by Milly Adams
Verity whispered, ‘He’d better bloody well tell her what’s going on, once he’s got himself sorted out, that’s all I can say, because I feel as though I’m lying to her already.’ She dashed after the other girls, leaving Tom to limp behind. She snatched a look over her shoulder and called back, ‘Catch us up, but stay out of the way. You could get hurt.’
Polly and Sylvia were well ahead. Verity dropped her paper and ran back for it. Tom yelled, ‘You go on, I’ve got it covered.’ She rushed ahead again, wanting to shout and scream at him, but why? He was right in a way; it wasn’t her business.
To either side factory chimneys were doing their usual job of belching out dark, acrid smoke, and men were criss-crossing their path. One called, ‘Get a move on, Crane B’s nearly there. I don’t know – you trainees, just a bunch of Idle Women.’
Verity shouted without slowing, ‘Idiot. We’re not trainees any more.’
Another bloke in overalls laughed. ‘You think we don’t know that, but you’re still Idle Women.’
‘And you’re still an idiot,’ she shouted, taking out her fury on him, and followed the girls to where Marigold was docked. She saw them leap on board, and when she arrived Saul and Granfer, true to their word, were on the gunwales, having taken the top planks down. They were now undoing the tie-strings of the tarpaulin.
Granfer took a moment to point to Horizon. ‘Yer do the butty, girls, we’ll get this lot sorted.’
Verity glanced over her shoulder. Tom had almost reached them. It began to rain. ‘Well, of course it damn well has,’ she muttered. ‘Get into the cabin, Tom,’ she snapped.
He shook his head. ‘No, I’ll help.’
Polly yelled at Tom as she hurried to the butty, ‘She’s not thinking of you, but of the ruddy newspaper. Take it under cover into the motor cabin, then you can get the fire going in both, please. If you try and do more, you’ll pitch into the cut and she’ll have to dive in after you, because you’ll sink like stone with your plaster.’
Everyone laughed, except for Verity, who was suddenly swept by a vivid picture of Tom going in, the plaster dragging him down. Here on the kerb she could almost feel the cold water, and as she headed to Horizon she was swept by nausea and dizziness and suddenly the world went dark, and all she could feel was that water. Freezing water. All she could taste was blood in the water. All she could see was mashed legs, and the sound of Sandy’s screams coming out of nowhere and going on and on.
She heard, as though from a distance, Polly call, ‘Verity, come on. Verity, what …?’
Verity bent over, trying to breathe, but she couldn’t. She sank to her knees on the concrete and the only thing she could hear were Sandy’s screams, which were growing louder. Her nausea deepened.
‘Verity!’ It was Polly screaming her name. No, not more screams. Verity bent over, her head touching the ground, but Polly was there beside her, her arms around her, calling frantically, ‘Tom, Tom.’
Verity could barely hear them over the screams, and she needed them to hush. She told Sandy, ‘No, no, be quiet. I’m trying. You’re stuck.’ She was under the water, pulling off those boots. Pull, pull.
Sylvia was calling too. ‘What can you hear, Verity? Who’s stuck? Let us help.’
Tom’s voice came, loud and clear, and cut through everything. ‘You girls get back to the butty, you need to get that tarpaulin off. Verity Clement, listen to me. It’s a flashback, a sort of panic thing; it will pass. I was expecting it – better out than in, as the vicar didn’t say to the tart.’
Suddenly, at the sound of his voice, it was going: the noise, the taste, was fading. Verity sat back on her heels and she was laughing, but it sounded high-pitched, strange, and she couldn’t stop.
Tom pulled Verity to her feet. He gripped her shoulders and shook her slightly. ‘It’s hysteria, darling girl, but you’re safe; you are here with your friends. You are safe. Sandy is going to be all right. As I said, it’s called a flashback. It’s over. It might come again, but probably not. Perhaps a few dreams, but it’s not real. Nothing else is real but you and me – here, safe. There is nothing else we can do anything about; nothing, do you understand? You can’t take on the problems of the world.’
He had pulled Verity to him and had drawn out his white handkerchief. It was as though he was warming her, as he had in the cabin overnight, and was wiping her face as he had done gently, so very gently. And he was right: her heart wasn’t beating like an express train, but slowing; her mind wasn’t whizzing so fast, but slowing, and now she could breathe, pause, breathe.
