Stranger, commemorated here
'Tis but a dog you see
And yet, I beg you, do not sneer:
My master wept for me
Wept as the lifeless earth he pressed
Above my lifeless head
And wrote, where now I lie at rest
The words that you have read
Perhaps I am a crank, but then so was the Greek chap who wrote that poem two thousand years ago.
The overweight gentleman let Jim out of his crate and Jim jumped him and licked his face—the gentleman had kept him cool and given him water and watched over him for two hours. Jim had been barking not because he was angry, but because he wanted to say hello.
It took us half an hour to get back inside our hire car and start it up and switch on the lights and the windscreen washers. During these travails the car rang bells and sirens and switched the lights on and off and shut down different parts of itself to remind us that this was America and we were useless.
Next day we drove to Portsmouth, two hundred miles south, trying to drive as the locals do, on the right with all four wheels on the carriageway. The Phyllis May had already arrived at the marine terminal but we could not board her without customs papers. We didn't know what the customs people would make of a narrowboat coming from England. Perhaps they would take it to pieces for bombs or drugs, or send it back home as unsuitable for the journey.
• • •
THE WATERFRONT OF NORFOLK, VIRGINIA, IS neat and modern, with a few high-rise hotels and offices. Little remains of the old riverside town, except for the customs building, which is modelled on a Greek temple.
That's a nice dog, said Officer Nagle. That's Jim I guess. Atlantic Containers told me about Jim. Officer Ellis will do your papers. He hasn't done it before but he can come out and ask me if he gets stuck. What does your boat draw and how fast does it go?
Two feet two inches, I said, and seven knots.
Mine draws four inches, said Officer Nagle, and does sixty knots.
Jim yawned and stretched, showing off his four rows of teeth and the coiled and hurdling muscles of his thighs. I guess he can run real fast, said Officer Nagle.
Forty miles an hour, I said.
And you can go after rabbits with him, I suppose, said Officer Nagle.
Yes, I said, he caught a rabbit in the spring, but I don't think it was very well. It gave him fleas.
A real sportsman's dog, said Officer Nagle—I can see that. I had a choice of dog myself. I made a list. It would be a whippet or a Jack Russell or a Chihuahua. In the end there was a Chihuahua ready and it was my wife's birthday so we took him. Of course Ziggy is not as fast as Jim, but he is immensely strong.
I thought Chihuahuas were small, said Monica.
They are not very big, said Officer Nagle, but the strength is there. Underneath the fur a Chihuahua is the same as a whippet. The bone structure is identical. It's the same dog—the legs, the deep chest. They have Chihuahua races—there is a league. I don't race Ziggy but I could—he would do great. And my cat weighs twenty pounds.
Good heavens, I said.
Officer Ellis came out from behind the filing cabinets carrying a sheaf of papers—Oh that doesn't matter at all, said Officer Nagle, forget about that; let it go—these people are guests of our nation, for Christ's sake. Twenty pounds, he repeated.
Is it a sort of a big or a fat cat? I asked cautiously. Officer Nagle was not a small chap himself.
Fat? Not in the least, said Officer Nagle. That cat is solid muscle. He is a guard cat. When visitors come he threatens them—he growls and he hisses real scary. You know you are safe when Spike is around.
You have mountain lions here, I said. Perhaps he has a bit of cougar in him.
Cougar, now that's very likely. I never thought of that. Cougar. Mountain lion. A wild cat—a sportsman's cat.
Officer Nagle went behind the filing cabinets.
Some time later he came out with a small computer print of a black and white cat, which looked like an ordinary cat except it was very fat, and a dog that looked like a rat.
Very nice, we said.
Officer Ellis appeared. Ah, thank you Officer Ellis, said Officer Nagle—now here are your papers. Y'all have a great trip. We haven't had one of your English narrowboats here before. I may come and see you—I live just north over the water—in Newport News.
That's a funny name for a town, I said—why Newport News?
I don't know, said Officer Nagle—I guess it has always been that.
What do they call the local paper? I asked.
The Daily Press.
