by Sarah Jasmon
Dave was out on the bank, playing with Bella. Charlie felt as if she was seeing the towpath for the first time. The rain from the past few days had made the season take a jump forward, the greenery of the hedgerow switching into summer as if with the turn of a dial. Plants jostled for space, all the new growth green and thick and pushy. She could smell their vigour, pungent and spicy, dark green and bitter. Standing at the hatch with the coffee Dave had left for her, she tried to put names to what she could see. It was the time of year for frothy white blooms: cow-parsley, and what she thought was hawthorn in the hedge. Elderflower hanging over them, the smell part nectar, part cat’s piss. Maybe she could make some cordial. Then there were nettles, of course, the lower leaves thick, the new growth tiny and pale. Watch for those nettles, Charlie, they will sting you. Unless you grasp them firmly. Britta’s voice came out of nowhere, another forgotten moment pushing its way into her mind’s eye. Her mother standing up with a sigh, a small smile flickering into life. In Norway nettles don’t grow as weeds. We have to plant them from seed, then we use them for tea, it’s very healthy.
It was odd, really, that there weren’t any plants on the boat. The garden at home had been one place Britta had engaged with. Charlie could picture her at different times of the year, deadheading roses, planting out annuals, her hair always tied back with a scarf. The absence of anything green here was stark, now Charlie thought about it. Maybe Britta hadn’t liked gardening as much as she’d claimed. This thought shook Charlie more than she expected. It would have meant a lot of acting, and for what purpose?
Thinking of plants she might herself buy – geraniums, herbs – Charlie turned to the worktop where she had the canal guide laid out. It was time to trace the route ahead, to work out how many hours it would take, count up the locks and swing bridges. Knowing exactly what was coming made it feel like she was in control, that she could manage. She ran through the names of towns she’d be passing through: Rugeley, Hopwas, Fenny Stratford. The list reminded her of the train stations she’d passed on her way across to Sheffield all that time ago. How long was it that she’d been back? Two months, a flash into nowhere or a lifetime, she couldn’t decide which. Concentrate on what’s happening now. The guide took a leisurely approach, the section of water on each page in close-up. On this page, the train line was shown, running in parallel to the canal. It curved away as she turned the page only to reappear further along. It was as if it was checking in, keeping an eye. Who would be keeping an eye on her? Not Dave, though he might want to know how she was getting on. Eleanor. Britta.
She felt the boat rock as Dave came back on board, and seconds later Bella was pawing at her legs.
‘Hey Bella, was the bank fun? Did you see any rabbits?’
‘There may have been some rabbit smells.’ Dave was behind her, stopping short. He wasn’t hesitant, exactly, more giving her the space to make the first move. Charlie wasn’t sure if she was glad about that or not. ‘Looking up what you’ve got coming?’
There it was, what you’ve got coming. You, not we. That was what she wanted, though, wasn’t it? She smiled without moving towards him. ‘Yep. Just scoping out the tunnel.’ Her first tunnel. She didn’t want to admit how daunting the thought of it was.
‘You’ll be fine.’ Did he seem a tiny bit disappointed? It was hard to say. ‘Well, let’s get back down the locks, then I’d better be off.’
‘Dave.’ She paused, not sure what she wanted to say, but he was there, waiting. ‘Look, about last night—’
‘It’s OK.’ He smiled, gave her shoulder a quick caress. ‘You have things to do.’
‘Yes, but thank you.’ She touched his hand, kept it on her shoulder for a long moment. Then she stood up decisively. ‘Let’s get this boat on the road.’
