Narrow Dog to Carcassonne (11 page)

From the bow of the boat for twenty yards on each side flew ribbons of light, rushing away in the dark. Scarf on scarf, streamer on streamer. Like every schoolboy I knew this was caused by millions and millions of micro-orgasms in the sea. I drove for hours through the radiance, crashing from black wave to black wave, surfing the night, trailing scarves of kingfisher blue. I was Hawkins, I was Hornblower, I was Bader, I was Cats Eyes Cunningham, I was Bannister, I was Moorcroft, I was the masked rider of the plains, I was Jumpin’ Jack Flash, I was the new and undisputed King of Rock and Roll.

That’s Margate coming up, shouted the Principal, and on my right a thin row of street lights had ignited.

GOING ROUND THE COAST YOU STEER FROM buoy to buoy. The Principal, stout Cortez with his eagle eyes, guided me until the buoys revealed themselves as dull full stops of light, an hour away, fading out and in. The North Foreland was not sheltered as we had been told nor treacherous as we had been told—it was like the rest of it, with a bit of a right turn. We peered ahead and beat on into the night.

The final buoys were at the entrance to Ramsgate harbour, and there is a sandbank to go round. From the Principal’s radio squawked the voice of the harbourmaster—

We are full, sod off. And we don’t do dogs. There’s no room, I say, no room. It’s Friday tomorrow and it’s a bank holiday weekend. People are so thoughtless. Look, I’ve had a terrible day.

The Principal, who probably taught the harbourmaster to walk, jumped off and found some balloon fenders and a place to moor and we all went to sleep as dawn rose.

AT BREAKFAST I WAS BEING LICKED BEHIND the knees. Jim rubbed his muzzle against me, and sauntered down the boat, stealing a piece of toast off the table. He was making a crowing noise. He jumped on the pilot in my chair and tried to interest him in a little romance, nearly waking him up. Then he found landfall on the pilot’s huge thighs. He’s drunk, explained Monica—I only gave him one pill this time and it has removed his inhibitions. He hasn’t got any inhibitions, I said.

It was a hundred-year day. Sun off the sea, a breeze tapping the rigging on the yachts, a few gulls. No other narrowboats—we were in another country. People off the yachts took pictures and talked of us among themselves and some told us they liked the boat and said we kept it well. We had painted the roof white for the Mediterranean heat and this had given it a holiday look.

After enough paperwork to tie Britain into the Single European Currency the fuel barge filled our tanks. The pilot came up from the engine-room rubbing his eyes. Where is Jim? I asked. He’s hiding in a drawer, said the pilot—he has eaten the marmalade and one of your socks. Monica and I and the pilot arranged ourselves on the back counter.

I’ll take her out, said Monica, and revved backwards into the quay. The engine hasn’t used a drop of oil or water since Stone, I said, give her a burn. Nineteen hundred revs, and we thundered past the harbour wall and into the bay. Monica and I kissed—Here we go, here we go, here we go, we can’t believe it. I’ll take a break, said the pilot.

In the wide waters outside the harbour there is a yellow buoy. Nothing else for miles—just a yellow buoy. The buoy looked very big as we grazed it. It sort of fascinated me, said Monica, and it’s the current. Yes, I said, it’s the sea. It can move faster than we can.

To our right, between us and the coast, the thirty-seven-foot steel escort boat—businesslike, blue, with rails. The Principal was at the helm and his crew was a young man with an earring, who looked like Douglas Fairbanks Junior as a pirate with a heart of gold. The
Pedro
had two engines, each strong enough to pull us to safety. But it was not breakdown that was in our minds, nor tempest on this lovely day. It was the waves, the waves, the seven-foot waves from the terrible Sea Cats, and the ferries, with their bow doors open and a drunk at the helm. If they drown their own passengers what will they care for us?

You go down the coast a long way, nearly to Dover, past the Goodwin Sands, before you turn left to cross the shipping lanes at right angles. On our tide it took two hours and seemed longer. I thought there were always gulls and gannets out at sea but it was desolate, except for some sad brown birds floating in front of the boat—the souls of drowned narrowboaters.

At last the escort began to inch left and we followed her. The Principal shouted—Look at those breakers! A mile or two away on our left the white teeth of the Goodwin Sands—it’s a graveyard. Come over towards me hard, shouted the Principal—those gulls are not floating, they are standing up!

A gongoozler was making for us at twenty knots—half a million quid of motorboat with smoked windows. As I turned he turned too and I had read that if their profile does not alter as they come near they will run you down. At last he turned away, without a wave or a signal. Mind your own bloody business, I thought.

