Water Gypsies

by Annie Murray

  It was a relief to get the children to sleep. Ada and Esther were all but weaned now, just having a drink from her sometimes at night to settle them. Once the children were down, there wasn’t much for her to do but go to bed herself, since there was no room to move about in the cabin. They were squeezed in tight as a pea pod. She was about to make herself a drop of hot milk to ease her head, when she felt the boat rock slightly, and there came a soft knocking on the door.

  Sylvia was outside, looking solemn and upset.

  So you damn well should, Maryann thought, looking up at her. The sky had cleared and it felt very chill outside.

  ‘Look,’ Sylvia whispered, ‘if your children are settled for the night, Dot and I would really like to have a talk with you. Mend some fences, sort of thing. Will you come and join us for a cup of tea?’

  ‘I was just going to bed.’ It came out abruptly again. More so than she meant it to. How was she supposed to talk to these people? She couldn’t speak the way they did, could she?

  ‘Please,’ Sylvia said. To Maryann’s astonishment she heard tears in Sylvia’s voice. ‘We both feel ghastly about what happened today. And we can’t go on like this, can we? We’ve got to learn to work together somehow. We need to try and make friends.’

  Maryann knew that what had happened had not been Sylvia’s fault. Why wasn’t Dot the one here eating humble pie, she wondered. She desperately didn’t want to go and sit with them, but she felt sorry for Sylvia and there was something sweet, almost pathetic, in the way she had asked. Grudgingly, she nodded. ‘I’ll be over in a minute.’

  It was an uncomfortable feeling, being invited into what for years had been her own home. She stood out in the cold, starry darkness for a moment, knotted up inside with nerves. Why didn’t she just go back to her own cabin and go to bed? She knew suddenly that part of the reason she wanted to hold onto her self-righteous anger was that she was afraid. She realized that it was the word ‘friends’ that really frightened her. It had been different with Nance, who had known her for years. Of course Nance accepted her. But to try and be close to anyone else felt terrifying. How could she ever show them who she was, what she had come from?

  She took a deep breath. They didn’t have to know anything about her, she reasoned with herself. Only what she wanted to tell them. All she had to do was try and patch things up so they could manage the work properly. For the sake of the boats. That was all that mattered. She tapped on the Theodore’s hatch.

  ‘Here she is … Come on in and sit with us for a bit.’

  Sylvia welcomed her so kindly that, to her irritation, Maryann found tears in her eyes and tried fiercely to blink them away, though she knew Sylvia had seen them. She sat on the side bench near Dot, who was perched on the edge of the back bed, knitting something with big needles out of thick orange wool. Sylvia came and sat on Maryann’s left and poured the tea. She’d obviously managed to wash her hair, as it was pale and silky looking again. She was such a fragile-looking thing, she didn’t look strong enough for this life, Maryann thought, sipping the tea. Sylvia could make a good cup of tea, though, she’d give her that. The oil lamp was burning and it was as cosy as ever inside. It felt very strange, though, being here with these strangers with their possessions about: a bar of Pears soap, a pretty mirror edged with shells and a little pink washbag. Sylvia’s trousers were hanging over the range, still steaming, and there was a copy of Woman’s Own on the table, a woman with glossy chestnut hair smiling from the cover. Maryann eyed it curiously. She wanted to reach out and turn the pages, and was surprised by her sudden hunger to see what was inside.

  ‘Look,’ Sylvia said carefully, ‘we seem to have started off on completely the wrong foot with you. What happened today was our fault entirely…’

  ‘No – it was my fault,’ Dot said robustly. She looked different with her hair loose over her shoulders, making her look voluptuous and much more feminine. Somehow it looked wrong, as if the hair belonged to someone else. Maryann wondered how old she was. ‘I misunderstood your boy when he shouted over to us – I thought you wanted us to follow on. And I must say’ – she began to sound rather heated – ‘that it wasn’t exactly my fault if I could barely understand a blasted word the child was saying. I think it’s a bit thin if you won’t accept an apology that’s genuinely meant. I mean, dammit, I’ve said sorry. Haven’t you ever made a mistake?’

