Contents
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Mark Wallington
Title Page
Dedication
1. ‘I’ll See You on Tower Pier at Eleven.’
2. ‘All Right, the Prospect of Whitby at Eight.’
3. ‘Listen, I’ll Have to Meet You in Hampton Later.’
4. ‘Be on Windsor Bridge at Seven – Prompt.’
5. ‘Sonning. I’ll Definitely Meet You in Sonning.’
6. ‘Sorry About That, Give Me a Ring from Pangbourne.’
7. ‘I’ll Wait for You Outside Boots in Oxford.’
8. ‘See You on Tadpole Bridge. And That’s a Promise.’
9. ‘What? Lechlade Already?’
10. ‘Meet Me at the Source if You Like.’
11. ‘I’ll See You Sometime.’
Copyright
About the Book
The sequel to the bestselling 500 Mile Walkies. When the author set off in a 100-year-old camping skiff to find the source of the Thames, he didn’t want to take his dog, Boogie. He would have left him in kennels but the other dogs complained and things do not work out as he planned... Boogie up the River is a witty and fascinating account of a mismatched couple, the people they meet and the places they visit.
About the Author
Mark Wallington had a variety of jobs before embarking on a career as a TV scriptwriter and a travel writer. He worked in a pork pie factory, on a Sardinian building site, in a lumbermill, as a gardener and for a bicycle messenger service in San Francisco.
As a travel writer Mark Wallington is the author of Destination Lapland and 500 Mile Walkies, and a freelance contributor to a variety of publications. His hobbies include playing the guitar in the bathroom and watching Grandstand.
Also by Mark Wallington
DESTINATION LAPLAND
500 MILE WALKIES
Boogie up the River
One Man and his Dog to the Source of the Thames
Mark Wallington
For Catherine
1.I’ll See You on Tower Pier at Eleven
I MADE A lot of phone calls that evening. It was the eve of departure and I was getting desperate.
I was standing at the window with the receiver pressed to my ear and I remember thinking how the clouds were wound around the brown sky like a river. But everywhere I looked I saw a river. I had rivers on my mind.
I rang my friend Douglas. I told him I was about to set off on a long journey, a journey by boat to the source of a great river, a journey to the source of the Thames. And he said: ‘So what; doesn’t impress me.’
So I went straight to the point. I said: ‘I want you to do me a favour. I want you to look after Boogie.’
It was a reasonable request. I had after all looked after his stick insects when he went windsurfing in Turkey.
He said: ‘Boogie?’
‘Yes.’
‘Your dog?’
‘Yes.’
‘The dog that ate my stick insects when I went windsurfing in Turkey?’
I didn’t pursue the matter. Douglas clearly has a better memory than I have. Instead I phoned Clive. I explained to Clive that I was about to row to the source of the Thames, that I was setting off in the morning and that my craft would be an antique camping skiff, and he said: ‘Big deal! I’ve just come back from a desert safari in Tunisia.’
‘I was wondering if Boogie could stay with you while I’m gone,’ I said.
There was silence, then Clive said: ‘Boogie?’
‘My dog.’
‘The dog you brought round here once?’
‘That’s right.’
‘The dog that ate my computer?’
Actually that’s not true. It was Clive’s computer software Boogie ate rather than the computer itself. I didn’t pursue the matter though, instead I phoned Sarah. But Sarah said she couldn’t look after Boogie either. She said she was going to South America on business. This surprised me since she works behind the counter at Sketchley’s, but I wished her a pleasant trip and then phoned Kevin. Kevin is an old friend. Kevin has a dog of his own. Kevin had even looked after Boogie once before. But when Kevin answered he reminded me of the stain on his ceiling, the enormous phone bill, the dent in his Vauxhall Astra, and the paternity suit filed against his own dog, all consequences, he claimed, of Boogie’s visit. I thought the man was over-reacting, personally, but I didn’t pursue the matter.
