by Georgie Hall
‘To give them a lovely view. A lot of people like to retire there. Maybe your father and I will.’
‘Not so clever when ice caps melt and the sea levels increase and all their little metal houses float away because they’ve goofed up the planet, oh no.’
I ready myself to deflect another TED Talk, but she just smiles and continues reading from the book: ‘Barton Lock (or Elsie and Hiram Billington Lock) is unusual in having three walls to enclose the lock island. The original wooden gates were salvaged from the Thames. Hello!’ she calls back as we’re hailed by a group of lads in a day-hire barge, oy-oying Summer.
‘Don’t objectify my daughter!’ I shout.
‘Overdoing it, Mum,’ she mutters. ‘But I appreciate the effort.’
Then I almost steer into the weir by mistake as The Proclaimers start singing in my pocket that they would walk five hundred miles.
There’s only one Miles.
‘Aren’t you going to answer that?’ Summer asks.
I have started to sweat, the telltale hellfire of a flush rising.
‘No. We’ve got a lock to get through.’
It’s a busy spot, bargees and gongoozlers everywhere. I push my dark glasses higher, lower my hat brim and touch my pearls for luck, my eyes darting everywhere, almost surprised to find my brother’s not waiting for us. We share the drop with another narrowboat heading off from its lunch moorings, my body pouring sweat, stomach grumbling furiously. It’s past three.
As before, onlookers fall over themselves to help Summer and tell me where I’m going wrong.
This time, Summer tells them, ‘We know exactly what we’re doing and we don’t need any help, thanks!’ Which is unfortunate when moments later her phone rings with Vossi Bop and she dashes up the grassy bank out of sight to take the call, leaving me to do it all single-handed.
After a clumsy exit, I wait for her by the landing mooring, fanning myself and staring at my phone.
1 missed call. Miles hasn’t left a message or tried again.
I open Paddy’s messages to reread, my heart turning over a bit, knowing I must come clean.
But when I call there’s no answer, and Summer is clambering back on board, looking furious and a bit teary. I give her a hug.
‘Oh, Mum, he’s been looking for us for hours. He thinks I’m with Joachim!’
‘What did you tell him?’
‘I told him that I love him and nobody else, but I can’t handle how unhappy he makes me feel pretending this isn’t a thing, and that I found today objectifying and difficult, and that I’m helping you take the narrowboat to hide it because of this dare you have with Uncle Miles, and that my brother is trapped on board, and that we found some stray puppies and got rescued by a sexist, and that you are going through this problem with your hormones, but we have had some really good chats including about him.’
‘And what did he say?’
‘Nothing. I think his battery ran out while I was talking about the puppies.’
*
The stretch of river that runs from Barton Lock to Bidford Bridge in a curving serpentine isn’t long – five furlongs in navigation-speak, or just over half a mile – and houses with sweeping waterside gardens are already welcoming us on our right. We pass one I remember showing to potential buyers for the agency not long ago, a million-pound-plus des res with feature walls and a Jacuzzi.
Must buy that Lottery ticket, I remember. There’s a pub mooring in Bidford where I plan to stop to ingest food and caffeine, use the Ladies, try to calmly break my son out of the narrowboat’s bathroom and walk to the convenience store on the High Street beside the river to buy essential supplies and the ticket which will win us a hundred and twenty three million life-changing pounds.
My phone now lights up with ‘Ain’t Misbehavin’’ and Mum’s picture.
I take the call.
‘Everything’s fine!’ she says brightly.
‘Does Miles suspect anything?’
‘Not a thing. He’s at the airfield all afternoon, so your father and I decided to come out for a little drive and offer our moral support. I hope you don’t mind, but I told Daddy what you’re doing. He thinks you’re quite mad, darling girl. Where are you? We’re in Bidford. We’ve bought a picnic so we can all have tea in Big Meadow and we’re about to park. According to your little map app thing, you should be nearly here.’
‘You can see my location?’
‘On my telephone, yes. I wrote down the instructions so I’d remember what you told me to do.’
Eliza Ludd strikes again. It seems I’ve only stopped sharing my whereabouts with Paddy, but the rest of the family are still able to pinpoint me from anywhere on Earth. Meanwhile, having laboriously explained Google Maps to Mum so that she could track my whereabouts from Prêt a Manger on a recent trip to Bicester Shopping Village, she’s used this privileged info to turn spy pro.
