The Narrowboat Summer

by Anne Youngson

  “We’re old hands, now,” said Angie. “We’re spending at least six months of the year on the canal.”

  “What’s the boat looking like now?” asked Anastasia. “A little less perfect?”

  “Oh, no! We’re looking after it. Come down and see.”

  Sally thought Anastasia would refuse this invitation, but she levered herself out of the chair and jerked her head at Sally, who slid off the roof and walked along with them.

  The True Belief was perfect. It was the sort of boat that those advertising the canals would use on posters or in brochures. It was painted green, with a broad red line around the sides, and in between each of the porthole windows was a picture, densely packed with stylized roses and leaves, with a roundel in the middle showing something unconnected with the True Belief or indeed with the canal, such as a dog’s head in profile, or a castle with a winding road leading up to it. Sally had been interested in the first examples of this type of painting when she first noticed it, in the shops they went into or on pots and jugs on the roofs of other boats, but she had found it impossible to understand or analyze and now it felt like the canal equivalent of scented candles—a ubiquitous example of something once relevant but now purely ornamental. The True Belief, as well as the paintings on the side, had the same motifs on a bucket on the roof, full of geraniums in a color slightly less bright than that which the painter had used for the representation of flowers on their container. The ropes were in coils; the brass cowl on the chimney was polished to a shine Sally did not believe they could ever dream of achieving on the Number One. There were some scores in the paint on the bow, and the fenders, traditionally woven from plaited rope, were scuffed and dirty. Otherwise, the True Belief could have been run off that moment by a 3D printer programmed to produce the perfect narrowboat.

  “Congratulations,” said Anastasia. “You’ve maintained it to an appropriate standard.”

  The couple both looked smug.

  “Would your daughter like to see inside?” asked Angie.

  Sally took a second to realize this meant her, and she would have rejected the description—she did not know how old Anastasia was and though it might be mathematically possible, she felt unworthy of the distinction. If Anastasia had a daughter, which was after all possible, she would have to be a much stronger and more significant person than she, Sally Allsop, was. But she had no chance to speak before Anastasia, without correcting the error, accepted the invitation on her behalf.

  Inside, the True Belief immediately struck Sally as cluttered. The windows were festooned with bits of wispy lace and patterned curtains made with far more cloth than was necessary to do the job they were intended to do, and thus had to be held back from the portholes with brass hooks. There were metal oval plaques commemorating the various canals that Angie and, it turned out, Brian had been along or intended to go along, screwed to the fronts of shelves designed to hold the knick-knacks that Anastasia would never have on her boat, just as she would not have contemplated the quantity of cushions and pictures, which ought to make the place look cozy, but that was not the word Sally was searching for to be able to say something positive to the owners. Nor was it charming, though it might have been; it might have been elegant but, again, it wasn’t. In the end she picked a word she thought was true and which the True Believers would like.

  “It’s very authentic,” she said.

  After she had been shown the toilet and shower (which were rather more inviting than those on the Number One) and the front cabin (too soft) and they had refused refreshment, Sally was released from the ordeal and allowed to catch up Anastasia, who had set off without her.

  “It isn’t, you know,” Anastasia said, as she came alongside.

  “Sorry—isn’t what?”

  “Authentic. The history of the canals is one of reinvention; often of simultaneous reinventions which coexisted alongside each other. Whoever found a use for a canal created a tradition of using it in a way that suited their purposes. Any tradition can only be authentic in that one context.”

  “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

  “I mean, it’s a place where everyone has the choice as to what it is going to be for them. No one can tell you that you are out of step. That’s the joy of it. Being able to be out of step.”

  “But the True Believers think they are authentic. They think there is a tradition of canal-boat painting and hardware and so on. Are you saying this never existed?”

  “Look, the canals were made to transport goods, by men with money for other men with money. They created employment and prosperity, like factories did. They had a purpose, which was to create wealth, and they did—for the men who owned the companies and, albeit at a lower level, for the men who worked for the companies. Then the railways came and the canals weren’t as important, so the commercial activity scaled down and it was smaller companies making less money, but still enough, and individuals, working for themselves.”

  They had arrived back at the Number One and Anastasia, who had begun to breathe heavily with the effort of walking and talking, sat down on the chair in the shade of the hedge. She pointed at her boat. “They were proud of their boats, the Number Ones, and they decorated them. At the same time, other people looking for a way to use the canals to make money began to offer pleasure-boat trips. As the commercial prospects faded, the idea of using the canals for leisure took hold, and some of the features of the working boats were carried across to the boats being used for the sheer fun of it. Just as the developers converting redundant factories to flats and offices keep a few of the features from the industrial past—the pipes, a hoist or two, a clocking-in machine. And now, of course”—she gestured right and left along the towpath—“anyone can use the canal, for holidays, for living, for plying a trade. They’ve always been a bit alternative. An alternative to a horse and cart, then an alternative to a railway, then an alternative to a caravan holiday, an alternative to a house. I like that. I like that it’s not fixed. No one owns it. And I like that it is slow, which is exactly what made the search for alternatives essential. The canals were wide enough to cope with a boat moving at the walking pace of a horse. Any faster, and they break apart. That’s the only thing that needs to be preserved: the banks, the locks, the bridges. And what would destroy them is speed. I like that.”

