Boogie Up the River

by Mark Wallington

  I slipped past the mysterious village of Kempsford where the banks were high and vegetation thick and I could only see the church tower and some rooftops. I was beginning to feel what life on the river was like without other boats. I felt an isolation that was unnerving because it had a urgency to it, and the urgency mounted each bend I took – around the next corner there might be an obstruction that would end the journey there and then.

  Now the river was only fifteen feet wide in places and the banks grew high and claustrophobic. I could no longer find the depth or width to use the sculls so I stood on the bow and paddled as the reeds grew more and more dense.

  Then as the day cooled the water became clearer. Whenever I jumped in to haul Maegan I could see minnows gathered round my knees. And the shallows were so frequent now I was hauling more then paddling. It was as I was bent forward, heaving, with the rope over my shoulder, that I turned a corner and saw before me Castle Eaton Bridge.

  It was an ugly metal structure, green, although the setting sun gave it a rusted effect. I paused and pulled my hat down. The river widened here and there was depth and room to manoeuvre, so I decided to take a run at the bridge. I climbed back in the boat, steadied myself and pulled away. Castle Eaton church flashed past. A very pleasant riverside pub called the Red Lion with a number of people in its garden flashed past. They called out to me but I kept going, I think I might even have given them a look of grim determination. I navigated the arch successfully but so fine had I cut it I had to pull my sculls in and I found myself leaning on my boat hook desperately trying to push my way past the rapids and into the safety of the pool I could see beyond. I pushed with mighty effort, lunged for another rock to support myself, missed, slipped and tumbled out of the boat, and I was under the water with an iciness in my ears.

  I was only submerged for a second but it was long enough to savour the experience; it was like a baptism. I surfaced, clutching my binoculars, to find myself in three foot of fast-moving water and I remember standing there and thinking how, despite the effort, there had been a strange peace over the river all day.

  A cygnet came paddling towards me, screaming pathetically, presumably searching for its mother. But no adult was anywhere to be found. I smiled at the helplessness of the thing, and couldn’t believe how such a graceless chick could ever turn into a swan. I looked at it through my binoculars and it dived into some reeds, in tears. That was when I noticed Maegan had vanished. I scratched my hat.

  ‘Hello,’ said a voice from the bridge. I looked up to see a woman with a napkin tucked into her front. She said: ‘Is that your boat?’

  ‘What boat?’

  ‘That boat that just came under the bridge. It’s yours, isn’t it?’

  ‘Umm. Might be mine, did it have a dog onboard?’

  ‘We were watching you from the pub garden. We were having supper. Then your dog came running into the pub. It was as if he was trying to tell us something. He probably thought you were in mortal danger and he was trying to save your life. We’ve given him something to eat, is that all right?’

  I waded out of the river and she offered me her hand and helped me up the bank.

  ‘You’re wet,’ she said.

  ‘You’ve got pickle on your lip,’ I replied.

  ‘Did you fall in?’

  ‘No, no. There’s a cygnet down there I was studying. It’s lost, I think. Did you know that swans keep the same mate for the whole of their lives?’

  She led me to the other side of the bridge. ‘There’s your boat,’ she said. Maegan was wedged in some willow stumps downstream.

  ‘And there’s your dog,’ she added. Boogie was in the pub garden, not a drop of water on him. He was sat in front of the woman’s husband being fed mouthfuls of quiche.

  I joined them. Her husband said: ‘Did you fall in?’

  ‘He was looking at the baby swan,’ said his wife.

  ‘Wildlife expert are you?’ said the husband.

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘I knew someone like you, into animals. He wanted to study elks. He wanted to live with them. He wasn’t odd or anything, he just liked elks. He tried everything to convince them he was one of them. He strapped antlers to his head. He ran around the forest on all fours. He moaned like an elk. No good at all. Then one day he got up really close to a grazing herd, and he started to eat leaves. And you know what?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘They all pissed off, ran a mile. He packed up after that. It wasn’t worth the effort, he said. “I don’t like elks that much,” were his words. That’s a nice boat. Travelling on your own?’

