The Narrowboat Summer

by Anne Youngson

  “The dog’s called Noah, if you want to make a note of that, too,” said Eve, and Sally hoped she wasn’t going to treat whatever was happening here as a joke, because she, Sally, knew it was not.

  “There was an incident here, earlier,” one of the men said. “Can you tell me what happened?”

  “We heard something falling into the canal,” Sally said quickly. “We went out and found it was the young man from the boat in front, so Eve waded into the water and helped him on to the bank. Then we came back here and went to sleep.”

  “Do you know the young man?”

  “We’ve met him,” Sally said. “He knows the owner of this boat, so he and his girlfriend have been friendly to us since we met them along the way.”

  “This isn’t your boat, then?” said the woman.

  They were taking it to Chester, Sally explained, on behalf of the owner who was in hospital having an operation. The policeman doing most of the writing made a note of Anastasia’s name, and lack of permanent address. No fixed abode, Sally thought.

  “Mind if I have a walk through the boat?” said the first policeman, almost pleasantly, pushing past Eve even as he spoke.

  “So what was this chap doing in the canal?” asked the second policeman, looking at Eve now.

  “Well, floating?” said Eve.

  “Did he fall in? Was he pushed?”

  “I was asleep when it happened.”

  “There was someone else on the bank, am I right?” said the woman. “What do you know about him?”

  “Oh, nothing,” said Eve.

  “Can you describe him, or his boat?”

  “It was dark,” Eve said. Sally knew they had both seen the man clearly in the Number One’s headlights and was relieved that Eve was awake enough and sober enough to know that it was better to say little until (and if) it became clear what the police were doing here, how this affected Billy and, more importantly, Trompette.

  The first man came back into the cabin and said, “Did the young man go in to retrieve something, would you say?”

  “We were asleep,” Eve said, again.

  “OK, but did he seem to be looking for anything? Was he holding anything when you pulled him out?”

  “I didn’t exactly pull him out,” Eve said. “It was more a case of guiding him to the bank.”

  “We have no idea what he was doing,” said Sally. “We went to help, as you’d expect, then we came back and went to sleep again.”

  “Briefly,” said Eve, whose face looked rather doughy in the lights of the cabin which, after an evening playing Scrabble, were beginning to dim as the battery drained.

  “Was he holding a knife?”

  “A knife!” said Eve. “No, I hope not. I never saw one.”

  “Did you see anyone with a knife?”

  Eve looked at Sally, who shook her head. “No one,” she said.

  “So remind me,” said the second man. “What was the name of the boat at the front?”

  They both shook their heads. “You could go and look,” said Eve.

  “We could,” said the woman, “except it’s not there anymore.”

  As suddenly as they had arrived, the police left.

  “You must have an idea what was happening here,” said the last man out, handing Sally a card with a name and a number on it. “I’d advise you to let us know if you remember anything else. It’s a murky business”—the bristles on his arm, holding the door open, made Sally think of Rottweilers; she never had liked dogs—“and I appreciate you may not want to get the young couple into trouble, but you won’t help by staying silent.”

  “What do you think?” asked Eve, when the door shut behind them and the boat had stopped rocking from their passage across the deck, the bells gradually falling silent.

  When Eve was wading toward Billy, Sally had been overcome with dread, remembering her own encounter with Billy in the water. She had nearly called out to tell Eve to stop, now, turn back, but Eve was so sturdy, so solid, so sure, it would have been presumptuous to suggest she could not look after herself. But she had suspected that Trompette shared her concerns, that she was staying apart herself to see if Billy was not, after all, playing some game. But in the end, it had been all right. Billy did need rescuing and maybe Trompette knew that and had been shouting Billy’s name to draw others to him rather than going in herself, weary perhaps of being the one to pull him, again and again, away from the crack in the ice.

  Looking at Eve, bleary-eyed in the dim light, Sally wondered how much of what had happened either of them understood. “I think it’s a good job we don’t know anything and we should both go back to bed. And well done, by the way.”

