The population is five times ours, Mon, I said. There are so many climates and terrains. It took a terrible war to keep it all together. Maybe there is just too much of it. It's as big as Europe and no one has ever made the slightest sense of Europe. By comparison the Yanks have done pretty well.
I poured Monica more Pusser's and some for myself to be polite.
Poor little Monnie, I went on, you put up with so much—I know I can be useless at times and the dog is a coward, but westward, look, the land is bright. Those sea captains who e-mailed us seem really interested in the Phyllis May and if we can persuade them to pilot us across Albemarle Sound and Pamlico Sound we have a good chance of making it to the Gulf of Mexico and being back in Stone next May. Do you remember when Clifford made friends with that old soldier, the Desert Rat, when he was a boy? The one who was captured in Africa and Field Marshal Rommel said to him For you, Tommy, the war is over? In May next year for you, Monnie, the war could be over. This is the big one, the last hurrah, the final frontier, the crowning glory. No more expeditions, just the sunny autumn of our days among friends and family in the town we love. Though there is the Loch Ness Monster of course—it wouldn't take us long to chase him down once the Phyllis May is chugging up the Caledonian Canal and I've got my echo-sounder up his arse.
Jim was on his back on the sofa, one leg straight in the air. Smiley Broadling, the horizontal hound. Jim had liked being carried. It showed respect to the fastest animal in the world, an athlete, a sportsdog, an artiste.
Bugger the Loch Ness Monster, said Monica.
VOLVO PARKWAY IS TEN MILES WEST OF GREAT Bridge. The Parkway Temple is large and new and low-built, with a white spire, on a ten-acre plot. In the lobby a few dozen people. The Temple was smaller inside than out, with upholstered seats in a semicircle. At half past ten a goodly crowd came out of the woodwork. Some of us were African-American.
There were no kneeler stools and no prayer books, but here was the King James Bible—the turtle not the mock. About thirty people walked on to the platform under the cross, and arranged themselves into a choir, a band, a large tanned man in a large tan sports jacket, and a blonde.
The band struck up and everyone started to embrace everyone else. Monica and I had some space around us and we were embraced only a few times. A teenage boy and I shook hands reluctantly.
The large tanned man, who was the minister, motioned us to rise and the blonde broke into song. The words of the song appeared on three screens above the platform. The song was unknown to us and did not rhyme, but that didn't matter as the tune was easy to follow and the blonde, who looked like Lulu's pretty sister, was singing up a tempest.
We all sang along. The blonde waved her arms and spun around and was so full of the spirit that sometimes she seemed to rise into the air. The African-American lady on her left did rise, jumping vertically like Zebedee, raising an arm to reach higher. The other members of the choir held their hands in front of them, and leaped and twisted. Half an hour passed quickly.
We sat down and the minister told us we should give all we could to the Lord and we would certainly profit from it, though maybe not for some time, and he was going to Romania in the morning. He recommended tithing, though past performance was no guarantee of future performance, and any returns on investment could go down as well as up. He realized that this uncertainty was a problem for all concerned and he addressed the issue for half an hour.
Then he was calling us forward and the congregation rose and went up to the platform and shouted Hallelujah and turned their hands up and shouted praise and fell down and crawled up the steps of the platform and over each other.
Some of you have dreadful problems, shouted the minister, but here you will find comfort.
An old lady put her arms round Monica. I know you have dreadful problems, said the old lady.
Yes, said Monica, and told her all about them. The old lady and Monica wept and wept and a gentleman next to me cried Hallelujah, hallelujah!
We were in the service for two hours and it did not seem so long. It was one of the best times we had in the US so far, and Monica did not mention the floods, or Stone, or the Bridge Club, or the Loch Ness Monster for weeks.
JIM AND I WERE COMING BACK FROM OUR morning walk along the island and there was an African-American gentleman sitting on the boardwalk by the bridge—one of the gang who operated the boat-lift. He stroked Jim. I saw her with you yesterday, he said. She was running real fast—she was haulin'.
