Children of Light

by Lucy English

  On the canal the mist settled towards nightfall. A thin layer of white and the puffs of smoke from people’s stoves. The smell of woodsmoke, the smell of coal smoke, the smell of cooking.

  This is what my narrowboat looked like. There was a large kitchen-sitting room, with a hinged table and red upholstered chairs. The seats were hollow and I stored my clothes in them. Steps led down into this room from above. The windows were slanting but the curtains hung down straight. Flowery blue and pink curtains, a bit like one of Jeanette’s dresses. There were cushions on the seats of the same material. The stove was squat and black. It was possible to cook on it, but there was a separate cooker fuelled by the gas bottle which also heated the water above the kitchen sink. It was necessary to have the stove burning all the time, it was the only form of heating. Leading off the kitchen end was a small bathroom with a pump toilet and a shower. The water for this was collected in a tank on the roof. A cold shower. Definitely not la-di-da. Beyond the bathroom, at the engine end, was a small bedroom that I didn’t use. It was the coldest room. My bedroom was at the other end, leading off the main room. I loved my bedroom. A large double bed, windows all round. Shelves for books and an oil lamp hanging from the ceiling. The boat rocked gently even when I wasn’t moving. Under the bed were more cupboards. Betty and Ern had been fond of cupboards, there were far more than I needed.

  At the back of the boat there was a petrol generator for the electricity and a bilge pump. It made a comforting sort of whirring sound. I didn’t use the electric lights. I used candles and lamps. I woke up with the dawn and went to bed when it was too dark to read. I liked it that way.

  When it rained, water leaked from the base of the tank into the shower. I tried to fix it with tar but it wasn’t successful. Ern had left the boat clean, but everything was shabby. The boat was called Arabella.

  My mother got used to the idea. After all I was just at the bottom of her garden. She let me use her bath and washing machine. I think she pretended I hadn’t left home at all and I was just playing like a child in a tree house. On Sundays I did the garden for her and she cooked lunch for me and Sanclair and it was like neither of us had left. Her darling Sanclair and grumpy Mireille, and when was I going to buy some decent shoes, surely I didn’t wear those boots to work?

  But my boat was mine in a way that my room at The Heathers had never been. It was as much mine as this little hut, as uncomfortable and awkward and cold, but when I sat there in the evenings listening to the pump, the water and the sounds of the other people, I felt still and peaceful.

  I’m not gregarious. It was at least two months before I started to get to know the other boat-dwellers. The boat behind mine was owned by the Bigbys, a couple in their sixties who used it as a weekend holiday home. Theirs was a smartly painted outfit with tubs of geraniums on the roof and much visible bargeware inside. On sunny Sundays they sat on their roof on deckchairs, like exhibits. If ever asked, they could talk for hours about canals, and locks and barge life. They had been great friends with Ern and Betty and told me more than once that the sort of people on narrowboats these days were not the sort of people they wanted to associate with. It was a comment directly aimed at the boat in front of mine.

  This was a long, scruffy hulk with old bicycles and a pushchair on the roof. Bags of rubbish and a pile of reclaimed wood. In it lived a young couple and their baby. They had long hair and dirty clothes. The baby crawled in the mud. They had frequent bonfires, invited their equally dirty friends, drank cider and banged drums until the morning. I could understand the Bigbys’ irritation. I never spoke to them. I smiled at the woman, but she always looked harassed, straggle-haired, tripping over her long skirts, and the baby was always crying. Her boyfriend was not the smiling sort. Six foot plus with black dreads and a beard, torn jeans and a leather jacket.

  Down from the Bigbys was a man called Jim, who was a recluse. His boat was the smallest and had a wind generator on the roof. The Bigbys said he worked for the government but I didn’t believe that. He rode a bicycle, an expensive racer. I used to see him on the tow-path. He was a thin man with black hair and a beard. He didn’t speak to anybody.

  In the other boats was a changing community of students and bohemians, all young, all scruffy, who all landed up at the drum-banging parties.

  Stephen helped me take the boat out for short trips. Devizes was the furthest we got. Canal life was a bit slow for him, but he liked the mechanics of the engine and the rigmarole of getting the boat through the locks. We learned by trial and error and a great deal of advice from the Bigbys.

