Narrow Margins

by Marie Browne

  At the sound of my raised voice, the animals looked up and then, as one, turned and wandered back into the mist.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he shrugged, ‘but they were definitely water buffalo.’

  We stood and watched the alien animals disappear into the mist, both confused by what we had seen. In the thick mist and being still slightly dopey in the early morning, it was a very surreal experience. It wasn’t until three months later that I actually found out there is a farm in Napton that has a herd of over 80 of the things. I’m not sure whether I was relieved or a little disappointed; I had sort of hoped that the mist hid an inter-dimensional rift or something. Sigh, no such luck.

  By 11 o’clock the mist had thinned sufficiently for us to be on our way. Chaos and Disorder had woken up and life was back to normal. It was a very short run to Napton’s top lock, and I must have been still either partially asleep, or still thinking about water buffalo, because as we exited the lock, I was going too fast, couldn’t make the sharp right-hand bend back onto the canal and ploughed Happy’s nose straight into a wall. Oh yes, definitely back to normal.

  Unfortunately, this one little accident set the tone of the travel conditions for the next couple of days. Being used to piloting on a wide, deep river, I had, I have to admit, had some problems with the narrow waterways. This stretch of the Oxford Canal was particularly problematic, as it had some seriously nasty curves in it. Your average 35-footer would find it merely inconvenient but we, or more specifically ‘I’, found it a right royal pain in the proverbial.

  Not only did I have to remember to sound the horn at every opportunity, to let everybody within a mile radius know that a big blob was coming through, but I became more and more angry that bloody holiday-makers didn’t do the same. Crowds of them sitting on top of their boat would come into view without returning our horn sounds, but as we had heard nothing, we had assumed that there was no one about and had powered on forward toward an upcoming bridge. After assuming wrongly twice, we went through exactly the same list of events:

  Notice bridge coming up around a corner

  Sound horn loud and long

  Listen

  Hear nothing

  Increase speed and head for the centre of the bridge to minimise bank effect

  Notice smaller holiday, hooligan-filled narrow boat closing from the other direction

  Notice that they are not slowing down and haven’t even noticed us (all boats look the same length head-on)

  Watch them helplessly realise that we are twice their length, half as manoeuvrable and stuck with nowhere to go under a bloody bridge.

  Watch them throw beer cans in the air and rush around trying to stop their craft

  Listen to a fair amount of verbal abuse along the lines of ‘bloody river rats’ and ‘that thing’s too big’

  Have a shouted conversation regarding horns

  Listen to their replies, which basically could be summed up as ‘the rules of the river don’t apply to us’

  Stick two fingers up at them and carry on past, while smirking and watching them trying to get their boat out of the mud at the side of the bridge.

  Getting yourself spaced as evenly as possible between the bridge pillars to minimise bank effect is a good thing to do, especially if the bridge is very small. I always managed to achieve this and I think only on one occasion managed to really screw it up, causing our back end to rub across the bridge pilings.

  On open water, however, I really couldn’t get my head around bank effect at all. I will quote from Wikipedia:

  ‘Bank Effect’ refers to the tendency of the stern of a ship to swing toward the near bank when operating in a river or constricted waterway. The asymmetric flow around a ship induced by the vicinity of banks causes pressure differences (Bernoulli’s principle) between port and starboard sides. As a result, a lateral force will act on the ship, mostly directed towards the closest bank, as well as a yawing moment pushing her bow towards the centre of the waterway. The squat increases due to the decreased blockage. This phenomenon depends on many parameters, such as bank shape, water depth, ship-bank distance, ship properties, ship speed and propeller action. A reliable estimation of bank effects is important for determining the limiting conditions in which a ship can safely navigate a waterway. This phenomenon has several different names, including bank suction, stern suction, and ship-bank interaction.

