A Mistletoe Kiss (34 page)

Alice shuddered and clutched her dry jersey round her. She was a slender girl with long, shiny hair the colour of polished oak, and a pair of innocent blue eyes. When Hetty had first met her, she had wondered whether the other girl would be able to cope with the physical work of the boat, which demanded a good deal of strength, but Alice, as Sally had remarked, seemed to be made of whipcord and did her share and more of any heavy lifting without waiting to be asked.

Now, Hetty wagged a finger at Alice and intoned, in a hollow voice: ‘'
Twas a dark and stormy night, three men sat round a fire, and one of them said, Antonio, tell us a tale, so Antonio began …
'

‘'Twas a dark and stormy night, three
girls
sat round a fire …' Alice and Sally chorused, then broke down in giggles.

‘What a night for telling ghost stories this would be,' Hetty remarked, holding out her hands to the stove. ‘But I don't think we'd better start frightening
ourselves into a fit, because we've got nowhere to run! In fact, I could do with a cup of tea while we vote on what to have for supper. Pull the kettle over the fire, Alice – I filled it up earlier – and …' She stopped speaking, for at that moment the girls heard a very loud splash and a shout, and then the boat rocked violently. ‘What the devil was that? Not a ghost, I trust!'

All three girls jumped to their feet and Hetty, who was nearest the door, clambered into the well and stared into the teeth of the storm. At first she saw nothing, but then something – or someone – rose out of the water, frightening her so much that she screamed before realising that the dripping figure was a mere man and not some sort of mythological creature come to haunt them.

Hastily she scrambled out on to the bank, closely followed by the other two, and snatched up a boat hook, pushing it in the general direction of the dripping figure. ‘Grab hold of that,' she shouted sharply. ‘Hold tight and we'll pull you out.' She turned to Sally and Alice. ‘Some fool's run straight into the canal,' she told them. ‘Ah, he's got the boat hook; give me a hand, girls.' She addressed the dripping, shivering figure, up to his armpits in icy water. ‘Don't worry, we'll have you out in two ticks, but for God's sake don't let go of the boat hook!'

The man shouted agreement, his voice scarcely audible above the howling of the storm, and Hetty thanked her stars that the canal was only about five feet deep at this point. Even so, it took the combined
efforts of all three girls, and the dripping victim, to get him out of the water, and when at last he stood shivering violently on the bank and was beginning to thank them Hetty cut him short.

‘You can tell us how wonderful we are once you're in the cabin,' she told him sharply. ‘And you can tell us how you ended up in the canal, as well,' she added as the man tried, rather feebly, to wring the water out of his heavy overcoat.

‘Thanks, girls,' he said through chattering teeth. ‘God knows what would have happened to me if you'd not been close by. I'm really grateful …'

‘Don't waste your breath,' Hetty advised. ‘C'mon, into the cabin.' She grabbed his hand and towed him to the
Shamrock
, and no more words were exchanged until they were all inside, the man having to bend his head since he was a good six feet tall and narrow boat cabins are low-ceilinged.

Once the doors were shut, Sally whipped one of her blankets from its cupboard and gave it to their visitor. ‘Take off your wet things,' she said briskly. ‘I dare say you think we ought to go outside whilst you undress, but I'm afraid that's out of the question. Just remove all your upper clothing and then tie the blanket round your waist before you slip off your trousers, and the decencies will be preserved.'

Hetty could not hide a smile and began to help the man out of his heavy coat, for he was fumbling helplessly at the buttons; it was plain that his fingers were numb with cold. She did not look up into his face, but kept her own gaze lowered until he had stripped to
the waist. Then he tucked the blanket round himself, slipped out of his sodden trousers and kicked off his already unlaced boots.

Respectably draped in the blanket, he sat down by the fire and began to rub himself dry with the towel Hetty offered him. ‘You must think me the most awful fool even to be out on such a hellish night …' he began, then stared up at Hetty, his eyes rounding. ‘My God, Hetty, is it really you?'

