Water Gypsies

by Annie Murray

  They all felt well set up after a share of crispy bacon, with wedges of bread and cups of sweet tea. Sylvia and Dot stood outside to finish drinking their tea, and Maryann peered uneasily at them out through the doorway, taking a good look at her new companions in the unsparing morning light, wishing she could examine them even more closely without them seeing. The children kept looking and whispering as well and she had to shush them. She had taken in, this morning, that Sylvia was older than she had supposed the night before. Her thin, oval face looked surprisingly tired and worn, even though she was already made up, with scarlet lipstick to match the wool scarf she was wearing. She had on a pair of workmanlike blue slacks and a loose-sleeved brown jacket. In the neck of this Maryann could just see the neck of a green woolly with the scarf tied round it. She held her tea cupped in both hands to warm them, her long neck bent forwards to sip. She looked to Maryann like a slender, timid deer.

  Dot, however, was far more sturdily built – more of an ox, with her plump face, thick arms and chunky thighs encased in brown corduroy trousers. Over these she had on a tweed jacket, and a navy beret perched sidelong on her head. Maryann guessed that Sylvia must be in her late twenties, but with Dot it was very hard to tell. The two women were talking in low voices; every so often Maryann saw them look over towards the open doors of the Esther Jane and she tried to pretend she wasn’t watching them. What were they talking about? she wondered, full of dread. What did women like that talk about?

  Then she heard Dot’s hockey captain voice cry, I say – look at those simply marvellous cats! Do they live aboard, d’you suppose?’

  Jenny and Spots were climbing along the cabin of the Theodore. The Bartholomew children listened wide-eyed as Dot made cooing, cajoling noises to the cats.

  ‘Oh, aren’t you a darling!’ they heard. Joley and Ezra started giggling and set Ada and Esther off as well.

  ‘Are those ladies living with us now?’ Sally asked, bemused.

  ‘Only for a bit,’ Maryann said irritably, piling their few crocks in the dipper for washing, with more force than was necessary. She was very anxious about the day ahead. She was skipper of both the boats now, with those two green beginners. She’d only worked with Joel and Bobby and was full of worry that she’d make a mess of it all. What she dreaded most was the thought of all the other boaters watching what was happening to the Esther Jane – one of the old, well-known Number One boats. She knew what to do, really, but she was afraid her nervousness would make her do something wrong – and who knew if those two painted birds out there really knew anything about working boats? She was damned if she’d let them make a fool of her and let Joel down. That was how she saw it – she had to do this for him.

  ‘I thought we’d start you off gentle like,’ Mr Veater told her when she went to the office. ‘Then I’ll see about a trip to Oxford.’ Seeing Maryann’s furrowed brow, the agitated way she was rubbing her hands together, he added, ‘They’ll soon cotton on – don’t you worry.’

  Outside, her breath streamed white from her and the smoke from the boats’ chimneys hung in long, slowly dispersing banners in the still air. One of the other boatwomen accosted her.

  ‘Who’re those two you’ve got on board with you then, Maryann?’ She eyed the Bartholomews’ pair, beside which Sylvia and Dot were waiting for her with the eagerness of newly trained dogs.

  ‘Volunteers,’ Maryann told her.

  ‘Blimey.’ The woman peered at them. ‘My eyes aren’t so strong now, but if it weren’t for that one’s hair I’d’ve said they were chaps.’

  Maryann knew the news would spread round the boaters of Sutton Stop at a fast pace. In the seconds it took her to get back to her own pair again, she decided that the only thing was just to get through this period.

  After all, she thought, they’ll be on their boat and we’ll be on ours. I shan’t have to have too much to do with them, shall I? But, Joel, you’d better get right soon and come back. I can’t stand the thought of working with these two!

  She knew the women were watching her as she walked towards them and folded her arms to protect herself, as if their eyes were scraping her skin. She wondered how she looked in her frayed cardi, with scuffed old boots. They were waiting for her, all eager like new Girl Guides.

  ‘Morning!’ they both chimed, although Sylvia had already seen her once.

  ‘Are we nearly ready for the off?’ Dot asked.