  We’re setting out on a Friday evening. It’s June and warm and the flies dance above the water. Just before we go under the wooden bridge I look up and see myself as a child standing there, waiting for the boats, when there weren’t any. ‘Hop on!’ I say to my lost self and imagine how surprised and excited I would look. The child jumps down, ‘Oh can I, oh can I?’ and together we steer the boat up the canal towards Bradford-on-Avon. I start to sing. Stephen at the front of the boat looks round with a ‘Mum, must you?’ expression, so I stop. But I sing in my heart to my pretend child and the water and the trees dipping into it.

  But by the end of the summer there weren’t going to be any more trips because Vivienne was ill.

  She was getting more tired and she started getting breathless as well. She hated doctors and she kept saying there was nothing wrong with her, but by Christmas she could barely get to the bottom of the garden and back. Stephen and I persuaded her to be examined. She had a degenerative heart condition. It was recommended she have a pace-maker fitted.

  My mother was a coward. Being critically ill sent her hysterical, which didn’t help her condition at all. We took it in turns to be with her at The Heathers. This is how I remember her, pale, but still elegant, in a cream angora jumper and beige slacks. Her hair wound up in a jewelled clip. Her feet on the sofa. Flicking through photograph albums.

  ‘We were a happy family, weren’t we, Mireille? Do you remember those parties at Bellevue and how you used to love to dress up and show off to the guests? What a funny thing you were, quite pretty really, and didn’t Hugo adore you?’

  My mother’s version.

  A Sunday evening at the end of February. Stephen has just left. In two weeks’ time my mother is due to have her operation and we have managed to avoid the topic all day. She’s watching ‘Songs of Praise’. She can’t get to church now, but the priest comes to see her once a week. She’s humming along to the hymns and smoking. She never gave up smoking.

  ‘I ought to go to the boat,’ I say. I haven’t been there all weekend and I’m missing it.

  ‘Oh yes, off you go,’ says my mother, ‘they say it might freeze tonight.’

  I can’t believe she’s letting me go without a struggle, but she looks contented and she’s got her prayer book beside her. ‘Keep warm,’ I say and put a shawl around her shoulders. She squeezes my hand but doesn’t look away from the screen.

  ‘Make me a channel of your peace …’ they’re singing, ‘… Where there is darkness let there be light…’

  I slip outside and run down the garden. The lawn is frosty and crunchy. In my torchlight the puddles on the tow-path are icing over. The row of boats have their lights on and smoke is coming from the chimneys. It looks homely and welcoming. The Bigbys are in and so are the couple on the top boat. I can hear their little girl crying and the mother saying, ‘Marigold, you must go to bed!’ As I get on my boat it rocks to greet me. Inside I light the lamp. The room smells moist and watery but I like that smell. I pile wood on to the stove and light it. If I can get a good fire going there’s a chance the taps won’t freeze. It takes some time because the wood is damp. My hands are black and I wipe them on my jeans. I make myself a cup of hot chocolate. At The Heathers I can stay awake until midnight, there’s something about the arid centrally-heated atmosphere that prevents me from sleeping, but here the proximity of water and the always-gentle rocking makes me tired. I sit on my bed be
cause it’s the comfiest place to sit. I’ve got a patchwork quilt now, a tattered one I found in Walcot Street market, and all around the wall are cushions. I’m still wearing my coat. I put my cup down. The mother is singing to her little girl. I can just hear her. ‘Twinkle, twinkle, little star, How I wonder what you are …’ I put my head on the cushions.

  The morning light wakes me up. I jump out of bed because I’ve left Vivienne on her own and she’s probably gone hysterical again, called up Stephen, and everybody will be cross with me. I run up the slippery tow-path. The whole world is white, frosted, sparkling, beautiful and the canal has frozen. I run up the silver garden and into the house. There’s a note on the table, ‘Don’t forget to lock the patio door.’ My mother is still in bed. I look in on her. She’s asleep, propped up on pillows so she can breathe. She does look old now. A little grey-haired old lady in a lacy nightdress. I go to my own room and flop on the bed. I’m unwashed and crumpled but stupidly relieved. I pull the duvet over me.