  ‘No, well, my girlfriend had to go home. She had an accident.’

  ‘Nothing serious I hope?’

  ‘It’s a long story.’

  Actually it was a short story. I was woken that morning as the tent was ripped off and there stood Jennifer looking very worried. I’d never seen her so distraught. She was rummaging round the bowels of the boat, throwing luggage on to the bank, scrambling about in the bilges. I said: ‘What is it?’ And she looked up at me with mud on her face and a breathlessness: ‘I can’t find my Vodaphone. It’s just disappeared. I always have it next to me where I sleep but it’s gone.’

  I lay there. ‘Well don’t help me find it, will you?’ she said. She was losing her cool. I’d seen her angry before but her anger, though venomous, was always controlled. I looked round for Boogie. He was sniffing about on the quay, licking the petrol pump by the marina. For a moment I thought what I’d seen during the night had been a dream but now I remembered. Boogie had at last found Jennifer’s soft underbelly and had gone right for it. I wanted to tell her but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.

  She cleared the boat in exasperation. Her eyes were wild, and she said: ‘Right! There’s nothing else for it.’ And she composed herself and from her bag pulled out a black suit, a pair of black stockings and a pair of black patent leather shoes. She dressed there on the lawn in front of the tea shop, then she grabbed her handbag, took out her credit cards and threw the rest on the ground: ‘I’ve got to go,’ she said.

  ‘Go where?’

  ‘Back.’

  ‘Back where?’

  ‘To work!’

  I said: ‘Jennifer. Before you go, just tell me one thing. What exactly is it that you do?’

  She shook her head, and strode off. I called out: ‘Maybe I’ll see you at the source.’ But she didn’t respond. She passed the petrol pump without looking at Boogie and that was the last I saw of her.

  That evening I sat in the boat under the lamp glow as military aircraft hummed overhead. I prepared sautéed fennel with Parmesan followed by egg and anchovy salad with herbs. Now Jennifer was gone it was just Delia and me again.

  There was no towpath to the river now so later I took Boogie for a walk in the Castle Eaton churchyard. Confetti lay on the ground. An owl squeaked and Boogie licked something off a gravestone. ‘I feel the trip is reaching a climax,’ I said. ‘I feel as though something is about to happen. You know you’ve ruined my chances with Jennifer for good now, don’t you?’

  We reached the river at the bottom of the churchyard. It was hurrying, like a child learning to run, having to keep going to stay upright. But it learned fast. You could throw a rock in the water here and it would have an immediate effect – a rapid would form and the current would divert – but by the morning the river would have compensated somewhere further downstream.

  Back in Maegan I lay awake in my sleeping bag. I felt as though I should have had a lot to think about but I only wanted to occupy myself with the source. Boogie lay in the back of the boat with his eyes on me. I briefly wondered if his look was one of an animal with an uneasy conscience. But I quickly dismissed that idea.

  Outside the reeds rustled and inside I lay dreaming. Delia Smith was sat in the back of the boat, cooking, cooking, cooking, surrounding herself with stacks of pancakes, and growing fatter and fatter. She was adding everything she could find to a stir-fry. All of Jennifer
’s luggage: her shoes, her books, her plants. They all went into the wok. Then she leaned over and tried to grab my wellingtons. I woke panting and sweating. A Nimrod enemy surveillance aircraft droned overhead.

  The following day was just as hot. The heat shimmered above the dry ploughed earth, and there was a taste of dust in the air. The level of the river fluctuated from six foot to six inches without warning. At one point I remembered what Mark Edwards had said, and built a flash-lock out of rocks. And once, where it was possible to excavate the gravel, I dug a channel with Jennifer’s wok. But these were mere interruptions. As I came to the area known as Water Eaton I met a far more serious obstacle, and found myself faced with something I’d always steered clear of on this trip – a showdown with the local swans.

