The Boat Girls (23 page)

At Norton Junction, above Buckby locks, Frances biked down to the toll office to get their trip card marked. As she handed it over the counter the manager said, ‘There's someone been waiting for you. An RAF officer. Your brother, he says he is. I told him you'd most likely be along soon.'

Vere was standing on the quayside, back turned, watching the boats and looking absurdly out of place in his gold-braided uniform. She
thought, it's my turn to say what on
earth
are you doing here? He turned round when she called his name.

‘Hallo, Frances.'

She said, ‘How did you know we'd be here?'

‘I rang the company office. Apparently they always know where their boats are. You all have numbers and they keep tabs on you. They told me you'd be coming through here, and more or less when. It wasn't very difficult.'

It wouldn't be – for him. Wing commanders got answers.

‘What are you here for?'

‘Not to make trouble – if that's what you're worried about. I simply wanted to see things for myself. I've got a couple of days' leave and I thought I might come along with you – if you've no objection.'

‘There's not enough room. And nowhere for you to sleep.'

‘You stop for the night, don't you? I'll find a room in a pub, or something.'

‘We haven't got the food.'

‘I'll buy my own.'

‘Your uniform would get ruined.'

‘I can get it cleaned. And I've brought some other clothes. I think that about covers the main objections, don't you? Why don't you show me the boats?'

Prue and Ros were waiting. Ros was sitting in the sun, smoking a cigarette, Prue industriously polishing the brass rings round the motor chimney. ‘You remember my brother, Vere?' she said. ‘He's come to spy on us.'

It was Rosalind's turn to steer the butty and Prue went on the motor with Frances to be ready to lock-wheel after the next pound, so the brother came on the butty and stood in the hatches beside her. He'd taken off his RAF jacket and was wearing a sort of seaman's white roll-neck sweater. The wind soon messed up his hair and made him look more human. He'd been taken aback by the tiny cabins and, naturally, he'd hit his head – twice, actually, and one of those quite hard. Nobody had yet dared tell him about the bucket in the engine room.

They were on the long snubber, trundling along far behind Frances and Prue on the motor. From time to time she reached into the cabin to stir the stew on the stove.

She said, ‘Have you really come to spy on us?'

‘Not at all. That's my sister's version.'

‘Well, I fear you're going to find a lot of fault with us. We're going to horrify you.'

‘Are you?'

‘Oh, yes. We don't wash often – it's too much trouble. We're filthy and therefore we smell. Also,
we eat like pigs and, as you can see, we dress like scarecrows. On the other hand, you could say we're doing quite a useful job.'

‘I can see that you are.'

Another pair of boats was approaching and passed by. The steerer gave them a nod and a ‘How d'you do?' Rosalind replied, inclining her head in return.

‘I hope you realize that you're ruining our reputation on the cut. Every boater will hear that we've got a strange man travelling with us and they'll probably shun us completely. They're very moral. If they take a girl to the cinema, then they're courting. And once they're courting they won't look at another girl. They'll be shocked by you.'

‘Well, I dare say they'll find out that I'm Frances's brother. That should make it all right.'

‘I certainly hope so. We need their help when something goes wrong – which it often does.'

He said, ‘But you seem to manage the steering very well.'

‘You can take a turn, if you like. See how you do.'

‘I'd like to.'

The butty was actually the harder boat to steer, having no engine to help. She'd been hoping very much that he'd get them stuck on a bend, but he didn't. He worked the tiller exactly right, pushing
it out over the cut and back again, then out and back again, so that the butty flicked smoothly round the corners – something she'd never quite achieved. She noticed his nice hands again.

‘You must have steered boats before.'

‘We sailed a fair bit as children – though I must say this particular boat handles rather differently. It's quite tricky.'

‘How about handling planes?'

‘They're nothing like boats.'

‘When I was home on leave last week there were lots of RAF fighters buzzing around the cliffs. Spitfires, I think. Or maybe Hurricanes. I'm never sure which is which.'

‘Spitfires are quite easy to recognize. Just look for the shape of the wing.'