I went through my address book once more. Marsha was my last chance. As I dialled, Boogie came into the room to watch the new Australian mini-series on TV. He glanced at me. It was a glance that said: ‘Here, you know that new frying pan?’
‘Yes.’
‘The Teflon job?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ve just been sick in it.’
Marsha answered. I felt confident Marsha would help me out. Marsha loves all animals. She particularly likes monkeys. In fact she’s monkey crazy. She has monkey-pattern wallpaper. If you visit her and she gives you a cup of tea the chances are the cup will have a gibbon on it. Marsha also likes dogs and so I said to her: ‘Marsha. I’m going on a rowing trip up the Thames. I’m going to solve the mystery of its source once and for all. I’ll be going uphill for a hundred and forty miles on a journey through the wilds of the stockbroker belt.’
And she said: ‘You should take a chimpanzee with you.’
So I explained how I didn’t want to take any animal with me and that the reason I was phoning was because . . .
‘You’re not going to ask me to look after Boogie, are you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Boogie, your dog? The dog that came round here once?’
I could vaguely remember taking Boogie round to her house once before. She gave him a bowl of water; I think the bowl had a gorilla on it. ‘You remember him,’ I said.
‘How could I forget him? He tried to seduce my hamster.’
I didn’t pursue the matter. I put the phone down and patted Boogie. He belched, and a miasma of curry and Winalot wound around the room like a river. I could never understand what all the fuss was about. He was charmingly noisome, that was all. Beneath his earthy exterior was an honest animal simply trying to unload his traumatic childhood. All he wanted was to be understood. Normally I took him with me on trips like this, but that was out of the question this time. This time Jennifer was coming with me.
Outside the daylight was stretched. It was the beginning of May, the time of year when you begin to forget that the days were ever short, and I could feel the mounting excitement of an imminent journey.
I made one last effort: I called Mrs Matheson.
‘Hello,’ said Mrs Matheson. ‘Sit And Stay Boarding Kennels.’
‘Hello, this is Mark Wallington.’
‘We’re full!’
The problem is Boogie has a reputation on the kennel circuit. He’s known as a bad influence on the other guests. He’s like Bilko in kennels – he organizes poker schools and plans escapes. The last time he stayed with Mrs Matheson even the other dogs complained.
‘But you’re my only hope, Mrs Matheson. I’ve tried everywhere else. I’m going away tomorrow.’
‘We’re full until Christmas.’
‘I’d take him with me but I’m going with a friend and . . . well . . . she hates him.’
‘And I’ve just remembered we’re full until the following Christmas as well.’
‘It’ll be a disaster if he comes with us. Couldn’t you keep him in the fridge or something?’
‘In fact I really don’t think we can fit him in this century.’
Before I could pursue the matter she hung up.
On the Australian mini-series the heroine stood in th
e shade of a gum tree and told the hero she loved him and Boogie licked his armpit. Hadn’t I heard stories of how cat owners went away for a week and left their cats seven tins of cat food in a row?
Boogie looked at me and grinned. He’s the only dog I know who has a can opener attached to his collar.
There was nothing else I could do. Jennifer would just have to grow to like him; she’d have to make an effort. I called her and spoke to her answering machine.
‘Hello, it’s Mark . . . um . . . I just called to tell you . . . well . . . just to say . . . to say about tomorrow . . . nothing really . . . just meet me at Tower Pier at eleven . . . and . . . well, see you there.’
I couldn’t tell her over the phone. Informing someone that they’re going to spend a lengthy period in an enclosed space with Boogie should be done to the face. She’d find out tomorrow and then it would be her problem.
I packed nervously. As I zipped up my bag Boogie came over and gave me his ‘going somewhere, are you?’ look. I sighed, unzipped the bag and squeezed in his bowl. He wagged his tail and knocked over an inexpensive ornament that didn’t break, then gave me his ‘and you simply couldn’t bear to leave me behind, could you?’ look.
Then we sat down and watched the end of the mini-series. But I couldn’t concentrate. I kept seeing rivers everywhere.