  I’d seen a number the previous day. But they’d retreated whenever I grew close. On this occasion there were only half a dozen birds to start with, but then from the reeds and the bushes and the air a whole squadron formed, about twenty-five birds. They blocked the passage, and this time it was clear they were going to stand their ground.

  On the main river the swans were used to the boats and I could negotiate with them and slowly manoeuvre round them. But in these parts they were unused to interference and to being frightened. They were masters of the river and instinctively unafraid of all around them. So I stopped and squinted at them, waiting for a sign. But none came. They seemed nervous, paddling in between each other in a confused manner. I edged forward. They waited until I was within thirty feet of them, then suddenly took action. In pairs they rose up and came running along the water straight at me, wings drawn and thrashing, mouths open and hissing. Boogie dived under the seat. I picked up the wok ready to defend myself. But, just before they reached me, one by one with the greatest effort, they somehow managed to haul themselves into the air and clear the boat. I ducked as their shadows covered me and their undercarriages just cleared my head. They took off in waves like bomber aircraft. The sound was one of stretching muscle and physical stress. It was painful to watch.

  For five minutes they kept coming, each following the example of the other, their wing tips touching, their necks straining forward. And then as soon as they were airborne they were caught on the stiff breeze and had no option but to bank and be blown downwind over the treetops.

  Only one bird remained. It trod the water with one foot, the other lay embedded in its down. I waited for it to follow the others but it made no effort. To begin with I wondered if it was injured, but it was simply more inquisitive than the rest. I remember looking at it and thinking how it reminded me of Jennifer, elegant, aloof, assertive and with a long neck. For the first time I noticed a vulnerability in swans, and I realized I was coming to change my opinion of them. Having spent so long on the river I didn’t find them as arrogant as before. It was dawning on me that all they’d ever done was treat me as an equal. I pulled a piece of bread from my loaf, broke it in pieces and proffered them on my hand. The swan lifted its head and turned a circle. I was drifting away from it but it followed me, and came closer until it could reach my palm. Maegan hit the bank and stopped and the swan leant forward and took the bread and I felt a thrill as its beak brushed my wrist. It swallowed the gift then leant forward for more, I reached for the packet and that’s when Boogie stuck his head through my legs and the swan rose like a cobra. I shouted at Boogie who barked at the swan and the bird spat and hissed and tore off downstream. Boogie looked at me with his ‘I’ve just saved your life; what have you got to say about that?’ expression.

  I pressed on. There was no channel now and Maegan had to carve a passage through the weed like an icebreaker; I pushed and pulled her for most of the day. At one point I decided progress was impossible and that I would have to stop where I was. It was unbearable to think that I should fail at this last hurdle; I’d already gone under Cricklade bypass and could see a housing estate. But I couldn’t haul the boat over rocks. I needed a boost, and fittingly, it was Boogie who provided one. On this stretch he had spent most of the time in the river, partly because he’d taken to water now, but largely because I’d decided at the first shallows that I was damned if I was going to haul Maegan with him lying on the back seat, and so I’d thrown him out.

  He was a little ahead of the boat knee-deep in water, when, suddenly, he disappeared under the surface. He came up coughing and covered in slime and I pulled him in to the bank and hugged him. He’d found a deep-water passage just when we needed it.

  We continued as insects swarmed around the boat and creepers hung from the willows and coiled themselves around me. Then, from round a bend I heard voices, young voices with a heavy Wiltshire accent. I looked on in disbelief as two young boys appeared in a plastic dinghy.

  ‘Hello,’ they said.

  ‘What are you doing here? You shouldn’t be here!’ I sounded incredulous.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because this is an impossible stretch of river that most men fear.’

  ‘We’re paddling down to Lechlade.’

  ‘From where?’

  ‘Cricklade. We live on the estate. We’re going to see our uncle. We often do it.’

  And they were gone, gliding smoothly over the gravel with the current. They were about nine years old.

  So! I thought. The local natives use this as a route to Lechlade. They’ve had to devise a special craft and they only send the young among them, but it is a viable passage.

