Boogie Up the River

by Mark Wallington

  ‘Please don’t run up and down the boat, Boogie,’ I’d say very reasonably, and he’d give me his cute cow-eyed expression which I knew from experience means ‘don’t tell me what to do, sunbeam!’ People often ask me why Boogie is so disobedient. The reason is not, as they imagine, because of his inability to understand commands – he does that only too well – his contrariness is purely due to his demand to have the right to choose. He doesn’t expect to be given orders; he expects simply to be consulted. Take stick-fetching for instance. To Boogie, stick-fetching is the most demeaning form of canine submissiveness and he insists I join him in his campaign to abolish such a mindless practice. At one point that afternoon, as we slipped into Berkshire, we met a woman throwing sticks into the river for her dog. She flung the things out into the middle and the dog sprang into the water and made for the other side, dodging motorboats. Having retrieved the stick, the dog would then return, exhausted, to the woman and drop it at her feet with a ‘there, I’ve fetched it for you, now don’t throw it away again’ look. At which the woman immediately lobbed it straight back in the water and the dog sighed and gave her his ‘all right, but this is definitely the last time’ expression, and dived in again.

  The woman looked up with a charming smile when we approached and said: ‘Does your dog fetch sticks?’ and I had to reply: ‘No, my dog thinks fetching sticks is degrading to his species. He doesn’t enjoy being treated like a circus animal, and before you throw that stick again for your dog he’d like you seriously to consider the implications of your action.’

  ‘He enjoys it,’ she said as the dog disappeared under a paddle steamer with a wedding party on board.

  This campaign against stick-fetching was the first in a long line of anti-dogist stands that Boogie has made. His reasoning being that dogs shouldn’t exist merely to play a role in the lives of human beings. After an initial protest, I have gradually come to understand and fully support him in his political career. People too easily dismiss Boogie as just an ugly little mongrel with a flatulence problem, but he’s a sincere animal with a generosity of spirit, and, with regard to his position in the boat, I knew that if I were to put forward a reasonable case as to why he should cease his excursions from one end to the other, he would comply. Runnymede, I decided, would be a good place to address the problem. Runnymede would get him in a good mood. Runnymede, the Meadow of the Runes, the Council-field, the ancient site for the signing of treaties where in 1215 the earliest of constitutional documents, Magna Carta, was signed by the barons of the nation and their King John.

  Quite why they had to do this in the middle of a field is not clear, although, the general theory is that the barons so distrusted their King and the King so distrusted his barons that neither party would go round to the other’s place for fear of their lives. The occasion seems to have been a miserable affair from start to finish, with the charter itself showing all the bureaucratic flair of a local government report on a proposed leisure centre. It was the sort of document that created freedom by law in one clause, and abolished fishtraps in rivers, in the next.

  Its boldest assertion though was to put the King in check by the creation of a parliamentary assembly, and although, initially, freedom was only granted to all as long as they did what they were told, the day it was signed was the day the nation first asserted the principle of constitutional government, which makes it probably the most important treaty ever signed in the history of the world and so it would have been nice if those involved could have been a bit less grim-faced about the whole thing.

  Some say that the site of the actual signing is on Magna Carta island in mid-Thames, but I hope that isn’t true since it would mean that the spot where civil liberty was created is now out of bounds to the general public. I’d much rather believe the other theory which claims the charter was signed in Runnymede meadows, an expanse of grass and woodland where a man and his dog are free to wander all they like.

  It was by the Magna Carta Memorial that I put it to Boogie that on a journey of this nature one has to make sacrifices for the good of the expedition. The point being that running up and down the boat was undermining our chances of reaching the source of the river, whereas, sitting still in one position would in fact be contributory to the effort. The decision was, I stressed, entirely up to him, and if he chose to run up and down the boat creating havoc then he had every right as a dog to do so, but it would generally be more acceptable if he didn’t.

  In response he conveyed to me the opinion that he liked running up and down the boat creating havoc and couldn’t give a toss about the expedition.

