They got back to Bulls Bridge before dark and tied up at the lay-by for the night. Pip cooked the supper – tinned stew and tinned peas and mashed potatoes – and Prudence fell fast asleep over her plate. They were allowed a lie-in until seven the next morning, but as soon as breakfast was finished and cleared away they had to clean the cabins, black-lead the stoves, polish the brass, fill the coal boxes, chop the firewood, scrub the decks and cabin tops, refill the water cans – Janet would have grumbled like anything. When all that was done to Pip’s satisfaction, she gave them another lesson on tying knots and a demonstration on how to splice ropes – mending broken ones by winding the strands together.
The replacement trainee turned up at midday. Pip had gone off to the depot office and Prudence and Frances were practising rope-splicing in the motor cabin when they heard someone call outside. They stuck their heads out to see who it was.
She was standing at the edge of the wharf above – a tall, slender and very beautiful girl with russet-red hair that reached to her shoulders in a mass of curls. Her face was pale, her lips painted scarlet, and the silver earrings in her ears dangled like miniature chandeliers. She was wearing the strangest clothes: a green velvet cloak over a leather jerkin and corduroy breeches tucked into high red boots, and, on her head, a Robin Hood hat with a long quill feather sticking out of it. A carpet bag lay at her feet and a roll of bedding was tucked under one arm. She gave them a dazzling smile.
‘Hallo there,’ she said. ‘I’m Rosalind Flynn. I’ve come to train.’
Six
SHE REALIZED THAT they had no idea what to make of her. Maybe it was the theatre-wardrobe clothes, or maybe they’d expected someone quite different, or maybe she was just in the wrong place.
She said, ‘This is Miss Rowan’s boat, isn’t it? Cetus. That’s what they told me.’
One of the girls – the fair-haired one – nodded. ‘Yes. She’ll be back soon.’ The rest of her emerged from the cabin doors. ‘I’m Frances Carlyon. And this is Prudence Dobbs. We’re both trainees.’ She held out her hand. ‘How do you do.’
Rosalind shook it politely and did the same with the other girl – the shy one with the sausage curls and what looked like bedbug bites all over her face. She indicated the old carpet bag at her feet and the rolled-up blankets and pillow that had done many years’ faithful service on all manner of couches in all manner of lodgings. ‘What do I do with these?’
They helped her on board and guided her down, backwards, into the cabin which made her feel like Alice in Wonderland after she’d drunk from the wrong bottle and grown too big. Sausage-curls said that she could have the bigger bed that came out of a cupboard at the back, if she liked. The fair-haired girl told her that she slept on the butty next door.
‘The butty?’
‘The boat without the engine. This is the motor – it has one to pull the butty. That’s why this cabin is a bit smaller.’
They showed her where to store her things, and where everything else was kept, and how the dolls-house stove worked. And then they all inched their way along a very narrow ledge outside the cabin to where the engine was, and the bucket.
‘You get used to it,’ the one called Frances said. ‘After a bit.’
Neither of them, she guessed, had ever come across anything like it before. Lavatories, in their lives, would have been made of white china and come with chains to pull and torrents of flushing water. But she had known buckets before, and outside privies, and chamber pots under the bed.
They clambered back along the ledge to the cabin, their feet almost in the water. The boats were all loaded up and ready to go, the fair-haired girl said. They’d been down to Limehouse docks for the steel billets and now they were going to take the Grand Union Canal north up to Tyseley near Birmingham to deliver them. After that, they’d go to a coalfield somewhere near Coventry and fill up the empty holds with coal for factories on the way back.
Rosalind said, ‘I’m afraid I don’t know a thing about barges. I’ve never been on one in my life before.’
The fair girl grinned. ‘Don’t worry, we hadn’t either, had we, Prudence?’
The other one shook her sausage curls and scratched at the bites.
‘And they’re called narrowboats, never barges – just to warn you.’
Miss Rowan appeared and introduced herself as Pip. She was bossy but not bitchy. Some of the theatre-wardrobe clothes, she explained kindly, were going to be a problem. The cloak would get dangerously in the way and the hat would fall off. The breeches were quite practical, especially the leather belt that held them up, and so was the jerkin, but the smart red boots would get ruined in a trice. Did she have any other footwear? Alas, no. In the end it was decided to make do for the time being with the breeches, the jerkin and the boots, and Pip lent her an old jacket to wear on top. It would be a good idea, she added, still very kindly, if Rosalind tied her long hair back or it would blow about and stop her seeing properly and might get caught in machinery. A piece of string should do the trick – there was plenty of it on the boats.
They had thick spam sandwiches and cups of strong tea in one of the cabins and, afterwards, three bent pieces of iron were handed out ceremoniously like precious gifts. They were for winding up things called paddles in locks and for letting them down. They must NEVER be lent, lost or dropped overboard, but kept safe and worn tucked securely in their leather belts. Assisted by the girl, Frances, who obviously had more of a clue than she’d let on, Pip gave a demonstration of how to start up the engine which seemed to require a combination of brute force and split-second timing.
