Water Gypsies

by Annie Murray

  Maryann nodded. ‘But that bloke you said came looking – he asked for me by name?’

  ‘Must’ve done.’ He was taken aback by the intense way she questioned him. ‘D’you know who he is?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she almost spat the words. ‘I know who he is all right.’ Her limbs still felt weak and shaky with shock. Who else could he be, a man with a burned face, a man who had decided to come looking for her? She looked round, suddenly overtaken by fear, everything out of proportion. The very wharf seemed sinister now. ‘Sally?’ she cried. ‘My little girl – Sal? Where are you?’

  ‘She’s here – just behind you.’ Charlie spoke gently, as if soothing an infant, for the young woman seemed like a terrified child in those moments, as she grasped her daughter’s hand and pulled her close. He resisted an impulse to put his arm round her, as if she were one of his own. ‘Look, are you sure you’ll be all right?’

  ‘Promise me’ – she clutched his arm – ‘that if he ever comes here again you won’t tell him anything. You’ve never seen me – we never come here. I don’t want him knowing anything – I never want to see him again. Tell the others in the office – for God’s sake don’t let him near us, please, Charlie.’

  ‘Course,’ he said, frowning. ‘I’ll tell them. Who is he, anyroad?’

  ‘No one,’ she snapped, her voice full of loathing. ‘He’s no one. And I don’t want him anywhere near me or my family.’

  She walked away fiercely, holding tight to Sally’s hand, then she turned.

  ‘I don’t want him knowing anything – not about us, not the names of our boats…’

  ‘Oh, he knows them, I’m afraid,’ Charlie said. When he come in, as far as I remember he said he was looking for the Bartholomews on the Esther Jane.’

  Disturbed by the look of despair which crossed Maryann’s face, he said hastily, ‘But I won’t tell him anything if he comes again.’

  She nodded, whispered, ‘Thank you,’ then turned away. He saw her draw her coat more closely round her as if a deadly chill had infected the November air.

  ‘What’s the matter, Mom?’

  ‘Sally’s eyes were wide with alarm as her mother sank down on the bed beside the twins in the Theodore, deathly pale and shaking.

  ‘Nothing.’ She struggled to compose herself. ‘I just come over a bit funny, that’s all. I’ll be all right when I’ve had a cup of tea, bab. You sit and do a bit of your drawing.’

  Sally retreated into her favourite activity and Maryann sipped her tea, trying to steady herself. She was raw with shock. She was certain that the man who had come to the wharf was her stepfather, Norman Griffin, and the layers of security she had built round her during the years of her marriage seemed to peel back all at once, leaving her trembling under the gaze of the past. That time she thought she saw him before – it must have been him, though she’d tried to make herself believe she’d been mistaken, or at least, if he had been there, that it was a coincidence. He was after her. He had asked for their boats by name … But why was he looking for her? What could he possibly want from her now? Whatever his reasons, they would be warped and cruel. After these years of peace and safety his disfigured features were raising themselves to look at her again and the thought chilled her to the core. But to tell Joel meant bringing the loathsome creature into the centre of her family again. Even the sound of his name repelled her. She didn’t want to say it, not on the cut, her refuge. He had no place here.

  She put her cup down and held her hands out in front of her, angry at their tremor, at the thought that he could still do this to her.

  We’ll be out of here in the morning, she thought, and we shan’t be back in a while. I shan’t say anything to Joel. Not unless we’re given another load to come back up to Brum. Then I’ll tell him.

  Six

  ‘Christmas at Sutton then,’ Joel said.

  He had hauled the Theodore in alongside the Esther Jane and was tying them both up. It was Christmas Eve and they weren’t going to make it to Oxford after all. But their disappointment was soon dispelled.

  ‘Look!’ Maryann called, jumping with excitement on the counter of the Theodore. As Joel and Bobby were securing the boats, her eyes were searching the narrowboats already in at Sutton Stop, and immediately she spotted the Isla, with its butty the Neptune breasted up neatly beside it. Nancy and Darius were only two boats away from them, Darrie and Sean scampering towards them on the bank. ‘Joel – they’re here – look – the Isla! Nance! Hull-oo! You there?’