A hand came up from the engine-room with a piece of paper with drawings of ferries. So you can recognize them, said the pilot. And there they were, hunched along the horizon, the tools of corporate manslaughter, the runners aground, the sad cafés, dirty hotels foundering under the weight of thousands who would never know if they had crossed the Channel or not. The threats, the enemy, the beasts that could run us down. But they sank under the horizon, and we headed for the South Goodwin light vessel, a flea on the rim of the world.

It took us an hour and a half to reach the South Goodwin light vessel and an hour and a half to get away from it. Every glance over my shoulder and it was still there. I was fed up with the South Goodwin light vessel. It was getting me down. It will be there all my life, even on land, like an old enemy trying to outlive me, like something I did a long time ago and can’t forget.

WE WERE ON OUR OWN, OUT OF SIGHT OF England at last, but we could not see France. Was it still there? Had it gone away while we were planning and delaying? Had we missed our chance? Oh come on, come on, we have come so far and we are nearly there but something will go wrong—dear God how long. Will we ever get there? On the
Pedro
Douglas Fairbanks flashed his Hollywood teeth and the engine rumbled Of course, of course, of course.

The sea was oily blue and moving lightly in small mounds and dips. The sun shone. This is as good as it gets, called Douglas Fairbanks—and we are over the first shipping lane. A ship came up from the right. It was white and monumental and moving very fast. We were toads under the harrow, we could do nothing. The pilot had come up through the hatch like a genie. Keep going, he said. But we are done for, I said. No, said the pilot, that is a big ship. It is two miles away. It will pass a mile in front of us. We kept going. Now T-bone it, said the pilot—point at the middle and keep going. We pointed and kept going. Nothing happened—the ship did not get nearer or further away and we were heading straight for it and we would squash against it like a fly on a windowpane. Oh the noise, the confusion, and what about Jim, and I didn’t e-mail about the Nepal carpet.

Suddenly the ship had gone, offstage right at a trot like Falstaff, and we were alone. It works nearly every time, said the pilot. For us it worked every time, as the factories and apartment blocks came thrashing by.

Where is France? said Monica—we’re lost, I can’t stand it. It’s there in the mist, I said. We sang ‘La Mer’, and we sang ‘Blue Skies’, and Monica sang ‘Plaisir d’Amour’ in French like she did when we were young. We sang ‘La Mer’ again. You’re in the wrong key, I said. I’m going downstairs, said Monica. She was still there half an hour later when the French coast came in sight. Where were you? I asked. Making tea for the pilot, said Monica, and Jim is drunk and I was seasick. And you were nasty to me about ‘La Mer’. And we are nearly there and I can’t stand it. I know, I said, I can’t stand it either.

Ferries were coming up from the right along the horizon. I didn’t know there were so many ferries in the world. Far away a Sea Cat, smaller, faster, its huge wake almost dying before it reached the
Phyllis May
. We drove on, getting no nearer to anything. The tide is wrong, shouted the Principal from the
Pedro
—take her inshore out of the stream and we’ll go up with the ferries. Head for that white dot, said the pilot at our elbow, that’s Calais.

Still we got no nearer and the sun was setting. I thought—Six knots against a seven-knot tide isn’t going to get us far, and I remembered the Channel swimmers who had given up a hundred yards from the shore. On the cut it is only five minutes from one place to the next and you can tell you are moving because you can see the scenery going by. But this is lost in the desert, adrift on ice floes, flailing through outer space. France was a long way away and it was staying there. The wind brought back fumes from the toilet tank and we were tired.

AT LAST WE COULD SEE A BEACH AND SOME buildings. The ferries began to appear huge behind us and on our left. We felt the wakes but they were slowing down. The Friday sky was full of orange vapour trails. I pushed the engine harder. Our bow wave rose and we moved slowly along the shore, and arrived three weeks later at the Calais harbour wall.

What does it feel like to have made it? asked the pilot. We haven’t made it, I said. Hang on here, said the pilot. Four ferries came across the setting sun behind us and into the harbour and three ferries came foaming out.

On the
Pedro
the Principal put his radio down and shouted—
Go for it, Terry
! This is it, said the pilot,
now, now, now
! I felt nothing and saw nothing except where I wanted to go. I rammed down the throttle—flat out for the first time. The engine nearly threw itself out of the boat, plates fell off the walls, Jim howled drunkenly, Monica put an arm around me, and the
Phyllis May
headed for Calais harbour.