TWENTY-TWO
He left her at the junction, heading up the towpath on the route they’d come down just a couple of days earlier. As she watched him give one last wave before disappearing around the corner, Charlie felt a burst of emptiness. The boat felt empty, too light. It was a mistake, going on by herself. For a minute she hesitated, on the verge of calling him back. Just for the tunnel. Or the next lot of locks. It wouldn’t do, though. She’d made the right decision. At least she had Bella with her. The terrier ran around her feet as she went inside to get a bottle of water. No point in waiting. She might as well get through the tunnel, and then she could have a proper rest without the thought of dark spaces invading her dreams. As she went into the kitchen, she spotted something new written on one corner of the blackboard-fronted cupboard. A mobile number and a message: Let me know how you get on x. She squatted to look at it more closely, the letters giving her a surprisingly strong jolt of pleasure. Without thinking too hard, she pulled out her phone and tapped a message. If you don’t hear from me, it’s because I’m lost in the tunnel. The answer came straight back. Watch out for monsters! (You’ll be fine x)
Two miles underground, more or less. Just her and Bella and Skíðblaðnir, heading towards the dark. A little team of women. She went through the checklist in her mind, silently thanking Dave for making sure she was prepared. Headlight on, torch at the ready. Waterproof for the drips from the roof. It was nearly time to shut Bella into the boat, no matter how appealingly she used her eyes to ask to stay on the deck. Charlie imagined her slipping off, scrabbling at the side, squashed up against the walls in that narrow space. It made the bottom of her stomach disintegrate into a kind of vertigo.
She was so focused on where she was going that she didn’t notice the figure loping along the towpath. Two minutes later and she’d have left him behind, unseen. It was Bella who spotted him first, wriggling flat on her stomach with her tail lashing back and forth. Charlie would have looked round to see what was causing the excitement, but there was a tricky section coming up. A bend, a swamp of reeds blocking the far side, moored boats to avoid.
‘What the FUCK do you think you’re doing?’ The sound made her nearly lose hold of the tiller, and Skíðblaðnir’s nose began to head towards the first of the boats as Charlie spun round. Max. What was he doing, how had he found her? He was in his work clothes, suit jacket open and flapping as he strode along, leather shoes slipping on the muddy path.
Charlie turned back to check where she was. Too close. She shoved the throttle forwards for a burst of power whilst leaning her full weight on the tiller arm to kick the boat back out towards the channel. She missed the moored boat by a whisker, leaving it rocking. With a quick step forward, Charlie bundled Bella down into the boat and slammed the door shut. Then she was back up to correct her line again, and there was the tunnel, almost upon them. She sent the engine briefly into reverse, to slow down, and then neutral, so she could be heard above the sound of the engine.
‘Bella was tied up in the garden, by herself, in the rain. With no one in the house. I’d like to see your girlfriend exaggerate her way out of that one.’ She gave the engine a short rev, and then paused it. ‘And before you say why didn’t I talk to you about it, after the email you sent I didn’t think there was any point.’
With that, she set the boat off again. Her legs were trembling, her hand shaking as it grasped the wooden handle, but at least she’d had her say. Behind, she heard Max shout something, but the engine noise drowned out the sense of the words. She glanced back briefly to see someone coming out of a moored boat, apparently asking what the hell was going on. Then the impact of the bow bumping up against the tunnel’s entrance shuddered through the boat and she turned back. She needed to concentrate now.
Skíðblaðnir was vanishing chunk by chunk into the tunnel, her colours changing as she went from the light to the darkness. The tunnel was reaching out to her, enfolding her, but whether in a helpful or daunting way, she couldn’t quite decide. She was committed, anyway. The brickwork came up around her, like blinkers, leaving the world behind. And then she was underground.
Inside, the atmosphere was heavy and cold. Did the air absorb the damp of the brick walls, giving it a
different composition to the air outside? Or was it just that it sat here, sluggish and dense, never quite being refreshed by incoming boats? She was pushing into it as an explorer might make their way through thick jungle foliage, the vines and creepers falling back down as she passed, hiding her from view. For a brief moment she found it hard to draw in a full breath. Her lungs twitched with a sense of desperation, as if she was going under the water as well as under the ground. There should be a candle on the distant front edge, flickering steadily as a marker of safety, a canary perched way ahead.
