The Narrowboat Girl (37 page)

Nance was all of a tizz when they got back and asked her to come out with them. ‘But I can’t – I mean I’ve got to do the dinner, and . . .’

‘Oh come on, Nance!’ Maryann chivvied her, untying her apron. ‘No arguments – you’re coming.’

‘Maryann!’ Nance laughed. She could see the change in Maryann immediately.

‘We’ll get some liver or summat on the way back – that’s nice and quick. It’s a lovely day today – you don’t want to spend it stuck in ’ere, do you?’

‘Well – if Mr – if Darius don’t mind?’

Darius shrugged. ‘I can stay ’ere a bit longer. If you want to come that’s all right with me.’

They walked out into the bright, hot afternoon. Darius told them he had tied up not far from Farmer’s Bridge and Maryann led the way through the streets of buses and trams and hurrying people, which seemed to be as foreign as a jungle to Darius.

‘Did you bring her up empty?’ Maryann asked him.

‘Oh no – I got a load on grain into ’er – unloaded that this morning.’

‘There she is!’ Maryann cried as they reached the spot. The boat sat high in the water. ‘Ooh, she’s looking nice, Darius – much better than when I saw ’er before.’

‘She’s ’ad a good going over,’ he agreed. ‘And a lick of paint. She was in a bad state before. Only we ’ad to keep getting ahead – there was never time.’

Young Ernie Higgins was sitting out on the bank beside the boat chewing on an apple. Darius helped Nance on board and Maryann followed.

‘Oh my – it’s tiny in ’ere!’ Nance said, peering into the cabin. Astonished, she turned to Darius and Maryann. ‘D’you live in ’ere – all year round?’

‘Got nowhere else,’ Darius said. ‘That’s it – home to us.’ He smiled, obviously enjoying her amazement.

‘And you lived on ’ere an’ all?’ she said to Maryann. ‘Where on earth did yer sleep?’

Maryann took great pride in showing her the cabin, where they slept and cooked and old Mrs Bartholomew’s crochet work, almost as if she’d been born to the life and wasn’t a newcomer ‘off the bank’ herself. Nance sat at the tiny table.

‘It’s like playing doll’s ’ouses!’ She laughed. She was more light-hearted than Maryann had yet seen her. ‘I’ve never seen anything so tiny. And it’s ever so clean – not like them dirty old joey boats. Ooh – ain’t it nice?’

‘There’s nothing like it,’ Maryann said, taking a seat beside her. She looked round contentedly. Darius had had time to polish the brasses while he was at Tooley’s Yard, and the cabin was fairly clean too. Her eye still picked out a lot of things that needed doing. It felt like
her
home.

‘Oh Nance—’ She squeezed her friend’s hand. ‘Joel’s going to get better. I know ’e is! This feels like the happiest day of my life!’

‘I’m glad for yer,’ Nance said sincerely.

Darius poked his head through the door of the cabin and smiled. ‘I’ll brew up a cuppa tea, shall I?’

He seemed to enjoy their company and was far more relaxed now he was back on the cut, having come through the ordeal of going to the hospital. They sat drinking tea – Darius and Nance perched at the stern, Maryann sat half twisted round on the cabin step. Darius told Nance about the life and how they worked. Maryann could see she admired Darius and he was at ease with her, seemed to like her. She made him laugh. And Nance basked in the sun, her pale, thin body seeming to relax and become more youthful away from home. Maryann saw Darius looking at her often. If only things were different, she thought, I do believe these two might’ve had something. But it was no good thinking of that. She thought bitterly about Mick. Shame you could never see what was just round the corner.

‘Now I’ve seen Joel,’ Darius was saying, ‘I’ll go looking for a load tonight – get off in the morning. I’d thought I might ’ave to be here longer, if . . . but I’ll get ahead for a bit. Keep ’er going. There’s nothing I can do ’ere for now.’

‘Oh – I wish I was coming with you,’ Maryann said.

‘I almost wish I was from what you’ve told me.’ Nance laughed. Maryann hadn’t heard her laugh like that in ages.

‘Ah well.’ Darius smiled. ‘God knows, you’d both be welcome. I could do with more hands on board. I s’pose we’ll manage though.’ He nodded his head towards Ernie. ‘For now.’

Thirty-Eight

‘Don’t tell ’im where we’ve been, for God’s sake,’ Nance implored later as they got the tea ready fast and furiously. They’d stayed too long down on the cut and had had to run back, via the butcher’s. The prospect of Mick’s fury if everything wasn’t ready when he got home set the pair of them off and the cooking became a joke. Maryann was chopping onions frantically at the table. Nance was so dithery she dropped the liver on the floor so it had to be washed and then she got the giggles.

