believe her mother, when he should have known his Verity.
Bobs asked, ‘What d’ya reckon the word is?’
Tom stared at him, brought back to the cabin. ‘I reckon it’s “responsibility”. It means to take care of, to have a duty towards.’
Bobs looked at him and then at his notepad. ‘Yes, “responsibility” sounds right fer what they did fer Jimmy; they saved ’im, so ’ad responsibility to do their best for ’im. All right, Mister, yer does know yer words, so yer can ’elp. Be less for ’em to do.’
Tom checked his watch, seething not with pain or anger, or self-pity, but with regret and impatience. ‘Will we catch them up, d’you reckon?’
Bobs shrugged, handing him the notepad. ‘We will or we won’t. All I know is I’ll be out o’ the warmth afore we reach the lock, pedalling me legs off along the towpath to get there t’open oop the gates, so me uncle doesn’t have to wait. Have a look at these words. I ticked the ones I knows and left t’others.’
Tom looked at the words. ‘Jasmine’ was unticked. He only knew the plant because it had climbed the wall in Verity’s walled garden at Howard House. He could see it now, white stars on the fresh green leaves, and he remembered its glorious scent. The terraced house he had come from didn’t have a garden, just a yard, and there was only an outside privy. He and his mum had shared it with his grandparents and an auntie, all of whom made sure he did his lessons and used the library, and pronounced his words properly. All the time they were saving money to give him an apprenticeship in the garage so that he could make something of himself. They were all dead now. Bombed to smithereens, like the ARP’s wife.
