Sally Ann's Summer (Marnie Walker)

by Leo McNeir

  “But all Jessop’s papers have disappeared, haven't they?” Marnie was confused. “I didn’t think it was possible to check his designs.”

  “Ah, that’s the thing. His papers, plans, drawings … all vanished. And if you read Telford’s journals, you could be forgiven for thinking Jessop hadn’t even been there.”

  Marnie wanted to point out that a lack of evidence was hardly strong enough to make out a case. She held back. “But despite that, you have suspicions based on …”

  There was no need to finish the question. She knew the answer before Ken provided it.

  “Every designer has a personal style, points of detail that are there to see if you know where to look.”

  “Of course.” Marnie agreed. “Like a signature, written into their design.”

  “Exactly! A signature.”

  “And you see that in the aqueduct at Pontcysyllte, for example?”

  Ken pulled a face. “If I’m really honest …”

  Marnie understood. “Without the papers or some kind of evidence, it’s hard to be sure.”

  “That’s right.”

  “But you have your suspicions?”

  “Like Betty says, it’s become a kind of hobby horse, something I bore people with, given half a chance.”

  “You certainly haven’t bored me.” Marnie’s quick reaction made Ken smile.

  “I’m glad about that.”

  “It was all a long time ago, anyway.” Betty’s motherly tone of voice was intended to bring the discussion to a close.

  “Eighteen hundred and five,” Ken confirmed.

  “Wasn’t that the same year they opened …?” Marnie gestured with a thumb towards the tunnel.

  “Exactly. Men of genius, they were.” Ken turned towards the portal. “Genius and strong passions.”

  Gary was tired of hearing that woman’s plummy voice.

  The person you are phoning is not available. Please try again later.

  He had rung Sheena’s mobile at intervals during the day. After the third message he had wanted to lob his phone into the canal.

  For once, the journey back into London had been less of a nightmare, and the van had crawled at a steady pace through the late afternoon traffic to deposit Gary by the bridge in Little Venice. Instead of taking the path to Garrow, he set off towards the parade of shops. He mooched in the newsagents for five minutes looking at magazines until, on the dot of five-thirty, he spotted activity across the road at the chemist’s. Two people appeared in the doorway. It was the first time Gary had seen the pharmacist. The man exchanged a few words with his assistant and went back inside as she walked off down the street.

  Gary caught up with the girl before she reached the corner. “Hi. I was in the shop this morning.”

  She barely glanced at him. “I know. You’re Sheena’s boyfriend.”

  “Is that what she says?”

  “I’ve got eyes.”

  “So where is she?”

  “I told you, she phoned in sick.”

  “I’m concerned about her, can’t get a reply from her phone. Do you know where she lives?”

  Hesitation. “Harrow.”

  “Harrow? Whereabouts in Harrow?”

  The girl shrugged. Gary persisted.

  “Can you get her phone number for me?”

  They reached the corner of the street. The girl stopped, turned to face Gary and gave him the eyebrow.

  Gary said, “Look, it’s not what you’re thinking. We haven’t had a row or anything. I just really need to speak to her. It’s important.”

  “You know how it works. We girls stick together. If she wants to talk to you, she’ll phone.”

  The girl set off again at a quick pace. Gary accelerated to keep up with her.

  “But I need to see her.”

  “Try her mobile.”

  “I’ve been ringing it all day … no reply.”

  The girl frowned. “That can’t be right. She’s always on that mobile.”

  “She is?”

  “Yeah, always, usually just quick calls.”

  “Not when she’s at work.”

  “Oh, yeah. She pretends she’s going to the loo. One day I followed her out the back. She went into the yard. I thought she was going for a quick smoke. But she was on the phone.”

  “Who to?”

  “How should I know?”

  “Couldn’t you hear what she was saying?”

  “I didn’t listen. It was private. Anyway the door was shut. I couldn’t hear properly. I saw her through the window.”