She's a he, I said. Haulin' is what they are for. The miners in the north-east of England bred them for racing and rabbiting. They are quite a new breed and they are very healthy and have lots of colours and lots of chromosomes. Jim is the original sandy colour—they call it fawn. He is a retro whippet. He is an inch bigger than the strictest UK standards but smaller than your US whippets, though we have not seen any of those so far.
She was haulin', said the African-American gentleman.
He pulled on a string and from the Typhoo depths came up a wire cage two feet square, half full of crabs. The crabs rattled and fought. They were big, with blue claws.
They look very fine crabs, I said—can I buy some?
Gracious no—I will give them to you.
Monica was breaking out the blueberry muffins when we all arrived at the Phyllis May. This is Bob, I said, and these are our crabs.
The crabs were making that scratching noise that crabs make in a bucket—the noise you hear in nightmares when the Things are trying the windows. Bob started putting the crabs in a saucepan. The crabs did not think that was a good idea at all, and attacked him as he was taking them out of the bucket. One broke free and fled sideways across the gas cooker. Jim set about haulin' to the other end of the boat, touching thirty miles an hour as he passed the stove.
They will get you if they can, said Bob—they are real mean.
He poured some Budweiser beer on the crabs and lit the gas. Five minutes later he lifted the lid and the crabs had turned red.
I have often wondered what to do with the Budweiser I bought when we arrived, I said.
We are going to do something a bit dangerous this afternoon, said Monica, but if we are spared we will eat your crabs for dinner tonight with a bottle of Californian Zinfandel. Bob, you are so kind.
Plenty of pepper, said Bob, and get some Old Bay spice for the next lot. At the end of the day I love to relax with a beer or two and pick my way through a stack of crabs.
Why have we got crabs in a river? I asked. Is it salt or fresh water?
Bit of both, said Bob, it varies.
Come on Terry, said Monica, we have a date.
STEVE THOMAS CAME THROUGH ON THE EARPHONES—Look—there's your boat!
Under us, Atlantic Yacht Basin with the Phyllis May a matchstick by the Zeppelin sheds.
Steve turned the plane by laying it over on its side and his weight pressed against me. Like his father Norwood, Steve Thomas is too big for most places.
My seat swayed and bounced and slipped away. I looked through the perspex and felt I was about to drop from the zenith like a falling star, straight into the Albemarle and Chesapeake Canal.
Have a good look, said Steve, then I'll take you to a thousand feet where it's smoother. It's bumpy today but it's clear and you are going soon and you want to see that sound you are scared of.
He pointed the Piper Colt into the firmament and the hundred and eight horses of the Lycoming engine began haulin', the opposed cylinders hardly vibrating.
The Piper Colt had been built in 1962 and was the prettiest plane you ever did see—it had spats on its wheels and a wide wing over the cockpit and a snub nose and you wanted to stroke it and talk in its ear. It was made of spars covered with doped canvas a bit like the balsawood and paper plane my father made for me sixty years ago and there was room for two big chaps like Steve and me as long as you don't get embarrassed snuggling up. It cruised at a hundred miles an hour and Steve had pulled it out of the hangar with one hand.
The hangar was carpeted and fully kitted out for weekends polishing the Piper Colt and cleaning the Lycoming with a toothbrush with the radio playing and a fridge full of Diet Coke and just being together, Steve and his plane.
Higher and higher—a crystal day. Around the yacht basin swirls of blue-collar housing and to the east trees and jungle and standing water—four hundred square miles—the Great Dismal Swamp.
I keep off the swamp, said Steve—not a place for a landing. If the trees don't kill you the snakes will get you.
I thought of the ruined Colt, poor baby plane, its back broken, and Terry and Steve stunned in the cockpit and the slithering, the slithering. There, shouted Steve, you can see it, you can see it, what a day!
