The Boat Girls

by Margaret Mayhew

  ‘We’re givin’ ’er yer name as well as me mam’s – that’s if yer don’t mind. Frances Sara. She’ll be christened ’fore we move off. Yer’ll come to the church, won’t yer?’

  It was a great honour, she knew, and she’d been very touched. The baby had worn a beautiful gown of old lace and the church had been full of Jessops gathered to make sure that everything was done properly. Afterwards they’d celebrated at the pub and it had been quite a party.

  ‘I ’ear Jack Carter’s courtin’,’ Molly had said to her at one point. ‘A girl on the Oxford. One o’ the Stokes.’

  ‘From the boats?’ She tried to look as though she didn’t care – but she did. And it hurt.

  ‘Course. You still thinkin’ ’bout ’im? Wouldn’t never ’ave done, see. Jack knew that. Best to fergit ’im.’

  They let go early the following day with orders to take the empty boats to pick up a consignment of tinned food at Brentford. Brentford was much closer to the lay-by than Limehouse and they went breasted-up since the locks on that arm of the cut were broad enough to take both boats side by side. Frances steered, while Ros and Prue lock-wheeled for the eleven locks. The big horse-drawn barges coming up, loaded with coal or timber, made progress very slow. At Brentford Frances had to wind the boats before they could tie up – the tricky turning manoeuvre that was closely observed, as usual, by the boaters. No matter how long they spent on the cut, to the true boaters they would always be them trainees and sometimes, still, them bleedin’ trainees.

  The consignment of tinned foods included several crates of oranges. One of the loaders let a crate crash heavily onto the wharf side. It burst open and oranges rolled merrily in all directions.

  ‘Whoopsa-daisy,’ he grinned at them. ‘’Elp yerselves, girls.’

  None of them could remember how an orange tasted. They unpeeled them, prised away the segments and ate them with the juice dribbling down their chins.

  ‘We ought to make marmalade,’ Prue said.

  ‘No sugar,’ Ros pointed out. ‘Anyway, they’re better like this.’

  By the time they’d sheeted up it was too late to let go that night, so after cleaning the boats and themselves they went off to the cinema and then, afterwards, to the pub, where Frances saw Jack. He was standing at the bar, back turned, like he’d been the first time she’d ever set eyes on him – dark clothes, red scarf, thick black hair curling on his neck. Ros had seen him too.

  ‘I’d leave it, sweetie. No point stirring things up again.’

  Frances stood up and walked over to him.

  ‘Hallo, Jack.’

  He turned round. ‘How d’yer do?’

  ‘Fine, thanks. How are you?’

  ‘Not so bad.’

  ‘It’s a bit of a shock to see you here.’

  ‘I goes where the work is.’

  ‘How’s Freddy?’

  ‘Same as ever.’

  She said, ‘I heard you were courting. A girl on the Oxford.’

  ‘That’s right. Rosie Stokes.’

  ‘You’ll be getting married, then?’

  ‘Reckon so.’

  ‘Soon?’

  ‘Reckon so.’

  ‘’Scuse me, love.’ A bargee shouldered his way to the bar.

  There was a sing-song going on round the piano. The usual din. The usual songs. They’d started another one.

  We’ll meet again . . .

  She probably never would meet Jack again and it broke her heart.

  ‘Well, goodbye, Jack. Good luck.’ She tried to smile at him.

  He nodded. ‘Goodbye, Frances.’

  ‘I’ll never forget you.’ She couldn’t help saying it.

  He stared at her for a moment in his boater’s way. ‘I’ll tell yer somethin’, Frances.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ll never forgit yer, neither.’

  It was raining again, pattering lightly like fairy fingers on the cabin roof instead of the usual heavy-footed rats. Prue was lying quietly but Ros knew that she was saying her prayers into her pillow and knew exactly what she was praying for. She hardly ever spoke of her Canadian now, but it was obvious that she hadn’t given up hope of him being alive.

