The Narrowboat Girl

by Annie Murray

  They were back in the rhythm of the cut, working hard, not speaking much throughout the jouney. Maryann fell exhausted into bed the first night while the men were still in the pub. She was too tired to feel lonely. The second evening they reached Fenny Compton. It was the first of November and very cold, though not quite severe enough to freeze over the cut. By the time Bessie was stabled and Maryann had prepared the evening meal, the frost was setting in. The sun set over the fields in a glow of orange fire and the spare shapes of the trees were silhouetted against the eggshell-blue sky higher up. She saw Joel looking at her as she wiped unexpected tears from her eyes. She never seemed to know what her mood was going to be from one moment to the next.

  They ate the stew round the tiny table without saying much, but she felt Joel’s eyes turning to her often, his face anxious, and to her frustration her own eyes kept filling with tears which she had to wipe away. All that afternoon, however hard she had tried to force them away, memories of Sal kept pushing into her mind, not as she had last seen her, in despair and death, but as she had been when they were young, so lively and pretty with her long blonde hair, running and laughing in the park or leading Tony by the hand. Sal had loved having a baby brother. Maryann could hardly swallow down any of the food, however much she tried not to think of it. After a while she gave up. She went out and climbed on to the bank, trying to calm herself, looking out across the stern of the Esther Jane along the darkening water, her vision blurred by tears.

  ‘’Ere – you’ll need this.’

  Joel was holding out her coat and she put it on, glad of it.

  ‘Come on with me, this way. We’ll ’ave a bit of a walk.’

  He led her away from the cut and the pub, along a footpath into the fields. There wasn’t much light and she had to concentrate on walking on the frozen mud track. For a while Joel led her in silence, along the edge of the field until they came to a gateway, which opened out into another field where black and white cows were just visible in the dying light, standing huddled together not far away.

  Joel leaned over the gate for a moment. Maryann looked up at him. He seemed so familiar standing there, his face, the shape of him, his big, work-roughened hands on the gate – it was as if she had known him all her life. He turned to her, one elbow still leaning on the gate.

  ‘You ent yourself since you’ve come back with us, Maryann.’

  ‘I’m . . . I’m awright.’ Once more the rush of tears. She wanted to stamp: stop it, stop it, I’m all right! Don’t make me talk or remember. I’m where I want to be, just leave me alone!

  He stepped away from the gate and put his hands on her shoulders, turning her towards him. She had grown a little, she realized. Her head now came up to his chest.

  ‘Look, little ’un—’ Despite his affectionate names for her, she sensed he was treating her differently, like someone older. There was vulnerablilty as well as kindness in his expression. ‘I can see there’s summat amiss. I don’t know what’s driven you away from your family, but I do know what a sunny face you ’ad before, Maryann, and I don’t see it now. The Maryann that left us is ’ardly the same ’un that’s come back.’

  Maryann kept her eyes on the ground, shoulders heaving as the great swell of her grief struggled to the surface.

  ‘Speak to me, girl,’ Joel said gently. ‘It can’t do no harm.’

  ‘M-my sister . . .’ she managed to say, eventually. ‘She ki . . . ki . . . took ’er own life. We only buried ’er in the week.’

  ‘Oh no – oh—’ she heard Joel say. ‘My poor little bird.’

  He took her in his arms and she felt herself held tight against his chest as his deep, growling voice made ceaseless, comforting noises. Over and over again he stroked her hair as she wept, beginning to let out some of the reservoir of horror and pain inside her.

  He held her, murmuring his comfort to her for as long as she needed it, not asking questions, just letting her weep until she began to grow quieter. She went limp, leaning against him, gulping and sighing.

  ‘Oh Joel,’ she said eventually in tired despair.

  ‘Poor little thing.’ There was great tenderness in his voice.

  ‘I thought I’d be awright back with you, and look ’ow I’m carrying on.’

  ‘You will be awright. In a while.’ There was a pause, then he said gruffly, ‘We didn’t half miss you. I missed you.’ He squeezed her shoulders. ‘You ent ’alf growing up, Maryann. I can’t help seeing you a bit different. I’ve not ’ad soft feelings for many lasses, but you – you’re coming to be special to me. Silly old fool, ent I?’

  Maryann felt the affection and warmth of his words go through her. She gave a tiny laugh. ‘No you’re not, Joel. You’re just you and I want to be with yer.’

