Water Gypsies

by Annie Murray

  ‘Get bloody moving will you?’ and Joel realized the water had levelled and he was still standing, staring.

  Passing onwards, he tried to imagine any other life than the one he had known. His only time on the bank had been two years in the army, most of it away in France. He had volunteered the year after his mother’s death in 1916 in childbirth, when Ada was born. Joel’s twin brothers Ezra and Sam had already gone and he left his father and Darius to man the boat, and his sister Sarah to keep house and tend to Ada. Joel was nineteen when he left for France. By the time he returned with his injured lungs, both Ezra and Sam had met their deaths on the Somme without him ever seeing them again, and soon afterwards Sarah had died of the influenza.

  Before France, Joel had a part-time sweetheart. Part-time in the sense that boating courtships were capricious affairs, meetings dependent on the movements of cargoes and criss-crossing of boats which might or might not meet. By the time he came wheezing home to what was left of his family, Clara had married one of the ‘joshers’ and gone to work the Grand Union. Very occasionally, he caught sight of her now, looking across from one of the orange and green Fellows, Moreton & Clayton boats, face hardened by work and weather. A stiff, restrained salute was their only acknowledgement that they had exchanged youthful kisses and – Joel had believed – promises in the Warwickshire meadows all those years ago.

  The years after the Great War had been a time of survival for the Bartholomews. By then the family consisted of three men, all numb with grief, and one infant girl, Ada. Ada grew up to be an adept boatwoman. She had been ten years old when a dark-haired girl just a couple of years her senior, skinny as a foal and fiery with mutinous emotions, wandered up to the Esther Jane one white, frozen day and announced fiercely to Joel that her name was Maryann Nelson and always would be. Only years later, as a grown woman, had Maryann consented to change her name to Bartholomew, and Joel knew what a store of trust she had invested in him.

  He knew it wasn’t easy marrying into his way of life, which, before the war began, had been under threat. The boaters kept moving their cargoes, pushing onwards, knowing that if they didn’t shift a load they wouldn’t get paid, whatever the season, whatever the weather. For Joel, boating was the life he knew in every cell of his body. Any length of time walking in city streets, caught between high buildings and away from the veins of the cut, made him feel fidgety and lost. Family history was a matter of word of mouth, with nothing written down, nor, until his marriage to Maryann, had any photographs ever been taken of his family. Now a framed photograph of that day, him smiling joyfully beside his young bride, hung in the cabin of the Theodore amid the ribbon-threaded plates. What he did know, though, was that for at least three generations, back into the haze of those days when Queen Victoria was a young bride herself, Bartholomews had worked the cut and, in particular, the Oxford cut. Joel’s landscape, inner and outer, was marked by winding contours, the black and white beams of locks, the graceful tilt of road bridges which leaned aside to let them past, by those soft, green hills. On that cut, for as long as anyone could remember, they had been Number Ones, working their own family boats, and Joel longed deeply to be a Number One again, for his sons and daughters to work the cut and to feel the dignity and self-respect which had been owned by the previous generations. And he could feel it slipping away from him.

  Maryann, too, was so much a part of him now that her deep unhappiness weighed him down. What was troubling her? What could he do to lighten her, to make her smile again?

  That night they found a place to stop at Minworth, out beyond the aerodrome. When he went to the Theodore after tying up, the three older children were out on the bank. From inside he could hear what sounded like both the twins crying. Timidly, he looked down through the hatches. Maryann was sitting opposite the stove, where bacon was frying in a pan, the fat spitting loudly. In a bowl nearby rested five eggs. She leaned forward to jerk the pan by the handle, her face white and impassive. His heart went out to her. He knew it was hard, that she had so much to do. But that was the life, wasn’t it? That was how it was.

  He climbed down and squatted on the coalbox and the screams battered his ears. Maryann didn’t even look at him.

  ‘Pass us one of them over,’ he suggested.

  Maryann leaned over and lifted an irate Ada into his arms while she latched Esther onto her breast, still jiggling the pan with one hand.