  While Prue was doing her praying, Ros lay thinking about Vere and wondering what to do. The doubts niggled away. How long would it last once he’d taken off the rose-tinted specs and seen, like everyone else would have seen straight away, that she was never going to measure up? That she’d never be able to live up to those portraits of Carlyon wives at Averton. She didn’t behave like a Lady, or dress like a Lady, or speak like a Lady or do anything like a Lady. And would he really let her go on acting, as he’d promised? Would he stand by without kicking up a fuss, while she skipped off for weeks or months on end? Would he really do that? And what about the little matter of the necessary son called John? All very well for Molly to talk happily about popping peas in a pod, but it hadn’t sounded as though childbirth was anything like as easy as that: more like being stretched on the rack.

  And then there was Ken. He didn’t love her, of course, but he was going to be a big success and he was going to help her to be a big success too. Her parents’ hopes and dreams, ever since she’d played the extra fairy, could all come true one of these fine days, if she had the sense to stick to him.

  Last, but far from least, there was Vere himself. Old-fashioned, stick-in-the-mud Vere who was, as she’d been intrigued to discover, neither of those things – far from it – and who deserved a much better wife than she could ever be to him. It would be so easy to say ‘yes, please, Vere’; and so easy to love him. All so, so easy . . . if only the rest of it were right.

  Prue must have finished her prayers because all was silent. For her sake, and for nice Steve’s sake, Ros hoped they’d be answered.

  After a bit, it started to rain harder, drumming loudly on the cabin roof, finding ways through. She listened to the water dripping into the pots and pans carefully positioned to catch it. Ping, ping, ping. Her face started to itch – more bloody bedbugs on the rampage. They could never get rid of them. Ping, ping, ping.

  They took the crates of oranges and the tinned food to Birmingham and brought coal back from Coventry to the ABC bakeries. On the next trip the load was aluminium bars and coal for the Heinz factory, but when they got back to Bulls Bridge and tied up at the lay-by there were no new orders. Frances hung about outside the offices until, finally, she was told to take the boats empty to Hawkesbury for coal.

  ‘Empty?’

  The man tapped the papers. ‘That’s what it says.’

  ‘But we’ve never done that before.’

  ‘There’s always a first time for everything.’

  The war was coming to an end – that much was clear from the news and rumours. V2s had stopped falling on London, the Russians were surrounding Berlin, Hitler was holed up in an underground bunker, the Allies were unstoppable, the Germans ready to surrender. She biked back to the boats.

  ‘I suppose they’re not going to need us so much now.’

  Ros said, ‘We’ve almost done our bit, Frankie, don’t you think? We were only filling a gap.’

  ‘We can still be useful, surely.’

  ‘For a while. But we’ll end up taking work away from the boat people, if we’re not careful. They’ll want us to go sooner rather than later.’

  Go! Leave the cut for ever! Say goodbye to a way of life which suited her so perfectly. Goodbye to freedom, to never-ending variety, to a wonderful, colourful people and wonderful, colourful boats. All very well for Ros who was longing to get back to the theatre, and for Prue who was still clinging stubbornly to the belief that Steve had somehow survived, but she had nothing like that. It would be back to some depressing job, incarcerated from nine to five and bored to tears.

  She said heavily, ‘We’ll let go first thing in the morning. May as well get on with it.’

  They did the empty-boat run in record time and then had to wait around at Hawkesbury for several days before th
ey were given loading orders. To pass the time, they took the bus into Coventry where they went to the public baths, wandered round the shops in the rain, ate nasty food in cheap cafés and sat in the cinema where it was dry and warm, watching newsreels about the war coming to an end.

  They unloaded the coal at Croxley mills and worked their way steadily down through Walkers, Rickey, Stockers, Springwell and Copper Mill. At Black Jack the keeper was grinning all over his face.

  ‘War’s over,’ he shouted at them from the lock-side. ‘They’ve said on the wireless. We’ve beaten the buggers at last!’

  In Trafalgar Square bells were pealing, bands playing, fireworks exploding, people singing at the tops of their voices. They were laughing, hugging and kissing, dancing, waving flags, climbing up lamp-posts, hanging out of windows, splashing around in the fountains.