  Nancy’s dark curls appeared immediately out of the Neptune’s cabin and she waved back madly, cleaning cloth still in her hand. She had a bright red jumper on and her cheerful grin lit up the day, despite the cold and leaden sky. Maryann beamed, full of happiness. Joel waved as well. The moment he could reach the bank, Joley was throwing himself off to join his cousins before his mom could say anything about letters and book learning. That was the last thing on Maryann’s mind, though – her best pal was tied up nearby!

  Nance was across in seconds, politely calling out that she was coming across and averting her eyes in the customary way as she moved over the counters of the two boats which lay between them. She stepped nimbly onto the Theodore.

  ‘Look at you!’ Maryann laughed, laying a hand on Nance’s round stomach.‘ Well out at the front, aren’t you? You look ever so well, though – don’t know how you do it, that I don’t.’ Nance’s abundant energy never ceased to amaze her.

  ‘I went in to see Sister Mary on the way back up,’ Nance said. Sister Mary was the nurse who lived by the Grand Union at Stoke Bruerne. She was much loved among the boat families for all the care she gave them. ‘She says everything’s going perfect. I should be coming to town with him March time.’

  They saw Joel’s brother Darius coming back along the towpath and both waved. His arm came up in greeting. Joel favoured his mother’s looks, with the auburn hair and more rounded face. Darius was the image of how his father, old Darius, must have looked as a young man, with his peaty hair and sharp, chiselled features. He wore a cap and a colourful scarf knotted in the neck of his shirt. With Nance beside him, with her dark looks, bright clothes and gold earrings, they looked an exotic pair. Their children were as striking as they were, Darry and Sean both dark-haired and agile as monkeys, and Rose already sultry-eyed under her own mop of curls.

  The two brothers greeted one another on the bank. Maryann and Nance watched them fondly.

  ‘Our two old chaps.’ Nance laughed. When they were all together they often teased their men about their age and the ‘young wenches’ they’d managed to persuade to run off with them. Joel was sixteen years older than Maryann and the gap between Nance and Darius was even greater – almost twenty-two years.

  ‘His age don’t mean anything,’ Maryann often said. ‘He’s just Joel – he’s always looked the same to me.’ They liked to make a joke of it, though. The two of them chattered nineteen to the dozen, before they managed to tear themselves away to get on with their mountain of chores. Maryann spent the afternoon racing to the shops, washing on the bank beside Nance and some of the other boatwomen, pounding heavy clothes in dippers and galvanized tubs, sharing a mangle and exchanging news, all the while surrounded by their children. Maryann fitted in as much cleaning as she could, getting Sally and Rose polishing the brass strips round the chimneys. She sang to herself that evening as she went about her work, full of a burst of Nance’s infectious energy. The children looked quite startled, coming upon her humming ‘The Sheikh of Araby’ and ‘I’m always chasing rainbows’. I feel better, she thought at last. More myself.

  ‘We’re going to have a nice Christmas,’ she told Joley and Sally as she tucked them into bed on the Esther Jane and kissed them both. ‘Sleep tight.’

  One of the best things about Christmas was that it was a rest and a change, a chance to celebrate and socialize in what was otherwise a life of almost non-stop work. The family of Ernie Higgins, who worked with Nancy and Darius, were tied up at Sutt
on too and he and Bobby went to them for the day, leaving all the Bartholomews together. They congregated instinctively in the family’s old boat, the Esther Jane, somehow squeezing everyone in out of the cold. Maryann cleared the bedding off the back bed and stowed it in the Theodore so that the younger children could perch on the bed while they all ate chicken and plenty of spuds and cabbage, with a good jug of ale to wash it down and Tizer for the children. It got so hot inside that they slid the hatch open, until an icy rain began to fall and they had to close it again. And all the while they talked, about recent journeys, of bad bends and hold-ups and engine trouble, wharves and lock keepers and news gathered in passing from acquaintances met on their journeys. They reminisced about how things had once been on the cut and about the time when they had all met. Their favourite story, one they never tired of retelling, was of the morning Nance had finally escaped from her old life and her miserable marriage to Mick Mallone to join them on the cut, dashing after the boat at dawn as they pulled away from the basin at Gas Street.