  ‘Right.’ Once again, Maryann heard her voice come out brusquely. ‘Let’s get going. We’re going up Bed-worth for a load for the Light.’

  Sylvia and Dot looked at each other in bafflement.

  Maryann nodded over towards Longford Power Station, only a quarter of a mile behind them, covered, as usual in a pall of cloud.‘Fuel for that.’ She went to climb aboard the Esther Jane ready to start the engine. ‘It’s a day’s trip. You steered a butty before?’

  ‘Oh yes, of course,’ Sylvia said eagerly. ‘We’ve done all our training trips you know. Kit taught us ever such a lot – really threw us in at the deep end.’

  Maryann looked up.‘Who’s Kit?’

  ‘Oh, sorry. Kit Gayford – our trainer. We thought everyone knew Kit by now! She trains most of the female volunteers on the Grand Union. She’s absolutely marvellous. Don’t worry, Maryann. We shan’t let you down. We’ll do our very best.’

  As the engine of the Esther Jane began to turn over, breaking into the morning peace, Maryann thought grumpily that this was yet another instance in the past twenty-fours of someone telling her not to worry.

  The first part of the trip passed without a hitch. There were no locks on this stretch and once Maryann was at the tiller she felt better. Of course she could manage! She’d been a boatwoman long enough now, hadn’t she? Joley took the tiller, while she ducked inside to do odd jobs and deal with Ada and Esther, and her son’s quiet confidence steadied her and made her proud. The day was overcast and they passed through a ghostly landscape along that part of the cut, a wasteground of former coal tips and abandoned mine shafts. In one spot a group of gypsies had set up camp with their sturdy ponies and coloured caravans, scrawny dogs barking at the boats as they chugged past. The cut was busy with joeys coming and going, and pairs of ‘Joshers’ and Barlow boats. A family from another S. E. Barlow boat greeted her with waves and the usual ‘How do’s?’ She saw their amazed expressions when they caught sight of the butty with Sylvia at the tiller, now wearing a red and white headscarf, and Dot perched on the gunwale sporting her navy beret.

  ‘Look at their faces!’ Maryann laughed to Joley. ‘They weren’t expecting that, were they?’

  They reached the Bedworth arm and queued for loading. The day had become even more heavily overcast.

  During the wait, Maryann fed the children, and she was outside emptying wash water over the side when she saw Sylvia coming towards her and she tensed. Now what did they want? She kept trying to put those two back there out of her mind – pretend they weren’t there! Even if she had to suffer working with them, it didn’t mean she wanted anything else to do with them. Bucket in hand, she waited.

  ‘We wondered how long we’re likely to be here?’ Sylvia looked up at her, giving a tight smile. Maryann saw that she had pale blue eyes. She had a naturally vulnerable expression, which softened Maryann’s feelings a fraction.

  ‘Shouldn’t be long.’ Maryann nodded at the pair ahead of them. ‘There’s only them in front of us.’

  ‘Only, Dot and I have made some cocoa and we wondered if you’d like some?’

  ‘No, ta. We’ve just had our dinner.’

  The smile faded in Sylvia’s eyes. She hugged herself as if cold and stood, uncertain, by the boat. For a moment Maryann thought she was going to say something else, but she turned away. The odd thing was, Maryann thought, she looked almost nervous. Surely not about speaking to her? After all, they were the ones with lah-di-dah accents and their clothes weren’t running to holes like hers. What had they got to be flaming nervous about?

  The
afternoon did not go well. They were heavily laden and low in the water, though they hadn’t stopped to sheet up the boats: even though the sky was heavy, no rain had fallen yet. Maryann decided to risk it, since they’d deliver at the Coventry Light that afternoon.

  By the time they’d reached Sutton Stop again, it had grown colder and a bitter wind was blowing. Ada and Esther had been perched up on the cabin roof, and Maryann moved them inside for warmth.

  I hope it’s not going to go and rain now, she thought, glowering at the sky. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt in such a thoroughly out-of-sorts bad temper with everything. All afternoon she’d been acutely aware of the butty behind. She had to glance back every so often to make sure they were following without any hitches. Otherwise she faced ahead, glad of the long snubber between the boats, but still prickling with awareness of the two women at the tiller which for so long had been hers. All the time she felt this inner tension, and that the two of them were watching her from behind.