  “How often does she do that?”

  “A few times a day.”

  This was disturbing. They had reached the tube station. The girl slowed slightly but did not stop.

  “Gotta go.”

  “Listen –”

  “I can’t tell you anything else.” She walked towards the steps. “Keep your mobile on. She’ll call you, I expect, when she’s ready.”

  Gary watched her go. Nothing seemed right. The girl reached the foot of the steps and turned the corner. She did not look back. Not bad legs, Gary thought.

  Marnie was more than glad to pull over that afternoon. It was a day for sun-block and wide-brimmed hat, with time to let her thoughts wander, thinking about Ken’s men of genius and strong passions. It fascinated her to think that while Brindley’s navigators were tunnelling through the hills around her, Jessop’s and Telford’s men were building a wonder of the world in north Wales.

  At lunchtime she called in at the chandlery by Whilton Marina to buy bread. She emerged with a box containing a loaf, butter, eggs, cheese, milk, coffee, magazines, oil and wicks for the lamps, candles, matches, torch batteries, salt and various books, including two about the Idle Women.

  Wanting somewhere peaceful for a picnic, she watched a Virgin express rocket along the West Coast main line beyond the marina, while lorries jockeyed for position on the motorway behind her. There was nothing for it but to head for the Buckby flight and tackle the climb into the Northamptonshire Uplands.

  Two hours were to elapse before Marnie completed the ascent and reached Norton Junction. She pointed Sally Ann west under the bridge towards Braunston tunnel. In a lonely stretch, with fields spreading to the horizon, she brought the boat over to the bank and tied up. When she switched off the engine, she became aware of another rumbling. Time to eat.

  Marnie dived below, stripped to her skin for a perfunctory wash and donned a bikini. She quickly made a sandwich of salmon and mayonnaise with diced green pepper to liven it up. Settled on the stern deck, she sipped designer water, hearing the faint susurration of the bubbles and the clink of ice cubes. The sun was shining. She had the whole country to herself. All was peace and light.

  She did not notice that two pairs of eyes were observing her. A heron was mildly resenting the invasion of her territory by this interloper. Further along the bank a solitary angler had no such objection. It made his day.

  As soon as he reached the boat, Gary put his mobile on charge and kept it switched on to receive calls. He took a shower, all the while thinking about Sheena, convinced she was not the kind of person to go into hiding. If she wanted to chuck him, she would just tell him. But what else could it be? Perhaps Sheena had just phoned in sick. Maybe she really was in bed feeling rotten with her mobile switched off.

  He came out of the shower and checked the phone: no missed calls, no messages. He thought about the meals they had enjoyed together while he made supper: two fried eggs, four rashers of bacon, fried tomatoes. Over the dessert course – the Evening Standard and a cigarette, washed down with a mug of tea – he decided to make enquiries.

  The early evening crowd was settled in at the bar when Gary pushed open the doors of the pub. His eyes strayed to one particular table in the far corner. It was unoccupied. He spotted a mate at the bar and walked over.

  “Hi, Vince.”

  “No.”

  It was not the greeting he expected. “No what? I haven’t asked you anyt
hing.”

  “No to any more jobs with the JCB, Gary. Don’t even think of asking me.”

  “What are you on about? I paid you all right, didn’t I?”

  “I got in deep schtuck over that.”

  “How come?”

  “You said it’d be a nice little job, no-one’d know about it, I’d have the JCB back at work before anyone even noticed it had gone off site.”

  “So?”

  “So when we pulled that stiff …” He grimaced. “… bits of stiff out of the pool, it got plastered all over the front page of the bleedin’ Evening Standard, didn’t it?”

  “Ah.”

  “Too right, Gary. It was on the front page of the Mirror and the Globe. I was everywhere in the Sun apart from page three. It even made the news on telly. My JCB had more viewers that night than Eastenders.”

