Sabrina Fludde (23 page)

Abren turned back to the boat, and a figure rose up on the deck. It was Phaze II. He half-smiled at her, and she half-smiled back, thinking that he didn't look like a lost puppy as he had done when she'd last seen him, with all the stuffing knocked out. But neither did he look like what he had once been – a wild boy, creeping through the darkness in a ragged black coat.

‘What are you waiting for?' he called. ‘Aren't you coming on board?'

Abren didn't need to be asked again! She clambered on board, with Pen to help her up as well as Phaze II. They showed her everything, from foredeck to aft, and
from crew cabins to the master's one, with its little window looking into the hold, its cupboard-berths and its little stove.

‘Where did you get this boat? Did you make it?' Abren said.

‘I didn't make
her
, I repaired
her
. And she's not a
boat
, she's a
trow,'
Sir Henry said. ‘An upriver trow, and the very last of them, restored in memory of the days when Sabrina Fludde was the queen of rivers. Half a lifetime's work, I hate to admit – but she's finished at long last! I never thought I'd see the day. And I certainly never thought the river would launch her like this – single-handedly!'

He showed them what the river had done, smashing down the boat shed and sweeping away everything but his precious trow. Abren asked if she had a name. He looked her straight in the eye, and said there could be only one – and that the name which she'd had all along:

‘The Princess of Pengwern.'

They would set off on their maiden voyage after breakfast, Sir Henry said, and prove his armchair critics wrong about sailing on a silty river which wasn't deep enough. Pen returned to the house in the coracle, to fetch them provisions. Sir Henry found a pair of missing side-sheets on the water, and a massive paddle – which he called a sweep – without which, apparently, no river journey could be made in safety.

Before they set out, he gathered his little novice crew around him for a basic lesson in trowmanship. The
Princess of Pengwern
was like a tree, he said. Her
hull
was her root, digging down in the dark, her
mast
the trunk, her
yard
the branches, and her sails – or
sheets –
the leaves shaking in the breeze. Her foredeck stood at the front, or
bow
, and her aft deck at the back, or
stern. Port
was left, and
starboard
right.

Then he showed them how to raise and lower the anchor, loose the ropes which lowered the mast, and steer using the tiller. Talked about wind, and how to turn the square-rigged sail, and about the current, and how the sweeps would help them not to run aground.

He also showed them how to put on life-jackets, and while they were busy tying each other into knots, he released the bowline and poled the
Princess of Pengwern
round so that she could start her journey stern first, trailing the anchor to slow them down until
they'd got used to the fast-flowing river. Then he called that the day was getting on and they should leave immediately.

Just as they were departing, however, Bentley appeared. He climbed over the side gate and ran along the terrace, waving his arms and shouting in anguish, ‘Don't go without me, Abren!
Not again!'

He had a point. Abren laughed at him and waved back, pleading with Sir Henry, who gave in at her insistence and fetched Bentley in his coracle. Abren marvelled that he'd known about them setting sail. He laughed back at her.

‘Everybody knows!' he said. ‘Look up at the town walls. What else has anybody got to do until the flood goes down?'

Abren looked up, and the walls were crammed with silent figures waiting for the moment when the
Princess of Pengwern
would set off. At the sight of them all, Sir Henry grew inches taller. He was the master of a trow! He had a full complement of crew members and every needful provision. And not only that, but the weather promised fair.

They waved goodbye to Pengwern, and Sir Henry untied the last rope so that the little trow could inch out into the water. Suddenly the figures on the town walls were silent no more. The last trow on a river which had once been full of them! They clapped and cheered and waved. Abren could see even Mena waving, and Fee piped them out, wearing his Paddy McBytheway hat.

Abren smelt adventure up ahead. She looked at all the people honouring the days when the river had been a busy thoroughfare. They'd come to remember
the past, but something new was happening, too.
And only she knew
.