He wiped Verity’s face again and, as he did so, she remembered that someone else had washed her gently, when she was a small child. And someone else had been rough and had pulled her, smacked her. She leaned against Tom, but she couldn’t remember who it was who had been gentle, like Tom. Who? Who? She smelled something; it was getting stronger. What was it? She buried her face in Tom’s uniform, and then she recognised the scent: camellias. There, it was stronger now, here on the kerb, in Tom’s arms.
He whispered, ‘It’s not real. It’s over – you saved her. You saved her. Be proud.’
Verity pressed deeper into him, thinking she’d make him wet and cold, but no, that was then, when Sandy fell in; but Tom was correct: Sandy was all right, would be all right; and yes, she remembered now that Polly had a bit of do, after they saved Jimmy. She had said then that there was a terrible feeling of panic and sickness, but it hadn’t happened to her again, not really. It hadn’t happened to Verity back then, but instead it had waited until her Tom was here, God bless it. She relaxed.
But the smell of camellias, when she was small …
Tom’s words played in her mind. She whispered, ‘Oh my, Sylvia won’t like the vicar and the tart.’
Tom was laughing now. ‘Hush, Granfer and Saul have taken over the butty tarpaulin, so the girls are coming back, looking worried to death.’
Tarpaulin? Verity thought. Oh, crikey, the tarpaulin. She wrenched free of him, feeling shaky. ‘Tom make up the fire, we’ll need tea soon.’ The words were calming, normal, and Sandy would get better. Polly and Sylvia were with her now, gripping her arms, telling Verity that she had to stop worrying them to death or they’d have to strangle her. They were all laughing, but it wasn’t a real laugh, from anyone.
Polly whispered, ‘Do you remember when it happened to me? It’s horrid, but it passes.’
Tom led Verity to the butty cabin. She sat with him, while the girls went back to helping Saul and Granfer. The boat rocked as the aluminium was taken from the hold. Tom made tea and carried mugs to everyone, but Verity sat, trying to remember the screams. She couldn’t. The smell of camellias lingered, though. How strange.
She heard the tannoy call Polly to the office to receive their onward orders. Then Sylvia came into the cabin, saying, ‘Please, please let it be a clean and easy load from here, not coal from Coventry and the Bottom Road.’
Polly came back, waving the docket glumly. ‘Coal from Coventry, so we go along the Brum Bum.’
They groaned and, with the unloading finished, all three of them cleaned the hold, sweeping up the debris of broken wood and general muck, while Tom went to telephone the barracks with an update, as he had been told to do. The girls beavered on, and the light rain settled the dust, which was a blessing. Two of the wooden boards at the bottom of the Marigold’s hold were broken, and they cursed because the coal would go through to the bilges, and cleaning up after they’d offloaded it would not be fun.
Polly stood on the stern of the butty when they’d finished, and waved to Saul, who was taking on a butty load. ‘We’ll be off, but I hope we catch up sometime – perhaps this evening, perhaps tomorrow, perhaps at Bull’s Bridge.’
Saul ran and jumped onto the counter and kissed her. ‘Haul well, all o’ yer. Might catch up along the way, as we may be picking up coal, like you, in the motor’s hold.’
‘What does he mean: haul well?’ queried Tom.
‘You’ll see,�
�� Verity replied, grinning, although she still felt shaky.
Sylvia and Polly on Horizon were towed on a long snubber, as Verity and Tom set off on Marigold, pat-pattering past warehouses, machine shops, the backs of factories and endless chimneys belching endless smoke. A walker waved and his dog barked. Dog barked back. A cyclist, perhaps late for work, rushed along. The water became increasingly dark and dank, the factories shutting out what light there was.
Tom made yet another pot of tea. He called from the cabin as Verity steered, ‘Shall I make some for the butty, too?’
‘Polly will make theirs. Incidentally, you, your leg and Sylvia are to take Marigold through the locks. We’ll catch you once the locks are done, and then we’ll all have a rest.’
Tom was leaning against the cabin now, sipping his tea. ‘What do you mean – we’ll take the Marigold? Where will you be?’ He shuddered, looking to either side. ‘It’s grim here.’