  ‘Happiest day of my life, that was,’ Darius said. He sat back, content to be on his old boat, well fed, a cup of ale in his hand. Maryann watched him fondly, the dark, wavy hair round his face, his powerful, almost eagle-like features. He was, like his father, a man of few words, but his eyes, when he looked at Nance, conveyed everything that needed to be said in the way of affection and regard.

  Maryann felt Joel take her hand under the table and their eyes met for a moment. Seeing the way he looked at her, she was startled by a rush of desire for him, an inner throb as if their bodies were connected by something even more powerful than touch, and she was filled with relief. She could still feel for him – it was not lost! In the early days of their marriage, trusting and loving him as she did, she had let him caress and wake her body to the discovery of shared pleasure, of excitement, to lovemaking instead of the forced pain and revulsion which was all she had experienced before. It took time. Often she could not enjoy it; sometimes, when she could feel very little, and could not seem to concentrate, she knew it was his pleasure she was enjoying, not her own. But that was all right. It was not bad, not terrible as it had been before and she was grateful for that. She still liked the closeness, the comforting warmth of him. She longed for children then and they had soon arrived. She had no idea how quickly lovemaking would become fraught with fear of its consequences, a bittersweet intimacy of desire and dread. How she would find herself doing anything to avoid it – pretending to be asleep, saying she was too tired … And now, though her gaze as she looked back at him held love and gratitude, her mind raced ahead … Oh Lord, he’s going to want it tonight. Will he remember what I asked? Oh, please let him just fall asleep straight away!

  ‘Maryann?’

  Even in her heavily pregnant condition, Nance seemed to land in the hatches of the Theodore as if she’d flown there. Her laughing features appeared between the doors.

  ‘Still feeding them gutsy little so-and-sos are you?’

  Maryann was pinned to the bed by the twins.

  ‘You can laugh,’ Maryann retorted.‘It’ll be your turn soon. What makes you think you haven’t got two in there, eh?’

  ‘Oh Jaysus, no!’ Nance rolled her eyes. ‘Listen – Mr Barlow’s sending us down London again, but he’s asked Joel if you’ll do a long haul and come down with us?’

  ‘What – the Grand Union?’

  ‘Yep – he’s even giving you the choice, you having your hands full and that. Anyroad, as I was coming back, I told Joel I’d check with his missis! If we got ourselves sorted out right we could all go down there together.’

  Maryann brightened. Today was Boxing Day and after yesterday’s celebrations it felt very flat. Now all that faced them was work and more work. The thought of being able to do it alongside Nance cheered her no end. Though they had good relations with most of the other boatwomen, they were always a bit conscious of being ‘the Brummies from off the bank’ and they shared the same sense of humour. Maryann sometimes found she would crack a joke to another of the boatwomen, only to be met by a solemn, slightly mystifed stare. On the other hand a gaggle of them might be splitting their sides about something which she couldn’t see the funny side of. With Nance she could really share a joke. And the children, who enjoyed switching families and travelling on another boat for a change, would be delighted with the idea.

  The journey down was reckoned to take a week or so, depending on delays and calamities. They loaded up at the coalfields, spending a freezing morning sheeting up to keep the cargo dry. The side sheets, which when not in use lay folded along the gunwales, had to be pulled up, hard and crackly as they were, and knotted over the top of the planks which ran the length of the boat over the cargo. Then, their hands cracked and chaffed from the cold and from pulling and knotting the rough strings, they had to work the main tarpaulin along the boat, making their way backwards, tying it at the sides. By the end of helping to sheet the Theodore, Maryann’s hands were so stiff and sore she could barely move them. Joley had disappeared somewhere when she wasn’t looking and Ada and Esther were screaming to be fed. She wanted to weep, but just then Nance appeared with cups of cocoa.

  ‘I don’t know where Joley’s got to – have you seen him?’ Maryann was looking round anxiously.

  ‘Oh – ’e’s in the Isla with Darrie and Sean. Don’t worry, kid – he’s not run away to sea. Not yet, anyhow!’

