Water Gypsies

by Annie Murray

  Maryann sank down on the side bed, still feeling weak and sick. Lord, if only she could lie down and sleep again! Everywhere she looked there was muck and mess – jobs staring her in the face, crocks to be washed, a pan gluey with porridge, crumbs and dirt everywhere, the stove all rust and a pail of dirty napkins outside, beckoning with their smell. Ada and Esther had had a feed and gone back to sleep behind the curtains of the back bed. She shut them in to keep it dark, hoping they’d sleep as long as possible. They’d wake soon, though, and while they were tied up here she ought to be cleaning and washing like mad to get caught up with herself! But her head felt muzzy in the hot cabin and her limbs just wouldn’t seem to move, however much her head ordered them to. Her ribs and stomach felt tender from retching. She sat, staring dully at the stains down her skirt, her innards still turning uneasily.

  Ada and Esther were seven months old now. Really bonny, everyone said. Esther’s hair had grown into dark curls, her eyes big and blue, cheeks rosy and plump. And Ada was still the live wire, smaller featured, red haired and with a nose-wrinkling smile. But only seven months since they were born! How could she have caught again so soon? Her despair sat in her, cold as stone. She felt pushed down too low even for tears. So far she had managed to hide the fact that she was expecting from Joel. She was ashamed of not telling him. She would have liked his happiness, his sympathy, when she felt so ill, but she hid her exhaustion and poorliness as well as she could. Because Joel would never forgive her if he knew what was in her mind. To Joel his children were the fruits of his manhood, his success, his pledge for the future. She couldn’t confide in him, not this time. Though she was now certain she was expecting, she didn’t allow herself to think of the infant as ‘he’ or ‘she’. She pushed away any imaginings of it as grown up, running among her other children, hand in hand along the flowery towpaths of the Oxford cut. Because having another child was unimaginable. It was impossible. There were already six infants on board. Her whole overwhelmed being cried no! It could not be. In that cold, hard place inside her, she knew she could not do it. Not now. She’d give Joel more children later, but not so soon. She needed more of a gap or she would go under, and then, as Alice Simons had said, where would the rest of the family be?

  Moving carefully so as not to lurch her insides about, she eased herself to her feet, rinsed the dipper out again with clean water and piled the family’s few crocks in it. All the time, shouts and clangs came from outside. Her ears were cocked for sounds of the twins waking. She must get some things done before they woke! She was so slow, fighting sickness and faintness when she stood up too quickly. All the time, as she poured hot water and soap over the dishes, while she hurriedly rinsed out the napkins and strung them along the empty hold of the Theodore, her mind worried frantically at her problems. Bobby usually went and filled the water cans for them when they tied up. But maybe if she went to fill them, lugged those arm-breaking eight-gallon cans back and forth, would that do it? Would that be a way of starting things off? Doing away with … it?

  Scraping porridge from the sides of the pan, she tried to recall fragments of conversations overheard in her childhood, the things women whispered over the grimy walls of Ladywood backyards. These were the scraps of wisdom and hearsay she called upon when the children fell ill: tea-leaf water for sore eyes, goose fat for bad chests, the middle of a boiled onion in the ear when they had earache. But it was more adult, whispered remedies she tried to remember. Drinking water which had had pennies boiled in it, pennyroyal syrup, gin? Wasn’t there something about gin? And, whispered more quietly, more shamefully still, ‘putting something up inside’. Once she’d followed her mother into a house where she was helping another woman who’d ‘had a miss’, and before Flo shooed her out again she’d glimpsed at the foot of the bed the po’ half full of blood. The image made her innards contract with fear. Round and round spun her thoughts. What could she do? Oh, if there were just someone she could ask, could confide in! If only Nancy were still here! She couldn’t have told Nance, though, not about this. Not life-loving, Catholic Nance – she would’ve been horrified. But at least she would’ve been here, the comfort of her, not gone for ever. She ached with loneliness, the tears running down her cheeks and dripping into the washing-up water, but when she tried to stop, wiping her face with her sleeve, the sight of a fraying tear in her old brown cardi made her cry even harder. If only I had someone to talk to, she wept. God, the way I nearly blurted everything out to that preacher last night. That would’ve given him something to pray about, all right.

