The Narrowboat Summer

by Anne Youngson

  She went first to her flat. She collected a few things Jacob had said Anastasia still wanted but that he had been unable to find, identify or understand. The flat felt unexpectedly big. She had prepared herself for it to feel big after the boat but still it surprised her.

  The other thing that struck her was what a long journey it had been, from outside, to reach the inside of the flat. A climb up into a place far detached from where there was weather, nature, other people. It had not occurred to her before how many doors, corridors, staircases lay between her living room and the street. All these obstacles to pass up or down or through before she, and Noah, could reach a patch of grass suitable for a dog’s needs. The dog was not with her and she had no personal need to reach the outdoors in any particular hurry, but it no longer felt natural to be this isolated. She wondered how she could ever have believed it was.

  She reached the hospital and found the ward by reference to a handy panel that told her in which wing, on which floor, she needed to be. She made a mental note to tell Jacob that no one who had the patience to stop and consult a board needed an app to navigate. She was directed to a room with two beds and a pleasant view. There was no one in the bed farthest from the window. A curtain shielded the bed next to it from the rest of the room and Eve tiptoed round this, suddenly frightened by what she might see.

  She found Anastasia, asleep, colorless and small. Having prepared herself for worse, the fear turned at once to pity; not for the pallor, for Anastasia was never pink and rosy, nor the sleep, but for the smallness. The bulk of the woman, upright, awake, on the edge of outrage, should never be as diminished as the narrow bed, the taut sheets, the drip stand, even the lack of outdoor clothes made her.

  Anastasia was not alone. In a chair by her bed, turning his head from the window as Eve entered the cave created by the drawn curtain, was a man in middle age. A stocky, sturdy man with hair cut so short it was hard to tell if it was mainly gray or mainly fair. He had an outdoor complexion. He was wearing baggy denims and a very old leather jacket. His hands, resting on his knees, were clean but not entirely free of the grease engrained in the creases and cracks.

  “Are you Eve or Sally?” he asked quietly.

  “Eve. Are you Owen?” When he nodded, she said, “I thought she didn’t want anyone to visit.”

  “You’re here,” he said.

  “Yes, but I’ve got”—she held up the bag—“things. And Jacob thought she might want visitors after all.”

  “Of course she does. Jacob was right.”

  There was nowhere else to sit except the bed. Eve leaned against the windowsill. Owen stayed where he was.

  “How is she?” Eve asked.

  “Doing well, apparently. Tell me, what is the state of the Number One?”

  “We haven’t done any damage, if that’s what you mean. Or only cosmetic damage. Functionally, the batteries don’t seem to be holding their charge very well; the fridge stops working in the middle of the night. And tickover seems a bit high, to me, but I don’t know whether that’s normal for a boat engine. Other than that, it’s OK.”

  Anastasia groaned and opened her eyes. Then shut them again.

  “Good lord,” she said, her voice more of a croak, more of a whisper than when Eve had heard it last, “hordes of you.”

  “Only me, as before,” said Owen. “And Eve has brought you … things.”

  “What things?”

  “A couple of pairs of pajamas,” Eve said. “Some face cream, lip salve, tissues.”

  “There’s some point in you coming, then.” Anastasia opened her eyes again. “Do you know where I was before your chatter interrupted me? I was in Audlem, before the last two locks in the flight. The sun was shining through the trees either side and I was sitting on the front deck, watching Noah finding every smell of piss left by every dog that had been along the towpath.”

  She closed her eyes again. Owen said nothing and, wanting to acknowledge that Anastasia had spoken, Eve said: “You’ll be there again, soon enough.”

  Anastasia’s eyes opened again and for a moment, in her fury, she looked much more normal, much more herself.

  “For fuck’s sake,” she said. “Is that what you think I deserve, platitudes? If you think that, you’d better fuck off back to your suburban flat and forget me.”

  To her horror, Eve’s eyes filled with tears.

  “I could never forget you,” she said.