Of course, I said.
Here are your documents, said Officer Nagle. You can go and fetch your boat and sail away. Y'all have the best trip now. And goodbye Jim—I could have had a whippet like you, but there was a Chihuahua ready and it was my wife's birthday so I took him. He is immensely strong.
IN 1861 THE CONFEDERACY OF SOUTHERN States decided to break away from the Union. The North went to war to stop them and blockaded the East Coast.
On 8 March 1862 a terrible machine came out of the Elizabeth River and sailed into the broad waters of Hampton Roads, at the mouth of Chesapeake Bay. The terrible machine was the rebel battleship Virginia. Nothing like her had ever been seen in these waters, or anywhere else. She looked like a 250-foot flat-iron and under the water she had an iron beak. She rammed the Union corvette Cumberland and blew up the frigate Congress and crippled the frigate Minnesota and killed four hundred Union sailors.
Next day another terrible machine came in from the Atlantic. It was the Union battleship Monitor. Nothing like her had ever been seen in these waters, or anywhere else. She was a revolving iron turret on an armoured raft, with two eleven-inch cannon. She was much smaller than the Virginia. The populations of Norfolk and Portsmouth stood silent on the hills as she set upon the Virginia like a terrier.
Shells could not penetrate these machines, because they were the first ironclads. Then from ten yards away the Virginia hit the sight hole of the Monitor cabin and the captain fell, blinded by powder and blood. Lieutenant Greene, who was twenty-two, took command and turned on his enemy, but she had fled.
In May the rebels evacuated Norfolk and blew up the battleship Virginia.
On the last day of the year the little Monitor sank off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, with sixteen of her crew. The Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships explains her size, low power, and speed and certain design defects limited her to service on protected waters such as harbours and rivers.
TWO LIFETIMES LATER, ONE BLUE DAY IN JUNE, a machine rose into the air at the Portsmouth International Terminal, and dropped into the broad waters of Hampton Roads. It was the narrowboat Phyllis May. Nothing like her had ever been seen in these waters before, or anywhere else in the US. She was sixty feet long and six foot ten inches wide, grey and crimson and white, with long windows on the waterline. She looked like a sinking railway carriage. Near the stern, fairground letters a foot high—PHYLLIS MAY—T & M DARLINGTON, STONE.
Clyde the crane loosed his grip and the longshoremen drew away the straps under her hull. The Phyllis May gunned her engine and to scattered applause reversed from the wharf into the waters of Hampton Roads. The aircraft carriers the other side of the Roads made her look like a weevil. The populations of Portsmouth and Norfolk carried on eating ice-cream in the MacArthur Mall.
On the back counter, holding the brass tiller arm, was a fat man covered in white bristle, wearing a Breton sailor's cap. His blind eye looked nowhere in particular and his good eye a thousand miles down the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway: through the Great Dismal Swamp, across the terrible Albemarle Sound, along the Carolinas to Georgia and Florida and out on to the Gulf of Mexico.
In the bow stood a pretty woman of a certain age wearing an Australian bush hat. She was looking through the Phyllis May binoculars, with which you can see just as plainly as with the naked eye.
On the roof a dog, six inches wide and
four and a half feet long, ribs proud through a fawn velvet coat. The sun shone through his ears and his legs and the skin under his belly. His narrow muzzle sniffed the future and he began to tremble, as if he knew that the size, low power, and speed of the Phyllis May, and certain design defects, limited her to service on protected waters such as harbours and rivers, and the fools were planning to take the bloody thing across vast estuaries and inland seas, and he was an artiste and an athlete, the fastest animal in the world, and he could see into the future and knew that dreadful things were going to happen, probably almost straight away, and if anyone had any sense or understanding he would be lying on a sofa in Stone now or under a table in the Star with a scratchings packet and there is no end to how he is put upon.