  ‘We’ve got out through there, anyway,’ Joel said. It was always a relief to get past that bit of the cut, even though soon they would reach the coalfields, where everything, landscape and people, was blackened by its dust. He spoke feeling nervous of her, though. He could tell there was something coiled up inside her.

  Maryann nodded, still not looking at him. She leaned forward and flipped the rashers over with a knife.

  ‘You all right, little mate?’ he asked eventually.

  She turned to him then, and in her eyes, for a second he saw a look of utter desperation. But then, by a miracle of will, a smile appeared on her face.

  ‘Yes,’ she assured him. ‘Course. Tea’s nearly ready. Tell Bobby, and the others, will you?’

  Eleven

  Maryann found herself jerking into consciousness now before dawn, sweating from her dreams. There was a recurring one in which the boats were tied up at Lime-house dock. Maryann was standing on the bank, her boots poised at the edge of the wharf, watching the tide go out, the sea sucking the water back rapidly, boats sinking deeper and deeper down until they seemed much further away than they would be in reality, tiny specks of colour at the foot of the grey wall with its clinging weed and slime. Round them stretched a sea of thick, oozing mud. She felt herself launch forwards over the edge, down, down, knowing that she was going to land smack across the empty hold of a boat and that her belly would pop open like a seed. Except it was the sickening feeling of falling which woke her every time so she never reached the bottom but woke, gasping.

  God forgive me, she thought, lying trembling beside Joel’s hot, oblivious body. Just let me be free of it this one time. I’ll be able to manage another babby later on, but they’re all so close together. I can’t. I just can’t.

  As the days passed, Maryann knew she had to act. Fear held her back. What was she going to do? If only there was someone she could go to, someone kind like Sister Mary to whom she could pour out all her troubles. But they weren’t going down through Stoke Bruerne, and in any case, how could she ever go to Sister Mary and admit what was on her mind? That she had reached such a pitch that she wanted to do away with her baby?

  But if I’m going to do it, I’ve got to get on with it, she kept saying to herself. She could think of nothing else. The thought of it, the dread of childbirth, of another child to cope with possessed her. And supposing it was twins again! In front of Joel and Bobby she tried to act normally, to be cheerful and hide her sickness, though she was constantly pale and strained and she knew Joel had noticed. When she denied that anything was wrong, though, he didn’t press her.

  Her thoughts wouldn’t leave her alone. The cold, closed-off feeling returned, which had come over her when she had run away from home as a young girl and come to Joel and his father on the cut. It had been like that later, for a time, after baby Harry died. If only she could tell Joel how she felt. But that was completely out of the question. If he knew what was in her mind …Well, she couldn’t bear to think how he would react. She felt more desolate and alone than she had for years.

  The easiest way, she thought, would be water with pennies boiled in it. And she slipped into a chemist in Birmingham for pennyroyal syrup. Both tasted vile and made her even more sick, but neither had any result at all. She couldn’t bring herself to jump, or pretend to fall, not like in the dream. She knew she’d never have the courage. There was only one way left now that she could think of, and a cold shudder of fear passed through her every time she thought about it.

  They were on their way south now with coal for Oxford. It was a while since they�
�d been down there and Joel was pleased, as it meant meeting up with family. By the time they left the coalfields, the grit catching in their nostrils, clothes and hair, the family were all as black and begrimed as ever, especially the children. Maryann felt another deep wave of despair. They looked like a load of chimney sweeps! The old taunt of ‘dirty families’ haunted her. But how was anyone supposed to keep clean in these conditions, especially feeling the way she did?

  Joel and Bobby had sheeted up and put the top planks up over the hold. As well as keeping the rain off, the tarpaulins stopped so much gritty dust from blowing back in their faces.

  On the way south they found themselves followed closely by another pair of Barlow boats occupied by the Higgins family, whose son Ernie crewed for Darius. Mrs Higgins was an older woman – it was impossible, Maryann thought, to guess exactly how old – with a wizened, leathery face and a terse but not unpleasant manner. She had a scarf dotted with brightly coloured flowers tied over her hair and her forearms were as knotted and muscly as branches.

  ‘You going down the paper mills then?’ she asked as they were untying. When Maryann said they were, Mrs Higgins shook her head.

