Boogie Up the River

by Mark Wallington

  They also realized that to keep this vital channel open, strict regulation was essential, otherwise the river would flood in the winter and be reduced to shallows in the summer. The millers and the fishermen had by Saxon times found a solution to the problem with crude versions of the weir. These provided pressure for the millers’ wheels, and a trap for the fish, but they also provided a dead end for the boatmen, since they were little more than barricades across the stream. So flash-locks were introduced i.e. weirs with removable slats which provided a ‘flash’ of water on which a boat could be ridden downstream or winched up. These kept the boatmen happy, who now, on a good day, could ride the same flash all the way downstream – although on a bad day they would probably drown – and they kept the fishermen happy since the fish were channelled as before. But now the millers had grievances because the flashes of water undermined their waterpower. They made extortionate charges for boatmen to ride a flash; or frequently, if water levels were low, they’d simply refuse to open their gates. The result was huge delays for the boatmen who took to ramming weirs for their entertainment.

  Fortunately, in Italy, where the Renaissance was well under way, Leonardo da Vinci was working on the problem. While our boatman and millers were standing on weirs squabbling, Leonardo was taking a far more systematic approach to the far greater problems facing Italy’s waterway network. This had to cope with rivers that fell three hundred metres in as many miles and da Vinci knew that the only device of any use would be one that operated independently of the weir stream and yet used a comparatively small amount of water. His solution was the pound lock. Two hundred years later in the middle of the seventeenth century, the British got to hear of it and started to convert.

  This was a costly and slow process. The first pound lock on the Thames was introduced at Iffley in 1633 but not till 1938 was the last flash-lock replaced. By then all parties concerned were largely grievance free, but this was because they were all largely redundant. The country’s rivers and canals had declined as commercial routes in place of the railways; the fish were victims of pollution or people brought them in frozen boxes anyway; and watermills had been a joke for a long time. But the locking of the river did see the creation of one role: that of the lock-keeper.

  I think it was at Sonning lock that I realized my vocation in life was to be a lock-keeper. The keeper there didn’t speak to me as far as I remember, but that morning as I rose up the granite walls a further five foot four inches towards the source, and surfaced into a world of trees, flowers and mist to see the lock-keeper bent over his gate, nodding and smoking his pipe, I knew that his was the job I’d always wanted. It was clear to me that a lock-keeper was a man who woke up in the morning and stood on his front porch scratching his belly, surveying his vegetable patch and thinking to himself: Life is good when you’re a lock-keeper. Then he would dedicate the day to being helpful to people, chatting to them, advising them, forgiving them when they gouged chunks out of his newly painted lock doors. He’d spend his spare time weeding his herbaceous borders, oiling his hinges, patting his dog and painting everything diamond white and gloss black. Then at lunchtime he’d take a break in his cottage which would be a hundred-and-fifty-year-old flintstone building with bright curtains and a crammed larder. In the afternoon he’d potter in his fruit cage and shine the plaques that commemorated the flood of 1847 and the year when he won Best Kept Lock of the Year Award. Then he’d bottle some jam for sale to passing boaters and go and sit under his sycamores for his tea break. After that he’d check the flow of the weir stream and as the sun went down he’d top up the hydraulic fluid levels and count the boats that had gone through his chamber that day, then close his register and go in for his supper. In the evening with the weir rushing under the moonlight he’d read Arthur Conan Doyle stories until he fell asleep in his armchair, the world a better place for the day he’d spent.

  And so at the Caversham lock where the keeper had freshly painted bollards, manicured flowerbeds and permed hair, I said: ‘You’ve got the best job of the world.’ And as luck would have it he replied: ‘There’s a vacancy if you want.’ But then he added: Long hours and lousy money and you don’t meet as many girls as you’d think.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘It’s boring as well.’

  ‘Oh. Garden looks nice though,’ I said.

  ‘I hate gardening. It’s boring. Do you know your boat smells of roast dinners?’

