The Narrowboat Summer

by Anne Youngson

  She reached the station tired and irritable and realized she had no idea what she was doing there. She had imagined something like the stations she used in London, with a café and a shop or two, but this was just two platforms, a tunnel between them, a Portakabin (closed) for ticket sales. A train arrived, from the south, and people climbed out. None of them was Anastasia, who, even in this abundance of variety, would have stood out as fitting into a category of one. Eve was disappointed. She must be fonder of the old lady than she had imagined. Or maybe, after the weeks of nothing happening, she was suddenly desperate for something to happen.

  She cycled on into Long Buckby and found a café, bought herself a hot chocolate and a slice of carrot cake. She sat in a corner and phoned Jacob from the flat upstairs. He did something that involved computers—she had been told, she could not remember who by, that he was a games designer, but she refused to believe this; it sounded exactly the sort of thing a chirpy little toerag like Jacob would tell people. She imagined he designed websites for small businesses. He lived with his partner, a large, silent man called Vic, who worked irregular hours and was often away. Eve assumed it must be Vic’s high-powered job that had funded the purchase of the flat and kept Jacob in a style which suited him without the need for much effort in the pursuit of money. They were unobjectionable neighbors, but she had limited her contact with them to collecting the parcel deliveries that Jacob, at home all day, took in for her, in exchange for which she gave them a bottle of gin at Christmas. She had his number in her phone, though, as the delivery of parcels had meant occasional contact needed to be made.

  Jacob answered on the second ring.

  “Ho, there, Eve! Quelle surprise. I thought you were off boating in the back of beyond.”

  “I am, but there is a phone signal in this particular part of the further side of beyond. Anastasia tells me you’ve been helping her organize a trip to visit us.”

  “I have, I have. What a woman that is! Can you imagine having her for a grandmother? Or a mother, even? You’d be well sorted out, wouldn’t you? Properly buffed up by the time you were ten.”

  “Do you know what train she was planning to catch? I’m keen to have her boat looking the way she’d want it to, before she arrives.”

  “I should think you are! Right, the plan is, she goes with Vic tomorrow morning to Euston, when he goes to work. He has to be in in time to take the ten forty to Edinburgh, so she should be able to get a train to Long Buckby mid-morning.”

  “That’s very kind of Vic.”

  “Well, it is, actually. He’s terrified of her. I might have to tag along with them to make sure he doesn’t have conniptions before they get there. There again, she’ll only assume I’m coming along to make sure she gets the train safely, and that’ll wind her up. She’s a bit on the independent side, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, but she’s not well. Perhaps Vic can make sure she’s OK at your end, and if you let me know when she’s arriving at this end, we can meet her.”

  “Vic’s got his colleagues all lined up to keep a surreptitious eye on her, don’t you worry. The whole station staff will be looking out for her.”

  “What does Vic do, then?” she asked.

  “He’s a train driver. Did you honestly not know that? My dear, we have not got to know each other as well as neighbors ought. You must come round when you get back and we’ll have a good old gossip, find out everything there is to know about each other. How does that sound?”

  “Terrible,” said Eve, and Jacob laughed and hung up.

  She did not enjoy the hot chocolate or the carrot cake as much as she had planned she would when she decided to indulge herself. She was cross with herself for having fallen into misconceptions about Jacob and Vic; entirely through her own laziness, she had adopted a cliché as if it were fact and now found that, as so often, the fact was more interesting than the cliché. But as well as this shameful feeling, she was unsettled by the suggestion that there was a point in the not-too-distant future when she would go back to her flat, would be around to take time for a cozy little chat over coffee or wine with Jacob. It was like the moment when she realized, rather more than halfway through her time in the sixth form, that at some point the day of the first exam would arrive. She had always known it would, but at some impossibly remote date by which time some mystical dust would have transformed her into the sort of person with the sort of knowledge that made exams easy. It was not today, or tomorrow, so what did it matter if the dust had not yet blown in? Or so she had thought until she allowed herself to recognize that day would follow day to the dread day and there was no hope, no dust on the horizon. It was entirely down to the person she now was and would ever be. So she had better take steps to make the day, when it came, as painless as possible. She had fallen into the same sense of timelessness, of expecting something to happen before the buffers at the end of the track (in this case, she was thinking, Chester) were reached that would make everything easy, everything obvious.

  She bought another piece of carrot cake for Sally and cycled back with the wind behind her. Sally was sitting idle, reading a book, and accepted both the carrot cake and the news that Anastasia would not be arriving until the next day so calmly that Eve had to walk Noah a couple of miles along the towpath and back to re-establish the rhythm of living on the canal.

  * * *

  EVE AND SALLY CAME CLOSE to falling out over breakfast. The subject of their disagreement was Anastasia, but even as they were failing to agree on whether one of them or both of them should go to meet her at the station, in preference to both of them waiting with the Number One, they were aware that the real reason they were arguing was elsewhere, buried. Sally thought they should watch the bus stop until a bus arrived, then go up to the bridge if they spotted Anastasia alighting to carry her bag down to the boat. No, no, said Eve. She’ll need help with her bag at the station. But then, Sally said, it will look as if we are escorting her to the Number One, as if it is our boat, not hers. So we will, countered Eve, if we meet her by the bus stop. No, said Sally, we can hang back, let her approach by herself. We can do that if we’re on the bus with her, said Eve. We could be hanging around Long Buckby station all day, said Sally. We could go to the café in the village, said Eve, and wait there. Even though it’s half a mile away, said Sally.