  I’m woken by my mother going into the sitting room and exclaiming, ‘Oh, what a beautiful day! Oh Mireille, it looks like a wedding cake …’ I get up but she’s already opened the patio door and she’s in the garden in her nightie and slippers. ‘Oh look, everything is so white, it’s so white!’ She laughs like I’ve never heard her laugh before, it’s how Sanclair used to laugh. ‘I’ve never seen the garden like this, have I? Mireille, surely it’s never been so white before!’

  But by Friday she was dead. Sanclair found her in the morning. He said he could tell she wasn’t asleep because she’d fallen back on the pillows. He said she looked peaceful. At the funeral there weren’t many people, but the Costellos cried. So did Sanclair. So did I.

  I sometimes think I had two mothers. The woman I left behind when I went to France and the woman I came back to. I know which one I prefer. She was silly and vain, dependent and insecure, but she had been generous to me and Stephen. Yet there was always a gap, I felt we hardly knew each other. Oh, I knew how she liked a cup of tea and how she liked her potatoes cooked, but I didn’t know what was inside her head, and what was inside mine only upset her. We baffled each other. When I lived at The Heathers I got to like her. I suppose that was a step.

  We lived with her for sixteen years and she never complained. I had to insist on paying towards the bills and she spent so much on Stephen. She had money invested and she left most of it to me, but she left The Heathers to him.

  In the months after her death I felt oddly calm. I moved the rest of my things down to the boat. I got the roof fixed. I decorated the kitchen. I watched spring come back slowly to the trees along the canal.

  Stephen was in turmoil. He couldn’t decide whether to sell The Heathers or sell his own house. It embarrassed him that he had The Heathers and not me. I kept saying to him I didn’t want to live there anyway. He found it difficult to throw away her things, so I helped him. I got somebody to take away her clothes and somebody else the contents of her bedroom. All those beautiful clothes, silk shirts, suits, dresses, shoes (they wouldn’t have fitted me) and her bedroom furniture. I barely went into Vivienne’s bedroom. An elaborate chest of drawers, a bedside table, a standard lamp and a big, heavy double bed. Stephen and I watched as the last pieces were being carted off. Afterwards we sat in the sitting room and cried and cried. Vivienne had truly gone.

  Without her it was easier to see what The Heathers was supposed to be like, a work of art. A white frame for the canvas of the sky. Stephen saw it too. He put his house on the market. By the end of March he had moved in and was already decorating and buying new lamps. It’s his place now and it suits him. He sleeps in his old room but bared down to just a bed and a cupboard. Vivienne’s room is for guests and my room is a study, which I seem to remember is what my father originally intended.

  I wish I could draw a line there and say, so we lived happily ever after, because that spring I was happy. Stephen was feeling important and stylish in The Heathers and I was down on the canal feeling undisturbed. I cycled to work. I came home and cooked a meal. I loved it.

  I wish I could draw a line because the next bit is tough. I’m sitting outside the hut on a warm evening soon to become cold and I’m thinking, I don’t want to write the next bit. I want to feel again what I did then. Undisturbed, uncomplicated, ticking over, ticking on.

  The next bit hurts.

  My lamp is flickering on the table and a moth is flying around it. A large brown floppy moth. I’ve flicked him away several times but he keeps coming back. The flame will kill him and apart from killing him myself there’s not much I can do. He’s done it, he’s inside the lamp now. He’s flapping about madly. Do moths feel pain? He’s a lunatic, he keeps flying right into the flame. He’s done it … he went up with a fttt!

  I thought he would put the light out, but he didn’t.

  End of May. Stephen has a girlfriend. She’s called Judy. She’s not my sort of girl. She has blonde hair and a made-up face. She’s in marketing. She wears suits and little tappety shoes. She smiles a lot. Stephen likes her. They have dinner parties up at The Heathers. I let them get on with it.

  I’m taking a group of students to the Roman baths. It’s one of the first things I do with new groups. Most of them aren’t the least bit interested, but when they write back to their parents it sounds good. ‘Today I saw the Roman baths, the abbey and the costume museum.’ I have been to the baths so many times now I can do it blindfold and this day is no exception. We come out into the open by the great bath and I stand by the water and say, ‘This is a holy place. It’s not just a hot tub, it’s a sacred spring dedicated to the goddess Aquae Sulis Minerva,’ and I make the students stand by the stream where the water gushes out and put their hands in the water. ‘See, this is a hot spring. It’s a natural hot spring. Our ancestors thought this was a miracle and I want you to know that it still is. The natural world is a miracle.’ I, too, kneel and touch the water.

