The Boat Girls

by Margaret Mayhew

  ‘Where is he buried?’

  ‘Stoke Bruan. All done proper. We knows how to do things right.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  Another silence. The stove was roasting her left leg and she could feel sweat breaking out on her forehead.

  ‘You must be very proud of your grandson – Freddy.’

  ‘’E’s a good lad, though ’e’s a chatterchops.’

  ‘And of your grandson Jack, too.’

  ‘None better ’n Jack. ’E looks a’ter me.’

  ‘That’s nice.’ Everything she was saying sounded false to her ears; Mrs Carter would surely think so too. Old she might be, but not stupid.

  ‘’E’ll be gettin’ wed one o’ these days, will our Jack. There’s plenty on the cut for ’im ter choose from.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure.’

  ‘No sense lookin’ elsewhere.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Those that live off the cut don’ understand our ways, see. That’s why we keeps to our own. We bin on the boats ’undreds o’ years. Don’ do ’less a person’s born to it.’

  Mrs Carter lifted her head at that moment and, for the first time, Frances saw her face clearly.

  It was a very old face – mottled, deeply lined, wrinkled, toothless and with grey hairs sprouting from the chin. But the rheumy eyes were knowing. If she’d heard the same cut gossip as Molly – which seemed likely – then she was probably warning her off her grandson. Perhaps that had been the whole reason for the invitation to tea.

  She drained her cup, thanked her very politely and made her escape. Outside, arms plastered in muck to the elbow, Freddy was chucking stinking slime from the mud box into the cut. It was a chore that she loathed but he was grinning away. As his grandmother had pointed out, he’d been born to it.

  A mouldy shop-bought pie had disagreed with Prue and she stayed behind when Rosalind and Frances walked along the towpath to the local pub in the evening. A group of American airmen in the bar immediately surrounded them. Ros had pinned her IW badge onto her peasant blouse and they were curious.

  ‘What do you girls do? Some kinda special job?’

  Ros smiled sweetly. ‘I’ll tell you if you give us some of your lovely American cigarettes.’

  They were showered with packets of Camels and Lucky Strikes, and were bought drinks – proper gins, not the usual watery beer. In return they explained what IW stood for and what they did. The Yanks didn’t believe them at first.

  ‘You’re kiddin’ us. Beautiful girls like you doin’ work like that.’

  True, they looked cleaner than usual, having had time to wash their hair and themselves, but they displayed their ruined hands and the cuts and bruises as proof. Soon more drinks were bought, more cigarettes lit. The Americans were ground staff from a nearby bomber station – good company, with nice manners and bags of charm.

  ‘I’m from Smithville in West Virginia,’ one of them told Frances in a drawling accent. ‘Guess you don’t know where that is.’

  ‘Sorry, I don’t.’

  He proceeded to tell her all about his home town and his family and then got out several photographs. She dutifully admired the pretty wood-framed house, with the mother and father and the three small sisters standing on the porch. He was clearly very homesick and she didn’t blame him. England in wartime was a horrible place to be and America, the land of plenty, thousands of miles away. As she listened to him talking at length about what a great country it was, she could see, over his shoulder, that Jack Carter had come in and was drinking at the bar.

  ‘Ever seen a baseball game?’ the American was asking.

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘Gee, you don’t know what you’ve missed.’

  After the next round of drinks, she began to feel decidedly tipsy and decided to go back to the boat. The American wanted to walk with her but she refused the offer. Ros, her pockets full of cigarettes, another gin in her hand, earrings jangling merrily, stayed.

  It was almost dark, but not quite. Frances could still see the towpath and the cut beside it. Boaters returning from long evenings at pubs and many pints of beer had been known to fall in and drown. They had once passed a boatman crawling unsteadily on hands and knees along the wooden plank connecting his boat to the bank.

  ‘Evenin’, Frances.’

  He’d come up behind her so quietly that she hadn’t heard him. Her heart was thudding away.

  ‘Hallo, Jack.’

  Without his coat, the embroidered waistcoat was on full display. Boatmen wore loose white shirts and he’d rolled up the sleeves, showing his strong arms.

  ‘Seen you with them Yanks.’ His disapproval was obvious.

