Love on the Waterways

by Milly Adams

  ‘But please, please don’t unload us too quickly. Please be busy. Please let us have a hot bath, and a bed on land,’ she said aloud as she finally clambered onto the butty, in order to leave the lovebirds on the Marigold in peace for a little longer, and slung the bike on the roof.

  Sylvia said, ‘I can’t wait for a bath either. I do so hope the wharf is busy, and I’m sorry Saul won’t be there this time. We were so wretchedly slow that he and Granfer must be at least a couple of days ahead.’

  Polly smiled. Sylvia’s remoteness came and went, and it had gone again. Did Tom make the difference, or was it, as Tom had suggested, the teamwork she experienced when Sandy fell in?

  Within twenty minutes they were at the wharf, the kerb of which was almost on a level with the boats, unlike Limehouse Basin, which always loomed above them. Pairs queued ahead, still unloaded, and even as they moored, they heard other boats approaching from the south and Polly’s heart lifted. She said to Sylvia, ‘Maybe we’ll get that bath and bed.’

  Sylvia grinned. The foreman trotted across to Verity, moored just in front on Marigold. ‘’Ow do – be tomorrer, t’will. Break yer ’earts, no doubt, to be nipping off and ’aving a shop, or whatever it is yer do with yerselves, though I sees yer have an ’itch-’iker. Been in the wars, lad? Ah well, bit of a cruise does yer good.’

  Polly heard Tom’s strong laugh. She smiled at Sylvia. ‘Let’s clean up the old dear and then head for the trams, eh, Sylvia?’

  As they began, Tom and Verity went to fetch the letters. On their return, Verity pointed towards the head of the queue of boats and shouted, ‘Isn’t that Seagull and Swansong? They should have been loaded a few days ago, surely.’

  Polly nipped onto the kerb and saw that Verity was right. She broke into a smile, jogging along the wharf and weaving past men who were arguing about who should do what, as a lorry revved up behind them. The driver wound down his window and leaned out, a cigarette in his mouth. ‘Make up your bloody minds; this lot ain’t going to unload itself.’

  She ran around crates, keeping her eyes on Saul and Granfer, and on Harry, the runabout, as they clambered onto the kerb of the wharf. ‘Saul, oh, Saul,’ she called out. He looked round and she ran into his open arms and felt his strength enfold her. ‘Did you break down? Why are you so late? Oh, Saul, I miss you so much, all the time.’

  He tightened his hold. ‘And me too, lass.’

  She breathed in the scent of him, but then drew back. It was different – clean. She looked up at him. ‘Have you had a bath?’ His gaze slid from her, and she reached up, holding his face so that he had to look at her. ‘Saul, where have you been?’

  Granfer cut in. ‘Ah, lass, we been to Buckby to see me sister Lettie. She writes to me now I can read and said to come fer our lunch and a bit of a natter.’ He coughed, and Polly heard the rattle of his chest. Granfer continued, patting her shoulder, ‘Yer lad ’ad an bath, I ’ad me chest wrapped in goose grease and brown paper. He stinks clean, I stink o’ goose, but Lettie reckons it’ll do the trick. She always were the bossy one. Gettin’ on a bit now, she is, and her Arthur ’as gone to dust, so she’s a mite lonely, or so I reckon.’

  She looked from one to the other. ‘I’m so pleased, partly because it held you up, but it must have been lovely to see Lettie, Granfer. Perhaps one day I can meet her, too, when we’ve time to stop. We can call in on Fran, Bet’s friend, too, and pick up some honey from their hives. Not sure how close their house is to Lettie’s?’

  Harry was pulling at Granfer’s sleeve, asking him something in a low voice. Granfer smiled and answered, ‘Course yer can, lad. I saw yer da’s boat up ahead, too, and they’re loading his cargo, so he’ll be away soon, and he’ll ’spect yer to say ’ow do.’

  Harry started to run off and then spun on his heel, tipping his hat at Polly and shouting out, ‘’E don’t ’alf smell sweet, yer Saul, don’t ’e, Polly? But ’e’s been right rude about us who pong. Yer just watch yerself, or yer’ll be catchin’ an earful an all.’

  Polly laughed and turned back to Saul, who was calling after the lad, ‘Yer just wait, Harry. I’ll roast yer, so I will.’

