Love on the Waterways

by Milly Adams

  He lit a cigarette, placed his mug of tea on the roof, smelt toast and heard Sylvia slowly climb the stairs, followed by Polly. Polly took off, towards Bet’s boats, while Sylvia placed some toast on the cabin top for him. ‘Verity’ll decide when she’s up to doing more. She knows not to overdo it, because she doesn’t want to be laid off.’

  Dog leapt for the bank and did what was needed, then sniffed to her heart’s content, paying particular attention to the hedgerows, while Sylvia sorted out the lashing of the boats as Verity joined Tom on the counter, a blanket around her. He protested. ‘Back into the warmth.’

  ‘In a minute, but thank you,’ she said, kissing his cheek. ‘For looking after me all last night. I sensed you were there and then, as morning came closer, I really knew you were there and I’ve never felt so safe.’ She took Tom’s cigarette from his mouth, inhaled, coughed and replaced it between his lips. He felt the moisture of her. She exhaled.

  He said, ‘I love you so much. I never realised how much anyone could love anyone else until last night. And I admire you – all.’

  She shook her head. ‘We’re only doing our jobs, sweet boy.’ She leaned into him. ‘Sweet, sweet boy.’

  He felt her trembling. ‘Come on, be sensible – back downstairs for now.’

  Verity nodded and returned to the cabin without complaint, as pale as a sheet.

  Bet was talking to the lock-keeper. Sylvia called from the prow, ‘Any news of Sandy, Bet?’

  Bet called back. ‘She’ll keep her legs because, as your Tom said, the cold stopped her bleeding to death, as did his tourniquets – and Verity’s spectacular grubbing about, whipping off Sandy’s wellies. But of course Verity will owe her a pair of wellies, so tell her that, Tom.’ Tom heard Verity laugh in the cabin, then cough. Bet continued, ‘Naturally it’s second nature, after she and Polly unhooked Jimmy from the propellers a while ago. If you save a third, we’ll have to give her our sugar ration. Drinks on me, when we reach wherever we get to. Come on now, chop-chop, we need to get going.’

  Tom was astonished that there had been no thank-you. He opened the cabin doors and said as much. Verity, lying on the cross-bed beneath the blankets, said, ‘We’re boaters, we don’t; we just oblige in return at some stage. What more do we want? We have our table by the fireside, by virtue of helping Jimmy – little though it was, and something anyone would do.’

  ‘We boaters’ resonated with Tom. Well, there were worse people to be. He insisted, ‘Now sleep. Get your strength back. I’ve always wanted to be the captain of a ship.’

  Verity started to laugh, but it turned into a coughing fit.

  ‘Sleep,’ Tom insisted.

  Chapter 9

  Saturday 1 April – at the home of Polly’s parents: Jotom, 12 Pinewood Avenue, Woking

  It was the start of the school holidays, and Mrs Holmes, Polly’s mother, had promised her husband Thomas that she and Joe would do some weeding at his allotment and would be home in time to put lunch on the table. The weather had warmed magically, although perhaps that was too strong a word. ‘Better to say it’s not so cold, so the soil could be loose,’ she said in the hallway of Jotom, tightening Joe’s scarf and pulling his woollen hat down over his ears.

  Joe wriggled free and jerked his hat back up. ‘I didn’t say nothing about the earth being cold, Auntie Joyce.’

  She laughed. ‘I started by thinking about the freeze, and then that the soil would be looser around the roots, and out it came – just like it does when you’re doing homework and something’s in your head. If the ground’s still too hard, we’ll tidy up the runner-bean poles and pick some sprouts.’

  She clambered to her feet, thinking of the letter she had collected after the post arrived when breakfast was finished, and, more importantly, after she had unpicked the massive bobble from Joe’s new hat. She hid a grin as she pointed to his wellington boots, lined up with Thomas’s and hers, on newspaper beneath the hall window. They had been Will’s boots when he was ten.

  Joe yanked on the boots, then looked at her. ‘You caught me good and proper about the bobble of me new hat – it was so huge, like Polly’s, and pink, Auntie Joyce, and so awful, but I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know about the jokes people played on April the first, yer see. I’ll get you next year, so I will. But though it were a joke, I want yer to know I didn’t want to sound mean about it.’

