Narrow Minds (26 page)

As he stood up, red-faced and embarrassed she had started to poke him both verbally and physically. The pokes turned to pinches and Sam's face became a deeper and deeper shade of red. Obviously enjoying herself, Charlie quietly pushed him and pushed him until I couldn't take it any more.

‘Charlie, for goodness' sake,' I hissed at her, ‘will you leave him alone?'

Sam couldn't resist piping up, ‘Yeah Charlie,' he sneered, ‘leave me alone.'

I found out later that after I had turned around Charlie had reached out and, grabbing Sam's soft underarm, had given it a huge pinch. But of course, at the time all I heard was Sam's scream.

Turning around amidst the tutting and sour looks of the other women in the queue I prepared a withering speech which should have ended in Charlie being sent outside to look after the dog, unfortunately Sam got there first.

Bright red in the face, and obviously torn between tears and anger my smiling little pacifist finally lost it. Hauling back his left arm he let loose a punch which connected squarely with Charlie's grinning jaw and knocked her off her feet and onto the floor.

Complete silence fell in the shop. Charlie got to her feet and stamped out of the shop, Sam burst into tears and I was horribly torn between telling him off for punching his sister and patting him on the back for finally taking a stand, albeit a rather extreme one.

With him wrapped around my waist I decided that silence was probably the best way to go, so in this state I paid for the items, packed them into bags and left the shop, still with Sam attached to me like some sort of psychologically scarred remora. As we headed toward the door an elderly gentleman stepped in front of us and regarded Sam.

‘That's a good left hook you have there young man.' He grinned.

Sam tried to smile through his tears but only managed a sort of grimace. I waited for the lecture to start but all he did was smile again and wander off. Sam looked up at me. ‘Mum?'

‘Yes, love?' I looked down at him as he prised himself upright.

‘She's going to kill me, isn't she?' He looked fearfully out of the window where Charlie was waiting with the dog, her expression completely blank.

I laughed. ‘No she isn't, I won't let her.'

He stared at his sister for a moment, and then took a deep breath, squaring his shoulders he headed out of the door to meet his fate.

As he walked toward her, she studied him, head on one side, the red patch on the side of her jaw stood out like a neon light.

Sam swallowed and kept walking; I could hear the music from those old westerns playing in my head. As he reached her, they stood and stared at each other.

Finally Charlie grinned. ‘That really hurt,' she said and clapped him hard on the back causing him to stagger slightly. ‘Well done.'

Sam finally smiled and sighed, there was nothing better than getting congratulations from his big sister.

‘If, however,' Charlie snarled, ‘you ever do that again, I will kill you where you stand.'

Charlie picked up Mort's lead and handed it to him and without even a glance at me they headed out of the car park together. Honestly, kids! I had to grin.

Back on the boat we finally set off again. The river was still flowing quite fast, in the right direction, and we made good time as we headed on toward Peterborough. It wasn't long before we had Titchmarsh lock in our sights. Confident and happy with the sunshine on my face, I pulled into the moorings and yelled for Charlie to come and sort out the lock.

As we pulled into the pound, I noticed that
Minerva
was being a little bouncy, the water was flowing very fast, coming over the top of the open gates. Feeling the start of a nervous moment, I dismissed my fears and concentrated on getting Min over to one side of the pound and making sure that she was roped securely to the concrete bollards on the top of the lock.

Charlie closed the gates behind us and began to lift the guillotine gate at the front of the lock. As the water level in the pound dropped, the river behind began to cascade with ever increasing fury over the rear gates causing a frothing white maelstrom just behind my feet. The force of the water coming in pushed
Minerva
hard up against the front gate and, despite having the engine on full in reverse and two separate ropes around bollards, there was nothing I could do to get her to back away.

We were stuck and I signalled Charlie to hit the emergency stop switch. With the water pushing so hard behind her, if Charlie opened the gates I would be swept through with absolutely no control whatsoever. All my confidence seeped away and I dithered horribly, hopping from one wet foot to the other as water washed over the back deck and down into the back cabin.