  She said, ‘Leave the lad, you great brute, and just think about how I’ll smell like sweet violets by the time we girls have been to the public baths. So why not meet us again at the Bull and Bush pub at the end of Mrs Green’s boarding house street. Then Granfer will be the only one ponging.’ She hoped her voice sounded light and carefree, when really she wanted to beg Saul to come. He mustn’t feel tethered, though.

  Saul laughed loud and long. ‘I’ll be doing that, don’t yer fret, my lovely lass, and I’ll bring Verity’s Tom, too, but we have things to do before then. Now, off yer go. Verity’s talking pretty straight to the foreman, and it’ll be chop-chop to the baths, I reckon.’

  She shook her head. ‘No, it won’t. It’s chop-chop to clean up the boats, and only then to the baths. She’ll be telling him Bet’s stuck at Mikey’s with a beggar of an engine. Tom got her that far by stripping a fuel line or something, but that was only a temporary measure.’

  Verity came to stand with them. ‘Put Saul down, you bad girl, we need you to clean up. Tom’s walking Dog, then says he and Saul are off to do boys’ things and, if we’re nice, they’ll buy us a present. If not, they won’t; anyway, they’ll meet us later. He says we’re to book a room for him at Mrs Green’s, after he’s had a bath, but I dare say Saul will want to come back to the wharf to be with Granfer?’ She turned and walked back to Marigold.

  Polly kissed Saul hard on the lips. ‘Let me know about the room, and come to the Bull and Bush if you can.’

  He pulled her to him, kissed her, his eyes closed, and whispered, ‘I’ll need to stay with Seagull for the night. Granfer worries me, so he does, with his chest an’ all.’ She understood and couldn’t have left the old man, either.

  ‘But you’ll be at the pub?’ she persisted.

  ‘Try and keep me away,’ Saul said, kissing her hand as she turned, then pulling her back once more and hugging her. ‘We’ll look after Dog an’ all, whiles you’re sleeping in a proper bed.’

  She ran back to the Marigold. In the cabin Verity waved a letter at her. ‘From your mum, and one for me. I sent some sums for Joe, but I expect he does them with one hand tied behind his back by now. I asked him to tell me if they were too hard for Jimmy Porter, who should be letting us have his lessons, but they’ve gone on. Harry’s da thinks they’ll be at Bull’s Bridge on our return.’

  Polly sat on the roof and read her mum’s letter, which mentioned weeding at the allotment and her evening games of Snakes and Ladders with Joe, and dwelt on his progress at school, and how pleased she was that Tom was with them. Polly smiled, and read Joe’s note at the bottom, about looking forward to the Easter school holidays and the Easter-egg hunt that Auntie Joyce had promised him; she smiled again. It’s what her mum had done for her and Will, even if it was only a painted hard-boiled egg. She folded the letter and put it in her pocket.

  ‘Mum’s pleased Tom’s back with you.’

  Verity was washing the walls. ‘Oh, you told her.’

  Polly picked up the mop and bucket and carried it to the steps, then stopped. ‘No, you must have done.’

  There was a pause as Verity reached for the ceiling above Polly, working around her and saying finally, ‘Oh, you know me. I can’t remember from one day to the next, but I’m pleased she’s pleased, if you follow me.’

  Polly lugged the bucket up onto the counter. ‘Mum just wants us both to be happy. Not sure what she really feels about Saul, though. I reckon they think I’ll outgrow him, but on the other hand, perhaps they really do like him? They certainly love Joe.’

  Over on the butty Sylvia was on her hands and knees, scrubbing the counter. Polly looked at her mop and bucket and sighed. She nipped along to the stores shed and gathered up the scrubbing brush, then returned, hearing the hoot of a lorry, and curses. Ahead of Marigold a crane was swinging a load of pallets from a lorry onto
a narrowboat. Someone was yelling. Well, someone was always yelling.

  She scrubbed the counter, her knees becoming wet. Suddenly she was sick to death of being wet and filthy, and even more fed up with the endless cleaning. She kept going, her hands red and sore now, but when weren’t they? Finally she slung the brush into the bucket, dipped the mop in the cut, wrung it out and rinsed the counter.

  It was the turn of the cabin roof next, and automatically she set about it while the gulls called, cranes clanked, men shouted, machinery from the workshops screamed, an external telephone bell sounded and a tannoy crackled. Then it was the turn of the cabin sides. She was in a rhythm. Inside, Verity would be polishing. It would have been the maid’s job in Howard House. She grinned to herself and called out, ‘You should wear a little black uniform, a bonnet and pinny, Verity.’

