You Never Told Me

by Sarah Jasmon

  Another door opened into a back bedroom, this one with the air of uninhabited space. Nothing had been added, no decorative touches to soften the edges. The floor-space narrowed as it reached the back of the boat, and the bed had been built to take the shape, with one side straight, the other tucking into the slope of the wall. It gave it the look of a coffin. Charlie shivered and retreated to the friendliness of the patchwork quilt.

  This time, she kicked off her shoes and hoisted herself up onto the bed. The pillow rested alongside a small porthole, its glass shrouded by a square of cloth patterned with small, flying birds. The blind was held on by a ring at each corner, and Charlie unhooked the top one nearest to her so that she could look outside. And there, tucked into the porthole’s wooden surround, was a photograph.

  Charlie eased it out, her heart thumping. A black and white square with a thick white border, the figures on it small enough that she had to hold it up to the light to see them properly. Two women sat on the front of a boat. The older of the two was wearing work dungarees, and her hair was cropped closely to her head. Even in this tiny print, Charlie could tell that she had grease worn into the creases of her hands, that the dark shade of her skin was as much oil as sunburn. The other was really just a girl, wearing wide-legged shorts and a hand-knitted jumper. She had her face held at the same angle as her companion, both of them tilted towards whoever was taking the picture, both of them squinting against the sun. Britta.

  Charlie knew it straight away. It was the way she was sitting, the curve of her hair where it sprang away from her forehead. She was happy here, though, radiating an unreserved delight in her surroundings, in her company. Charlie held the photograph closer, staring at that small, happy face. How old would she have been? Hard to tell, and not just because of the size of the photo. It reminded Charlie of seeing other post-war images, with girls who stayed as children for a long time, before suddenly taking on the stiff perms and middle-aged clothes of adults. The Britta here couldn’t be more than sixteen. That couldn’t be right, though. Britta hadn’t been in England when she was that age. Little as she knew about her mother’s background, one or two facts had made it through. Britta had arrived in England well into the sixties, when she was already out of her teens. I didn’t have the swinging time, she’d said once, when Charlie was doing a history project at school. It wasn’t there in my part of London. I had a job, I became married, and then I had your sister. There was no time for other things. Maybe this had been taken in Norway, then? Could the other woman be a sibling, perhaps, or an aunt?

  There was something about the background, though, that made Charlie feel sure this was England. She tilted it further towards the light, trying to make out the details of the boat. There was the beginning of the name just visible, at least she thought that was what it was. Not painted on the side like her boat, or most of the others she’d seen, but on its own little plate, in raised metal letters. Only the end of it was showing, but Charlie could work out ‘EMOT’. That wasn’t much use. It was an old boat, she could see that, with a boatman’s cabin behind the two women and side doors open to show the corner of a proper old engine. She could see a similar boat here, just across from her porthole. The engine was central, with a room to itself rather than being tucked away under the back deck like the others. It was running, and she could feel the throbs of sound almost more than she could hear them. A figure crossed in front of it and disappeared, and moments later the throbbing stopped. Charlie went back to the photograph.

  Further away, down the portion of towpath just visible to the left of the scene, was a waymarker, the distances painted in black letters on a white background. Charlie screwed up her eyes, trying to bring the letters of the place names into focus. If she could work out where the photo had been taken, maybe she could find out what the boat was called. There must be people who’d know, enthusiasts who could recognize an old working boat from this sort of visible portion. The canal equivalent of a trainspotter. The marker was too small, though, the letters too far away. Perhaps with a magnifying glass … Then she had another thought and turned the picture over. There was something in the corner, a tiny mark. With M on boat, 1964. No clue as to the place. But still, ‘M’. It might narrow things down a bit, if she could identify the boat.

