The Boat Girls

by Margaret Mayhew

  ‘Come down backwards. It’s easier. Hand me your kit first, though. Thank God, you haven’t brought too much. Some of them bring trunks and there simply isn’t the room.’

  She lowered herself gingerly backwards into the cabin, cracking her head in the process.

  Miss Rowan was heaving her luggage onto a side bunk. ‘This is the butty cabin. It’s a bit bigger than the one on the motor because there’s no engine – that’s why I use it. I sleep on the cross-bed. You can have this one here, if you like. The other two trainees will have to go on the motor. First come, first served.’

  Frances rubbed her head, looking round. The gypsy caravan had been very similar but this was even smaller – no more than a few feet square, not much more than five feet high, and every inch put to use. The walls were lined from roof to floor with cupboards and stained with brown varnish. The cross-bed, breezily referred to, was invisible. Every shelf was crammed full, something hung on every hook and over every rail, and a miniature cooking stove was scorching her left trouser leg. But it was the brass that she noticed more than anything; it winked at her from every side. Brass knobs and handles and rails and hooks, and brass without any purpose other than to adorn – old horse brasses, old brass door handles and old brass bed knobs.

  ‘It’s traditional,’ Miss Rowan said. ‘The boat people love their brass. So do I. You can put some of your stuff in that long cupboard above the bunk and there’s a locker underneath, as well as the little cupboard there at the end. Keep the space under it free, though, so you have somewhere to put your head at bedtime. While you’re getting yourself sorted out, I’ll make us a pot of tea.’

  Frances emptied the kitbag contents into the long cupboard and into the locker which was already partly occupied by a frying pan, tins of evaporated milk, sticks of firewood, a bottle of disinfectant, bars of soap, and what looked like a car battery. The small cupboard was useful for the oddments – her alarm clock, sponge bag, hairbrush and comb. Miss Rowan, meanwhile, had put the kettle on the stove, taken mugs off their hooks and lowered a hinged panel, revealing shelves stuffed with canisters and tins and an assortment of crockery.

  ‘Our larder. I’m afraid the milk’s tinned. Do you have sugar? Take a pew on the coal box there.’

  She sat down on the lid of the coal box, which did double duty as a step. Miss Rowan had fixed the hinged panel so that it was propped on the edge of the side bunk.

  ‘Our table.’ A spare plank of wood fitted neatly across the cabin’s width. ‘My seat.’ She poured out the tea into the thick china mugs. ‘I think we’ll manage quite well, don’t you? By the way, which trainee are you? What’s your name?’

  ‘Carlyon.’

  ‘I meant your Christian name. We always use those on the cut.’

  ‘Frances.’

  ‘I’m Philippa, but everyone calls me Pip. Cigarette?’

  She accepted the Players and puffed away, though she had hardly ever smoked before. It was snug in the cabin and, after a while, she found that it no longer seemed quite so claustrophobically small – as though the space had somehow magically expanded around her. Pip talked about the trip they were to do, taking a cargo from the docks all the way up to Tyseley near Birmingham, then onwards to load the empty boats with coal from one of the coalfields around Coventry for dropping off at canal-side factories on the way back.

  ‘It’ll take us at least three weeks from start to finish, I’m afraid, as this is a training trip. An experienced crew could manage it in about ten days and the real boaters in a week, but then they’ve been doing it all their lives.’

  ‘The real boaters? You mean the people I saw just now on the wharf? They didn’t seem at all friendly.’

  ‘Some of them are and some of them aren’t. We’re a bit of a mystery to them, you must understand that. They know nothing about us or our world. Their whole lives are lived on the cut – it’s always called the cut, by the way, never the canal – and that’s all they really know. The cut, working the boats, their own very particular ways and customs. It’s important for us to respect them. After all, they’ve been here for a long time – two hundred years or more. We’re the newcomers who have to learn to fit in. They can teach us a lot, if they’re minded to, and help us when we get into trouble, which we often do. Sometimes, but not very often, we can even do them agood turn and they never ever forget that.’

  ‘I got the impression that they resented us.’

