The Boat Girls

by Margaret Mayhew

  They were on the long snubber, trundling along far behind Frances and Prue on the motor. From time to time she reached into the cabin to stir the stew on the stove.

  She said, ‘Have you really come to spy on us?’

  ‘Not at all. That’s my sister’s version.’

  ‘Well, I fear you’re going to find a lot of fault with us. We’re going to horrify you.’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘Oh, yes. We don’t wash often – it’s too much trouble. We’re filthy and therefore we smell. Also, we eat like pigs and, as you can see, we dress like scarecrows. On the other hand, you could say we’re doing quite a useful job.’

  ‘I can see that you are.’

  Another pair of boats was approaching and passed by. The steerer gave them a nod and a ‘How d’you do?’ Rosalind replied, inclining her head in return.

  ‘I hope you realize that you’re ruining our reputation on the cut. Every boater will hear that we’ve got a strange man travelling with us and they’ll probably shun us completely. They’re very moral. If they take a girl to the cinema, then they’re courting. And once they’re courting they won’t look at another girl. They’ll be shocked by you.’

  ‘Well, I dare say they’ll find out that I’m Frances’s brother. That should make it all right.’

  ‘I certainly hope so. We need their help when something goes wrong – which it often does.’

  He said, ‘But you seem to manage the steering very well.’

  ‘You can take a turn, if you like. See how you do.’

  ‘I’d like to.’

  The butty was actually the harder boat to steer, having no engine to help. She’d been hoping very much that he’d get them stuck on a bend, but he didn’t. He worked the tiller exactly right, pushing it out over the cut and back again, then out and back again, so that the butty flicked smoothly round the corners – something she’d never quite achieved. She noticed his nice hands again.

  ‘You must have steered boats before.’

  ‘We sailed a fair bit as children – though I must say this particular boat handles rather differently. It’s quite tricky.’

  ‘How about handling planes?’

  ‘They’re nothing like boats.’

  ‘When I was home on leave last week there were lots of RAF fighters buzzing around the cliffs. Spitfires, I think. Or maybe Hurricanes. I’m never sure which is which.’

  ‘Spitfires are quite easy to recognize. Just look for the shape of the wing.’

  ‘What do you fly?’

  ‘I used to fly Lancaster bombers. Now I fly Mosquitoes. Two-engined fighter bombers.’

  ‘You mean they do both – fight and bomb?’

  ‘Exactly. They fly very high and very low and very fast. Useful machines.’

  ‘Do you have a crew?’

  ‘Just one chap. He navigates, operates the radio, drops the bombs.’

  ‘He sounds quite useful, too.’

  ‘Couldn’t do without him.’

  He took them smoothly round another bend.

  ‘I’ve never been in an aeroplane,’ she said. ‘Maybe one day. When the war’s over. What’s it like up there?’

  ‘Rather difficult to describe.’

  ‘Try.’

  ‘Well, I suppose you could say that flying is like being set free. Tremendously exhilarating. The sky’sa vast place . . . no frontiers, no boundaries, no shackles. You can soar through space, climb towards the sun. Reach for the stars.’

  Fancy that . . . he was a human being, after all.

  ‘There’s a tunnel coming up soon,’ she told him more graciously. ‘You can carry on steering, if you like.’

  ‘Fine by me.’

  They passed from bright sunshine into the darkness of the Braunston tunnel and she switched on the cabin light and sat on the coal-box lid, out of his way and avoiding the icy drips. From there, she could observe him – or what she could see of him. The air vents spotlit him every so often – very upright, very noble, very English, very Henry V. The tunnels were wonderful places to belt out speeches because you could let rip at the top of your voice and nobody could hear you.

  Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;

  Or close the wall up with our English dead!

  She’d enjoyed playing Princess Katharine, doing the fractured French. Your majesty sall mock at me; I cannot speak your England . . . is it possible dat I sould love de enemy of France? It was a pity that the flat-footed Paul hadn’t looked more like Frankie’s brother.

  It took less than the usual forty minutes to get through the tunnel. Apart from one or two minor bumps, Eurydice, who was rather fond of crashing into tunnel walls, behaved as docilely as a spirited horse that has met its master.

  Prudence lock-wheeled after the tunnel and, to her embarrassment, Frances’s brother insisted on going with her to help.