  That evening I found a place to moor by the quaintly named Black Potts railway bridge from where there was a glorious view across the fields to Windsor. The castle stood thinly wrapped in a sepia shroud by the sunset. As darkness fell the walls were floodlit and I walked into town drawn by the glow.

  The night air was sticky with a storm and the town was at boiling point, its bridge so crowded it seemed to sag with the heat and the stress. I waited outside a pub called the Donkey House where tables and chairs lined the riverside and there was a background of foreign languages and fairy-lights. A crowd were sitting on the quayside singing old Beatles numbers as from downstream a disco boat appeared – more lights and more Golden Oldies. It was the same paddle steamer as I’d seen earlier in the day. The wedding party had been put ashore and a few bulbs changed and the boat had quickly assumed a new role.

  I was there on the bridge on the dot of seven. By eight Jennifer hadn’t showed. The pubs began to spill over. The castle glowered above as people without shirts leant against Wren’s Guildhall clutching pint pots. There was going to be a storm or a fight, you couldn’t tell which. It turned out to be a fight as from the George someone flew out on to the street. There were shouts and smashes of glass and a group of youths ran across the bridge.

  I turned to get out of their way and bumped straight into a familiar figure in leathers wearing a crash helmet and clutching a carrier bag.

  ‘Mark Wallington, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Me again, Michael.’ And he handed me the bag. ‘She’s got problems. She needs you. Remember that before you get angry. I’ve a feeling she has an unlocked trauma. Sign here, please.’

  I signed and he nodded and said: ‘I’ve been through it as well. It’s not easy. If you want someone to talk to let me know.’ Then he strode off.

  Inside the bag was a note that read: ‘ “Is it so small a thing To have enjoyed the sun, To have liv’d light in the spring, To have lov’d, to have thought, to have done?” Enjoy the Bombay duck. Call me.’

  Boogie and I sat on the bench next to a Japanese couple who smiled at us for twenty minutes as we ate crispy duck, plum sauce, pancakes, spring onions and mushrooms. Afterwards I found a phone box outside the castle gate.

  Windsor Castle is attractive because each window you look through you can see some sort of life – you feel the laundry room is full of steam and the kitchen full of cooking smells and there’s someone on the landing doing the Hoovering. You get the feeling someone really lives there, which is more than you can say about Jennifer’s flat. The answering machine came on. ‘Hello, this is Jennifer Conway, I’m not able to take your call but if you’d like to leave a message I’ll get back to you. And if that’s Mark, I’m sorry but I’ve been delayed again, can’t help it, something big. I’m really sorry. I should make it on Monday. Have an adventure planned for the afternoon. What do you think of the poem? It’s not me – it’s Matthew Arnold. But then of course you knew that.’

  Concorde passed overhead and two large bats flew into the floodlights of the castle. An owl made a noise nothing like a hoot and I walked out of the town into the darkness and followed the towpath back to the boat. ‘She’s been delayed, that’s all – can’t be helped. I know you think her intentions are questionable but you’re wrong, you’ll see.’ Boogie licked something horrible off the path and retched.

  In the small ho
urs of the night the storm broke. I awoke to a crack of thunder overhead and rain fired on to the canvas like shot. I lay there in a sweat, waiting for the first drop to pierce Maegan’s skin, but she remained taut as a drum and took the battering without a protest. At one point during the night I lifted up the flap and saw the castle alive with lightning. The railway bridge hissed and steamed and the river swallowed and filled by the minute. At one point a flash illuminated a supermarket trolley poking out from the water like a skeleton. I lay there wondering what possessed people to throw supermarket trolleys into canals and rivers. There must be some strange thrill attached to it. I decided that at some time on this trip I would go to a supermarket and steal a trolley and push it into a secluded stretch of the river and discover the sensation for myself.

  Next morning I was up at dawn, a time of the day which doesn’t reach anyone sleeping in Maegan until eight thirty.