  Maryann thought of some of the terrible mistakes she made when she started out on the cut and the shameful feeling nudged harder inside her. How would she have felt if no one had forgiven her? But she felt so lost without Joel, and worried and tense about taking charge of the boats with strangers on board whose background she didn’t understand, that it was easiest to take it all out on them! And there was something about Dot especially which made her hackles rise. The way she strode about on her buxom legs and that voice. Sylvia was well spoken all right, with her tinkly voice, but she didn’t have the posh, overpowering blare that Dot had. She stared back at her, feeling her expression harden, about to make a curt reply.

  But Sylvia was saying, ‘The thing is, Maryann, we’ve never worked together before either, and we haven’t got used to each other yet – or your family…’

  Maryann turned to her, frowning. ‘I thought Mr Veater said you were a team?’

  ‘Well, if he did, he got it wrong. We only met on the train coming up here. We’ve done our training trips, but not together. Quite a lot of the girls dropped out and we were leftovers for the moment – spare-wheelers, as Kit would say.’

  ‘We are new girls, it’s true,’ Dot said, ‘but we aren’t as bad as … well, as we were today. That was me getting the wrong end of the stick and then putting too much oomph into it altogether. But we’ve both come through quite a few sticky situations on the Grand Union. We’ll do our best not to let you down again.’

  ‘The thing is – ’ Sylvia cut in again rather intensely before Maryann had a chance to speak – ‘we so love the life here, and we think you’re marvellous, how you manage and everything. I just don’t know how you do it with six children. I struggle with only two even when I’m living in a house.’

  ‘What?’ Maryann was nonplussed. ‘You’ve got children?’

  ‘Oh yes – a girl and a boy. Kay’s twelve and Dickie’s ten.’

  ‘Twelve!’ Maryann blurted. The woman’s children were older than her own!

  Sylvia gabbled on nervously. ‘As a matter of fact I was going to ask you if I might put up some pictures on the walls. Dot, dear, pass my bag over, will you?’ She showed Maryann a picture of two smiling faces, a girl and boy side by side. The girl’s hair was shoulder length, waving prettily round her cheeks and darker than her mother’s, though she had a look of Sylvia.

  ‘Her face is the same shape as yours,’ Maryann said, peering in fascination at the picture. ‘You can see the likeness. She’s pretty.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Sylvia smiled. ‘Of course, Dickie’s the image of his father.’ The boy had a squarer face, a rather thin mouth and narrow eyes, but was handsome in his way. Maryann took another look before handing it back.

  ‘And this is my darling Roy.’

  The second picture showed a thickset man with cropped, fair hair who looked out of the picture with the sort of half smile which shows no teeth. He was wearing a suit and tie.

  ‘Oh – I see what you mean,’ Maryann said. ‘Your son does look just like his father.’

  ‘Yes.’ Sylvia put the pictures back in her bag. ‘Though they’re not alike in temperament. Oh, I forgot!’ She reached over to the cupboard. ‘I brought a cake from home. Would you like a piece? It’s cherry madeira.’

  Maryann wasn’t hungry, but she thought she’d better accept a piece out of politeness. And she was beginning to warm to Sylvia, even if she couldn’t take to Dot.

  ‘But where are your … Kay and Dickie then? You left them with your mom?’

  ‘Oh no,’ Sylvia said. ‘My mother’s been dead for a number of years. No, they’re at boar
ding school. I sent them some time ago, to avoid the bombing, of course. They’re not far from each other, fortunately – outside Worcester. I’ve dropped them a line to tell them to send their letters here. Is that the best thing? I so miss hearing from them. I’ve been told I’ll be able to have leave to go home for the Easter holidays.’

  Maryann was still struggling with the idea of Sylvia being a mother and of sending your children away to the other side of the country.

  ‘How old are you, then?’ she blurted out.

  Sylvia chuckled at her frankness. ‘I’m just thirty-two as a matter of fact.’ Maryann was even more astonished. The woman was older than her! ‘Dot here’s a mere pup – only twenty-one.’

  ‘I think you’ll find I’m old for my years.’ Dot looked up for a second, somehow challenging them. Maryann wondered why she had to be so aggressive, as if she felt permanently under attack. ‘What happened today won’t happen again. I can promise you that.’

