by Sarah Jasmon
The next bus bumped past, and Charlie made her excuses. She didn’t want to wait for another hour or get into complications about lifts in the car. And it was better to leave without things dragging out. She ran for the stop, Martha panting along beside her. The last thing she saw was her niece waving madly, reminding her of her promise that she could come and stay.
As the bus once more took its familiar turns, it occurred to Charlie that this might be her last journey down the road. She tried to picture herself in the future, coming back to show her children where she grew up. They would stand in a cluster as she pointed out landmarks and features: There’s the Post Office where I used to go and buy sweets. That’s the corner where I fell off my bike and skinned my elbow, look, here’s the scar. For a moment, the image was close enough to touch. She was bending down with an arm around each small person’s shoulder whilst, to one side, a man stood, his features indistinct. Was that how Max had imagined things? She couldn’t blame him for that; it was how most people seemed to think, after all. As the musty velour of the seat filled her nose, she allowed the passing landscape to blur. She didn’t want to be a mother, that decision hadn’t changed. For a brief moment she felt an equilibrium.
The marina wasn’t that easy to find. She had a sketch map, passed over by Eleanor along with the keys, but it seemed to be fooling her, leading her up a hill when surely canals were downhill, in valleys. The street went on for as far as she could see, lined with nondescript houses opening straight onto the pavement. They had an air of disappointment, as if this was as good as it was ever going to get. Then, just when she was about to turn back towards the town centre for better directions, she was on a bridge and there, below her, was the canal.
She stared down, taking in the opaque brown water moving in sluggish ripples. The ripples began to rock a little faster, spreading out in suddenly organized lines towards the bank on either side. Seconds later, the nose of a boat appeared from under the bridge. Charlie watched the long, thin roof emerge, one flowerpot at a time. There was a rope coiled halfway along, and a figure was balanced on the side of the boat just next to it. A shout came from the back of the boat, still just hidden by the road. The man on the side lifted an arm in acknowledgement of whatever had been said, before reaching out and catching the rope up. With slow precision, the boat moved towards the bank, its whole length coming to the edge as the man watched the ground approach. Charlie studied him as he jumped off, walking along beside the boat as it slowed, and then digging in his heels and leaning back into the stretch of the rope. The boat pivoted, moving inwards and coming to rest with a bump that Charlie couldn’t hear, but seemed to feel from her viewpoint. She carried on watching as another man came into view. The sound of his mallet knocking a metal pin into the earth rang in her ears. She would be there soon, on a boat like that. She would be there, knowing nothing, able to do nothing. She wondered how her mother, quiet and withdrawn as she was with outsiders, had managed to come here by herself, to buy a boat, spend time on it. By the time she moved, the two men from the boat below had long gone, their voices disappearing towards the nearby pub.
The marina was on the side of the canal without a towpath, reached by an anonymous side road. Charlie was pointed in the right direction by the second passer-by she stopped, and to begin with, she thought she’d been sent to the wrong place. Inside the gates, all she could see was the bulky red brick of an old mill, the chimney reaching high above. To one side were a small, prefabricated office and a couple of caravans. There was no one around. She walked towards the corner of the mill, where she knew the water was. There they were, boats filling a wide basin in serried ranks. The lines were separated by wide gangplanks, bobbing and shifting on their anchoring chains. Charlie took a couple of steps towards them. She didn’t even know what colour her mother’s boat was, all she had was a name. The weight of her ignorance transferred to the water as the walkway swayed under her weight.
A head appeared out of a hatch in the side of the nearest boat.
‘Bob?’ It was a woman, around her mother’s age, though her hair was turbaned in an old towel which made it harder to judge. Her solid torso was half wrapped in a dressing gown.
‘Oh, sorry, love.’ She didn’t seem surprised at the sight of a stranger or embarrassed about her undressed state. ‘Thought you were the old man, can’t have a cup of tea until he gets back with the milk.’ She chuckled. ‘And I can’t start my day without a cuppa.’
Charlie smiled back automatically as the woman continued to talk.
