by S. T. Haymon
I was so pleased with my father’s cleverness that I took the galley next door for May Bowden to admire.
She looked it over without comment, then said, ‘I suppose you want to sail it on the lily pond.’
‘Oh no!’ I cried. The pond, not much bigger than a bath tub, was covered with a green slime in the spaces between lily pads blotched with brown freckles like the hands of very old people. ‘I mean –’ belatedly: May Bowden was so touchy about her possessions – ‘it’s not meant to go sailing. It’s just for looking at.’
‘Rubbish!’ May Bowden snapped. ‘What’s the good of a boat only for looking at? Tell you what –’ with sudden animation – ‘if the river Yare is clean enough for your Royal Highness, we might take a little ride out to Bawburgh and try it out there.’
Bawburgh, a few miles out of Norwich, off the Earlham road, was the village where May Bowden had been born, and where her father had begun his long climb to riches as the village cobbler. I had accompanied her there once before, in a hired Daimler limousine, to be shown the ancestral cottage, the little hump-backed bridge, the river and the village green where she claimed, improbably, to have been crowned Queen of the May.
I had also been taken to an orchard which lay in a hollow close by the church, where there was what looked like a large black box lying open on the ground, filled to the brim with greenish water. It was not my idea of a well, but that was what May Bowden had called it – St Walstan’s Well, after a prince and holy man of God who had died at nearby Taverham working in the fields like a common labourer, so meek he was, so compassionate. His workmates had loaded his body on to an ox-wagon to bring it back to Bawburgh, his own village, for burial. Where the oxen had halted, in the hollow below the churchyard, a spring of purest water had gushed from the ground; a spring which, since that May day a thousand years ago, had never failed, and never would, to the world’s end.
That was the story May Bowden told me, long before Nellie Smith and the old un between them had taught me better than to meddle with the power of water. When she had finished she opened her handbag and took out an empty medicine bottle which she bent over and filled at the black box.
‘There!’ recorking it, full, and returning it to her bag. ‘That’s to keep by.’
I said that it looked like any other water.
May Bowden looked disgusted with me. Water from St Walstan’s Well like any other water! Water to cure measles and melancholy and keep your winter woollies from going yellow. Water to make you what you wanted to be.
‘Did you drink some when you were a child here?’
‘Of course.’
‘And did it make you what you wanted to be?’
‘Of course.’
‘Then why do you need to drink some more? Does it wear off?’
‘It doesn’t wear off. Only it’s a long time to be the same person.’
I had not cared for that black box of water down in the orchard; but Bawburgh was a pretty place and I was always game for a ride in a limousine. About risking my dear little boat in the river I was less sure, but I didn’t say anything.
My mother having given me permission to go, the limousine called for us next morning, May Bowden dressed up to the eyes, in frills and flounces that made her look like a tester bed with all the trimmings. I suppose she wanted to impress the people in Bawburgh who had known her before her father made his money, though there couldn’t have been many of those left, she was so old.
When we drove into the village over the bridge and I saw the grass dotted with daisies and the shiny river flowing with no particular haste towards Yarmouth, I was glad I had come to sail my galley there. I felt that somehow its launching was a prefiguring, a rehearsal, of the day when Chicken’s boat would take to its proper element, the two of us on board waving to the people waving back from the bank as we set out together on our journey round the world.
‘Take your shoes and socks off,’ May Bowden commanded. ‘That’s what I used to do at this very spot when I was your age. It’s quite shallow, so you needn’t worry.’
I took off my shoes and socks, stepped off the bank and gently lowered the playing card boat into the water. It sailed beautifully, and I shouted with joy – a short-lived rejoicing before a mute swan, one of that breed with a lump on its beak which makes it look as if it had recently been in a fight, came barging along regardless. With the flick of a scaly toe it tossed the galley into the middle of the stream before carrying on at the apex of its V-shaped wake as if nothing had happened. Through a film of tears I watched my father’s masterwork bobbing into the distance.
‘If there’s one thing I can’t stomach,’ declared May Bowden, ‘it’s carrying on. You ought to be glad it’s on its way, doing what it’s made for.’