The bank holiday crowds on the quays cheered and waved and pointed. As we came near the entrance a Sea Cat came out at thirty knots and its wake came for us six feet high like a running grave.

I had seen that wave when I had first spoken to the Principal, and I had seen it come at me up the cut a hundred times. I had driven into it as I sat in the Star with Jim. I had slept with it and woken with it. I was not afraid of it—it was my big dipper ride, my impossible dream, my Everest, my last enemy, my best friend. I turned and drove straight at it and the bow of the
Phyllis May
broke into its green side and was swallowed, and then threw itself up and out, and then crashed down with a scream from the engine and a wall of water coming along the sides and over the roof. The tiller wrenched at me but I had it cramped into a grip that was not going to break. The wave dropped under the stern and the next wave came but it was all over, we could handle that. I turned into the harbour, and drove along the pier, collecting fishing tackle, worms, and curses.

Monica kissed the Principal and the pilot and Douglas Fairbanks and called them lovely men and I clapped them on the back and Jim came to wriggle against them and have his ears pulled—and they were gone.

We were safe on our mooring. We were there. We had made it. In seven and a half hours we had made it. We turned to each other and were silent. We embraced. Monnie, I said, I would just like to say—A great hammering on the roof, a shouting—Come out, English, we know it was you. We have returned and it is clear. We know what you have done to our boat. You are guilty like hell. Shame on you, English. You are found out, English, you are discovered and we are here. Come out, English, come out and face us!

Excuse me a minute, I said to Monica, I’ll be right back.

Five

MINDFUL OF HONOUR

Calais to Armentières

A
man who has just sailed the Channel in an inland boat against informed advice does not need to assert his dignity. I felt Olympian. The pontoon was working against the harbour wall and a fat man in a white T-shirt was jumping up and down, and a thin man with a Zapata moustache was treading his feet like a heron. Both were over six feet tall. The fat one raged—You know what you have done, English, you cannot hide.
Monsieur
, I said, please explain. The heron came up close and shouted pungently—You lie, English, you lie, you are perfidious—our dinghy was here and now you are here and you have stolen our dinghy. He drew his arms back like a disco dancer, moving from one foot to the other, preparing to knock me down.

What nationality are you,
messieurs
? I asked. Belgian, they said. Have you been drinking? I asked. We had dinner with our friends on shore and you have stolen our dinghy and we cannot get back to our boat, they shouted. Now listen,
messieurs
, I said. I am English. In fact I am an English gentleman. English gentlemen don’t tell lies. I looked straight at the fat one—I am telling you that I know nothing of your dinghy, and wish only to help you in your misfortune. He looked back—My God, you are telling the truth. Now let’s go on board and have a whisky, I said.

We got on board and Monica got out the whisky and I went through to the engine-room with the fat one and started the engine and cast off and switched on the big brass tunnel light. The dinghy was drifting along the wall on the other side of the basin. We sailed across and soon the huge Belgians fell into their boat and paddled away into the darkness.

Did you have a chat with the heron? I asked Monica. Yes, she said—he told me it was very good whisky and it was a privilege to meet us. He said he had disgraced his country and his family and himself and he loved our Queen and fancied the Duchess of York, and then he started to cry. He didn’t finish the whisky but said he would return. We left the half-glass on the kennel for a couple of days and then I drank it.

NEXT MORNING JIM STEPPED OUT ON TO THE pontoon and threw himself flat—You fools, we’re going over! He has an athlete’s balance but he is a land athlete. Each time we left the boat we had to carry him along the boards and then up the long ladder to the quay. He liked it when we did that. If the tide was out it was a steep climb but he felt warm and would relax, but not too much.

Aren’t yachts supposed to be in the water, I said to Monica, and aeroplanes in the air? Around the basin a hundred craft were on stilts, and in the sky above us someone was frying bacon. The basin was in a waste of concrete, and the
capitainerie
was a kilometre away. Over it a bar which was clean and bright and enough to put you off drinking for life. Under it the pontoon with the fuel.

Your boat,
monsieur
, what luxury, said the young man filling our tank—we have not had one in the yacht basin before. How English, your boat of the canals, with the flowers, and the thin dog. You came on a lorry? No, I said, we sailed.

You sailed across the Channel in your little boat of the canals like a cigarette? You sailed standing on the back in the waves? It is not possible. My God—
sans doute c’était un défi personnel
. Yes, I said, without doubt it was a personal defiance.