‘Oh, look at that! What’d Mick say if ’e saw me throwing ’is tea on the floor!’ Her laughter almost got the better of her as she mimicked her husband’s indignation, swaggering and waving a piece of liver around in her hand like a weapon. ‘“Sure I don’t see my dinner ready. What sort of a wife is it who can’t even put a meal on the table when a man walks through the door!” Oh my Lord!’ she spluttered. ‘I don’t know what’s got into me!’

Maryann was laughing just as much, her eyes also streaming from the onions. She was bubbly with relief and hope over Joel, and really happy to see what difference a little break had made to Nance, who looked younger again suddenly, face pink from the sun and full of mirth under her mop of black curls. They were both laughing so much that for a few minutes they were incapable of cooking anything at all and the liver and onions lay untouched on the table.

A rattle at the door sobered them instantly.

Nance gasped, horrified. ‘’E can’t be back already!’

But the door didn’t open.

‘Must be someone else,’ Nance hissed and crept over to open it. ‘Oh – ’ello, Tony love.’ She started giggling again with relief. ‘’Ow’re you? Come on in. Don’t mind me.’

‘S’Maryann there?’

Maryann experienced a flutter of pleasure that he had come to find her.
My brother.
He had clearly just got off work again and was as grubby as the last time she saw him.

‘Awright, Tony – ain’t yer coming in?’

He looked awkward and anxious at the same time. ‘Can yer come out – just for a bit?’

Maryann looked doubtful. ‘Can you manage, Nance?’

‘Yes, go on – I’ll get on quicker without you setting me off.’

She walked with Tony down to the end of the street, passing men on their way home from work, a few kids playing out. Smells of cooking drifted from the houses as they walked along.

‘I thought you were going to bring Billy to see me,’ she reproached him.

‘Not this time.’ Tony seemed tense.

‘What’s up?’

‘I know where ’e’s living.’

Maryann didn’t need to ask who. ‘You went to see him?’

‘
No.
Course not. I followed ’im home. ’E does just what ’e did when ’e was with Mom. Leaves and locks up just the same time, quick pint and ’ome. ’E lives up behind the park in Handsworth.’

‘And has a shop on the Soho Road? An undertaker’s?’

‘It’s an undertaker’s, but it ain’t under the name of Griffin. ’E set ’imself up under a new name: Arthur Lambert. ’E’s made ’isself a new life awright.’

‘The slimy . . .’ Maryann began, but Tony interrupted.

‘T’ain’t the main fing though. After I followed ’im home I waited for a bit to see if I could see anyfing. I daint see much, but when it was getting dark this woman come and shut the curtains at the front.’

‘Woman – what, you mean . . .? Could be a landlady, couldn’t it?’

‘Could be. I dunno. But then, when I was getting fed up, nuffing to see – I s’pose they’d been ’aving some tea – the door come open and two girls came out and went off down the road.’

‘Girls?’ Maryann stopped, full of foreboding. ‘How old?’

‘Couldn’t see for sure. Younger’un me.’

Maryann felt herself swell inside with suspicion and fury. ‘Oh no – oh Tony, d’yer think . . .?’

Tony shrugged. ‘Dunno – couldn’t make out anyfing else.’

‘No. Course yer couldn’t.’ She felt sorry he was involved. He was still only a kid, even if he was tall and muscular and doing a man’s work. He shouldn’t even have to know any of this. ‘Look – thanks, Tony. For doing that.’

‘What’re yer going to do, sis?’

It warmed her heart to hear him call her that – already, when she’d been away so long. Made her feel she belonged. This search for Norman Griffin was bringing them together. Once again she thanked God that Tony believed her, was on her side. She couldn’t have faced this alone.

‘I don’t know, Tony. I really don’t. What
can
I do? It makes me feel bad just thinking about it.’ She wouldn’t say more to him, didn’t want to fill his head with disturbing details.

‘’E wants a good ’iding, ’e does,’ Tony said fiercely.

Maryann almost smiled. A ‘good hiding’ sounded so innocent, like something a child might be threatened with. It was the least of what she had in mind. ‘’E does that, Tony. And I’m going to think about how he’s going to get it an’ all.’