  “I heard,” said Owen, shifting in the chair, making the legs squeak on the hard floor, “there was a boat caught in the top lock at Audlem. Week ago, it must be.”

  “Hire boat?” said Anastasia.

  “Not what I heard. Couple from Wolverhampton, seemingly. Bought themselves a retirement present. Left all their fancy fenders out and got wedged as the water dropped. Had to be winched up to free the fenders then lowered back down again. Took hours.”

  Anastasia closed her eyes again.

  “Well, off you go,” she said. “Go away and talk to each other somewhere else. I’m about to turn up the Middlewich Branch and I don’t want any distractions. It’s a tricky turn.”

  “You’re not coming to see me, then,” said Owen.

  “I am. I’m just in no hurry to finish the journey.”

  * * *

  They went to the hospital café. Eve was hungry and wanted to avoid accepting an offer of coffee from Owen, which would prevent her reaching the counter and snaffling a sandwich, so she asked him what he was having before they were through the door. He didn’t quibble. Not only that, he asked for a toasted cheese sandwich so she didn’t have to feel greedy. When she joined him at the table he offered to pay for what she had ordered for him, which she refused.

  “Do you think Anastasia’s going to be all right?” she asked.

  “I can’t possibly tell,” he said. “It’s a stupid question.”

  When she thought about it, he was right. It had been a stupid question, just as her remark about Anastasia seeing the locks at Audlem again had been a stupid remark. That he had rebuked her so sharply meant either he was habitually blunt or was excessively fond of Anastasia. Or both.

  “You’re right. Sorry.”

  “I hate to see her so…” he breathed in and ran his workman’s fingers over the stubble of his hair, “so dependent.”

  “I admit, I expected her to look worse than she does.”

  “It’s not how ill she looks, it’s that she’s lying there waiting for other people to decide when she eats, when she washes … when she pees, for Christ’s sake.”

  Eve ate a mouthful of sandwich. Owen looked at his for a while, then picked up one half of it and managed to fit it all in his mouth, if not exactly in one go then with a staccato burst of bites that gave that impression and caused the sandwich to disappear without the need for him to lower his hands.

  “She did say,” said Eve, “that she was planning on treating the whole thing as an experience. Let’s hope that’s what she’s doing: just observing it all.”

  Owen swallowed.

  “That’s probably crap, but better to think that than put my fist through a window in frustration. Now, where is the Number One?”

  Eve told him.

  “With the other one?”

  “Sally, yes.”

  “I have a gap in two weeks’ time. I need to get it to the yard by then.”

  “Anastasia said August.”

  “Yes, but I didn’t know about the operation when I suggested that. You need to have time to get the boat back to Uxbridge for when she’s well enough to live on board again.”

  Eve realized she had been concentrating so hard on reaching Chester, on delivering the Number One to Owen in time, in one piece, that this had begun to feel like the end of the journey. But they had agreed to take the boat to Chester and back. She had been worrying about the wrong deadline.

  “Well,” she said, “I suppose we did agree to bring the boat back.”

  He glared at her. “What do you mean, ‘you suppose you a
greed?’ You were planning to dump her home three hundred miles away, at least six weeks’ cruising away. What was she supposed to do? You’ll want your flat back, obviously. So what about her? She’ll have follow-up treatment, outpatient appointments—what’s going to happen to all that? Transfer her to Chester Hospital? Great idea! The NHS is so good with systems and so long on capacity there should be no problem at all. Seamless. Is that what you think?”

  “Oh, shut up,” said Eve. If he could be abrupt, well, so could she. “I hadn’t thought about the return journey and when we needed to get back. Give me a chance. We may not have known Anastasia for long, but it’s quite long enough to be certain we would never, ever leave her in the lurch. Now, I need a cake.”

  “I’ll go,” said Owen, and pushed his chair back.

