Narrow Dog to Carcassonne (4 page)

THE TIDEWAY ABOVE PUTNEY WAS KNOWN TO me from fifty years ago and had not changed much. Monica says she fell in love with me as I came off the river one afternoon. I wasn’t very pretty and I wasn’t very nice, but the sun was in my hair and there was a twelve-foot oar on my shoulder.

When respectable people were beginning their day’s work, we reached Teddington, moored up and went to sleep. Jim licked us awake in time for lunch and I felt guilty because this was not his day. I still feel sad but as I write he lies half asleep under my feet, and when I move he sighs happily and from time to time he farts.

Two

THE FLIES, THE FLIES

The Thames to the Severn

Y
ou had a girl in Oxford, didn’t you? said Monica. Is that why you want us to go out of our way? In her green eyes flickered a wintry fire. She was older than me, I said, she’s dead by now—you know it’s always been you since we met. It was the night before my finals, said Monica. I was nervous and you took advantage of me.

The
Phyllis May
picked up her skirts and ran—from Teddington through Richmond, Kingston, Windsor. Easy on the throttle because of Joe’s warning, but the sweet Thames ran softly and we made five miles an hour, leaving a tunnel of white prop wash under the water.

The main craft on the Thames are white cruisers. These are all the same shape but come in different sizes like Russian dolls. Some are twenty feet high, and announce on the stern that they have two engines, each with a power that passeth all understanding. The cruisers are all driven by the same bloke, in a white captain’s cap, at his side a fat woman in a plum sun-top, with burned shoulders. In the eyes of God all men are equal, but a narrowboat skipper does not believe this includes stiffs in Tupperware boats. The cruiser captain feels the same about gypsies in sewer tubes, and we all wave cheerfully as we pass.

The other craft on the Thames include boys in rubber rings, sculling shells like long-legged flies upon the stream, drunken Aussies in canoes trying to impress a British sheila, families in rowing boats who have decided to drown some of the children, and slipper launches you want to take home, leaving all else to decay as you varnish them in the garden shed. The outcome is misrule bordering on a shambles. In the Midlands these people would be shouted off the cut. The canals are a precious amenity, for which Elizabeth Jane Howard and many others gave their all. The Thames, with its bounty of green water, is a playground.

AS THE MIST BURNED OFF THE WATER AT Cookham we ran together through the linear parks and by the corn and heaven was nothing to look forward to.

That evening a riot of whippets romped alongside the boat. There was a brown one, a brindled one, one nearly blue, and a white one with a black mask called the Lone Ranger. They are so beautiful, so delicate, said Monica, as they climbed inside her singlet, grinning—are they all yours?

The gentleman on the end of the lead said Yes, they are all mine. I am the chairman of the Thames Valley Whippet Racing Club. He had a brush-cut and a sour face. We race them, he explained, so they can fulfil themselves without killing anything. They run at forty miles an hour. Over a fifty-yard dash they can beat a greyhound. Did you know that for its weight the whippet is the fastest animal in the world? We knew Jim was fast, said Monica, but no, we didn’t know he was the fastest in the world.

It would be all right to kill something if you ate it afterwards, said Monica, I mean that’s sort of fair play isn’t it? Would they catch rabbits? My dad was a gardener—I can skin a rabbit. I think Jim would like to catch rabbits.

No, said the gentleman. First they have to learn to run after a lure, then they have to run in a muzzle, then they run in lanes, then they race, grouped by how much they weigh. It’s a matter of discipline. It takes years. But if they catch a rabbit and taste blood they are finished.

He had with him a little terrible boy. The boy hung on him as he spoke, talking over him. I had to stop myself clipping the boy round the ear. The gentleman explained his dogs had won a lot of trophies and he told us about them. He told us the name of Jim’s colour, which is fawn. He asked to see Jim’s pedigree and said that Jim had good racers in his line and was his own grandpa. He talked without drawing breath, inching backwards, sure to fall in the river. Meanwhile Jim was working his way round the back of the whippets, trying to shag them.

By the mercy of time passing I was back in my chair on the
Phyllis May
with a large whisky in my shaking hand and they had gone away. Why don’t you try a bit of rabbiting with Jim? Monica asked. On the hearthrug Jim yawned, showing four rows of mother-of-pearl teeth.

I COULDN’T SLEEP LAST NIGHT, I SAID. I WAS worrying about what I said to Clive. I think I promised him we were sailing across the Channel. Yes, said Monica, you promised and shook hands and drank to it and then you hugged each other and Clive said you were a brave man and a true friend and started to cry. Oh dear, I said, I taught our kids to make as few promises as you can and if it is in your power, keep them. Yes, said Monica, it was enough to turn them to crime. But it’s crazy, I said. Hardly anybody has sailed across the Channel in a narrowboat. We are not heroes, we are not even boaters, we are pensioners. You didn’t see the sea until you were twenty. I can’t keep track of a spanner for fifteen seconds, much less the North Star or Cap Gris Nez and if we go more than six feet from the bank the dog goes into convulsions.

We can afford to lose the boat, said Monica. Oh that’s all right then, I said. And we’re old anyway, she said. We have had our share—the grandchildren will carry on our chromosomes. I want to carry on my chromosomes myself, I said. Look, said Monica, why don’t you e-mail that nice man with a beard. All boaters are nice men with beards, I said. No, said Monica, the one who is big in the Dutch Barge Association. They sometimes sail those big barges across and he lives in France and he would know. And the gentleman from the St. Pancras Boat Club—the nice man with a beard.