‘You might ask why my day’s starting this late in the afternoon.’ The woman gave another throaty laugh. ‘You don’t want to know, I tell you. Are you looking for young Danny-boy? I keep telling him, he’s not supposed to hand out the key like that.’
‘The gate wasn’t locked.’ Charlie lifted her hand to show her own key ring, complete with the cork ball to keep the keys afloat if she dropped them. That would be a great start. ‘I’m here for a boat.’ She came to a stop. Were canal boats supposed to be female, like the ones at sea? Her ignorance washed over her in a wave of embarrassment. ‘It, she …’ Neither sounded right, now. She went for the name instead, the word feeling clumsy in her mouth. ‘It’s a Norwegian name, Ski—?’
The woman interrupted her. ‘You mean Britta’s,’ she said, leaning out to gesture towards the other boats. ‘No one ever knows how to say it. Fourth along. She’s not selling, is she?’
‘No, but …’ Charlie took a deep breath. She’d been picturing her here alone, her boat moored away from the world, not in the centre of a kind of watery housing estate. Was that something else to find out, that on the water her mother had been some kind of chatty extrovert? ‘It’s my mum’s boat, was my mum’s boat.’ She paused, deciding what to say. ‘Mum died last month. I’m moving onto the boat for a while.’
‘What, Britta?’ The woman tilted her head to one side, eyes wide and one hand clapped to her chest. ‘That’s terrible, love, what happened?’ Without waiting for an answer, she carried straight on. ‘She did have that funny turn, but the last time I saw her she looked proper sparky. And she’d only just had the name painted!’ She stopped herself with a visible effort, holding a hand out. ‘I’m sorry, love, I do go on, but it brings it home, doesn’t it? I’m Libby Rae, by the way. Libby Rae Jones.’
Charlie bent to give the hand an awkward shake. The day, the place, it was all building up around her, and she wanted to get to the end, the boat. She would ask more, later on. See how much Britta had shared about her sudden decision to buy the boat. Just now, all she wanted was a cup of tea. Which, she realized, she’d forgotten to bring milk for. Or teabags. Too late, she remembered thinking she’d have to find a shop of some sort on her way. Would there even be water on board? The noise of the gate sounded again, and they both looked round to see who was coming. It was a thin man with a neatly trimmed goatee. His face was lined and brown beneath the brim of his hat, which he wore unselfconsciously, as if it was part of him.
‘Gate’s not locked,’ he said, giving Charlie a brief nod in passing. He had a glass bottle of milk in one hand and a cork-float key ring like Charlie’s in the other. Charlie felt for her own keys, saw herself coming in, leaving the gate as she’d found it. Not her fault, really.
‘Oh, Bob, you’ll never guess.’ Libby Rae stood back from the hatch, tightening her dressing gown around her. ‘This is Britta’s girl, you know, from that boat with the difficult name.’ She turned to Charlie with a confiding look. ‘I’ve never been able to say it. Britta told me what it meant, but I’ve no head for foreign words.’
The man regarded her with a patient, resigned look. ‘Did you want some tea or not?’ he asked, holding the bottle out. Libby Rae shook her head, eyes wide.
‘Bob, listen to me! Britta’s dead!’ she said, her tone admonishing him for talking about tea at a time like this. ‘And this is her daughter, who’s moving onto the boat. What did you say your name was, lovey?’
‘Charlie,’ Cha
rlie said, automatically waiting for the standard response, the nod of the head, the pinched mouth of sympathy. Nothing came, though. The man stood there, his face oddly blank. It was just for a moment, and then Libby was talking again, saying something about how Bob and Britta had always been talking, how upset he was. She didn’t seem to find anything wrong, and Charlie couldn’t think and listen to her at the same time. Maybe it had just been a case of two silent people making a bond in the face of unending conversation. It did suggest that Britta had spent time here, though, making relationships, becoming part of society, hard as that was to imagine. She needed to get to the boat, find out what was there. And she was beginning to realize it wouldn’t work to wait for a pause. ‘I’d better get going,’ she said at last, gesturing along the line of boats.
