by Georgie Hall
*
It’s Paddy. I need Paddy. Fifty love. Every sight and sound of the river reminds me of him so acutely I half expect him to rise out of it like a merman with a windlass in one hand and a mug of strong tea in the other, calmly guiding me through the hazards.
Binton Bridge is almost upon us, my dry mouth reminds me, the first of the treacherous BBs.
Bowie’s ‘Fame’ has replaced The 1975. That’s more like it! Authentic seventies. I join in, my courage regrouping.
‘You have a great singing voice, Mum.’ Summer’s head lifts in surprise and I give it my all until she ruins it by asking, ‘Why did you tell us you were going to Leicester?’
‘They found someone else,’ I bluster too fast, thrusting the Avon Navigation Guide up at her. ‘Look up Binton Bridge for me.’
‘Why isn’t Dad here?’
‘He’s working.’
‘Does he even know you’re doing this?’
‘Let’s not even go there.’ I play back her line.
The butterfly glasses come off, a younger version of myself studying her older deceit. ‘Just answer me one thing, Mum: this trip isn’t a bucket list thing, is it?’
‘Goodness, what makes you think that?’
‘No Big C, you promise?’ The tears are threatening again.
‘Absolutely not.’ I send up a quick prayer. (At my age, when cancer’s picking off friends and idols like a terrorist cell, it’s not something anybody can promise.) ‘Summer, it’s the small “c” I am suffering from right now, something most women endure sooner or later.’
‘Tell me about it. Bloody cramps.’ She leafs through the river guide. ‘I am so premenstrual.’
(Oh, how I miss a hot water bottle pressed to my abdomen once a month. I never thought I’d mourn periods. And I don’t per se, but I miss the trade-off: a seductive body, clear head, sex drive, sleep.)
‘The CHANGE, Summer!’ I remind her in a fear-laden gothic voice. ‘It’s not like I haven’t told you about it.’
‘That was ages ago; I thought you’d be over it by now.’
‘Didn’t they teach you about menopause at school?’
‘I think it was covered in the reproduction module in like Year Eight, maybe? Isn’t it just normal, though? Like puberty, only in reverse?’
‘Imagine you’re turning from a pony into a cow. At a pony show, with pony lovers everywhere. It’s that normal.’
*
I started my first period during the end-of-year ballet showcase staged by Miss Ashworth’s Dance and Drama Troupe in the local Baptist hall. I’d put the tummy pain down to pre-show nerves. We were messing around in the dressing room just before curtain up, seeing who could do the biggest high kick, when one of the little ones tugged at my hand and whispered did you know you’ve pooed yourself. The humiliation was absolute as I rinsed thin brown blood out of pale pink tights and a stretch-satin leotard crotch in the girls loos then held them under a ferocious hand dryer that scorched them to a lightly stained crisp. Too embarrassed to tell anybody what had happened, I performed with toilet roll wedged into my knickers and my knees glued together and was savaged afterwards by Miss Ashworth for not putting enough effort in.
My mother was sweetly sympathetic when I later admitted the awful truth, but I sensed her disappointment that this important step into womanhood had been the usual Eliza trip-hazard, whereas Jules had managed the transition discreetly. She’d talked us meticulously through the signs and gifted us our own supply of sanitary towels in anticipation, weird old-fashioned pads that attached to press-studs in special ‘period knickers’. Jules, for whom puberty had started a year earlier, had already graduated onto the new adhesive sort and I wanted those too, but was told I had to serve my apprenticeship with the ‘Nikini’ to prove I was responsible (and not waste the supply I now suspect).
Periods remained my nemesis almost five hundred times over, a secret shame I never entirely accepted as natural, that felt like my body bullying me. And when childbirth proved the torture that showed me the curse was a blessed relief, menopause was lying in wait as punishment for wishing they would go away forever.
*
Summer’s lying on her back again studying the Avon Navigation Guide, one twinkly-toenailed leg hooked over the other’s bent knee. ‘Imagine if Kwasi was waiting on Binton Bridge? I can’t decide whether I’d forgive him like that,’ she snaps her fingers, ‘or scream “Go, Mum!” and we’ll leave him looking at our bow wave.’
‘We both know most people can walk faster than this thing moves,’ I point out.