  He leaned down and carefully planted kisses, first on one cheek, then the other, and she giggled as his whiskers tickled her. His face was still close to hers and he was looking into her eyes.

  ‘You’re so sweet,’ he said longingly. ‘Just so sweet, lass.’

  His holding her, the desire in his voice, aroused a flicker of excitement in her. He brought his lips close to hers and gave her a soft peck of a kiss. When she didn’t pull away, he embraced her properly, closed his eyes and kissed her more passionately, hungrily. For those first seconds as he had looked at her, kissed her, she had been deeply touched by his gentleness, his desire for her. Then she felt his tongue between her lips, his hands pressing her now more ardently, and in her hurt state, her confusion, something hard and cold slammed down in her like a shutter. What was he doing? He was supposed to be her friend, her brother! And he was starting on this dirty stuff, invading her like Norman Griffin had done! But this was Joel. Joel didn’t do things like that . . .

  ‘No! Stop it!’ She pulled away with such vehemence that he released her immediately, confused. ‘Get off me! Don’t you ever touch me. I hate anyone touching me!’ She was crying again, distraught, starting to run from him, but she had only gone a few paces before her ankle turned on a hummock in the frozen ground and she fell over.

  Joel reached down to help her up but she slapped his hand away. ‘Don’t you ever touch me, yer dirty bastard. I hate yer!’ She scrambled up.

  ‘Maryann, don’t – what’ve I done to you?’ He seized her arm and made her stop. ‘I’m sorry. I just thought you’d . . . You seem so grown up and I’ve such feelings for you, but I wouldn’t hurt you for the world. Please – don’t be like this. I’d never do a thing to harm you . . .’

  ‘Take me back to the boat,’ she snapped, yanking her arm away. ‘Don’t touch me. Just take me back.’

  Joel stood, hands on hips, staring at her, completely bewildered. ‘We’ll get back then.’ He sounded confused, irritated even.

  They walked back in silence. Maryann’s mind was in turmoil. How could he have done something like that? He was a grown-up man and she was just a girl! This was supposed to be her safe place, the refuge she had run to for help. But it wasn’t safe. He was just like Norman, he’d made her feel foul and loathsome, and nothing on the Esther Jane would ever feel right again.

  She refused to speak to Joel again that night, despite him trying to make up with her. She lay down on the side bench and turned away from him. She barely slept at all, listening to the sound of the men a short distance from her, repelled by both of them, wanting now to be anywhere else but here.

  The next day they docked at Banbury and work began on unloading the cargo. Darius was busy overseeing that, and Joel had gone in search of another load to take on south or back up to Birmingham. Maryann would have expected to use the time to clean up the cabin, do some washing and put a sparkle on the brasses. Instead, once the men were out of the way, she wrapped up her few things again, pocketed the last of the money she had taken from Norman and climbed ashore, looking round her to make certain both the Bartholomews were out of sight. She walked briskly through the busy wharf area and slipped away, unnoticed, into the bustling town of Banbury.

  PART TW
O

  Twenty-Seven

  1934

  Maryann carried the tray along the gold carpet of the landing, at pains not to slop tea from the large cup into the saucer. Beside the cup, arranged on delicate china plates, were two boiled eggs, one in the cup, one tucked beside it in a cosy, three slices of buttered toast, a pot of Chivers marmalade and a starched linen napkin in a silver ring. When she reached the last door along the landing, she set the tray down on the floor and knocked.

  ‘Come!’

  Each day she carried his breakfast to him, after she had already been up for four hours and had had her own meal in the servants’ hall. Roland Musson liked to lie late in bed and eat his breakfast late, and it had been long agreed by the rest of the family that he should because this was what was good and right for him.

  ‘On the table as usual please, Nelson.’ He was sitting, tousle-haired, on the edge of his bed, his sturdy frame wrapped in a tartan wool dressing gown although it was May and quite warm. As usual, the room was fuggy with cigarette smoke.

  ‘How do you come to look so hot and rosy-cheeked,’ he complained petulantly, arms folded tightly across his chest. ‘I feel quite shivery this morning.’

  Maryann smiled. ‘I keep warm working – it’s nonstop this time of day.’

  Roland Musson didn’t reply, but sat looking sunk in gloom. He had the solid Musson looks, large blue eyes and a shock of thick fair hair, but his complexion was growing ruddy from too much drink. When she first arrived at Charnwood House Maryann had found him bad-tempered, demanding and unlikeable. She asked the other housemaids why this young man, a robust twenty-seven-year-old, as he had been then, spent his life confined in the parental home, and much of the time lounged about without purpose in his room.

