by Alan Lawton
Darryl strode along the towpath towards the ‘Bonny Barbara,’ moored about a hundred yards west of the wisewoman’s dwelling. Looking beyond his craft he could clearly make out the crenulated entrance of the ‘Devil Hill’tunnel that lay about half a mile away. The boatmaster knew from long experience that each of the boat crews, who entered its dark mouth, faced a long two and a half hour journey beneath the barren Pennine moors, before emerging on the Yorkshire side of the long chain of hills that were often referred to as the ‘Backbone of England.’
The navigation widened as he approached the mouth of the tunnel and the boat-owner was just able to make out the beginnings of a narrow side-canal. The little waterway branched off from the main navigation running for a distance of about one hundred yards, before terminating at a dilapidated wharf that lay in the shadow of an old and long disused corn mill. The mouth of the half-forgotten branch canal was shrouded by the same tangle of trees and undergrowth that also hid the ruins of the old mill from public view. Indeed, few villagers had ever seen fit to fight their way through the bramble thickets in order to visit the isolated and broken pile. Darryl had known about the Branch canal and its derelict wharf since his earliest childhood, sometimes serving him as a quiet place to temporarily lay up his craft when trade was slack. He also used the wharf as a convenient place to regularly paint his boat and to carry out minor repairs whenever they became necessary.
Darryl turned his attention to the ‘Bonny Barbara,’ which lay moored against the towpath and he noticed that his barge horse was standing in full harness at the water’s edge with the long towing rope attached to the towing post situated just forward of amidships in the centre of the craft. George, his young boat hand had obviously anticipated his imminent return and had prepared the boat for immediate departure and the youth was already standing close to the bows with his hand upon the forward mooring rope in readiness to cast off.
The boatmaster jumped down into the cockpit of the craft, a sheltered area situated in the extreme stern of the vessel that housed the tiller and also gave access to the small cabin accommodating the boat’s crew. His first act was to take hold of the tiller and order the waiting youth to cast off without a moments delay. He placed two fingers into his mouth and blew a piercing whistle, the barge horse instantly responding by throwing the entire weight of its body against the padded collar encircling its neck. The towrope whipped taunt and the cargo vessel slowly began to gather way and started its journey down the Marquises canal; a journey that would take the narrowboat to the waterway’s junction with the Peak Forest Canal and to its eventual destination, the commercial wharves at Portland Basin in the industrial borough of Ashton-Under- Lyne.
Only when the heavily laden narrowboat was making steady progress did the boat hand join his employer in the cockpit of the craft. Darryl immediate handed him the parcel of food prepared by his mother and pointed towards the door of the tiny cabin that served as communal accommodation for the young boat-owner and his crewmembers.
“In you go lad and get some food and rest, I’ll give you a shout if I have need of you.”
The youth nodded in reply and disappeared into the cabin, leaving the complete management of the craft in the hands of his master. Indeed, Darryl anticipated little need for the lad’s assistance until the craft arrived at the junction with the Peak Forest canal, near the village of Bugsworth. He would only need the lads help if they unexpectedly met a boat coming in the opposite direction and were forced to cross the towlines in order to allow the craft to pass one another; but this was extremely unlikely, for the old Marquises’ navigation was seldom used nowadays by commercial craft, due to the bitter competition from the trans Pennine railway companies, that had driven freight charges down to rock bottom. The few narrowboat’s still using the waterway were now forced to eke out a miserable living by carrying low value commodities such as limestone and building sand. Darryl knew that he would also have been in desperate straits, but for a precious agreement with a Yorkshire brickworks, allowing him to carry bricks and roofing tiles across the uplands and deliver them to their customers in Manchester and to other towns situated upon Lancashire plain.
The young boat owner had further bolstered his financial position by purchasing boatloads of a reeking organic fertilizer manufactured at ‘Corporation Wharf’ from the contents of the privies of Manchester; this he took aboard as back cargo and sold by the ton to the farmers who cultivated the Pennine uplands. Even so, Darryl fully understood the financially precarious nature of his occupation and he knew perfectly well that his ability to continue carrying goods cheaply depended upon the blind loyalty of George, the young boat hand, who toiled relentlessly from dawn to dusk in return for only a few small coins per calendar month. However, the Sixteen year old youth’s loyalty had been well earned for Darryl had originally found the lad, some two years before, lying upon the towpath of the Peak Forest canal, delirious with enteric fever and as close to death as mattered.
The boatmasterhad taken the lad aboard the ‘Bonny Barbara’ and delivered him to Hetty’s cottage, where his mother had saved the youth’s life by a near miraculous exhibition of her healing powers.
“Aye, near miraculous indeed!” Darryl reflected as he clung to the tiller of the boat. For the lad had been cold as a stone by the time they reached Elfencot and his pulse was almost undetectable. Fortunately, both his mother and twin sister had been at home and not for the first time, he had been bundled unceremoniously from the kitchen, as the two women began practicing the most secret of their healing rituals. Once again, he had heard his mother singing a strange but haunting melody and again had smelt the acrid stench of the smouldering herbs that eventually forced him to leave the cottage and take refuge aboard his narrowboat.