2.All Right, The Prospect of Whitby at Eight
A JOURNEY TO the source of the Thames wasn’t my idea; it was Jennifer’s. Not that I’m holding her responsible for what happened – that would be unreasonable, there were far too many people involved to blame one individual. Even the manager of my local branch of The Sock Shop played a part. If he hadn’t arranged his window the way he did that evening back in March things might have been very different.
I remember the occasion well. I was on my way round to Jennifer’s flat in Docklands. We get together now and again. We have poetry evenings. She reads me her poems and asks for comment. She says I’m the only person she could possibly do this with. She says I’m different from her other friends. She says they all have Porsches and cufflinks, while I have sensitivity. They live on their stock market knowledge and their nerves, while I live on a whim.
I don’t know where she gets this idea from but I’m certainly not going to discourage her. If anything I try to cultivate the image. I stare out of windows a lot when I’m with her. I appear preoccupied, as if I’m hiding something. I dress plainly on the surface but like an El Greco underneath. For this reason when I saw the green and yellow viscose creations in The Sock Shop window, I thought: Those socks talk. Quite what they said I wasn’t sure, but Jennifer is a woman who likes to be kept guessing. She said to me once: ‘The two things in life I love most are poetry and money.’ She’s an enigma, a contradiction; it’s just a shame her poetry is so dreadful.
I changed in the lift on the way up to her apartment. It was the first time I’d ever been to a poetry evening with a dirty pair of socks in my pocket. I sat on the floor as she read me her latest work. When Jennifer reads poetry she lets her hair down and then spends the evening throwing it back off her face. She takes her shoes off and sits cross-legged and tries to sell me the poem as if it were gilt-edged stock. It’s most effective.
‘“Rubble lies like flesh in the streets, and my mind wanders picking at the bones . . .”’ she read, and then she stopped and pouted and said: ‘It’s awful, isn’t it?’
‘No . . . no . . . it’s . . . promising, definitely promising,’ I said, and then the telephone rang.
I went to the window and gazed out over London. Jennifer’s flat is in one of the development schemes that rise every week from the mess that was once Wapping. She doesn’t say much about her past but I have a feeling she’s known the Docklands since she was a child. A lot of her poems are based around them – the word rubble has appeared more than once. She bought the flat for the price of the bricks and now if she sold it she could buy a Lincolnshire market town. She says she doesn’t think about it. She means she doesn’t like to think about it.
Across the river among the warehouses the new silver buildings reached for the sky like fresh tombstones. In the street below, an Audi Quattro rumbled over the cobblestones past a line of builders’ skips and estate agents’ offices.
I kicked my own shoes off and my socks hit the white carpet like a spilt drink. But the shag-pile poked through the viscose and irritated my feet and when Jennifer came off the telephone I said: ‘I’ve got really itchy feet.’
She smiled and her big eyes widened and slipped into that faraway look she has and she said: ‘You’re not planning another trip, are you?’
‘What . . .?’
‘That’s what I like about you. Nobody owns you. You look out of a window, become inspired and off you go. What far-flung corner are you heading to this time?’
The problem with Jennifer is that she likes to charm people but doesn’t like much to be charmed herself. When she gives you her faraway look she threads your eyes and she takes control like a puppeteer. She makes you feel you are the only person who really matters. She even makes you forget about the other ten people she has made feel exactly the same way already that day, and I knew I would never be able to forgive myself if I admitted that when I mentioned itchy feet I was commenting on my new socks rather than my wanderlust, so I said: ‘Well . . .’
On a pier a police boat gargled into life. On the bank I was sure another slim building had appeared since I last looked. Through it all rolled the mighty Thames.
‘. . . I think it’s about time I went on a journey to the source of a great river.’
