But when I reached the gate of Frances’ cottage, I knew that there would be no gruff bark or caustic quip after all. There was an air of dereliction about the place; a row of untended shrubs in terra-cotta pots, now greening over with mould, a drab curtain that hung half shut and askew in the sitting-room window, and the honeysuckle, a massed tangle of dead brown twigs and curled fading leaves which hung too heavily over windows and doors. There was silence, of course, when I knocked damply on the door. I didn’t wait very long, but turned back up the little lane and made my way back to town. There on the High Street was the little art shop run by Daisy May, but when I pushed my way through the bell-tinkling door I saw a lady that I did not know standing behind the counter Daisy, it seemed, had gone to Australia for a month to visit her relatives out there … and yes, I was told with a rueful shaking of the head, poor Mrs Bell had died three months before. The cancer had returned, and the end had been really quite quick. Such a loss, she murmured. Such a very … spirited lady, she added, and I wondered briefly if this was one of the kind souls who would be picking shredded cellophane out of their garden beds for years to come. The family were away at the moment, but was there a message?
I stepped back out into the dull afternoon, despondent and suddenly very tired. I stood for a while indecisively and then made up my mind – my main reason for coming to Lechlade had been chopped from under me, so I would follow my original idea. I returned to Jack de Crow, donned my pith helmet (how Frances would have cut me to shreds over that) and set out to row upstream as far as I possibly could while the afternoon light lasted. The physical action of rowing soon cheered me a little – Kipling’s cure for the camelious hump seems to work just as well for despondency – and I resigned myself to the fact that she had had her wish after all; the two boys must be grown now, through school and out of the nest And she had fought long and hard and with grim humour to save what she believed in … though I fully expected her to break through from the other side the moment I mouthed to myself those mawkish words … and besides, one cannot be soulful for long when there is a boat to row, and the light green and dark green of willows and water are melting and merging on the river’s glassy palette and a golden wagtail has just flitted, chipping fitfully under the white span of the foot-bridge ahead. It was only when I rounded a bend half a mile above Lechlade and saw the big new board in a field on the bank that comfort deserted me.
THAMESMEAD ESTATE, it read. 50 ACRES OF PRIME RIVERSIDE PROPERTY TO BE DEVELOPED FOR HOUSING AND RECREATION.
For details, contact Town Clerk, Lechlade Council, High Street.
Had there been an observer on the footbridge or by the curved walls of the curious Roundhouse there that afternoon, he may have wondered why the boatman in the little yellow dinghy was propelling his craft along with oar strokes of such needless and sudden savagery.
Frances Bell had died in July. By mid-August, after a seven-year stand off , the bulldozers had moved in and work had begun.
My journey upstream was nasty, brutish and short. A few miles beyond the Roundhouse on its willowed island, the Thames had become little more than a brook between high banks. Ash and osier and willow closed in overhead, thick sedge and reeds clogged the river’s course, and where they did so the current trebled in strength, making it all but impossible to work my way upstream. Some sour remnants of anger and adrenalin drove me onwards, my oars catching in clumps of vegetation every few strokes and the low branches raking across my hair. Visions of the Morda Brook closed in around me. Finally, I came to Hannington Bridge, a lonely stone bridge half-hidden in trees. Here the stream tumbled swiftly down over a shallow rocky bed beneath the arch, chattering between fallen lumps of rubble and masonry, and five attempts to propel Jack up and into the quieter pool beyond proved fruitless. As I rested on my oars after the fifth time, a kingfisher, dragonfly-blue, came skimming upstream, flashed past me and vanished through the darkened arch. An omen? A sign to struggle on through?
Possibly. But Jack and I were weary, and besides, it had begun to rain again. ‘Out oars for Narnia,’ I cried, turned Jack’s nose and started the long haul downstream.
Return to Reading
I chatter, chatter as I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.