‘It was made for me.’ I was sobbing outright now. How stupid she looked, the old woman, with her white face, her hat perched on her dyed hair. ‘I only brought it round for you to look at, and you had to go and say, come here to Bawburgh. I hate Bawburgh, and I hate you!’
For a moment we stared at one another hard-eyed. Then May Bowden clapped her hands together and said, in a completely different voice, ‘I know what we’ll do! Get your shoes and socks back on and we’ll drive to Yarmouth. The car can go faster than any boat. We’ll drive to Southtown Bridge and we’ll wait there for it to pass under. And then we’ll take out our hankies and wave bon voyage to it as it sails out to sea and off to the Spanish Main!’
I knew it was ridiculous. I knew the playing card boat could never survive the weir at Cringleford. Or, if it did successfully shoot that mini-Niagara, then the paddle steamers which plied between Norwich and Yarmouth during the summer months would surely chew it into confetti. I knew that if, against all the odds, my boat came through these dangers in one piece, it would unfailingly meet its doom just behind Yarmouth, sucked down into the mud of the tidal flats of Breydon Water.
I knew it was ridiculous. Daft. I also knew that, certain of its coming, I would stand on Southtown Bridge, peering down past the herring drifters and the cargo ships parked alongside Hall Quay, straining for the first glimpse of that bellying sail which sported the ace of hearts, shading my eyes against the glare just as the look-out in the crow’s nest would be doing, spying me. Willing it to come, willing it to go, as one day I would come, and go, with Chicken.
Chapter Ninteen
Southtown bridge was a noisy place, busy with the traffic of the port. There was nowhere a limousine could park, so May Bowden had the chauffeur stay only so long as it took her to cross the quay to the Star Inn and order our luncheon. While she was gone the man went to the trunk which was bolted to the running board and took out a couple of camp stools and the small table which the hiring company provided for picnickers.
Following May Bowden’s instructions he unfolded stools and table and set them up on the narrow pavement, confiding to me as he did so that the old gal was nutty as a fruit cake. ‘They don’t come no nuttier.’ I explained that we were waiting for my boat to come along and couldn’t leave the bridge, even to eat, in case we missed it.
The chauffeur stared.
‘You mean that bit o’ pasteboard you were fooling about with, over in Bawburgh?’
I nodded coldly, not caring for his description.
‘Crikey! That makes the pair of you! Hope it ain’t catching!’
May Bowden came back and told the chauffeur to take the limousine and park it on the forecourt of the Star, where, she informed him, she had arranged for him to be provided, at her expense, with two rounds of beef sandwiches and half a pint of beer. The man took this intelligence with small thanks, being better pleased, probably, with those clients who gave him cash, enabling him to decide for himself the proportion of solid to liquid refreshment. Soon after he departed, a waiter from the Star wearing a black frock coat and a bulging white shirt front crossed the road from the inn carrying a loaded silver tray balanced on one arm and using his free hand to wave a white damask napkin at the surge of lo
rries and carts as a sign they were to let him through.
He came on to the bridge with measured tread, lowered the tray on to our little table, and arranged our meal – fresh salmon mayonnaise with a glass of milk for me and a pint of stout for May Bowden – with as much aplomb as if we were seated in state in the Star dining-room. There was even a little silver vase with a single rose, in bud. The sun glinted on his pince-nez. May Bowden explained that we were obliged to stay in sight of the river as we were expecting our boat to come through.
‘I quite understand, modom,’ the waiter answered, pocketing the shilling she took out of her beaded handbag.
We sat on Southtown Bridge eating our luncheon, keeping an eye on the water below. It being Norfolk, whose official motto is ‘Do Different’, our alfresco meal attracted only the most delicate attention. If a couple of nutters had a mind to sit down to their food in public where was the harm of it? One apple-cheeked woman, innocently glad to see people enjoying good fare, peered over my shoulder at the salmon mayonnaise and commented admiringly, ‘Tha’s nice!’