  ‘And you?’ Sylvia asked.

  ‘Me? Oh – I’ll turn thirty in the autumn.’ Surely she looked older, didn’t she? she wondered. Some days she felt as old as Methuselah.

  ‘Were you born and bred on the cut?’ Sylvia asked, in rather awed tones.

  ‘No,’ Maryann admitted. ‘I married into it.’

  ‘Told you, didn’t I?’ Dot said triumphantly. ‘I knew she had a Birmingham accent!’

  Maryann stiffened in annoyance. She didn’t like Dot’s tone, or the fact that they’d been making guesses about her life. She felt prickly about any of her life being exposed beyond her control.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I’m from Brum. That’s where I met Joel – my husband.’ She said it in a way that did not invite more questions and looked down into her lap.

  Gently, Sylvia asked about Joel’s accident. She said her own husband, Roy, was an RAF officer in Coastal Command.

  ‘Will he get leave at Easter as well?’ Maryann asked, trying to get off the subject of herself.

  ‘Oh, perhaps,’ Sylvia said lightly. ‘I imagine he might. But the poor darling never seems quite sure when he’ll be home.’

  By the time she went back to the Esther Jane that night, Maryann had a picture of Sylvia’s life in a nice family home in Wimbledon. She saw a pretty garden edged with roses (this was far more than Sylvia had told her, but she enjoyed embroidering this charmed picture), the two children playing out on the greenest of lawns and her husband coming home, broad-shouldered and handsome in his air-force blue. Of Dot’s background she had learned almost nothing, except that she came from Buckinghamshire.

  I just don’t take to that one, she thought, squeezing into bed beside Joley and Sally. Dot seldom met her gaze, except with a challenging stare. Maryann just couldn’t imagine what her real life was like. I’ll just have to try and rub along with her somehow, she thought. It’ll only be for a trip or two.

  But Sylvia … course, she was from another life altogether, but there was a nervous sweetness, a sympathy, about her which Maryann had warmed to. And at least Sylvia was a mother: that was something they had in common. It felt new and strange, the company of these women not from the boating life. As if a door had opened, giving her a glimpse into something new.

  As she slipped into sleep, she realized her headache had gone.

  Twenty-Two

  It was true, as Maryann found out on the trip to Oxford, that Sylvia and Dot were not bad boaters, especially for beginners. But they were still early on in their learning and some things took a frustratingly long time.

  The first day they travelled back to the coalfields. This time, though, after loading they stopped to cloth up before departing for the long journey south, as the weather looked uncertain. In the past Maryann had usually left most of this to Joel and Bobby, who were quick at it after a lifetime of practice. Now, with Joley’s help, it was she who had to cloth up the Esther Jane, leaving the others to deal with the Theodore.

  ‘Are you sure you know what to do?’ she asked them.

  ‘Of course,’ Dot said, already climbing along the hold to the cratch at the fore end where they stowed the cloths and tarpaulin. Dot’s tone was prickly with resentment at having her competence questioned again.

  ‘I’ve done it a few times,’ Sylvia said. Maryann could tell she was trying to soften the effect of Dot’s brusqueness.

  ‘I’ll let you get on with it then. Come on, Joley.’

  Joley had helped do the job many times. Balanced on the top planks, Maryann shuffled along on her knees, knotting the tough, hairy strings of the side-cloths over the planks, while Joley stood in the hold threading them through in the right places and passing them to her.

  ‘This one needs splicing,’ she told him, holding out one that was frayed and in danger of snapping. They had to take constant care of all the ropes on the boat, and these strings had to be pulled very tight and knotted taut; their rough fibre blistered her hands.

  She had tied the final string and she and Joley were opening out the top cloth to lay it over when they heard a shriek from behind on the Theodore. Maryann swivelled round in time to see Dot hurtling down from the top planks. Her hands reached out, trying to clutch anything to save herself, but she failed and rolled at a very undignified angle over the gunwale and into the cut, her large backside the last thing to disappear under the water. The splash was impressive. A moment later she surfaced like a flustered hippo, spluttering and enraged. Maryann caught Sylvia’s gaze as she stood in the hold, a hand clasped horrified over her mouth. As well as consternation, Maryann was sure she saw a flicker of laughter in Sylvia’s expression. The Bartholomew children were in fits of giggles, and the man who was clothing up his own boat behind them called out, Taking a good look in there, were you?’