  Hmm, very technical. What this actually means in real terms is that if, like me, you have a tendency to bring the back end a little too close to the bank when attempting to get around a tight corner, bank effect takes hold, pulls your rear end aground and pushes your nose out into the middle of the waterway, so slapping you diagonally across the canal, where you then stick until your wonderful husband wanders up with a pole and pushes you straight again. This isn’t much of a problem until there is someone coming the other way who doesn’t expect a 70-foot barricade stuck across their path of progression. There then follows a panicked race: can we get our boat out of the foliage before the oncoming boat hits us? And can he slow down to avoid hitting us until we can get our boat out of the foliage?

  By the time I had hit the bank for the third time in as many hours, we gave up and compromised. Geoff would drive through the really curvy bits as he didn’t seem to be affected by bank effect and I would bring it into every lock as I wasn’t affected by Geoff’s lock ‘pinballism’. We were both happy, but not as happy as the other river users that I was no longer at the tiller.

  Early the next morning we had a phone call from Amelia, who, having taken a job as a lettings agent about three months earlier in Didcot, had moved to Oxfordshire. With our rapidly dwindling amount of clean clothes in mind and our lack of anything resembling wheeled transport, I asked her if she would mind meeting us in Cropredy and giving me a lift to the nearest launderette – not exactly a fun-filled day out, but it was getting to be an emergency.

  She agreed with a laugh, mentioning that it was parents who were supposed to be saddled with their migrant offspring’s washing, not the other way round, and couldn’t I just be normal for once. Seeing the irony, I laughed, and offered her and Huw a bed for the night and a cooked dinner in return for their help.

  Thinking that we would really have to buy some food if I was to make good on my offer to feed them, we stopped at the Fenny Compton wharf and enjoyed a rather long walk into the village for a visit to their little shop. We had nearly arrived at our destination when Charlie gave a short shriek of outrage and shot off into the road. Confused and relieved that there were no cars, we watched her wander over to a small, fluffy lump in the road and pick it up.

  ‘Oh God,’ I nudged Geoff. ‘What the hell has she got this time?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ he replied, ‘but you can guarantee that if Charlie has found it, it will be broken, need feeding and will probably cost us a great deal of money in vets’ bills – and then it will spitefully die and leave her bereft, something else we are going to have to deal with.’

  Curious silence fell as we watched her walking back across the road, with something fluffy held between her cupped hands.

  ‘Look, it’s a dove.’ She held up a bemused-looking bird to show us and grinned – oh dear.

  ‘That is not a dove,’ Geoff poked it with a forefinger. ‘It’s a bloody stinky pigeon – is it hurt? What are you going to do with it?’

  Charlie thought for a moment. ‘I dunno. Keep it warm, feed it, I’ll call him Grubs.’

  Great, just what we needed – another occupant – and with her hands full Charlie couldn’t help carry the shopping back to the boat.

  Stopping for the night just past Fenny Compton Tunnel (a poorly named, thin, little brick-walled cutting which was now open to the sky and very overgrown), we studied Grubs closely and found that there wasn’t anything physically wrong with him, but mentally he was, without a doubt, the most ridiculous animal in the world. He stuck to Charlie closely, and seemed to suffer terminal apathy. He ate well, he slept, but, above a
ll, he stank. He was the smelliest thing I had ever encountered and would have even given Herbert a run for his money.

  The next day we travelled toward Cropredy and the promise of clean underwear. Amelia and Huw turned up as we moored. Grubs took one look at Huw’s huge mop of tight, curly, blond hair, flew up, settled himself into it and stayed there. Even when Huw went outside and jumped up and down in an effort to dislodge him, he held on tight and stayed there against all efforts to remove him, rubbing his beak through the curls and cooing in deep satisfaction.

  Despite Huw’s new hat (which would insist on pooing down his neck), we had a pleasant evening and all finally retired at about midnight having finally removed Grubs from Huw’s head after the wretched thing had fallen asleep.

  The next morning, Amelia brought in a cup of tea for Geoff and me to enjoy in bed. ‘What’s that smell?’ she enquired, wrinkling up her nose.