  Eve watched him in the queue, which had lengthened. There had been a couple of invitations in the post she had collected in Birmingham, and she thought about these while she waited. One had been for a fiftieth birthday party in August and one was for a wedding in September. These had seemed like the sort of things she used to do. She would previously have thought about both of them, when they arrived, with a degree of interest or even excitement: what would she wear, who would be there, what would the venue, the weather, the entertainment be like? When she opened them in the cabin of the Number One, moored in Gas Street Basin, she had immediately formed the opinion that she couldn’t go. As if she had committed to living like this for the foreseeable future; as if she had accepted that the woman who had had a car, a wardrobe full of clothes, an income that meant the cost of buying presents, of overnight accommodation and drinks was not a factor in deciding whether to accept or not, no longer existed. She resented the implication that she would be clear about what she was doing at the end of August, in September. But she knew that, if she accepted, she would begin to look forward to these two celebrations, to think about what to wear and so on. In which case, she would have acknowledged that the journey on the Number One was nearly over and had always been only an interlude. Not a step on a road which led up a hill toward some other point on the compass, but a circular trip, out and back, with the final destination close to if not exactly the same as the place she started.

  Now Owen, still patiently queuing, holding the tray of the woman in front of him who was burdened with two sticks and a shaky hand, had reminded her that there was no need for the journey to end, at least until after the birthday party and possibly even the wedding had taken place. She couldn’t work out whether that was entirely a relief. He had also reminded her that the journey was circular. It did not end in Chester but in Uxbridge, exactly where she had started out from.

  Owen came back with a double-choc-chip muffin which was exactly what she would have chosen if he had bothered to ask.

  She felt obliged to offer him her spare room overnight, but he had a train to catch. Only time enough to nip back to the ward and say goodbye to Anastasia.

  “Let me know,” he said, “when you can get to the yard. You might want to work out how long it will take to get back here, if you needed to travel more quickly than you have been doing.”

  “I’ll talk to Sally,” Eve said, licking her finger to pick up the last muffin crumbs on her plate.

  * * *

  EVE: It’s me.

  SALLY: Yes, I know. How is she?

  EVE: I don’t know.

  SALLY: Haven’t you seen her?

  EVE: Yes, yes I have. It’s just hard to tell. She’s not as bad as I feared she might be, but it still seems a violation of her human dignity to stick her in a hospital with tubes and central heating and squeaky floors.

  SALLY: What was her mood like?

  EVE: Oh, she was grumpy.

  SALLY: That’s good news.

  EVE: She was positively rude to me in a way she hasn’t been before. I felt thoroughly cut down to size.

  SALLY: I expect you deserved it.

  EVE: Well, I have to say I did. I came over all patronizing—caught on the hop, you know.

  SALLY: And she snapped? That’s quite a relief. My father-in-law had surgery at about her age and he was never the same again, mentally. He was a horribly abrupt man before that and creepily docile after it. The anesthetic knocked a few of his marbles out of line.

  EVE: God, yes. You never said. I didn’t know that was a possibility.

  SALLY: Well, as it turns out, it wasn’t, so we can relax. Any news on what happens now?

  EVE: Not yet but I must tell you—Owen was there.

  SALLY: Owen?

  EVE: The man from Chester.

  SALLY: Was Anastasia pleased to see him?

  EVE: Hard to tell. He was already there when I arrived. But listen, this is the important thing, and you’re going to tell me you’ve had this in mind all along, but he pointed out that Anastasia is going to need the Number One back in Uxbridge when she recovers enough to live on board again. So he wants us to be at his workshop in two weeks and ready to set off back south as soon as he’s finished, which means we need to get there as quickly as we can.

  SALLY: I see.

  EVE: You were ahead of me, weren’t you?

  SALLY: No. I hadn’t thought past Chester, but obviously we have to take the boat back. We said we would, didn’t we? And she’ll want to move on board as soon as she can. I don’t know, I’ve been thinking all along about Chester as the end of the journey and of course it isn’t and never was and now I don’t know whether to be relieved or distraught.

  EVE: Oh, Sally, it’s such a joy to be talking to you. I don’t know either.

  SALLY: Well, it’s time you worked out one of your demon plans. When can you get back?