  ‘You should be quiet,’ Verity yelled, but then laughed. ‘Anyway, I’m going to offer to help Sylvia, now this is done. We have been sleeping there, after all.’

  She emerged onto the deck, her hair awry. Polly said, ‘You look like the woman with snakes in her hair.’

  Sylvia called from the butty roof, ‘Medusa, you mean. And yes, she does. And I’ve cleaned inside and out, but thank you anyway. I have made spam sandwiches for the three of us, and then I want a bath; and I don’t want to wait too long, and that’s jolly well that, so there.’

  When Polly and Verity emerged from the cabin, Sylvia was on the quay, slapping her arms around her in the cool wind, her grip at her side. They heard Dog barking, and Tom came across the yard, dodging the lorries and workers. He was using just one stick now, and the other was Dog’s plaything.

  Verity handed him the keys. ‘You know where the baths are. I wrote it down, remember?’

  His salute was a good deal smarter than theirs would have been. The three girls ran across the yard, aching to be free of the cut and its environs and longing to soak in the deep, hot water, which had become a tradition inherited from Bet. They gobbled down the sandwiches on the tram, then sat back as it rumbled towards the baths, jumping off when the soot-streaked building was in sight, running to it and into the lobby. Panting, they paid their ninepence each from the housekeeping kitty.

  The lady behind the counter slammed her hand on the counter bell and, like the good fairy, Mrs Green – plump, grey-haired and rosy-cheeked – appeared through the door on the right, in her starched white uniform. She opened her arms, then dropped them again. ‘No,’ she said, ‘not till yous clean, not after last time.’

  They all laughed, even Sylvia, who at the time had been mortified at the smudges they had left on the pristine Mrs Green. Sylvia said now, ‘I still don’t know how you stay so starched in all this steam.’

  They followed Mrs Green into a cavernous white-tiled room, which was divided into cubicles. ‘Same cubicles as always,’ she said. She pointed to Number Two. ‘That’s yous, Blondie. Polly, yous is next; and little Miss Sylvia is the next, and nice and spotless she leaves it, too. Cleanliness is next to godliness, our parish priest says. He’d like yous, lass, but he’d know when ’e was beaten with t’other two.’

  She winked at the three of them.

  ‘Yer can go up to the top line marked on t’side of the bath, sluice it, then fill it once more. Towels on the back of the doors – two each. I’ve left soda and a scrubbin’ brush for each o’ yous at the end. See if yous, Blondie, and yous, Polly, can change the ’abits of a lifetime and leave it so it sparkles. Needs some elbow-grease, so it do.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Green, I think,’ grinned Verity. ‘By the way, Bet will be in sometime with her lot. I think they’re sending her a new trainee to make up the crew. They’ll meet at Braunston.’

  Sylvia was letting herself into Number Four. They heard her bolt the door. Mrs Green nodded. ‘I ’eard. Nothing much happens that my Alf don’t ’ear about, swinging around in his great big crane. Staying tonight, is yous?’

  ‘If you have rooms, Mrs Green. But we need an extra, for Tom Brown.’ Verity sounded tentative all of a sudden.

  ‘Yes, I ’eard about ’im an’ all. Didn’t turn up when he should ’ave, but managed to swing it anyway, so he must have something, if you’ve forgiven him. In yous go, Blondie; it’s three-thirty now, and I dare say you needs to be at Bull and Bush fer yous tea, and darts.’

  Verity entered her cubicle and bolted the door. Polly heard her murmur, ‘Oh, bliss.’ The sound of the tap running covered anything else.

  Polly waited while Mrs Green opened the door to Number Three. ‘There you go, Miss Polly Pocket, and I ’ear yous and yous Saul are still sticking it out. Warms me ’eart. He’s a good ’un, a keeper. You just remember that, that’s what I says. In yous go.’

  Polly entered. The white tiles gleamed. She stood on the doormat, bolted the door behind her, dropped her grip, removed her boots and socks and turned on the tap. Did Mr P. O. Thompson at the Ministry of War Transport tell the trainees about the filth? Well, Potty, as they called him, hadn’t told her, not in any detail. Neither had he told her about the public baths that saved the sanity of many a girl, or woman, who joined up. But Bet did, and to heaven she would go.