  None of his business, she thought fuzzily. ‘Yes, they were very nice. Real gentlemen.’

  ‘Not from what I’ve ’eard. Yer needs ter watch out.’

  ‘I can take care of myself, thanks.’

  So saying, she tripped over something on the path and he grabbed hold of her to save her from falling flat on her face.

  ‘Yer bin drinkin’ too much gin, I reckon.’

  ‘I most certainly have not.’

  ‘Yes, yer ’ave. I bin watchin’ yer at the pub.’

  ‘Well, you’d no business to. Let go of me, please.’

  He walked beside her, hands in his trouser pockets, whistling.

  ‘Like ter go ter a fair?’

  ‘A fair? You mean with merry-go-rounds?’

  ‘With all kinds o’ things. There’ll be a big one by Leamington. An’ it’s a good tie-up for the night. I’ll take yer if yer wants – that’s if yer gets there soon enough. Can’t be after dark with the blackout.’

  She’d heard that boaters loved fairs. And so did she.

  ‘But we won’t be able to keep up with you, Jack. You’ll be at Leamington hours ahead of us.’

  ‘I’ll wait.’

  When they reached the boats, there was silence from Eurydice – Prue would be sound asleep. Nobody else was about.

  ‘See yer at Leamington, then,’ he said.

  He was standing very close and she wondered whether Molly was right again. ’E wouldn’t lay a finger on yer. Not ’less you wanted it. Well, she did want it. She wanted him to lay his fingers on her – all ten of them this time. And if she took just a single step towards him, he’d know it. Instead, she took several cowardly steps backwards.

  ‘You frit of me, Frances?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes, yer are. Yer shakin’ all over.’

  ‘I’m cold, that’s all.’

  ‘Couldn’t be. Not this weather. Yer frit. Frit I’m goin’ to grab hold of yer. Could ’ave done that back in the fields if I’d wanted to, and yer couldn’t ’ave stopped me. But I didn’t, did I?’

  ‘No, you didn’t.’

  ‘Don’t yer wish I ’ad?’

  ‘Certainly not.’

  He smiled slowly. ‘Don’t believe yer. Yer want me to, only yer frit. An’ yer’ve drunk too much gin so yer’d best get to bed.’ He held out his hand to help her onto Orpheus, steadying her when she staggered. ‘G’night, Frances.’

  As he walked away, she called after him. ‘I’d love to go to the Leamington fair, Jack.’

  ‘I’ll wait fer yer,’ he answered over his shoulder. ‘Like I said.’

  Prudence felt better the next morning and was up early, boiling the kettle on the Primus and cutting slices of bread. Ros made a groaning sound.

  ‘Don’t do any for me.’

  ‘Did your pie make you ill too?’

  ‘Not the pie, the gin. I drank too much at the pub. I feel ghastly.’

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

  There was another groan. ‘No, thanks. Not a thing.’

  Frances came over from the motor and she had a headache, too.

  ‘We’ll have to untie and get on. Can you take the motor, Prue? I’ll lock-wheel and Ros ought to be able to manage the butty.’

  Somehow they got down the Mathus seven. Ros was sick over t
he side and Frances forgot the safety catch when she was drawing a paddle and let go of the windlass by mistake. The handle whirled round, striking the back of her hand again and again before she snatched it away. Prudence made a hash of steering the motor, crashing wildly into gates and then dropping the butty strap on her way out. If the locks hadn’t been ready for them, they would have taken all day to get through.

  At Leighton Buzzard Prudence, still on the motor, looked out for Steve McGhie, although there was no hope that he’d be there. She searched fruitlessly among the faces peering over Leighton Bridge and among the people on the towpath. On they went through the Stoke Hammond three, Talbots, Finney and Cosgrove. Along the quiet, tree-lined stretches of the cut the anglers on the bank, their fish disturbed, scowled as they raised their rods in an archway to let them by. Prudence hid behind the chimney.

  They came to the bottom of the Stoke Bruerne seven, confronting them like a Herculean trial of strength. At the top they tied up for the night. Ros had recovered her appetite and they had corned beef and mashed potatoes for supper with fresh carrots that she’d pinched from an allotment when she’d been lock-wheeling the day before, and some juicy apples that she’d scrumped from an orchard. Poor Frances could hardly use her hand.

