Narrow Margins

by Marie Browne

  That evening is still one of my favourite memories. It was warm, the stars were out and the evening was made complete with burnt, unidentifiable barbecue food and good company; we laughed a lot, drank quite a lot (except Geoff who doesn’t drink at all – he spent the evening relaxing with numerous cups of tea while regarding the rest of us with amused tolerance) and finally staggered off to bed in the small hours, well, in all honesty, Helen and Dave staggered off to bed – I had to be carried, whoops.

  The next morning, while, yet again, I was nursing a niggling hangover, it was decided that Geoff and Dave would take Happy to the mooring, and Helen and I would go ahead and make sure that everything was ready for them to arrive.

  Sam elected to stay with Dad, and we all headed off in separate directions. I would really like to be able to insist that I’m not entirely sure why we did it this way, but I know that Helen and I wanted to have a day shopping, drinking coffee and chatting. Getting rid of all the lads was at the forefront of our minds. I have always felt a little guilty about this as I was fully aware that Dave and Geoff didn’t actually know each other very well, Dave had never been on a narrow boat and they were just about to face that nasty turn on to the fast-running, tidal section of the Ouse.

  I was dreading it far more than I had let on to Geoff, so when Dave offered, with only slight hesitance and a fair amount of prodding from Helen, to go with Geoff, I completely leapt at the idea and walked (we almost ran actually) away without a backward glance. How mean is that?

  Helen and I were appalled at our horrific ability to abandon our loved ones and run away giggling but as we were discussing it, while sitting in the sun, outside Starbucks, over a large Peppermint Mocha, I really couldn’t find it in me to care. Anyway, I figured that if they got into difficulties Dave could fix them up and, as Helen said, you should never let guilt get in the way of a coffee and chocolate fix.

  An hour later, Helen and I were still sitting in the sun with yet another obscene, cream-covered coffee and I wondered if I should phone Geoff and see how he was getting on. I decided that, if he was in difficulties, a phone call would probably make it worse, so I bravely and charitably decided to leave him to it.

  After a couple more hours shopping and a quick trip to the pub, we decided that it was probably time to check out the mooring. I had only been there once before and the 15-minute journey between Ely and Stretham took us over an hour because I kept getting lost and dragging us off down side streets.

  We finally managed to locate our mooring just in time to watch Happy, luckily with Dave and Geoff still in attendance, pulling around the corner. Grabbing ropes and hammering in stakes, everybody rushed about ‘doing things’ and it was at least another half an hour before we finally sat down to take stock and ask Geoff and Dave how their day had gone.

  I noticed that Happy had huge smears of mud all over her roof and down her sides; Geoff and Dave had it in their hair, down their backs and all over their shoulders. It transpired that Salters Lode is another guillotine lock, but unlike all the others we had been through, this one, instead of dripping a gentle rain of water and weed, embeds itself into a muddy silty bottom so, as it comes up, it drips huge dollops of mud, water and weed. I can’t say I was sorry to miss that, but I did manage to keep a straight face, mostly ... I had to go and find an important job to do – out of sight.

  Later, I asked Geoff how the turn had gone. He told me that it had been pretty horrendous but not as bad as he had feared, the tide had been coming in and had whipped Happy’s nose out of the lock and into mid-stream, she had travelled a little faster than Geoff was comfortable with for a while, but then had settled down and they had entered Denver Sluice at a pretty normal pace. When asked how Dave had coped, Geoff’s expression grew thoughtful.

  ‘I don’t think he’ll ever do it again; he certainly didn’t enjoy it, and oh ...’ he looked at me sideways. ‘How was your day’s shopping?’

  I winced at the emphasis he had managed to put on the word shopping but decided to play dumb.

  ‘Oh, you know same old, same old.’ Damn, hadn’t got away with that one either.