And there, fifty miles away, plain in view, the patterns of rivers leading into the terrible Albemarle Sound, which stretched to the end of the world.
When it was Monica's turn to go up I went on to the runway with my camera but Steve managed to land somewhere behind my back and Jim and I thought we were on our own for the rest of our lives, but here was Monica looking for us. What a beautiful little plane, she said. Wasn't it lovely how it swayed around and floated on the bumps in the air? Come on, we are going tomorrow—it's time to get tooled up.
• • •
IN THE SHOP UNDER THE GREAT BRIDGE IN Great Bridge I picked up a sub-machine gun. Perhaps a bit more than we need, I said to the lady sitting at the till.
She was so wide that she enveloped the till—in fact the whole shop, with all its camouflage singlets and hats and jackets and billycans and guns and knives to kill people with, was sort of in her lap.
It's to defend ourselves against attack, said Monica. Everyone has been very nice so far but we are going a long way and you never know. Our friends in the marina had a baseball bat. That might be more the level of response, if that is how you say it in the military.
Yes, I said, do you think bringing out a sub-machine gun could spoil the atmosphere?
Oh that is an Airsoft gun, said the lady. That belt of bullets is a fake. See all the little white pellets on the floor—it fires a stream of those.
A teenager joined us. He was stout and pimpled and bereted—dressed to set out into the dusk and sort out this terrorist business once and for all. You should see them pellets fly, he said—and they can hurt. He showed us a red mark on his wrist like a mosquito bite. It's a bit like paintball, without the paint, he explained.
How do you know you have hit the other guy, I asked, without the paint?
It's an honour sport, said the teenager. I am myself the leader of an Airsoft team—I am well known for my honour. Have another look at my red mark.
Shut up Jason, said the fat lady. You could have a stun gun, but you have to get up close and press it against them, and sometimes they realize. The cops have ones with wires so they can zap you from a distance. Not difficult to get a licence for a rifle in Virginia but for a handgun you have to go on a course. I advise a pepper spray—it works from twelve feet. This is the easiest—just flip and point and press. We sell a lot of pepper sprays here in Urban Survival. The pepper spray is strong—only time will heal the stinging—you can get wipes but they don't help.
It's been quite a day, said Monica, back on the Phyllis May, waving her pepper spray. You promised me action, you promised me something new, and I can't complain about today. I wonder is this thing any good against alligators?
Dear Michele and Brent
Thank you for your kind e-mail—we are pleased you are interested in our boat and our voyage and we would love to welcome you on board the Phyllis May when you are next in Virginia.
I feel a bit guilty asking a favour before we know you, but as you are both Sea Captains we wondered if you might be able to help us cross the Albemarle and Pamlico Sounds in October, or perhaps you know someone who could. The only time we really went out to sea was when we crossed the English Channel. You are not supposed to do that in a canal boat, and I think we may have been lucky.
The Phyllis May is a traditional flat-bottomed English narrowboat, 60 feet long and 6 feet 10 inches beam. She has a 43 bhp diesel engine and her top speed is 6.2 miles an hour.
We have a Global Positioning System with a four-inch screen at the tiller, a back-up GPS below linked to a laptop, VHF radio, two anchors, life jackets, a life-ring, and flares.
On our website www.narrowdog.com there is a picture of the Phyllis May going through the wake of a Channel ferry and, I am pleased to say, coming out the other side. But we don't know how she would handle persistent heavy seas and we are a bit worried about the big sounds in North Carolina.
We do hope you can help or advise.