Hetty gasped. Now that she looked closely at the young man, she could only marvel that she had not recognised her childhood enemy at once. ‘Gareth!' she exclaimed. ‘What on earth are you doing here? The last I heard of you, you were on some sort of an engineering course, then your parents moved away and we didn't hear anything else.' She laughed, and turned to Sally and Alice, who were staring at her open-mouthed. ‘Sorry, girls. Have I never mentioned a horrible, red-headed boy who lived next door to us and made my life a misery when I was a little kid?' Gareth made protesting noises, which Hetty ignored. ‘Well this is him, Gareth Evans, late of Salisbury Street.' She looked down at the young man, suddenly realising how much he had changed and guessing that she had changed also. ‘Gareth, meet my crew; Sally's the blonde and Alice the brunette. And girls, I've just remembered, Gareth used to work for my grandfather aboard the
Water Sprite
, so he knows – or used to know rather – a good deal about canal boats.'

She turned back to Gareth. His water-darkened hair
was beginning to dry to the flaming red she remembered and his face had been wiped clean of mud, and once again she wondered how on earth she had not recognised him straight away. But it had been years since they had last met, and it had not occurred to her that she might meet him here, let alone up to his chest in the canal. She was beginning to ask him just how he had come to plunge into the water when the kettle whistled and Sally leapt to make the tea, whilst Alice produced the tin of biscuits and offered them round.

Hetty waited until everyone was provided with a cup of tea and a couple of ginger nuts, then looked enquiringly at Gareth. ‘Well? What were you doing, going for a swim in the canal in the middle of a blizzard? Come on, out with it!'

Gareth laughed and leaned across to where his greatcoat hung, dripping, across the makeshift clothes line. He fumbled in the pocket, then brought out a sheet of paper and held it out to Hetty. ‘You won't be able to read this, but I was on my way to the fish and chip van,' he said ruefully. ‘The blokes had all given me their orders – they were written on that piece of paper, only the water's washed every word out – and the quickest way from our training camp to the wharf is along the towpath. Having worked on canals myself, I usually enjoy a walk alongside the water and the fellows know it, so even when the snow started they guessed I'd be glad of the opportunity for a change of scene.'

‘We were going to have fish and chips tonight,' Sally put in. ‘But when the blizzard blew up we were too
afraid of an accident if we kept going; a collision is always bad, but in this sort of weather it could be fatal …'

‘And we really don't know where we are,' Alice said rather plaintively. ‘Even when we get nearer to civilisation, where there are landmarks such as warehouses and so on alongside the canal, we won't be able to see them.'

‘Yes, but that doesn't explain how you came to fall in,' Hetty said accusingly to their visitor, ‘and you a member of the
Water Sprite
's crew for long enough to be wary of a swim in midwinter. Don't tell me you jumped in on purpose, because I'm afraid I shan't believe you.'

Gareth chuckled and dunked his ginger biscuit into his cup of tea, then bit into it and spoke with his mouth full. ‘If you want the plain, unvarnished truth, it was your fault,' he said, grinning round at the three girls. ‘I'd crossed several fields and reached the towpath, or rather I thought I had – snow changes everything, doesn't it, and of course I could see very little with it blowing into my face. Usually, I cross on to the towpath by climbing over a stile, but this evening I couldn't see it. The snow was a good way up the hedges and laying fast, so I found a thin bit of hedge and pushed my way through …'

‘That will please some poor farmer,' Hetty muttered, giving her old enemy an accusing look. Gareth must know as well as she did herself that it was one of the deadly sins of farming to make a hole in a hedge through which stock might escape.

Gareth gave her a shame-faced look. ‘Yes, I know what you mean, but I was lost, queen, and beginning to get pretty anxious. I thought I'd reached the towpath – hoped I had, rather – but I couldn't be sure. Then I saw light ahead of me and I just thought I'd found a cottage with its blackout curtains carelessly drawn. I decided I'd best make my way there and ask directions. Then I saw what I thought was a tarmac road and stepped on to it, only to find myself plunging into ice-cold water. I gave a bit of a yell, hoping that someone from the cottage would come to my rescue …' he grinned round apologetically at them and drained his mug of tea, ‘and the rest you know,' he finished.

‘Well, someone did come to your rescue,' Sally said brightly. She took Gareth's empty mug and refilled it from the teapot, then waved a spoon at him. ‘Do you want it black, or with conny-onny? Only we're clean out of milk, and bread as well. We meant to buy some when we got the fish and chips, in fact we had quite a little shopping list, but the blizzard put a stop to all that.'