  For the first time since he had arrived, over 24 hours previously, Herbert finally took an interest in proceedings, hauling himself out of his already stinking pit and spending a good half hour pottering up and down the riverbank sniffing and exploring. Herbert, as I have stated before, is old. He smells and dribbles and when introduced to friends and visitors the first question they always ask when they see him is ‘what exactly is that?’ but however old and stinky he is, we have had him a fair while and he is part of the family (like an ageing, incontinent aunt who you would like to put in a home but no one will take on).

  Usually, he will rouse himself for one of only two reasons. One: food in; and two: food out. With these two important things taken care of, he usually flops over in whatever comfortable place he can get away with (we don’t allow him on either the sofa or the beds, you can’t get the smell out for weeks) and within seconds starts to snore. It was nice to see him obviously enjoying himself.

  He had managed to successfully navigate the gang plank the previous evening (he’s too old to learn new tricks fast) and we were cautiously confident that he could now manage to get on to the bank on his own.

  I still don’t know whether it was just a senile moment or he was actually a lot blinder than I thought he was, but on this occasion, he completely ignored the gang plank and tried to get back into the boat by jumping onto the bow … he didn’t make it.

  There was a rush of fur and feet, accompanied by four adults screaming as we all worked out simultaneously what he was about to do. There was then a complete kerfuffle of people leaping to their feet and tripping over each other as we all tried to move 70 foot in 0.3 seconds. All of this noise and motion ceased abruptly as, with a muffled grunt, Herbert took off.

  He jumped and splattered himself, legs akimbo, on the raised bow of the boat, then sliding down the side of Happy, he hit the water with a loud splash. Sam howled with laughter and there was a horrible moment in which I didn’t know whether to laugh with him or tell him off for being so unfeeling.

  Dave was the first to reach Herbert, and flipped him, soaked and shaking, on to the bank. Geoff smothered him in a towel and poor Herbert was subjected to a thorough rubbing down, which left him looking like a huge, dirty, yellow and grey puff ball with an ugly little face stuck to one side; he was a very sad sight. We sat him in the sun and waited for him to dry out, all the time trying to keep upwind of him (river water mixed with natural eau d’Erbert does not a perfume make).

  After about an hour it was decided that, apart from being a little scared, he hadn’t suffered major damage and it would be all right to let him go back to his bed. Helen carried him over to the gang plank and placed his front paws on the wood and pointed him in the right direction. He tottered two or three steps up the wide plank and then, obviously deciding that he wasn’t quite dry (or that he had been dried beyond endurance), he stopped on the plank and decided to give himself a good shake.

  Herbert is not what anybody would describe as graceful, and when he shakes, he does it with all the energy at his disposal. On this particular occasion, he started shaking with his normal enthusiasm and the momentum carried him sideways in tiny little jumps, straight off the side of the gang plank and back into the river. It took us another hour and another towel to dry him off again, and this time we physically carried him up the plank and put him back in the boat. He didn’t come out for anything other than the necessary for three whole days.

  Other than mud-covered husbands, a stunt-double dog and a small boy who had laughed so hard he had actually made himself physically sick, it was a pleasant afternoon. Martin the marina owner had come down and connected us up to the electricity point, only to find out that it wasn’t working, so he’d kindly connected us to another one for free, while he organised for the installers to come back and swap ours for a new one; he assured us it would be done within a week
.

  It was an odd evening, the family were feeling a bit down, brought on, I think, by knowing that the travelling was finished and now the hard work had to begin. Helen and Dave took us out and treated us to a lovely Thai meal at a restaurant in Ely. We, however, paid them back poorly I fear, by being quiet and contemplative company, except for Sam of course, who, being fed late and having to eat unfamiliar food, went into manic mode and then dissolved into tears as he was told off repeatedly for poor behaviour. Helen understood, but I still felt guilty.

  Sunday dawned, complete with beautiful sunshine and mixed feelings. On either side of the river the flood defences rise so high nothing can be seen from the water level. A short climb to the top, however, reveals miles of man-made landscape which stretches flat and featureless to the horizon. Having spent the last five years wandering the wooded Herefordshire hills I felt as though I was on the moon, exposed and strangely disconcerted by the expanse of ‘land’ around me.

