The Boat Girls (7 page)

‘Mechanics, painters, carpenters, glaziers, blacksmiths . . .' Pip told her. ‘Nice chaps.'

She seemed to know most of them, exchanging smiles and greetings on their way to the counter. ‘Hallo there, Bill. Is your wife better? Good to see you, Pete. Hallo, Tom.'

Tom stopped her with an arm outstretched like a barricade. ‘Who's the young lady, then, Pip?'

‘This is Frances. She's just started training with me.'

‘Not another Idle Woman! Don't know as we can put up with many more of you.'

‘You'll just have to make the best of it, Tom. You're stuck with us till the war's over.'

He gave her a nod and a grin, raising his mug of tea to Frances. ‘Good luck to you, miss. You're goin' to need it.'

They queued up at the counter at the far end of the canteen. The food was served by women who were as friendly as the men.

‘What'll you have, love? The toad's very nice today.'

They collected eating irons from a box and found room at one of the tables. As well as the Yorkshire pudding and sausages, Frances's plate contained a small mountain of mashed potato and boiled cabbage.

She said, ‘They don't really think we're idle, do they? Like Tom said.'

Pip laughed. ‘They know we're anything but.' She tapped the front of her pea jacket. ‘See this badge I'm wearing. What does it say?'

‘National Service.'

‘What's under that?'

‘It looks like the initials I W. With some waves underneath.'

‘IW stands for Inland Waterways. But
they
say it stands for Idle Women and that's what they call us. It's only a joke. They don't really mean it.'

‘Do I get one of those badges, too?'

‘When you've completed your training – if you do. How do you feel about working on the boats – now you've seen something of them? Do you think you're up to it?'

She said cautiously, ‘I should think so.'

‘Well, you walked the plank all right and that's a pretty good test. Some of the girls never even get that far. They take one look at the boats and scarper. Actually, it's best if they do it then rather than going through all the training and then pushing off. That's a big waste of everyone's time. Other girls find they just can't cope, for one reason or another. They're not strong enough, they get ill or injured, or they just plain hate it. Somehow, I think you'll probably be all right, but only time will tell.'

Frances was far from certain that she shared Pip's optimism. The obstacle course had been alarming and, cosy as the cabin was and decent as Pip seemed, the prospect of sharing such cramped quarters, in such primitive living conditions, was daunting. No bath, no proper lavatory, only a hand bowl for washing in a few inches of water.
And, so far, Pip hadn't said a word about how they actually handled the boats. Over cigarettes and cups of very strong tea at the end of their dinner, she brought up the subject of locks.

Pip sighed. ‘Everybody worries about them, but they're really very simple. Just think of them as steps in a staircase. The land across England's not flat, so sometimes you have to go up the stairs and sometimes you have to go down. The steeper the rise, the closer together the locks. Only, of course, boats can't climb stairs so you have to help them go up and down, using the water as a kind of lift. A lock has two sets of watertight gates with a chamber in between, big enough to take the boat – usually
two
boats, in fact, side by side. If the water in the chamber's at the
same
level as the boat when you arrive, then you can go straight into the chamber, shut the gates behind you and let the water in, or out – depending if you want to go up or down the staircase – by working the gate paddles that control the sluices. When the boat's at a level equal to the way you're heading, you open the other gates in front and off you go. But if the water in the chamber was at a higher or lower level than your boat when you came along, then the lock's
against
you and the boat has to wait outside while you bring the water up, or down, to its level. It's all done by gravity and water pressure and manpower. See?'

‘Sort of.'

‘You will, once you've seen one working for yourself. We've got time to take
Cetus
out for a little spin up to Cowley lock this afternoon. Before that, we must do a spot of shopping so we're ready to get going when the other two arrive tomorrow.'

They bought tinned baked beans and sardines, margarine, bread, Camp coffee, tea, jam, sugar, tins of evaporated milk. Frances offered up her emergency ration book with the extra coupons for tea and sugar.