‘I'll have it with conny-onny, ta,' Gareth said, grinning broadly. ‘Eh, it's good to hear someone talking Scouse for a change. How long did it take you to say shopping, or errands, instead of messages? The first time I said messages, the fellers in my hut thought I were a German spy! Oh, and when I spoke Welsh to a pal who came in for training, I got even more suspicious looks.'

The girls laughed. ‘I didn't know you spoke Welsh,'
Hetty said. ‘As for Scouse expressions, it's not so bad for us because we're all from Liverpool. But I see from your uniform that you're in the air force, so there'll be men in your camp from all over the country, I suppose. Which branch, or section, or whatever, are you in?'

‘I'm a flight mechanic; at the moment I'm working on the kites used for training would-be pilots, which is fairly interesting, but I hope to be posted to an operational station – we call them stations, not camps – once the war hots up a bit and the high-ups get their act together. Things are pretty chaotic at the moment; I expect it's the same with the Inland Waterways Board. Or are they more organised?'

‘I don't know,' Hetty said. She turned to her friends. ‘What do you think?'

Sally pulled a doubtful face. ‘It's difficult to judge, because this is only our third trip, and when things go wrong we blame ourselves.' She grinned at the young man, whose clothing was now steaming gently, and leaned down to turn his coat, since one side was already almost dry. ‘Because of the weather we haven't always arrived when expected, which has meant hanging around, waiting for our return load. But you've worked the canals, so you know it isn't … it isn't …'

Hetty laughed, and helped Sally out. ‘Working a canal boat isn't an exact science, as my old physics teacher used to say, and the Inland Waterways people know it and work round it, so to speak. Gramps concentrated on carrying foodstuffs, fleeces, cotton
and so on, so the
Sprite
didn't need an enormous clean between loads. But now there's a war on we have to take all sorts, even coal, and as you can imagine cleaning the boat out when she's been carrying coal and is about to be laden with flour or sugar is no sinecure.'

‘Gosh, no; how the devil do you do it?' Gareth asked.

Hetty gave him a small and rather grudging smile. Despite the fact that several years had passed, she could not completely forget how the two of them had sparred and argued, and called each other names. And though he was three years the elder, Gareth had sometimes used his superior strength to trip her up, or tug a loose strand of her hair, and on one occasion steal her half-eaten apple and crunch the remains of it down, grinning tauntingly as he did so. But he was obviously still interested in life on the canal, though he had been out of it for years. I really must forget the old Gareth and give him a chance to prove he's a different person, she told herself.

‘Well, Hetty? How do you manage the clean-up which is necessary between trips?'

Hetty gave herself a shake. ‘There's a special wharf with a chute which loads us with loose coal, and one with a scoop crane which removes it at the other end of the trip,' she told him. ‘Then we brush and scrub and wash until the boat's impeccable, and go on to another wharf where our return load will be put aboard. We don't do any of the heavy lifting, which is all done by mechanical means. In fact, apart from cleaning down between loads, all we have to do at
either end of our voyage is sheeting up … and if you remember, that really is a horrible business.'

‘I remember,' Gareth said ruefully. ‘But do you have the strength to heave the planks which support the canvas sheeting into position? No doubt you fasten the canvases over whatever your load happens to be with no trouble at all, but the planks are damned heavy and difficult to handle because they get slippery, I remember that too.' He looked at Alice, thoughtfully brushing out her long, damp hair, and caught her eye, then raised his brows. ‘If you'll forgive me, you don't look strong enough …'

All three girls laughed and Sally answered for her friend. ‘Hetty and myself thought the same when we first met up, but Alice's fragility is just an illusion. She's as strong as any feller, is our Alice!'

‘She needs to be; we all need to be. Just starting the engine, as you'll remember, takes every ounce of one's strength,' Hetty said ruefully. ‘But what's worrying me right now is you, Flight Mechanic Evans! What will your pals think when you fail to turn up with their grub? Suppose they send out a search party? I feel we ought to make our way to your camp – sorry, station – just to let them know that you aren't lying in a field somewhere, a frozen corpse, but I don't fancy going out into that blizzard, even armed with a torch.'