  Not entirely succeeding in straightening her own twitching lips, Maryann climbed down to help Dot out. Her bun had come loose, her heavy plait uncoiling down her back.

  ‘ What happened? D’you have a string snap?’

  ‘Yes, I damn well did.’ She took Maryann’s hand resentfully and was hauled, gushing water, onto the bank. ‘And I don’t think it’s very nice of you all to laugh!’

  ‘I’m not.’ She managed to look sober. ‘Sorry, Dot. You awright?’

  ‘Yes, of course I’m all right!’ She shook herself, almost like a dog, looking ready to explode with anger. ‘Don’t be so bloody ridiculous.’

  ‘There’s no need to get upset.’

  ‘I’m not damn well upset!’

  For the second time in twenty-four hours, one of the trainees went dripping into the Theodore’s cabin to change an entire set of clothing. Maryann frowned, watching Dot’s furiously hunched shoulders disappear through the hatches. There was no need to get that mithered about it, was there? Everyone fell in sometimes. Again, she and Sylvia exchanged glances and Sylvia shrugged, rolling her eyes. For the first time Maryann wondered just how well Sylvia and Dot got on when they were on their own. Just because they were different from her didn’t mean they had anything in common themselves.

  Maryann had hoped to get past the first set of locks at Rugby that day, but the clothing up took at least twice as long as usual – she helped Sylvia finish on the Theodore – and they still had to get past the junction at Hawkesbury again. Dot was silent and morose all day, but with brooding determination completed the manoeuvres round the bends almost perfectly this time. She was still barely speaking to any of them until the evening, though, which added an extra strain, but then she just seemed to snap out her mood.

  In a quiet moment that evening Sylvia said to Maryann, ‘Kit did mention to me that Dot can be rather touchy, so don’t take it personally, will you?’

  The next morning, when they reached the double locks at Hillmorton, Maryann gave Dot the mildest of reminders to go back and close a paddle that she’d left open. She got a furious reaction,

  ‘I’m going to!’ Dot’s fleshy cheeks flushed angrily. She stomped off with the windlass, calling over her shoulder, ‘I do know what I’m doing
, you know.’

  ‘Well, if you know what you’re doing, why don’t you do it then?’ Maryann retorted to her back, fed up with her. She’d asked politely enough, hadn’t she? Who did she flaming well think she was? She had to admit, though, that Dot was strong. She bow-hauled the butty into the locks at Hillmorton with the force of a man.

  Most of the journey went better. There was a hint of spring in the air and the biting cold had softened to mildness. They woke in the mornings to the first, tentative sounds of birdsong. Maryann found that, despite her own burden of being in charge of loaded boats, children and everything, Dot and Sylvia were very efficient at getting shopping in whenever there was a chance to. Sylvia also insisted that she and Dot cook for everyone most of the time.

  ‘How can you possibly do everything – all your washing and looking after the family and cooking? No – you let us do that,’ Sylvia said. Maryann had more of a sense that the work was being shared by them all than when she worked with the men.

  As the days passed along the winding Oxford cut, Maryann gradually became more used to the women and they to her. She found Sylvia immediately easier – they were closer in age, and Sylvia was always nervously anxious to please. Dot, in spite of her prickliness and determination always to be right, was extremely hardworking. It seemed that her way would have been to push on and on, never stopping for a rest.

  ‘You’ll have to go and work the beer boats,’ Maryann told her. ‘Then you’d never have to stop at all!’

  Sylvia was kind and motherly to the children, especially to Rose when once Maryann confided, though without going into too much detail, how the child came to be in her care. She always chose very carefully what she did and did not tell.

  ‘Oh, the poor little lamb!’ Sylvia exclaimed. She made a special pet of Rose, always cuddling and spending time with her when she had the chance, and Rose loved the extra attention. Maryann realized that Sylvia needed this. Once she came into the cabin and found Sylvia cuddling Rose, tears running down her face.