This wasn’t altogether untrue. Every spring I think about going to the source of a great river, or the top of a great mountain, or across a great ocean, or to the heart of a great continent. I spend the winter locked in the den of my body. I leave the curtains drawn and windows closed and I eat things out of packets. Then the clocks go forward and I’m struck down by impatience. I pull out atlases and I read books like Charles Sturt’s Narrative of an Expedition into Central Australia. I listen to the shipping forecast. I throw open the windows and see the blossom and I take deep breaths and say things like: ‘I think it’s about time I went on a trip to the source of a great river.’
Normally I’m on my own when I behave like this, and within a few days it’s all forgotten and there’s no damage done. But this time I was with Jennifer, and Jennifer has this idea I’m the last of the great adventurers. She’s excited by the thought of me swinging through trees to get a story. She doesn’t realize I spend most of my life sitting in my attic looking out over the gas showroom. I keep meaning to tell her but whenever I’m on the verge she says: ‘Why don’t I just pack up all this work business and go on an adventure with you?’ and I’m helpless. On this particular occasion she stared downstream towards Millwall and said: ‘I’d love to go to the source of a great river as well.’ And I panicked and replied: ‘Name your river and we’ll travel together to its source.’
I quickly followed this with a nervous laugh in the hope she’d think twice before committing herself to a raft on the Orinoco with a nautical buffoon. But she just stood there watching a balloon bearing the name of a building society fly over the water. I could see the globe in her eyes. I could see the word Amazon on her lips. Then she turned to me and said: ‘The Thames.’
‘The what?’
‘The Thames.’
‘The Thames.’
‘Yes. The Thames.’
‘You mean . . . The Thames?’
‘Yes. The Thames.’
‘Let me get this right. You want to go . . . to the source of the Thames?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it’s here.’
‘You mean because it’s there. The phrase is: because it’s there.’
‘No, because it’s here. Because it’s here, right outside my window.’
‘Oh.’
The rest of the evening we dedicated to Thames poetry: ‘“S
weete Themmes! runne softlie, till I end my Song,”’ read Jennifer from the Spenser collection. ‘ “Earth has not anything to show more fair,”’ read I from the Wordsworth. Later she dug into a drawer and read me one of her own poems about the river. She stroked her hair back and said: ‘ “When I lie on your bed I see greyness and strange stains. When I lie on your surface, I just see greyness, I’m sinking into . . .” It’s awful, isn’t it?’
‘No, no. it’s . . . promising,’ I said, and then the phone went again.
It wasn’t until I drove home and found myself driving along the Thames Embankment that I began to think seriously of what she’d said. By Blackfriars Bridge I parked and peered into the black and gold water and I felt I was looking at the river for the first time. As it rolled through the city I could sense the power of an enormous history, and I began to understand Jennifer’s distraction. The Thames is here rather than there. The Thames is our river – Britain’s river. The Thames coils like an intestine through the belly of the nation. A voyage to its source would be an important journey.
So I began to make casual inquiries. Popular opinion had it that the source of the Thames was near Cirencester in Gloucestershire. But then I met a man in a pub who said: ‘Bollocks!’ and went on to explain that the source was undoubtedly at Seven Springs near Cheltenham. I passed this information on to the woman in the library and she said: ‘The source of the Thames? It’s in Crudwell, everyone knows that.’ Then I brought the subject up at a dinner party and was amazed at the silence it inspired. And so I began to wonder: had I stumbled across a geographical riddle? Could a river as well charted as the Thames really have a disputed source? It didn’t seem credible. I intensified my research and consulted my AA atlas of Great Britain. I followed the course of the river as it wound out of London as blue as a motorway, headed on through Berkshire and the Goring Gap, and turned north to Oxford. As far as there it was a regular ribbon of water but then as it set out through open country it gave the first signs of the strange behaviour to come. It took to wandering drunkenly through nowhere in particular. Somewhere it slipped unnoticed into Gloucestershire, and passed Lechlade as if it were lost. Finally it reached Cricklade and there things got out of control, as, without warning, the river split into a frayed end and veins ran off like leaks from a pipe. It seemed to me that any one of these could have been the source. I put my maps down and wiped a tear from my eye. It was time, I decided, that someone settled the dispute once and for all.
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