  “What? Oh, just blundering on, you know. It’s what I do,” said Eve.

  * * *

  IN THE MORNING, A BREEZE was blowing, lifting and dropping the crisp packets, pieces of paper, the plastic and polythene debris. The same wind was creating patterns of shadow and light with the clouds overhead, and these patterns of light and dark were a comfort to Sally when she finally opened her eyes, unable to sleep any longer though still feeling the need for sleep. There was something tapping against the doors to the front deck; Sally sat up and saw at once that there were no boats moored ahead of them, just an empty stretch of ruffled water. In the space where, during the hours of darkness, any horror had seemed possible, a man was jogging, bright in lime-green Lycra, and a woman was striding past with a baby in a sling across her front.

  The tapping came from a carrier bag hooked on to the exterior door handles. Inside it was a piece of card, folded over. On the front was a line drawing of a kimono-style garment, and on the reverse was a message: Sorry. I will have knitted this by the time I see you again. It was unsigned.

  Eve came through with a cup of tea.

  “What’s that?” she said.

  “It’s a goodbye note from Trompette,” Sally said.

  “Are we leaving, or has she?”

  “She has.”

  They worked their way up the flight of thirteen locks to where there were shops, bars, restaurants and other boats moored. They were helped on the way by a couple of women following them through. They introduced themselves as Jen and Chris and they were reassuringly sturdy and wholesome in contrast to Trompette and Billy. Both Sally and Eve thought this, though Sally’s feelings toward the crew of Grimm had a sad flavor while Eve’s were seasoned with irritation.

  They moored and found a café where there were chairs and tables outside and a dog could sit with them, watching the flow of people. Many of them, now that the day was well advanced, dressed as befitted someone with an occupation and a place to be, moving with a purpose that was nothing to do with taking exercise or enjoying the sunshine, though they were able to do both in the course of whatever business they were engaged in, because of the happy contiguity of the canal and places to work. Eve pointed this out to Sally.

  “Maybe for my next job I should be looking for an office near water,” Eve said.

  Sally was going through the bundle of post Duncan had sent. Their correspondence had become unemotional, which was still the tone of the letter she had in her hand in this café on the canal in Birmingham, but it set a different agenda. It talked about the future. He had been thinking, he said, that perhaps they should sort things out. To this end he had reduced their lives together to a series of financial transactions, though he didn’t say that. He just said he was enclosing the information she might need to look through. It was all bank statements, mortgage statements, savings accounts statements and a spreadsheet showing their joint income and expenditure for the last ten years. Sally had no intention of looking at the figures, but when Eve spoke she had been deep in the meaning of it all. What Duncan meant her to feel and what she did feel. It took her a moment to process what Eve had said, then she looked, as Eve was looking, at the people walking past, and understood that for Eve they represented the world she had stepped away from, and was already thinking—Sally thought Eve was unaware of
this but it came to her as a fact, in the moment—of how and when she would step back in.

  “Perhaps I should buy a house by a canal,” Sally said, for the sake of something to say, and because this was where the letter from Duncan was pushing her thoughts. But as she said it, it sounded true, so she added: “Not in Birmingham, though.”

  Eve went back to reading the paper supplied by the café. Sally sat on, pondering whether she could imagine going back to being some modified version of Mrs. Allsop of 42 Beech Grove, or whether that was no longer available to her.

  * * *

  They met Jen and Chris on the way back to the boat, carrying a reusable shopping bag, each holding one handle. Chris told Eve that Jen, in “real life,” was a hairdresser. Eve said Sally’s hair could do with a makeover as the pink highlights had reached the stage of looking accidental, as if she had dipped her head in a pot of tandoori paste and failed to wash it afterward. And without having agreed, or even being aware that she had a choice, Sally found herself on board the Rainbow Flag lying back in a chair, covered in towels, while Jen’s thin, strong fingers massaged her scalp.