I’m steering the boat around the top of the serpentine bend, the medieval stone packhorse bridge coming into sight two furlongs ahead with its traffic lights at either end and the usual queue of cars. It’s too narrow for two lanes of traffic, so motorists are obliged to take turns to cross in single file. The popularity of the riverside park, Big Meadow, means there’s always a tailback. The sun glints off car roofs as they hurry across, an angry horn beeping as somebody nips through behind the others after the light’s changed to red.
The same car beep echoes in my ear.
My parents are on the bridge.
‘You’ll never guess who we’ve just spotted!’ Mum gasps. I can hear a snarly engine, which is odd because their Leaf is pretty much silent.
Then Dad’s voice says, ‘Bloody decent motor, that.’
In the background on the phone, a voice shouts, ‘Cosa diamine stai facendo, eh?’ and Mum titters. ‘It’s Matteo from Russo’s having a frightful ding-dong with a man in a van in front of us.’
Matteo Mele is also on the bridge.
‘Has he seen you?’
‘No, we’re just turning into Big Meadow and he’s crossing over. We’ll park down by the day moorings where we all usually stop with Paddy. See you there!’
I hang up fast.
The bridge is still too far away to make out individuals on it. I put the throttle to reverse and give it a blast to kill our speed before clicking it to neutral, the narrowboat now at a stable enough standstill for me to dash into the saloon to dig out Paddy’s birdwatching binoculars. Lady and her puppies watch me sleepily. Summer looks up from reading back through messages on her phone, her eyes suspiciously red.
‘Granna and Grandpa have come to Bidford to see us,’ I explain, ‘and guess who is already waiting on the bridge?’
‘Really?’ she yelps.
I hurry back up on deck and scan the river ahead. I can no longer hear the Ferrari engine; it must have driven over and away.
Summer follows me. ‘Can you see him?’
‘No…’ I keep looking, straining my ears. ‘Can you hear a loud, snarly engine?’
‘I can hear lots of car engines.’ She concentrates. ‘But he just has an old scooter, a Lambretta, I think.’
‘Who has?’
‘Kwasi.’ She takes the binoculars. ‘I thought that’s who you meant? He’s coming after me and Joachim, remember?’
‘Why would he still believe you’re with Pretend Ex when you told him about hiding the boat and Ed and the puppies?’
‘Because I sort of let him think he was involved?’
‘Why?’
‘To make him jealous?’
‘Summer, you have so much to learn!’ I wail.
‘If he thinks I’m with Joachim, he is going to literally go HAM, isn’t he?’
After a pause, I’m forced to ask, ‘As in cooked meat?’
‘No, it’s like really, really angry. As in Hard As Motherfu—’
‘OK! I get it.’
My star-crossed daughter clambers on the roof, binoculars peeled. ‘Why aren’t we moving?’
‘I think Miles might be onto us,’ I mutter, thinking about the missed call. ‘He might have persuaded Granna and Grandpa to double-cross us.’
‘That’s just paranoid, Mum. Or is that your hormones too?’
‘Yes, it’s all bloody hormones, Summer!’ I throw the throttle into forward thrust once more. ‘And mine make me feel HAM pretty much constantly.’
*
It seems Summer embellished the ‘older lover’ story a lot when talking about him to Kwasi, starting back in the days when it was all flirty fun, later using Joachim for creative inspiration at school whilst working alongside ‘Mr Owusu’, fuelling his already conflicted sense of outrage. If I thought Patch, the fictional red-and-white spaniel was a bit of an over-elaborate lie, it’s nothing on erudite Joachim Conti, the acting coach who took her virginity so expertly at summer drama camp before returning to Teatro Español in his native Madrid, from where he has remained a Svengali and confidante throughout her later teens.
As well as possessing a back story that could make a six-part Netflix drama series, turns out, Joachim is just my type. Like mother like daughter.
‘It was actually Jack who took my virginity and vice versa,’ Summer confides from behind binoculars, information I had quietly guessed at and now don’t know quite what to do with; should I say ‘ah yes, I thought as much’ or ‘good to know’ or ‘mine was a Smiths’ fan called Paul, I still have one of the mix tapes he made me’? I decide to use my deafening silence and a wise, salty look at the tiller.