  After a good night’s sleep they let go early the next morning and continued on their way through the Blisworth tunnel up to Gayton and on to the Bugby seven and Norton Junction, then through the Braunston tunnel and the Braunston six to the turn towards Napton and Leamington. Frances had taken over Orpheus while Ros had a turn at lock-wheeling and Prudence steered Eurydice. At Napton, Pip passed them with some trainees, going the other way, and shouted out something to Prudence that she couldn’t hear. They worked on steadily down through the Wigrams three, the Itchington ten, the Radford ten and tied up at Leamington near the gasworks in the evening. She was giving the cabin roof a good swab-down when she heard someone call her name. She turned round and saw Steve there, standing on the bank.

  ‘How did you know we’d be here?’ she asked him later.

  ‘I didn’t. Figured there was a chance you’d be by, though, after I’d seen another boat with girls on it. There was an older woman in charge and she said she thought you’d be coming along soon.’

  Pip, of course. And that was what she’d been shouting about.

  He said, ‘If you hadn’t come along, I was going to go to Croydon – the place where you said you lived – and see if I could find you there.’

  She thought of the pretty WAAF in the pub and the way he’d been smiling down at her, just like he was smiling down at her now. She ought not to believe him, or trust him.

  ‘But you don’t know my address.’

  ‘I know your name: Prudence Dobbs. I’ll bet there are not many Dobbses in Croydon and only one called Prudence. Wouldn’t have taken me too long.’

  ‘Anyway, I don’t go home often. We spend most of our time on the boats.’

  ‘That’s why I came looking here first. I’ve got a coupla days’ leave, so maybe I could come along with you. Like before.’

  ‘We can’t really take passengers.’

  ‘I’m not a passenger. I’m crew.’

  Frances’s brother had been one thing – this was quite another. The boaters wouldn’t approve at all.

  ‘You couldn’t stay on the boats at night. The people on the cut would talk.’

  He pretended to look shocked. ‘Can’t have that. Hey, I can kip down anywhere . . . haystack, hedge, wherever . . . I’m used to living rough. Do it all the time back home when we go hunting.’

  ‘Hunting?’ She couldn’t imagine him doing that, wearing a smart red coat and following the hounds. ‘You mean for foxes?’

  ‘Heck no. Big animals. Moose, elk, white-tailed deer . . . Some guys go for bears. Not me, though.’

  ‘You have bears in Canada?’

  ‘Sure we do. Big ones. More’n five foot tall when they stand up, with great long claws like this.’ He held up crooked fingers to show her. ‘They can be mighty mean. We go hunting in fall right through winter – my brothers an’ me. Mostly I use my grandpa’s Winchester – same as he used years back, when he was alive – other times we shoot with longbows.’

  ‘Bows? Like Robin Hood?’

  ‘Yeah . . . I guess like your Robin Hood. Only it’s not like Sherwood Forest, that’s for sure. Canada’s a real big place, an’ real wild out of the cities.’ He grinned at her. ‘So you see, it won’t bother me sleeping rough – if I come along.’

  She hesitated. ‘I’ll have to ask the others.’

  ‘Sure. And while you’re asking, tell ’em I’m an engineer. It might come in handy.’

  It did. He started the engine first go in the morning – one easy swing on the handle and off it went – and when it broke down later he mended it straight away. And that wasn’t all. He cleaned out the mud box, checked the bilge pump, tightened up the bolts on the shaft couplings, hauled up the cabin floor to grease and check the rest of the shaft and the stern gland – all horrible difficult dirty jobs that they hated.

  When they’d tied up that evening, she went for a stroll with him along the towpath beside the fields. It was still daylight, still very warm and very peaceful, the sun just beginning to go down. The corn had been cut, the sheaves stooked in neat rows. They climbed over a stile into one of the fields so that she could pick the scarlet poppies growing along the edge, then sat down by the hedge. Except for some rooks cawing away over a wood on the far side, there was scarcely a sound.

  He stretched out, propping himself up on one elbow and chewing on a piece of stubble, while she sat at a little distance from him, hands clasped round her knees, the bunch of poppies laid beside her.