  Mrs Holmes laughed. ‘You weren’t mean, and I should have understood you wouldn’t know about April Fool’s Day. You must go on keeping me on the straight and narrow while you’re here, Joe.’ She tightened her own scarf, told him to do up his mac and they set off down the cul-de-sac. As they walked, Joe chatted about Easter Sunday in just over a week, and the egg hunt she’d promised him after church, and Joyce felt her heart sinking. Saul’s letter was in her pocket; she had recognised his writing, but could not yet bring herself to read it. In fact she never wanted to do so, because it must be that Saul and Granfer wanted Joe back.

  They turned right out of Pinewood Avenue and she half listened to Joe’s chatter as they rattled along. The gardens of some of the houses looked unkempt, but it wasn’t surprising. So many men were away at war, and families had been evacuated or were perhaps even dead.

  Joe pulled at her sleeve, and she smiled down at him. ‘Auntie Joyce, did you hear me? Miss Fletcher, my teacher, was telling us that Simnel cake has been made for hundreds of years for Easter, and the eleven marzipan balls on the top are to remind us that there were eleven good apostles, and the twelfth – the missing one – was bad. He was called Judas. It must be sad to be bad, mustn’t it, Auntie Joyce, and not be part of your gang any more?’

  Mrs Holmes slowed. Joe sometimes asked questions like this, and she waited, knowing what would come next. Sure enough, as they entered the lane to the allotment, Joe said, ‘D’you think my dad is sad to have been so bad, and not part of the cut any more?’

  She never quite knew what it was best to say. She had discussed it with Mr Burton, the solicitor that Polly had worked for, before she left to become a canal trainee. He was also her husband Thomas’s ARP colleague. Mr Burton had been kind and had helped obtain Joe’s release from custody, after the police thought he had fired the cargo of wood carried by Polly’s butty.

  ‘What do you think, Auntie Joyce?’

  Mrs Holmes realised they were at the allotment gate and she must produce an answer, and she repeated pretty much verbatim what she and Mr Burton had cobbled together. ‘I expect he is sad, but if you do something really bad, like your father did, by telling that POW to set the cargo alight and selling black-market whisky to the club owner in London, there are consequences. You do understand consequences, don’t you, we talked about them a few weeks ago?’

  Joe was pushing the gate open. ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘If I fall, it’ll hurt.’

  They were walking along the grass path towards Thomas’s plot. Mrs Holmes nodded, forcing down a laugh. If Polly was here, they’d have exchanged a look and would have enjoyed the accuracy and simplicity of children. Dear Polly. She stopped dead. Saul’s letter. Perhaps it wasn’t about Joe. Perhaps there was something wrong? She shook her head. No, no, Saul or Verity would have telephoned.

  Joe had found a discarded pea stick and was whipping the tussocks as they walked. What had they been talking about? Ah yes, consequences.

  ‘The thing is, your dad knew there could be consequences, but he did it anyway. So yes, he might be sad because he is on remand, waiting for the trial. At the trial there will probably be more consequences. But that’s the way it is. I suppose the answer is to think hard, if you’re tempted.’

  Joyce felt helpless. Mr Burton had made it sound so much more sensible, while she feared she just sounded weak. But now Joe was running ahead, calling, ‘Last one there’s a cissy, Auntie Joyce. And yes, I does see. It was his decision, and he’ll learn not to do it again. Anyway I’m glad he’ll be locked away, then he can’t hurt us, and maybe Mum will come back.’

  Joyce ran
after him, her wellington boots slapping against her calves. She didn’t want to think of Maudie returning, or of Joe going back to the cut. Not until it happened anyway, and then she would find a way to bear it. After all, she had recovered from Will dying.

  They reached the allotment. Joe had the key and unlocked the shed. ‘Oh, come on, Auntie Joyce, ’urry up, we have lots to do.’

  Inside the shed she watched as Joe rooted around in the toolbox until he found a hand-fork for her, and then grabbed the hoe from the rack for himself. Thomas was so neat; she supposed it came from being a storeman and needing to know where everything was. On the shelf beside the box of packets of seeds was a photo of Will and Polly. They weren’t identical twins, but as near as possible.