The Tempest is soon eating up the two furlongs to the bridge at a good lick, following in the wake of another traditional narrowboat called Romeo’s Juliet which seems fitting.
‘I want you to understand that Kwasi isn’t being possessive or controlling,’ Summer says. ‘He just thinks Joachim is an exploitative creep and he wants to warn him off big time.’
I try to imagine Paddy pumped over any of my bastard exes, real or imaginary. Nope. Not even when we first married. ‘Why did you lie so elaborately?’
‘It was a good story,’ she shrugs, ‘and I tell good stories. Truth is sometimes as much about authenticity of thought as arrangement of fact.’
‘Nice try, but you should be the one to kill Joachim, Summer,’ I tell her. ‘Admit he’s fake.’
‘I have tried!’ she pleads unconvincingly. ‘You don’t know Kwaz. He’s all fire and passion. I’m amazed he hasn’t figured out yet, especially when I uploaded that photo onto my phone. He was supposed to guess straight away. See this?’ She holds it out, her face on screen beaming beside a familiar-looking man in blue surgical scrubs.
‘Summer, that’s you and George Clooney.’
‘I know! How bad is that Photoshop? I did it in, like, one minute? And how can Kwasi not know who Clooney is? He’s been around longer than Disney. Granna loves him. The original picture was taken before I was born.’ She looks at me over the butterfly glasses. ‘Are you OK, Mum? You look white?’
We’re nearly at the bridge, motoring towards the furthest left of its eight arches, the current pulling us off course hard. Somebody is shouting down from the busy road above.
‘Bit distracted. Who’s that?’
‘Ohmygod, Mum, it’s him! On the top of the bridge! Go faster! FASTER!’
‘Where?’ Nobody looks familiar. The usual crowd of onlookers are crammed into the little step-aside spots where they must wait for single-file traffic to pass, some snapping and recording. Then I spot a big digital camera, a small afro and the face of a stone angel.
‘Summer! Princess!’ he yells. ‘You don’t have to fooking do this, beautiful!’
‘He did it!’ Summer cries jubilantly. ‘He chased me four locks.’ She turns to me. ‘You said no man chases a woman four locks?’
I could point out that this is a bridge which means it’s technically only been three locks since we said hasta la vista to the pretend wedding, but I don’t want to spoil her moment.
‘Summer Hollander, let them arrest me, I fooking love you!’ he shouts down, sounding very Liam Gallagher. ‘I’ll fight anyone for you. And I’ll wait for you.’ He points down at me in my hat and dark glasses. ‘She’s MINE, you hear! No old bastard is laying a finger on my princess!’ Then he double takes. ‘Mrs Hollander?’
I wave politely. ‘Mr Owusu, hi!’
As we head under the left arch, Summer shouts up, ‘I love you too! Please don’t worry about Mum. Or Joachim!’
‘I’ll drop you off here,’ I promise her. ‘Talk to him and tell him the truth. But go back home with Granna and Grandpa, understood?’ We’re puttering past the pub where I’d first intended to stop, now aiming for the public moorings further ahead on the opposite bank where Mum and Dad are waiting beyond the trees.
‘PRINCESS!’ comes a shout from the bridge.
‘Will you really be OK without me?’ Summer frets. ‘Princess is ironic by the way.’
The pub’s car park is directly alongside the river, a Ferrari sitting conspicuously in it.
‘We’ll be fine,’ I mutter distractedly, scouring the pub’s decked sun terrace. A familiar figure is lounging at a table, nursing a tiny coffee cup. Our gazes lock for a long, long second before he stands up to shout, ‘BELLISSIMA!’
Summer spots him. ‘Christ, Mum, do you owe him money or something?’
I look away, a marching drum in my chest.
*
I should not be flattered by this. Not, not, not. It’s the boat he’s after. Or his lucky charm. Or he’s simply proving a point. Or he is a stalker after all. (Face it, Eliza, this isn’t Love, Actually, and even if it were, now that we’re all wise to that film’s misogynist subtext – and realise Dame Emma is the only grown woman in it, which is why she makes us cry because she is desexualised into mothering everyone and wipes secret tears away while her husband wants to fuck his sexy young PA – you too would have a few witty one-liners and no sexy Italians chasing you whatsoever.)
Yet I am flattered by this. Because this man still looks me in the eyes, even across a river. And the jolt I felt realising that on meeting him is still jolting.