  EIGHT

  Charlie could hear the birds singing from the trees on the far side of the canal. She had to be early to catch it, not the dawn chorus but a secondary burst of joy after sunrise was established but before the day got going properly. Charlie could appreciate the sentiment. As she had every morning since she’d arrived, she’d let the hatch doors fall out, one to each side, so that she could drink her morning tea looking out at the canal and enjoy the sense that her legs were underwater. There she was, standing in her dry space, whilst outside the water swayed at about thigh level. As he did every morning, the resident swan glided up to take a piece of bread from her fingers. If she was late, he’d taken to knocking on the side of the boat, his beak imperious, demanding. Sometimes she could hear voices coming from the other boats, the sound of engines starting up, though she couldn’t see anything of them from where she stood. This morning, a yellow and green boat was going along the main channel of the canal. The name was painted halfway down, Dolly Hockeysticks, though the elderly couple on the back deck didn’t look as if they played much competitive sport. Charlie lifted a hand to acknowledge them, at the same time feeling the disturbed water reach her, sending Skíðblaðnir into a slow jiggle of response.

  The first days had gone by as if she was actually underwater rather than sitting on top of it. She’d never have managed if it hadn’t been for Libby Rae. There were so many things to learn. Finding out about water and how the toilet worked. Remembering to run the engine when the power got too low. Where to get fuel. When the bus went past to get into the town. Libby Rae stopped to talk at any opportunity, unleashing an endless stream of information as she stood at her side hatch, or on the jetty on her way back from work. A lot of it was the minutiae of her day: how long the bus took getting to work, the comments made by the marina manager when she went to empty her rubbish into the communal bin. There was no need for Charlie to dig for details about Britta, either. Libby brought her up constantly, the expressions of shock still threaded through the words but mixed with hints of the everyday. A woman who was friendly but not one to chat. Who knew her way around a boat without any help, though she’d only been for a couple of short trips down the canal.

  ‘I wondered if she’d been out,’ Charlie said. They were sitting on the back deck of Libby’s boat, making the most of some late afternoon sun. May had arrived with blue skies and temperatures high enough to trigger headlines, though rain was forecast for the week ahead. Libby had caught her as she trudged back from the bus stop, weighed down with the first really substantial shop she’d done since arriving. Their back deck was big enough for a couple of deck-chairs, and it was nice to sit there with a cold beer, feeling the water sway beneath. It was good timing as well. Charlie had decided to ask her neighbour about the photograph, see if she could throw any light on the location, or even the boat.

  ‘Oh yes.’ Libby had her eyes closed and her skirt pulled up, the skin on her legs already slightly red. ‘She said she hadn’t been on a boat for a bit, but you could see she knew what she was doing. And of course, she’d been there from the start, really.’

  ‘From the start?’ For a moment, Charlie thought she meant from a baby, that her mother had grown up on a boat. How would she not have mentioned that?

  ‘The revival, love, when they were fighting to keep the water open. She had a hand in all that.’ Libby held her beer bottle against her cheek. ‘Sweltering, isn’t it? Not that I’m complaining. We’ll have enough of the other before we’re done.’ She caught sight of Charlie’s expression. ‘Did she never mention it?’

  ‘Not really.’ Charlie was imagining her mother as an activist. ‘I was going to ask you something, actually. I found a photo of her on an old boat, w
hen she was young. I was wondering if I could find out where it might have been taken.’

  ‘You can try, love, but I don’t know if I’ll be much help.’ Libby closed her eyes. ‘I’m an incomer like you, my love. It’s Bob you want.’ She turned her head. ‘You pop your shopping on board and bring it along. I’m expecting him any minute.’

  Bob took the little picture and held it in close. ‘Hard to tell, that.’

  ‘You need your glasses,’ Libby told him, coming up to his shoulder to have another look herself. ‘Here, use mine.’ She’d not been able to help, beyond an exclamation over the young Britta, confirming Charlie’s identification, but she was already invested in tracking down the boat, and the identity of the other woman. ‘Well, what do you think?’

  Bob settled Libby’s sparkly frames on his nose, tilting his head to get the right spot. Charlie watched his face, holding her breath with the suspense. His expression gave nothing away, and he said nothing, even as he took the glasses off and held the photo back out to Charlie.