  Dave and Helen left after lunch. We had spent the morning turfing out some boxes and getting them ready to go into a storage unit we had already booked in Littleport, about ten miles away. All the tidying had been done in near silence.

  Over elevenses, Helen had stated, ‘I’m not going to ask how you feel, because if I do you will probably tell me and then cry all over me, and that’s not going to do you any good. Dave and I were going to stay later but we are actually going to leave in about half an hour, to give you all some time to come to terms with what is going on.’ God, I hate insightful friends.

  ‘I think it’s just me,’ I griped, staring into my coffee. As if to prove my point, Geoff wandered past the window sporting a huge grin, followed by Sam, wearing a matching grin and asking an unending stream of questions. ‘They seem quite happy.’

  Helen lit a cigarette and stared at me through the smoke until she was sure I had become uncomfortable and I was forced to snap, ‘What!’

  She tapped the end of her cigarette into the ashtray and finally said, ‘I’m going to work tomorrow, what are you going to be doing?’

  That threw me and I had to concentrate on what I actually was doing the next day.

  ‘Um ...’ I stuttered, ‘I don’t know, find the closest launderette, find out where the nearest supermarket is, get some shopping in, take Sam to school, pick him up from school – you know, just stuff.’

  She raised an eyebrow. ‘And the next day?’

  I thought again … ‘I honestly don’t know. At some point we will have to start ripping all this out.’ I waved an arm vaguely at the sad and dilapidated furnishings around me.

  Helen stubbed her cigarette out and leaned back with the air of a spider that has just successfully trapped dinner.

  ‘So what you are saying,’ she paused for emphasis and I winced, knowing exactly where she was going with all this but unable to stop her kicking my blues, ‘is that, while 80 per cent of the population are trapped in boring jobs and doing things that they “have” to do, you are swanking around pleasing yourself.’

  I know when I’m beaten, and it suddenly dawned on me that she was absolutely right; no wonder Geoff had such a huge grin, he had worked it out. No responsibility, nothing we ‘have to do’, just get on with it and do what you like for a while – hey, this might actually be some fun. The idea so turned my feelings around I even let Helen wallow in smug righteousness for a while.

  Helen and Dave left about an hour later and, after waving them off, Geoff, Sam and I were left feeling slightly self-conscious in the peace and quiet to contemplate the next phase of project life. It wasn’t so bad; this was going to be easy. All we had to do was rip out all the old woodwork in the boat and replace it with new, move all the electrics and put in new plumbing – piece of cake. We should be finished in about three months.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I Think We Broke the Neighbour

  OUR FIRST MORNING AT the mooring I woke a little confused, unsure where I was. I stood staring out of the window with a cup of coffee, just letting the caffeine pull my brain together and going over, once again, the events that had led to this moment. I found myself watching the river. In the early morning chill, little spirals rose up from the shallow covering of mist and dissipated into the warmer air. It was a glorious sight and I found myself just staring, cold coffee in hand.

  Beneath the mist there was less ephemeral movement and, taking a closer look, I spotted a fair number of fish slipping through the weeds, disappearing beneath the boat, and then re-appearing. Occasionally, they broke the surface to gulp at floating specs, their big wet lips causing the mist to eddy and curl, then, leaving only ripples, they would sink back into the spiralling mist, the Piscean equivalent of the Cheshire Cat’s grin.

  ‘I wonder if they like bread,’ I muttered to myself and wandered over to the cupboard. Ferreting around in the dark, looking for the bread bag, I became infuriated and reached up to open the curtains.

  ‘Ah, that’s better.’ I reached into the cupboard, grabbed the bag and as I stood up I found myself staring into a pair of big brown eyes above a nose that was pressed hard to the land side window.

