Narrow Dog to Carcassonne (29 page)

This morning he was on his own. Did you catch anything,
monsieur
? I asked. Goodness me yes, said Max. He made a gesture suggesting a fish two feet long. A barbel, he explained. Can you eat them? I asked. Yes, he said, but I put him back. Are you in your caravan? I asked. Yes, he said, I am passing through. I spend a couple of days and then I go to the Midi. We all have to go by Saturday—there is a market in the square. I thought this was the Midi, I said. No, not really, said Max, the Midi is on the sea.

Monica and I had a cup of coffee in the boat and there was shouting and we looked out and Max’s rod was bending and the line was moving around the basin. The barbel was about four pounds, and had short whiskers under its chin. The underside of its body was silver, and its sides were gold, with scales the size of five-penny pieces. The scales were not just golden gold, they were textured gold, with grades and lights that made ordinary gold look boring. On the back of the barbel the gold darkened almost to bronze.

The most cunning smiths could not have worked the gold that clothed this fish. No supermodel, no rich man’s whore, was arrayed like one of these. Would you like it,
monsieur
? asked Max.

I took the barbel into the boat. It was trying to breathe but it was tired. Monica cried to see it suffer and I hit it on the skull with a wine bottle. Monica began to prepare it for dinner and I went out to thank Max. When I came back I had another fish.

We took a photograph of Max and his hangers-on and the two barbel on a tray and sailed away from Tournon hooting, and Max and his hangers-on waved from the quay.

The barbel is a bottom feeder and we expected a muddy dinner but the fish was delicious poached, and the rosé
en vrac
is just the thing for your barbel.

IN THE MARINA AT VALENCE DINNER WAS BARBEL once more, this time fried in butter, with St. Joseph white wine. This is not the best region for white wine, but their barbel are the finest in the land. Along the pontoon two couples—Hello we are English and this is our friend Sacha and we heard there was a narrowboat. They were all in their fifties and looked fit and young, and Sacha had shaved his head and wore black.

An hour later we were in the roof garden of Sacha’s forty-five-foot cruiser. During the war everyone in France was
Pétainiste
, said Sacha. Everyone wanted to keep things going, everyone wanted to get paid. But you just said your father fought with De Gaulle, I said. These matters were complicated, said Sacha. But in the north, I said, it was not complicated—it was the French, and the Allies, and
les boches
.

When the Germans came the people from the north ran away into Free France, said Sacha, but after the armistice they all went back. There is much you do not understand. In Croatia they hate Churchill.

Sacha told us why in Croatia they hate Churchill and the sun went down. Sacha shone a torch into the marina and the fish jumped. They do not jump for the light, he explained, they jump to avoid the pike, who can see them when the light shines—it is complicated.

The English couple spoke of Carcassonne. Alas, said Sacha, you will not be able to get to Carcassonne. The canals have been closed for repairs.

Where are you mooring tomorrow? asked Sacha. La Voulte-sur-Rhône, we said, by the bridge. This is most serious, said Sacha, please follow me. We all went down a couple of floors to the inside wheelhouse. This is where Sacha sits when it’s raining and he doesn’t want to perch twenty feet up on the fly-deck like a pigeon on a shithouse roof. The inside wheelhouse was full of dials. The wheel was a yard across and next to it there was a computer screen the same size. The dead, said Sacha, ah, the dead. How little you understand.

First the hotel boats, said Sacha. They are a hundred yards long. There were two the same. One is the
Camargue
, which is still on the Rhône. This picture shows the other one caught under the bridge at La Voulte-sur-Rhône. They got the people off and for ten days it agonized, being torn to bits, then it was swept away. See, it is half gone. They start slowly then it speeds up. It’s like growing old.

Then the barge, this January. Two one-hundred-metre units and a pusher, coming up against the stream. He touched the bridge and the whole thing was swept back into the pillar. Folded like a knife. Look at that picture—that current, like madness. Took these on my digital camera, not bad, don’t you think? There were four people on deck. She hit so hard they were thrown off the deck into the water. Never found the bodies. Those are the barges wrapped round the bridge and that’s the pusher unit as it was going under.