  They’d reached Tyseley in the late afternoon and Maryann had hurried out without the children, to get to the shops for their rations before everything closed. Even a brief chat with Mr Osborne hadn’t lifted her spirits. As she came back across the wharf with her bread, meat, spuds and tinned milk, she saw the pale young man whom she had caught sight of with his bible on the wharf a few months back. He was speaking to one of the other boatwomen as she stood on the counter of her butty boat, lifting out the tiller to upend it for the night. The man was dressed shabbily in black and wore a trilby hat. His one flash of colour was a red tartan scarf, the ends of which were blowing back over his shoulder in the breeze. Maryann saw the woman nod politely, say something which was evidently dismissive, and disappear into her cabin.

  And as Maryann moved across to the Theodore,he was suddenly beside her.

  ‘Good evening, madam,’ he said, touching the brim of his hat.

  ‘Evening,’ Maryann said brusquely. She knew nothing about the man except that he must be one of those ‘holy Joes’ and they were people she had long found disquieting. She remembered the odd figure of Jimmy Jesus, who used to stand shouting out his message in the Bull Ring. And as children they were frightened of running into the Mormons because people said they would steal away young girls and force them to be brides in Salt Lake City.

  ‘May I presume upon a moment of your time, madam?’ he persisted. From his accent, Maryann could tell he was not from Birmingham but from somewhere further north. He held out to her a pale, thin hand and when she felt forced to stop and glance into his eyes, she saw they were large and dark grey and somehow melancholy in a way which made her soften a little towards him. He had well-pronounced brows and lips so full that she found them off-putting, they looked so plump and moist. But she felt obliged to push her packages into the clasp of her left arm and shake hands, conscious of her rough, callused palms.

  ‘I’m Pastor Owen,’ he told her. ‘James Owen.’ Instead of releasing her hand, he turned it over and examined it.

  ‘A hand that knows a hard-working life,’ he said, giving her another of his deep, mournful looks. To her consternation, Maryann felt tears pricking her eyes. She pulled her hand away, making out that she was about to drop her shopping.

  ‘What d’you want?’ It came out sharper than she had intended.

  ‘Only a moment of your time to share with you the good news of the risen Christ. I’m quite new to the Lord’s work in this area.’ He spoke so humbly and sincerely that she felt guilty, but had no idea what to say in reply. In her head, her mother’s voice admonished, ‘Tell him to bugger off!’

  Instead, she said, ‘Oh, I see.’

  From the pocket of his coat he drew a small, plump bible. Without opening it, but holding it out on the flat of his hand as if proffering a plate of sandwiches, he said,‘“Come to me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” The words of our Lord Jesus – and I am very certain that upon Him alone you can lay all your burdens, Mrs…?’

  ‘Bartholomew.’

  ‘Mrs Bartholomew.’ He went on to tell her how Jesus was the only gate to eternal salvation and to ask whether she had any pressing burdens upon her soul.

  Maryann almost quipped that if he had a couple of hours to spare she could tell him a few, but she was prevented by the genuine sense of sympathy coming from the young man, along with his gangly, rather pathetic look. He could only have been in his early t
wenties and looked as if, had she laid the burdens of her soul upon him as he suggested, his knees might have buckled under the strain.

  ‘I don’t think so, not today, thank you,’ she said, as if refusing wares from a fish salesman.

  ‘Well, just remember – Jesus is the way,’ he said earnestly. ‘And I will pray for you, Mrs Bartholomew. I trust you will do the same for me.’

  As she nodded, he touched the brim of his hat again and turned away, and she watched his long, skinny form move along the wharf, looking out for other boaters who would stop and listen to his message. Boaters whom he no doubt saw as the unschooled and unsaved souls of the cut whom he must rescue.