He remembered returning to the cottage, some two hours later, and had re-entered the kitchen to find the youth breathing easily and obviously far from death.
Even so, it had required two months of careful nursing and a great many nourishing meals before the lad had been returned to full health and was able to leave the wisewoman’s care. George had subsequently come aboard the ‘Bonny Barbara,’ taking up the post of boat hand and had proved to be a diligent worker and a true and loyal friend.
The ‘Bonny Barbara’ progressed steadily along the line of the Marquises’navigation and by early evening the craft had finally arrived at the head of the flight of locks marking the waterway’s junction with the Peak Forest canal. Darryl then called his young assistant from the cabin and the two men had spent the remaining hours of daylight in working the narrowboat downwards until it rode safely upon the surface of the lower waterway.Afterwards, they secured the boat to its night mooring and attended to the needs of the hardworking old barge horse before gratefully retiring to their bunks for the night.
“Agood day done,” the boatmaster concluded, as he closed his eyes. “But tomorrow will be far better. For the remainder of the debt to my Uncle Robert will be fully discharged and the deeds to the ‘Bonny Barbara’ will be mine and mine alone.”
The big station clock was showing twenty minutes to nine when the morning train from Ashton-Under-Lyne drew to a halt in Manchester’s Piccadilly Station.
Carriage doors crashed open and a flood of passengers poured onto the platform, flowing like a human torrent in the direction of the station exit.
Darryl waited a moment for the crush to ease and then stepped down onto the emptying platform. He caught his breath as he alighted, for his nostrils and throat were immediately assailed by the acrid air of the city. This gross atmospheric poisoning, he knew perfectly well, was the inevitable result of the dense clouds of coal smoke belching from the funnels of the numerous railway locomotives using the busy terminus.
Darryl grimaced at the nuisance, but he smiled to himself as he remembered the old northern phrase. ‘Where there’s muck there’s money!’ For he knew full well that the locomotive exhaust fumes merely augmented the huge volumes of coal smoke, that daily poured from
the forest of tall chimneys dominating the skyline of Manchester. The foul smoke laden air was the price the city, together with its Lancashire hinterland, paid for becoming the greatest centre of textile production in the history of the world.
He was also familiar with the dreadful social cost of this industrial supremacy, namely the wretched slums housing a frequently hungry and often ill paid workforce; the huge downtrodden and often ragged population, whose labours enriched the growing class of mill owners and entrepreneurs, men whose business acumen was held as being second to none in the world of British commerce.
The boatmaster stepped out of the station and onto a crowded sidewalk where men and women, drawn from almost every estate and occupation, hurried in every direction in order to reach their appointed places of work as quickly as possible. Darryl, by contrast, was in no great hurry. His original intention had been to conduct his business in Manchester upon the day following the departure from his mother’s cottage. Unfortunately, a temporary shortage of horse transport at the Ashton canal wharves had slowed down the unloading of his cargo of Yorkshire bricks and it had been almost mid afternoon before the ‘Bonny Barbara’was riding empty at the wharf-side. Darryl had therefore been forced to delay his departure for Manchester until the following morning. However, the young man had made the best of a bad situation and had used the extra time to gather and load a Yorkshire-bound cargo of scrap metal and general merchandise. He had then dispatched his craft upon the first leg of its return journey to Yorkshire, under the command of young George. The youth had been given a few coins to engage the assistance of a temporary boat hand and been given strict instructions to await his employer’s return from Manchester at the old mill wharf in Elfencot. Darryl had then spent the night at the cottage of a former work-mate before catching an early train to Manchester.
Darryl continued walking at a leisurely pace, for the doors of ‘Downes and Sons.’ his bankers, would not open until nine o’clock sharp. He therefore had over an hour to wait before he could withdraw the twenty pounds lying in his bank account. Agoodly sum, which, together with the twenty guineas that he had won in his last boxing contest, would enable him to clear the debt to his uncle and leave him in sole possession of the deeds to the ‘Bonny Barbara.’
He reached into his pocket and fingered a single silver shilling, lying within its dusty depths.
“Plenty of cash for a good breakfast at Mother Cresswell’s Ordinary,” he muttered to himself, “aye and why not? For a fellow doesn’t become the owner of a narrowboat every day of the week!”
The young boatmaster turned down a narrow alleyway running behind the railway station and emerged inside the small courtyard where Mother Cresswells eating house was situated. He crossed the courtyard, after picking his way between a column of heavily laden horse drawn coal wagons and was about to enter the eating house, when he felt a sudden tap on his shoulder. He turned and found himself looking into the faceof a short dapper man, who wore a rather old fashioned stovepipe hat. Darryl immediately recognized the individual as being Sidney Arkwright, commonly known a ‘Stovepipe Sid.’ The man had an extremely dubious reputation and was said to earn a living by acting as an agent and runner for some of the bookmakers and publicans who operated their businesses in the districts of Piccadilly and Ancoats.