  I jumped backwards with a bit of a shriek at which the animal threw its head up and also stepped backwards. I had forgotten for a moment that Happy would be floating well below ground level which is why my early morning voyeur looked so huge – that and the fact that it had its huge wet nose rammed against the porthole. I couldn’t work out what it was; my mind said ‘strange, skinny, copper-coloured cow’, but no cow ever had ears like that.

  As it snorted and danced backward on elegant, stick-thin legs I worked it out: it was a red deer. Good grief! The thing was huge. Even without my strange perspective, it must have stood five foot at the shoulder, it was obviously female and we stayed staring at each other for about a minute, then, blowing spit-filled steam all over the outside of the porthole, she turned and climbed effortlessly up the flood defences where she continued her unhurried wander down the riverbank.

  I stood, with the bread momentarily forgotten, watching her make her elegant way along the river, stopping every so often to climb back down the flood defences, stare into another boat, before climbing back up and wandering onward.

  Shaking my head slightly and wondering what she was hoping to find in the boats, I remembered the fish and turned to the other window. As I suspected, the fish were more than happy to be offered an easy breakfast and within ten minutes I had about 30 good-sized freeloaders splashing around the boat. This became a ritual, with all the breakfast crusts and edibles being thrown to the fish, which performed acrobatics to delight Sam and myself every morning.

  A week later and we were still no nearer to starting the ‘refit’ than we were on the day of arrival; we had puttered around pretending to start. This had involved mowing the mooring and clearing out a load of junk from the boat which we then put into storage. Anything more constructive than that we had avoided strenuously.

  Sam had settled into school well and Herbert had managed to keep dry, so it was on a Monday morning that Geoff finally announced that the real work could be put off no longer and, even though we had managed to take procrastination to a new level, we really would have to start on the big stuff.

  It was decided that the first thing to go would be the second bathroom; it was situated right where Geoff had envisioned the lounge-diner would go and the wall jutted out, obscuring the entrance to the boat. It would be the easiest thing to start with, as there were no major changes to be made and we weren’t keeping any of it – piece of cake.

  When I returned from taking Sam to school, Geoff had already made a start. He had removed the front wall, which he informed me had taken about three minutes as it was only joined to the other walls at the side, and I joined in with vigour. It was a lot more fun than I had expected, finally taking something apart.

  We were a little surprised to find that the shower tray was actually made of concrete, especially when we tried to pick it up, and whoever had installed it
was, like Geoff, devoted to over-engineering. I tried not to laugh aloud at his swearing and cursing as he tried to detach the wretched thing from the wall.

  It took both of us to ‘walk’ the shower tray out of the boat, and looking around at what was left we decided that the next easiest thing to remove would be the wash basin, which was a tiny little porcelain affair.

  Geoff capped off the water and removed all the taps and pipes, while I huddled underneath removing any screw that I could see. At the last two screws, I advised Geoff to hold on to it ensuring that it wouldn’t fall on me. He took a firm hold and I removed the last screw then gave him a thumbs up, telling him that he could take it away. I watched his muscles flex as he changed his grip on the sink, then he frowned and just let go. Squeaking, I crabbed away beneath it, taking a breath to give him a good telling off for trying to brain me with a sink … No need, the sink didn’t move.

  Geoff nudged me with his foot, then reached down and took the screwdriver away from me.

  ‘I think you missed one,’ he laughed.

  I looked at the sink which appeared to be performing some trick of levitation.

  ‘Must have done,’ I frowned. ‘I took out all the screws I could see.’

  Geoff squatted down and had a good look underneath, then getting up again he wandered out and around the back of the side wall making small humphing noises, before returning and giving me back the screwdriver. Stepping up to the sink, he grasped it with both hands and applied a gentle downward pressure; nothing. He frowned and, getting a better grip, began wrenching it backwards and forwards trying to dislodge it from the wall ... nothing.

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ he gave the sink a hard stare, ‘there is nothing holding it on, just the silicon sealant around the top.’ He flexed his muscles again and went back to wrenching on it. Still nothing.