  EVE: I’d come back tonight, but Jacob’s cooking for me and I daren’t turn him down.

  SALLY: Tomorrow. See you here.

  * * *

  IT WAS A MORNING WHEN a mist over the canal clung on as the sun rose, picking out the hedges, the raindrops on the leaves, the spiderwebs between the branches, but leaving the water in its gauzy veil. The last few days had shaken Eve out of the easy rhythm of being in the boat, and she slept badly. So here she was, out early in this mystical, silent landscape with Noah questing for any scents left overnight by passing wildlife. As she walked back toward the Number One she saw a man coming toward it from the other direction, knee-deep in mist. As she drew nearer, she recognized Arthur. They reached the rear of the Number One together.

  “I’ve come to find you,” he said. “Owen told me where you were. I’ve a message for you from Trompette.”

  “Wouldn’t it have been easier to phone?” Eve said.

  Arthur was looking neater and cleaner than he had when she saw him last, consistent with having only just left the comforts and conveniences of whatever home he had in Uttoxeter.

  “I don’t know any numbers.”

  “Owen does.”

  “I didn’t think to ask. Or perhaps, dear lady, I wanted the excuse to come. Oh, what deceptions we practice on ourselves. Do you want me to confront mine, or are you kind enough to let it pass? To accept that I am here, you are here, the Number One is here and the sun is even as we speak beginning to warm our hands and faces?”

  “All right. Hello, Arthur, it’s a pleasure to see you.”

  “And you, my lovely lady, and you.”

  “What is the message, then? From Trompette.”

  “Ah, she wants you to get in touch. She’s somewhere on the Trent and Mersey. She’s in trouble.”

  “What a surprise. Get in touch how?”

  “By phone, of course.” Arthur took his rucksack off and placed it on the cabin roof, then unzipped one of its many pockets and extracted an old envelope with a phone number on the back. He handed this to Eve as if bestowing the body of Christ. Eve turned it over, curious to see what the address was on the other side, but it was a window envelope; the address had been on the letter inside, long gone. She still did not know Arthur’s surname. Why should that be important? And if it was, why didn’t she just
ask?

  “I’ll give it to Sally,” she said instead. “She has a better relationship with Trompette than I do.”

  Arthur became brisk. He had a few days to spare, he said. He could help move the boat northward. After all, Owen wanted them at the yard as soon as possible. Eve went below and checked with Sally, then confirmed he could stay.

  “Excellent,” said Arthur. “Excellent!”

  It was good to be moving. As long as she needed to think ahead only as far as the next tap, the next locks, the next mooring, Eve had no room to worry about the next month, the next year. They went through a lock, Eve driving, Arthur doing the work. Sally was trying to contact Trompette but either there was no signal, or no answer. Eve thought, but didn’t say, that Sally had dropped into worried-parent mode as naturally as a ball, given a kick, will run downhill. Arthur filled the water tank and oversaw the pump-out in the first village they came to, while Eve found a shop and bought food. She didn’t consult a recipe book beforehand and, if she had, the range of ingredients needed would probably have been beyond the village shop, so she bought what it did have that she thought she could combine in some simple but tasty way.

  She had seen enough of Arthur’s eating habits to know he would be happy with anything, up to and including a Fray Bentos steak and kidney pie in a tin, one of which she remembered traveling with them on every self-catering holiday as a child—no matter what country they were visiting—and was astonished to find was still available after deep freezes, freeze-drying, microwaves and ready meals had all become available. She did not remember ever eating one, but her mother, whom she had thought of at the time as an irritating fusspot but now realized was a master of risk analysis, had always taken it with them “just in case.”

  They cruised on. A still day, a sunny day, views expanding in all directions across farms and farmland.

  “It’s hard to believe, isn’t it,” said Eve, “that all this was part of the Industrial Revolution? That these embankments and bridges and all the business of digging and construction will have upset the owners of this land; will have seemed to them to be an outrage, obliterating centuries of tradition, despoiling the landscape.”