She could still hold on to an awareness of the world behind her. The half-moon of the tunnel entrance was reflected in the water, creating an oval of light, a portal that she could not now access. It retreated behind her at a speed that was surely greater than that at which she was travelling. She had to stop holding her breath. For a second, she allowed herself to think of the weight of earth above her, a mound enclosing her as completely as a body in an ancient barrow. The throb of the engine filled the space, the sound waves bouncing from the curved walls, cutting her off from anything beyond her vision. On impulse, she turned the key and quietened the racket. Skíðblaðnir continued forwards in the sudden quiet, as yet unaware that the force pushing her had stopped. The remembered thump of the engine still reverberated, a silent bass accompaniment to the dripping of water from above, the light swish of the hull below. Charlie could almost hear the sound of footsteps above her, as if Max was up there, his weight making the earth ceiling creak. The boat moved at walking pace so, if he did follow them, they’d arrive at the tunnel exit at the same time. Briefly she pictured him forcing his way through scrub, vaulting gates, squeezing between strands of barbed wire. It wasn’t going to happen. There was no footpath for him to follow, for a start, no markers to indicate where the canal was heading far below. And he wasn’t dressed for a cross-country walk.
The scrape of metal against stone brought her back to the moment. Still she paused, not wanting to lose the ability to hear. She couldn’t stay there, though, suspended in the dark. Not least because another boat might come at any time. With a slow hand, she turned the key and the engine jumped to life again, demanding movement, and Charlie felt the darkness begin to move past. She should put the headlight on. It would give her a sense of reality, never mind give notice of her presence to a boat coming the opposite way. A crump of metal. The slow sinking of her boat, her plans. With a sudden flash of panic, she turned the engine off once more, straining for the sound of another engine. How close would it have to be for her to hear it? But what if it was silent, creeping up behind her in ambush? Her mind flashed out a complete image, perfect in every detail. Figures emerging from dark boats at the tunnel’s opening, untying ropes, pushing off to sneak in under cover of the noise Skíðblaðnir was making. Closing in, silent figures in wetsuits swarming up from the black water. Watch out for monsters.
‘Get a grip.’ Her voice was small, but it pushed her into snapping on the headlight, and a glow of yellow was thrown against the red of the walls. It brought rationality along with colour, and she shouted the words out as she set the engine going again. The only way she was going to get out was by going forwards.
Even so, the journey felt endless. The bricks alongside her slid past. They didn’t care. She was one of many. Behind her, the water was churning in a vacuum. At times it felt as if she was stationary, the tunnel walls a trick, moving onwards in an endless loop. Blood throbbed through her ears in time with the engine noise. Skíðblaðnir slid onwards, oblivious, the long line of her roof oddly comforting. The two of them against the world, the boat a weight of steel at her command. As if aware that she was being left out, Bella scrabbled against the door. Charlie called out to her, promising it wouldn’t be long. Underneath the water, the blades of the propeller were a bonus weapon in a computer game, protecting her from foes behind. The idea made her laugh out loud, the sound becoming absorbed by the air behind her as if it had never been.
A sudden trickle of water splashed cold on the back of her neck, making her jump. For a second, it was the sea above the tunnel’s roof, about to pour down and drown her. At least that wasn’t the problem. She saw herself from a distance, Skíðblaðnir nothing but a tiny shape moving along the narrow strip of the canal, herself a miniature figure on the back deck, a stick person holding an invisible tiller. With a rush, she came back to the tunnel, the wooden end of the tiller arm smooth under her palm, the water churning along the sides of the boat.
When it came, the pinhole of light at the far end seemed like an optical illusion, conjured up from too much looking. Charlie flicked the headlight off to check, leaving the tunnel dark around her. For a second, she couldn’t even see the flat line of Skíðblaðnir’s roof, right there in front of her. As the reminder of the outside world ahead of her grew, from a speck to a blob to an oval matching the one she’d left behind, it was as if the straight edges of the tunnel began to distort. Would Max be waiting for her, ready to carry on arguing? Before today, the boat had felt like a hiding place, somewhere she couldn’t be traced. But that was an illusion. He wouldn’t be there, because now he knew where he could find her. Because how could you hide on a strip of water, with no escape routes, no alternatives?