  ‘Ah well, watch that there river. can be a booger down there.’

  They knew she was right. To reach Wolvercote paper mills they had to go through the lock at Duke’s cut and onto the Thames. There was nowhere to turn the boats at the mill, so they had to wind them on the wide Thames and take them down backwards on the rushing current. Maryann never did that part of the trip without her innards turning with fear, and most other boatwomen were prepared to admit that they felt the same.

  ‘Least I’ll get a good wash done, though,’ Maryann said. There was plenty of hot water on offer at Wolvercote Mill and most of them tried to get their wash tubs out.

  Mrs Higgins gave her a sudden, gappy smile. ‘That you will,’ she agreed. ‘We’re off to the aloominum works, down Banbury.’

  With the Higginses on their tail so much of the way south, Maryann felt somehow on display, even though they were as respectful of the privacy of others as anyone could be. But for the first two nights they were all tied up nose to tail along the bank and Joel went out for a drink with Mr Higgins the first night, while Mrs Higgins stayed aboard with the two youngest children, who still worked the boats with them.

  Mrs Higgins was one of those women beside whom Maryann felt weak and inadequate. She couldn’t forget that Ernie had been the ninth of her thirteen surviving children, who’d all grown up on the cut. It made Maryann dizzy just thinking about it. Where had they all slept? They must have been stuffed under the cratches, she thought. The cratch was replaced on some boats by a very small forecabin in which a couple of young children could be tucked out of the rain for the night. But Maryann felt that women like Mrs Higgins were somehow a different and hardier breed from her altogether. Whatever would Mrs Higgins think if she could see into her mind now?

  The days were grey and dull, though the clouds let out nothing more than drizzle. As they wound along between pastures and ploughed fields, Maryann saw that spring was coming in the buds pushing out on the trees, the fuzz of green shoots along the furrows, all the spring promise of new life. But she felt so ill, so unequal to giving life herself, that the sight made her feel even more lonely and desperate than before.

  On the second afternoon she sat in the cabin as Bobby steered the butty; Joel was way ahead of them with the motor. Maryann was positioned opposite the stove, cooking and feeding the twins in turn. She could balance a baby on her lap and let her feed, keeping her hands free to chop onion, carrot and beef, though it made her back ache. Suddenly the smell of onions filled her with nausea and she had to snatch Ada from her breast and lean over the waste bucket as Ada lay back roaring on the bed.

  Spent, she sat with her head down, too tired to move, even after the retching had stopped, the smell of old potato peelings unpleasant in her nostrils. A sob escaped from her.

  ‘I can’t go on …’ she whispered. ‘I just can’t. Not like this … ’

  They left the Higgins family behind at last and headed south. When they reached Thrupp, Joel found a spot to pull in for the night.

  ‘Don’t want to be starting down the Thames in the dark,’ he said. ‘Best start fresh for that in the morning.’ He lifted the water cans off the roof and went off to fill them.

  The family ate their stew and potatoes without speaking. Meals were often silent at the end of the day when they had all been up since before dawn and sometimes worked on until after dark. Joel scraped his plate clean and made a satisfied sound.

  ‘Ready for a quick one, Bobby?’

  So the men went out to the pub, which nestled among the pretty stone cottages of Thrupp.

  Maryann cleared the crocks away, her hands trembling as she stacked the plates. There was no Higgins boat tied up behind them tonight and the place wasn’t busy. She knew the time had come.

  ‘Joley, Ezra, Sally, Rose. Come on.’ The four of them bedded down on the big bed on the Esther Jane still, while Bobby squeezed onto the side bed. Still in their clothes, they snuggled down together, Joley and Ezra at one end, heads in the cupboard into which the bed could be folded up when necessary and the two girls at the other end.

  ‘Night, night.’ Maryann kissed them all. She tried to be as affectionate to Rose as to her own children, which wasn’t difficult as she was very fond of the little girl. Poor little mite – no mom and now separated from her real brothers as well.

  ‘Night, Mom,’ they said. Even Rose called her Mom already.