  Sutton Stop was the meeting place of the Coventry and Oxford cuts and the power station was south of the junction on the Oxford. The two waterways met at an angle, which meant taking the boats round two right-angled bends to reach the stop lock dividing the two.

  As they approached the bridge before the junction, Maryann slowed to a crawl, allowing the Theodore to catch up a bit. She released the snubber and handed it to Joley.

  ‘Get off at the bridge and tell them to pull in and wait while we get round. Then get back and help me. Sally, go forward and get ready to throw him the line!’

  Joley leapt off under the bridge-hole and ran back to the Theodore. Maryann heard him calling out instructions to the two women.

  He knows more than the pair of you put together, she thought. She saw the Theodore begin to veer into the bank and Joley running back to join her.

  She faced the busy junction nervously, even though she and Joel had been back and forth through it endless times. Sally threw the cotton line attached to the small mast over to her brother and he looped it round the bollard by the iron bridge, playing it round as Maryann brought the boat under. As she kept the engine ticking steadily ahead, the stern swung round nicely, just as required. She smiled grimly for a second. Thank God for that. When they were safely round both bends, she tied up and told Sally to mind the younger ones.

  She ran round and over the bridge with Joley, expecting to find the women waiting with the Theodore tied up as instructed. Instead of which, by the time she got down to the bank, she found Dot bow-hauling the butty along, almost at the bridge. Dot, who was leaning into the job like a dray horse, had got the butty moving at quite a pace.

  ‘What the hell’s she playing at!’ Maryann cried. ‘She’s never going to make the turn like that – how does she think she’s going to stop!’

  Waving her arms she shouted, ‘Stop pulling, you bloody fool! What’re you doing? Slow down!’

  It was already too late. On a monkey boat with an engine, the only way to brake it was to throw the engine into reverse. On a butty with no engine, Sylvia, holding the Theodore’s tiller, could only watch helplessly, hauling on it to try and turn the boat in time to make the turn.

  ‘She’s going to crash,’ Joley said matter-of-factly. ‘Good job Dad ent here.’

  ‘If he was we wouldn’t be in this bloody mess, would we?’ Maryann said furiously.

  In those seconds she became aware of several other things. One was that the women had pulled the boat out in the path of a horse-drawn joey, which was bearing down close behind them, the man at its tiller yelling at them, outraged. The other was confirmation of Joley’s observation that nothing now was going to stop the Theodore except a collision. All she could do was watch, hands pressed to her cheeks.

  ‘You cowing, stupid idiots,’ she breathed.

  Instead of managing the left bend, the Theodore shot across the turn and rammed, shuddering into the corner of the bank on the other side, leaving Dot with rope scorching through her hands. Sylvia, who had been leaning back, pulling desperately on the tiller, lost her balance on the jolt and fell in over the back into the water, in the company of the Theodore’s water carrier, which clunked and sploshed into the cut after her.

  Sylvia surfaced, gasping, in the freezing water to see the front of the joey boat coming straight at her. With the speed born of survival instinct she flung herself round to the right of the Theodore as the two joeymen shafted and pulled, tweaking the fore end round to the left of the Theodore and made the bend.

  Dot, standing shaken by the bridge, called to the men in her ringing voice, ‘That was a close one. We’re most terribly sorry!’

  The joeymen eyed her with a contempt more corrosive than even Maryann could have managed and loud expletives trailed in the air behind them. A small but interested audience was gathering on the bank.

  Maryann ran to help Sylvia out of the water. Her teeth were chattering convulsively and the black, slimy water poured off her. Her hair had turned an interesting shade of gritty grey. Otherwise she was perfectly all right.

  ‘Come on,’ Maryann ordered, holding on tightly to her rage. She led her back over the bridge to help Dot haul the Theodore round out of everyone’s way. As they joined the Esther Jane, Maryann saw all her children perched at various points on the cabin and gunwales, watching the events with fascination.