  “Eve is fascinated by the engineering brilliance of their design.”

  “Right! Quite right. That’s her canal, an almost unbelievable triumph of engineering and human ingenuity. Think about that, next time you see roses painted on the side of a boat, and consider the scale of achievement of the one against the other.”

  5

  To Solihull

  EVE MADE AN EFFORT with the meal that night. She had been through the battered copy of the Good Housekeeping cookbook that was the only one Sally had brought on board. It had not occurred to her to bring one at all, but now she was becoming interested in the business of cooking, she was wondering if there wasn’t more adventure to be had from the world of recipe books. But since she was restricted to the one, she picked out something that felt as close to exotic as possible: a lamb tagine with apricots. She prepared couscous to go with it and an Eton mess to follow, though she was unhappy with this. It felt too easy and there was a lack of harmony between the two courses. She amazed herself by thinking this, and felt rather smug for having thought it.

  She worked methodically, laying out the ingredients before she started each step and completing that step before going on to the next, cleaning up as she went along. It made her feel empowered and in control—those magic concepts she had heard bandied about at work, and had bandied about herself, as the secret to a successful outcome and a satisfied workforce. At the time, the word “feel” had a whiff of the weasel about it: we want to feel empowered and in control, or, more often, we want you/them to feel, etc. As if it did not matter whether any power was actually delegated, only that those doing the work should be under the illusion that it had been. Eve,
as she grated nutmeg and whisked cream, knew that she genuinely did feel that way, and also, that she had rarely, if ever, felt as she did now back when she was at work.

  “I might reinvent myself as a chef,” she told Sally and Anastasia when they got back from their visit to the True Belief.

  “Is it going to be that good?” asked Sally.

  “Not necessarily, but it’s been such fun cooking it.”

  “There’s fun and there’s hard work,” said Anastasia. “Cooking, now, that’s hard work. You’d have to be sure there was enough fun involved to make the hard work worth it.”

  “I’m not sure I was being serious,” said Eve.

  The food was good and the glow sustained Eve through a Scrabble game where Sally came very close to beating Anastasia and she was a poor third. When it came to bedtime, Anastasia rejected their offer to sleep together on the double bed conversion in the middle cabin.

  “I wouldn’t do that for anyone,” she said. “Climb in with either of you. So I don’t see why I should expect you to.”

  “You’re not just anyone,” said Eve.

  “Don’t be so wet,” said Anastasia.

  So Sally moved her things back into the rear cabin and Eve joined her. It was still a disturbed night. Although Eve knew she was a noisy sleeper, Anastasia was noisier still, her coughs, wheezes and snores little diminished by the two doors and the bathroom between the cabins. Eve had been delighted when Noah decided to join them, in preference to staying with Anastasia, until Anastasia pointed out she had never let him into a room where she was sleeping and never would. Although Eve was used to his whiffles and grunts, they contributed to a restlessness, not helped by the realization that, whenever she dropped off, she was probably helping keep Sally awake. She fell asleep finally and woke up to find Sally was already dressed; had taken the dog out; had made the tea. Eve felt a bit like the junior partner of the three of them; it was only then she realized she had previously thought of Sally as occupying that position. She needed, she thought, to get a grip on her ego. Not the first time she’d thought that, but maybe the first time she’d meant it.

  After breakfast, they moved. Eve and Sally unhitched the ropes and Anastasia steered until they were through the last lock and past Norton Junction, when she handed the tiller over to Eve.

  “Are you sure?” Eve said.

  “Perhaps I’ve got used to doing nothing,” said Anastasia, and went down to the front to join Sally. The cover was folded back and all the doors were open. When they spoke to each other, their voices lifted in the still, warm air and carried back to Eve, the words sometimes audible, sometimes not. But they spoke little, and most of what was said was questions from Sally about where the other arm of the canal went off to at Norton Junction, about the names of wild flowers, of trees, and Anastasia’s brief, barked responses.

  Within half an hour they reached another tunnel. This one—Eve consulted the book—was only two-thirds as long as the Blisworth Tunnel had been, but still over a mile. Sally came out of the cabin and handed Eve a coat.

  “It’s hard to believe we need a coat,” said Eve, but she put it on, and switched the headlamp on, as the dark entrance came closer and closer. She’d hoped Sally wouldn’t offer to drive again; she was worried she might agree and then hate herself for failing to take up the challenge of getting through the darkness, but instead, Sally said: “I’m glad it’s your turn,” and she was able to admit she was not looking forward to it.