  They occupied themselves at different ends of the boat, waiting for their normal harmony to be restored. At least, that was what Sally was waiting for until she remembered the conversations with Arthur about winning and losing, and she began to suspect that what Eve was waiting for was a capitulation that would mean victory for her side of the argument. Or, to put it another way, for Sally to lose. She stopped folding her pajamas and sat down on the bunk, thinking this through. She thought back to all the previous times when they had not both come to the same conclusion—where to moor, whether to eat in or go out, when to stop for lunch, for water, for a pump-out, for fuel. There was no pattern, she realized. Sometimes, Eve fell in with her alternative, sometimes she fell in with Eve’s. Between them, there had never been the tension that comes from one of two people always wanting to be right. No matter how trivial the matter in hand was, no matter how much stronger the arguments for the other solution might be.

  Sally put her pajamas away and went to find Eve, who was polishing the kettle.

  “It doesn’t honestly matter, does it?” she said.

  “No,” said Eve. “Of course it doesn’t.” She gave Sally a hug.

  “I think we’re both just nervous of Anastasia turning up. Which is pretty ridiculous. What’s the worst that could happen?”

  “She could throw us off the Number One,” said Eve.

  “Oh, no,” said Sally. “I don’t think we’d allow her to do that.”

  Eve’s phone announced an incoming text message. It was Jacob, telling them which train Anastasia would be on, what time she would arrive.

  “That’s settled, then,” said Sally. “Let’s go and meet her.”

&n
bsp; * * *

  They caught a bus to the station. Moving fast, away from the canal. They reached the station early and sat on a bench on the platform, waiting for the train to arrive. Eve stuck her legs out in front of her and asked Sally why they never seemed to tan at the same rate as the rest of her. There was a wide, white strip on her arm when she took off her watch, and a tideline where her T-shirt sleeves ended, but her legs remained as white as ever.

  “You probably need to lie down in the sun,” Sally said. “Stretch out on the roof and rotate yourself every half hour. If you’re that bothered, that is.”

  “I’m not,” admitted Eve, tucking her heels back under the bench. “Just idly wondering. Your legs look brown enough without you having to behave like a spit-roasted chicken.”

  “Perhaps I sit still more than you do,” said Sally. “I’m not as restless. Also, I tan more easily.”

  “Am I restless? I always thought I was a bit of a lump. Inert to the point of idleness.”

  “Maybe you were when you had whatever people do in an office to occupy yourself with. But you skip about a lot now.”

  “I have lost weight. Look.” Eve pulled the waistband of her shorts away from her middle. “Time was, there wasn’t any room for a flea to fit in there.”

  The train arrived. They stood up. A handful of people alighted briskly onto the platform and dispersed. Another two or three emerged more sedately and began to walk away from the train. At the last moment, the figure of Anastasia appeared in the doorway of the quiet coach and slowly descended. A man in a hi-vis jacket waiting to wave the train off, Eve, Sally and another passenger who was still strolling past, rushed to help her.

  “What is so difficult,” she said, “about getting off a train? I may be old but I’m not helpless.”

  They all backed away and waited at a distance until Anastasia’s feet were firmly planted on the platform, a soft, zip-up bag that Eve recognized as one of hers, sitting beside her.

  “Anastasia,” said Sally. “It’s so lovely to see you.”

  Anastasia looked at her fiercely, probing for insincerity and, apparently finding none, nodded.

  “Good to be here,” she said, and the wrinkles on her face (surely deeper now?) produced a smile. “It’s been an adventure.”

  Eve picked up the bag and they set off for the steps down to the tunnel under the track, setting a pace that was designed to be slow enough without being insulting. By the time they had negotiated the steps, tunnel and more steps and reached the bus stop, Anastasia was breathing a little heavily, but there again, she was wearing too many clothes for what had turned out to be a warm day. The bus arrived and they were on it and then off it, at the bridge, with Eve and Sally hanging back to let Anastasia reach the parapet first, to let her take her first look at the neatly moored, sparkling clean Number One without them.

  As the noise of the bus faded away, they became aware of another, horribly familiar sound. On the Number One, Noah was howling. Eve and Sally rushed over the road to join Anastasia at the parapet. A woman had come out of the hire boat moored ahead of them. A couple walking past had stopped in their tracks. All three were transfixed, looking at the boat and at one another. The male half of the couple took a step toward the Number One and crouched down to peer through the windows. The woman from the hire boat took out her mobile phone.

  “Well, get a move on,” said Anastasia. “Get down there.”

  “I’ll go,” said Sally, and sprinted down the steps, along the towpath.

  “Sorry, sorry,” she called, as she ran. “It’s only the dog showing off. He’s all right.”

  “He doesn’t sound it,” said the man.

  “No,” said Sally. “But he is. I’ll show you.”