Rosalind was given the job of untying ropes from iron rings – she managed that all right – and hopped onto the back of the motor boat which Pip was driving, balancing on the ledge at the side, to keep out of her way. Frances and Prudence were in the one they’d called the butty, towed along behind them on the end of a piece of rope with Frances doing the steering. They pottered off along the canal, the engine making loud pop-popping noises. A row of urchins, leaning over a bridge, shouted rude things and hurled clods of mud. Pip took no notice.
‘Pointless shouting back or getting angry – it only encourages the little perishers.’
After a while, they came to a lock – the first one she’d ever seen. The gates were standing wide open and in they went, the butty sliding in beside them. Pip, who had undone the tow rope, chucked it neatly onto its front end as it passed.
She followed Pip up some slippery steps to help heave the gate shut on their side. Frances was struggling with the gate on the opposite side of the lock, while Prudence was holding the butty on a rope, like a dog on a lead.
‘We have to lower the paddles,’ Pip said. ‘Watch carefully.’ The bent piece of iron was fitted onto the end of some sort of winding gear and given a quick turn and, hey presto, there was an ear-splitting rattling as the thing unwound. The other gate was still half open, Frances still struggling. ‘Come on, Frances, put your back into it!’
They ran up to the gates at the top end and Pip said, ‘Got your windlass? Soon as Frances has finished at the bottom, see if you can wind this paddle up.’
It reminded her of cranking the handle of the wind machine backstage – only fifty times harder. She could hardly move the wretched thing at all. Luckily, some old man appeared from somewhere and took over with a lecherous wink and a grin.
Pip said drily, ‘You won’t be able to count on a lock-keeper every time. You’ll have to be able to manage it yourself.’
The water rushed in to fill the lock and the boats rose up with it. Then the top gates had to be heaved open before they stepped back on board. More rope tricks from Pip as the motor overtook the front end of the butty, and they were off again with it trailing behind them. On a straight stretch, Pip handed over.
‘Take a turn with the tiller – let’s see how you do.’
Badly, as it turned out. At the first bend, she pushed the thing the wrong way and the boat headed straight for the bank.
Pip grabbed hold of it and they veered away just in time. They went on veering this way and that. Shoving the tiller in one direction to make the boat’s nose go the opposite way made no sense at all, and it was no help that the front end was miles away from her and that the boat was so slow to react. Still, after a while, with Pip constantly correcting her, she began to get the hang of it.
They were gradually leaving London behind, chugging north-west at a funeral pace along the canal – the cut, as she was supposed to call it. Another pair of boats came past them, from the other direction – not with trainees but with the gypsy-like people she had seen at the depot. Pip called out something and the man steering the motor jerked his head and muttered something back. Rosalind smiled and waved at him but he ignored her. So did the woman in the butty.
‘Why are they so grumpy?’
‘They’re not grumpy. It’s just their way, if they don’t know you.’
They went through two more locks, and each time the gates were open for them.
‘We’re lucky today,’ Pip said. ‘We’ve got a good road. Sometimes they’re all against you and it takes twice as long if you have to get the lock ready each time. Fill it, or empty it, as the case may be, before you can get in.’
Across the fields the sun was already setting, painting the sky with lovely crimson streaks. They did two more locks, both obligingly open and ready, before they stopped in a wooded spot above the second one, close to another pair of boats. She had to walk along the top planks to the front end to tie up, but it wasn’t too difficult. Ballet lessons had taught her about footwork and balance. She’d been rather good at ballet and if she hadn’t grown too tall, she might have become a dancer instead of an actress. The lock was called Black Jack. According to Pip, the boaters gave them all names – Black Jack, Copper Mill, Springwell, Stockers, Batch, Rickey – one hundred and fifty-four of them all the way up to Tyseley, and the names had to be learned and remembered. There was no map to help, not in wartime. Maps, like signposts, could help the Germans if they invaded; they’d been burned, torn up, hidden away under lock and key. Pip had made her own notes of what she called Useful Information: names of locks and towns, pubs and good places to eat, shop, have baths, fill up with water, get repairs done. She’d written it all down in a book which she carried in the pocket of her jacket. By the time they’d got both boats tied up, one alongside the other – which took some doing with the three of them scrambling about and a lot of yelling from Pip – it was dark.
Pip said hopefully, ‘I don’t suppose any of you can cook?’
‘I can.’
‘Good. Then you can do supper tonight for us, Rosalind. We’ve got potatoes and a cabbage and a tin of mince. Think you can make something with that?’
‘Any onions?’
‘There might be. We’ll have a hunt.’
She cooked on the little stove in the motor while the others kept out of the way in the butty cabin. Two onions had been discovered in the locker under the side bed – sprouting but still edible – so she fried those before she added the tinned mince. The potatoes went into the oven, in their skins, and the cabbage was cut up, ready to do last. She’d been cooking meals on all kinds of tricky stoves since she was about twelve, making up dishes out of any scraps she could find. Cooking bored her mother, but not her.
They sat down to eat in the butty cabin, next door, where there was a bit more room. Pip said, ‘This is very good, Rosalind. Did you work as a cook?’