‘Would you like some?’ I asked, and before May Bowden could object – the dish was too rich for my taste, tinned salmon with vinegar and sliced cucumber being nearer my mark – scooped most of it into the starched white napkin spread open on my lap and handed it over. ‘Please take the napkin back to the Star, though, when you’ve finished, if you don’t mind.’
‘I’ll give it a good wash out first, you don’t have to worry ’bout that,’ the woman said, taking the gift in the spirit in which it was offered. She glanced at May Bowden, though. ‘You sure your ma don’t mind?’
May Bowden put down her glass of stout, wiped the froth off her lips with a corner of her lace-trimmed handkerchief, and announced angrily, ‘I’m not her ma! I am a maiden lady!’
‘Oh ah?’ the woman said kindly. ‘Never mind, m’ dear. You know what they say – where there’s life, there’s hope.’ She settled the napkin-wrapped mayonnaise into her shopping basket and went on her way with a pleasant ‘Cheerio, then!’
It was boiling on the bridge. No shade: the changing patterns of light on the ever-moving surface of the river made me feel disorientated. Also, I needed to go to the lavatory.
I held out as long as I could before I told May Bowden.
‘Always something!’ she returned sourly. And then, as I awaited her permission, ‘Off you go, then! I can’t go and do it for you!’
She instructed me to go into the Star and inquire at the reception desk for the ladies’ cloakroom; but when it came to the point and I stood on Hall Quay peering through the open door into the sumptuous gloom of the Turkey-carpeted entrance hall, my courage failed me. Instead, I went up the shopping street at the side of the Town Hall until I came to the turn-off for the Market Place where I remembered from previous visits to Yarmouth that there was a public convenience. Fortunately, I had a penny in my pocket, Maud never allowing me to leave the house without that essential standby.
‘What kept you so long?’ May Bowden wanted to know, when at last I got back to our bivouac on the bridge. And, before I could answer: ‘Well, late arrivals must take the consequences! Time and tide wait for no man.’
‘You don’t mean –’
‘I most certainly do! While you were busy attending to your animal urges your boat has come and gone. Passed under the bridge like a royal procession. Oh, it was a sight to see! It’ll be past the jetty now, and the lighthouse –’
‘Please,’ I begged, ‘couldn’t we drive to Gorleston and go to the end of the jetty, just in case we can see it from there?’
‘Certainly not! I’m not dressed to go scrambling about on jetties. You’ve had your chance and you muffed it.’
Nobody in the world could put my back up like May Bowden.
I shouted, ‘I couldn’t help having to go to the lavatory!’
‘I didn’t have to go,’ she responded smugly.
We had a bumpy ride home from Yarmouth. At the humpbacked bridge in the middle of the marshes, half-way to Acle, we were going at such speed that May Bowden’s hat and hairdo were banged even flatter against the roof of the Daimler, and we came down to earth again with such a bang that one of the panes of glass between the rear seats and the driver cracked clean across. I think that despite May Bowden’s instructions the chauffeur must have contrived to trade in his beef sandwiches for beer after all.
He was very disrespectful too, telling her to stop nagging for Christ’s sake whenever she called out to him to slow down. He also called her an old cow for making the kiddie cry. As it happened, I wasn’t crying, but he was – thick, soapy tears that seemed to have a head on them. I leaned over and informed him through the cracked window that it wasn’t May Bowden’s fault I’d missed seeing my boat. I had had to go somewhere at the very moment it was passing under the bridge, and so I had missed it.
‘You tellin’ me it actually made it to Yarmouth? I don’t believe it!’
‘May Bowden saw it.’
‘May Bowden couldn’t see her arse if it was staring her in the face,’ the chauffeur returned coarsely, over his shoulder. ‘The old bag’s having you on!’
This new scenario, that May Bowden hadn’t seen the boat at all, was only pretending, was so much worse than missing it by chance that my own eyes spilled over in earnest. Had my darling Ace of Hearts, then, drowned at Cringleford after all, been shredded by a paddle steamer, sunk to a lonely grave in the mud of Breydon?