  ‘Just tell me what to do,’ he said. ‘And I’ll do it.’

  And so she found herself issuing orders to a wing commander – open that gate, draw that paddle, drop the other one. He did everything exactly as she told him, and when she’d taken the kitty cocoa tin to the shop at Braunston, he’d gone with her and bought a whole lot of extra things for them, out of his own pocket – biscuits and peanut butter and tins of useful supplies. She wanted to ask him if he knew where RAF Cranborough was, but in wartime people didn’t ask, or answer, that sort of question.

  They tied up at Warwick and ate Ros’s one-pot stew – one of her best ever. There wasn’t much room for them all to sit in the cabin, so, later on, they went to the pub with Frances’s brother. The boaters there cold-shouldered them at first, but then Molly’s husband, Saul, came in for a pint and Frances explained to him in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear that her brother was on leave from the RAF and would be staying in the town.

  Vere travelled with them until the middle of the following day, when they put him off at a bridge close to a railway station.

  Ros said, ‘Did we shock him, Frankie?’

  ‘The bucket certainly did. And he still thinks the work’s far too hard for women.’

  ‘Well, we won’t be doing it for much longer, if those landing rumours are true.’

  ‘I asked him about that. But, of course, he wouldn’t tell me anything, even if he knew.’

  ‘I suppose he’ll be mixed up in it?’

  ‘Yes . . . I suppose he will.’

  ‘I hope he’s OK.’

  ‘So do I, Ros. So do I.’

  They delivered the iron rods at Tyseley but, to their relief, new company orders directed them to the Coventry coalfields via the Oxford canal, instead of by the dreaded and dreadful Bottom Road. Approaching the coalfields was just as depressing, though. Slag heaps, ponies dragging carts, huts and wash-houses, black-faced miners with lamps on their helmets, pit wheels turning, black coal dust thick on the ground.

  They were loaded first thing the next morning and the coal roared down from trucks, filling the holds from sterns to fore-ends. Even with the doors tightly shut, the dust worked its way into the cabins and it got into their eyes and down their throats and up their noses. When the job was done, Prudence produced mugs of tea for the loaders, whose faces were as black as the miners. Frances noticed Orpheus was tilted to one side and pointed it out to one of the men.

  He shook his head.

  ‘Nothin’ to worry about. She’ll settle down when you gets goin’.’

  ‘She might not. And it makes steering awfully hard if the load’s not level.’

  ‘We knows what we’re doin’, love. Bin doin’ this for years. Done more boats than you’ll ever ’ave ’ot dinners.’

  She stuck to her guns. ‘I’m sorry but we’re not leaving till it’s been levelled out.’

  They grumbled and muttered, but they did it.

  They carried the fifty tons of coal down to the Heinz factory near Greenford, where their hard labour was rewarded by a canteen dinner – a mouth-watering array of hot dishes and all for free. The
y stuffed themselves to the gills.

  On the next trip they carried a consignment of American rubber and brought coal back to the Croxley paper mills, where Frances remembered Molly’s tip. She found a shedful of canvas army gas-mask cases with brass clips attached, and put together two long chains for tying the chimneys and water cans to the cabin tops.

  They were getting to know the boaters, passing them on the cut or meeting them at the tie-ups at night, or in the shops. The Granthams, the Skinners, the Suttons, the Taylors, the Gibsons who somehow found room for nine children, a dog, two cats, a ferret, four chickens and a canary in a cage. Nods and smiles were exchanged. Not much was said, but the words were friendly if sometimes hard to understand. Boaters’ speech was like none other – a weird blend of Yorkshire and Midlands and cockney, rolled into one, and with odd bits of other dialects thrown in.

  Sometimes they encountered the fly-boats – boats that carried barrels of Guinness from Park Royal to Birmingham and did the trip from London to Birmingham in two and a half days, non-stop, running all night through the blackout with masked headlights. They had right of way, and everyone let them by.

  Jack Carter’s boats passed them only once. He gave them no more than a curt nod, but Freddy held up his fingers and shouted out, ‘There’s three locks ready fer yer, ladies.’

  The following load was steel billets, and on the way back the kindly lock-keeper, who had kept on giving them things since the cabbage and the bunch of flowers, came out of his house.