Abren shivered. The little trow dipped her mast to pass beneath first the crowded English Bridge, then the dark underbelly of the railway bridge. More quickly than she could ever have imagined, Pengwern lay behind her. The mast arose again, as if the trow were waving goodbye, and Abren felt as if the whole town were waving back – not just the people on the bridges, but the trees and houses, churches and cinemas, schools and pubs and old town walls.

She turned away reluctantly, and suddenly a new world waited for her – one that she'd only ever glimpsed from the girders, and now here it was. The
Princess of Pengwern
moved downriver as if taking possession. And no matter that the waters beyond the town were choppy and full of hidden currents, Abren felt as if she were taking possession too. She dipped between banks on a roller-coaster of a ride, while Sir Henry yelled commands and the trow bobbed and careered in her clumsy novice hands.

She laughed and panicked, slipped and fell, despaired and wept with sheer exhilaration. It was the start of a long and exhausting day. On a straight stretch of the river, she helped turn the yard to face the wind so that the
Princess of Pengwern
could show them what she was capable of. It was a marvellous moment – the square sail full and the trow racing downriver.

They sailed into a gorge with the wind behind them, and out again, across open waters where the swollen waters formed a massive lake, under cliffs and around sand banks which lay unmarked on Sir Henry's charts.

Past boatmen's inns they sailed, where poachers once had sold ill-gotten salmon in the porch; along lonely stretches of river where the only signs of life were wild spring flowers and budding willows; past riverside houses with gardens still under flood-water; past farmland and woodland, hills and roads, villages and towns.

Sometimes the river was easy, and all they had to do was follow it. But sometimes it was wild, and they had to drop the sail, lower the anchor, man the sweeps – and hope for the best!

‘You think this is tricky!' Sir Henry yelled. ‘But this is nothing compared to what you'll feel when you meet the fickle currents of the Severn Sea!'

Night approached and despite all efforts to the contrary, they were still afloat. Sir Henry brought the
Princess of Pengwern
into a quiet, tree-lined haven where he leapt on to the bank and fastened them at bow and stern. Darkness fell, the moon rose over them and the river carried on its way, silvery and magical.

Bentley sat in the bow, playing the saxophone. Sir Henry smoked a coltsfoot pipe. Phaze II disappeared, off on a walk somewhere, and it fell to Abren to stoke the stove and turn tinned meat, beans and carrots into a one-pot stew. Eventually, Pen came down to the cabin to help her. She was unusually quiet, and an awkwardness hung between them. Abren knew what was the matter, but didn't know how to put it right. She had a story to tell. She owed it to them, and it hung between them like a shadow. Things she'd done, and things she'd found out about herself. But she couldn't find the words to start.

She left the one-pot stew simmering, and went off on a walk too, jumping on to the bank and slipping between the trees. Back upriver she could see a house which they must have passed some time ago. It was the only one in sight and she sauntered towards it, drawn by its small squares of yellow light. The moon shone down on her, and she watched the shapes it cast upon the water, so lost in thought that she didn't see the man until they'd almost walked into each other.

He was coming from the direction of the house, striding through the long grass and humming to himself. But Abren didn't even hear him either, and if it hadn't been for the familiar smell of coltsfoot she mightn't have noticed him until it was too late.

But she caught a whiff and looked up, expecting to find Sir Henry out walking too. And there was the man, right in front of her. A long white stem stuck out of his mouth, and a wisp of smoke curled out of its clay bowl. He smiled without taking the pipe out of his mouth – an old man, as small as a child, wearing a pinstripe suit with a waistcoat, watch and chain.

‘Are you with the trow?' he asked. ‘Because if you are, I've cooked you these. Cooked them for you special. Caught 'em with my lantern last night. Must've known that you were coming. Though I can't imagine why – there hasn't been a trow past here for years. Not since I was a boy!'

He held out his hands. In them Abren saw a black pot lined with newspaper, inside of which lay a pile of something white and thin – not chips, as she first thought, but something more like strands of spaghetti.

‘What are they?'
she asked cautiously.