If you try to moor at La Voulte-sur-Rhône you will have to cross the current, like these boats. These were long boats, like yours. Long boats don’t work on the big rivers. They are too long, too slow, the currents turn them over. Tomorrow you must not moor at La Voulte-sur-Rhône. You must go on to Viviers. There you will be able to get a mooring without turning over.

Sacha, I said, for us it would be eight hours to get to Viviers and we stand on the back on top of the engine and it’s hot. It’s too far, it’s impossible. Your engine, said Sacha, how much does it use? Two litres an hour, I said. Mine uses fifteen, said Sacha. Now I will show you my new video camera. I will let you look through it. Do you understand video cameras?

WE STOOD ON THE BACK OF THE BOAT AS IT filled with diesel. I couldn’t sleep last night, said Monica. There’s nowhere to moor and I don’t want to drown. I want to be there at my funeral, not in another country bumping along the bottom of a river. And they’ve shut the canals to Carcassonne. It’s all going wrong. It’s the Rhône. It’s all smiles and blue water and nice lock-keepers and then it’s torrents in the night and poison gas and madmen with gas barges and people getting drowned.

I didn’t sleep either, I said. I was thinking about it all, and I’ve made up my mind. We have had gongoozlers, and we have had Jeremiahs and vandals and dicks and now we have had Superdick, the destroyer of worlds. Sacha is a nice guy in his way and he was trying to help but I’ve got the measure of him and I’ve got the measure of this river and sod him and it. Today we will moor at La Voulte-sur-Rhône. It’s August now, the current is down. And if we can’t take the
Phyllis May
up the Canal du Midi we’ll bloody well walk to Carcassonne and camp along the towpaths.

As we left we could see our English friends on their pretty Dutch barge, and we waved and came out of the mouth of the marina, and the Rhône leaped on us like a tiger.

The hot wind off the Sahara, the sirocco, was straight against us and nearly had my Breton hat and nearly blew Monica off the gunwale. Rows of white horses galloped up the French-blue river and smashed into our bow, throwing spray. I’m frightened, shouted Monica, turn back! But there was no swell under the waves and the propeller didn’t leave the water and the
Phyllis May
roared on towards La Voulte-sur-Rhône, at the helm the King of Rock and Roll.

HOTEL BOATS ARE FULL OF DEAD PEOPLE. IF you pass a cruiser the skipper and crew will always wave and when it is an English cruiser they keep on waving. If you pass a working barge they will hold up the dog to see you and if you pass a fisherman he will often say
nice boat
in sign language, because you have slowed down for him and he sees the red ensign and he may not have seen a narrowboat before. But hotel boats are like the walls of a fort lined with dummies and with the bodies of the guys who got an arrow in them yesterday afternoon.

At La Voulte-sur-Rhône the current ran no more quickly than anywhere else. I headed for the bridge wondering what festers in the mind of a Superdick, and saw through the arch the hotel boat
Camargue
. It’s OK, it’s a long way away—look at the size of that—look how fast it’s going—oh God it’s coming straight for us—no it isn’t the profile is changing—yes it is, we are done for—it’s miles away—it’s nearly on me. I turned away left and revved up and the
Camargue
missed us and moored up where we wanted to be, the only mooring for so many hours, at the death bridge of La Voulte-sur-Rhône, leaving us in the middle of the stream. I found a space behind the monster and crept in and we drove in stakes as the hotel boat roped itself to the bollards.

When that boat moves, said Monica, it will crush us like a beetle. It’s right up on the bridge and it has got to reverse before it can get out and we are behind it and it’s twelve yards wide.

I walked the hundred yards along the length of the hotel boat, past the rows of windows and the dummies propped up with a gin and tonic. Up the gangplank, into the varnished teak, the chrome, the tables with white linen and three wine glasses at each place. A young man in shorts and a white shirt with gold stripes on the shoulders danced down a flight of open wooden stairs between the potted palms, like Fred Astaire about to face the music.

I wonder,
monsieur
, I said, if it would help you if I moved my boat? If you are leaving soon I may be blocking you and I would not for the world wish to cause you difficulty. The young man smiled—No,
monsieur
, there is no problem. I am leaving in half an hour. Have a nice afternoon.