  ‘Heard the news, little lady?’

  ‘What news, Mr Morton?’

  ‘On the wireless. We’ve been an’ gone an’ done it.’

  Prudence gave the winding gear another turn with her windlass. ‘Done what?’

  ‘Landed in France.’ He handed her a freshly cut lettuce. ‘Would you like some spinach?’

  Fourteen

  PRUDENCE WAS HOME on leave in June when the first flying bombs landed on London. The siren started late one evening and the all-clear didn’t sound until half past nine the next morning. After that, the buzz bombs kept on coming, by day and by night. Croydon was on their path to the City and on one afternoon, she counted five of them in the skies. They made a growling spluttering noise, like a motorbike with a faulty engine, and, at night, the tail flames looked like fireworks. Father said it showed what cowards the Germans were, sending planes without pilots. She didn’t like to contradict him, but she thought it showed how clever they were to have invented such a thing.

  Every so often one of the buzz bombs would come down on Croydon, and the most frightening thing about them was that nobody could tell when or where they were going to fall. The spluttering noise they made grew louder as they approached and everybody prayed it would go on, because if it stopped it meant the engine had cut out. She’d been shopping with Mother the first time that had happened. They’d been in the butcher’s, queueing for the meat ration and chatting with the other women, when they’d all heard the sound. Everybody had fallen silent and stayed as still as stone statues – the women clutching baskets and string bags and ration books, the butcher in his straw hat and striped apron, cleaver aloft in his hand. The buzz bomb had come right towards the shop and then its engine had suddenly stopped. Everyone had flung themselves onto the sawdust floor and the bomb had come down two streets away and exploded with a mighty woomph and a blinding flash. After a moment, they’d all picked themselves up, straightening hats and brushing themselves down. The butcher had risen slowly from behind the counter, cleaver still in hand, his boater knocked over his nose. Mrs Pilkington who was at the front of the queue had said, just as though nothing whatever had happened, ‘I’ll have a nice piece of brisket today, if you please, Mr Ford.’

  Father invited Mr Simpkins to Sunday lunch. ‘An admirer of yours, Prudence, as I’m sure you’re aware. And with a promising future.’

  He sat opposite her at the table, looking at her in his creepy way. His hands were soft and white – hands that never lifted anything heavier than a knife and fork, or pen and pencil. She wondered if he had noticed how rough hers were, and hoped he had. It might put him off. He leaned towards her.

  ‘You’ll be returning to the bank before long, Miss Dobbs, no doubt.’

  Her father said, ‘As soon as the war is over, isn’t that right, Prudence? Not long now that we’ve got the Huns on the run.’

  ‘Do you think we have, Father?’

  ‘Of course. We’ve got the finest armed forces in the world. There’s nothing to worry about now.’

  It seemed to her that there was still quite a lot to worry about – not only the buzz bombs but what the newspapers had been saying about the trouble the Allies were having in Normandy. Far from being on the run, it sounded as though the Germans were fighting back hard, defending every town and hedge and orchard to the death.

  After lunch they went out into the back garden, where Father had patriotically Dug for Victory and the lawn had been replaced by orderly rows of vegetables – potatoes, carrots, cabbages, broad beans, peas, spinach. Mr Simpkins, who lived in a flat, said all the right things and confided aside to Prudence that it might not be long before he, too, would be purchasing a property in Croydon. Was she acquainted with Princes Way, only three streets away from Mr Holland’s Chestnut Drive? That was the sort of select neighbourhood he had in mind. What did she think of the idea? All she could think was that she would sooner be dead than live anywhere with Mr Simpkins.

  When he had gone and her father had sat down to read the Sunday newspaper, she crept into the hall and dialled the number of the Three Horseshoes pub. The same woman answered.

  ‘May I speak to the landlord, please.’

  ‘Can’t hear you. You’ll have to speak louder.’

  ‘Could I speak to Ron?’

  ‘He’s busy.’

  ‘It’s rather urgent.’

  ‘Huh.’

  The receiver was banged down and then picked up after a moment.

  ‘Yes? Who is it?’ He sounded impatient too.

  ‘This is Prudence Dobbs. I’m a friend of Sergeant McGhie and I just wondered if you had any news of him? Whether he’s all right?’