‘What do you fly?'

‘I used to fly Lancaster bombers. Now I fly Mosquitoes. Two-engined fighter bombers.'

‘You mean they do both – fight and bomb?'

‘Exactly. They fly very high and very low and very fast. Useful machines.'

‘Do you have a crew?'

‘Just one chap. He navigates, operates the radio, drops the bombs.'

‘He sounds quite useful, too.'

‘Couldn't do without him.'

He took them smoothly round another bend.

‘I've never been in an aeroplane,' she said.
‘Maybe one day. When the war's over. What's it like up there?'

‘Rather difficult to describe.'

‘Try.'

‘Well, I suppose you could say that flying is like being set free. Tremendously exhilarating. The sky'sa vast place . . . no frontiers, no boundaries, no shackles. You can soar through space, climb towards the sun. Reach for the stars.'

Fancy that . . . he was a human being, after all.

‘There's a tunnel coming up soon,' she told him more graciously. ‘You can carry on steering, if you like.'

‘Fine by me.'

They passed from bright sunshine into the darkness of the Braunston tunnel and she switched on the cabin light and sat on the coal-box lid, out of his way and avoiding the icy drips. From there, she could observe him – or what she could see of him. The air vents spotlit him every so often – very upright, very noble, very English, very Henry V. The tunnels were wonderful places to belt out speeches because you could let rip at the top of your voice and nobody could hear you.

She'd enjoyed playing Princess Katharine, doing the fractured French.
Your majesty sall mock at me; I cannot speak your England . . . is it possible dat I sould love de enemy of France?
It was a pity that the flat-footed Paul hadn't looked more like Frankie's brother.

It took less than the usual forty minutes to get through the tunnel. Apart from one or two minor bumps,
Eurydice
, who was rather fond of crashing into tunnel walls, behaved as docilely as a spirited horse that has met its master.

Prudence lock-wheeled after the tunnel and, to her embarrassment, Frances's brother insisted on going with her to help.

‘Just tell me what to do,' he said. ‘And I'll do it.'

And so she found herself issuing orders to a wing commander – open that gate, draw that paddle, drop the other one. He did everything exactly as she told him, and when she'd taken the kitty cocoa tin to the shop at Braunston, he'd gone with her and bought a whole lot of extra things for them, out of his own pocket – biscuits and peanut butter and tins of useful supplies. She wanted to ask him if he knew where RAF Cranborough was, but in wartime people didn't ask, or answer, that sort of question.

They tied up at Warwick and ate Ros's one-pot
stew – one of her best ever. There wasn't much room for them all to sit in the cabin, so, later on, they went to the pub with Frances's brother. The boaters there cold-shouldered them at first, but then Molly's husband, Saul, came in for a pint and Frances explained to him in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear that her brother was on leave from the RAF and would be staying in the town.

Vere travelled with them until the middle of the following day, when they put him off at a bridge close to a railway station.

Ros said, ‘Did we shock him, Frankie?'

‘The bucket certainly did. And he still thinks the work's far too hard for women.'

‘Well, we won't be doing it for much longer, if those landing rumours are true.'

‘I asked him about that. But, of course, he wouldn't tell me anything, even if he knew.'

‘I suppose he'll be mixed up in it?'

‘Yes . . . I suppose he will.'

‘I hope he's OK.'

‘So do I, Ros. So do I.'

They delivered the iron rods at Tyseley but, to their relief, new company orders directed them to the Coventry coalfields via the Oxford canal, instead of by the dreaded and dreadful Bottom Road. Approaching the coalfields was just as
depressing, though. Slag heaps, ponies dragging carts, huts and wash-houses, black-faced miners with lamps on their helmets, pit wheels turning, black coal dust thick on the ground.

They were loaded first thing the next morning and the coal roared down from trucks, filling the holds from sterns to fore-ends. Even with the doors tightly shut, the dust worked its way into the cabins and it got into their eyes and down their throats and up their noses. When the job was done, Prudence produced mugs of tea for the loaders, whose faces were as black as the miners. Frances noticed
Orpheus
was tilted to one side and pointed it out to one of the men.

