Boogie Up the River

by Mark Wallington

  I suggested instead we discuss the expedition. I said: ‘The information I have is all rather based on hearsay but it appears a large piece of water does leave the main river just after Cricklade. Some call it the Swill Brook, some the River Churn. We’ll find barbed wire across the river and we might have to carry the boat a couple of miles, but I’ve heard there’s a tree . . .’ And then Jennifer started to yawn. She said: ‘I want to go to bed. Where does the dog sleep?’

  ‘In the boat, of course.’

  ‘What! Doesn’t he sleep outside?’

  ‘Boogie is my constant companion. He’s been at my side throughout this journey. He’s a member of the crew.’

  ‘You’ve been watching too many Lassie films. He’s a dog. He’d probably prefer to sleep outside.’

  ‘We’ll let him make the decision,’ I said and took Boogie for a walk along the towpath.

  It was a longer walk than usual. The moon was a marble. I could see veins running through its face. A chub plopped. Boogie stopped, sat down and scratched his ear more aggressively than I’ve ever seen him do before.

  ‘She’s a character, you’ve got to admit that. It’ll take her a while to settle into the river’s routine, of course. But don’t worry about her. We’re a good team, Jennifer and me. We work well together. Anyone can see that. It’s good to have a woman on board as well, isn’t it?

  We walked on. The water slapped against the bank. My wellingtons glistened in the moonlight. ‘It’s a lovely night. The sort of night to sleep outside under the stars, to really get back to nature. I would do myself but I’ve got company. I don’t know why you don’t, though? You being a dog and all that. I mean it’s your decision of course. You can sleep where you want. But I just thought it might be nice for you to sleep outside.’

  Boogie stopped and banged his head on a gatepost. I thought it was an accident but then he did it a second time. When we got back to Maegan I paused on the bank and patted him: ‘Listen, Boogie, I wouldn’t normally ask you to do this. But . . . it’s our first night together. You don’t want to play gooseberry, do you?’

  I pulled back the flap and he dived in and ran over the pile of dishes and bedclothes to the stern where he lay down and started to snore.

  ‘He’s made his decision. He wants to sleep in the boat,’ I said.

  Jennifer was lying in her sleeping bag. She had a vest on and the gas light made her shoulders flare as they had in my dream.

  I went through my going-to-bed routine. I placed all the breakables in the stern, all the foodstuffs at the bow. I put the milk outside to keep cool. I arranged the kettle and the stove for the morning so I could just lean out of bed and turn it all on. And I made sure my torch, matches and notebook were handy. Then I brushed my teeth and watched the white trail of Signal drift down towards Oxford. I was so excited I dropped my toothbrush over the side. ‘The river has a gentle, soothing effect,’ I said. ‘It wraps itself around you. I’ve never felt so calm as I have the last two weeks. I feel as though I’m having little say in where the boat is taking me. I’m just following a groove that I’ve no control over. The river has, I think, more than anything else, made me feel insignificant. It’s made me . . .’

  ‘Are you going to sleep with me tonight?’ said Jennifer. She was leaning on her elbow and the light illuminated the little black hairs on her forearms.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Good.’ she said, and then she zipped the sleeping bags together.

  Later that night an owl hooted at last.

  9.What? Lechlade Already?

  JENNIFER AND BOOGIE have never got on, not since the time they first met and Boogie made a mess in her handbag.

  They’re such uncompromising characters. Boogie dismisses Jennifer the way he does pedigree dogs. He thinks she’s pompous, discriminatory, opportunist, whereas none of this is true. I’ve tried to communicate to him that Jennifer is simply a perfectionist. She likes things to be without blemish. Boogie’s problem is he isn’t satisfied with something unless it’s covered with blemishes. The more blemishes the better is Boogie’s motto. That night on the boat was the first time they’d seen each other for years, but it hadn’t been long enough as far as Boogie was concerned. He was outraged at the idea of Jennifer joining the expedition. Over the last two weeks he’d established certain parts of Maegan as his territory, and now it had been invaded. He felt usurped.