  As it happened I had noticed a faint smell of roast dinners all morning but I couldn’t understand where it was coming from. In fact I couldn’t understand a lot of things that morning. The most odd was Boogie’s desire to help me out with the sculling. I should have guessed his behaviour and the smell were connected. His lassitude of the previous few days forgotten, he spent the morning trying to push me off the sculls and take over my position in the boat. He even started to lick the scull-chocks and that was when I made the connection. I’d greased the sculls before I set out from a tin I’d found in the bottom of the boat. The grease had come straight from a roasting tray, and now the sculls were like beef lollies.

  We were approaching Reading. Gathering on the horizon were the gasworks, pylons, scaffolding and railway cuttings of the biggest city since London.

  Some swans escorted us in, or rather made sure we kept to a certain lane. There were a large number of them on the approach. They’d found a refuge in a house on the bank where a man stood by his open back door and threw bread and vegetables for the birds and they clamoured around him. I’d seen similar scenes on a number of occasions since London. The houses were surrounded by swan dung and feathers, and the people who fed the birds had long necks and noses and walked with flat feet. When they died they’d have their ashes sprinkled over the river and for years afterwards the swans would come and expect to be fed.

  We passed the river Kennet and the entrance to the Kennet and Avon Canal. And for the first time I felt the river narrow noticeably. In London it had been an old and worn corrugated slab of water looking as though it expected to find the sea round the next corner. Here it was young and gritty and needed big gulps to swallow a river like the Kennet.

  Reading was a town with a charm all of its own. As we slipped under the town bridge an empty Toblerone packet landed in the boat thrown by a lad who leant over the parapet with his tongue stuck out. I said: ‘What’s your name?!’ And he shouted back: ‘Nigel Leyton, aged twelve, what of it, Mister?’

  And then by Caversham Bridge a gang of skinheads sat all over a bench, smoking and shouting and throwing things. I asked them what Reading was like and they were surprised to find someone addressing them. They were suddenly quiet as they tried to work out who was to be their spokesman. Finally, one said: ‘It’s got an inner ring road and an outer ring road.’ And then another said: ‘It’s got a biscuit factory.’

  I stopped in Reading briefly just to fill up with water, but Boogie saw a Pelican Crossing and had to have a go on it. Then he saw a car park and he wanted a run in that, and then we had to have a walk down the pedestrian precinct and have a look at the bus depot. Finally he wanted to lick some parking meters and visit the railway station redevelopment, and in the end it was a couple of hours before we could get away.

  But, like all the towns it passed through, the Thames left Reading by a back door and within ten minutes I’d found an island in the stream and was sat on a branch of a low-slung willow, brewing up.

  A coot paddled past me; a moorhen followed. I fancied I was finally able to tell the difference between them. It wasn’t their paddle motion or the size or shape of their nests. And it wasn’t their cry or their mating ritual, nor the size of their brood nor their defense tactics. The difference was that coots had a bright white head while moorhens had a bright red and yellow one. Birdwatching isn’t easy but you get the hang of it after a while.

  I snuggled into the tree sheltering from the warm drizzle. I liked these islands in the river. They’d been a feature all the way since Kew. The Saxon word for t
hem was eyot and there was something dark and disturbing about them, except for when they had executive hotels and landscaped lawns such as on Monkey Island near Maidenhead, or when they had housing estates like one near Shepperton.

  This particular one was just an overgrown lump of vegetation and didn’t look as though anyone had set foot on it for years. Hardly had the thought left my head than a cloud of diesel called Maid Ugly appeared. Its wash climbed my boat. The coots and moorhens dived for cover and bits of bank fell in the water as the driver leapt out and tied up: ‘Good place you’ve found here,’ he said. ‘Look, there’s even a supermarket trolley.’

  Sure enough a supermarket trolley was sticking through the mud on the bank; only an experienced eye would have spotted it. I said: ‘I can’t understand why people throw supermarket trolleys into rivers.’

