The Narrowboat Girl

by Annie Murray

  ‘Bu-b-b- . . . I wanna . . . I wanna see ’er!’ He was so bewildered, upset and tired.

  ‘I’ll see to ’im,’ Maryann whispered, and Sal nodded and got up, sniffing. Maryann could see from her expression that she’d been crying too. The children had all been very fond of their Nanny Firkin. She’d always been good to them. Maryann expected Sal to go downstairs, but instead she went across and lay on their bed, the springs creaking as she sank down on it and put her hands over her face.

  ‘And ’e took all Nanna’s cats away, and Walt, and I dunno where ’e took ’em!’

  ‘What’re you saying?’ Maryann turned to Sal.

  Sal raised her stricken face. ‘Norman took them outside and . . .’ She made a wringing movement with her hands. Maryann went cold.

  ‘Not Walt? Not all of them?’

  Sal nodded, glancing anxiously at Tony.

  Choking back her feelings, Maryann managed to sing a lullaby through her tears, stroking Tony’s head until his breathing changed and she could tell he was drifting off to sleep. Sal lay on the bed, buried her head in her arms and shook with sobs. The smells of cooking floated upstairs: liver, potatoes, cabbage. The boys had had slops and if it had just been the family there they’d have had the same, but Norman Griffin had to have his meat and two veg whatever the time of night. Maryann got up and went over to Sal, tapping her gently on the shoulder. It was like after their dad died when they’d cried together up here and Maryann expected her to sit up so they could put their arms round each other. But instead Sal seemed to shrink from her.

  ‘Get off me!’ Her voice came out muffled but the venom in it was unmistakable. ‘Just don’t bloody well touch me.’

  ‘Please yerself,’ Maryann said, feeling more tears well in her eyes. Why was Sal being like this? And today, of all days, when they’d lost their nan? The two of them had always been different and they’d always fallen out a lot, but in the end they had been close. But these last few months Sal seemed to have changed so much Maryann couldn’t get near her, and tonight those changes felt unbearable. She was going to move away, but she looked back at Sal. She was curled on her side now, her hands over her face as if she couldn’t bear to see anything. Now she was looking carefully at her sister she noticed the boniness of her fingers – Sal, bony! She’d always been the plump one. Maryann felt a sudden physical shock go through her. She knew her sister had been strange, moody lately. You couldn’t miss the fact. But people said that was wenches for you when they began to get a bit older: she was just going through it, growing up. But now Maryann saw it was more than that.

  In a soft, hesitant voice, she said, ‘You don’t look well. What’s up with yer?’

  Sal sat up with an abrupt movement and Maryann flinched, thinking for a second Sal was going to slap her. Her blonde hair was wild round her face and she spoke through clenched teeth. ‘Why should there be anything up with me – eh? Just bloody well leave me be, stupid!’

  Maryann stood up and backed away, leaving Sal glaring at her in the candlelight.

  ‘I dunno what’s ’appened to yer’ – a sob caught in Maryann’s throat – ‘but you ain’t like my sister any more. Yer ’orrible, I ’ate yer . . .’

  ‘Oh who cares.’ Sal lay down, indifferent. ‘Just sod off, will yer?’

  Maryann got halfway down the stairs and then sank on to one of the steps in the dark, hugging her knees, utterly miserable. She sat rocking for a moment, everything flashing through her mind, all the horrible things that had happened. Norman had done away not just with Tiger but all Nanny Firkin’s animals! The swelling, explosive feeling built and built inside her until she could hardly breathe, she was so full of hatred and grief. At last she got up, not giving herself more time to think, and ran down to the front room where Norman Griffin was reading the Mail. She snatched the paper out of his hands, screwed it up and threw it into the grate before he had even taken in what was happening. The fire leapt into a great yellow blaze.

  ‘’Ere! What the . . .?’

  Maryann saw his slitty eyes widen with astonishment and he sat forward as if to get up.

  ‘You killed Tiger, didn’t yer?’ she shrieked at him. ‘Who d’you think you are, killing my little cat and my nan’s pets and throwing them out like bits of rubbish! I hate yer, you ’orrible man, coming ’ere thinking yer can take over from our dad. Well, yer can’t because ’e was a good man and you’re just a . . . a fat, murdering pig, that’s what you are and I ’ope someone cuts yer bloody throat for yer!’