  For a second I close my eyes and I think of that other spring far away in France and I hope it’s as still and secluded and private as this place is public. I open my eyes and I’m looking into the eyes of a young man. Blue eyes, grey eyes, with a dark ring around the corona. My eyes look like that and it’s a shock, it’s like I’m looking into my own eyes.

  I stand up and the others are waiting. I assume he’s with my group. ‘Well …’ I say, ‘now you know more about the goddess. They say this country is Christian, but we have holy places which are far older … Next week we will go to Glastonbury. Now, we will visit the abbey …’

  The young faces look at me. Teenagers from Spain, France, Italy, Scandinavia, Germany. The young man is tall and has curly dark blond hair. He’s wearing a brown jumper. I assume he’s Italian.

  We go round the abbey. I tell them about its history. We look at various tombs. Any questions? When are we going to have lunch? Why do the French students always ask that?

  We eat our sandwiches in the square. We sit on benches. The French students inspect their meal distastefully. A pigeon flies over the bench and one of the girls screams as if it’s a rat. Across the square somebody is juggling on a monocycle. The tall young man hasn’t sat down. He’s smoking a cigarette. He stamps it out and starts to walk away.

  ‘Excuse me!’ I call out. ‘We’re going to the costume museum … What is his name?’ I say to the other students, but they look at me blankly. I run after him. ‘Excuse me. Where are you going? We haven’t finished yet.’ I look down my list. ‘And who are you?’

  ‘I’m not with your group,’ he says in perfect English.

  ‘Whose group are you with then?’

  He smiles. He looks like an angel, like one of the angels on the front of the abbey. ‘I liked what you said about the water. I’m not with your group.’

  I look at him and again at his pond-blue eyes. Of course he’s not one of my students, he’s far too scruffy. He’s wearing faded jeans and scuffed black boots. ‘You live on the canal,’ he says. ‘Next to Barney and Rosebu
d.’

  I say nothing. I’m at work, I don’t want people knowing where I live.

  ‘I liked what you said about the goddess,’ he says again and I still don’t answer, so he walks away.

  It meant nothing. The world is full of odd people. When I thought about it I decided I didn’t care if somebody had recognised me. I didn’t know the people on the top boat and I had no plans to include them in my future.

  It was June and it was the solstice and there was a bonfire party going on outside. The Bigbys were away, which was fortunate, because the bonfire crew had started drumming. Pots and pans, bongos, lumps of wood. It was impossible to sleep. From midnight until four in the morning I lay with a pillow over my head cursing them. Daft, dirty, drunk crusties. Eventually I got dressed. I was going to tell them to shut up. I opened the hatch and stood on the roof of my boat. I had thought there must be at least fifty of them but there were only about ten. One of them was playing a didgeridoo now. They were sitting round the dying fire, the sun just coming up. They looked like a happy bunch. The man with the dreads had his arm round his girlfriend and their child was sprawled across both of them. I remembered being on the beach with Gregor, and remembered it so acutely, being young and carefree and anarchic, flouting convention and respectability, and what was I now but a dowdy old spinster with a bad temper?

  But most of all I remembered singing and I missed it so much my eyes were tearful. I went back to the boat and got my accordion. I took it to the bonfire group and sat down. The man with dreads smiled at me in a drunk, sleepy way and I started to play.

  A didgeridoo and an accordion. It’s an odd mix. I closed my eyes and sang the old songs I hadn’t sung for years because nobody wanted to hear them, only this bunch of raggle-taggle pixies up the canal.

  The man on the didgeridoo has stopped and he’s lying down. The only other person playing is a young man on an African drum, and I can see in the morning light that he’s the same man I met at the baths. We don’t make eye contact but we keep playing. He’s not the first to stop. I am, because I’m tired. The sun is shining on the water and the mist is hanging over the valley obscuring the great scar of the by-pass being dug out across it.