Kind regards
Terry Darlington (and Monica, and Jim)
THE TERRIBLE
SOUNDS
North Carolina
Let's Boogie! — The Great Dismal Swamp Canal — The Return of Tits Magee — We Are Going Down! — Letter from Bethan — The Dirty Grocer — Oversized, Overpriced, and Over There — Down the Long Quay the Slow Boats Glide — White Sails, Tall and Leaning Hard — Blush Chablis — A Failure of the Imagination of Some Importance — A Typhoon of Typhoo — Through the World's Tempestuous Seas
CICELY CAME ALONG THE BOARDWALK AND JIM jumped her and she caught him in her arms and they hugged and kissed each other's ears and she came forward and caught me in her arms and we hugged and kissed each other's ears. Cicely was handsome and, like Officer Nagle's Chihuahua, immensely strong. She was not small, and it was like being on a sofa with a girl and the sofa has decided to join in. Goodbye, I said, darling.
We had said goodbye on her million-pound trawler the night before with Felix, her husband who owned a television station, and Max, a rough-haired Jack Russell who was just like Susan that Monica had when she was a little girl in Radnorshire. We had said goodbye at lunchtime when we had given a Coke and cake and crisps and cashews party for the good ole boys in the Atlantic Yacht Basin and we had said goodbye the night before last after we four went to the Olive Garden for dinner, and we had said goodbye when Cicely came on the boat and showed us the photographs of her paintings and we had said goodbye when I was trying to fix the new compass on top of the boat.
Next day a new morning, a blue morning. Early October, when leaving Virginia was no longer the act of a madman. We were free—free to try our luck on the Intracoastal Waterway, free to try to cross the terrible sounds of North Carolina. I stepped on to the back counter and Monica stood on the gunwale. Let's boogie! I cried, and reversed into our wooded creek where the blue heron and the white heron hunted, and the turtles paddled and the fish rose and the crabs grappled and I swung the Phyllis May round the corner on to the Albemarle and Chesapeake Canal and headed north towards the Great Dismal Swamp Canal and there were people on the quay waving and we felt almost sad because we liked them all so much and Atlantic Yacht Basin was a nice place but Monica was talking to the keeper of the great bridge at Great Bridge on her VHF and he dropped the concrete counterweights as big as houses and the great bridge at Great Bridge lifted and we were under the great bridge and Here we go Here we go Here we go!
Did you call by Cicely and Felix's boat this morning with Jim? asked Monica.
The boat wasn't there, I said, they had gone. Never even said goodbye.
A new morning, a blue morning—the North American fall. Sailing alongside, a few yachts and trawlers, waving and taking pictures. They pulled ahead and we settled down to a roar and I watched the little boat on the four-inch GPS screen at my elbow creep between the electric shores and watched the real shoreline of the Elizabeth River unwind in fields and houses and jetties and woods. An osprey glided down to the water. It picked up an eel between two fingers, and flew into a tree.
After an hour a little boat came towards us and passed us and then turned around to run alongside. In it were two African-American gentlemen. My Gard, shouted one, what an awesome—er—THING!
THE GUIDEBOOKS SAID THE GREAT DISMAL Swamp Canal
was beautiful, but they were wrong. When we had visited in July we had already seen the lot. The trees are a hundred feet high, close packed and filled in with jungle, which reaches out over the water. Now in October all the foliage was dark green. There were no views, and you could barely see the sky. No flowers, no fruit, no butterflies. The canal was straight and but for a single kink you could look out the other end twenty-two miles away. The Phyllis May left a small wake, like the bubbles on a good cuppa.
I have come from the Trent and Mersey at Stone, I said to myself, remote and open and green and grey and curving and the locks and the clouds from old paintings shining over the hills and a pub every five miles, and I have travelled three thousand miles at great expense and come to this.
Only Jim enjoyed sailing the Great Dismal Swamp Canal, sleeping on the bow in the shade.
We saw a dragonfly. A bird uttered a hopeless cry. The swamp harbours thirty-seven different snakes—many can swim and many are poisonous, but they stayed where they were, waiting.
We moored at the visitor center. The flies had given up for the season, but no one had warned us about the gongoozlers, which attacked from all sides. I rather like gongoozlers, but these gongoozlers were the type that walk along the jetty and talk loudly as they look through the windows.
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