Water Gypsies (8 page)

‘There go the beer boats,’ she murmured to Joel. The Guinness boats worked fly – they had a larger crew, which meant they could keep going day and night chugging on along the black cut. ‘Glad we’re not working them.’

Joel, almost lost to sleep, just managed to grunt in agreement.

The morning was bitterly cold, the grass crackling with frost, and a thin film of ice covered the cut. The bright blue sky of the day before had been replaced by an unyielding grey, which seemed to fit like a lid over the fields. Climbing out through the hatches at dawn, they felt the air sting their noses and their breath left them in clouds of white.

Joel drank from his steaming teacup and looked round.

‘If this keeps up, they’ll have to get the icebreakers out.’

But the ice was thin enough for the boats to nose through quite easily, cracking it into thin, glasslike sheets. The cold and stillness did not lift all day and the ducks, which usually appeared round the boats looking for food, stayed tucked in the undergrowth and reeds. Only a solitary heron braved the cold and flapped languidly ahead of them, landing at intervals on the bank until the motor grew nearer and drove it onwards again.

Soon they were approaching the junction at Braun-ston, where they would turn onto the Oxford Canal. As they came through the tunnel at Braunston, enveloped in damp darkness, Maryann thought,
Nancy and Darius’ll be about at Warwick or Leamington by now.
Would they see them on the way back? She was disappointed and uneasy. She had wanted the reassurance of Darius and Nance tied up near them when they reached Tyseley Wharf.

She only became gradually aware of the shouting ahead because she was in the cabin. They’d made the turn and Bobby was at the helm. She could hear something, but then Bobby’s voice came to her: ‘Maryann – you’d best come out!’

He pointed as she came and stood outside. They’d tied the butty on a shorter strap to go through Braun-ston, so she was not far behind Joel on the
Esther Jane.
The first thing she saw was a small crowd ahead on the bank, who were waving and shouting at them, while a tan and white dog ran back and forth about their legs, barking in agitation. It took only seconds to see that something was seriously wrong. Maryann took in the scene in small glimpses of understanding, as if the corner of a large picture was being gradually revealed to her. A space had been reserved for them along the bank and several of the women were beckoning them urgently to pull in. As they drew close, she made out that the boats the gaggle of people had gathered by were the
Isla
and the
Neptune.
Her mind struggled with this: why were they here instead of much further ahead? Then Joel turned and signalled to them that they were pulling in and Bobby was saying, ‘Oh my – what’s amiss here?’ and at that moment, from the cabin of the
Neptune,
Maryann saw Darius appear and step off the boat. There was a stiffness in the way he moved and his face was like that of a statue carved from the hardest granite.

‘Oh, Bobby.’ Maryann went cold all over at the sight of him. ‘Summat terrible’s happened, I can tell. Where’s Nance?’

Helping hands seized the straps and secured them as they jumped onto the bank, Maryann taking Sally’s hand. Everyone stood back and became quiet as Joel went to his brother. Maryann walked behind, suddenly acutely conscious of following Joel’s footsteps, the brown corduroy of his trousers above his boots, of turning to reach out to Sally again as she ran up beside her, of stopping as Joel put his hand on Darius’s shoulder. The older brother crumpled, lowering his head, a hand going up to cover his face.

No!
Maryann was screaming inside herself.
Not one of the children, not Nance, not any of them, O God, please, no!

Darius looked up again, face twisted with grief. ‘Her’s drownded.’ His voice cracked. ‘My little mate. My Nancy.’

Maryann heard the sound of a woman weeping behind her. Darius, sobbing openly now, led them into the cabin away from the watching eyes. He went and sat on the edge of the back bed. The first thing Maryann was aware of was the three children, squashed like peas in a pod along the side bench, all crying heartbrokenly. It was the most miserable sight she could imagine. She and Joel squeezed inside the cabin. Nancy lay on the back bed, covered with a blanket, its curving line tracing the shape of her heavy pregnancy. As Darius leaned back to allow them closer, Maryann saw that her friend’s face was a bluish white, the features lifeless, somehow impersonal. Nancy, yet not Nancy: the power, the spark of life extinguished in her. Maryann stared, unable fully to take in the sight. The children continued to cry behind her.