When she got back, Mick was home, eating in silence. Nance winked at her over his head but Maryann could tell the atmosphere between them was very sour. Nance was back to the cowed, weary-looking woman she had been before and Maryann felt Mick’s resentment of her as soon as she walked in. She ate up her own tea quickly and said she was going to bed.

Soon after she’d gone up she heard them start downstairs, arguing, voices getting louder, savage in tone. She undressed, full of tension. It was horrible to hear.

‘Don’t you start carrying on like that!’ she heard Nance shout. ‘I ’ate it when you show yer face through the door these days, yer miserable sod. I don’t know why yer bother coming ’ome the way yer keep on when you’re ’ere!’

‘This is my house and you’ll not talk to me like that. If I’d known what sort of a wife you’d make I’d never’ve married you, so I wouldn’t . . .’

‘Not like the blessed Saint Theresa yer mean!’ Nance shrieked harshly. ‘Well, ’er was never so bloody perfect as yer make out – and you never managed to get ’er a bun in the oven neither, did yer?’

It always came back to that. Maryann screwed up her eyes, hearing Nance’s howl of pain and then a crash as something fell and smashed on the floor. There was more shouting, followed by a roar which almost made Maryann’s heart stop.

‘You bitch! You evil fecking bitch – look what you’ve done!’

She ran down and stopped at the bottom of the stairs, appalled. Suddenly everything was quiet. Mick was standing clutching his left forearm, blood oozing out round his fingers. Nance, mouth open in horror, was still holding the knife she’d used to slice up the pig’s liver.

‘Oh . . . Mick!’ Nance gasped. ‘What’ve I done?’ She seized a cloth and went to him to staunch the wound but he snatched it and backed away from her.

‘Don’t you come near me, you mad bitch!’ he snarled. ‘Look what you’ve done to me! You’re not right up top – you’re not fit to be a wife to anyone.’ Clutching the cloth to his arm he backed out of the door, kicked it shut so the house shook and then they heard his feet going down the path.

Nance looked stunned. Maryann went and took the bloodstained knife from her quivering hand and laid it on the table.

‘He punched me.’ Nance’s mouth was trembling, the tears starting to come. ‘It ’urt so much . . . I daint know what I was doing.’ She laid her hand over her right breast. ‘Punched me just ’ere.’ She sat down and started to cry. Maryann poured her a nip of whiskey and put it down beside her. ‘’E should’ve never punched me there – it ’urt too much. Oh Maryann – what’ve I done?’

‘’E’ll be awright. It’s only a cut.’

But she knew Nance didn’t just mean Mick’s arm. She meant everything.

Maryann scarcely slept that night. She lay awake, awaiting the sound of Mick coming home again. Her thoughts swirled round. She was so upset for Nance, and in the night’s darkness she felt full of doubt about everything and very afraid. She had felt Joel squeeze her hand and had been so hopeful, but he was still so ill. It didn’t mean he was going to get better, did it? Perhaps even now he was slipping away and she’d never see him again . . . She pushed this thought away but it was replaced by all the things Tony had told her about Norman Griffin.

I’m free of him, she thought. I need never have anything else to do with him. I should just give all my strength to Joel and go away and never think about any of it again. He probably has a landlady with children – or they were just visiting . . . She tried as hard as she could to persuade herself that this was what was right. It was nothing to do with her. But she could not stop thinking about Sal and herself when Norman was living with them, of the trap of fear and disgust he had built round them. What if he was doing it all again and those two girls were having to live through the same hell that he had put Sal through?

She twisted back and forth in the bed, then lay on her back, hands behind her head looking at the window. There was a full moon and its light was shining through the gap between Nance’s thin curtains.

‘Tell me what to do,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t want anything to do with this. Let it all just go away.’ She ached for the morning to come.

She had left the hospital full of happiness yesterday, but going back today she approached it with terrible misgiving. She was weighed down by the grim thoughts brought on by lack of sleep and what had happened the night before. Mick had not come home all night.

‘Oh – ’e’ll’ve gone to ’is mom’s to get fussed over,’ Nance said. She was trying to take it lightly but she was pale and drawn and Maryann could tell she had not slept either.

This didn’t feel like a day for anything good to happen. Her head aching, eyes watering in the sunlight from sleeplessness, she walked to the hospital.

She arrived to find Joel with his eyes open. All her dread drained away, seeing his gaze follow her hungrily towards his bed as if she was the one thing he had been waiting for. There was a little cup on the chair so she sank down on her knees by the bed and for a moment they just gazed at one another in silence. Joel tried to squeeze her hand and she could tell how weak he was.