  ‘Haven’t seen him lately. Not since the Landings.’ The voice softened a bit. ‘Do you want me to give him a message, if he comes in?’

  ‘Could you just tell him I rang?’

  ‘What did you say your name was?’

  ‘Prudence Dobbs.’

  ‘I’ll do that. If he comes in.’

  They paid a visit to Auntie Dot and Uncle Ted who lived in a house in Purley that was as big as Mr Holland’s. Uncle Ted had been very successful, buying and selling things. Father always said that that sort of thing wasn’t like having a proper post in a bank, but Prudence thought he was secretly envious of the house. Her mother always went on about the parquet flooring, the convenient serving hatch to the dining room, the big Kelvinator refrigerator in the kitchen and the French windows from the lounge to the garden. Not that Father cared much about any of those; the thing he really envied was the car in the garage. The Sunbeam Talbot had been put away on blocks for the duration, but Uncle Ted liked to show it off. When they trooped into the garage after tea, Prudence was invited to sit in the passenger seat. It was upholstered in green leather and the dashboard was made of polished walnut, with a compartment at the side where Uncle Ted kept a road-map book of the British Isles. She took it out and ran her finger down the As and Bs in the index until she came to the Cs. Cramlington, Cramond, Cranage, Cranberry, Cranborough. Page 34. Mother started tapping impatiently on the window. The page, when she reached it, was a maze of roads, marked with towns . . . Luton, Hitchin, Toddington. Thesmall black dots were the villages: Tebworth, Wellbury, Potsgrove . . . Tap, tap, tap on thewindow. Tap, tap, tap. Biddenham, Wootton, Millbrook.

  She found it. South-west of Bedford and at least fifteen miles away from Leighton Buzzard. Mother opened the door and stuck her head inside.

  ‘Whatever are you doing, Prudence
? We’re all waiting for you.’

  On the next trip they transported scrap – shell casings from anti-aircraft guns. The flying bombs were coming over all the time and the boats got in and out of the docks as fast as they could. Doodleboogers, the boat people called them. The weather was cold with heavy cloud and driving rain and nothing dried out properly. Bedding was sodden, clothes put on in the morning still wet. Deck surfaces were slippery as glass, locks even more so. Prudence lost her footing crossing a gate and toppled into the water just as Orpheus came charging in. The lock-keeper hauled her out just in time, choking and spluttering and badly shocked. Next day, the gears started to do strange things and they had to stop and phone for a fitter. It took hours before one turned up, and two days for a new gearbox to arrive. Then Frances caught her hand on a rusty nail. She bound it up with a handkerchief and it bled and throbbed and, finally, turned septic. Another hold-up while they went in search of a doctor. The only one to be found was off duty and drunk. He prodded about, poured something stinging from a bottle and managed a clumsy bandage. The bandage fell off the next day, but the gash felt better and began to heal.

  They unloaded the scrap shells at Tyseley and, once again, were spared the Bottom Road. At Hawkesbury, three days later, they were given their orders from the Grand Union office. They were to load up with coal at Griff Colliery, six miles north of Coventry, and to unload at the ABC bakery again, almost as far down the cut as Limehouse. From there, they continued straight on to the docks to take on steel billets. After that it was more bags of cement. Then a few days’ leave.

  Instead of going home, Prudence took the train up to Bedford and, from there, a country bus out to Cranborough. It was a very small village with one street, just as Steve had described – a row of cottages, a church, a shop and the Three Horseshoes pub. Opening time was not for another hour, so she took a walk down a lane which led to the aerodrome a mile or so away. There was a barbed-wire fence all the way round the outside and an armed guard at the main gate. Inside, she could see Nissen huts and hangars and airmen going to and fro. She walked round the barbed-wire fence and saw the four-engined bombers standing out on the far side of the aerodrome. Halifaxes. One of them started up, engines roaring and fading several times. She watched it swing round and roll along the track to the start of the runway, turn and stop. The engines bellowed again, roaring and fading as before, and the bomber suddenly charged forward and lumbered down the runway until it left the ground and climbed slowly into the sky. It seemed a miracle to her that such a heavy thing could fly. She waited and, after a while, it returned and went back to its place. No other planes took off and there was no sign of preparations for a night raid.