  Joe led the way outside and while he hoed the spring cabbage, clinking against stones and scraping up young weeds, she dug out dandelions near the second planting of broad beans. The roots of the wretched things went so deep that they were a complete pain to get out, and the ground really was too cold, but it was good to be out here, at one with nature.

  To get a better grip she stuffed her gloves in her pocket, and the envelope rustled. She would open it when she was home, having a cuppa, and Joe was out playing with Bernard from Roxburgh Avenue, who was bound to come knocking. How would Joe feel, leaving Bernard and school behind, to return to the cut? She levered up the dandelion root, snapping it. ‘Oh, damn.’

  Joe looked up from clinking the hoe around the cabbage. ‘If that was me or Polly, you’d say, “Language”, Auntie Joyce.’

  Joyce looked up, saw him trying not to laugh, although it burst from him, and she joined in. ‘How right you are, but dandelion roots are enough to try the patience of a saint, and I’m definitely not one of those.’

  With the sound of Joe’s laughter drowning out the noise of the birds in the hawthorn hedges, she returned to ferreting out the remains of the root.

  Later that day, having baked a few hot-cross buns with very little sugar while Joe and Bernard played football in the garden, she sat down at the back-room table where she and Joe had eaten their lunch of egg and chips – his favourite – though she had insisted that he had also finished his cabbage. She poured herself a cup of tea and drew out the letter from the envelope. It was nothing short of a miracle that Saul could write at all, having only started to learn a few months previously. She laid the letter on the table, smoothing out the folds. It was written in pencil and the letters were not joined up, but one day she thought they would be. She stared out of the window again, hearing Joe’s shouts and Bernard’s replies.

  She had been appalled at Polly originally, when her precious daughter, in whom she had invested such hopes, had fallen in love with a boater. It made her blush to remember how snobbishly she had behaved. This shame came to her especially in church, where somehow giving in to the sin of pride seemed even more crass and cruel.

  Thomas had also had concerns about Saul, because he worried about how his daughter would live when the war was over. Would Polly go on having to use a bucket for years to come? And what about children? Then they had taken on Joe, while the crimes against his father were dealt with; and Thomas had said one evening, while looking at a photograph of Will, that it was Polly and Saul’s life, so the youngsters should bloody well grab whatever happiness they damn well could, because who the hell knew what lay around the corner. Thomas had sworn more, after Will died; but perhaps, in her own mind, she did, too. He had turned to Joyce, his arms crossed and with that fierce look on his face, which told everyone he meant business.

  She opened the letter:

  Dear Mr and Mrs Holmes

  I does hope you is well. We is too, me and Polly and Granfer. Verity’s Tom has come back to her and they is happy as can be on the boat. I am writing because I have been full of shame, and vexation, because I reads in the paper that the war is bigger than when I couldn’t read, somehow, if you understand me. So in my heart, I have decided that if I am to be any sort of a man I must try to leave this Reserved job on the canal, as theys call it, and fight like Verity’s Tom, and all them others, and your Will, who died. I should at least be out there for them, you see, for men like Will. I can’t lift me head much, and walk proud no more. And Leon is locked up, so no danger no more to them girls, or to Joe, or to you. My leg is better too, so that should count. Does you knows what I mean? I’s not good with words yet.

  Thing is I’m right troubled because I don’t know how to break out of the cut, and Verity’s bloke, Tom, and Steerer Mercy says I needs to go to someone important who can tell me how. Mr Burton is the only important person I sort of knows. Tom said too that there must be someone who leads the transport of the war, and they might be the ones for me, or know who is, cos I might know things they need. I wonders if Mr Burton knows about all of that?

  I have thoughts that you does know how I can write to Mr Burton because yer know him well. So praps you’d tell me where to write to?

  But course I need to ask you other things too. You are kind to Joe, and looking after him for now.

  The letter stopped and continued on a second page. Joyce Holmes put the letter down, unable to read on, trying to absorb all that Saul had written thus far. He wanted to leave to go to war, because of the shame he felt. She had realised, a month or two after meeting Saul, that he was an exceptional young man, who had made her daughter happy in a way that she had feared Polly would never be. She saw that he was even more exceptional now. Yes, she did understand his shame. It was what she felt when she thought of how she had disapproved at first of his relationship with Polly.