‘They're elvers,' the little man said. ‘Baby eels. Their
home's way off in the Sargasso Sea, but they do their growing-up here in the river. Unless the fisherman gets them first, of course! Like I did last night.
Here you are.'

He thrust his gift at Abren, who found herself clutching not a pot, after all, but a bowler hat turned upside-down!

‘They're a real tasty treat,' the little man said.

‘I'm sure they are,' Abren replied, trying not to shiver at the thought of eating baby eels whose struggle to grow up had ended in an old man's hat. ‘You must come and share them with us.'

The little man didn't say no. Perhaps he'd caught a whiff of coltsfoot coming from the trow. He followed Abren back to it, and he and Sir Henry greeted each other like long-lost brothers – fellow claypipe men sharing the secret pleasures of a good smoke.

The elvers were delicious, too – far better than the one-pot stew. Everybody ate them, even Abren, for all her qualms. Maybe it was the fresh air that did it, or the fact that she hadn't eaten much over the last few days, but she was starving hungry. After she'd finished all the leftovers, the little man removed the newspaper from inside his bowler hat, wiped it clean and gave it to Sir Henry. It had been his father's hat, he said. All the old trow masters wore them. It had been the badge of their trade.

Sir Henry took the bowler hat as if it were made of gold. He put it on his head at the little man's insistence, and for all his claiming that he wasn't worthy, he wouldn't take it off again. It was getting late by now, but with his new hat on his head and his pipe in his mouth he plainly didn't want to go to bed.

Neither did the rest of them. It was getting cold as well as late, but none of them wanted to shut themselves away, fore and aft, in their cabins. Pen invited the little man to tell them about his boyhood days when trows still sailed the river. The little man started talking, and the river rocked them. Abren found herself drifting into a strange, contented half-sleep – only to come to herself again with everybody looking at her.

‘What is it?' she said.

‘Our friend here's wondering about the flood. He's never seen the likes of it in all his days.
I said that you could tell him all about it.'

It was Phaze II who spoke for all of them. Phaze II giving Abren the chance to explain herself at last! Abren looked round at them – Pen curled against Sir Henry, Bentley absent-mindedly nursing his saxophone, Phaze II staring at her as if he'd known all along that she had a story to tell, but he'd never asked. Never pushed it.
Not until now
.

And now was the right time! Abren could tell. She ran her finger down the frayed edge of her comfort blanket. Even the little man was watching her as if there were things that he, a stranger, wanted to know. This was her chance to tell them all about herself. To tell it all.

And so she did
.

In the early hours the little man went home, disappearing into the darkness as he had come, humming his tune and puffing on his pipe. When they awoke next day, his house stood quiet against the river bank without a sign of life.

It was a windless morning and they cast off at first light, with a long day ahead of them according to Sir Henry. The river was still high, and as smooth as glass, and they flowed silently down it with a sense of wonder. It was as if Abren's story had touched them all. Bentley played his saxophone, and Abren sat in the bow looking straight ahead. She'd thought that she might turn to dust when she'd told them everything she had to say – but here she still was.

Bentley gave up playing and came and sat beside her, not a word between them but for just this one day she was his ‘cousin from away, come to stay'. That night they moored under Wainlode Cliff. It would be just as long a day tomorrow, sailing into the estuary, so they bunked down early. The sky was clear, the moon as full as a moon could be and the river swelling under the trow. They had reached the tidal passage of the river, and Abren could feel it turning under her as she fell asleep.

Next morning she was woken by a sprightly breeze which knocked the ropes and shook the leaves in the trees. The
Princess of Pengwern
bobbed on the river, as if impatient to get away. Everything felt different. They
left the tall pink rocks of Wainlode, drawn by the current and driven by the breeze. On one side of the river a row of willow sticks had been pushed in to mark the edge of a sandbank. They steered around it, travelling out into deep waters where the cross-currents were tricky and all hands were required to work the sail and man the sweeps.