Stovepipe detained the boatmaster by grasping at his right arm.
“I’m right glad to have bumped into thee Black Darryl,” he said in a weak voice that was little more than a whisper. “Albert Pike’s been asking after you for the past three days and he’s let it be known that he wishes to have words with you over at his gymnasium.”
Darryl frowned, for he knew Albert Pike only too well. Pike was the proprietor of the ‘Sparta Gymnasium’an establishment that was situated only a few streets from Mother Cresswell’s Ordinary. The gymnasium was a place where the unmarried sons of well-to-do businessmen met their friends and worked off the effects of their frequently damaging drinking bouts, under the watchful eyes of the group of ex-pugilists who acted as their instructors.
Pike often held boxing contests at the Sparta gymnasium and at a number of other sporting venues, in which he held a financial interest. Darryl also knew that Pike derived a considerable income from the numerous private contests that he was paid to secretly stage within the dwellings of his richest and most favoured clients. These were brutal encounters, with few rules to protect the contending fighters and where huge sums of money were routinely wagered upon the sad bloodstained figures battering each other to pulp inside the ropes of the makeshift fight rings.
Darryl had fought three times at the Sparta and had always won convincingly and he knew, instinctively, that Pike intended to offer him further contests.
He shook his head. “Please tell Mr Pike that I have recently retired from the ring and will fight no more!”
Stovepipe looked worried.
“Its best that you tell him yourself,” he replied. “Pike’s no man to cross and I don’t relish the task of bringing him bad tidings. Tell you what, he’ll be over at the gym by now and it might be best for all of us if you slipped over there and had a word with him yourself.”
Darryl reluctantly agreed to the runner’s suggestion and the two men reached the Sparta gymnasium in less than ten minutes, after passing through a perfect labyrinth of back to back houses and dirty alleyways.
The establishment was quiet, for the vast majority of the young bloods, who formed its clientele, would not begin arriving until almost mid-morning and the only occupants were a pair of old pugilists sweeping the bare wooden floor with long handled brooms.
Agaslight was burning inside the small office that occupied a distant corner of the gymnasium and Darryl instructed the runner to remain outside and await the outcome of the meeting. He then knocked briefly upon the door and entered without waiting for a summons from within.
The ex-fighter crossed the threshold and came face to face with a short thickset man seated behind a large mahogany-topped desk supporting a stack of heavy brass bound ledgers. The man quickly rose to his feet and grasped the ex-pugilist by the hand.
“Black Darryl,” he exclaimed in a high falsetto voice that was little more than a squeak. “I’m glad to see you looking so well and obviously in perfect fighting trim.”
He paused.
“Look.” He said. “I’ll not mess you about, but tell you at once why I had my lads keep a good lookout for you. The fact is that Silas Oldshaw saw you fight here the last time that I had you on the bill, and he’s asked me to set up a contest between you and ‘Bill the Boar.’You know the man? That South-country bruiser who drives Oldshaw’s coach and four, acts as his personal bodyguard and whom he keeps as his personal boxing fancy. He wants me to stage the fight in the basement of that big mansion of his. The one that stands high on the hill above Staleybridge.”
The promoter smiled and jingled the spare coins in his right trouser pocket.
“There’ll be a good purse to be won, a hundred guineas at least. What do you say to that Black Darryl?”
The boatmaster shook his head. “I’m done with the ring Mr. Pike. I fought my last bout four days ago, up in Yorkshire, and now I’m finished for good, for I’ve no intention of ending up beaten mindless like one of those poor nitwits who keep the floor of your gym clean.”
Pike casually swatted away a fly that tried to alight upon his bald head.
“Can’t say that I blame you for your sentiment,” He replied. “For I remember you tellin’ me that you only stayed in the boxing game in order to pay off the debt upon that canal boat of yours. So it seems to me that you must have reached the point of doing so, if I’m any judge at all!”
The promoter paused and struck at the persistent fly with a rolled up newspaper. After squashing the insect against the surface of his desk, he turned his attention back to the young visitor.
“See here Darryl, cash is always useful to a man like yourself with bills to pay. Why not beat yon coach driver into the ca
nvas and quit for good?”
Once again, the boatmaster shook his head, but the bald-headed boxing promoter was undeterred and looked the young man directly in the eye.
“I warned Mr Oldshaw that you might be reluctant to fight and that you wouldn’t come cheap. He instructed me to offer you a fee of fifty guineas in gold. Win or lose. This would be in addition to the purse of one hundred pounds, if you should succeed in flattening yon coachman.”
Darryl gasped in amazement at the generosity of the offer, but a feeling of suspicion crept into his mind.
“That’s a lot of cash to offer a common fighter for a nights work,” he stated. “Now where’s the snag?”
Pike stared at the floorboards.
“Broughton rules,” He replied in an almost inaudible whisper.
The young boatmaster cursed aloud and spat upon the floor in disgust.