  As they chugged south, the weather grew colder. Frosts turned the ground to stone and the morning trees to sparkling works of art. For most of the time the boats managed to keep together. In the long pound from Hawkesbury to Rugby they moved smoothly on as a convoy. Once they reached flights of locks they would see each other only intermittently, Joel and Maryann, who were the second pair, having to wait for other pairs to come through and set the lock for them, or reset them in their favour before they could continue. But they would catch up later and tie up together for the night.

  The burden of work was no less than usual and the temperatures harsh and cold, but for those days Maryann’s heart was lighter. She felt almost carefree. Having Nance around lifted life more into a pleasurable realm, a game almost. They bow-hauled the buttys through the double locks at Rugby, Maryann scolding all the way, telling Nance she shouldn’t be pulling at all in her condition, Nance arguing that Ernie was really doing all the work, she was only helping. At other locks they raced to canalside shops for supplies, moving bulkily in their layers of winter woollens and coats, bright scarves tied over their hair, arriving back just as the last butty was being pulled out of the lock, both of them panting and giggling, cautious on the frosty stones, their breath furling white on the air. They climbed into their respective homes with armfuls of bread, eggs and vegetables. In the mornings they waved blearily to each other, stepping out of their cabins as the dawn light reflected off the perfect mirror of water, their movements the first disturbance in the deep stillness of morning.

  ‘It’s nice travelling like this,’ Maryann said to Joel the first evening. ‘With Darius and Nance, I mean. Can we do it again, d’you think?’

  He looked up, surprised at the enthusiasm in her voice.

  ‘It’ll depend on the loads,’ he said, ‘but I’m happy with it. It seems to suit you, so that’s all the better.’

  At Stoke Bruerne the two of them went to see Sister Mary in her surgery by the cut. She wore a white coat and her kindly face, looking out from under a long white nurse’s veil, broke into a delighted smile at the sight of Maryann with her twin daughters, wrapped up plump as sausages, in her arms.

  ‘Well I never!’ Sister Mary helped Maryann lie them down so that she could examine them. ‘Goodness me, you have got your hands full now, haven’t you? But what lovely healthy babies!’ She made a fuss of Joley, Sally and Ezra as well, before turning to their cousins.

  ‘And you, Nancy – are you still keeping all right?’ Sister Mary had delivered Nance’s last two babies.

  ‘Yes, ta,’ Nancy said cheer
fully.

  ‘You do look the picture of health,’ Sister Mary chuckled. ‘You were obviously made for this life. I don’t think there’s anything I need to do for you – except remind you not to go pulling those boats about. D’you hear?’

  ‘I hope she’ll listen to you better than she does to me!’ Maryann said.

  ‘Yes, Sister.’ Nancy grinned at her. They were all very fond of Sister Mary. She did such a lot to support the women of the cut and keep them and their children in good health.

  Seven

  It was a long haul down to London.

  ‘Blooming long journey – started in 1942 and ended in 1943!’ Nance quipped. After the New Year arrived they eventually slid between the green sides of Cassio-bury Park, then past Regent’s Park to the docks, or ‘Limehouse’ as it was known to the boaters.

  Maryann and Joel had seldom worked the Grand Union route. As they travelled the last leg east, Maryann stood on the gunwales in the cold wind, looking round as Bobby steered. The cut was so wide down here that it felt quite intimidating. Along the Regent’s Canal, boats were tied up on each side, sometimes two deep, but this still left plenty of room in the middle of the channel. Travelling along this wider cut came huge river barges, which would loom in front of them suddenly, making Maryann’s pulse race with panic at the thought of a collision. The further south they had travelled, the more barges they seemed to meet.

  And London itself came as a shock. She had seen some of the effects of the bombing in Birmingham, and the skyline of Coventry was drastically changed. At one period it had seemed diminished every time they came back to it. But, as Nance told them, London had ‘taken it’ for weeks on end and she and Darius had been down a couple of nights after the great fire storm raged almost up to St Paul’s cathedral. The further east they went the more devastation they saw, whole neighbourhoods lying smashed apart.