  The steam was billowing as Polly ran hot water into the bath almost up to the 8-inch line. She ran in some cold, tested it, ripped off the rest of her clothes, putting them into the dirty half of a sheet they each carried, and stepped in. As she lowered herself she heard Verity singing softly, ‘I’m in the mood for love.’ Sylvia joined in, with her marvellous soprano, ‘Simply because you’re near me.’ Polly eased herself down, letting the warmth wash over her, listening to the other two and catching up in the second verse. ‘Oh, is it any wonder.’ And all three of them chimed in with: ‘I’m in the mood for love.’

  Then there was silence, until Verity said, as though half asleep, ‘Never ever wake me. I am in heaven right now, and I don’t think I can live any longer without running hot water.’

  Polly smiled, almost floating herself. But then Sylvia said, ‘One day the war will end, and we’ll look back on this as a time of immense freedom and purpose. It’s not real life, you know. It’s just a pause.’

  Verity pulled out her plug, the water glugged as it drained, and Polly knew she would be spooning the gunge from the bottom of the bath, then spraying the tub with the hand-shower as she shouted above the noise. ‘Well, it’s a pause that would be greatly improved by hot running water, so there. And now I’m going to wash my hair, have another soak, and only then am I going to scrub-a-dub-dub the bath. We will then toddle to the Bull and Bush and hope that, just for once, Gladys can serve our fish or sausage tea without a fag in her mouth, and her ash dropping onto the chips.’

  Polly knew, at that moment, that Sylvia was right. This was just a pause, but one filled with friendship, shared hardship and love. She sat up, hauled herself out of the bath and rubbed herself dry. Where had Saul and Tom been off to so secretly? She feared it was to sign up, but Saul had just been turned down. She ran another bath, soaked, washed her hair, counting the tiles on the wall, not thinking of the war, or of Saul, or Ted – Steerer Mercy’s son-in-law, who had beaten the Reserved Occupation order.

  She let out the water once more, then scrubbed furiously at the bath, as the soda fumes stung her eyes. She dressed, putting on her boots, and sat down on the painted wooden chair, listening to the rustling, the whistling of Verity, the humming of ‘Begin the Beguine’. She joined in.

  Yes, Sylvia was right. This was a pause in the whole of their lives. She clung to the word. A pause, and who knew how long that meant. It could even be forever, but in the meantime she would write it on her mind, and live in the present. She heard Verity drawing the bolt and joined her in the white-tiled corridor, and Sylvia, too. Polly said, ‘Those were wise words.’

  ‘Which ones?’ Sylvia asked, hitching her grip onto her shoulder. Her hair was still wet and smelt of shampoo.

  ‘That life on the cut is a pause.’

  Sylvia nodded, looking down. ‘They are wise, ar
en’t they, but they’re not mine.’

  Verity turned. ‘Whose then – your mother’s?’

  Sylvia shook her head and said nothing more, just walked along and out into the foyer, thanking Mrs Green, who waited for them by the counter. Mrs Green put her head on one side. ‘They is wise words, whoever said them, lass. I’ll think of ’em when me sons come to mind, out there on them seas, protecting the convoys. We got to live, girls. Live in the pause, and not be frightened. Fear is a right nuisance, and it be just thoughts.’ Mrs Green held open the door to the outside. The noise of traffic hit them.

  ‘We’ll go straight to the pub for our tea, and then on to you in the evening. Should we know what numbers our rooms are?’ Verity huddled behind her scarf.

  Mrs Green smiled. ‘Four, Five and Six; and yous young bloke, Tom, is on the floor below. Can’t be having any ’anky-panky, even if it is wartime; that’s what I say.’ As they left, she kissed them, one by one.

  She always smells of washing soda, thought Polly. As they walked down the steps Verity said, ‘Let’s make a pact, the three of us. Let’s try not to think of what might happen in the future. And if it comes into our heads, we’ll say to ourselves, or to one another: It’s just a pause.’

  Sylvia said, ‘But what happens after the pause?’

  Polly slipped her arm through Sylvia’s. ‘We go on, with whatever our lives become. It’s all we can do.’

  Verity muttered, ‘Fine words butter no parsnips.’

  ‘Ah, but at least they’re fine, and we must either believe, or pretend to believe, in them.’

  They stood at the side of the road, waiting for a break in the traffic. A lorry from the wharf stopped, hooted and gestured them across. They waved and began to cross. He hooted as they passed in front. They jumped, he laughed and they did, too.