‘Take no notice of him!’ May Bowden cut in sharply. ‘He’s drunk, can’t you see that? He’s not fit to drive!’
At that, the chauffeur pulled the limousine up with a jerk which threw us against the sides. He opened his door, clambered out of the driving seat, and stood swaying in the road.
‘All right, then!’ he declared thickly. ‘Le’s see if you can do any better.’ With which he saluted – smartly, if with some little difficulty in finding the peak of his chauffeur’s cap – turned away, and began walking unsteadily along the grass verge.
‘Did you honestly see my boat?’ I demanded. First things first.
May Bowden, who had opened the door on her side of the car, drew herself up. ‘Of course, if you prefer the word of a drunken oaf to mine –’
‘I didn’t mean –’ Intimidated, I began again. ‘I didn’t think –’
‘Something I’ve noticed on more than one occasion! Now then …’ She was out of the Daimler now, and then in again, into the driving seat. ‘Do you want to stay in the back or come in front with me?’
My fright was such that I forgot my galley had ever existed.
‘You don’t mean you’re going to drive!’
May Bowden fiddled about with the gear lever and the self-starter. She adjusted the mirror fixed outside the door.
‘Have you any better idea for getting us back to Norwich?’
‘But you have to have a licence to drive!’
‘What makes you think I haven’t got one?’ May Bowden said. ‘I’m tired of this conversation.’ She pulled strongly on the starting button. It came out on a kind of string, further than I had ever seen a starter pulled before. But the car started. ‘There, you see! Nothing to it.’
‘But you have to know how to drive!’ I wailed. ‘Alfred had a man from Mann Egerton come I don’t know how many times.’
‘Whilst your brother is not a bad young man as young men go, he is not exactly a genius, is he? Not everyone who drives needs a man from Mann Egerton to show them how.’
She put the gear lever into first, released the handbrake and we were off with surprising smoothness, the shifts accomplished without jar or hesitation. As we passed the chauffeur standing at the roadside with his mouth open, she squeezed a resounding toot-de-de-toot-toot out of the bulb horn.
Of course she had known how to drive all along, but she never said, the old devil, she let me go on worrying. However she had come by her expertise I was too young to recognize it: lay face down on the rear seat with my fingers in my
ears so as not to hear, not to see, the inevitably approaching crash. My fear so exhausted me that, incredibly, I fell asleep until awakened by a jubilant May Bowden, her hair and hat canted at a rakish angle, but looking immensely pleased with herself. The car was at a standstill, aligned perfectly with the St Giles kerb.
‘Wake up, lazybones!’ May Bowden exclaimed, prodding me with her parasol. ‘Hasn’t it been a lovely day?’
Chapter Twenty
Before that summer holiday ended, I had one further day out connected with a boat.
A wonderful thing happened in that second week of September. Between one day and the next – for I measured myself against it every single day when I was at home – I grew tall enough to ride my sister’s bicycle: my bicycle from that moment on. Suddenly I could sit as comfortably on its saddle as on a chair, even slouch there and still reach the pedals without strain. I could take a hand off the handlebars to signal a left or right turn without, as heretofore, the bike wobbling all over the road. I could ride with such sang-froid as, for the first time, to be able to take proper note of where I was going instead of being so taken up with a fierce concentration on keeping the damn thing upright that I had once, for instance, ridden smack into the back of a parked van.
Distance took on a new meaning, Salham St Awdry now no more than a hop, skip and jump away. I took to riding over there even when I could only stay an hour, if that.
However pressed for time, I knew better than to forego that moment of ritual before the great diamond at Horsford Point. It was no time for getting above oneself. I wasn’t to be like poor old Moses who, after all he had done to get the Israelites out of Egypt, wasn’t, at the end of it all, allowed to enter the Promised Land because, when they had murmured against him because they were thirsty – and they were always murmuring about something or other, it was enough to try the patience of a saint – he struck a rock and when water came out he said, ‘Here’s this water I give you, you murmuring so-and-so’s’ when he ought by rights to have given the credit to God, who, when all was said and done, was the One who had made them thirsty in the first place.