  The darkness filled up the space around them as the Number One nosed into the tunnel’s mouth. The air temperature dropped and the throb of the engine was amplified, echoing from the walls, the roof, the water, only feet away from where Eve stood. She found it hard to know what to fix her eyes on, how to keep the boat on a straight course. The tunnel was not entirely straight, and the bright spot of light at the end was not at first visible, but when it appeared and she concentrated on this far-off beacon, heading for the point where it would all be over, it was almost impossible to keep the nose straight, parallel to the bricks on either side. When she forced herself to focus on the farthest point on the wall to her right where the boat’s headlamp beam reached, she became almost mesmerized by the interplay of the light on the bricks and the water, both sliding toward her then vanishing again, over and over in a repeated but not identical pattern, as the bricks were variously colored, or discolored. In the previous tunnel, when she had not been driving, she had looked at the tunnel roof, the curve of its sides, and thought about the construction, the techniques and tools used, the problems that must have needed to be overcome. Now, with the responsibility for keeping the Number One safe in the center of the available space, she was forced to look at the interface of the two elements—brick and water—and it struck her how unreal the water appeared, in this setting. Logic told her it was no harder to create a mile-long trough to hold a given quantity of water under the arch of a tunnel roof than it was to do the same thing out in the open, but something about the feeling of being indoors, inside a man-made structure, turned the water from being something understood to something mysterious, displaced.

  “We could do with Arthur,” Sally said. “And his harmonica.”

  When they finally emerged into the heat of the day, the so-distant circle enlarging, almost in the last few yards, to something wide enough and high enough to allow the Number One to pass through, Eve found her arm was aching from the tension of holding the tiller steady. Anastasia, who had stayed in the front, only moving to fetch a blanket to wrap herself in, came back to the rear deck and took over driving, as there was a flight of five locks, she pointed out, between them and Braunston, and she saw no reason to exert herself when she had a handy crew aboard. Eve took this as some acknowledgment that she had navigated the tunnel without too many errors; though, when she was standing by the paddles on the first lock watching the Number One drop down as the water flowed out, she noticed a collection of debris on the sill, near where Anastasia had been sitting: a coating of brick flakes and dust dislodged when she had allowed the Number One to scrape along it rather than keeping to a center path. She looked up and saw Anastasia was noticing she had noticed it.

  “I seem to have brought some of the tunnel out with me,” Eve said.

  “No more than most people,” said Anastasia.

  At Braunston they bought lunch and carried on down the Grand Union, ignoring the turn to the North Oxford Canal.

  “You could take it,” said Anastasia as they cruised toward the turn. “It would bypass Birmingham and it’s a canal I’m particularly fond of.” Sally, who had taken over the tiller, reached for the throttle to slow them down, waiting for a decision. “What are you doing?” asked Anastasia. “I only said you could take that route, not that you were actually going to take it.”

  * * *

  They moored for the night at Napton Junction. When they had calculated that morning, as they did every morning, where they thought they should aim to be at the end of the day, Eve and Sally had assumed they would go farther, but when they set off after lunch, Anastasia asked them what the rush was, though Sally was keeping below the 4mph maximum. So she slowed even further, which meant other boats came up behind them, and Sally pulled in to the bank a few times to let the faster boat go first through one of the many narrow bridges. It was a long, featureless stretch, but lovely in a way that Sally had come to recognize any stretch of countryside with a canal running through it was transformed into a frame of tranquility.

  Anastasia sat in the front, with the logbook in her hands. It was a thick, black journal with narrow-ruled pages. Each day, a line was drawn across the page to mark the end of the previous day and the new day’s entry started with the time at which the boat moved (if it did). Anything involving maintenance on the boat—fuel and water taken on board, toilet and bilge pumped out—was recorded as it happened. Then, once the day was over, a note of the place and time of the final mooring and any observations were added: damage seen on the banks, sightings of unus
ual or rare wildlife or plants, incidents involving other boats, other people. The book Sally and Eve were using, that Anastasia held in her hands, had been started over two years before and was still not quite half full. Anastasia’s observations were curt and crisp: “Tree fallen across canal. Maintenance crew making a mess, slowly. Moored for night at 2:30 p.m.” And the next day: “Did not move. Crew finished clearing tree at 4:30, slowed down by cups of tea, passersby and incompetence.” Her writing was small and neat. Sally’s was small but messy, Eve’s large but clear, so they had been taking it in turns to fill in the log on the basis that neither of them came close to meeting Anastasia’s standard. To begin with, they had tried to be as brisk as she was, but as time went on they had begun to include what she would undoubtedly regard as irrelevant detail, turning the book from a straightforward record into a fuller diary of the trip. They both enjoyed doing this and they enjoyed reading what the other had written. They had even begun to squeeze in additional observations in the margin of each other’s daily accounts: “Octogenarian on bank called Sally my lovely and she did look lovely, in pink.” “Eve and Noah covered the floor in mud. Eve helped clean it up; Noah hindered.”

  Now they both stayed at the rear waiting for Anastasia’s criticism of what Sally remembered as prolix whimsy in comparison to her economy. Eve went down to make tea and when she brought Sally’s out to her, she whispered that Anastasia seemed to be reading the book from start to finish but, so far as she could tell, there were no storm clouds looming.

  When they moored, Anastasia went off on her own down the towpath with Noah, who had remained inches from her feet, wherever they happened to be, all day. She refused Eve’s offer of company.