The Narrowboat Summer

by Anne Youngson

  They moored for the night shortly after the staircase locks. Sally cooked sausages, onions, fried potatoes, tinned tomatoes. It was not what Eve, with her new-found commitment to ingredients and recipes, would have contemplated, but it was what was available, and Sally knew she could deliver it to an acceptable standard. She was also pretty sure that Owen would eat it, and would not mention it either during or after the eating, and she was right. He didn’t. He ate everything she put on his plate then went outside and opened up the engine cover. She sat on the roof watching him unscrew a nut, pull off some component, inspect it, put it back. He started the engine and then made some adjustments that meant it ran slightly slower, with less noise than it had before. He did not tell her what he was doing and she did not ask.

  What she wanted to ask him was about Anastasia, her life, before and after he was born, but even before he had taken himself off to work on the engine, she had decided she would not ask. She was already regretting that she knew something about Anastasia that Eve did not know. So she sat in silence, watching him work.

  Before they went to bed—Sally in the front, Owen where Eve normally slept in the middle of the boat—she said:

  “When Eve gets back, will you tell us about Anastasia’s life?”

  “If you want.”

  * * *

  As Sally pulled up the covers and turned off the light, she was aware of his presence, just a flimsy partition or two away; a man sleeping, breathing in a space which had been hers and Eve’s for so long. It was unnerving, but not unpleasant.

  * * *

  THE FUNERAL TOOK PLACE IN a village outside Newark and involved a weary business of trains and taxis and a night in a Travelodge. Eve felt, even more than when she had gone to visit Anastasia, as if she was stepping out of one world into another, as if she were landing in another country, one with different architecture, culture and dress codes. Esme, whose funeral this was, had lived all her life in one or another of several small villages within a few miles of each other. Her funeral was to be held in the church where she had been married, within sight of the house she had lived in for over sixty years, as wife, mother, widow, grandmother. Within sight of the village hall where she had met her husband at a dance and where, as the congregation filed in to the service, the ladies of the village were filling the urn and setting it to boil, ready for the funeral tea.

  Eve, coming into the gloom of the building and pausing to pick a seat toward the back, was beckoned forward by her cousin’s son, Adam, a man now, in his thirties or even, for goodness’ sake, in his forties. She had no choice but to sit down where she was directed, leaned forward to look round him and exchanged greetings with the other people sharing the pew—his wife, his children, another adult whom she could not place, much as she could not quite remember how the other familiar faces in the other pews slotted into the familial cat’s cradle. She only knew they did. A hunched figure played melancholy tunes on the organ, which transformed the notes, as they passed from the keys through the bellows and pipes and out into the air, from the trite and ordinary to the monumental dignity of church music.

  Adam passed her a leaflet with photos of Esme on the front and the back. On the front she was a little dab of color in a flowery frock, both arms hanging on to the arms of the dining-room chair in which she was sitting, as if it took all the meager strength in her tiny, wrinkled frame to avoid sliding off it on to the floor. Taken, so the caption said, on her ninetieth birthday. On the back was a photo of a pretty young woman in a white frock framed in the doorway that Eve had just walked through. On her wedding day. In between the two photos was an order of service, mercifully short. Two hymns, a reading, a few prayers, an address by the vicar. Presumably none of Esme’s family, now filling at least half the pews in the church, had wanted to stand up and talk. They wanted only to sing the hymns, throw a handful of soil in the grave and get down to the hall before the tea was stewed.

  The coffin was carried in by somber-suited men and the service began. The first hymn, “All Things Bright And Beautiful,” was played briskly by the organist and sung with enthusiasm by the congregation. Eve rarely had the chance to sing and enjoyed it, though she had to share the sheet with the words on it with Adam as the family had underestimated the number who would turn up for the occasion.

  The prayers and the reading were in a language so long familiar to Eve it was like a tune heard too often ever to be forgotten, even if she had not listened to it for decades. Each word falling into place after the word before as each note of the hymn tune had been followed by exactly the note anticipated. Then the vicar rose up to talk about Esme. Eve steeled herself for the usual hyperbole in which a flawed individual’s achievements and positive character traits were magnified and whatever was irritating or unfortunate, whatever mistakes they might have made, were ignored as if these were not also part of the person, who, after all, many of the people present will have loved better than they might have loved the polished paragon being described.

  But it was not like that. The vicar recited the facts of Esme’s life. He did not try to claim any special virtue in its narrow geographical reach; did not try to present her domestic routines, her involvement in the society of the village, her friendships and consistent good humor, the skills she demonstrated in the kitchen and the garden, as anything other than a life well lived, one that had given comfort and stability to her family and had, to the extent it was in her power to do so, helped others.

  As they stood to sing the second hymn, Eve became aware of how full the church was. She had assumed that there would be few mourners for someone who had outlived so many contemporaries and had traveled through life on so narrow a track, but she was wrong. The rustle of the muted clothing of pews full of people as they stood, the scrape of the emergency chairs on the stone floor, were a rebuke. Esme, by Eve’s standards, had done nothing and been nowhere. The talents she’d had—sewing, cooking, dancing, singing—she had been content to exercise up to a standard consistent with the expectations of her family and friends. She had had no ambition to be or do anything more. But on her death, the church was full. People had come because she mattered to them, and she mattered because they had mattered to her. She had been committed to bringing whatever she could—be it company, comfort, practical help—to the people she cared about. And perhaps to some she did not like.