  The next morning I woke early. Light was streaming in through the canvas. At the end of the boat Boogie lay with his eyes open, but next to me was an empty space. I looked at my watch: it was seven o’clock and something was splashing about in the river. Then two hands grabbed the side of the boat and there was Jennifer.

  ‘I suppose you’ve been for a swim every morning?’ she said. She took her wet T-shirt off and threw it into the boat. It landed on top of Boogie who leapt up as if someone had plugged him into the mains. Jennifer laughed. Boogie shook himself and covered her with wet hairs.

  It was a lovely day. ‘Breakfast?’ I said.

  ‘In a little while,’ she replied, and then she put on her running shoes and set off along the towpath. She ran for four miles she said, then, when she came back, Boogie and I lay in the sun surrounded by buttercups and watched as she did aerobics for twenty minutes. Then she dived in the river again. When she finally climbed out, she said: ‘I suppose you do that every day as well.’ I shrugged and scratched my hat. Boogie licked his bits and went back to sleep.

  For breakfast we had croissants, figs and yoghurt, orange juice and herbal tea. Jennifer breathed in deeply and said: ‘You’re the only person I know who would take me to somewhere like this.’ Then she went back to the car and returned with more luggage. She was well equipped for the trip, there was no doubt about that. To her already sizable pile she added a guitar, a wok and a selection of pot plants. ‘I couldn’t trust anyone to water them for me,’ she explained, securing a philodendron to the bows.

  So I explained that that was the very reason I had brought Boogie along, and she turned sharply and said that she hoped that me bringing Boogie wasn’t deliberate after she’d expressly asked me not to. She said she hoped she couldn’t sense a power struggle. I said that a power struggle was exactly what I had no choice in sensing, considering her behaviour and the amount of time she’d kept me waiting. She said if she’d known Boogie was here I’d have been waiting a lot longer and that it seemed ridiculous that a grown man couldn’t go anywhere without his stupid dog. I said how thoughtless she was and that if she respected me she should respect my dog as well. And then she said who said anything about respect? I was only a travelling companion. I backed off here and said that if we went on like this any more we’d have an argument. She suggested we were already having an argument and if we needed one to clear the air then we should have one. It was at that precise moment that Boogie, who had wandered off at the start of this altercation, came charging back to the boat hotly pursued by a herd of Jerseys. He jumped into the middle of breakfast with his dung-covered feet while the cattle screeched to a halt on the bank. Then the ones at the back started pushing the ones at the front going: ‘Go on! Get in there and get the little bugger, you saw what he did to Margaret,’ until one of the front rank lost her footing and her two front legs landed in the boat. Staring into the face of a cow I did what I considered to be the most noble thing – I clapped my hands loudly and threw a croissant at it. Jennifer, who clearly wanted to release some aggression anyway, hit the creature over the head with her wok. It was then I remembered my plan was not to react to her but to be reasonable, and so when the cow had got out of the boat I said: ‘Anyway, the whole business doesn’t really bother me’. And I think she may have been about to raise the wok to me when the phone rang.

  She ran her fingers through her hair, composed herself momentarily as before and then spoke into the instrument: ‘Jennifer Conway . . . Why? . . . Why? . . . No . . . No.’ Then she put the phone away carefully and looked at me so as I could see the whites of her t
eeth. I decided it was time I took charge.

  ‘Time we were heading out,’ I said as authoritatively as I could. ‘We’ve got some sculling to get done,’ and I went to untie the moorings. But I’d tied a half-hitch sheepshank with a bowline reef the previous evening and the dramatic effect I’d hoped for was lost while I spent the next twenty minutes unravelling the tangle.

  The problem with two people sculling together is that they have to keep in time. A missed beat results initially in much crunching of sculls and ultimately in a trail of zig-zags. Jennifer, who was in the stroke position, was powered by aggression and from the pace she was setting she clearly had a lot of it to work off. I looked at the bow wave we were creating and estimated our speed at about 20 knots. Having just got the coots to trust me I was now sending tidal waves to terrorize them.