  The middle-aged woman next to Prudence was crying, not laughing. The tears were streaming down her face and she kept wiping them away with the back of her hand.

  ‘My son Joe’s in the Far East, still fighting,’ she said. ‘I don’t know when he’ll come home – or if he ever will. I can’t join in all this – not yet. Not till he’s safe home.’

  She said, ‘My fiancé’s not back either.’

  ‘Far East too, is he?’

  ‘No, he was shot down over Europe.’

  ‘POW?’

  ‘I’m not sure. But I know he’s still alive. I’m sure of it.’

  The woman nodded. ‘You have to keep hoping – that’s the only thing to do. I’m sorry for the ones that can’t – the ones with sons and husbands and brothers they know they’ll never see again. It’s very hard for them today.’

  Frances was jitterbugging with a GI and Ros had climbed up onto one of the lions with some drunken naval ratings and was wearing a sailor’s cap on her head. She waved and Prudence waved back.

  They did several more trips, mostly taking empty boats to bring back coal. Other Idle Women were starting to leave the cut and return to life on the land.

  When they met Pip at the lay-by even she was talking of going.

  ‘Time to hand the cut back to the boat people,’ she said. ‘It belongs to them and we’re not needed any more.’

  She’d spoken briskly but she looked sad.

  Frances realized that there was no point in them hanging on for much longer. Ros was more than ready to go back to the theatre where her actor friend was going to help her. And poor Prue seemed to be losing heart as the papers printed more and more pictures of prisoners arriving home and there was still no news of Steve.

  They packed up all their belongings and cleaned out Orpheus and Eurydice for the last time, sweeping and scrubbing and polishing to leave them looking their very best.

  She stood alone in the empty cabin. The brass knobs would stay with Orpheus because the boat people would appreciate them, but the fairground plate would go with her. She lifted it off its hook, last thing of all, and traced its golden rim with her finger, remembering the summer’s day at the fair, and the merry-go-round, and the apple orchard, and Jack.

  Twenty-one

  PRUDENCE LEFT THE house in Lime Avenue with her father at eight fifteen precisely, walked down the front path and out of the sun-ray gate to go to the bank. As they approached the building, she hung back a little to allow him to go in first – just as she had always done.

  Everything inside was exactly as it had always been: same staff, same customers, and Mr Holland still hurried out of his sanctuary to pacify old Mrs Harper. Miss Tripp still didn’t smile and Mr Simpkins was still a creepy-crawly nuisance. On her first day back he had kept coming to her desk on any excuse, leaning over to pretend to check something in the ledger, touching her arm with his pudgy white hand, breathing in her ear.

  She had tried to find work somewhere else – anywhere else – but there were hundreds of other people back from the war, all looking for jobs too, and Father had been shocked and hurt by the idea of her not wanting to return to the bank. Mr Holland, he had pointed out, had been very generous in offering to take her back at her original salary. She was a very fortunate young lady. She had even been given the same desk and the same ledger with the same customer accounts. The only difference was that the blackout blinds had been taken down, the brown paper strips unpeeled from the frosted-glass windows and the sand buckets and stirrup pump removed.

  There were still photographs in the newspapers of homecoming troops and of prisoners of war arriving back from camps all over Europe, but there was no news of Steve. She had not quite given up hope – not yet – but there wasn’t much of it left.

  Sometimes, posting the figures in the ledger, her mind wandered back to the cut. She saw the open skies, felt the warmth of the sun, the wind blowing her hair. She heard the putt-puttering of the motor’s engine, the clang and thud of lock gates, the rattle and crank of paddles, the water rushing through, and, at the end of the day, the stillness of the night.

  She started to make mistakes in the ledger and crossings-out to correct them, and ink blots on the pristine pages. Mr Holland summoned her into his office and delivered a stern lecture on the Psychology of Accuracy. Her father delivered another one on the way home. There was no room for careless work at the bank, he told her, rapping the steel point of his umbrella against the pavement as they walked along. She would have to pull her socks up. In his view, she had learned very bad habits on the canals. It had been a grave mistake to let her work there. She should have stayed at the bank, just as he’d always preferred.