  I breathed in a new day, felt the sun on my face. If you could ignore the goods trains rumbling over Black Potts Bridge, the traffic on the Datchet road, the jet engines overhead and the blue and white bathtub that roared by crewed by Chelsea supporters chasing the ducks, it was a peaceful Sunday scene.

  I sat in the boat during the morning and tried to make notes, but I kept being distracted. Water voles popped out of their holes to look at me, and swans came over and threatened me. So did a police launch. It cruised past and the officers eyed me suspiciously. I gave them my unsuspicious smile but they pulled over.

  ‘Have you got a licence for that?’ said one.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘That boat.’

  ‘Er . . . well . . .’

  ‘Right, you’re nicked,’ he said. Then his mate leant over and pointed to the pork pie sitting on my seat and said: ‘What’s that then?’

  ‘My lunch. Want some?’

  ‘Beneath it.’

  Beneath it was a little blue sticker.

  ‘That’s my licence of course.’

  I set off in the afternoon, sculling up through Windsor, catching a peek of the spires of Eton College through the trees. Some scholars loafed on the boathouse ramps but the river was too busy for them to take their fragile rowing boats out. All afternoon as the air thickened I picked my way through a milieu of boats: pedaloes, punts and cruisers, and ploughing a path through them all, a hotel boat with guests gazing down from the deck as if they were on a liner. The river was a playground and the splendid views of the castle supplied the classic backdrop. It grew smaller and smaller as I pulled my way westwards, then it was gone round a bend and instead a black cloud the size of a small European country filled the heavens, and suddenly all boats were running for cover. I wasn’t really bothered. I just leant into the rain and felt the water refresh me. At one point a woman dressed in a coat and head scarf stuck her head out of a launch called Maid Anita and shouted: ‘Are you enjoying yourself?’

  ‘Yes thank you,’ I shouted back.

  ‘I should give up if I were you. We’re going back to Datchet. Been a lousy trip all round. It’s all right for him, he’s been to sea. I haven’t. We argue all the time. It all started in Marlow when I dropped the anchor over the side. Wasn’t tied to the boat, see. People keep shouting at me.’

  I reached Boveney lock as the rain intensified. The lock-keeper came out dressed in oilskins and sou’wester and, taking pity on the drenched duo that paddled into his chamber, he said I could moor for the night on his island. We sheltered in the gents’ toilet. From the lock-keeper’s cottage I could smell a roast dinner being cooked, which is a dreadful smell if you’re not going to have any. I sat on the step and watched the vegetable patch fill with puddles. The cabbages had been gasping but now each leaf had a pond for the flies to dive in.

  The rain stopped some time after dark but I spent a restless night as the weir stream roared. By the following morning the river had risen considerably.

  As I packed up, the lock-keeper came and stood over me and shouted above the din: ‘You should be all right. I’m not going to put the red flags up for the time being. Conditions aren’t that dangerous, not yet anyway, not quite, almost though, could be by lunchtime. Travelling alone?’

  ‘No, no. A girlfriend’s joining me soon.’

  ‘Dog’s good company, I bet.’

  ‘No, he farts too much.’

  I cast off and felt the weir suck at me through its straw. And for the whole morning I battled against the wind and the current. My hands were raw and blistered and to those people who gave me waves of encouragement from the bank I apologize now for not waving back, the reason being that if I took my hands off the sculls for an instant I lost all the ground I’d made in the previous half hour. I particularly apologize if one of those waving to me was Vince Hill.

  It took me four hours to reach Maidenhead, and I was rewarded with a town full of smooth edges that boasts a Pizza Hut, a McDonald’s, a Kentucky Fried Chicken, and a Marks and Spencer’s. It does have two fine bridges though. The first is one of Brunel’s greatest hits, a railway bridge with two splendid arches incorporating the largest and flattest brick span in the world. Such an engineering feat was believed impossible when the bridge first opened, and Brunel was persuaded to leave his wooden structure in place to allay fears of collapse. Only when these supports were washed away in a flood a few years later was the great man able to admit they never reached the brickwork.