I CAN’T GET THE E-MAIL TO WORK, SAID Monica. We can’t tell anyone we made it—they’ll all think we’ve drowned. If we had drowned, I said, it would be on the news. But no one knows, said Monica, and I can’t tell them, because you said in South Dock forget about the laptop and the mobile phone and the e-mail because nothing matters except getting across alive and now I have let you down and it’s all your fault. It’s so complicated, I can’t cope, it’s all gone to hell, and you should be ashamed how you mess me around.

We’re tired, I said, it’s a reaction after the crossing. We’ll ring the kids and Peter at the boatyard. We’ll send everyone else postcards—postcards are fine.

You made it then, said Peter. They made it, Karen! he shouted. Don’t sound so surprised, I said. The engine didn’t miss a beat all the way to Ramsgate, and all the way over the Channel. And your storm deck went right through a wave and out the other side and we never shipped a teaspoon of water. We didn’t need the beans after all, though they would have helped. And no problem with the exhaust—we blew bubbles all the way.

I’m glad you made it, said Peter—we thought you were mad. And you can be a funny bugger and take offence and I was worried that if the modifications hadn’t worked you would never have spoken to me again. If the modifications hadn’t worked, Peter, I said, I would never have spoken to anyone again.

We sent the postcards and people phoned us and the e-mail started carrying congratulations. We were safe, we could move on, but the fear of the crossing had been the centre of our universe and now the galaxies of our brains were rushing apart, sending hopeless messages into the void.

We had not thought about our route, or the wide waterways or the huge locks and barges and the currents on the rivers or which way we were going and if we could moor in Paris and would we have enough strength for the terrible Rhône and we thought the engine needed work but we didn’t know how to check. We decided to leave at once, we decided to stay for weeks; we couldn’t think, we couldn’t make sense of anything. The tide lifted us up into the sunshine and let us down again and cuckoos called and called and it didn’t seem right there were so many cuckoos.

MUCH OF CALAIS HAD BEEN REBUILT IN THE dark days of low-rise concrete. Jim was not allowed on the beach and we wandered among the bad restaurants and the bad smells. Next to the yacht basin was the Citadel, with bushes and walks and flowers and among tall trees a raised sunlit lawn. The Sangatte asylum centre had been closed down and the asylum-seekers lay on the lawn or stood in the bushes: dark, accusing, waiting to cross the Channel; their journey so much more brave, more desperate than ours.

But every day yachts were arriving in the basin and we began to spend evenings with couples who told of drug-runners and broken masts and making love in storms. A boater could not but be gay in such a jocund company. Their steepling poles and folded ropes amazed us, and their bows that feared no distant sea.

In the early mornings we returned to our steel tube, our flowers, our hangovers, pleased that such people wanted our company. We would stay for a while until we were ready, and the
Phyllis May
was ready.

IT WAS TEATIME AND JIM HAD JUST BARKED. Jim can bark, but he won’t, so we looked out of the window. On the pontoon were three men with guns. They walked down the boat, talking quietly. They stopped at the back and read the fairground lettering—
T and M Darlington, Stone
—and stood without expression, waiting for a sign. One of them made a phone call. Then they went away. After forty minutes they came back and did the same things again. Should we surrender? asked Monica—we’re outnumbered and they’re armed. But one of them hitched up his gun-belt and rapped on the boat—Customs, he said. We asked them on board and Jim sniffed their blue trouser legs.

There were two Young Guns and Top Gun, who was in his late twenties. Top Gun looked terrified. We had been here for ten days and we all knew there could be no point in a visit except curiosity. In such a rare and British craft perhaps we were related to the Queen, or were friends of the Duchess of York, and could ruin his career. He kept touching his gun, and I wondered if he was going to put a bullet through Jim to steady his nerves.

He filled in a long and boring form with Monica, both of them standing at the table. He stuck to English and did not smile, keeping his dignity in front of the Young Guns, who stood around and patted Jim and looked at the pictures on the walls. Then Top Gun stepped back and addressed us. He spoke as if he had been rehearsing for some time in a mirror. Welcome to the canals of France, he said.

We felt thoroughly welcomed, officially welcomed, as if by The France herself, by Marianne, interpreted by Catherine Deneuve in a flowing nightie. As the boarding party left one of the Young Guns whispered Pretty boat,
monsieur
—the woods, the brasses—first I’ve seen—my God. He shook my hand before Top Gun noticed and patted Jim on the head.