The little spin up to Cowley wasn't quite so simple as it had sounded. First of all, the engine on
Cetus
had to be started. This involved another shuffle round the motor's gunwale and some bewildering instructions about handles and levers and rods and flywheels.

‘I'll take the starting handle to turn her over and when I think she's ready I'll begin counting. When I get to
three
you push the compression lever down. Ready?'

Pip swung the handle vigorously – for all her small size, she was very strong. Round and round and round. ‘One, two . . .
three
!'

Frances was too late the first time and jumped the gun on the second. Pip, patient as ever, began all over again. This time she got it right and the engine burst into a pulsating throb. Back round to
the stern again where Pip fitted the swan-neck tiller into its hold.

‘Important lesson. Tillers reach all the way across the counter. They have a nasty habit of swinging about if left unattended and can knock you clean off the boat. That can be very dangerous on the motor if you fall near the propeller blades. If that ever happens to somebody, put the engine into neutral immediately. Got that?'

‘Yes.' Another terrifying hazard.

‘You steer holding the tiller
behind
you
.
Engine controls are right here, just inside the cabin where you can reach them. Only three gears: forward, neutral and reverse. No brakes – you use reverse to slow down. The steerer needs all the space available for manoeuvre so anybody else on the counter has to perch forward on the gunwale – which means you in this instance, as I'm steering. Don't worry, it's quite safe. You can lean against the cabin sides and hang onto the ledge.'

They untied – narrowboats, according to Pip, didn't cast off, nor did they have port and starboard, but simply left and right, or inside and outside, the inside being the side nearer the towpath. You held in, or you held out.
Cetus
nosed its seventy-two-foot length from its place in the row and out into the cut. One arm of the Grand Union Canal turned towards the docks and the other, which they took, headed for the
Midlands. So far, the scenery was a big disappointment. There were fields and hedges on one side, but the other bank was lined with ugly wharves and warehouses. The only pleasant smell came from the Nestlé's cocoa factory – tantalizing whiffs of chocolate wafting around on the air. Pip shouted to her at her precarious perch on the gunwale.

‘Another lesson: keep to the
right
of other boats on the Grand Canal, but stay away from the banks if you can. The cut's about twelve feet deep in the middle but the mud piles up at the sides and you're liable to get stuck in it if you're not very careful. Catch the rudder in the mud and you've lost control so your bows go careering into the bank. It happens a lot at bad corners, but luckily there aren't any on the way to Cowley.'

‘What do you do, if you get stuck?'

‘You use a shaft to try and shove the boat off. If you're lucky, it works. If you're not, you hope for a snatch from another boat passing – they tow you off, in other words. Like I said, the boaters will usually help if they aren't in too much of a hurry.'

It was hard to imagine the silent washerwomen, or the weasel-faced man, helping anybody but their own kind.

Cetus
trundled on slowly and steadily. The pace was tortoise-slow – no more than about four miles
an hour – and she began to see why it took so long to get anywhere.

‘Bridge coming up,' Pip shouted. ‘Keep your head down.'

They chugged under the archway of an old brick bridge. With the motor unloaded and riding high, the arch wasn't much above their heads. Soon afterwards the scenery improved, with fields on both sides and a magnificent group of beech trees just below the lock. They tied up and walked along the towpath running beside the cut. It was blowing an icy wind, and Frances found a silk scarf in her raincoat pocket and tied it over her head.

‘It's an uphill lock,' Pip said. ‘You're going
up
the staircase. The bottom gates are open, as you can see, and the water's down at our level, so if we were on the boat we could have gone straight in. We'll go up onto the lock-side so we can see properly.'

Frances peered gingerly over the edge at the water ten feet or so below. The brick walls of the lock sprouted ferns and weeds and were dank and slimy with moisture. At the far end, the heavy wooden gates were closed against the water above the lock. Pip was pointing and giving more lessons.