‘Yes, of course.’ Libby Rae was practically clucking. ‘If there’s anything to do with the boat, just ask my Bob. I remember when I first got here, didn’t know my arse from my elbow, did I, love?’ Bob’s expression gave nothing away. ‘Left the taps running, drained the power with my straighteners.’ She gave a throaty laugh. ‘It helps being here with hook-up for leccy and water handy. And for work, of course. We don’t get out as much as Bob’d like, but it’s a balance, isn’t it?’ Charlie took advantage of a pause for breath to move away. Libby Rae’s exclamations were still audible when she finally reached the boat.
Skíðblaðnir, the boat of the gods. It had been written on the documents that had been with the bank statement. Charlie had Googled how to pronounce it, though the sound still felt strange to say. Skithblathnir. Her mother hadn’t spoken Norwegian to them, had never used casual terms from her native language, so the choice of name must be significant. Charlie remembered what she’d read, about the boat that had been a gift to the god Freyr. It would always receive a fair wind and could be folded like a handkerchief when not needed. Which of these attributes was her mother hoping for? They both sounded like escape. The name was painted in yellow on the glossy blue of the boat, the letters curving above a porthole. Charlie stroked a finger along the curling lines, feeling the lumps and contours of whatever name had been painted over. What had it been? Someone, somewhere, had owned the boat before. She could track them down, find out the details of the sale. Did it matter, though? The boat felt secretive, sealed. Much like its owner.
There was a kind of cover over the front deck, the way in complicated by a reluctant zip. It would be so stupid to slip before she’d even got a foot on board. Finally, it gave way and she clambered over to the shrouded space. Under her feet, the boat rocked in greeting. Greeting or irritation. There was a squat door, the lock stiff. As she wrestled, it felt as if the boat was waiting, judging.
The inside was dim, the curtains drawn but thin enough to let some light through. Taking in a breath of air that was both cool and stuffy, Charlie went slowly down the two steps from the front deck and the boat shifted under her feet. It was as if it was feeling her weight, considering its response, and then rising to meet her. She had the odd sense that she’d experienced it before, that someone had even said those words to describe the sensation. But when? Déjà vu or a line from a book. She tucked the thought away and looked around her.
She was standing in a living area, with wood-panelled walls painted a soft blue. As her eyes adjusted, she could tell that the curtains were made from a cheerful flower-patterned fabric. A small wood-burning stove stood four-square beside an armchair covered in worn cretonne. Charlie crossed the floor, sinking down into the sagging cushions. She didn’t recognize it. It had the feel of being inherited, a loved item passed down when houses were downsized, or lives wound up. Charlie thought of the house in Derbyshire, with its stretches of polished wooden floors, each room defined by rigidly clean lines and a lack of clutter. Here, the spaces on the walls were filled with oddments: prints, a quotation, a chain of small hearts. She tried to picture her mother here, sitting in the chair and looking around her. Had she bought the boat with everything in place, drawn in by an atmosphere missing in her own life? Or had she put it together, piece by careful piece? Impossible to tell. Impossible to imagine her doing any of it, in secret and with so little time to use.
On the far side of the wood-burner was a low bookcase, the shelves crammed with colourful spines. Charlie went over to it, bending to read the titles. Poetry. Novels, by writers whose names she couldn’t place. She slid one out. Winner of the 2003 Man Booker Prize. Were these normal choices for her mother to have read? If she was honest, she couldn’t remember seeing her mother read anything in particular. Was that something else she’d hidden, or a part of her new, secret life? Slowly, Charlie ran a finger along the shelf until she came to a little stack of worn paperbacks which brought her up short.
The narrow spines were worn, much more so than the other books, some peeling off in curled strips. Mrs Pepperpot, Pippi Longstocking, Finn Family Moomintroll. Charlie sank to the floor, easing out a faded volume and turning it to see the cover. Six blonde-headed children climbed out of a window into the branches of a tree. The background was a creased burnt orange, the little puffin standing on guard in the top left corner. All About the Bullerby Children. All Scandinavian authors. Her mother’s childhood books, preserved until she had a place of her own? But why weren’t they in Norwegian if that was the case? She turned back to the book. The title was familiar for some reason, though she couldn’t remember having seen the book before, not any of them in fact. She opened it to the first page carefully, aware of the cracking sound of dried glue.