  Eve had no way of checking or wiping away the tears that began to roll down her face. One hand was holding the service sheet so that both she and Adam could read the words to “Abide With Me,” and the other hand was holding on to the back of the pew in front: she did not think that, without its support, she could remain upright. The service sheet was shaking and she could not see what she was meant to be singing, so she stopped singing. Only then did she realize that Adam, too, had stopped singing and was holding himself like a man whose balance needed concentration. His shoulders were rising and falling as he fumbled in his pocket for something to dry his face. The family had not left it to the vicar to do the talking in order to speed things up. They had known that their sorrow in losing this sweet, kind woman would prevent them making a good job of it.

  Eve put the service sheet down and wiped her face. She felt overwhelmed with self-disgust. She was crying for herself, not for Esme, and she was crying because she had suddenly realized, after all these years of skipping through life pleasing herself and being pleased with herself for having so arranged it, that she mattered to no one. She was crying, for fuck’s sake, at the idea that there would be no one crying at her funeral. What worse manifestation of self-pity could there be? And how she hated, hated, hated self-pity.

  She looked down at her feet. She was wearing a pair of sandals more elegant, less practical, less comfortable than the ones she had been wearing all summer on the boat, and she could see the pattern of light and dark where the sun had etched the outline of the straps of the other sandals into her skin. It was comforting. The Number One, the weeks on the canal, that was real. It was not a rural
church, a ready-dug hole, sandwiches in a village hall, an organ thundering out a tune that a congregation reduced to tears by the contemplation of a woman’s life were struggling to keep up with. But it was something. It had value.

  In the hall the company cheered up. It had been no tragedy to die peacefully at ninety-five. All the love and emotion could be put back where it belonged: in a place of safekeeping, to be brought out and shared in the future with others who felt the same. All the stories told about Esme round the tea urn were humorous: when the neighbor’s goat ate her washing; when she put on the wrong glasses while making cakes for the bazaar and used salt instead of sugar; the way she would call all men John and all women Susan when she couldn’t remember their names, as she often couldn’t.

  The cousins, second and maybe even third cousins, and other members of the extended family who were possibly no relation at all, interrogated Eve about her life, as she’d known they would. Their attitude toward her had always been one of pride tinged with scorn—they liked that she had an important job high up in a big company; they liked her to talk about the cars she drove, the places she had been. But really, they could not help letting her know they thought, what sort of life is that for a grown woman? All their occupations had obvious tasks resulting in concrete outcomes—postman, builder, market gardener—and they could not imagine what she found to do in an office all day. “I wouldn’t want it,” she could hear them not saying out loud, at least to her. She had intended to be casual about her current situation, to present it as a planned break with exciting opportunities in the future that it was too soon to talk about. But she couldn’t, when it came to it, her face still feeling tight from the tears she had shed in the church.

  “I’ve been given the push,” she said. “Booted out. So I’m helping a friend on a canal boat and trying to work out what to do next.”

  There was no scorn in their reaction, nor any shadow of the glee at her comeuppance she would have expected. Instead, they were interested, caring, and she felt they liked her better. Or maybe she just liked herself better.

  * * *

  She was desperate to get back to the Number One but she had agreed to stay in the area overnight. There was a family barbecue; wine and beer to drink; the story of every pregnancy and birth since she had last met them; the story of every child’s progress toward and into adulthood. They were recognizing her as part of the family in telling her all this, and she realized they had always done so and she had never appreciated it before, but she only wanted to talk to Sally about what it was she had learned in the church. On the long journey next day, she could not frame the thoughts into words. She only knew she wanted to tell Sally that, whatever happened next, Sally mattered to her and she was ready to demonstrate that, she had no idea how, in whatever decisions she took about the future.

  It was evening when she walked into Owen’s yard. The way to it was short of coherent signage but had no shortage of potholed private roads, so the taxi driver had a problem finding it and was keen to make his distaste for the journey perfectly clear. At last Eve lugged her rucksack through a metal gate, slightly ajar, and walked round a sizeable shed, a collection of machinery, a couple of boats on cradles sitting on the ground, past a dry dock and finally, following the sound of voices, through another fence to a canal-side wharf. The Number One was moored tight to it and Sally and Owen were sitting beside it on a bench, facing away from her toward the sunset, a bottle of wine and two glasses on a table in front of them. Eve paused, wishing Owen was not there, wishing the two of them did not look so comfortable together, so self-contained. She put down her rucksack and, hearing the sound it made as it met the broken concrete, Sally turned, leaped up and came to her. Owen fetched another glass, brought a chair so she and Sally could sit together, on the bench.

  “All right?” said Sally.

  “I believe so,” said Eve.