I am flattered because I am a grown woman, middle-aged mother, and competitive Finch whose daughter can’t quite believe that a man could chase me four locks too.
Five, actually.
*
‘SUMMER, PRINCESS!’ comes another shout from the bridge.
‘DARLING GIRL! Bellissima!’ from the sun deck.
I focus on the river, my face on fire, wondering how I get out of this and praying Mum and Dad don’t cotton on to what’s happening.
‘SUMMER!’ From the bridge.
‘CRAZY LADY! DOLCESSA!’ The sun deck descants.
‘HEY, FELLA!’ Voice moving along bridge towards pub. ‘Yeah, YOU down there. WHO THE FOOK ARE YOU, CALLING MY BEAUTIFUL GIRL A CRAZY LADY?’
Standing delivery from pub sun deck to bridge: ‘Signore, I do not know what you are talking about!’
‘FOOK, YOU’RE HIM, AREN’T YOU?’ Leaping over wall from bridge into pub car park (inadvertently landing on a car bonnet).
‘Oddio, NOT the Ferrari!’
Running through car park. ‘JOACHIM FOOKING CONTI!’
Summer shouts, ‘No, Kwaz!’
I look back in alarm.
Matteo is standing on the sun deck, draining his tiny coffee. ‘Do NOT use language like that in the presence of ladies, basta!’
Leaping over the rail from car park to sun deck, Kwasi storms, ‘SAY THAT TO MY FACE!’
‘Do not use that language in the presence of— ooft!’ The first punch lands.
Summer shrieks, ‘Do something, Mum!’
‘Just bloody well grow up and stop that!’
They naturally take no notice. As The Tempest keeps moving veeeeeeeeeeeery slowly past the pub on the river, all attention is on Matteo and Kwasi engaged in a wrestling match on the sun deck.
Summer’s videoing it on her phone shouting, ‘THIS WILL BE SHOWN IN COURT!’
I long
to add, ‘or Instagram slash YouTube slash Twitter,’ but I can’t risk our truce. It’s mercifully not much of a fight. Kwasi’s using the same bear hug tactic he used with the groom so Matteo can’t throw a return punch, plus his camera’s hanging from one shoulder like a handbag. They could be drunken slow-dancing until two burly men in bar aprons appear to separate them.
‘THAT MAN ISN’T JOACHIM, KWASI!’ Summer shouts. ‘JUST SOME WEIRDO WHO KEEPS PESTERING MY MUM! Come back over the bridge! We’re stopping!’
He sets off at a run, shouting a threat at Matteo I don’t catch. Meanwhile, Summer dives into the cabin to raid my handbag again, this time for cosmetics.
Wiping his face with a large white handkerchief, Matteo watches me warily over it, like a mask. That dark, intent gaze. The pestering weirdo line hasn’t gone down well, I sense. I hold up a hand, hoping he will take it as a peaceful farewell gesture.
He dips his head, raises the handkerchief in surrender and smiles ruefully, then turns to walk away. I hate to admit it, because it’s a very dignified response, but I’d expected a bit more drama.
I navigate across the river towards the mooring pitches on the opposite bank where I can see Mum and Dad’s Leaf parked at the far end with their picnic table already set up, complete with flowered folding chairs, the Jack Russell lying in the shade beneath one.
I scour the area for Miles, but unless he’s hiding up a tree, I don’t think he’s here.
‘HELLO, TEMPESTUOUS ONES!’ Dad is looking out for us, leaning heavily on his stick. ‘Need talking in, Eliza? LEFT a BIT! Not so fast! Use the bloody bow thruster!’
The fight across the river was too far from earshot to have attracted their attention (not that Dad would ever hear it), this little pocket of riverside recreation a haven of vintage thermos and plastic plates.
‘LEFT A BIT! MIND THAT OTHER BOAT! STRAIGHTEN UP!’ Dad keeps barking useless advice. ‘WHERE’S PADDY WHEN YOU NEED HIM, EH?’
‘Cucumber sandwiches ahoy!’ Mum greets us, hawking two plastic coolers round from the car boot. ‘And seedless raspberry jam for Ed. What on earth are you wearing, Eliza? You look like a Kwik Fit Fitter. Never mind, you are doing brilliantly and we are very proud of you, aren’t we, Peter?’