  ‘Who wouldn’t? A lot of strangely dressed young women, playing at boats, shouting at each other in la-di-da voices, doing everything all wrong, and getting in their way and holding them up. I don’t blame them, if they do. And, by the way, never call the boats barges or the boaters bargees, and never go on board without their permission, or look inside their cabins, or even lean against one of their boats, and never be overfamiliar, especially with the men, and never ever compare them with gypsies. It’s a great insult.’

  ‘I thought that’s what they were, at first. They look awfully like them.’

  ‘So would we if we’d spent all our lives in the open air, living on a boat and always on the move.’

  ‘You mean, they actually live in a tiny space like this? All the time? Don’t they have homes?’

  ‘The boats are their homes. They’re born in them, they live in them and they die in them. And they bring up their families in them. Some of them have as many as twelve children, though they don’t usually all survive. Don’t ask me how they manage to cope, but they do. Most of them keep their boats neat and clean as a whistle – others don’t, it has to be said. They live with their work and it’s a very tough life, especially for the women.’ Pip drained her mug. ‘Drink up and I’ll give you a tour of the boats.’

  A metal bowl with a wooden handle, known as a dipper, was unhooked from the wall and the mugs rinsed out in a few inches of water poured from a can. Water, Pip explained, was precious. The boats carried big four-gallon cans on the cabin roofs. There was no convenient tap to turn on and the cans had to be refilled at water taps along the canal that were, Pip said, few and far between. The dipper apparently did service for washing many things – vegetables, dishes, clothes and themselves. Water used for cooking was kept for boiling eggs, egg water for making tea and cocoa.

  The motor, Cetus, lay alongside the butty, Aquila. At first sight, there had seemed little difference between the two, but Frances soon learned otherwise. For a start, the tillers were quite different – the butty’s a long, thick piece of wood, curved and tapered like a steer’s horn, while the motor’s was metal banded in red, white and blue paint and bent like a swan’s neck. On the motor, the steerer stood on a flat counter at the stern, not down in a well as on the butty, and the propeller blades and helm were protected by fat rope fenders hanging at the stern. The cabin on the motor was even smaller to allow space for the engine housed beyond the bulkhead, but otherwise it looked much the same as on the butty. She inched her way after Pip along the narrow gunwale that led round the edge of the cabin to the engine-room doors, where she was shown the shiningly kept green National diesel engine and, not so shining or impressive, the enamel bucket that served as the lavatory.

  ‘You empty it over the side into the cut,’ Pip said cheerily. ‘Bucket-and-chucket. A bit primitive, but you’ll soon get used to it.’

  The gunwale came to a stop at the end of the engine housing and, to go further, they had to climb up onto the roof which also accommodated an old and rusty bike. Beyond and below lay the yawning chasm of the empty cargo hold. Pip’s lecture continued.

  ‘Both of the holds together can carry up to fifty tons. When we’re loaded up, you’ll see how low the boats go down in the water. Right now, they’re riding high.’ Pip glanced sideways at her. ‘Think you can walk the plank?’

  The hold was divided into three by wooden cross beams placed across the width of the boat. Supported by these, a long and sagging pathway of single planks ran from the cabin roof to the fore-end of the boat. There was, Frances saw, no oth
er way of getting there. She gritted her teeth. ‘I’ll try.’

  It was a terrifying journey. The planks were no more than a few inches wide and the only handholds along the way were the uprights fixing them to the cross beams. If she lost her balance on the stretches in between, she’d fall straight into the bottom of the empty hold, a good eight feet below. And, just to add to the fun, the planks bounced up and down as she walked. The idyllic recruiting picture hadn’t shown any of this, nor had it been mentioned in the interview. She made it to the far end and turned to watch Pip run across after her as easily as a tightrope walker.

  The top planks had finished at a tarpaulin-covered framework called the cratch – another test in the obstacle course. She followed Pip round a narrow gunwale, clinging to the tarpaulin strings, until they finally reached the fore-end deck where an iron hatch covered a snake pit of coiled ropes and straps. There was also a headlight mounted on an iron stand.