  The second bridge is the town’s, and is another graceful construction on which I am now an authority since I’ve been under it backwards, forwards, sideways and through every aperture. Each time I neared one of the holes or arches or whatever they’re called, the current became so strong it swept me either downstream or clean through only to be picked up by another rush and thrown back through a different hole.

  After four attempts I took a break and tried to call Jennifer. Her personal assistant answered.

  ‘Jennifer Conway, please,’ I said.

  ‘Can I ask who’s calling?’

  ‘Personal call.’

  ‘I’m sorry Ms Conway is busy.’

  ‘It’s Mark Wallington.’

  ‘Oh, Ms Conway has gone to Brussels then.’

  ‘What!?’

  ‘That’s the message she left.’

  ‘Brussels! What the hell is she doing in Brussels?’

  ‘She said she’s sorry and that she would meet you later in the week. On Wednesday.’

  ‘Wednesday?!’

  ‘Hopefully. Personally I shouldn’t think she’ll make it.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Listen, you seem like a reasonable sort, you should steer clear of her, you know what she’s like.’

  I went back to the boat and thrashed my way under the bridge powered by raw aggression. I didn’t need Jennifer’s help or anyone else’s to find the source of the Thames.

  Not far upstream from Maidenhead I got lost. It was all the islands in the channel. They confused me.

  5.Sonning. I’ll Definitely Meet You in Sonning

  BEFORE MAIDENHEAD THE riverside had been tailored and well protected. It had been London’s waterway and had had its edges clipped and every willow tree purposely placed. But as I headed up towards Cliveden, the east bank rose and grew into a cliff of beech and chestnut. Travelling backwards I hadn’t noticed my approach, but now crags unfolded one after the other and the river was suddenly let loose. A mist crawled up into the woods so that the trees smoked and stood so still they appeared drugged. The river was a groove and I sculled slowly through the deep feeling heady, feeling for the first time the opiate of the river, and how it intoxicated all that it came into contact with.

  At the top of the cliff among the trees stood the Italianate mansion Cliveden House. It was huge and loomed magnificently out of the mist and was impossible to look at without seeing a haze of scandal. For Cliveden had a reputation. If duels weren’t being fought between dukes and jilted lovers in the gardens, then young women like Christine Keeler were being introduced to Ministers of War by the
swimming pool, and it seemed to me to be more than mere coincidence when, passing the river frontage, I dipped my scull into the water and pulled out a sodden diary. I peeled the pages back in the hope I’d find material with which I could blackmail at the very least a member of the Cabinet, but the entries were clearly in code: ‘Jan 1st. Dear diary. Got up late. Boring day. Anne Diamond is back on Breakfast Time. Arranged to meet Ben down the pub but the head gasket on his Toyota has blown. Started the jigsaw of the Matterhorn this afternoon. Think I’m getting a cold. Peter Snow chaired Newsnight.’ At least I presumed the entries were in code. I didn’t want to believe that someone’s life could be so dull.

  That night I sat in the boat in the lamplight and began my own diary. I wanted it to be an introspective and poetic account of the journey, but that didn’t last very long. Instead I wrote about the wildlife I’d seen so far. My knowledge was scant but anyone who spent more than a few days on the river would soon have become intimate with all the creatures that lived on the banks, particularly the birds. I spent a long time each day just watching them paddle and scoot and swoop about their business.

  Mallards, of course, were ubiquitous, but I’d never really noticed what beautiful birds they are, and how aerobatic. They left the water like jump jets and flew low and in formation, masters of their art. The males were recognizable by their beautiful blue-green iridescence, and their yellow grained beaks. The females, by the way they normally had three males on top of them. They were gregarious creatures but it was noticeable how they didn’t get on with great crested grebes. I saw one have a fight with a grebe on one occasion and the grebe flattened it.