  There were a few seconds of stunned quiet while the clock ticked and the fire crackled, then Flo’s voice, ‘Maryann!’ at the door, her expression more appalled than Maryann could ever remember seeing it before. But she was past caring now, she was in a storm of crying, kneeling on the hearth rug, beside herself with grief and exhaustion.

  ‘How could you’ve let him, Mom? ’E’s a nasty, cruel man. ’E put his hands round Tiger’s throat and squeezed the life out of ’im and that’s the man you’re married to, Mom . . . What’d Tiger ever done to ’im, poor little thing?’

  The slapping Flo Griffin administered at that point almost floored Maryann, an almighty swipe across the side of the head.

  ‘What d’you think you’re on about, yer little bitch! Shut your mouth before I knock the living daylights out of yer!’

  ‘Flo . . . Flo . . .’ Norman Griffin’s voice was calm, measured. ‘That’s enough now – calm down.’

  The heat from the fire was intense on Maryann’s back and her cheek was raw and burning. She looked out from behind her hands, keeping her gaze lowered, to see them both standing over her. Her eyes were at the level of their thighs. She knew without looking that her mother’s face was contorted with rage. Next to her, Maryann looked down at Norman’s stockinged feet planted wide apart. His shoes, well shined, were tilted up against the fender beside her. Slowly, she raised her eyes towards him. He seemed immense, looming over her, his face a great doughy ball on the end of his neck. She looked for the fury in his face, the eyes narrowed with loathing. But instead she saw something more puzzling. Norman Griffin looked relaxed, not smiling but as if a smile was waiting under the surface of his face. He seemed in some way triumphant. Maryann stared uncertainly at him, waiting, but then Flo started up.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Norman, for Maryann carrying on like this. The girl’s a disgrace, but what with losing my mother today and all . . .’

  ‘Feed the girl and get her to bed,’ Norman said. The expression on his face didn’t alter and he spoke evenly, betraying no emotion. ‘Today’s not an ordinary day, is it? We don’t want her going hungry.’

  ‘Oh Norman.’ Flo sounded quite awestruck. ‘D’yer hear that, Maryann, after all the terrible things yer’ve said? Norman did the only thing that could be done with all yer nan’s animals – we couldn’t bring them ’ere, the filthy things. Now you get on yer feet and say yer sorry or you’ll feel my hand across yer again, wench. Yer’ve got far better from Mr Griffin than yer deserve, that you have.’

  Maryann stood up, her eyes fixed on the coloured splashes in the rug. She was astonished herself, but she couldn’t say sorry. The word bulged like an egg stuck in her throat but it wouldn’t come out. Sorry! She wasn’t bloody well sorry. She wished she’d said far more. She wanted to get a red-hot poker and burn and burn him till he screamed.

  ‘Maryann – say yer sorry!’ Flo was almost shouting at her.

  Maryann shook her head.

  ‘Let it go,’ Norman Griffin said quietly. ‘We’ll let it go. For now.’

  Maryann lay in bed next to Sal. Sal hadn’t come down, despite Flo calling her repeatedly. By the time they ate it was eleven o’clock and Maryann almost collapsed into bed and, exhausted and overwrought, fell asleep.

  But she was wakened in the dead of night by Sal, moving restlessly at first, whimpering, then thrashing about more and more violently. Her arm came over and whacked Maryann across the chest.

  ‘Eh – Sal!’ Maryann pushed herself up
on one elbow. ‘Sal? You dreaming?’

  Sal sat up suddenly and started gagging. Maryann’s heart was going like a drum.

  ‘Sal, Sal!’ She tried to put her arm round Sal’s shoulders, shaking her to wake her. Sal’s whole body was heaving as if she was choking on something, her breath coming in sharp, desperate gasps.

  ‘Sal, for God’s sake stop it – say summat to me. What’s the matter with yer?’

  She gabbled on and on at her sister until Sal suddenly took a huge gasp as if something had come unblocked and her breath calmed a fraction. Maryann held her tight.

  ‘Maryann?’

  ‘Oh Sal. You frightened the living daylights out of me! I thought you was choking.’

  For a moment Sal seemed to snuggle into her sister’s skinny arms as if glad of the comfort. ‘Help me, Maryann,’ she said sleepily.