  Further encouragement came that afternoon when I saw a couple sitting in a field. I waved and shouted: ‘How far to Cricklade?’

  ‘A mile,’ he said.

  ‘More like three,’ she said.

  ‘It’s a dump, anyway,’ he said.

  But I wasn’t really bothered. I’d just seen the incentive I needed: the spire of Cricklade parish church poking up through the hedgerows like a finishing post, a mile away, no more.

  I hauled the boat on past the back gardens and garages of Cricklade and into the town. In the distance I could see High Bridge with some kids sitting on top. I shouted to them and they were in the river with me helping me haul Maegan over the last fifty yards, singing and screaming as they pulled and pushed. Some members of the local cricket team took off their shoes, rolled up their whites and joined in. We manoeuvred Maegan to the bridge and I slumped over her exhausted. ‘I’ve sculled this boat 130 miles uphill,’ I said to one of the cricketers, and he replied: ‘That’s nothing, we lost by eight wickets this afternoon. Are you coming to the pub?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. And when I got there I bought myself a Babycham.

  It was an evening to remember. I told them of the trials I’d had coming under Hannington Bridge and of the wild swans of Water Eaton, and they told me of their slip fielder who had had twenty-four chances so far this season and dropped the lot. I told them of my ducking at Castle Eaton and how if it hadn’t been for the wok I might not have made it, and they told me how their number eight batsman had once played for England, although not at cricket. Then I popped the all-important question: I told them of my quest for the source of the river and asked if anyone of them had any idea where it was? And they thought about this for a moment and then told me about their second change seamer who was the spitting image of the pope.

  Later on though, I was sitting at a table with the wicket keeper when he said: ‘I heard you talking about the source of the Thames earlier.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Well, I know where it is.’

  ‘Where?’

  He looked at his empty glass, and grinned. I bought him another pint and he leant over the table and said. quietly: ‘It’s near Kemble village at Trewsbury Mead, ten miles from here.’

  I’d heard so many conflicting stories since London that it was tempting to treat him as just one more man in a corner of a pub, but he had a gleam of truth in his eye. I said: ‘What evidence do you base this theory on?’

  ‘I’ve seen it with my own eyes. I farm round there. I’d lost a calf one day. I was wa
lking through the fields looking for it and suddenly I stumbles across a ring of stones. There was no water or nothing, just an ash tree inscribed with two initials, almost swallowed by the bark – the initials TH.’

  ‘What does TH mean?’

  ‘Thames Head.’

  I gasped. It all slotted into place now.

  ‘There was another clue there as well,’ said the wicket keeper.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Right next to the tree there was a bloody great plaque that said: “This is the source of the Thames.”’

  After the pub shut I took Boogie a walk through the town. I felt satisfied. We stood on High Bridge and I looked downstream at the thin leg of water, and I smiled when I thought of the great expanse of river on which I’d started the journey.

  The street light danced on the stream, and there in the trees I noticed a supermarket trolley. No one was looking so I clambered down on to the bank and pushed it in the water. The sensation was minimal. So I pulled it out and tried again – still nothing. I tried once more and derived no thrill or pleasurable feeling of any description. Despite all the talk, pushing supermarket trolleys into rivers is a pointless exercise.

  Cricklade was unlike any other town I’d passed through. One reason was because it hadn’t one familiar shop-front on the whole street, but it was also different because it was untouched by the river. I heard talk of a scheme to make the Thames navigable up from Lechlade, to install three more locks, and dredge it and so attract the pleasure craft, but talk was all it was, and the stream that was the Thames passed without interest through Cricklade. It wanted nothing to do with the town, and no one in the town had any use for it. If anything the river was a nuisance. The farmers laid gravel over it to create a cattle crossing.

  This gave the town a different appeal because, unlike Marlow, Henley and Wallingford, it didn’t need to flaunt its riparian status. It had wide streets and a wealthy past as a wool merchants’ town and it could depend on its parochial qualities. If anything it reminded me more of a seaside town. The High Street climbed a hill at such an angle it looked as though you would find a cliff at the top.