  ‘Well?’ Libby grabbed Charlie’s hand so that she could look at the picture again. ‘I can’t get over how young she is. Does the other one look familiar, love?’ She turned back to Charlie. ‘Bob knew a lot of the old ones. His dad had a boat back in the sixties, went on all those festivals and what have you. The photos he had – should have been in the museum.’

  ‘Could be Margareta, that.’ Bob spoke quietly, but he had their attention straight away.

  Charlie waited for him to say more, but he just stood there, his eyes fixed on the figures. Libby wasn’t so patient.

  ‘And who’s Margareta?’ She gave Charlie a nudge. ‘Old girlfriend?’

  Bob didn’t react to Libby’s joking tone. He rarely did, and Charlie had thought before that he must tune out most of Libby’s chatter. ‘She was one of the volunteers, down Sneasham way. That’s the boat she lived on, old working one. Guillemot.’

  Charlie looked again at the picture, the letters visible on the side of the boat now part of a whole name. ‘I don’t suppose she’d still be there?’

  Bob gave a slow shake of his head. ‘I’ve not seen Guillemot since, I dunno, sometime in the eighties. And I think it was already sold on then. Lost track of Margareta a long time ago.’

  ‘And she’d be a fair age now.’ Libby was back at Charlie’s shoulder. ‘You should head down that way and ask around.’

  ‘What, take the boat?’ Charlie blinked. The thought of going anywhere on the canal hadn’t occurred to her before. Other people might move about, her mother even, but she could never learn how to do it. She glanced up, half expecting to see them both doubled up at the joke, but neither of them seemed to find the thought of her moving sixty feet of steel down a waterway no wider than a single-track lane funny. Instead, Libby was nodding.

  ‘Bob’ll come along tomorrow and get you started,’ she said. ‘If he can teach me how to do it, you’ll have no problem. And maybe he’ll let on more about this,’ she tapped the photo, ‘whilst he’s at it.’

  NINE

  Bob turned up early the next morning, before she’d even got dressed.

  ‘Best to get on,’ he said, when she looked out from the side hatch in answer to his knock. No preamble but also no sense of impatience. He nodded towards the back of the boat, indicating he’d wait there for her to open up. As she tugged on some clothes, not bothering to wash her face, she wondered if she should ask him more about Margareta. She had a feeling he might have more to say without Libby there. But, as they stood in the dark oiliness of the engine room, she couldn’t think where to start. If he wanted to say anything, he’d start the conversation himself.

  They went through oil checks, coolant, tightening something called a stern gland so that the canal wouldn’t leak in along the propshaft. The words buzzed in Charlie’s head, unfamiliar, important. The fuel tank was more than half full but she was running low on water. Bob didn’t stop to explain what she needed to do about this, instead rummaging in a side locker, pulling out a metal winch arm ‘for the locks’ and a straight handle, which he eased onto the truncated curve of the tiller. Charlie trotted after him, trying to keep a list in her head of what she needed to do, wishing she’d thought of having pen and paper to hand.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Bob said, catching the expression on her face. ‘You’ll get it all. Second nature after a couple of times.’ He scanned the space, looking for something else. ‘There should be something for holding the tiller arm in,’ he said, holding his hands apart to give an idea of the size. ‘Brass, probably, spike to go through the holes.’

  Charlie remembered seeing something on a shelf inside and ducked back through to find it. There it was, next to the box of teabags, a little figure in the shape of a troll. He was squatting on top of an eight-inch spike and looking up with a grimace, the fingers of one tiny hand spread across his mouth and chin. Bob got her to line up the holes of the tiller arm, sliding the spike in to join the two parts together. The face leered up at her, daring her to put a foot wrong. When Bob turned away, she swivelled the troll round so it was facing out, looking back down the canal. She didn’t want it watching her make a fool of herself.

  Following his quiet instructions, she started the engine. To her slight horror, Bob left her standing at the tiller whilst he went back onto the jetty and pushed off. The breeze was freshening and blew into her face as she stood on the small back deck, tiller arm grasped in her hand. Bob was too far away, more than halfway down the boat. He’d left it too late to jump back on board, would leave her floating helpless midstream. At the last minute he shifted, timing the move perfectly to step onto the gunnel. With relaxed ease, he cross-stepped along, one hand on the rail, until he was back by the deck. Not on the deck, not coming to take over. Skíðblaðnir was at an angle across the canal, her nose heading for the far bank.