—Tennyson, The Brook
I rowed and sailed down the long empty miles to Oxford aware only of a heron beating slowly downstream ahead of me or the quick rustle and clop of a diving water vole on the bank. It is here in these infant waters of the Upper Thames that one can most easily set The Wind in the Willows. There is the great meadow where Mole came running on that first morning; here is the bank where Ratty lives, his eyes twinkling like twin stars in the darkness of his hole. Over yonder is the Wild Wood, the menacing mass of Wytham Great Wood as mortals call it, where Oxford University scientists do ecological experiments on carol-singing dormice and foot-shuffling hedgehog urchins, and where you are not allowed to go unless you are a biologist or a personal friend of Mr Badger’s. And somewhere here surely in a reedy backwater by a foaming weir is that island, Pan’s Island, the setting for the most beautiful chapter in English prose ever written: ‘The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.’
Rowing back through Oxford I turned up the Cherwell River to see if I could find a scholastic mooring place as befitted the bookish Jack de Crow. The Cherwell is a dark, quiet, tree-shadowed river that winds its dank and mossy way between the Botanic Gardens and various secluded College grounds up to the Magdalen Bridge. Here every year after the celebrated May Ball, a hundred or so honking students ruin an equal number of dinner suits by leaping from the ancient stone parapet into the slick-dark waters below, under the mistaken impression that being drunk, plastered with duck-slime and removing water-snails from their crannies for weeks to come will render them irresistible to the opposite sex.
Just below the bridge I pulled Jack de Crow up onto a fine lawn of green-striped velvet beneath yellowing horse chestnut trees in a secluded arm of the Cherwell and set off with my rucksack to spend another night at Jo’s place up the hill. Finding a way out onto the public streets was trickier than I thought, involving as it did crossing over several white wooden bridges, traversing a couple of willowy islands, ducking through tunnels, edging along wall tops, and finally climbing over a low gate onto the Magdalen Bridge itself. I felt rather like a participant in the Konigsberg Bridges conundrum or some Lewis Carroll problem in topology. It was not far from this very spot, in fact, that Alice in Wonderland was written, with its wealth of logical and mathematical problems disguised as hallucinatory fantasy. (How do you reassemble a chessboard to lose one square? Why does a mirror’s reflection reverse from side to side but not top to bottom? Can one behead a Cheshire Cat if it is all head and no body?)
The next morning I sauntered down to the Magdalen Bridge and threaded my way through the gates-bridge-tunnel-island maze once more to where Jack lay deep in horse-chestnut leaves on the hidden lawn. Rowing hard and fast down the inky Cherwell, I made my way out into the broad glitter and sunshine of the Thames once more.
Thence to the Iffley Lock and Abingdon. The latter is the oldest inhabited town in Britain, claims the museum there, which celebrates that fact somewhat surprisingly by displaying nothing more than a collection of paper doilies through the ages, watched over by a hawk-eyed lady hovering in case anyone is overcome by the sheer excitement of it all. I managed to stay upright and calm, and kept on downstream.
It was early evening when I turned into the narrow entrance of the River Thame and rowed up between high rushy banks, snaking my way to the ancient Roman town of Dorchester-upon-Thame. This quiet village lying amid flat meadows and high earth dykes was once the cathedral capital of ancient Wessex and Mercia; the abbey was built in the seventh century and boasts a unique window whose branching stonework imitates living trees. The rector, I had been told, was a certain John Crow – perhaps a cousin of our own beloved Jack.
It seemed a perfect place to stop for the night.
Yet as I moored in a little meadow under the shadow of the abbey where the little Thame had dwindled to a mere brook I felt terribly lonely and tired and dispirited. The sun had set like a frozen red blood-orange behind thorn trees ragged and bare. For the first time since leaving, the air was icy cold and already it seemed that a blue frost was crystallising on the bleached grass of the field. As I struggled with the awning and the decking to prepare Jack for the night, I noticed with dismay how wet with dew everything had become. I toyed feebly with the idea of treating myself to a bed and breakfast room that night, but told myself firmly that such extravagance was unwarranted. What was the point, I scolded, of making a beautiful awning and a lovely decking and setting off to have exciting adventures if I just kept bolting for hot baths and warm duvets every time it got a little dewy round the ears?
‘Oh, shut up, shut up, leave me alone,’ I whimpered. Then I violently jerked the awning into place with a frozen hand and fell backwards into a clump of nettles.