  ‘That’s because you’ve never done it, have you?’

  ‘Have you?’

  ‘Yes, I have as a matter of fact.’

  ‘What’s it like?’

  ‘Well, put it like this: now I think the world is divided into two sorts of people – those who have thrown supermarket trolleys into rivers and those who haven’t.’

  I greased the sculls again and Boogie licked them dry again and we headed up to Mapledurham. The sun came out and the river was a mirror. The reflections of Mapledurham House and the old mill were a shimmering water-colour, a pool of life that looked as though one could walk on it. I threw a stone and a shock of ripples hurried over the surface with a shiver then the water quickly returned to its mirage-like state. The river was made up of many things, but it was the reflections that gave it its extra dimension. It was easy to forget about them at times, to take them for granted and not notice them for long periods. But every now and again I’d see a special display such as this and then I could see the whole earth and sky in the water. The reflections were sharper at some times of the day than others but they were always there somewhere, and in the evening as the dusk seeped into the edges of the landscape and the sun set, the reflections were left behind in the water for a short time, until the last of the daylight dragged them off into the woods.

  The stretch from Mapledurham to Pangbourne was glorious, the sort of scene I’d pictured when, before I set off, I’d closed my eyes and tried to imagine the journey. On the bank stood old sycamores so colourful you could taste their sweet blossom. Insects skated on the breathless surface; fish shoved their faces through a ring of water; some horses came down to the bank to look at me; and there in the most splendid setting was Hardwick House, standing back from the water, its gardens sloping grandly down through vivid meadows. By the landing stage two herons stood motionless on a log, like guards, grinning and waiting.

  The evening had become calm and warm. The only sound was Maegan breaking the water. I had the reach to myself and I spent hours exploring every creek. The river was a box of tricks and I crept about, frightened to move too suddenly in case I broke something.

  At length I got to within sight of Whitchurch Bridge and I moored to watch some canoeists playing water polo. I made camp and then walked along the towpath towards Pangbourne, preparing myself for a frank telephone conversation with Jennifer. Her behaviour was putting the expedition into jeopardy. It was time to be firm. Well, firmish.

  Some other boats were moored for the night, but there was little activity from them. I’d hoped there might be some sort of boatman’s camaraderie on these mooring sites. I’d thought there might be campfires at night and folk gathered together singing songs of the Thames, roasting fish on the fire and telling tales of ghost barges and house prices in Chertsey. Instead, most crews threw their slops out of the window, then pulled the blinds and switched on the television, and that was that.

  As I neared the bridge though, I saw a different kind of boat. It was moored away from the others and looked put together out of orange boxes and rope. Its blue and white paint was peeling and faded. Washing hung from bow to stern. The windows were coated in grime and condensation, and lashed to the deck was an impressive display of paraphernalia: a bicycle, a fishing net, fenders, petrol cans, a mattress, a standard lamp, a Hoover. It looked like a tramp’s steamer. But the most unnerving part of it all was the dog bowl on the bank outside. It was the size of a bucket and had the name Ralph written on it. Where Ralph was I didn’t know but I didn’t want to meet him, that was for sure, and I passed on tiptoe. Boogie, on the other hand, who is either fearless or stupid, but probably stupid, went over to the bowl and started to lick it out, tripping over a mooring line in the process. Like a spider sensing a touch on its web, a man came dashing out of the cabin. He had a tattoo on his arm and a snarl on his face, and he said: ‘Get lost.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘What’s your dog doing?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Clear off.’

  ‘Yes, we’re going.’

  ‘You were pulling up my moorings.’

  ‘It was an accident.’

  ‘Push off.’

  Then he eyed my wellingtons. ‘You’ve got wellingtons on,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You don’t see many wellingtons on the river these days.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘You’ve got a stupid hat on as well.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You don’t see many stupid hats on the river these days.’