‘Oh, Nance,’ she whispered. Leaning over, she reached under the blanket for her old friend’s hand and grasped the cold fingers. ‘Come on, Nance,’ she said, squeezing them. ‘Oh, Nance, what’ve you done? What’s happened to you?’ She recoiled, a howl of horror and protest trapped in her chest. ‘What’s happened?’ she demanded of Darius. How could he have let this happen to her friend, to Nancy, who was brimming with energy, with joy, her body leaping with the life of another child? She felt Joel’s hand on her shoulder and turned to him, his arms clasping her tight. All of them were weeping. Maryann pulled away and put her arms briefly round Darius, then went and knelt in front of Darrie, Sean and little Rose, trying to draw them all to her at once.

Eight

It was some time before they were calm enough to hear from Darius what had happened. They climbed out and stood in a gaggle, the crowd on the bank tactfully retreating.

The previous evening Darius and Nancy had gone on, getting ahead right into the dusk, aiming to get to Braunston for the night. Darkness seemed to fall even more quickly than usual and they were still on the move, persevering on through the gloom with their blacked-out headlamp. They’d get through the last few locks on the Grand Union, they agreed, tie up at Braunston and get a good start in the morning. It was already punishingly cold, ice forming on the ground, making the towpath and lock sides treacherously slippery. Nancy had been inside the
Neptune,
bedding the children down, and Ernie was at the tiller. At the bridge-hole before the locks, though, Nancy had completed her chores and picked up the windlass.

‘I’ll go out for a bit. I could do with stretching my legs,’ she said to Ernie. ‘You stay here.’

Before he could argue she’d stepped off. Darius hadn’t known that she’d got off instead of Ernie until he looked back, wondering why Ernie hadn’t already passed the motor boat, running ahead to make sure the lock was ready. Instead, he saw Nancy puffing and panting along.

‘I was a bit put out with her,’ Darius said. ‘We was trying to get on and she couldn’t move as fast as she can – could – normal like, her being so big. I thought, what did Nance want to go getting off for? But it were too late by then.

‘We got through two and Nance was managing all right, she were strong, you know. And nippy, even when she was expecting … We was breasted up and Nance’d shut the gates behind us.’ He shook his head, still disbelieving of what had happened. ‘She’d gone and got the first paddle up. I dunno how she came to fall. She knew she always had to hold on. It was second nature. She was crossing the gate to get the other one and … I wasn’t even looking. I’d gone into the cabin for summat. She come off the gates, fell right down.’ His distress mounted as he talked. ‘I don’t know if she hit her head on the gate or on the
Isla
… But I looked up – the water was only coming in from one side so it was pushing us about and I thought why ent she got the other paddle open? And she weren’t there.’ His face crumpled again. ‘She just weren’t there any more.’

It was a silent, grief-stricken cortège which made its desolate way back to Sutton Stop, outside Coventry. Other boaters who called greetings, ignorant of the tragedy, were met by the frozen, unresponsive faces of people lost in their own thoughts and emotions and the one-sided ‘How d’you do’s?’ faded unanswered on the air. Darius stood straight and still at the tiller of the
Isla
as the boats bore the love of his life back to be buried among the people and villages they knew so well.

For Maryann, every chug of the engine seemed to hammer home the pain inside her. Even here, at the heart of her family, she felt very alone without Nancy. Nance had been her oldest friend, and each had linked the other with the past, with their childhood. Now Nance was gone. It was so difficult to believe and hard not to wait expectantly for Nance to pop up through the
Neptune’s
hatches in her bright clothes and shine the brass bands on her chimney with her usual vigour, or wave and make daft faces at them as they followed behind. All the times she would not see Nance now, all the chats and shared chores and confidences poured into her mind, bombarding her with a future of sad loneliness.

She had managed to find a quiet moment before they left. She asked Darius if she could go aboard the
Neptune
alone to say goodbye and had taken with her a few sprigs of winter jasmine and some pretty red berries which, in their colourful flamboyance, reminded her of Nance. She sat beside her old friend’s body. Nance’s face was very bruised on the left side, her clothes were still damp and her coldness made Maryann recoil – it seemed so foreign to the warm, vibrant friend she had known. But she took Nance’s hand and held it. If she didn’t hold her now, soon it would be too late.