We’re starting to pass the well-spaced private moorings of luxurious houses that mark an edge of Welford, a maypoled, three-pubbed showcase of an Avon village tucked in the bulge of the long river bend. Medieval Binton Bridge lies ahead, spanning two river islands where the water has been crossed and forded since the thirteenth century. A notorious challenge to navigate, it’s the first road crossing since Stratford.
‘Let’s hope he can’t walk on water then.’ She closes the guide. ‘He owes me that.’
*
None of the nineties bastards ever pursued me in that reckless love-struck way men do in books and movies. They were too cool, too self-conscious. So was I.
Paddy certainly never gave chase; it was the other way around until we were at least six dates in, which felt natural, given I was the more gregarious one with the bigger social circle, and then we chased each other.
Very occasionally, I still allow myself a wistful sigh that I’ll never be wooed as an old-fashioned female object of desire in this lifetime.
The only time I can remember being persistently, adoringly shadowed by a love-struck admirer was at university when a fine art student in the year below got it into her head that I was the reincarnation of Tamara de Lempicka.
*
‘STOP! Fermare! Aspettare!’
Matteo is on the mooring platform of the Four Alls pub upriver from the bridge, his Ferrari parked at a rakish angle in the car park behind him. ‘You must STOP, cara!’
Far from flattered by this fantasy fulfilment, I feel supremely put out because it is not how karma should work. It should be me on the roof of this slow-moving narrowboat for a start, champagne in hand, mildly amused by his fervour, not sweating at the helm while my nubile daughter – sunbathing like a fifties starlet – raises her head to say, ‘It’s that man you’ve never seen before, Mum.’
I want to shout back, ‘Go away! Why are you even here? What about lunch service at Russo’s?’
We go past sooo slooooowly. I keep as far towards the opposite bank as I dare.
He cups his hands to his mouth. ‘Eliza!’
‘Who is he?’ Summer sits up, then gapes, open-mouthed. ‘Is that a Ferrari?’
‘Ignore him.’
‘Sure.’
So, so slowly.
The stone archway with the arrow is set at a horrible angle of approach, the current making it a skilful procedure to get through even in low June water. Matteo makes his way up onto the bridge while I’m still angling The Tempest, shouting down, ‘Eliza, listen to me, bellissima! Please stop this thing and talk to me!’
I pretend not to hear, although I am starting to wonder at his persistence. I know how much he wants this boat, but he can’t have her. It was a cheap trick using all that prosecco-pouring Latin charm on me, and blackmail won’t wash.
‘You have my cornicello! My little hornet.’
‘His what?’ asks Summer, eyes wide.
‘It’s a lucky charm, popular in Italy.’ Surely he hasn’t followed me all this way to get his jewellery back?
‘Is he…?’ Summer’s squinting up at him. ‘OMG Mum, is he Mr Vella?’
‘No!’ I glance up too, then wish I hadn’t. He’s looking straight back at me, not at the boat or the beautiful girl on its roof, but at me. The smile is winningly wide, the brow pure Clooney as he throws his arms out and cries, ‘Eliza, I have followed you all this way, please listen to—’ His words are
blotted out by traffic behind him on the bridge.
A bunch of canoeists have appeared in my path, forcing me off course. Now heading straight for a thick stone pillar, I have to throw the throttle into reverse to take another run at it. ‘What does that bloody book say again about getting through this thing?’
Picking up on my fear, Summer reads from the navigation guide, ‘Whilst not wishing to overemphasise the danger that appears at these bridges… blah blah… it’s nevertheless necessary to indicate the danger that does exist. Who wrote this? Just say IT’S DANGEROUS! OMG, we’re going to hit it!’ She covers her eyes as I go for broke and power through the arch.
It’s all a bit of an anticlimax as we emerge the other side, engine glugging contentedly, a family of ducks parting to let us through.
‘BRAVO, ELIZA!’ Matteo has crossed over the road to applaud and shout down after me. ‘BEN FATTO! Ti prego, possiamo parlare?’
‘I have no idea what he’s saying,’ I tell Summer.
‘He said please can we talk.’ (I’d forgotten she picked up a smattering skiing in the Dolomites with the school.) ‘Mum, are you and that man having an affair?’