Charlie leaned over the edge. ‘What are we going to do?' she yelled down to me.

‘I don't know,' I yelled back, ‘we can't stay here. Just try opening the gate slowly.'

Charlie gave me ‘the look'. ‘I can't, Mum, I press a button and it opens, I don't have any control.'

I sighed, I knew she was right, we had two choices either we fill the pound back up again and wait for the river to drop further or we attempt to go through. I dithered again, my feet getting wetter with every passing second.

‘OK,' I shouted up, ‘let me get another rope on and I'll try to hold her.' I wrapped a rope around a bollard and wrapped it around one of the T studs on the boat. ‘OK, fire away.'

Charlie gave me a doubtful look and hit the button again. The big metal door commenced its inexorable upward swing and with just as much determination
Minerva
pushed her nose hard against the door. It didn't matter how hard I pulled she would not back off. Finally the bottom of the gate reached the point of our bow and with a soft thud edged up and away from the boat.

Like a greyhound from a trap
Minerva
surged forward. The rope I was stupidly holding sped through my hand taking a fair amount of skin with it, I screamed and let go. One of the older ropes snapped and I watched the flailing line fall back toward the boat like a loosely cracked whip. The boat shot forward, sliding the bow and the front deck beneath the metal gate.
Minerva
was pulled up short as the front doors smashed into the gate. There was the sound of breaking glass and a horrible screech of rending metal as our poor television aerial was first crushed and then flattened against the roof as the door passed within inches of the roof.

Luckily we still had one rope attached and as we moved forward, about thirty feet beneath the gates, the push from the water behind slowed and I managed to bring her to a stop just as the gates were about to take off Geoff's new chimney from the top of the boat. He would have been devastated.

‘Mum! MUM!!' Charlie screamed down at me, ‘Are you OK?'

I took stock before I answered, one bleeding hand, one completely obliterated TV aerial, at least one window smashed, I just hoped Sam and Mortimer were both still in one piece.

‘Yeah, I'm fine.' I gave her a cheery wave, unfortunately I hadn't been careful which hand to wave and at the sight of all the blood Charlie turned a little green.

‘You're bleeding,' she pointed out.

‘I know, it looks worse than it is.' I pointed downstream. ‘Meet me at the moorings I think we need to do a bit of cleaning up.'

An hour later, bandaged, and in possession of a hot cup of coffee (with a fair tot of scotch in it, for the pain obviously) and a dustpan full of broken glass I was on the phone to Geoff.

‘Can you bring home some wood?'

‘Yes, why?'

‘We've had a bit of a knock.'

‘What broke?'

‘Both windows in the front doors.'

‘WHAT! How?'

‘Slight altercation with a lock gate.'

‘Are you all OK?'

‘Yeah, we're fine, bit shaky and …' I was going to say bloody, but sensibly stopped, it would only worry him. ‘… It's a bit breezy in here, but we're fine, I'll use some duck tape to put up a couple of bin bags and some cardboard for now but we're going to need some wood.'

There was a short silence at the end of the phone then. ‘I'll pick up the wood, shall I still meet you at Fotheringay?'

I hesitated, if I said no, meet us here, he would worry but, if I said yes, I would have to be brave enough to take the boat through another five locks and under numerous bridges, I hoped the rest of the day would be easier as there was no way I could afford to be off-schedule, I sighed. ‘Meet us at Fotheringay as planned.'

‘You sure?' Geoff sounded more worried than I was.

‘Yes, I'm sure. We'll be fine, now go away and we'll see you later.' I blew him a kiss down the phone and hung up.

Charlie looked at me. ‘You're not serious are you?'

I waved my half-bandaged hand at her, I'd washed it and applied a good glollop of Aloe Vera pulp then bandaged it up, the light green goo and the blood were beginning to seep through the bandage, making a horrible grey stain. ‘I think we ought to do this again, don't you?'

She nodded and taking a knife cut another leaf from my poor denuded cactus. This time we spread the pulp onto a pad rather than straight onto the skin. I had the feeling that I really ought to take this to A&E but that wasn't going to happen, no car and no town nearby with public transport. I really should be thankful that it hadn't been more serious.