THERE IS A STORY ABOUT A SAILING SHIP THAT arrived in an unknown bay. Nearby some natives fished from a canoe. They looked at the ship—white sails, oak walls, ropes and spars—and they comprehended it not. So they did not see it, for them it did not exist, and with their catch they paddled back to the shore. I am like that with the engineering on the
Phyllis May
. Sometimes I pass through the engine-room, and sometimes I lift the boards and look at what is beneath, and I comprehend it not. So I see nothing, and I paddle back to the shore.

You need to do things in the engine-room, said Monica, we have done two hundred hours since Stone. It is not as if we were dropped off a lorry, all sorted out. There is a book, I said, somewhere.

The book was written in many tongues, filled with grainy photographs of steel intestines and warnings—

If you touch this it will bring a slow and painful death. If you do that it can seriously affect your health and that of those around you. This you must do at once—there is not a moment to lose. And that you should have done twice a day since you came on board and God help you if you haven’t.

I spent an evening laying out my props like a conjuror, talking to myself and rehearsing my movements, and the next day I changed the oil. I had not changed the oil before and I didn’t make it look easy. The next day I filled the batteries with a gallon of distilled water. The batteries did not want to be filled and it took me all day. You’d think they’d make them easier to fill, I said to Monica—it’s bad design, not thinking about the customer.

In the book it said we should change the oil in the gearbox, and adjust the valve clearances, and the engine-room stank of diesel, and the lights in the saloon were dim, but I had paddled to the shore.

JIM SAT STARING UP THE STEPS OF THE RESTAURANT by the sea, pathetic and outraged. The waitress went in to consult the
patron
. She returned—Unhappily we take only small dogs—a
lévrier
is too big. But he is not a
lévrier
, said Monica, he is a whippet, a
lévrier nain
, a dwarf greyhound. Desolated, said the waitress. We dined next door. As we were leaving, a gentleman of a certain age threw himself to the floor in front of Jim, who snuffled him and licked him. The gentleman stood up and took out his wallet. A foxed Polaroid showed a young man on a sofa with his arm round a girl and a dark shape over his shoulder that could have been a cushion, a fault in development, or the
horla
himself. My whippet, he said—his name was Black—he could fly. Yes, said Monica, they can fly. He was racing down a lane, said the gentleman, when a Belgian in a four-wheel drive came very fast at him and would have crushed him. But Black flew, right over the four-wheel, right over the Belgian, and he was safe, because he could fly.

The gentleman shook my hand and his three friends shook my hand and they all shook Monica’s hand and they shook each other’s hands and they shook Jim’s hand and they shook the waitress’s hand and they shook the hand of an old chap who was trying to get through to the gents. They said
Bonsoir Sheem
and the gentleman bent over Monica’s hand and kissed it.

WHY AREN’T YOU IN THE ENGINE-ROOM? ASKED Monica. Why do I have to keep reminding you? You know there are things to do. I’m not right yet after the crossing, I said, I keep seeing the South Goodwin light vessel. But anyway I am a civilian, I don’t know anything about it. Things don’t work for me—they won’t come apart and they won’t go together. Can’t we leave and take a chance? We always leave and take a chance, said Monica, and we always break down. You must take an interest. We are not on the Trent and Mersey here—there are no boatyards and no engineers and you might need spares. The people in the sky have been waiting eight weeks for a gearbox. Why are you no good at anything? You’re useless. We should never have bought a boat. Other people know how to look after their boats. We’ll never get to Carcassonne—we’ll never get away from Calais. We’re trapped, with the bloody cuckoos.

I went to the two-masted yacht moored next to us. Can you advise me, I asked the skipper, a Dutchman, where one might hope to find the drain-hole for a gearbox? He laughed and gripped my arm and his eyes bulged—he looked like Mad Mozza’s father. At the lowest point, he said—you are not an engineer? No, I said, I am more at ease at the conceptual level. Talking of myself personally, said the Dutchman, I am a lecturer in the marine diesels. I will look at your engine-room. Oh no, I said—it’s OK—I have the book.

Your gearbox is fresh like the daisy, said the Dutchman. You changed the engine oil through a wrong hole. Your batteries are maintenance-free and cannot be refilled and they are at the door of death. Your water separator is pissing diesel into the drip tray. Your big alternator is fallen off. Your windmill generator isn’t generating. Your valves are for adjusting. Your tunnel light is broke. You have no connection of the electricity with the shore. You have not a battery charger. You have an engine like the lion but you have been running for two hundred hours and everything else is gone to hell. But have no fear, I will make it all like new.