  She unlocked the rear doors and Noah barreled past her, reaching Anastasia as she neared the bottom of the steps. Anastasia sat down, or Noah knocked her over, it was hard to tell. One moment she was upright and Noah was moving forward, the next, both woman and dog were in a heap on the steps.

  “Is that dog safe?” asked the woman from the boat, still holding her phone.

  “That dog,” said Sally, “is ecstatic.” She walked back to where Eve was still standing, holding the bag, watching the reunion. She could hear the baritone rumble of Anastasia’s voice as she approached, heaping abuse on Noah without disguising that she was as delighted to see him as he was to see her.

  At last they made it onto the boat, with Noah keeping some part of his anatomy in contact with some part of Anastasia’s anatomy all the way. She looked round. Then she laughed her rumbling, disconcerting laugh.

  “I have never seen this boat so clean,” she said. “What were you thinking? One dull surface and I’d demand my boat back? What a pair of idiots. Now make me a cup of tea.” She shed a layer and sat down. “And what have you done to yourself?” she asked, looking at Sally.

  “We’ve been exploring the Yasmin-ness of Sally,” said Eve. “Introducing a bit of color, a bit of freedom.”

  Anastasia picked up her mug and sucked noisily at the contents.

  “Superficially,” said Sally.

  “Yes,” said Anastasia, putting the mug down, but not before Sally had noticed the ring of hazy moisture it had left behind, which she had to prevent herself from wiping up, given this conversation—any conversation with Anastasia—was more important than a mark on the table. “Doesn’t suit you.”

  “It doesn’t suit the person she was,” said Eve. “Mrs. Sally Allsop of 42 Beech Grove.”

  “But I can’t leave that person behind simply by not looking like her,” said Sally. “I agree with Anastasia. It doesn’t suit me.”

  “I thought you liked it,” said Eve. “Didn’t you say how liberating it was?”

  “Yes, and that was true, but it was like my daughter’s punk phase, before she’d grown up enough to work out it wasn’t all about the way she looked. It was about the person she was, and wanted to be.”

  “Until she’d grown up,” repeated Anastasia.

  “Yes,” said Sally. “Am I grown up, do you think?”

  “Yes,” said Anastasia.

  “But what does that mean?” asked Eve. “Does being grown up mean we are all doomed to be ordinary?”

  “No,” said Anastasia. “It means accepting we are all extraordinary in ordinary ways.” Then she sat up a little straighter and said: “I see you’ve met Arthur.”

  They followed Anastasia’s eyes to where the book Sally was reading lay on the shelf.

  “We were going to tell you,” said Sally, as if they had been caught out in some sort of deceit.

  “Tell me now. How was he?”

  “Worried about you.”

  Anastasia said nothing, carried on looking at the dull, scuffed spine of Mr. Lucton’s Freedom. “Apart from that?”

  “Well, he seemed very odd,” said Sally.

  “Oh, yes,” said Anastasia. “Always and ever.”

  “And mysterious,” said Eve. “We were hoping you would tell us a bit more about him.”

  “I could,” said Anastasia. “I could tell you his story and it wouldn’t make him seem any less odd, but it would explain a thing or two. But I’m not sure I will. I’ll think about it.”

  “If we’re not going to talk about Arthur, we should talk about you,” said Sally. “Tell us exactly what the doctors said. What happens next.”

  “I knew you didn’t need the silly hair and the ridiculous clothes,” said Anastasia. But she didn’t answer the question.

  * * *

  They stayed at the mooring overnight. Anastasia was happy to drink tea and read the log, sitting under the shade of the hedge with the business of the canal going past in front of her. One of the boats passing tooted its horn and the people on board waved at her. A couple on a boat moored farther up toward the junction walked past and stopped to remind her she had helped them out of a tricky situation the summer before last, on the Llangollen Canal.

  “Pure selfishness, I expect,” said Anastasia. �
�You were probably going to cause me a problem if I didn’t help.”

  “No, no,” said the woman. She was younger than Eve and Sally and was wearing a T-shirt with writing on it: at the top, “True Belief,” below that, “Angie,” below that “Lechlade.” Sally, observing the meeting from the roof of the Number One, assumed these were the names of the boat, then the name of the woman, and then either her surname or the place where the boat was registered. It was too much information, Sally thought. The man with her was wearing a sleeveless jerkin over his T-shirt, so if he was also carrying his name across his nipples he was keeping it under wraps.

  “Don’t you remember?” said Angie. “We’d just about run out of diesel. The engine was beginning to cough a bit, you know, and we realized what was happening, so we pulled into the bank and turned the engine off, to make sure it didn’t actually run dry. We knew better than to let it do that! Of course, we were complete novices back then.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Anastasia. “I remember the boat now. All painted up and pretty. I wouldn’t have recognized you, though. Not because you’ve changed but because I don’t find people vary enough, one from another, to stick in my mind.”

  “Well, you were the only person who stopped to help, so we remember you,” said the man. “We asked everyone passing if they had a spare can and none of them did, and they said so and went on their way. But you gave us a lift down to the boatyard and you persuaded someone you knew at the yard to lend us a can and run us back to the True Belief .”