  I yawned. ‘It’s probably your stepfather.’ I nudged Geoff and a muffled ‘Oh, thanks!’ came from under the covers.

  ‘No,’ she sniffed again. ‘It smells like cat. Phew, it’s horrible.’

  I took a sniff; hmm it was a bit horrible. ‘Either it’s the pump-out tank which needs seriously emptying or it’s that wretched bird of Charlie’s.’

  Amelia laughed. ‘Charlie warned Huw that she was letting Grubs out of her bedroom, and he went outside for a smoke – funnily enough, he’s wearing one of Geoff’s hats.’

  We laughed together. Funny, now that Amelia had mentioned the smell, I found it really pungent. Sighing, I got out of bed and, picking up a torch en route, I opened the toilet and looked down the hole.

  ‘Erm, Geoff, I think we have a problem.’

  It had been a little while since we had last pumped out, and there was absolutely nowhere with a pump-out machine until we reached Banbury. Geoff looked down the hole and worked out that we had about a day and a half’s gap left and that the smell was due to the seals around the toilet base beginning to give way again.

  These seals gave way on a regular basis and we always carried spares, but it was a horribly smelly job to replace them. Which was why, knowing full well that Amelia and I were going to be out of the boat for the best part of the day, I suggested that they be changed sooner rather than later. And with that instruction imparted, Milly and I gathered up every dirty piece of clothing we could find and fled.

  It was the first time I had been in a car with Amelia since she had passed her driving test and I was understandably nervous. It was only after the fourth or fifth gasp at a corner that Amelia turned to me and, slapping at my white knuckles with a pen, made me let go of the handle on the dashboard.

  ‘I do this for a living, you know,’ she said and, pinning me to the seat with a hard look every time I flinched, we carried on into Daventry.

  Strangely enough we had a lovely day. With there being nothing we could do other than sit and talk while watching the washing go round and round, that’s exactly what we did, and by the time we got back to the boat with the clean and lovely smelling washing, we were both relaxed and quite cheerful. It made me even happier to note on entering Happy that, not only had Geoff fixed the seal on the toilet tank, he had also set Huw and the kids to cleaning the boat up. Happy shined like a new pin.

  Amelia and Huw left that evening, both having to go to work on the Monday morning. They informed us that they had filled in an application for a flat, rather than living in a shared house as they were currently doing, and so by the time we reached our final destination, they would probably have a place of their own.

  I was a little unsure how I felt about this news. What right did she have to grow up like this, I thought, as I watched them walk away, hand in hand, down the tow path toward their car. I smiled; at least Huw was the type of guy who would actually laugh and put up with a stinky pigeon on his head for an entire evening and if that isn’t a good way to judge a future son-in-law’s character, I really don’t know what is.

  The next morning, we left Cropredy and headed on toward Daventry, and after a pleasant but totally uneventful day we moored up next to some big fields, where we figured the children could go and run riot with a boomerang that Charlie had purchased a couple of weeks previously but hadn’t had the opportunity to test.

  Home schooling was not going well. I had a nasty suspicion that schools don’t actually instil a wish to learn into children; they just feed them the information they need to pass the exams. Any time we told Charlie to think for herself, she would throw herself into her bedroom and sulk, or just shout that she couldn’t do it. I was beginning to have long and wistful reminiscences about them going to school. Sam, on the other hand, would be quite happy with maths or IT, and would spend hours messing about with these two subjects. But if I suggested geography or history or comprehension, he would often join Charlie in a shared and noisy tantrum; ah well, at least they were doing something together.

  I don’t blame the children, but I do blame Geoff and myself – obviously, we were not cut out to be teachers, as more often than not we would just let them get away with it for an evening’s peace and tranquillity, and when we did insist that the work was actually completed, all too often it would end in tears, either the children’s or mine.