• • •
THE MARINA AT MILE ZERO ON THE INTRACOASTAL Waterway has a chandlery, a convenience store, a restaurant, and room for three hundred boats. The Elizabeth River was wide and the sky was blue and the boats were white—Tupperware launches and sailing boats. They were from thirty to a hundred and twenty feet long, and built high, like geese trying to look over each other's head. What could be the use of such height? Above some of the fly-decks poles soared up—fishing rods. What fish must be pulled forty feet into the air? What sort of a place is this? What goes on round here?
It was the weekend of the Cock Island yacht race, which takes place every year off Norfolk. It is the biggest yacht race on the East Coast so there were a good number of oceangoing yachts in the marina. Narrow and trembling—greyhounds in the slips, their owners distrait, fussing.
By noon it was over ninety degrees and humid and we could not endure inside or outside the boat. Portsmouth, Virginia, is the same latitude as Tunis but hotter. We went into the old town to look for a restaurant. The streets were broad and shaded with great trees and the houses were square and pretty and wooden and many had been there before the Civil War. Behold, a restaurant with a shaded terrace.
On the other side of the terrace a lady was talking into a mobile phone. They resuscitated her twice yesterday, she said.
She came over to Jim. A greyhound puppy, she said. Oh my Gard, she's beautiful—be still my heart. I'm an artist. I'm sixty-two. I came home after a relationship broke up and have been sleeping on my mother's couch for twelve years. Where are you going—the Great Dismal Swamp? That's where the first settlers on these shores went four hundred years ago. The next expedition found a message on a tree—CROATOAN—but no one could understand it and the settlers had vanished into the swamp. Perhaps they are still there, or their descendants—though they would have degenerated a bit by now I guess, all deformed like in the movies. Y'all have a nice trip.
She went back to her table to spread the news about her mother's pancreas.
The mussels had been frozen to remove the flavour and the crab cakes were grass flavoured with castor oil. The waiter was a big chap with a black beard and we left a large tip—we understood this is wise in the US if you want to avoid violence. We walked back along the Elizabeth River, glassy smooth.
You don't get breakers on the Intracoastal, I said to Monica, apart from the big estuaries and sounds like Albemarle Sound and Pamlico Sound, and they are all right if you know the weather. The weather comes across the country for three thousand miles so everyone knows exactly what is on the way. It said on the radio this morning that there will be quiet weather for ten days at least. Ho ho I am beginning to get the feel of this trip. I am Tits Magee, who circumnavigated the globe in red satin, accompanied only by an eft in a jar. I yam der yingle humperdinck. I am the king of rock and roll. I am a little bloody marvel. Stick with me and you will have love, mystery and adventure.
At the marina the yachtsmen were still fussing and the Tupperware men on their cruisers were pointing at the sky. Then the west went black, and a wind arose and tore the river into surf and hooted and screamed and ripped canvases on the boats.
Thunder and zipping lightning. We pushed Jim into his kennel, where he lay staring. The surf ran under the Phyllis May and chucked her into the air and the wind flung her against the quay and then started to tear her away from her moorings to send her across a row of cruisers. Half a dozen yachtsmen came running and asked for ropes and we rushed below and found some and the yachtsmen, who were big chaps, knotted them along the grab-rail and heaved on them and secured the boat so she could only rattle and jerk. They seemed to enjoy helping us—You'll never get that knot undone, said one, I made it up to save time.
Another rope there, said another, for when the storm turns round and pulls the other way. It's not a hurricane, it's a tropical storm, and they turn round and pull the other way. You folks being British perhaps you don't know about the turning round and the pulling the other way. Have a nice day.
The wind was like a brick wall and rain came out of pint pots. Lightning and thunder and more wind, and then there was a hammering and a clattering and we looked out and our well deck was full of ice cubes.
Ten minutes later the sky was clear. The mast on the sailboat across the pontoon had snapped and smashed the top of a Tupperware boat. The chairs on the terrace of the marina restaurant were in splinters in the corner and broken glass covered the floor. Is this normal? I asked.
No, said the gentleman who ran the marina.
We heard later that the wind had reached a hundred miles an hour.