Verity shook her head. ‘Not yet, it isn’t. And wait and see where Polly and I will be.’
They continued between high smut-stained factories, the noise of machinery reverberating around them. They were still in shadow all the way, although the sun had struggled out. ‘It’s like being in a massive long dugout,’ Tom muttered. She wished he hadn’t, because she didn’t want to think of the war, or of London, where he’d leave her; he’d had confirmation when he telephoned from Tyseley that at Alperton he could get on the Tube and return to the hospital for sign-off.
They motored under a bridge on which lorries and buses passed in a continuous stream. There were no children gobbing or throwing, but a young boy leaned from a window at the back of a row of terraced houses. ‘Boater scum,’ he called out.
‘Ignore them,’ she instructed, as Tom spun round. ‘Don’t feed their insults.’
Verity always felt as though they were ploughing through sludge along this canal. As usual, discarded old tyres bumped and banged against them. A dead dog and half a bike passed them, or did they pass it? Someone cycled along the towpath, and the dust that floated in his wake wasn’t earth but a mixture of coal dust and claggy soot. They passed under more bridges and dodged the children’s gobs of phlegm, and once a bucket of manure. By this time Tom had stopped yelling, ‘You little beggars.’ He just dodged everything as best he could, cleaning up the mess once out of sight of the little wretches.
He commented, more than once, ‘The smell of the cut here.’
And Verity said, more than once, ‘Yes.’
He said, ‘I can see why you call it a bum.’
‘Not yet, you can’t.’ She shook her head as girls hung out of the window of a factory and waved.
Before Tom could question her, the girls called out, ‘Wotcha, ladies. Ohh, you’ve got a soldier boy.’
Verity hooted Bet’s horn, and Polly hooted the butty’s. Verity and Tom laughed.
The conditions grew worse, and Verity muttered, ‘Please, please don’t let anything tangle in the gear, you lovely sweet-natured motor. Come on, keep going.’
Tom grimaced. ‘Lord, would we have to go in and untangle it?’
‘For “we”, read “I”. The answer is yes, if we can’t poke and cut it free from here, but we’ll try as hard as we can to do just that.’ As always, Verity thought instead of the fields they travelled through in other places; of the kingfishers, even the otters, and the sheep that grazed, the allotments that produced food, the wheat that grew, the aeroplanes that flew. She grinned at herself. She was a poet and didn’t know it. Then, suddenly, she remembered Sylvia’s words. Even the Brum Bum was just a pause. Soon they would be in fresh fields.
On they pat-pattered, and Tom made more tea and spam sandwiches as they approached a lock and Verity steered into the bank, just as Polly did with the butty.
Sylvia came along the towpath and leapt aboard. Verity kissed Tom. ‘I’m going onto the butty with Polly, but you will not be alone, so don’t fret. You just have to steer your way through the locks that Sylvia operates.’ Tom looked from Sylvia to Verity. Sylvia was uncoupling the tow-rope.
‘Hang on,’ Tom called to Verity. ‘What’s happening?’
‘You’re about to find out why we call it the Brum Bum.’
‘Though I don’t,’ Sylvia said, looking prim.
Tom stared from one to the other, confused. Verity said, waving to Polly, ‘Be there any second. Tom, remember us hauling out Bet’s boat from the bridge-hole? This part of the canal is more fragile, the locks too, so we have to take the boat and butty singly. We are the horses, or the engine, whichever sounds best.’ She grimaced, then kissed his cheek as he stood, appalled. ‘See you soon. Bon voyage.’ She jumped for the bank.
Tom watched as Polly yelled, ‘You haul, then I’ll take over, Verity.’
Verity hitched the tow-rope around her shoulders and waist. She saw Tom look back as he manoeuvred Marigold forward, the engine pat-pattering. Then she started to drag the butty after the motor, as the rope dug in. She thought of Tom with each dust-choked step and each rub of the rope; she thought of the panic, but it was gone. She felt the shakiness, but it was diminishing. She thought of the need to wait until she was twenty-one to marry, because she wouldn’t ask her parents’ permission, or allow Tom to approach them.
They reached the first lock and dragged the butty in, shut the gates and opened the paddles; the lock filled, she opened the exit gates and out they went, hating the effort required to get the butty started again. As they slogged on Verity’s memories ran through her head, keeping in time with her footsteps.