  We passed Rushey lock, where the beautiful garden was made even more colourful by two peacocks. The lock-keeper said: ‘I used to have more, but they don’t get on with the plants.’ He leant on his shovel and smiled at us, time on his hands. ‘You know something,’ he went on. ‘You’re the only people I’ve had through here this morning.’ And Jennifer said: ‘Well get a bloody move on then. We’re in a hurry.’

  ‘Right,’ said the lock-keeper, taken aback. As we rose up he saw Boogie and said: ‘It’s all right for the dog, isn’t it?’ and Jennifer said: ‘Just open the gates, will you?’

  ‘Right,’ said the lock-keeper and he wound up the sluice gates as fast as he could. As we paddled out he said: ‘If you’re going up to Lechlade call in at the Swan, it’s the best . . .’

  ‘Where’s your toilet?’ said Jennifer.

  ‘We haven’t got one,’ said the lock-keeper. ‘We’ve got a wastepaper bin but no toilet.’

  ‘You must have a toilet. Where do you go?’

  ‘I’ve got my own. It’s an unofficial one.’

  ‘Where is it? Or I’ll go on your petunias.’

  ‘Er . . . First door on the left down the hall.’

  Jennifer leapt out of the boat. I turned to the lock-keeper and said: ‘Sorry. Her first day on the river.’

  ‘Most of them are like her,’ said the lock-keeper. ‘My problem is I bottle it up.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  We licked up the river through meadowland, and flashed under Radcot Bridge, the oldest on the upper river. Someone threw a piece of orange peel at us but it fell in the water behind the boat. We were too fast for it.

  The wind picked up. But half the time it was a headwind and half the time a tailwind, so erratic was the river’s course. Jennifer said: ‘Why does the river meander so?’ And I replied: ‘It’s a very simple and natural process following inescapable laws of physics. If a river finds an obstruction in its path, say, sediment or a tributary stream or even fallen debris, the river course diverts. The deflected current hits the opposite bank where it carves the land away, and the underflow carries the resulting sediment, depositing it on the inner curve. As the surface current ricochets back to the other bank another meander is created, and the process is repeated until the river becomes a series of curves, changing the shape of the flood plain constantly. The longer it runs the bigger the curves become, thus in the case of the Thames, by the time it reaches Essex, the meanders are miles apart.’

  Jennifer stopped sculling and my oars crashed into hers. She turned round and said: ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘A lock-keeper.’

  Then she tensed and said: ‘Quick, hand me a piece of paper; you’ve inspired me.’ I tore a piece out of my notebook and handed it to her and she was silent for a while as she wrote in snatches. Then she punctured the paper with a full stop and said: ‘Thank you, you made me write that. I knew this trip would be like this. It’s wonderful. You must have written lots of stuff. Poetry is so therapeutic. Listen. About this morning. I’m sorry about our disagreement.’

  ‘So am I.’

  ‘I’m glad I’m here.’

  ‘So am I.’

  ‘Want to hear my poem?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘It’s not finished yet. But the ideas are there. It’s about reflections and how you forget they’re there and then suddenly you see them again and realize they’re always there. Everything on the river happens twice.’

  ‘That’s my idea.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I noticed that almost as soon as I started on the trip.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘Well, nothing, I was just pointing out that I was struck by all the reflections as well. I wrote it down myself. About how the reflections give the river its extra dimension, how it’s easy to forget about them and not notice them for long periods, but then suddenly you can see the whole earth and sky in the water.’

  ‘So you’re saying I’ve stolen your idea?’

  ‘No . . . I’m just . . . let’s hear it.’

  ‘No, I don’t want to read it to you now.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘No.’ And she leant into the sculls again.

  In the afternoon we reached Kelmscott. I felt tired. I lay on the grass while Jennifer went for a jog to ‘warm down’. When she came back she said: ‘William Morris used to live in Kelmscott. I’d like to go round his house.’