He shook his head.

‘Nothin' to worry about. She'll settle down when you gets goin'.'

‘She might not. And it makes steering awfully hard if the load's not level.'

‘We knows what we're doin', love. Bin doin' this for years. Done more boats than you'll ever 'ave 'ot dinners.'

She stuck to her guns. ‘I'm sorry but we're not leaving till it's been levelled out.'

They grumbled and muttered, but they did it.

They carried the fifty tons of coal down to the Heinz factory near Greenford, where their hard labour was rewarded by a canteen dinner – a
mouth-watering array of hot dishes and all for free. They stuffed themselves to the gills.

On the next trip they carried a consignment of American rubber and brought coal back to the Croxley paper mills, where Frances remembered Molly's tip. She found a shedful of canvas army gas-mask cases with brass clips attached, and put together two long chains for tying the chimneys and water cans to the cabin tops.

They were getting to know the boaters, passing them on the cut or meeting them at the tie-ups at night, or in the shops. The Granthams, the Skinners, the Suttons, the Taylors, the Gibsons who somehow found room for nine children, a dog, two cats, a ferret, four chickens and a canary in a cage. Nods and smiles were exchanged. Not much was said, but the words were friendly if sometimes hard to understand. Boaters' speech was like none other – a weird blend of Yorkshire and Midlands and cockney, rolled into one, and with odd bits of other dialects thrown in.

Sometimes they encountered the fly-boats – boats that carried barrels of Guinness from Park Royal to Birmingham and did the trip from London to Birmingham in two and a half days, non-stop, running all night through the blackout with masked headlights. They had right of way, and everyone let them by.

Jack Carter's boats passed them only once. He
gave them no more than a curt nod, but Freddy held up his fingers and shouted out, ‘There's three locks ready fer yer, ladies.'

The following load was steel billets, and on the way back the kindly lock-keeper, who had kept on giving them things since the cabbage and the bunch of flowers, came out of his house.

‘Heard the news, little lady?'

‘What news, Mr Morton?'

‘On the wireless. We've been an' gone an' done it.'

Prudence gave the winding gear another turn with her windlass. ‘Done what?'

‘Landed in France.' He handed her a freshly cut lettuce. ‘Would you like some spinach?'

PRUDENCE WAS HOME
on leave in June when the first flying bombs landed on London. The siren started late one evening and the all-clear didn't sound until half past nine the next morning. After that, the buzz bombs kept on coming, by day and by night. Croydon was on their path to the City and on one afternoon, she counted five of them in the skies. They made a growling spluttering noise, like a motorbike with a faulty engine, and, at night, the tail flames looked like fireworks. Father said it showed what cowards the Germans were, sending planes without pilots. She didn't like to contradict him, but she thought it showed how clever they were to have invented such a thing.

Every so often one of the buzz bombs would come down on Croydon, and the most frightening thing about them was that nobody could tell when or where they were going to fall. The spluttering noise they made grew louder as they
approached and everybody prayed it would go on, because if it stopped it meant the engine had cut out. She'd been shopping with Mother the first time that had happened. They'd been in the butcher's, queueing for the meat ration and chatting with the other women, when they'd all heard the sound. Everybody had fallen silent and stayed as still as stone statues – the women clutching baskets and string bags and ration books, the butcher in his straw hat and striped apron, cleaver aloft in his hand. The buzz bomb had come right towards the shop and then its engine had suddenly stopped. Everyone had flung themselves onto the sawdust floor and the bomb had come down two streets away and exploded with a mighty woomph and a blinding flash. After a moment, they'd all picked themselves up, straightening hats and brushing themselves down. The butcher had risen slowly from behind the counter, cleaver still in hand, his boater knocked over his nose. Mrs Pilkington who was at the front of the queue had said, just as though nothing whatever had happened, ‘I'll have a nice piece of brisket today, if you please, Mr Ford.'