She used to think of Star, her mare, in the early days; but when her beloved horse fell, after being ridden to hounds by her mother, and had been put down, she thought of the cut and its people. Now, as she dragged the butty alongside a machine shop, she pondered on the darts match played with Polly, when for the first time Sylvia had smiled. She thought then of their teamwork, of their increasing friendship, of the good things – anything to stop thinking of the filth, the rawness and the smell.
On and on they went, changing places with one another. Rain started falling again, but at least it wasn’t snow, though it was almost as cold. Blisters developed where the rope rubbed, and they couldn’t understand why their skin wasn’t hardy enough by now; they had callouses, for heaven’s sake. They met a horse-drawn pair, heading towards Tyseley. Why did they come this way? The girls didn’t know.
It was along here that Saul’s brother-in-law, Leon, had made the sign of a gun at them, because Saul had rescued his nephew, Joe, from him. Well, that wasn’t the only reason. It was also because Polly had beaten off Leon and his men, with a chair outside a pub, when they attacked Saul, much like a lion tamer. That had taught the bugger.
Verity called to Polly, who was steering Horizon, ‘Where do you think Maudie is? How can a mother just leave that bugger without taking Joe?’
Polly yelled, ‘Same answer as always, Verity. No one knows, and anyway wouldn’t Saul have heard something from Maudie, if she was alive? If she is dead, where is she? I can’t bear to think she’s under water like this.’
‘Then we mustn’t think it.’
They fell silent. It was the same conversation as always, so why the hell did they go over and over it? It was something to do with the misery of the Brum Bum, Verity decided, dragging out the last spam sandwich from her pocket. She opened the greaseproof-paper wrapping with one hand and her teeth, chewing filthy grit along with the spam. She rammed the wrapping back in her pocket when she had finished, unwilling to add to the debris in the canal – hauling, always hauling, but on this trip it was towards Tom. She smiled to herself.
Chapter 13
Monday 3 April – arrival at Coventry to take on coal
Tom steered through the locks and the stretches of water in between, called ‘pounds’ apparently, feeling like a shirker, because he should be taking his turn handling the locks for Sylvia, or hauling the damned butty for the girls. When he said as much, Sylvia just shook her head. ‘It’s our job, w
e can manage, but thank you. If you fell, we’d feel bad.’
The rain began again and kept falling heavily, then fading, but always falling. His greatcoat was soaked, the rain ran off his beret into his eyes, but he stood as the other boaters would be doing; and in the oven a pheasant stew was simmering. Pheasant from Saul’s nocturnal activities. That bloke should be in the Special Forces, because he must be able to move silently through the dark and could probably live off the land, just as they had to; and Tom expected that Saul could kill, if necessary. Tom hesitated. Could Saul really, though? There was something essentially gentle about the bloke. How would Saul fare in the army, if his plan worked out? Had he found his ‘important person’ to try and sort it?
The tiller was slippery under his hand, and a second horse-drawn pair passed them, heading for Birmingham. A child steered the butty, standing on a box, while a couple of slightly older lads hauled it.
The steerer of the main boat called, ‘’Ow do’ and tipped his hat, looking curiously at Tom, but saying nothing. On the bridges over the grimy cut he saw soldiers breaking stride to cross, as dictated by the manuals, because the resonance of the men’s marching could shake a bridge or pontoon down, but surely not old Victorian ones like these? The factories looked dreary, and the sky even worse. He didn’t light up a cigarette because it would fall to bits in the rain.
He muttered, ‘I thought it was all beer and skittles. You know, gliding along in the sunshine. I have blisters on the palms of my hands from the tiller, so what on earth are yours like, Sylvia?’
She was sitting on the roof of the cabin, beneath a large black umbrella more suited to a businessman, and the sound of the rain falling on it was drowning out the pat-patter. Though Tom had seen no other boaters using them, he couldn’t help wishing he had one, too. She balanced the umbrella and held out her hands. He saw the callouses, the grimy split nails. Sylvia said, ‘Polly and Verity will be getting blisters over their shoulders and round their waists from the tow-rope. We do it every couple of weeks, so you’d think the skin would toughen. One of life’s many mysteries.’