  “I’ll just do what I think you ought to want, whether you do want it or not,” Jen said, when she had Sally upright again, a pair of scissors at the ready.

  “I don’t want any more highlights,” Sally said.

  “Maybe not,” said Jen. “Not today, anyway. And definitely not pink.”

  There was no mirror, so she had no idea what Jen was doing. From force of habit, Sally attempted conversation but was immediately hushed.

  “Shut up, I’m concentrating.”

  Jen put her scissors away and plugged in a hairdryer, but this part of the process, which Lynne from the Kut Above would spin out through several anecdotes about holidays and their respective children’s love lives, took almost no time at all. Then Jen produced a mirror.

  “I think I’ve got it,” she said, looking rather stern and critical.

  Sally turned her head, thinking, for a second, that the light was falling in such a way as to make her unknown to herself. But it was not the light. Jen had turned Sally’s hair into part of her appearance, which was an odd thought but nevertheless true. Her hands and feet, nose, mouth, breasts, ears and knees Sally had always accepted were what they were; together with the other parts of her body they made up the person she was, or the person she looked like. Her hair, though, had always been an adjunct. An extra, there to be tackled, yet never integral to the whole. Now it was.

  “Oh,” she said.

  “I wanted to make it look natural,” Jen said. “And I think I have.”

  “You have,” said Sally. She looked past the mirror to the window that gave her a view of a bollard, a stretch of wall, a fleeting shadow as the clouds blew across the sun. “You’ve made a difference,” she said. “Thank you.”

  “Look at you,” Eve said, when Sally returned to the Number One. She kept looking at her for the rest of the afternoon, stealing glances when she thought Sally wouldn’t notice.

  “You can stop looking at me now,” Sally said at last.

  “Yes, but I feel I’ve sort of had you wrong, all these weeks,” said Eve. “I don’t know … the hair, the way you look and move—you’ve turned into someone else entirely.”

  “No, I haven’t,” Sally said. “You know that as well as I do.”

  “All right, then. You are the person you’ve always been, but that person is only now rising to the surface.”

  “What a lovely thing to say,” said Sally, embarrassed at how tearful she felt.

  * * *

  They took Chris and Jen out for a meal. During the evening, as they waited to order, drank their wine, ate their food, drank their coffee, the two women were in touch with each other. Physically, a foot resting against a foot, a hand against a hand, but also in their enjoyment of the moment, passing forkfuls of food back and forth, sharing a pleasure in the tastes and textures. In the past, when Sally had seen other couples so much in accord, so together, it had depressed her and she had resented them. She had wished she could be the sort of person for whom this yielding of self in favor of coupledom came easily. She had believed that another couple’s togetherness isolated her, excluded her. She did not feel that now. She still did not believe herself capable of such intimacy, such a close emotional connection with another person, but it no longer mattered.

  They had finished the meal by the time a teenager from another moored boat, who had been given a tip to provide this service, arrived to tell them Noah was howling. They could hear him from the doorway to the restaurant, and could see the small crowd gathering in attendance, debating among itself which of the authorities to alert.

  “Bless him,” said Sally.

  “New hairstyle, new tune,” said Eve.

  7

  To Gnosall

  EVE: Hello?

  JACOB: It’s me, lovely: Jacob. Updating you on Operation Anastasia.

  EVE: Go on, then. Good news or bad?

  JACOB: Well, not exactly falling neatly into either of those two categories—I mean, when did life ever? She went in as arranged—good, I suppose—and had the op, more or less on time, as I understand it. I rang this morning and all the nurse would tell me was that she’d spent a comfortable night. What on earth does that mean? That she hasn’t died? She wouldn’t tell me anything else—not related, you see. I pointed out that Anastasia hasn’t got any relations and the nurse said that wasn’t strictly true. They had a next of kin listed. Any idea who that is?