I tell you he can’t get out, said Monica—we’ll be crushed. He said everything was OK, I said—he said have a nice afternoon. He didn’t understand your French, said Monica. He thought you had come with the bread for lunch. He still doesn’t know we are here. We have two alternatives—straight out into the river or abandon ship. I will get the passports and your camera, you fetch the floppy disk of the book and the dog. We’ll sit on the bank. And don’t forget the money, I said, and the mobile phone. Who will we ring? asked Monica, and what do you say?

The
Camargue
began to tremble and with two smooth chassis steps to the right slipped from the bank on side thrusters and into the stream, going neither forward nor back. Then, foaming from the stern, she gathered forward speed and went under the arch of the bridge at La Voulte-sur-Rhône, where in January her sister had been torn to pieces and swept away, like growing old.

WE SAT DOWN TO LUNCH AND A BARGE CAME by and the
Phyllis May
went up in the air and her sixteen tons came down on a ledge underneath her hull. Jim made for the door and I rugby-tackled him and shut him in his kennel. We can’t stay here, said Monica, we’ll be knocked full of holes. It says in my notes there is a quay, a high wall, an hour away. It’s still early—we might get on it.

The sun beat on the top of the boat and it was like driving an electric iron plugged into the mains.

The quay was much higher than the roof of the boat. Overhead a car with a chap inside having a sit-down. Monica summoned him from his driving seat and he put a rope round a bollard, and another rope round the other bollard. He got back into his car and drove away before Monica could ask him to cut some sandwiches. The waves banged us against the wall. The
Phyllis May
took up all but the last ten feet of the quay.

We’re trapped, I said. This is a barge quay—the wall is too high. It’s not like Belgium—they had ladders there. Here there is nothing. We must get to Viviers—we can’t stop here. Jim has to get out.

But we would have to leave now to get through the last lock before it shuts, said Monica. It’s six hours and we are tired already—we’ll have an accident—Jim can pee on the front deck, on the
Figaro
. He won’t, I said. He’ll burst, he’s very fussy. I might be able to climb up somehow, said Monica, and we can haul him up on a rope.

A gas barge went by and the boat rose and crashed and re-crashed against the wall and Jim started to cry. A transport barge was coming upstream and seemed to be getting very close. We went to the window and the thousand-ton barge was coming straight for us.

Sometimes you feel there is no point trying to think of something—if Tonbridge rugby team has decided to take off your clothes and cover parts of you with black boot polish there is not much point developing plans of your own. The monster came closer and closer and halfway past and turned and bumped us smartly on the stern with its own stern, like hands knees and bumps-a-daisy. The collision had been more a slap on the bum than a blow. It was much less than when our daughter Georgia hit the bridge at Aston and ran away over the fields yelling I never wanted to come on your bloody boat anyway.

A boy ran down the side of the barge and shouted—We are parking our car, or We are not parking our car, or You are parking our car, or Let’s all have a banana. However good your French is you will never understand advice shouted from a boat on the river, particularly when it is fifteen feet high and weighs a thousand tons and seems to have chosen your craft as a sexual partner.

The barge was holding itself six inches away from us and whirring. A little car parked on it near the stern rose into the air like a Harrier jump jet and spun once and dropped on to the quay and the lady in a flowered dress and forties hair, first seen playing the guitar in Armentières, jumped six feet down on to the quay with a shopping basket and drove away.

The barge detached its stern from the
Phyllis May
and headed upstream. I gave a wave and the boy waved and his dad waved from the controls. I think we had better stay here for a bit, I said, and have a cup of tea and a sit-down.

Monica and Jim got up on to the quay before nightfall. Monica proved that she had come from country folk who would climb the highest tree to steal eggs and apples and Jim dangled from a rope in his life jacket as he had never dangled before. I am proud of you both, I said. The waves dropped at dark and the river traffic stopped and we had the quietest night for weeks.

VIVIERS HAS BEEN THERE FOR A LONG TIME, and the streets are very narrow. From the cathedral we looked down on red-tiled roofs and away down the Rhône. We were in the deep Midi now.

Lucy, our eldest, rang at breakfast. Where are you? On the Rhône, down towards Avignon, I said. We are just getting ready to go through the Bollène lock, the second deepest in Europe. I am nervous, and your mother is nervous and we are being nasty to each other and we have made Jim nervous and he’s whining. These locks are so big that one false step and you would never be found. Awful things happen on the Rhône. You don’t know what has been going on here. We never know what to expect.