  ‘It were the war,’ Letty, the first housemaid, told her. ‘Shot ’is nerves to bits. ’E’s better now, Mrs Letcombe says.’ The housekeeper could remember the five Musson children as babies. ‘’E were ever so bad when ’e came ’ome. Crying, nightmares and everything. Wouldn’t ’ardly go out of ’is room for months on end.’

  ‘Why doesn’t ’e go and get a job?’ Maryann asked, thinking this a rum way to go on.

  Letty laughed. ‘’E don’t really need to, living ’ere, does ’e? ’E’s comfortable enough, and to tell you the truth—’ She lowered her voice to a whisper, as the two of them were polishing the dining-room floor and anyone might be within earshot, ‘I don’t think she wants ’im out of ’er sight, what with John being gone and that.’

  John, the eldest Musson, an officer in an Oxfordshire Regiment, had been killed in 1917 and Mrs Lydia Musson, an elegant, though rather vague woman with a wreath of thick, wavy hair coiled round her head, seemed to encourage her second son’s invalidity. She referred to him as ‘poor, dear Roland’ and he remained, at once petulant and pitiable, neither challenged to leave, nor seeming to have the will or incentive to do so.

  It was getting on for six years since Maryann had come to Charnwood House, four miles out of Banbury, and in that time Roland Musson did seem to get out more. He worked in the grounds in the afternoon with Sid and Wally, the two gardeners, and he had a motorcycle on which he roared dangerously along country roads and across the fields. He had a few friends locally and they sat for hours at a time in village pubs. Maryann, though, couldn’t help but compare his plight with that of her father, also scarred by the war, trying to adjust back to family and civilian life and having somehow to struggle on and get jobs, keep afloat, without the cushion of wealth that Roland Musson had beneath him. And Nance’s father, Blackie Black, too, and Joel . . . But no – she wasn’t going to think of Joel. Whenever her mind strayed down any path which would lead her to think about home she blocked out such thoughts. She had found a life that was free of pain and trouble and she wanted to keep it that way. And over the years her dislike for Roland Musson had faded as she grew to understand him better, turning instead to a mixture of tenderness and pity.

  Sometimes when she carried Roland’s breakfast tray in he was quite jovial and chatty; other times down and sunken into himself. That morning, Maryann stirred two lumps of sugar into his tea and handed it to him, thinking today was one of his depressed days, but he suddenly looked up at her.

  ‘How old are you, Nelson?’

  ‘Nineteen, sir. Twenty come September.’

  ‘You look different,’ he said taking the cup. ‘What is it about you?’

  ‘I really don’t know.’ She hadn’t changed her hair, her morning dress was as usual. She wasn’t aware that Roland ever saw her anyway. She was a servant, and they had to stand to one side in the corridors when a family member passed, trying to make themselves invisible.

  ‘You look yourself – as if that’s how you’re meant to look. Chap in my unit – that’s what it makes me think of.’ Roland spoke musingly into his teacup. ‘Went out on a night patrol – one of those bloody woods on the Somme. Can’t think what it was all for now but anyhow, they were successful. We’d heard the shots – didn’t know who was getting it at the time. But they came back, all of them, full of it.’ Roland spoke in his odd, clipped way. ‘Anyway, this fellow was one of them. When I saw him the next morning, he looked, well, altered. That’s it. That’s what you made me think of. As if he’d grown into himself overnight.’ He took a long drink of the cooling tea and Maryann, puzzled, thought he’d finished and began to turn away. But he carried on.

  ‘Day after that the chap stood up for a few seconds and bang – killed by a sniper. So what was that all about? Man grows up, becomes himself overnight, then—’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Like a bloody butterfly.’

  A moment later he looked up at her again. ‘All right. I don’t expect you to have an answer. Off you go.’

  She went back down the stairs, pausing on the landing to look out over the garden, where Wally, the elder of the two gardeners, was bent weeding the long border which edged the drive. It was at its most beautiful at this time of year, the lawn wide and green, the beds bright with flowers, trellises of climbing roses up the outbuildings and the mock orange and laburnum in blossom. The mingled scents drifted in through the open window. From close to the house, out of sight, she could hear the Mussons’ two dogs barking: Freddie, a wild young fox terrier with his insistent yap, and the deeper bark of their spaniel, Lily Langtree, who was beginning to run to fat. Freddie suddenly launched himself, a black and white flash across the lawn, with Lily lumbering after him.