It took the nice man from the Dutch Barge Association no time at all to respond:

No, not for me. I could not recommend it. Insurance is unobtainable. You would have to seal the boat like a tank and you would have to face the possibility of losing it if the worst came to the worst. There is nowhere to have charts readily available
to the steerer and if it went down anyone inside would be locked in a tomb.

Quite poetic, really, said Monica.

The second nice man took a fortnight:

I personally have not taken a narrowboat any further to sea than round the estuary to the Medway. SO I CANNOT ASSIST ANY FURTHER THAN THAT.

I’m not sure he’s for it, said Monica. I’d better ring Clive about these two, I said, he won’t want to go now.

Clive rang back, said Monica that evening. It’s all over then, I said. No, said Monica. Did you tell him about the tomb? I asked. Did you tell him about the insurance? Yes, said Monica, he sounded a bit like Kipling—

If you can make one heap of all your winnings,

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings,

And never breathe a word about your loss…

But it’s their home, I said. They haven’t got a house like us. I wonder what Beryl thinks?

DON’T TELL ANYONE, BUT ON A NARROWBOAT you live where you like. Sometimes people come and ask for money, but not often. You can always move on, but we paid our three pounds and there we were, swaying gently in the June sun, opposite the pitched roofs and balconies and boathouses. No one in Henley had a better address.

I went for a jog with Jim. He was balky because it was hot and Monica had gone somewhere without him. We got lost in the town and wandered round underdressed like one of those dreams. Then we found the river again. The evening sun was at our backs; the line between water and air had melted and there were four carp hanging below us. They were velvet black, each more than a foot long, idling in the sunshine. I felt good, the way you do when something is explained that had not made sense before.

I decided to run round the meadow and let Jim off the lead. A whippet running as hard as he can is fast indeed—sometimes he goes through a door only he can see and comes out somewhere else. His ears go back, his eyes fix on his mark, his legs reach under him and there is such power in his footfall that you can feel him drum the ground. All the time he holds his balance so he can jink or turn and as he runs he seems to be smiling. There is something desperate about a whippet running—he does it as an artist, everything about him is compromised for it, and he is the best in the world.

It makes you happy to see something doing what it is meant to do, whether it is lazing under the water or running in a green meadow.

That evening I told a fisherman about the carp. Jim had tried to eat his maggots and his sandwiches and I felt I should offer a little conversation. They grow to forty pounds round here, he said. They were black, I said—are they really black? Yes, he said, they are black. But not underneath. Underneath they are gold.

WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO DO, MISTER? ASKED the little boy in Abingdon. I am picking nettles, I said, wincing as they punctured my rubber gloves. What for? the little boy followed through. To make nettle soup, I replied. Nettle soup is good for you. It has vitamins. You must profit from the gifts of nature. My basket was full and I walked out of the nettle patch towards the children, smiling and pulling my fingers. They ran away, shouting for help.

Nettles are always with us and nettle soup is not hard to make. You take some fat bacon and fry it up in a saucepan, and add some chicken stock. Then slice in some mushrooms and one large potato and add some single cream. Then if you wish add the nettles. It doesn’t make much difference if you don’t.

On a canal boat food comes and gets you. The crabapple and the curious pear themselves into your hands do reach; nuts tap you on the shoulder; ruined orchards beckon you in. Monica makes blackberry crumble, stewed blackberries, blackberry jelly. At a lock she gathered two pounds of aromatic fungus—for all their enterprise the southerners do not play mushroom roulette. Near Abingdon I flung a rope over a branch and Monica spread a blanket on the ground. We pulled in rhythm and hundreds of black plums fell on Jim. Then there is Monica’s home-baked bread. You could throw one of her sandwiches through a corrugated iron sheet.

If you would let me make beer in the engine-room we could live off the cut, I said. At least it might get you into the engine-room, said Monica. What we need is protein—what we need is rabbits. That whippet has got to be good for something. What about lamping, like the gypsies—you can borrow my torch. (My wind-up torch had recently attacked me, then exploded.)

So I set out into the dusk, gatherer turned hunter, by the light of my faithful hound Jim, the fastest dog in the world, and a kitchen torch with a half-mile throw. It seemed like a winning team to me.

The field was big, and there were dozens of rabbits grazing a yard from the hedges. I aimed the torch. They stopped chewing and sat transfixed, their eyes shining. Jim began to scream softly, like a fiend in hell watching a likely soul go over the wall. I cried havoc and let him slip. As he approached at forty miles an hour the rabbits stepped into the hedge, and when he had gone they stepped back out again.

After some time I put Jim on the lead and we considered our position. Then we saw some baby rabbits ten yards away, lolloping around. They were the size of chocolate Easter bunnies. My heart filled with lust. I realized the enormity of what I was going to do but still I did it. Jim rushed at the babies and knocked two of them over, then stood and looked at them as they hopped into the hedge.

Back at the boat Monica was waiting with a scissors. Jim went to his kennel, looking straight ahead. Where are my rabbits? asked Monica. Not much out there tonight, I said. You are a pair of losers, said Monica. I did not answer—I was too ashamed. I am ashamed still, and glad that Jim won’t talk.

THE ANCIENT CITY OF OXFORD ALLOWED US A good address: a little out of town, under Folly Bridge, by the cricket ground, opposite Christchurch Meadows. It was raining but we kept to our plan for a walk, in full mating plumage. Jim was wearing a paisley bandanna, setting off his butch leather collar and lead. Monica sported her Drizabone Australian hat, looking like Ned Kelly’s reckless sister. I was appearing, for the first time in public, in a Breton sailor’s cap. I had not dared wear this on the
Phyllis May
in case someone asked me a question about boating. Our caravan poured up the towpath to Isis Lock, where Oxford bares its backside to the canal.