‘See!’ said that other voice. ‘That’s what happens when you get all grumpy. Now stop making a fuss. Besides, the stings will keep you warm.’ I was on the point of mentally clubbing my inner school-marm with a metaphorical brick when a real voice intruded into the conversation. It sounded remarkably like the one I’d been about to silence.
‘You! What is that boat doing there?!’
An iron-haired lady was looking over a gate above me, two black labradors panting frostily at her side. Green wellies, padded jacket, leather dog leads held like some mediaeval weapon; I recognised the formidable archetype of the English countrywoman. A little wearily I replied, ‘Sorry, is this private property? I’d thought the river banks would be common land.’
‘I’ve no idea,’ she trumpeted back. ‘I’m simply curious why a Mirror dinghy – it is a Mirror, isn’t it? – should be tying up in the middle of nowhere. And what on earth’s that blue thing?’
I explained the purpose of the awning.
‘Lord! You’re not going to sleep on the thing, are you? It’s freezing.’
‘I – ’
‘Nonsense!’ she rapped. ‘I’ve got a spare room and half a chicken that needs eating up. Now come along!’ she called briskly.
‘Um … I – ’
‘Hurry up! The dogs are getting cold and need their supper. Chop chop!’
In ten seconds flat I had grabbed my hat and rucksack and without a backward glance at poor Jack was trotting to heel along the icy road. After fifty yards she turned to me and said, ‘Now, I’m a widow, mind you, and alone in the house, so I’m taking a risk. Still, I’m trusting you. I don’t think you’re a madman.’
Farewell to Oxford
A pause.
She stopped, glanced at me, her eyes lingering on the pith helmet. Then she added, ‘Well actually, I do think you’re mad, but I don’t think you’re dangerous,’ and strode onward into the dusk.
People are extraordinary. I set out on this voyage with no very clear aim in mind, no Northwest Passage to discover, no treasure to find. But one treasure I did find on the way was a wealth of kind hearts and courageous spirits; I discovered a strange world where, despite the daily assault on our fears by the media, people are full of goodwill and take a positive delight in trusting each other. It seems the best way to get there is by Mirror dinghy.
On the following morning, after sincere and hearty thanks – it had been a delightful evening: she had lived and sailed in New Zealand as I had, was a gardener with a special interest in medicinal herbs, and her chicken in leek and white wine sauce was divine – I walked back to my abandoned Jack via the ancient abbey and rowed off to the Thames to continue south.
The day was yet again glorious, and it seemed that even in the fortnight since I had rowed up this stretch of river, the bright banners of autumn had unfurled on every tree and bush. However, although the sun was shining in a bright sky, there was a chill breeze over the water – when I rowed from sunshine to shadow, the air breathed icily on my bare neck.
As I rowed down past the Palladian water-steps of Rush Hall, past the busy, vulgar cheeriness of Benson’s Boat Yard and round the river bend onto the long empty stretch down to Goring, I turned over in my mind an idea that had been growing ever since Bath Somewhere, somebody had told me of a man who had planned to take his narrowboat from the Black Country to the Black Sea, crossing the Channel to Calais and entering the French canal system. From there, I had heard, it was possible to navigate on inland waters all the way across Europe to the Danube Delta on the Black Sea. The story sounded highly dubious to me. Weren’t there some mountains called the Alps in the way? Wasn’t the Rhine River full of rocks and rapids and Lorelei sirens luring sailors to their deaths Wouldn’t this man have been shot by Slovakian Secret Police or brain washed by Bulgarian Communists – if he ever made it beyond the Anglophobic, onion-hurling French, that is? And as for crossing the Channel in a narrowboat … well, that was plain suicide. Narrow-boats are roly-poly, unwieldy vessels made of solid cast-iron and about as seaworthy as a tin pig. Ridiculous to even consider it.
But a Mirror dinghy? Now there was an idea. The more I thought about it, the more the idea appealed. I had tentatively mentioned it to one or two people along the way and met with various reactions The main difficulty would be the other traffic; the Channel is the busiest shipping lane in the world. Jo in Oxford had explained that to cross the Channel in a Mirror would be like trying to cross the M25 at peak hour on hands and knees. John and Di on Diana had been cautiously polite, reluctant on so short an acquaintance to throw me to the ground, bind me hand and foot and slap me till I came to my senses. Several times Captain Eggersley had appeared in feverish dreams holding up shipping statistics and tide charts and threatening to shoot me with an emergency flare. Most worrying of all was the phantom appearance of Terry in those same dreams, standing on the bridge of King Arthur and giving me a cheery thumbs up and his No worries, easy-peasy grin while skeletal figures danced a grim hornpipe on the decks behind.