  ‘Not allowed to use it except in tunnels,’ Pip said. ‘Blackout regs and all that. Same on the cut as everywhere else. Well, now that you’ve done all that, let’s go and have some dinner in the canteen. They call it dinner – remember that – not lunch.’

  The depot canteen was crowded with workmen and wreathed in cigarette smoke. A wireless was going at full blast with a comedian telling jokes to roars of audience laughter. There was a long table down the centre and smaller tables at the sides, where the men were sitting and eating from plates piled high with hot food.

  ‘Mechanics, painters, carpenters, glaziers, blacksmiths . . .’ Pip told her. ‘Nice chaps.’

  She seemed to know most of them, exchanging smiles and greetings on their way to the counter. ‘Hallo there, Bill. Is your wife better? Good to see you, Pete. Hallo, Tom.’

  Tom stopped her with an arm outstretched like a barricade. ‘Who’s the young lady, then, Pip?’

  ‘This is Frances. She’s just started training with me.’

  ‘Not another Idle Woman! Don’t know as we can put up with many more of you.’

  ‘You’ll just have to make the best of it, Tom. You’re stuck with us till the war’s over.’

  He gave her a nod and a grin, raising his mug of tea to Frances. ‘Good luck to you, miss. You’re goin’ to need it.’

  They queued up at the counter at the far end of the canteen. The food was served by women who were as friendly as the men.

  ‘What’ll you have, love? The toad’s very nice today.’

  They collected eating irons from a box and found room at one of the tables. As well as the Yorkshire pudding and sausages, Frances’s plate contained a small mountain of mashed potato and boiled cabbage.

  She said, ‘They don’t really think we’re idle, do they? Like Tom said.’

  Pip laughed. ‘They know we’re anything but.’ She tapped the front of her pea jacket. ‘See this badge I’m wearing. What does it say?’

  ‘National Service.’

  ‘What’s under that?’

  ‘It looks like the initials I W. With some waves underneath.’

  ‘IW stands for Inland Waterways. But they say it stands for Idle Women and that’s what they call us. It’s only a joke. They don’t really mean it.’

  ‘Do I get one of those badges, too?’

  ‘When you’ve completed your training – if you do. How do you feel about working on the boats – now you’ve seen something of them? Do you think you’re up to it?’

  She said cautiously, ‘I should think so.’

  ‘Well, you walked the plank all right and that’s a pretty good test. Some of the girls never even get that far. They take one look at the boats and scarper. Actually, it’s best if they do it then rather than going through all the training and then pushing off. That’s a big waste of everyone’s time. Other girls find they just can’t cope, for one reason or another. They’re not strong enough, they get ill or injured, or they just plain hate it. Somehow, I think you’ll probably be all right, but only time will tell.’

  Frances was far from certain that she shared Pip’s optimism. The obstacle course had been alarming and, cosy as the cabin was and decent as Pip seemed, the prospect of sharing such cramped quarters, in such primitive living conditions, was daunting. No bath, no proper lavatory, only a hand bowl for washing in a few inches of water. And, so far, Pip hadn’t said a word about how they actually handled the boats. Over cigarettes and cups of very strong tea at the end of their dinner, she brought up the subject of locks.

  Pip sighed. ‘Everybody worries about them, but they’re really very simple. Just think of them as steps in a staircase. The land across England’s not flat, so sometimes you have to go up the stairs and sometimes you have to go down. The steeper the rise, the closer together the locks. Only, of course, boats can’t climb stairs so you have to help them go up and down, using the water as a kind of lift. A lock has two sets of watertight gates with a chamber in between, big enough to take the boat – usually two boats, in fact, side by side. If the water in the chamber’s at the same level as the boat when you arrive, then you can go straight into the chamber, shut the gates behind you and let the water in, or out – depending if you want to go up or down the staircase – by working the gate paddles that control the sluices. When the boat’s at a level equal to the way you’re heading, you open the other gates in front and off you go. But if the water in the chamber was at a higher or lower level than your boat when you came along, then the lock’s against you and the boat has to wait outside while you bring the water up, or down, to its level. It’s all done by gravity and water pressure and manpower. See?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘You will, once you’ve seen one working for yourself. We’ve got time to take Cetus out for a little spin up to Cowley lock this afternoon. Before that, we must do a spot of shopping so we’re ready to get going when the other two arrive tomorrow.’