  William Morris’s house is a beautiful sixteenth-century Cotswold stone manor house that just peeks over the trees to catch the river. Morris moved here from London to escape the pressures of his public life but he made the mistake of leasing the property with a fellow artist, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who shared Morris’s life rather more than Morris would have wished, falling in love with Morris’s wife, Jane. Rossetti painted her again and again, in a way you wouldn’t normally paint the wife of the man you’ve just leased a house with. Morris, depressed by the whole business – although unable it seems to do much about it – buried himself in his work, producing unrivalled designs for ceramics and fabrics, many of which are still kept at Kelmscott House. The house is open to the public only a handful of days during the year. Fortunately the day we were there was one of them.

  We left Boogie guarding the boat and walked out of the heat into the cool, panelled house. It was a treasure of tapestries and furniture. We looked at each other and knew we were in a precious place.

  A small number of people were quietly walking around, speaking in whispers. The couple in front were gazing at a tapestry. The woman said: ‘It’s just like Eileen’s, only more complicated.’

  I put my arm through Jennifer’s and we controlled our laughter. I said: ‘Shall we get a place like this?’

  ‘You’re not serious?’

  And I wasn’t but she looked at me in a way that made me think she’d be disappointed if I was joking. So I said: ‘Yes.’

  Then she looked disappointed so I said: ‘Well . . .’

  ‘You and me, live together?’

  ‘We get on okay.’

  ‘No we don’t.’

  ‘We do.’

  ‘We argue all the time.’

  ‘We don’t.’

  A woman was showing the visitors round. We were attracting attention. I stopped beneath a tapestry and put my arm through Jennifer’s again. She said: ‘No one has ever wanted to live with me. I’m selfish. I’m a loner. I use people.’

  ‘No, that’s just the image you give. I know it’s a veneer.’

  ‘No it isn’t.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Listen, I’m telling you it isn’t.’

  ‘C’mon. It must be.’

  A man with dark glasses was looking at us. He turned his head away but I knew his eyes were still focused on us.

  ‘Besides,’ said Jennifer. ‘I couldn’t live with that dog.’

  We walked through the village. It was the most beautiful I’d seen on the river. There was a stone fence around a meadow. There were dovecots in walls, pigs in back yards, vegetables in the gardens and Volvos in driveways. The spring had laundered everything in inimitable fashion. The foliage was unblemished and unravaged. The blossom on
the chestnut trees was a perm fresh from the salon. Nothing was fat, flaccid or pale; all was small tight and vivid, and I remember that day in particular for the irresistible sense of optimism to be felt when the first warm spell of the year arrives and you know that summer is finally here, and the best part is it’s all still to come.

  Eventually we found ourselves in the churchyard standing over Morris’s grave. ‘“Love is enough; though the world be a-waning, And the woods have no voice but the voice of complaining.” He was a refreshing poet,’ said Jennifer.

  ‘It would really please me if you’d just try to get on with Boogie.’

  ‘I will on one condition.’

  ‘What’s that.’

  ‘He doesn’t moult, breathe, or fart in my direction ever again.’

  ‘Listen, he’s not as unpleasant as all that. He’s not a puppy; he’s an adult now, responsible and mature. Treat him with respect and he’ll repay you in the only currency he has: loyalty.’

  Jennifer sighed and smiled and we walked back to the boat. As we crossed the field to the river Boogie was lying in the stern snapping at a dragonfly and Jennifer said: ‘All right. What does he like to eat best of all?’

  ‘Curry,’ I replied.

  ‘Tonight we shall have curry. Where’s the nearest takeaway?’

  ‘Probably in Oxford.’

  ‘I’ll call Michael my motorcyclist to . . .’

  ‘No! Delia and I can make a curry.’ And although we were still a hundred yards from the boat, as soon as that wonderful word was uttered, I saw Boogie sit bolt upright on the back seat and look around wearing his ‘okay, who said curry?’ expression.

  Outside, the day lay dying. The water meadows of Oxfordshire slipped into a mist. The sun went down behind the electricity lines and melted. On Radcot Bridge a great crested grebe knocked an old-age pensioner off his bicycle. Maegan sat very still on the water.