But as I hoisted sail after Benson Lock to catch the fresh northerly breeze and felt the rippling rush of water under Jack’s keel, noted her sturdy buoyant frame and valiant scarlet sail, and the way she dipped and heeled under the following wind, the landscape melted in my mind’s eye and became quite, quite different. The silvery osiers solidified, calcified to white and shot skywards. The cold blue waters softened to salt-green and swelled in gentle rolling waves. A pair of nearby swallows transformed into a couple of great gliding gulls, suspended on a mild sea breeze that sent me skimming along under the White cliffs of Dover on my way to France.
Yes, I thought. You have to try these things.
I had such a steady breeze that day and so full were my thoughts of P&O ferries out of Dover Harbour, Calais cockles and the salt tang of sea air on my lips that I swept past the undoubted delights of Wallingford and Moulsford all unseeing, rippled gaily beneath several fine Brunel railway bridges, whose curving brickwork beneath the arches does odd Escher-ish things to one’s sense of perspective, kept up a shouted conversation with an elderly jogger on the river path for a mile or so (he thought a Channel crossing was a stupid idea as well) and found myself just downstream of the Whitchurch Bridge at Pangbourne, an elegant span of white iron and woodwork where herons roost, as the sun set in an apple-green sky.
With dusk, the wind died to nothing and a consultation of the map showed that I had two choices. I could either row back upstream the mile or so to Pangbourne or row the six miles down to Reading. Heaven knows why, but I chose the latter option. In fact, I found on my whole trip a deep, irrational reluctance ever to retrace my route, even by so much as half a mile and even when the benefits of doing so were clear. It stemmed, I think, from the feeling that this trip was in some sense a peregrinatio, the mediaeval practice whereby a monk or pilgrim would climb into a small coracle without oars or sail, push out to sea and go where the winds and waves took him. In th
is way, so the theory went, the holy traveller could be sure that he was going where God intended, undirected by fallible human agency. It was a way of putting oneself fairly and squarely into Divine hands and relinquishing that flawed desire to control one’s destiny. St Brendan on one such trip even discovered America, Divine Providence working on a particularly grand scale on that occasion, though the canny saint had actually equipped himself with oars for the trip, contrary to the rules.
I, too, had oars, and a sail, but I felt that whenever the river current, the winds or my own lack of timekeeping skills took me further than was wise or swept me one way rather than another, I should take that as a cue. To ever go back, retrace my course, unwind the past was, I thought, to deny the designs of Providence, even if it did mean rowing six miles down a dark river to Reading of all places.
I had only rowed half a mile when Divine Providence manifested itself in the shape of three thirteen-year-old boys in a dilapidated motor launch. When a young tousled head popped out of the cabin and asked if I’d like a tow, I was delighted and flung him a line, saying, ‘Gosh, thanks, yes if you don’t think Mum or Dad will mind,’ assuming the presence of adults below – a family on a boating holiday in a hired cruiser, perhaps.
The lad calmly tied my line on to his stern, replying over his shoulder, ‘Mum or Dad? They won’t know nuffink about it. They’re at ’ome. Hang on to yer ’at.’ Then he called below into the cabin, ‘Righto, Eric. Let ’er rip!’
‘Okay, Rodney!’ came the reply and the launch shot off on a spurt of foam into the darkness. A second later the towline went taut with a resounding drip-flinging ‘twangngng!!!,’ Jack shot forward like an excited puppy and I went over backwards from my standing position to a crumpled heap in the stern. Icy water welled up around my buttocks and for a heart-stopping minute I thought Jack’s bow had been pulled clear away from the rest of the dinghy by that mighty yank, leaving me to sink swiftly into the night-time Thames in the remaining half of the boat. And the life jacket was in the bows, of course, keeping safely out of the action as usual.
The Unlikely Voyage of Jack de Crow Page 12