  Thinking of him now as she struggled through her chores, Maryann knew how close she had come to blurting out her woes to him – a young man, wet behind the ears and a complete stranger! But in her fear and loneliness he was the one person who had asked about her concerns, and who might listen. But then, on hearing, how sharply he would have condemned her! She was contemplating nothing less than the murder of a child in her womb! She was a terrible mother, a terrible woman. But, she thought defiantly, what did that young lad know about being a mother? How could he judge her?

  More tears ran down her cheeks.

  ‘Oh, Nance, come back! O God, forgive me for feeling like this!’

  She pushed her hands down into the bottom of the dipper and straightened her arms, leaning over the warm water. She was so lost in misery that she didn’t move until she heard Joel’s voice talking to the children as they all came across the wharf.

  Ten

  Joel Bartholomew stood at the tiller of the Esther Jane later that morning as they made their way, empty for the moment, through Birmingham and out to the coalfields. It was grey and overcast, the warehouses and factories black as shadows as they closed in on each side, and the air darkened by a pall of smoke. Joel breathed in the fume-filled air, then coughed. The Birmingham sky was cluttered with chimneys, the tallest and blackest being those of the fires of industry, belching aggressively into the clouds and creating further clouds themselves. Many more belonged to the endless rows of houses, which seemed to Joel so gloomy and confining. But he only caught glimpses of them: the cut showed him little of Birmingham’s life, and it saw little of theirs.

  Joel took in less than usual of his surroundings that morning, beyond an automatic watchfulness for the care of his boats, because his mind was restless. Men steering the horse-drawn corporation refuse boats out from the centre of Birmingham to Small Heath tip or to the incinerator at Hay Mills would have seen the Esther Jane and her butty heading towards them, washing flapping over the hold of the Theodore, and Joel at the tiller, burly, bearded, cap pushed down over his thick hair, his wide-sleeved brown jacket buttoned against the cold. They might have heard his racking cough as he drew nearer, from the damp getting into his lungs. But as they drew alongside and shouted, ‘Mornin’!’ or ‘How d’you do?’ as was customary among the politer boaters, they received only the vaguest, most half-hearted response.

  When they were approaching Camp Hill locks, Joel signalled back to Bobby. The boats were on a short strap as they were empty, so they were not far apart. Bobby jumped off the butty at one bridge-hole in Sparkbrook and ran forwards to jump aboard the Esther Jane at the next.

  ‘You come and steer her through,’ Joel ordered, pushing his windlass through his belt. ‘I’m going off for a bit.’

  ‘But …’ Bobby tried to protest. Maryann said the exertions of lock-wheeling made Joel’s cough worse and that Bobby should stay off and do it, but Joel was not in the mood to be argued with.

  ‘Can I come, Dad?’ Joley called, but too late as another bridge passed and Joel was on the bank.

  ‘You stay on,’ he called tersely.

  All the way along the flight at Camp Hill he worked with fierce energy, turning the paddles, cursing when his cough doubled him up and made him stop, fighting for breath. He felt taut and explosive inside, his blood hammering in his veins, and he wanted a way to release the tension inside himself. As they worked along the fast-filling locks, he kept his eyes on the immediate task, only casting his glance over the boats in a general, instinctive way, to make sure all was going smoothly. His muscles pulled and strained on the windlass as he turned the paddles.

  Every step of the way, though he did not allow his eyes to meet hers, her presence, the white-faced figure of his wife seemed to burn itself into him. His Maryann, his little bird, at the tiller of the Theodore, Sally and Rose perched in their coats in front of her on the cabin roof. Once or twice he heard her speak sharply to them. He could hardly avoid catching glimpses of her, in her black skirt and boots, a scarf tied over her hair and her old tweed jacket over her woollens, upright and stony-faced at the helm. Round her had grown up an aura of such misery and loneliness that, however much Joel loved her, he couldn’t seem to break through it and now could hardly bear to see it. He knew it was over the loss of Nancy, and he was full of pain and grief too, for Maryann, for his brother, for himself. And Nancy was the one person who knew Maryann from deep in the past, knew her in a way in which no one else did, and Joel knew Maryann’s grief cut sharp and raw. But he sensed it was more than that. Over the past few days he felt that something else was troubling her, something he couldn’t understand, and he couldn’t seem to reach her.