There are certain things that you just can't allow yourself to think about, potential for accidents or severe illness is one of them because most of my life is spent wallowing around in places there aren't even names for, let alone be able to give an ambulance directions to. I studied my hand, it had stopped bleeding but there seemed to be a pinkish water dripping from it. I sighed: this was going to take weeks to heal, slapping the gunk-covered melolin pad onto the wound, I held it out for Charlie to start bandaging. She was uncharacteristically silent throughout the process.

When she had finished and had pinned the bandage in place, she stared at her handiwork for a moment then looked up at me. ‘Don't do that again, please,' she said with a straight face, ‘I honestly thought the boat was going to sink with you and Sam on it, I'm going to be having nightmares for weeks.' She shuddered and biting her lip blinked rapidly.

I gave her a hug. ‘I can't promise nothing else will happen but I will try very hard not to worry you again.'

She nodded, ‘When the boat hit the gate I felt the thump right through my feet and with the sound of smashing glass and then you screamed and that awful sound as the aerial went down …' she sighed and gave me a hug. ‘I honestly thought you were going to die.'

‘Oh dear.' I hugged her back. ‘I'm really sorry, I'll try not to do it again.'

She nodded and gave me a tremulous smile. ‘I wish Geoff was here.'

I shrugged and replied, ‘I honestly don't think he could have done anything differently.' I stood up and flexed my hand and winced. ‘I think we did very well and should be proud of ourselves.'

She smiled then with a deep breath she nodded and climbed off the sofa. ‘Shall we get on?'

I heaved myself to my feet and downed the last of my cold coffee. ‘Yeauch! Yes I think we should.'

We took it very slowly and having had one major disaster it seemed as though we would be finally allowed to enjoy the sunshine.

As we were meandering slowly through Oundle the wind, which up to this point had been present but not really that invasive, picked up and began to make its presence felt, by the time we reached the Cotterstock lock it was blowing strongly and steadily in from the south-east. Coming up on the lock I noticed with a sigh that the pound was empty, our gates closed and the bottom gates open, no chance of just pulling her into the pound then.

I gave a double blast of the horn which brought Charlie, moaning and complaining, out on to the roof.

‘I'm fed up with this,' she announced, ‘I just get settled doing something and we find another bloody lock.' She frowned as I wrestled with
Minerva
and the wind and completely failed to get her anywhere close to the moorings. ‘Erm … Mum, didn't we want to park up there?'

‘Yes, Charlie,' I snapped through gritted teeth. ‘I am desperately trying to get her over there, but as you might notice she doesn't want to go.'

Putting
Minerva
into reverse we paddled in vain against the wind trying desperately to get back far enough that I could take another run in at the moorings.

‘What are you doing?' Charlie shouted over the wind.

‘I can't get her to go backwards,' I shouted back, ‘the wind's pushing us away from the moorings and the water is flowing fairly fast straight down that channel.' I pointed ahead. ‘I can't do anything, I'm going to try and turn her nose into the lock gates so that you can jump off, I'll throw you a rope and we'll try and pull her in.'

Charlie looked dubiously at the sharp right turn that led into the lock. ‘Are you sure that'll work?' she shouted.

‘No, but it's the only idea I've got.' I put
Minerva
into full reverse and, wincing at the huge cloud of black smoke that billowed up from the exhaust chimney, I ignored the screaming protests of the engine and did my utmost to pull her back.

Finally with a lot of swearing and wearing of engine parts, I managed to get her nose buried in the lock gates. Charlie skipped down the gunwales and jumped easily onto the far bank where she ran across the lock gates and stood waiting for me to throw her a rope.

Being only about six stone and built like an elf is great for climbing, running and leaping. It is an incredibly bad body shape for pulling twenty tons of steel against wind and current.

Seeing that she was being pulled closer and closer to the edge of the mooring I had to scream at her, ‘Just let go of the rope, you moose.'

She did and
Minerva
's rear end swung free to bury itself in the far bank.