I had no idea what hurricanes were like, I said to Monica. It was just stories, and New Orleans was film on the telly. It wasn't real and now it is, and this was only a tropical storm. I am beginning to understand. I don't know what the hurricanes do to the Americans, but by God they terrify me.
They terrify Jim too, said Monica—come out darling. Stop shivering—it's all over.
MIKE WAS ABOUT FIFTY, BOYISH, CONFIDING: A big chap, with shorts and white socks. My God, he said, she's thin.
It's the size of the locks, I explained. Is there enough room?
You may have to rip out the stove, and I'll need a week for the wiring. It will not be cheap.
We have got to have air-conditioning, Mike, or we will die.
The trouble is the unit takes five and a half kilowatts to get moving, said Mike. There is a surge. It all has to be fed in through your system, which is mainly twelve-volt. And you can't just bang any old woodwork into a pretty boat like this—you need to have it built properly and matched. There, there is the place for it—by the sideboard, floor to ceiling.
OK, let's go. When will it be in?
You have to lift the boat to get the water intake fitted and there is no lift here and no carpenters. You must come to Atlantic Yacht Basin, on the Albemarle to Chesapeake Canal. You go down the Elizabeth River and then on to the canal—it's four miles past the entrance to the Great Dismal Swamp. I'll start the electrics on Wednesday and book you into Atlantic. I don't know how long they'll take to do the carpentry—I can't tell them what to do—they don't work for me. But don't worry—one way or another we'll fix you up.
It was July and each day was getting hotter. We were supposed to leave for Florida next week, I said to Monica. Now we have to go up another canal in the wrong direction and wait for no one knows how long and spend no one knows how much and probably die of heat while we are waiting. We have lost control of our expedition before we have started.
HAVE ANOTHER BEER, SAID GREG—MY WIFE IS IN charge of the beer wagon.
We were at the reception at the end of the Cock Island races, the guests of Portsmouth Marine Terminal. The reception was held on a grassy space that looked out over the water towards Norfolk.
Greg had a naked lady tattooed on his calf. He was six foot two and tanned and his eyes were close together. He was trim for a young American: maybe three stone overweight, with a brush cut. He patted Jim.
Are you a sailor? I asked.
Yes, I work on the airplanes on the flat-tops. Most people are sailors round here. We have the main US naval base and the shipyards and the Wisconsin is just over there.
I had seen th
e Wisconsin—the biggest battleship in the US Navy, now on leave at the end of Norfolk High Street. The Wisconsin was known for serving in the Gulf War, and for running into one of its destroyers, nearly cutting it in two.
Easily done, said Greg. A moment's inattention and there goes your destroyer.
When we came, I said, we stayed at the Holiday Inn and it was full of people in desert boots. Sand-coloured suede boots with rubber soles and laces all up them and sand-coloured uniforms with enough camouflage marking to complete the style statement. I really fancied some of them, the ladies I mean. One was on crutches and her male comrades were making disrespectful suggestions about how she hurt her leg.
They were sailors, said Greg. Sailors are like that.
I thought sailors were supposed to wear bell-bottoms and little white hats, I said.
We did have bell-bottoms, but now it's uniform like soldiers. We are off to the desert—I can't tell you when.
WHEN JIM WAS A PUPPY I DECIDED, AGAINST INFORMED advice, that he be left entire. So Jim's character is loyal, loving, lecherous and violent.
To Jim the existence of a cat is an insult. He went headlong for the cat next door and the cat scarred his nose, and it taught him nothing. If he sees a cat when he is on the lead he stands on his hind legs and screams, and people stare at me: a bad owner and a dangerous incompetent.
All male entire dogs are challenged regardless of size. Most of them are bigger than Jim, so from time to time we have to take him to the vet to be stapled up.
Jim has no fur, only a light covering of velvet. When he is in a rage a rough patch appears on his back, and this is somehow more menacing than a crest. The rough patch appeared in Portsmouth, where in the vet's reception there was a male red Doberman puppy, and a fat black Labrador.
I thought I would have to sit on Jim but he was called into the surgery.
Narrow Dog to Indian River Page 3