  ‘Oh, Nance.’ Maryann found her lips moving as she closed the hatch and went, shivering, back to the cosy cabin of the Theodore. ‘I know you’d never understand what I’m about to do, but if you’re watching, don’t be too hard on me. I won’t be able to carry on being a mom to any of them if I have another one now. It’d just finish me off, Nance, heaven forgive me.’

  Inside the cabin she continued muttering to herself. The twins slept on on the side bench, and she tried to keep herself calm.

  ‘Now or never. I’ve got to do it – it’s got to be now or they’ll be back. Oh, please don’t let it hurt too much. Let it just be over!’

  She knelt down and reached into the monkey hole under the bed, where Joel kept a few of his tools. The screwdriver felt heavy in her hand. It had a sturdy wooden handle and a long metal shaft leading up to its flattened end, which was about a quarter of an inch wide. Maryann knelt there, turning it round in her hands, which she noticed were trembling. The metal was tarnished, dotted with rust. She knew she could have sat there for hours putting off the moment, but then it would be too late. It had to be done.

  Feeling something was necessary in preparation, some ritual, she poured a cup of hot water over the metal part of the tool and wiped it on her skirt. As she went about these humble preparations, tremors began to move through her body, as if she was running a fever; her teeth started chattering. With difficulty she adjusted the wick of the lamp and the shadows shifted round her.

  ‘It’ll be all right,’ she whispered, trying to steady herself. ‘Calm down … Steady … Tomorrow it’ll all be over. I’ve just got to do it…’

  For a moment she stood by the bed, holding the screwdriver, at a loss. She realized suddenly that in order to begin she would have to remove her bloomers. She wore the full, old-fashioned kind still, for warmth. To do that she’d have to take her boots off. Perched on the edge of the bed, she struggled with the laces. Her hands were shaking so much that this seemed to take for ever, but at last she pulled off her boots, placing them silently on the floor, then rucked up her skirt and pulled down her bloomers, feeling vulnerable, embarrassed even, at finding herself standing there with no drawers on and no shoes either. It was a relief to let her skirt fall down again over her thighs.

  ‘Come on, come on,’ she urged herself through chattering teeth. It had to be done quickly or she would lose her nerve.

  Again, she sat down on the edge of the back
bed, the implement with its sharp, square end in her hand. Everything felt unreal, as if she was dreaming. Her legs twitched convulsively and she couldn’t control them. She opened them shakily, closed them again. How was she going to manage this? She had to prod hard enough to make sure she started bleeding. The only way, she saw, shuddering, was to lie back, to get in the right position. Shifting her weight, she lay diagonally across the bed so that her head was pressed right into the darkest corner. She could smell coal strongly. It got into every crevice of the boats. The hard wall pushed against the top of her head, the blanket was scratchy against the back of her neck.

  Her skirt fell back as she lifted her legs and at once lying in this position filled her with horror. It was unbearable. The air felt somehow indecent about her private parts and she felt helpless and full of shame. She was a child, lying pressed to her mom’s front-room floor by Norman Griffin, when he had forced her dress up. She began to sob, but she made herself remember what she was doing. She couldn’t stop now: it had to be done to free her of the child. Just this one, she promised. She’d never, ever do anything like this again.

  Quick. It had to be quick. The steely end of the screwdriver felt cold as she eased it into herself, guiding the handle. Her breath was coming in loud, juddering gasps. In a couple of seconds she felt it reach in as far as it would go. What now? Push in further, slowly? No, quickly … Do it, do it, the blood throbbed in her ears.

  She pulled the handle out a little, trying to take aim. Without giving herself any more time to consider she jerked her hands back towards her with all her strength, driving it into her.

  The pain was instant. Her eyes stretched wide at the shock of it and she heard herself giving off screams and moans. She thought she knew pain, but this was not the coming, going waves of labour pains but an appalling sharp agony which was getting worse, tearing at her. Waves of heat and nausea swept over her. Unable to control her cries of agony, she tried to sit up, to pull the thing out, but she could hardly keep her hand still enough to get a grip on it she was shaking so much. God in heaven, what had she done? It wasn’t supposed to be like this!