  ‘OK, ease the tiller across,’ he said at last, leaning on the side with every appearance of trust in her ability. Charlie had a moment of blankness. They’d been through this. Which way was she supposed to go? Bob waited, giving her time to work it out. What was it he’d said? Push the tiller in the opposite direction to the way you wanted the nose to point. She made a tentative move to the right. ‘Bit more throttle.’ Bob’s voice was calm, unconcerned. He took it for granted she could do this, and the thought gave her some confidence. ‘And you can go a bit further, that’s right. Now bring it back to centre.’ The boat seemed to swivel, smoothly shifting so that she was pointing back down the middle of the cut.

  Charlie let her breath out, but still kept the tiller in a tight, sweaty clutch. They had a straight section ahead, which was a relief, but within moments Skíðblaðnir was heading again towards the bank.

  ‘Little bit the other way,’ came Bob’s voice. ‘Touch of throttle, not too much.’ She heaved over, pushing at the throttle to speed up, and watched in dismay as they swung right over to the other side. Bob stepped up and took hold of the tiller, easing at the arm, manipulating the speed. Within seconds, they were back on a straight course.

  ‘Sorry,’ Charlie said, staying back to let Bob carry on. ‘What did I do wrong?’

  He gave her a grin, gesturing for her to take back control. ‘Everyone does it to start off,’ he said, stepping out to the edge and leaning on the roof while he rolled a cigarette. ‘Steers too much, sends the boat off. You want to push over to start the move then draw her back in. It’s not like a car.’ He lit a match, pausing for thought. ‘Helps if you don’t drive.’

  ‘Why’s that?’ Charlie kept her gaze fixed ahead, trying out tiny moves with the steering for practice, watching intently as the boat’s nose wiggled. She was starting to feel what he meant.

  ‘Car drivers, they want to steer in the direction they want to go. And they think they can control it, keep a smooth curve. And you’ve got brakes. Boating’s different, you have to work with the boat, work with the water. You’re picking it up quicker than most.’ And with that, he settled into a contemplative silence, h
is eyes also turned to the front of the boat but, she felt, taking in more than the almost imperceptible movement of the passing trees. He had to put out an arm occasionally, helping her make a turn as the canal curved in a wide swoop, but Charlie felt him most as a reassuring presence, unflappable and relaxed. It made the process of learning almost easy.

  The decision to take control of the boat tipped other decisions into being. That night, she called Max. They were awkward, two voices in mid-air, not quite able to meet. Though that was what they needed to do, to meet.

  ‘What is there to say, Charlie?’ He sounded different somehow. Almost impatient, maybe a little resigned. There were things that hadn’t been decided before, about the house, about Bella. He’d been adamant it was the best course; keep things neutral, his words had been. You don’t know how things’ll be once you get this out of your system. He’d never really understood what she was trying to do, though he really had tried. Why does it have to be so sudden? Let’s get the wedding out of the way and make proper plans. We can go together, take sabbaticals. She’d tried to explain, about the suffocating panic she could feel all the time, how it rose up at the thought of putting things off, about getting married, about the ever-present but no longer discussed question of children. If he’d given up on any idea of their picking up the threads, it would make this conversation easier anyway.

  ‘We need to sort out what’s happening to the house, for a start. And I’d like to have Bella back.’ There, the words were out there. His reply was clipped, but it wasn’t the nicest thing to be dealing with after all. Following a pause for what felt like ostentatious diary-checking, he suggested a date. She agreed, hanging up with the uncomfortable sense that she’d made some kind of faux pas.

  It was Bob’s idea for her to make the trip up the canal, brushing away her objections with ease. They were on the back deck, leaning against the roof, having just returned from filling the water tank. He’d let her do it without stepping in, even when she took three tries to get Skíðblaðnir lined up with the water-point tap.