  “All right, all right. I wasn’t going to ask you to do a job with your precious JCB. I was just going to ask if you’d seen my girlfriend.”

  “Which one?”

  “Sheena.”

  “Is that the blonde bird with the legs up to her –”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s the same answer, then. No.”

  Gary looked around the saloon. He could see none of his other mates. The barman came over.

  “What’ll it be, Gary?”

  “I don’t suppose you’ve seen Sheena, my girlfriend?”

  “Is that the blonde with the –”

  “Yes, yes, the blonde …with the long hair.”

  “Not recently, no.”

  Vince nudged Gary’s elbow. “There was something else you wanted to ask me.”

  “Was there?”

  “Yeah, and the answer is, I’ll have a pint.”

  An hour and three pints later, Gary left the pub. It had not been a bad evening. He had picked up two offers of work, but his enquiries about Sheena had led nowhere. He pressed buttons on the mobile. The person you are phoning is not –

  He silently mouthed a succinct reply to the plummy woman as he cut her off.

  30

  Braunston tunnel

  Marnie liked early starts, avoiding the holiday traffic on the canal. That Thursday morning, with an overcast sky and a heavy dew glinting in the grass, she tugged on a sweater, started the engine and cast off. It was six o’clock and she aimed to navigate the Braunston tunnel before the world was stirring. The plan almost worked.

  Entering the tunnel she flicked on the headlamp, but already the dimness was playing tricks on her. She blinked, trying to clear the spots before her eyes. Behind, the tunnel entrance was slowly receding. Ahead, the spots remained. She was not alone. Another early riser was coming towards her. But something was wrong. There were two lights, which meant two boats, but both seemed to be of equal brightness.

  Marnie shut down the engine to dead slow. As she straightened up, the blast of a horn came down the tunnel. She reached forward and pressed her own horn button to acknowledge, startled by the volume of noise it made in the confined space. She pushed the gear lever into reverse and pressed the accelerator to bring Sally Ann to a halt.

  Marnie could now see clearly the shape of two boats ahead, breasted up, low in the water. She tugged the gear lever into neutral and waited, uncertain about what to do, faced with two working boats closing on her with a combined weight of maybe fifty tonnes.

  By now they were only a short way ahead. She was about to hail them, when someone beat her to it.

  “Back off!” A harsh voice of indeterminate gender.

  “Back off?” Marnie repeated to herself.

  The voice sounded again. “Come on, back off!” It seemed to be a woman.

  Marnie pushed the lever into reverse and pressed the accelerator to half speed. It took an age to reach the mouth of the tunnel. She focused all her attention on finding a space wide enough to move over and let the working boats pass. She glanced forward and was alarmed to see the bows of the two craft almost nosing against her own. A woman was crouching at the front of the butty and made a gesture of annoyance as if sweeping Sally aside.

  “Over there!” the woman called out, pointing to a space between clumps of trees.

  Marnie threw the tiller hard over. Nothing happened. She knew Sally could not respond in reverse. There was no way of manoeuvring. She could only drift and hope for the best.

  The woman yelled again. “Over there!”

  Marnie had had enough. It was time to make a stand. She reached down and reduced speed to idle, then straightened up and raised a hand. If the pair of boats wanted to pass, they would just have to separate and go by in tandem.

  Marnie prepared to bellow. She took a deep breath. “You –”

  It was all she uttered before Sally Ann ran aground under the trees.

  The working pair squeezed round her and pushed past, the woman in the bows of the butty now peering ahead for new obstacles. Marnie felt she had been dismissed.

  The long twin hulls slid by. The big diesel throbbed. At the tiller stood a young man, tanned and long-haired, in jeans and singlet. Drawing level, he turned his head to speak. Marnie waited indignantly for an explanation.

  “Idiot! Don't you know you have to give way to working boats?”

  Marnie’s mouth dropped open. The pair passed by, buffeting her with a turbulent wake.

  It took Marnie ten minutes of heaving and straining with the pole before Sally Ann was free.