  Last night, when they’d lain together in the warm, stuffy air of the Theodore, the bitter smell of coal mingling with their breath, he soon realized that though she was silent she was lying awake beside him. The bed was very narrow and no small movement or catch of breath could pass unnoticed if you were awake. Out of the darkness he heard a long, only half-suppressed sigh. For days her face had worn a strained, unhappy look, a frown constantly on her face, sometimes a look of pain. He knew that pale, sick look from when there was a child on the way, but she had said nothing. He knew she was worried about that. Once or twice she had, very shyly, said something about could he pull away – before the last moment. He wasn’t sure if she really meant this. It seemed to him such an unnatural, perverse request to ask him to withdraw at the moment when he was giving himself to her and was least able to control himself. He had managed it a couple of times, the second when she cried out, begging him to move away, and with a huge effort he had wrenched himself from her, almost too late. He found it so hard, such a denial of what he needed, that it hadn’t always worked. But when he asked if there was a child she shook her head.

  ‘No.’ She looked away. ‘I’ve just got a bit of an upset tummy.’

  He knew she found the life hard, especially since the children had come along, but in the past she had always reassured him about how much she loved him and how she would not exchange this way of life for any other. But something was eating away at her, he knew, and her quiet suffering made him feel tense and helpless. What should he say? How was he to understand her?

  Hearing her sigh in bed, sensing the burdened spirit behind that small outrush of breath, he had reached for her, hoping to achieve with his touch what he could not seem to with words. He felt the comfort of her slight, strong body, his hand sliding over her breast, its soft rounded shape, utter pleasure to him. With his lips he found her neck, moving closer to her, wanting to love her, to give affection and comfort. He stroked her back, her breasts, his hand working downwards over her belly. As he eased his fingers between her legs, her voice burst into the darkness in a wail.

  ‘Oh, Joel, please don’t!’

  She was shaking beside him, sobs breaking out of her like waves taking their time to reach the shore. Weeping brokenly, she turned her back on him.

  Having no idea what to do or say, he pulled away, keeping only his hand on her back as she wept in an attempt at comfort, swelling inside with feelings of helplessness and rejection. When her crying abated, she fell into an exhausted sleep, leaving him restless and frustrated.

  He stayed on the bank for a long time that afternoon as they set off along the Bottom Road. He bow-hauled the butty
in and out of the locks, through Aston, amid the black, enclosing walls of that part of the cut, the towpaths clogged with oily filth and cinders and its narrow, slime-choked locks. Despite Bobby’s repeated offers to exchange places with him, and Joley hopping off to walk warily at his side, he worked on like a dynamo, coughing, working the paddles, tugging on the line to haul the butty, his spirit in turmoil.

  Never before in their marriage had he felt this distance from his Maryann. There had been times when the poor, troubled child he knew, before she came back to him as a woman, had closed off from them all and sat sunk in misery. And on many occasions, amid the stress and physical struggles of the boating life, their tempers had crackled and exploded at each other. But that was temporary, was about something he could grasp the meaning of and was over in moments as the annoyance or danger passed. He had never before felt her to be so wholly distant, so completely wretched, and, as if she were his lodestar, he felt thrown off course and afraid.

  Is it because she’s from off the bank? he wondered. She was baffling at times. He often could not work out what was going on in her head. If he’d married a boatwoman born and bred, would it have been easier? Were they more straightforward, the women of the cut, having been known no other life? Was Maryann finally discovering that she couldn’t endure it any longer and secretly longing for a house and unmoving days on the bank?

  Joel stood at Garrison locks as the water roared through the paddles. This was the filthiest, most demoralizing part of the whole journey. Overhead, railways criss-crossed over black, clattering bridges; warehouse walls hemmed them in on each side so that the rodent-coloured sky was almost out of sight altogether, but, like a grim reflection, several dead rats were bobbing in the cut amid the scum and oil of the water. A crewman from one of the joey boats waiting to come through the other way bawled along the path, waving his arm.