‘The gates are V-shaped to withstand the weight of water, and those big wooden balance beams sticking out each side are for pushing them
open and shut. There's a walkway along the top of them over the gates so you can get across, holding onto those iron rails. You can't see the paddles because they're always underwater, but they're worked by ratchets on each side which you turn with a windlass.' Pip cocked her head, listening. ‘We're in luck. Here comes a pair of boats. Now you'll be able to see how they work through a lock. If they're boaters they'll be very quick. Watch carefully but for heaven's sake stay out of their way.'

Frances watched them approaching, the motor boat pop-popping along far ahead of the butty, which followed on a long tow rope. Both boats were loaded, black sheeting strung tent-like over the cargo, their gunwales only a few inches out of the water. The motor slowed to come into the lock below, the boatman steering it with one hand behind him, the other hand forward on the engine lever. The butty was steered by a fresh-faced girl of about her own age, nothing like the old crones at the lay-by. She was wearing a shabby-looking coat and a woollen scarf wound like a turban round her head. As the butty came gliding silently into the chamber the man unhooked the tow rope from the motor stern and threw it onto its fore-end. He shinned up the ladder in the wall and pushed the bottom gate shut on his side. The girl was already on the opposite lock wall, tying the
butty to a bollard before she shut her gate. The boatman passed close to Frances as he headed for the top gates and he gave her a nod. He was young, too, and dressed the same as weasel-face – flat cap, jacket, waistcoat, cord trousers, boots – but he had a nice face. She watched him winding up the ratchet with a bent piece of iron and the girl doing the same on the other side.

The water in the bottom of the lock began bubbling and swirling and rising and the pair of boats rose with it. When it had stopped, the man pushed his gate open, leaning his weight on the beam. The girl was back on the butty and he stepped onto the motor's counter, now at his level. The engine pop-popped throatily as the boat moved forward, nosing the other gate open. As he came abreast of the butty's fore-end, he scooped up the tow rope and fixed it to the motor's stern again. The butty, tugged along, followed docilely, its wooden rudder trailing a flowing plume of horsehair. The girl had one arm hooked over the tiller and was mixing something in a bowl. As she passed Frances, she gave a smile and a wave of her wooden spoon.

‘Nice scarf yer've got there. Wish I 'ad one loik that.'

She would gladly have handed it over, but the butty was out of reach. The whole lock process had taken a matter of minutes, and yet neither the
man nor the girl had seemed in any great rush. Every movement had been unhurried, the big boats controlled with ease. They had made it look quite simple.

‘This,' said Pip, holding up a bent piece of iron like the boatman had used, ‘is a windlass.
My
windlass. I'll give you one of your own later and you must
never
lose it. And don't ever lend it to anyone else either. Now, we'll shut the top gates and drop the paddles. I'll do this one and you do the one on the other side.'

The other side meant walking yet another plank – the narrow and slippery walkway over the bottom gates – not so bad now that the lock was full, but it was still a long way down to the water on the outside. She held onto an iron rail until she reached the lock-side and ran up to the top gate. The heavy balance beam refused to budge an inch.

Pip was leaning against her beam, walking backwards and pushing rather than pulling. She shouted across. ‘Go round the other side and put your back into it, it's much easier and a lot safer.'

Frances copied her and after a few desperate shoves the beam started to move; once she'd got it going, it swung over smoothly.

Pip came across to show her how to drop the paddle. ‘You put the windlass just on the end of the spindle, give a half-turn back, release the safety catch, then take the windlass off quickly and down
she goes.' The ratchet rattled down with a crash. ‘Now, we'll open the bottom paddles to let the water out of the lock. Cowley lock's always left ready for uphill boats. The lock-keeper usually sees to it, but we'll save him the trouble.'

Winding the paddle up was a lot harder than dropping it. She found that she barely had the strength to turn the windlass on the spindle, and Pip had to take over and finish the job for her.

‘You need to build up some muscle power, that's all. And always make sure the safety catch is properly engaged; if the ratchet slips when you're winding, the windlass can fly off and hit you.'