  ‘Right now,’ he said, ‘you’d never know there was a war on, would you? It’s kinda strange.’

  ‘We hardly see anything of it on the boats. Only when we’re going through London or when the cut runs past an aerodrome and the planes fly over us.’

  ‘Too bad you don’t come by Cranborough.’

  ‘I did once.’

  He stopped chewing and stared at her. ‘You came by and you didn’t let me know? Why the heck not?’

  She told him about seeing him in the Three Horseshoes with the girl.

  He shook his head. ‘You got it all wrong. I talk to different WAAFs all the time. I don’t even remember which one that was. It’s you I’m crazy about, Prudence. I thought you’d have cottoned on by now. You’re my kind of girl. I knew that when I saw you coming along in the boat, wearing those overalls, with dirt all over your face – remember? You held out your hand to me and that was real dirty too. I thought you were the cutest thing I’d ever seen.’

  She said stiffly, ‘I don’t usually look like that. At home, I look quite different.’

  ‘Sure. And I bet that’s cute too. But I’ll always remember the way you were the first time I saw you. I want us to get married, Prudence, just as soon as this goddam war’s over. I guess we could do that in England or we could wait and get married back home in Winnipeg. Whichever you like.’ He chewed some more on the straw, watching her. ‘But maybe you hate the whole idea. Maybe you’d never want to leave England. Maybe you’d hate to live in Canada.’

  She turned away from him, gazing across the cornfield, trying to imagine what it would be like to live in a place thousands of miles away – a place where it snowed and froze from November to March, where they had log cabins and fished through holes in ice so thick you could drive a truck across it; a place so wild they went hunting for bears; a place where, when the snows had melted at long last, it got swelteringly hot instead, with mosquitoes the size of your hand. To leave dear beautiful old England and go and live in such a place among total strangers.

  ‘I’d look after you,’ he said, as though he knew exactly what she was thinking. ‘Take real good care of you. If you’d take the chance.’

  The rooks were circling lower and lower over the treetops, like planes coming into land. She could hea
r a church clock striking somewhere in the distance. One, two, three, four, five, six . . . a gentle English sound.

  ‘Prudence? Do you reckon you could take a chance on me?’

  She turned her head towards him. ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘Kept my promise,’ he said. ‘Waited fer yer.’

  ‘Sorry we took so long.’

  ‘Didn’t do so bad, considerin’. What’s ’appened ter yer ’and?’

  ‘Forgot the safety catch and let go of the windlass by mistake.’

  ‘Yer want ter take more care. Could’ve broke yer bones.’ He stared at her with his dark eyes. ‘Yer look beautiful in them clothes.’

  She’d put on a cotton blouse and skirt instead of the old games shorts and shirt. Washed her hair, too, and brushed it properly, for once. Taken trouble. Playing with fire, Ros had warned her. With a man like that.

  ‘Where’s Rickey?’

  ‘Left ’im behind, guardin’ the boats.’

  They heard the sound of the fair from some distance away – organ music blaring, machinery roaring and rattling, shrieks of delight from the crowd.

  ‘What d’yer want to do?’ he asked when they arrived at the glittering lights, the stalls, the rides.

  ‘Everything.’

  They queued to see the Fat Lady and the Tattooed Lady and the Siamese Twins. They rolled pennies, threw quoits, shied for coconuts, went on the Big Lizzie and the Big Dipper and the Helter Skelter. When he hit the Test Your Strength machine with the sledgehammer, the bell at the top rang loudly, first try, and he knocked down all the targets at the shooting gallery. The prize was a gold-rimmed china plate decorated with roses and slotted with a blue satin ribbon, which he presented to her with a flourish.

  ‘Wouldn’t your grandmother like to have it?’

  ‘I dare say, but ’tis not fer her I won it.’

  ‘How did you get to be such a good shot?’

  ‘Rabbits an’ hares,’ he said. ‘Pheasants an’ pigeons. Anythin’ for the pot. I shoots ’em an’ Rickey fetches ’em back fer me. Sometimes ’e brings back ducks’ eggs. Jumps off at a bridge-’ole and jumps back on at the next with one in ’is mouth.’

  ‘What a clever dog!’

  ‘Yer won’t find better.’