‘Absolutely not!’ I snap. ‘It’s an Italian thing. He over-emotes.’
‘But you do know him?’
‘ELIZA! Voglio scusarmi!’
‘He owns Grandpa’s favourite restaurant and is obsessed with narrowboats.’
‘Is he stalking you?’
‘No! Although I have had Emma Thompson’s stalker on loan recently,’ I boast. ‘Well, more of a superfan. Very polite.’
High on the bridge, Matteo isn’t giving up. ‘You cannot run from this forever, bellissima!’
Oh I can, I think furiously, my heart beating in my throat. I can run from all of it. Just not very fast.
‘Joe has a friend with a stalker at uni,’ Summer confides, losing interest in our heckler. ‘Says he really grossed her out.’
‘Mia cara!’ Matteo’s voice is fading behind us.
‘This guy who stalked Joe’s friend,’ Summer confesses with a shudder, ‘he sent her literally thousands of friendship bracelets made from pubic hair.’
‘Sei una donna fantastica! Non reisco a smettere di…’ Matteo’s words fade away, the engine putter drowning him out.
‘Was he very hirsute?’ I ask distractedly.
‘It wasn’t all his own hair.’ She jumps down beside me and lifts my dark glasses, sharp eyes gazing straight into mine. ‘I demand to know everything, Mum. Does Dad know you have an admirer?’
The thought makes me feel a bit giddy and not at all like the grown-up I pretend to be when I tell her in a serious voice the (almost) unexpurgated truth about Miles wanting to sell the boat and my inadvertent deal-brokering. And I explain that I’m trying very hard to put things right, even if it means playing along with a juvenile dare. ‘Ed must have figured out what I planned to do. That’s why he stole aboard. He also guessed you might need help en route.’
She looks away. ‘I really thought Kwasi might follow us. I know I said he wouldn’t, but...’ Her nose wrinkles up. ‘Fuck him. We’re on the run. And we’re being chased. This is a whole new side to you I never knew existed, Mum.’ Her smile returns, bright as lightning, and I get another hug. ‘Sei una donna fantastica!’ as the man on the bridge said.’
‘Meaning?’
‘You’re one heck of a woman.’
Thrilled, I lift my chin, feeling like a female Indiana Jones pep-talking her youthful sidekick. ‘It’s just us three, the Avon and The Tempest, Summer. We are the river. Now let’s have some more music. Put some Annie on, will you?’
‘On it!’ She picks up my phone from the roof. A moment later we’re motoring through the water to strains of ‘The sun will come out tomorrow… ’
And it doesn’t matter that she’s picked Annie the musical not Annie Lennox, because we sing along at the tops of our voices that we love ya tomorrow. And today’s starting to feel pretty good too.
21
Down Time
Back on the picnic blankets on the barge roof, Summer’s now sitting cross-legged, paraphrasing the Avon Navigation Guide in an earnest voice-over that’s a spot-on Stacey Dooley Investigates: ‘Welford Lock is also known as the W A Cadbury Lock after the philanthropic Cadbury family who donated to the canal restoration.’ Her head tilts up. ‘The chocolatiers?’
‘The same.’ I steer carefully past the weir towards the moorings. The lock being inaccessible from the village, there’s thankfully no sign of Matteo.
‘Is he here, your Italian admirer?’
‘No man chases a woman four locks, Summer.’ But I check again nervously nonetheless.
Welford Lock marks a big step down in river height. A cavernously unforgiving piece of engineering, I have been dreading it the entire way. It marks the navigational point at which I am totally beyond my comfort zone. I’ve crewed it for Paddy a handful of times and it’s deep, fierce and murderously hard to operate.
It also needs setting. There’s a small clutch of white Regatta Set cruisers moored above it, haw haw voices out of sight. Tying the narrowboat up opposite them, I jump off to set the lock, Summer reluctantly helping. The water gushes into the chamber with titanic force as I call instructions to remind her of the order in which we raise and lower the paddles to fill it ready for The Tempest to come in.
‘I know all this, Mum!’ She does some half-hearted windlassing before straightening up and smiling widely as an excited member of the Regatta Set bustles up.
‘Let me do that for you, little lady!’