The tunnel was widening as the light grew stronger. Charlie reached for the throttle but, instead of speeding up to reach the approaching light, she pulled back into neutral. The boat hung in space, mirroring her reluctance. It was as if the dark length of tunnel behind her pulsed, but she couldn’t tell if it was trying to draw her back in or spit her out. There was only one way, really. With a final burst of acceleration, Skíðblaðnir bucked forwards.
The sunlight was golden, the world reset in her absence. An impossible collage of light and colour flared across her eyeballs, leaving her in a moment of blindness. And then the anticlimax. She’d made it through the tunnel, by herself, but what was the use of that when there was no one to share the news with? Instead of the mass of the hill sitting above her, each boat-length she moved brought a weight of negative thinking. She’d never find Margareta, never work out what her mother had been thinking. Bella, released back onto the deck, sensed her mood and kept close to her legs. That small pressure, of warmth and fur, kept Charlie going, far beyond the limits of tiredness. It wasn’t rational: there were only two ways she could go, after all, forward or back. If Max really wanted to find her, all he had to do was keep walking along the canal. She didn’t think he would, not really, but she wasn’t going to risk making it easy for him.
The conversation with Eleanor, when she finally got through, was brief and unsatisfactory. She couldn’t explain why her plan to follow the clues on the boat made sense, and Eleanor seemed to be less interested in the possibilities of the discovery than in picking holes in her reasoning.
‘It just seems like a waste of time. And what are the chances of that woman still living there?’
‘She’s called Margareta,’ Charlie told her. ‘And you never know.’ She had the cutting in front of her, and she tilted the sheet in case that made it any easier to decode. ‘I just think it’s interesting. Look, I’m going to take a photo of it and send it to you.’ She switched the phone onto loudspeaker so that she could do it as they talked. ‘Did you ask about any relatives, by the way?’
There was a pause at the other end. Finally Eleanor spoke. ‘It’s a bit weird, actually.’
‘Weird in what way?’ Charlie waited for the answer. ‘Eleanor? What’s weird?’
She heard a sigh. ‘Dad wouldn’t talk about it, and he claimed to have mislaid all the paperwork, birth certificates and whatnot. So I went to the library to see if I could find anything on Ancestry.’
‘On what?’
‘Ancestry. It’s a website you can use in the library … Look, it doesn’t matter. I just couldn’t find her on it, that’s all.’
‘What, like a birth record?’
‘It was probably my fault. I’ll try again when Poppy’s at school. I’ll have miss
ed her in all the Nilssons, it’ll be like looking for a Smith here.’
‘OK, let me know. What’s happening about the move?’
Eleanor sighed again. ‘It all fell through. We were literally about to sign the contract and something happened at their end, some problem with the solicitor they’d been using. It’ll be all right, I’m sure we’ll find somewhere else before long. Look, I should go.’ She didn’t end the call though. Charlie got the impression that she wanted it to go on, that it was something of a welcome distraction from whatever she had to go back to. ‘You didn’t finish telling me about Max. You’ve got Bella back then, that’s good.’ She was trying her best, even though she didn’t really understand why anyone would want to have a dog about. ‘Did you agree about the house?’
Charlie hedged, saying something about it being in progress. Going into the whole thing would take far too long, and then she’d have to explain Dave, the raid on the garden. She could too easily imagine what Eleanor would have to say about that.
She pulled herself back to the phone call. Eleanor was saying to let her know how things were going. ‘And can you please send a message to Martha? She’s checking every couple of minutes, and I had to prise the phone out of her hand before school this morning.’
When she’d gone, Charlie checked her messages. There were four from Martha, starting out cheerful and ending with one made up entirely of sad faces. Charlie quickly tapped a reply.
Sorry, no signal!! I’m going on an adventure, will let you know more soon! Hope school was fun!!
It was pretty much the truth. She’d make an effort to keep it up. And send her a picture from the next place she stopped. In the meantime, she really needed to get a move on. If she made good time over the next few days, she’d reach Sneasham. Never mind what Eleanor said. She had a feeling that this was a necessary visit.