  Joyce looked out of the French windows at the two boys kicking the ball back and forth, but with a purpose, because Bernard was trying to hit the goal marked in chalk on the back of the garden shed, and Joe was trying to stop him. She sighed; it was a bit like war really.

  She stared down at the letter. She must go on, and face whatever it was that Saul wanted, if he was to leave, which was probably that Joe was to return to help Granfer on the boats. She placed the top sheet next to her tea, which she had neglected to drink, and read on:

  But if I gets to go, and leave the cut, Granfer will live on the bank with Auntie Lettie, and the boats will go back to the company. I been thinkin’ our Joe won’t want to be with old people like Auntie Lettie and Granfer in Buckby, and I thinks that you took in our Joe instead of letting the police stuff him in the home when they thought he were guilty, with Mr Burton standing guarantor then. So if I gets to go would you keep our lad fer us til I gets home. I knows it’s a damn great ask, but ask it I do, and will not go if it is a no, since that boy is the sun and moon to me, like your Polly be too. I will have to think hard about what happens if I don’t get back. Just for now I can’t think of more than praps going.

  From the garden she heard a massive cheer from Joe. Joyce swung round with the letter in her hand. He had scored a goal and was leaping up and down while Bernard just laughed, stuck his tongue out and ran to pick up the football from the flower bed. For two pins, she would have cheered along. Of course – of course they’d have Joe. She drank her tea, cold by now, but tasting like ambrosia, then sat back in her chair, feeling that she could have turned cartwheels.

  There was more in the letter and, as she read it, Joyce thought of her conversation about consequences with Joe at the allotment:

  And now, to my lovely Polly. I haven’t told her of my thoughts, because I doesn’t want her heart to hurt while I waits to see if I am to go. So I would ask you to cross yer own heart and tell her nothing of my plans yet awhile, cos I will tell her when I hears from that place that sorts the war transport.

  I knows I can trust you and I knows you know she is the breath in my body but that sometimes we just have to leave and breathe on our own to do our duty.

  I write this with gratitude and wait for a reply to Bull’s Bridge depot. If I get taken, I will talk to our Polly, and I will come down to see Joe, and you, cos you are Polly’s Ma and Da, and so we is family.
<
br />   Saul Hopkins (Mr)

  Chapter 10

  Saturday 1 April – early morning, south of a bridge just north of Cosgrove

  Tom stood at the tiller of Marigold, heading slowly towards a bridge north of Cosgrove on what he called a soft morning: warm sun, non-existent wind. But then he heard a repeated hooting from inside the bridge-hole, and Verity, now mostly recovered from her dip, stepped away from his side. She said, ‘That’s Bet’s hunting horn, and no sign of her. Lord above, are they stuck? It’s been the foulest journey for them.’

  Verity was slower than usual getting onto the roof, but that was the only way anyone would know that she’d been knocked for six so recently. And what’s more, Tom thought, she’d never said another word about it. His love and admiration overwhelmed him as he watched her shading her eyes, as though she could see into the darkness beneath the bridge. He asked, ‘Hunting horn, my lovely girl?’

  Verity murmured, ‘Her father’s, my lovely boy.’ They laughed quietly, but then she continued, ‘I’ll tell you more later. But she gave us one, and kept one. Listen, there it goes again – that’s every three seconds. Something really is wrong. Oh, I do hope it’s just the engine, and not Bet’s chest.’

  They heard Polly hoot from Horizon, on tow behind.

  Verity hesitated. ‘Moor up, Tom, quickly. It’s deep enough here; see the mooring studs set in the bank. It could be that either Bet’s ill, or that ruddy Hillview’s broken down again. If it’s Bet, we can nip down and start the pair up, and take it through to get help. If it’s broken down, we’ll have to set to.’ She cupped her hands around her mouth. ‘Pols, we’re mooring up.’

  Polly’s reply came. ‘To see what’s what?’

  ‘Yep, bring rope.’

  Tom slowed, steering into the bank.