  Gary was in the chemist’s as soon as it opened on Thursday morning. He was hardly through the door when the sales assistant came out to serve him. She walked briskly through the shop, took a tube of toothpaste from the shelf and held it out towards him. She looked at it pointedly.

  Gary took it from her. “Is Sheena here?”

  The girl sighed. “She’s on holiday.”

  “No she isn’t.”

  “She is, I’ve just told you.”

  “What are you talking about? Yesterday you said she was sick, now you tell me she’s on holiday. What’s going on?”

  From the back of the shop a man’s voice called out. “Do you need any assistance, Diane?”

  “No, it’s all right, Mr Pillbrow.”

  Gary clenched his teeth. “Who’s he?”

  “Pharmacist, the manager, our boss. Look, are you buying this or what?”

  Gary took some coins out of his pocket and put them in her hand. They walked along the aisle out of sight of the pharmacist.

  Gary kept his voice low. “She never said anything to me about a holiday.” Diane shrugged. “When did she decide on this?”

  “They phoned in last night when the manager was locking up.”

  “They?”

  “The boss thought it might’ve been her dad.”

  Gary was bewildered. “I don’t get it.”

  “She might’ve just felt like a break after not feeling well. She was having a holiday in a couple of weeks, anyway.”

  “How long’s she going to be away?”

  “Two weeks.”

  “Two weeks!”

  “Shush, keep your voice down.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “That’s what the man – her dad supposedly – said.”

  “Jesus! What the bloody buggering hell’s going on?”

  A cough from the pharmacy. Diane nodded at the toothpaste.

  “Do you want some mouthwash with that, sir?”

  Marnie’s second attempt at the tunnel brought no oncoming traffic. She had braced herself for confrontation, but the passage was without incident, apart from the occasional splash of water down from the air vents. A wiser and tougher person from her earlier confrontation, she emerged from the tunnel and rediscovered her pleasure in the morning.

  There was ground mist in the fields and sunlight shining through foliage. She lifted her eyes as a flock of birds flew overhead. The sight of them brought a smile to her face. She looked ahead again and the smile faded.

  For as far as she could see, fishing rods were stretched out a
cross the canal. It was a competition, with anglers encamped on the towpath at twenty metre intervals. She had read somewhere she should drop to half speed and stay in mid-channel so as not to disturb the fish.

  The passage through the barrier of rods was a war of nerves. At the last second each rose like a drawbridge for her to pass underneath. Not a flicker of recognition came from any of the men on the bank.

  After an age, Marnie was relieved to see a lock up ahead. It was occupied, and she waited for the oncoming boat to come through, directly in front of the angler at the end of the line. She expected more bad feeling.

  “Sorry about this,” she called over. “I've got to wait for this boat.”

  “No problem. I've got all morning.”

  Surprised by the fisherman's amiable tone, Marnie made conversation.

  “Not a very good spot here.”

  “Luck of the draw, I'm afraid.”

  “It must be frustrating for you, trying to fish with boats coming by all the time.”

  “Tell me about it! Boaters aren’t our favourite people this morning. As soon as we started, two big boats charged through the lot of us. They were so low in the water, even the fish must’ve held their breath. I expect you saw them. They must’ve gone past you.”

  Marnie smiled ruefully. “No …over me.”

  At lunchtime Gary changed out of his overalls, left the boat he was servicing and headed for the pub. Benny faced him across the bar.

  “What’ll it be, Gary?”

  “You seen that bloke lately?”

  The barman scanned the saloon, his expression world-weary. “Take your pick.”

  “You know who I mean … Gravel.”

  “Who?”

  “That’s what I call him on account of his voice. Don’t know his name. You know him, black leather jacket, shaved head, ear-ring –”

  “D’you want a drink or what?”

  Gary pointed at a pump. “Pint o’ lager. You don’t understand. I’m following up something for him. I need to get in touch.”