My name is Lisa, she read. I’m a girl. Well, you can tell that from the name, of course. An image popped up in Charlie’s mind. She is in bed, tucked up next to Eleanor. It’s not their bedroom at home, but a small, square room with busy wallpaper. She is trying to work out what everything is, but it’s getting quite dark so she keeps losing count of the trellises and leaves and flowers and birds. It’s cold as well, but that’s all right because they’re wrapped in a sort of quilt which is shiny and smells funny, like when her jumper fell down the back of the washing machine when it was wet. The quilt was cold to start with too, but now it feels like a snuggly caterpillar. Mummy says it’s an eye-der-down. Charlie says the word out loud, and Eleanor pokes her and tells her to shut up, because she wants to hear the story. The picture was there one minute, as immediate as if it had happened yesterday, and then it was gone. Charlie turned another page, reading on. Britta is nine and Anna is the same age as me. I like them both just the same. Well, perhaps I like Anna a tiny, tiny bit more. Already the details of the moment were fading. She was sure she’d never seen the book before, and she would have remembered, wouldn’t she, with one of the characters having her mother’s name? Maybe she was making it up. She had no memory, after all, of when this had taken place, where they might have been. And there was just something … odd about it. She screwed her eyes up, trying to pin it down, and a tiny voice in her head spoke. It wasn’t Mummy reading, stupid.
The sound of the words stayed with her as she explored the rest of the boat. Immediately beyond the living room, with a space between them rather than a door, she found the kitchen. Or was it called a galley, if it was on a boat? Charlie made a mental note to check with her neighbours at some point. A gas cooker and small microwave oven sat on one side, the sink opposite. There was a window over the sink, presently looking out onto the side of another moored boat, and across from that two doors which clearly opened out to a side hatch, like the one Libby had been looking out from. Directly on from this was a narrow corridor, and the rest of the dividing wall was made to look like a dresser, with waist-high cupboards and painted shelves above. Hooks held mugs swinging in a row, all smooth, creamy white with phrases stamped in blue and pink lettering. The one nearest said blithering idiot. She remembered her mother finding amusement in odd English phrases, so maybe these had been her own purchases. Charlie read the others: fine specimen, rare breed, secret agent. Bluestocking sat next to the washing-up bowl, a ring of dried tea in its base. On
e mug. So could she assume that Britta had been here by herself? It hadn’t occurred to her or Eleanor that the boat might involve a third party, somehow.
One of the cupboard doors was painted with blackboard paint, the remains of the last words to be chalked on it smeared and unreadable. Charlie squatted down, trying to make them out. Was it Britta’s writing, or something left by the previous owners? It was impossible to tell. The marks were shadows, smeared curves. She couldn’t even see what language the words were in, or if they were in fact letters at all.
Beyond the kitchen was a bedroom space. It couldn’t be called a bedroom, she thought, because it didn’t have a fourth wall. The bed comprised a wide platform built against the wall and a cupboard underneath fronted with mellow, salvaged wooden doors. The mattress was soft and covered with a delicate patchwork quilt, the pillow smooth. It didn’t look as if it had ever been slept in. Charlie touched the quilt, stroking one finger around a square made up of pinwheeling flowers. There was nothing here, no personal possessions, no nightwear. Of course, if Britta was just coming over for the odd afternoon, she wouldn’t have needed much. Charlie eased open the cupboard doors. Nothing, a wide empty space. She felt reluctant to leave it, though. Was that because she could feel her mother here? More than in the living room, even with the books.
Next came a bathroom, this time with a door blocking the corridor to make the little room the whole width of the boat. There was a short bath, a little sink which looked as if it had come from salvage, along with its old-fashioned upright taps. The porcelain was cobwebbed with hairline cracks. On the surround was a pump bottle of soap and some matching hand cream. Charlie squeezed a little onto her palm. Lavender. It wasn’t a smell she associated with Britta.