  The three of them went into the cabin of the Theodore, Sylvia smelling abominable and dripping all over the floor, and Maryann let rip. She found she was trembling with fury at them making such a spectacle of her and of Joel’s boats. She hadn’t been deaf to the ribald comments levelled at them from some of the boatmen who’d been watching. After years of trying to prove herself as a boatwoman, a Bartholomew, of trying to belong, these two idiots had humiliated her completely in one afternoon. She let them have it with both barrels.

  ‘When I tell you to wait, you bloody well wait!’ she bawled at them. ‘What in God’s name did you think you were playing at, barging out in front of that other boat and bringing her in at that speed? If there’d been anyone else tied up at that corner you could’ve rammed them and sunk them, d’you know that? And you’ve gone and lost our water carrier, so unless someone fishes it out we’re going to have to get another one. D’you know how long that carrier’s been on this boat?’ She paused, glowering at them. Dot opened her mouth, then closed it.

  ‘I s’pose you think you know better than people who’ve been on the cut all their lives, coming along with your airs and graces, ’cause you fancy a little rest from painting your nails? Well, if you’re coming to work with me, you can sodding well do it properly or go back to wherever it is you come from!’

  ‘Look,’ Dot managed to say. ‘It was my fault, not Sylvia’s. I admit, I made a mess of it…’

  ‘Yes – not half you did!’ Maryann yelled. ‘I thought you said you knew what you were doing!’

  They were silent. Maryann was surprised they didn’t argue. Sylvia was too busy dripping and shivering, but even Dot, whose face was puce with embarrassment, stood in silence, nursing her rope-burned hands under her armpits.

  ‘Get changed,’ Maryann ordered Sylvia contemptuously, finally running out of steam. ‘And then we’ve got the lock to get through. D’you think you can manage that without sinking us?’

  Twenty-One

  Maryann’s foul temper lasted long into the evening. She banged about in the cabin, slamming the pan down as she cooked bubble and squeak, snapping at the children. Her head was thumping and all she wanted was to lie down and forget today had ever happened.

  ‘You gave those ladies a talking to, daint you, Mom?’ Sally said as she waited for her food. Maryann knew the child was trying to break the tense silence around her.

  ‘Yes, I flaming well did!’ she retorted. ‘Coming here with their airs and graces, thinking they know better than anyone.’

  ‘Are they leaving tomorrow?’ Rose asked hopefully. Like Maryann, she wasn’t very good at coping with change in her l
ife. She liked things to feel unchanging and secure.

  ‘No, bab – no such luck.’ Maryann sighed. ‘If only Bobby was about I’d have him back like a shot and manage two-handed. I wish to God I’d never let him go, only Mr Veater never gave me much choice.’ She turned and started dishing out the food. ‘We’re going down Oxford tomorrow, so we’ve got to put up with them.’

  Ezra’s dark brows were pulled into a frown. ‘Ent you allowed no slip-ups when you’re grown big?’

  ‘What d’you mean?’ Maryann asked, perching wearily on the back bed.

  ‘Our dad says to me when I do summat wrong: when you’re starting out you’re allowed some slip-ups.’

  Maryann sighed into a silence in which the children waited for her answer. She could see they were really puzzled by the intensity of her reaction to the two women. Even with the justification of the afternoon’s troubles, she could barely explain it even to herself, how having them there made her feel unsafe and exposed. The tight feeling inside her increased and her temples throbbed.

  All afternoon she’d held onto her self-righteous anger. The power station was only a quarter of a mile south, looming huge over the landscape, creating its own pall of cloud from the chimneys and cooling towers which poured out smoke and steam. The afternoon had darkened and, although it was only about four o’clock, already dusk was falling as they slid through the black, refuse-strewn water, in the shadows of the cranes and gantries, to the wharf. Here the coal was lifted from the boat by grabbers onto conveyor belts, to be carried into the insatiable power station. Sylvia and Dot kept out of her way, only exchanging the tersest of remarks about what needed to happen next. By the time they were heading back, gunwales higher in the water, Maryann had calmed down, but her headache was setting in, and a sour, shameful feeling had come over her which she found hard to admit.

  Ezra’s question made her feel even worse.

  ‘Yes, bab, we all make mistakes,’ she said, adding defiantly, ‘and there are some people need to learn from them more than others.’