  He eyed me meanly, then reached behind him and put his own hat on. It was really stupid.

  ‘Where are you heading?’ he asked.

  ‘The source.’

  ‘What sort of boat?’

  ‘Camping skiff.’

  ‘Like Three Men in . . .’

  ‘I promised myself I’d hit the next person who said that.’

  He sniggered. ‘You can come in if you want.’

  ‘What about Ralph?’

  ‘Ralph? That’s me.’

  ‘You’ve written your name on this bowl?’

  ‘It’s my bowl isn’t it? I write my name on everything that’s mine.’

  He had indeed. As I climbed down the steps into the cabin I found myself in a room that resembled a loaded removals lorry, only more tightly packed. You could pick something up to sit down but then there was nowhere to put down the thing you’d just picked up. Ralph had got round that problem by sitting down on the thing he would have picked up. In the end I held on to the thing I picked up – a picture in a broken frame – and I sat on a box that contained another box. Ralph handed me a cup of something. The cup had Ralph written on it. So did Ralph’s cup.

  ‘Where are you headed?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m not headed anywhere. I live here. Lived on the river for thirty years.’

  ‘Bet you’ve seen it change?’

  ‘Everyone asks me that.’

  ‘What do you tell them?’

  ‘I tell them it’s changed.’

  He gave me whisky with dust in it. I wanted to ask him so much but he liked silences. He’d asked me on board and now wanted to share a silence with me. I looked at the picture I had in my hands. It was of a medieval bridge across the river. The bridge was on piers and there were buildings and turrets and a chapel on it. Underneath, the caption read: Old London Bridge. Ralph looked at me and said: ‘Do you believe in time travel?’

  ‘. . .’

  ‘If you could choose one period and place in history to go back to where would it be?’

  ‘. . .’

  ‘If, say, you could go on your holidays to the period of your choice; if you could just walk into a time-travel agent and flick through a brochure of periods in world history and pick the one you wanted to visit most, where would you choose?’

  ‘Ancient Greece.’

  ‘Good choice. You know where I’d go? I’d go back to London when that bridge was there.’

  I looked at the picture again – stalls and carts and horses, grand houses several storeys high jutting out over the water, boats and mist and flags. All life seemed to be going on.

 
‘Lasted over six hundred years that bridge did. The city was a skyline of spires and belfries in those days, and as cosmopolitan a place as you could find in Europe. Traders from all over settled in London, and the bridge was its pulse. Ravens flew among the turrets, and decapitated heads hot from the Tower were stuck on poles at the bridge gates. Here, hold this a minute.’ He handed me a box, then another box, then a typewriter and then a sewing machine and he burrowed down into his belongings. With surprising speed he was at the bottom of the pile, emerging with another picture, an engraving this time. It showed a frozen river and in the background the same bridge.

  ‘The bridge used to slow the river down, see, and it would freeze, and then everyone would take to the ice and great frost fairs were held. Winter celebrations with oxen roasting on the ice. There were bear fights, bull-baiting, games and market stalls of all sorts. You could drive a coach and four over the river.’

  I could recall the Thames freezing over in my lifetime but never in London, always upstream. I said: ‘When was the last frost fair?’

  ‘Beginning of the nineteenth century, just before they knocked the old bridge down. The new one hadn’t the number and thickness of supports and the water wasn’t dammed like it had been. They built embankments as well and so the river was narrower and faster and couldn’t freeze.’

  He seemed sad. He filled his glass and said: ‘But what a sight it must have been. I’ve lived and worked on the river for years and I miss that bridge even though I never saw it.’

  ‘You worked on the river?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘All sorts.’ He didn’t want to talk about it, but he was the first waterman I’d met; someone who could actually tell me something about the old commercial river.

  ‘What sort of work?’ I asked.

  ‘Towing. We towed barges down from Lechlade to Reading.’

  He was silent again.

  I said: ‘I bet you’ve seen it change?’