‘No. I’m an actress.’
They all stopped eating, forks halfway to mouths.
Pip said, ‘How very interesting. I don’t think I’ve ever met an actress before. What sort of parts did you play?’
‘Oh, lots of different ones. I’ve been acting since I was a child.’
‘What did you do most recently?’
She told them about being with Sir Lionel’s company, which impressed them no end.
Prudence said, ‘Why ever did you leave?’
She embroidered that bit. ‘Well, I thought if I didn’t do my war bit soon, I’d get sent into a factory, or called up into the services. I thought this would be more fun.’
Pip frowned. ‘I wouldn’t exactly call it fun. It’s very hard work on the boats and pretty uncomfortable, as you’ll discover. And, speaking of hard work, we’ve got a long day ahead of us tomorrow, so we need to get off as early as we can in the morning – which means being up before dawn. We’ll have to let the boaters go ahead first – they won’t want us holding them up – and that also means that the locks are likely to be against us unless we’re lucky with boats coming the other way. Rosalind, you can go on the butty with Prudence while Frances comes on the motor with me and does some lock-wheeling – that’s taking the bike along the towpath to the next lock ahead and getting it ready for us, if necessary.’
They drank cocoa and smoked cigarettes – except for Prudence who didn’t smoke – and they talked. Pip had once worked a narrowboat of her own on the Worcester Canal, so no wonder she knew so much about it. Frances said she came from Dorset and made her home sound like a ruin, though it was probably very grand. Poor Prudence had been working at a bank in Croydon, totting up figures all day long. They wanted to know more about the theatre, so Rosalind entertained them with stories of various disasters – forgotten lines, falling scenery, faulty props – some of them exaggerated, others made up, a lot of them perfectly true. And with tales about Sir Lionel – though not everything about him. There was no point in shocking them.
The stove in the motor cabin was still warm when she and Prudence went back there for the night. They let down the bed out of the cupboard, across the bulkhead, and she arranged her makeshift bedding. Prudence sat on the edge of the other bunk in her nightie and woollen dressing gown, winding her hair up in curlers to make the sausage curls. She kept scratching the bites on her face.
‘Pip says they must be from bedbugs. She says they always get them on the boats. I haven’t seen any, though.’
‘You wouldn’t, sweetie, they’re too small. I’ve had bites like that before, as well.’
Many times, indeed, but she didn’t say so. Prudence wouldn’t have come across such things, any more than the bucket in the engine room. Her home in Croydon would be clean and neat and entirely bug-free.
Rosalind put on her flannel pyjamas – left behind by one of the travelling salesmen – unclipped her silver earrings and curled up on the cross-bed. It was surprisingly comfortable and with plenty of room sideways, though she had to bend her legs to fit in lengthways. It must be the marital bed in the boat people’s cabins, husband and wife cosily tucked up together. They’d have to like each other a lot, mind, and it wouldn’t do to be tall – not that any of the boat people were, so far as she could see. Height seemed to have been bred out of them so they could live on the boats without bumping their heads. They were short, but they were very tough and they were very strong.
She did some more thinking. The evening performance would be ending at the theatre, with Felicia playing Portia, perhaps, though the role would be far beyond her range. Given the chance, she could have done it well. She recited the words in her head.
The quality of mercy is not strain’d,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice bless’d;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes . . .
Or maybe Kate – that was a meaty part that she’d always fancied. If I be waspish, best beware my sting. Or Ophelia, drifting around, out of her mind. There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance; pray, love, remember: and there is pansies, that’s for thoughts.
And the thought she was thinking right now was that maybe the narrowboats hadn’t been such a good idea. From what she’d seen and heard so far, factory work would be a rest cure; so would the services.
She propped herself up on one elbow, watching Prudence winding up the curlers. ‘What happened to the girl I replaced?’
‘She lef
t.’
‘Why?’
‘She hated it. But then, she didn’t really give it a fair try. And she never stopped complaining. We were rather glad when she went.’ Prudence stopped winding and looked at her anxiously. ‘Do you think you’ll like it?’
‘I don’t know, to be honest.’
‘But you’ll give it a try?’
She flopped back onto the pillow. ‘Yes, I’ll give it a try.’
There was silence and she turned her head to see that Prudence was kneeling beside her bed. At first she thought she’d dropped something and then realized that she was saying her prayers. Just as well somebody was; they were going to need all the help they could get.
Seven
THE BOATERS MOORED at Black Jack lock had already left before dawn. Pip swore that they could see in the dark, like cats, and they played all kinds of tricks to keep ahead. Time was money to them. The sooner they were off, the sooner they delivered their load, the sooner they got paid and the sooner they could start the next trip. They’d make sure of getting away first by quietly loosing off the mooring ropes and then bow-hauling or shafting the boats along the bank before they started up the engine. And if they had the luck to meet another pair coming the other way, they’d be getting a good road with the locks ready for them.
After a quick breakfast Aquila and Cetus set off just as the sun was coming up over the trees, making the overnight frost sparkle. Frances was on the motor with Pip, to lock-wheel for her.
The Boat Girls Page 8