  * * *

  THE NEXT DAY, SALLY CLIMBED into the front of Owen’s van and Eve climbed into the back where she bounced about among a number of hard-edged, heavy objects (an engine part, a box of tools) and a pile of cloths, tarpaulins and rugs, none of them clean. It was a mercifully short journey to Chester station, where they caught a train to London. Owen drove off without waiting to see if they achieved this, only leaving the cab for long enough to slam the rear doors shut as soon as Eve had managed to step out.

  “He’s not exactly warm and cuddly, is he?” Eve said, watching the van head off out of sight.

  “He’s Anastasia’s son,” Sally reminded her.

  They had talked to him about Anastasia the previous evening, as they ate pizzas delivered by a youth on a motorbike who appeared to be an employee of Owen’s rather than the pizza restaurant. However it happened, pizzas were what Owen proposed, he had made a phone call and pizzas turned up. When they started to ask about Anastasia’s past, he told them they would be more usefully employed in talking about her present, or immediate future. Blacking the boat would take five days and he did not want them to stay on board while it was in his dry dock. So why didn’t they go to Uxbridge and talk to Anastasia about how she was now, how she expected to be in the future, what arrangements she was prepared to accept and they were prepared to make to look after her?

  Sally did not want to go. She felt, though she knew this to be stupid, slightly hurt that Owen should be so ready to eject them from his yard. Also, it would dislocate her too suddenly and for too long from the sheltering calm of the canal and the Number One. Eve did not appear happy, either, but unusually did not argue. They agreed to go.

  “I don’t know for how long, though,” Eve said. “We might buy a tent and come back and pitch it on one of your patches of weeds, to keep an eye on you.”

  “Like Arthur,” Sally said.

  “Exactly. After you’ve told us Anastasia’s story, you can tell us Arthur’s.”

  “No,” said Owen. “You’ll have to ask Anastasia about him.”

  Anastasia, Owen told them, had a childhood about which he knew nothing, only that it had been full of abuse and she had escaped it while still a child in the eyes of the law.

  “So the only thing you probably want to know—how she came to be living on the canals in the first place—I can’t tell you. When I was a child, I assumed she’d been born and raised on a working boat, as I was. But I’ve seen her birth certificate and she was born in Edinburgh, so nowhere near a canal. I just couldn’t imagine any other childhood. You know how it is, you think everyone is the same as you, then you hit a certain age—with me it was about nine or ten—when you begin to think it is only you who is different; everyone else is normal and you are the one out of step.”

  “Did you not ask her?” said Eve. “About where she came from, who your grandparents were, and how she ended up on the canal?”

  “Of course I did. It’s my earliest memory, snuggled up beside her in the cabin of the boat we lived on, while she told me stories. I can picture that cabin; I believe I would know it if I stepped into it again. But when I tried describing it to Anastasia, years ago now, she told me all my memories were distorted or false. It had a coal-fired engine where the galley is on the Number One, and we lived in the cabin beside it—ate, slept, played—all in this small space. Anastasia says I was so young when she converted the boat to a diesel engine I can’t be remembering it, but it’s stuck in my mind—the smell and the heat from the engine and the stories Anastasia told. She says I made them up, or misunderstood, and if she did actually tell me what I say she did, it was only a story. But I knew that. I heard them as stories. When I was older and asked for a version of the truth, she came up with a few sentences that were completely unconvincing. And she never said the same thing twice.”

  He threw a pizza crust to a collection of ducks and watched them squabble over it.

  “What I do know,” he went on, “is that she was sixteen when she last lived in a house, up until we moved off the canal when I went to secondary school. She told me that several times and I feel
it is the truth. But I don’t know if she moved onto the canal then, or lived rough. I can imagine her living rough.”

  They all thought about this.

  “She would never have been a bag lady,” Sally said. “More than one bag would be ridiculous self-indulgence.”

  “She’d have been a splendid rough sleeper,” said Eve. “She’d be so full of dignity she’d make everyone walking past feel she was a criticism of their sloppy approach to life and they’d end up wondering if they might not dig out a sleeping bag and join her.”

  “So, before you moved off the canal,” Sally said, “what was life like?”

  “I remember being happy—until I went to school. We were very close then. She taught me to read and write and quite a bit more besides and we were moving all the time. We were collecting loads and delivering them and collecting another, and I realize now that Anastasia must have been on the edge of exhaustion the whole time. On the edge of bankruptcy, too. She owned the boat we lived on, but this was in the last days of the Number Ones operating as haulage contractors and she would have had to hustle to get loads. I remember going to sleep night after night with the engine throbbing away and the boat moving, so she must have traveled through the night to keep herself afloat. Literally.

  “Then when I was seven, she decided I needed to go to school. It wasn’t to free herself from looking after me twenty-four hours a day, I’m sure—though that’s what I thought at the time. That she wanted rid of me. But it became even harder for her to make a living because she could only do local runs round the Birmingham area, to be there to pick me up. I suspect she thought that if she left it any longer there was a risk I would never learn how to be a child among other children and this might mean I would never learn to be properly at home in company as an adult. Still, at the time, I resented it.