  ‘’Ow can I help yer?’

  ‘Help me – I’ve got to get out.’

  ‘Sal—’ She wondered if her sister was asleep or awake. It was so dark she couldn’t see if her eyes were open. She stroked Sal’s shoulder and kissed her. ‘I wish yer’d talk to me. Tell me what’s up. Yer never talk to me these days, Sal. I want us to get on.’

  There was silence then Sal said, ‘Don’t ever let ’er make you work for Mr Griffin.’

  ‘I won’t.’ Whatever was she going on about? ‘I wouldn’t any’ow. Don’t think ’e’d want me.’

  Sal gripped her arm. ‘Just don’t. Promise me.’

  ‘I promise.’

  Nine

  All that spring Maryann stayed away from home as much as she could and haunted the canal bank. The paths were not readily accessible – they were kept well walled and fenced off to stop thieving from the wharves – but she had her place where she could squeeze through. It was her secret escape route through which she could climb into this other world, different and hopeful. She was keeping out of everyone’s way and it suited Flo Griffin to keep the cheeky little bint well out of her hair, except that she’d have liked her out of the way with her brothers in tow as well and Maryann had other ideas. Sometimes she took Tony with her, out down to play in the street or to the rezzer, but she never took him to the cut. That was her place. She tried to sneak out as quickly as she could every day, before Flo could tell her to mind her brothers, sometimes even slipping out the back, over the wall and away.

  No one had got round to cutting her hair in months, and it hung in black trails each side of her thin face. When school was over she untied the strip of rag which held it back all day, put on her cotton frock in faded checks of dark and lighter blue and old rubber-soled pumps with no socks and she was off, the air on her bare arms, the sun pricking out freckles on her nose.

  Ever since the morning a few weeks ago when Sal had sat up to find an ooze of blood between her legs, and Maryann learned that Sal had ‘got her first monthly and become a woman’ Maryann had decided she didn’t want to be a woman very much herself. If it meant putting rags in your knickers and sitting about looking weighed down, groaning that your stomach hurt, they could keep it. And to have to marry horrible men like Mr Griffin so she could live in a half decent house and have meat every day of the week. She wanted to stay as she was for ever, light as wisp, to slip through the fence and run and run along the canal bank until there were fewer factories and more trees and she could lie looking up into leaves arched over her like a great green cathedral.

  But she did have a companion to take on her wanderings. That week, after Mr Griffin murdered Tiger, Sal came home from work and, when they were alone, slipped something into Maryann’s hand.

  ‘’Ere – saw this in the pawn shop. S’for you.’

  To her delight, Maryann saw a little china cat, painted quite crudely in grey and black. It was lying down looking up with an alert expression. It didn’t have a white throat, but in every other way it could have been Tiger.

  ‘Oh Sal – ta!’

  ‘S’awright,’ Sal said.

  It didn’t make up for Tiger of course, and Sal soon sunk back into herself, but it meant such a lot that she’d thought to buy it. That Sal had reached out to her. Maryann loved the china cat. She called it ‘Little Tiger’ and carried it everywhere with her in the pocket of her frock.

  At the weekends she went down to the cut and walked miles, closing her mind tight against her family, her life at home. She’d been down on the path out through Selly Oak, round the back of Bournville, her mouth watering with the smell of chocolate from the Cadbury factory as trains rumbled past close by, purple lupins amid the grass. Up Winson Green way, on a cold day, water outlets from factories making steam hiss up out of the icy canal, the routes winding and looping round the back of firms and out again, the path darkening under dripping bridges. And when she looked up and took notice she began to realize that Sal was sloping out every weekend too. Nance told her Sal was turning up round their place and she and Charlie were going off together. The park, they said. Never spelled out where. When Nance said it, Maryann shrugged.

  ‘Good for them.’

  ‘I don’t know what’s got into yer,’ Nance said, offended. Before, they’d have gossiped and giggled about this development. Sal and Charlie – ooh, what was going on there!

  ‘There ain’t nothing wrong with me,’ Maryann said. Nance got on her nerves nowadays. She seemed young and daft, wanting to play games all the time. Maryann just wanted to be away from it all, on her own.