  One day they were home a few minutes later than usual, and her mother came into the hall from the kitchen. She looked quite put out.

  ‘There’s someone to see you, Prudence. Some man.’

  Her heart gave a wild leap. ‘Did he give his name?’

  ‘He may have done, I don’t remember. couldn’t make him out at all. He’s wearing a Royal Air Force uniform, but he speaks just like an American. I told him you were at work but he insisted on waiting. I’ve put him in the dining room. You’d better go and see what he wants.’

  She walked towards the closed door, praying hard. Please God, let it be him. She turned the handle and pushed the door open inch by inch by inch. Please, please God . . . She peered slowly round the edge.

  ‘I simply can’t decide which one to have. What do you think?’

  Frances didn’t care which handbag the customer chose, so long as she got on with it. It was amazing how long it took some people to make up their minds; they dithered for hours, opening and shutting the bags, looking inside, picking them up and putting them down, carrying them over to the long mirror and then coming back and starting opening and shutting them all over again. Sometimes they asked for her opinion but she’d learned never to give it because it invariably prolonged the agony of decision.

  ‘I think they’re both lovely, madam. I’m sure you’d be happy with either one.’

  ‘Do you? Of course black is always so useful. And it has a little more room inside and an extra pocket.’

  ‘Yes, indeed.’

  ‘But the navy blue has such a nice coloured lining.’

  ‘Yes, it’s very nice.’

  ‘And it would match my shoes perfectly.’

  The opening and shutting had started again, the clasps snapping away like crocodiles, then the woman was off to the mirror again with a handbag hooked over each arm.

  Her high heels were killing her; she stepped out of them and wiggled her toes around. It was a ghastly job, standing behind a shop counter all day and being polite to customers, but at least the handbag department was by one of the main doors to Knightsbridge so she could see people coming and going. And sometimes a friend would turn up and stop by for a chat.

  The woman was coming back with the handbags.

  ‘Oh dear, I just can’t decide . . .’

  The war in Europe had finished in May, the one with Japan in August. Millions and millions of people had died. There had been the most sickening photos of death camps
in Europe and of the prisoners of war liberated in the Far East. Suffering and misery of an unbelievable kind. But this silly woman in her silly hat couldn’t make up her mind which silly handbag to buy.

  She said, ‘I don’t think it actually matters a row of beans which one you have, madam.’

  The woman stared at her through the hat veil. ‘Oh, but I wouldn’t want to make a mistake.’

  ‘In that case, I’d definitely choose the black. It’s more useful.’

  In the end she chose the navy which, of course, was the one she’d looked at in the first place.

  Soon after that, Hugh Whitelaw came in through the swing doors. She was dealing with another customer who couldn’t make up her mind either, and spotted the blue RAF uniform out of the corner of her eye before she saw that it was him. If Hugh was back from the Far East, then Vere could be.

  He waited until the customer had left before he came up to the counter.

  She said, ‘Have you come to buy a handbag, sir?’

  ‘No, I’ve come to see you.’

  ‘Is Vere back too?’

  ‘The whole squadron is. They posted us home.’

  ‘Wonderful! How is he?’

  ‘He’s absolutely fine.’

  ‘Is he in London?’

  ‘No. He went off on some mysterious errand.’

  She straightened some bags to look busy.

  ‘How did you know I was working here?’

  ‘Your aunt mentioned it to my mother. It doesn’t seem the sort of job you’d enjoy.’

  ‘I don’t. But the alternative was a secretarial course and I thought I’d enjoy that even less.’

  ‘Are you missing your narrowboats?’

  ‘Yes, I am rather, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘I thought you might be. What are Ros and Prue up to?’

  ‘Ros has joined a repertory company in the Midlands and Prue’s just got married to her Canadian boyfriend. He came back from the dead.’