  Different? What had Roland Musson been on about? Maryann looked down at herself. She may be different, but it certainly hadn’t happened overnight. She had grown, of course, and filled out on the plentiful and stodgy servants’ food at Charnwood House. When she first arrived she had had no appetite and even Mrs Letcombe cajoled her to eat.

  ‘Come on, girl – you’ll have no energy for the work if you eat like a sparrer.’

  Gradually, she settled into the rhythm of the house. As she got to know the characters of the other servants and appreciated that she had a good employer and a comfortable life, she felt secure and happy. She liked the predictable routine, the steady days and years. She was under-housemaid to Letty and Alice, and once she’d got used to the place, resolved that she would try hard and work her way up through the pecking order of servants. Two years later, Letty, who was then twenty-one, had married and moved on and Maryann became second housemaid. That was a start, but the job she had her eye on was not to be a housemaid at all. The job she wanted was Ruth’s. Ruth, who was in her mid-twenties when Maryann arrived, was lady’s maid to Mrs Musson, and to the Misses Diana and Pamela Musson when they were at home, which Pamela still was. Ruth was a quiet, dark-haired, neat young woman, whose job seemed to be regarded in realms high above that of housemaid. As she looked dreamily out at the spring garden that morning, Maryann was speculating excitedly about the fact that Ruth was now courting with a young baker from the nearest village. If they were to marry, surely Ruth would leave and then perhaps . . .? But would they give the post to Al
ice, the first housemaid? Surely not! Alice was a good, hard worker, but she was a rough diamond. Was she, Maryann, neat and respectable enough for the job? She had done her darndest to make herself so. Every morning she brushed out her long, black hair and pinned it immaculately in a bun behind her head. She kept her nails short and her uniform mended. Smoothing her hand over her apron and trying to walk with Ruth’s cool serenity, she went on down the stairs. Could that have been what Master Roland meant, she thought hopefully, that she looked like someone who wasn’t meant to be a housemaid? Was she really destined to be a lady’s maid?

  ‘’Urry up!’ Alice snapped when Maryann appeared down in the kitchen. ‘You should be half done with the bedrooms by now!’

  Evan, who worked under the butler, Mr Thomas, winked at her over Alice’s shoulder as he passed with a tray of steaming cutlery ready for drying. Maryann ignored him. Suddenly, after a few months of banter with Evan, he was becoming too friendly. He had started creeping up on her in the pantry and putting his arm round her. ‘Gerroff!’ she’d say to him. ‘What’re yer playing at?’ It made her feel horrible and prickly.

  ‘Master Roland was talking to me,’ she retorted to Alice. ‘I couldn’t just walk out, could I?’

  ‘Well, you’d better get on with it double quick now’s all I can say,’ Alice ordered.

  Maryann made a face behind Alice’s back. Since she’d been first housemaid Alice had gone power mad.

  She began on Pamela Musson’s room. Pamela, voluptuous, blonde and loud, was only two years older than Maryann and was the youngest of the Musson children. The room was pretty, decorated in pale blue and white, with a soft, silky bedspread, curtains the colour of bluebells and a thick blue carpet. As usual, Pamela had left her nightclothes strewn across the floor and the bedding tipped off right over the side. Her dressing table was a litter of powder puffs and perfume, there was face powder spilt on the floor, stockings dangling languidly over the edge of one drawer and coat-hangers and underslips dropped on the floor by the cupboard. Maryann sighed. When she had arrived she found it almost impossible to take in that Pamela was the same age Sal had been. She was both a child and a young woman, both so much more sophisticated and knowing than Sal, yet so much more sheltered and childlike in other ways. She and Diana had gone about in their ‘flapper’ outfits, or their fashionable lounging clothes in bright colours with wide flowery bandeaux round their hair and hanging jauntily down at the back. Maryann had been astonished by their energy, their colourful freedom and confidence as they danced and giggled their way through life. Diana was married now and had stopped giggling some time soon after the ceremony. Pamela, who had done secretarial training, did her ‘bit of work, to show willing’ and otherwise existed in a round of social visits and Young Farmers’ dos and ‘hops’ in Banbury and kept talking about ‘getting a little job in London’. Pamela was rather hoping someone would marry her quite soon too and she sometimes told Maryann about her beaux.