‘Would you mind? That’s so kind.’ She beams, still playing it as Stacey, stepping back to let him take over and giving me a discreet thumbs up.
Soon offers of help are piling in from fellow boaters who hurry across from their moorings, a small army of chest-puffing manliness setting the lock in no time while I’m sent back to fetch The Tempest in.
Once again at the tiller, I am shouted to move her this way or that, tutted at (argh!) and criticised for my handling skills entering the lock, then given a lecture by a man with a very white moustache on the importance of keeping her forward of the ‘cill’, a ledge that can tip her stern up as the water goes down, leading to catastrophe. My only fan is an overexcited young cocker spaniel running up and down the bank, who jumps into The Tempest as we go down and wriggles upside down for attention, accustomed to being a boat hound, all matted river coat and lock-side flirtation. I appreciate his company until we’re through the lock gates and alongside the landing stage to collect Summer, when I pick the little cocker up to offer back to one of her admirers on dry land.
‘Give it to the wife, will you?’ He waves me away before holding out his hand like Sir Walter Raleigh to help Summer aboard, eyes feeding lustily on her legs and backside.
A woman pants up, small and solid in Bermuda shorts and tee, eyeing my pearls suspiciously as she claims her dog back. ‘You two ladies on holiday, are you?’
We both watch as her husband reluctantly lets go of Summer’s hand and promises to call ahead to his friends downriver to make sure they help us at the next lock. ‘Let them know a pretty girl is on her way.’
‘You are such a gentleman.’ She gives it the full Scarlett O’Hara.
It’s only when he’s out of earshot I hear her mutter ‘Boomer.’
Age makes fools of us all.
*
Do I miss men doing practical things for me simply by virtue of my youth and sexual allure?
Admittedly, I never had as much of the latter as Summer – she has far more self-belief – but I had my fair share of assistance with flat tyres, blocked sinks and changing fuses during my temptress years; one male neighbour in London regularly and infuriatingly put out my rubbish and brought my post up.
The answer is no, I don’t miss knights in shining ardour. Whilst hands-on help is wonderful from either gender, I often used to find myself waiting in frustration while a man did something I could manage perfectly well
myself, then mansplained it and eyed my boobs. Which is not to say there aren’t skills many men possess that I don’t – Paddy’s are plentiful – but while women might grow up being called the ‘fairer’ sex by men eager to step in and help, the dark secret is that we must still stir their loins to be fairest of them all, and that strikes me as not very fair on balance. It’s either that or reminding them of their mothers.
The middle-aged hinterland between Damsel in Distress and Little Old Lady is full of women lifting heavy shopping into car boots unaided. Embrace the freedom, ladies.
*
Summer is on the roof channelling Stacey again as we chug through another Heart of Darkness stretch. ‘The river is particularly attractive as it passes Hillborough Manor, Shakespeare’s “haunted Hillboro”. Haunted Hillboro’s a Shakespeare Village, isn’t it, Mum?’ Her head bobs up. ‘Grandpa taught us all the doggerel verse.’
‘Remind me.’ I search for the chimneys of Hillborough Manor on the north bank, but we’re too deep in a twisting tunnel of trees and rushes, and I think the medieval house is still way ahead of us, while she chants:
‘Piping Pebworth, Dancing Marston,
Haunted Hillboro, Hungry Grafton,
Dodging Exhall, Papist Exford,
Beggerly Broom and Drunken Bidford.’
Then she informs me that ‘They used to have bar-crawl competitions. Shakespeare’s squad won, and he got so caned he woke up under a plum tree the next day.’
‘As you do.’
‘Never.’ She tilts her head and looks at me levelly, coming from that self-controlled generation with no great desire to drink (they prefer matcha tea or iced mocha).
‘Getting trolleyed on Southern Comfort and lemonade was my clique’s mission in life at your age,’ I grumble.
She gives me a withering look. ‘We take studying more seriously.’
‘Ah, but will you ever understand rumbustiously bawdy Elizabethan comedy? And it was a crab apple tree Shakespeare fell asleep under.’ I’m getting into my stride. ‘What young scholar can hope to understand the rude mechanicals unless she’s woken in a bath full of baked beans with a marker-penned moustache as your mother did as a student, Summer?’