  EVE: Not a clue. Like you, I thought there wasn’t anyone. She might have a niece or nephew or a cousin or even a sibling. We wouldn’t know, would we? She certainly didn’t ask us to tell anyone about the op except a couple of canal friends.

  JACOB: Well, anyway, I went in this afternoon to see for myself how she was doing.

  EVE: You didn’t take grapes, did you?

  JACOB: Do you think I’m mad! She looked pretty rough when I finally found her. I’m thinking I could create a GPS-type app for hospitals. I might make a fortune. You could use your phone to navigate to the right building, the right floor and the right area and then, if they gave the beds numbers like postcodes, you could get to the person you’re coming to see without ending up feeling you might as well just lie down on a passing gurney and let yourself be carted off for medical experiments.

  EVE: Brilliant idea. Now get on with it. She looked rough, you said. She always looks rough. It’s what I love about her.

  JACOB: True, but she was gray and less … oh, come on, what do I want to say?… less sculpted.

  EVE: Good word. A bit looser than normal.

  JACOB: Exactly. And she was asleep. I’ve never seen her asleep. It didn’t seem right. I had to go off and chat to the nurses while I waited for her to wake up. They told me the operation went well, no complications, but we have to wait for the consultant to find out what happens next, whether it’s all good news or only partly good news.

  EVE: Is there more?

  JACOB: Don’t be so impatient. Of course there is. She woke up and asked what the fuck was I doing there—which was a relief; more normal, if you know what I mean. But then she said it was a good job I’d turned up, as it happened, because she needed some stuff. I’ve no idea what they told her to bring in with her, but either it wasn’t a good list or she ignored it, because she hadn’t got all sorts of things she needed, like a dressing gown and some lotions and potions—who knew Anastasia ever used lotions and potions, but it seems she does. So I nipped back to your flat and collected everything, and when I went back again I saw her before she saw me and, honestly, she looked sad. Then she noticed me and she looked Anastasia-ish again, all disapproving but tolerant. So that’s what I thought I ought to tell you. She’ll be in for at least two weeks, the nurses say, and I think she’s hating it so much she might forgive us if we rally round. Any chance of a visit from you two ladies? That’s about the sum of it.

  EVE: Of course. Not both of us at once, naturally.
We’ve got a boat and a dog to look after and both of those matter to Anastasia more than we do. We’re making our way out of Birmingham at the moment, so we’ll need to find somewhere safe to moor up for a few days, within reach of a bus or a station or a car-hire place. Whatever. We can sort it. I’ll text you when I know what we’re doing.

  JACOB: Great. I won’t tell her you’re coming. She might tell me to tell you not to.

  EVE: No doubt about it. She would. Oh, Jacob?

  JACOB: What?

  EVE: Thank you for the Keith Floyd book. I’m loving it.

  JACOB: Yes, but are you cooking anything out of it?

  EVE: Not yet, give us a chance. I’m busy absorbing it at the moment.

  JACOB: Well, don’t forget—he can be random with quantities. If he says use ten chillies when you think one will do, you’re probably right.

  EVE: I’ll remember.

  JACOB: Be seeing you, then.

  * * *

  WAITING BY THE BANK OR midstream, blipping the throttle forward, then into reverse, to keep the boat from drifting while the lock emptied or filled, or another boat came through or went ahead, allowed time for contemplation. Why, then, Eve wondered, as her shoulders began to ache with tension, was it so unthinkable to be forced to wait in a queue of cars?

  It did not help that she had hired the cheapest car offered by the one hire company prepared to deliver canal-side. She felt too big for it as soon as she was in the driving seat, and amused herself for some miles remembering the last time she drove something this small, this downmarket, before her career had carried her into the ranks of those who justified more expensive products, which had happened while she was still in her twenties. Thirty years ago. Then the irritations of driving, and of driving this particular car, took her over. By the time she reached Uxbridge it was as if she had a piece of grit in her shoe, or an insect bite, or some other minor irritation that meant she was not happy even though there was nothing substantially wrong.