  They bought tinned baked beans and sardines, margarine, bread, Camp coffee, tea, jam, sugar, tins of evaporated milk. Frances offered up her emergency ration book with the extra coupons for tea and sugar.

  The little spin up to Cowley wasn’t quite so simple as it had sounded. First of all, the engine on Cetus had to be started. This involved another shuffle round the motor’s gunwale and some bewildering instructions about handles and levers and rods and flywheels.

  ‘I’ll take the starting handle to turn her over and when I think she’s ready I’ll begin counting. When I get to three you push the compression lever down. Ready?’

  Pip swung the handle vigorously – for all her small size, she was very strong. Round and round and round. ‘One, two . . . three!’

  Frances was too late the first time and jumped the gun on the second. Pip, patient as ever, began all over again. This time she got it right and the engine burst into a pulsating throb. Back round to the stern again where Pip fitted the swan-neck tiller into its hold.

  ‘Important lesson. Tillers reach all the way across the counter. They have a nasty habit of swinging about if left unattended and can knock you clean off the boat. That can be very dangerous on the motor if you fall near the propeller blades. If that ever happens to somebody, put the engine into neutral immediately. Got that?’

  ‘Yes.’ Another terrifying hazard.

  ‘You steer holding the tiller behind you. Engine controls are right here, just inside the cabin where you can reach them. Only three gears: forward, neutral and reverse. No brakes – you use reverse to slow down. The steerer needs all the space available for manoeuvre so anybody else on the counter has to perch forward on the gunwale – which means you in this instance, as I’m steering. Don’t worry, it’s quite safe. You can lean against the cabin sides and hang onto the ledge.’

  They untied – narrowboats, according to Pip, didn’t cast off, nor did they have port and starboard, but simply left and right, or inside and outside, the inside being the side nearer the towpath. You held in, or you held out. Cetus nosed its seventy-two-foot length from its place in the row and out into the cu
t. One arm of the Grand Union Canal turned towards the docks and the other, which they took, headed for the Midlands. So far, the scenery was a big disappointment. There were fields and hedges on one side, but the other bank was lined with ugly wharves and warehouses. The only pleasant smell came from the Nestlé’s cocoa factory – tantalizing whiffs of chocolate wafting around on the air. Pip shouted to her at her precarious perch on the gunwale.

  ‘Another lesson: keep to the right of other boats on the Grand Canal, but stay away from the banks if you can. The cut’s about twelve feet deep in the middle but the mud piles up at the sides and you’re liable to get stuck in it if you’re not very careful. Catch the rudder in the mud and you’ve lost control so your bows go careering into the bank. It happens a lot at bad corners, but luckily there aren’t any on the way to Cowley.’

  ‘What do you do, if you get stuck?’

  ‘You use a shaft to try and shove the boat off. If you’re lucky, it works. If you’re not, you hope for a snatch from another boat passing – they tow you off, in other words. Like I said, the boaters will usually help if they aren’t in too much of a hurry.’

  It was hard to imagine the silent washerwomen, or the weasel-faced man, helping anybody but their own kind.

  Cetus trundled on slowly and steadily. The pace was tortoise-slow – no more than about four miles an hour – and she began to see why it took so long to get anywhere.

  ‘Bridge coming up,’ Pip shouted. ‘Keep your head down.’

  They chugged under the archway of an old brick bridge. With the motor unloaded and riding high, the arch wasn’t much above their heads. Soon afterwards the scenery improved, with fields on both sides and a magnificent group of beech trees just below the lock. They tied up and walked along the towpath running beside the cut. It was blowing an icy wind, and Frances found a silk scarf in her raincoat pocket and tied it over her head.

  ‘It’s an uphill lock,’ Pip said. ‘You’re going up the staircase. The bottom gates are open, as you can see, and the water’s down at our level, so if we were on the boat we could have gone straight in. We’ll go up onto the lock-side so we can see properly.’