  So on this rather gorgeous September evening, instead of getting on with the vagaries of the digestive system or writing stories, Geoff took the kids off to play boomerang in a local field. I entertained the vague hope that he would find interesting flora and fauna that maybe they could incorporate into a fascinating ‘biology lesson’. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I chided myself; if Geoff found some interesting fauna, he’d eat it or just give it to Charlie to domesticate.

  As I stood leaning on the tiller with my eyes closed, revelling in the late afternoon sunshine, I heard a little thump and looked down. Twelve pairs of black, shiny eyes looked back at me and, as one, their owners opened their tiny beaks and went ‘peep’. It was very late in the year for such tiny ducklings to be about, but here they all were. I looked about for their mum and spotted her skulking behind another boat.

  The ducklings were the cutest thing I had ever seen, all black and fluffy, with tiny little serious faces. I went into the kitchen and fetched some wholemeal loaf, then stood at the back of the boat, leaning on the tiller and smiling at the ducklings’ antics as they bobbed and weaved, mobbing each other to get to a particularly good bit of bread floating on the water.

  They went through all the bread in a matter of minutes. Mum and three of the more enterprising ducklings had climbed out of the water and were shouting at the boat from the tow path. Laughing at the ducklings energetically jumping up and down and peeping loudly, I cordially wandered over and emptied the last of the crumbs into a pile on the tow path. Mum and the three babies fell on the offerings and their squabbles made me laugh again.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a huge, overfed tabby cat lurking in the bushes that bordered the canal and before I could find something to swat it with, or draw breath to shout, it had made a huge leap, grabbed one of the ducklings and hightailed it up the tow path. As I saw it move, I made a leap of my own toward the ducks, in the mad hope of frightening it off. It didn’t work, and as I’d jumped, I managed to catch one foot on the T stud at the back and landed face first on the tow path, just late enough to frighten mum and the other two ducklings into complete hysterics and watch the cat scarper.

  As I got slowly to my feet, I noticed that my hand was bleeding, as was my nose from where I had mashed it into the ground. I had twisted my ankle, and was covered from head to toe in dust and feathers. I stood up and began to dust myself off and, naturally, it was at this point that Geoff and the kids wandered back into view.

  Charlie stopped, took in my completely beaten-up appearance and asked, ‘What on earth have you been doing?’

  I glared at her, and, climbing back on board, I slammed open the doors to the engine room.

  ‘Feeding the bloody ducks.’

  Chapter Thirty-tw
o

  This is Not the Time for Things to Go Wrong!

  THAT EVENING, COVERED IN Germolene and with a swollen nose, I settled down to watch a DVD. It was only nine o’clock and I really fancied watching something pointless. We had been staring gormlessly at the telly for about an hour, when, getting up to make a cup of tea, I noticed that the lights were very dim.

  ‘What’s up with the lights?’ I asked Geoff.

  He looked up from the book he was reading. ‘Oh, I thought it was getting hard to see.’ He wandered down to the engine room and came back to report that our batteries had run out of charge. I shrugged. Ah well, it happened sometimes; without a full day’s run to charge the batteries, we often got only half an evening out of them. There was really no point sitting around in the dark, so we had an early night. The next day was again only a short run, which brought us to the outskirts of Banbury. We moored in time to go down to the big shopping centre which is just off the canal and treated ourselves to dinner in a restaurant, then staggered back to the boat about eight o’clock. The main thing on our minds was a new car; our little Daewoo Matiz wasn’t big enough to swing a cat (although I could think of one that I would really, really like to have tested that cliché with), let alone big enough to pack all our worldly goods into when we finally handed over Happy to Gerald in a couple of days’ time.

  As we headed back to Happy, we were all in a slightly pensive mood. Nearing the end of our ‘road’ trip, we were actually going to have to move off her and find something else to do. We hadn’t found another boat, we hadn’t made any firm plans, the future was a blank and at some point we were actually going to have to sit down and make a plan to fill it with something.