‘I don’t know what I’m going to do without you, old pal.’ Her throat ached and the sobs began to rise in her. She pressed Nance’s cold hand against her cheek and its strange stiffness made her cry even more. ‘Oh, Nance – why did you go and get out of the boat? Couldn’t you’ve sat still, just for once? Why did you have to go and leave us all?’

She drew the blanket back a little, and through her tears looked at Nance’s distended body. The poor little baby! Did he die when Nance died or after, living on inside his dead mother, not realizing she was not able to care for him any more and keep him safe? It was a terrible thought. Grief tore at her, for herself and for Darius and his motherless children. However would he manage now?

‘I’ll do all I can for them, Nance, you know I will. For Darrie and Sean and Rose. But oh, Nance, it’s going to be bitter hard for us all without you.’

Nancy lay so peacefully, so uncharacteristically silent. If it were not for the bruising she looked as if she were sleeping, enjoying a sweet dream in her cosy little home. Here she lay on this bed, Maryann thought, which was hardly a bed at all, more a board with a few bits of bedding, but which had served as a happy marriage bed for what was not even a real marriage either in the eyes of respectable people. But Nance had been real all right. And what she and Darius had had made a pale shadow of a lot of other people’s marriages. The cut and its people had truly lit the fire of life in Nancy, and the cut had also taken it away.

At last she leaned down and kissed the unbruised side of her old friend’s face, her tears falling on Nance’s pallid skin.

‘You rest now, my love,’ she said. ‘Sweet dreams.’ And, before covering her again, she laid the yellow jasmine and the bright berries on her breast.

Maryann sent a telegram to Cathleen Black, Nance’s mom.

They were to finish the journey to Birmingham later. All that week the family clung together. Maryann did everything she could for Nancy’s children. Darrie preferred to stay with his father and Rose was very young. Of all of them it was little curly-haired Sean who most wrung her heart, asking and asking where his mom had gone. He and Rose seemed to take some comfort from the presence of their auntie Maryann.

Cathleen Black came from Birmingham for the funeral, with four of Nancy’s brothers and her two younger sisters, Lizzie and Mary. Cathleen and Nance had been close, as for many years Nancy had been the only girl among a gaggle of brothers. Cathleen’s curly hair had long turned from salt and pepper grey to a silvery white. She had on a squashed black felt hat pushed down over it and a brown tweed coat belted tightly at the waist. She wore spectacles now and her eyes, one of which had been crossed from birth, peered out rather rakishly from behind the thick lenses. Her children were all in their Sunday best, Lizzie and Mary in frocks that were too big for them. All of them were pale and strained with loss.

They knew Nance would have wanted to be buried from the cut rather than back in Birmingham, so the funeral was to be at the church in Longford, where so many narrowboat women had been churched and their babies christened. Maryann put on her one and only best dress which she had kept from her wedding, in soft, blue wool. It felt very peculiar wearing it again.

It was a cold day, but dry. Nancy’s coffin was lifted with great care onto the roof of the
Isla
and decorated with flowers. Darius took the tiller, Darrie and Sean beside him. Sean looked bewildered and sad, but Darrie, togged up in his best clothes, dark eyed and solemn, seemed older and more dignified than his seven years. Maryann travelled on the
Neptune
with Cathleen and Nance’s sisters, Rose and the twins. Joel brought up the rear on the
Esther Jane
with all the other youngsters squeezed aboard, the lads thinking it great sport to cling along the gunwales which were very low in the water as the boats were still loaded with their Birmingham steel. And behind came Ernie’s family, the Higginses, on their boat
Dragonfly
and a number of other families who all wanted to support the Bartholomews.

‘At least on the way I can talk to Cathleen and explain properly,’ Maryann said to Joel before they untied. ‘Poor thing – you can just see what this’s done to her, can’t you?’

Cathleen seemed dazed and not at all herself. Once they’d started, Maryann handed the tiller to Lizzie, who was twelve and thrilled by the responsibility.

‘Just hold it steady in the middle. Shout if you’re worried.’ She went in to make more tea and see Cathleen, who was sitting in the cabin, looking round her in bewilderment.