  But all the time, even though the canal had become a place of refuge in itself, she was on the lookout for that man, with his big smile and glowing red beard. Joel, who occupied her mind like a great burnished rock. The canals were busy with traffic day in, day out, mostly the joeys, day tripping, doing local deliveries round the factories, but among them were the family boats, the kings of the cut. Maryann narrowed her eyes when she saw one coming, looking for the right colours, the Esther Jane’s reds, yellows and greens, the scrolls, roses and castles painted on her doors. One day she thought she saw her, moving slowly along, a mile or so further out from where she had first met Joel. She ran towards the boat, full of excitement. But when she got closer she saw that it was wrong, everything was in a different place from what she remembered. The horse turned out to be a mule, not Bessie, and the boat was called the Mariella. A woman stood at the back holding a baby. Walking beside the mule, there was also a boy, about the same age as herself.

  ‘D’yer know a boat called the Esther Jane?’ Maryann asked him.

  The boy hitched up the sleeves of a huge shirt.

  ‘I dunno. Mom!’ he bawled across towards the boat. At the same full volume he repeated Maryann’s question, still plodding along as the mule towed the boat.

  A man appeared. ‘Esther Jane? That’ll be Darius Bartholomew’s,’ he called across.

  ‘And Joel Bartholomew?’ Maryann shouted.

  ‘Ar – that’s ’is son. You looking out for ’um?’

  The boy’s father gave the same promise as the coal-shovelling man had, those months ago, that he would pass word round. And why didn’t she leave a message with the toll clerks?

  So she had, a little note saying:

  Dear Mr Bartholomew,

  When you pass this way again I’d like to see you, please keep an eye out for me. I’m on the path most afternoons.

  Yours,

  Maryann Nelson.

  And one day she was suddenly there, a hazy afternoon when the cut seemed clogged with factory smoke and no breeze to blow it away. She’d walked out almost as far as Smethwick Junction. The horse was skewbald, a solid little mare, and behind her Maryann saw the red, yellow and green of the boat and once more her pulse speeded as she ran closer. Before she could read the name she saw a man in a black hat standing holding the tiller, a huge white beard curling across his chest and, standing behind the small fore-cabin, staring out, a dark-haired girl of about ten years old. On the roof a brown mongrel dog was standing by the water carriers, wagging a long tail. Maryann’s excitement drained away. No sig
n of Joel. It was the wrong boat again.

  But as it drew alongside she saw the writing on the side of the cabin. Esther Jane. It was her! But where was Joel? Was the old man steering the boat his father?

  She was too shy at first to call out to him. He looked rather grand standing there, face shaded by his hat, his back straight, beard billowing in the slight breeze, looking straight ahead of him along the canal. Maryann followed behind the horse towing the Esther Jane, and she kept glancing across to see if there was any sign of Joel. After a while, she saw the old man had noticed her and he raised his hand and saluted her. He reminded Maryann of a king in a fairy story, or what she’d been told God was supposed to look like. She waved back, uncertainly. She heard him say something into the cabin of the boat and in a moment she saw Joel’s head appear out of the cabin. He waved as well and Maryann felt her cheeks turn pink with pleasure.

  ‘Maryann Nelson!’ he called across to her, and she giggled. She heard old Mr Bartholomew call to the girl at the bow of the Esther Jane. His voice was deep and growly and Maryann liked the sound of it. The girl began pulling on the tow rope, guiding the boat into the side. The old man moved the rudder and the Esther Jane glided up beside her. The girl leapt across the gap once she was able, and caught hold of the horse’s bridle.

  ‘Keep her moving, Ada,’ Mr Bartholomew ordered. Maryann stood waiting nervously as the boat slid slowly along the bank. Now he was close to her, she could see that Darius Bartholomew had piercing grey eyes under the bushy white brows, and a forehead criss-crossed with lines like a railway junction. When he spoke he had several missing teeth. But best of all, she saw Joel smiling and reaching out his hand to her.

  ‘Come on then, Maryann Nelson, hop in quick.’

  She took Joel’s hand with no hesitation and her own felt tiny, gripped in his palm, which was caloused and rough as a brick wall. She jumped across into the Esther Jane as it glided along, on to the tiny platform from where the boat was steered, and they pushed off again, Darius holding the long tiller while the girl stayed on the path guiding the horse.