The Boat Girls (18 page)

At one lock – to her horror – she had dropped her precious windlass into the water and the lock-keeper had gone into his cottage and returned with another for her. He had a box of them, so he told her. The trainees were always leaving them behind and even the boaters got careless sometimes, which had surprised her. The boat people carried their windlasses so easily and
so nonchalantly – stuck through their belts or dangling from trouser pockets or hooked over their shoulders under their jackets, so that for a while she'd thought that a lot of the boatmen were humpbacked.

When she'd finished her splicing she went and stood with Ros in the hatches. If the butty was being towed on the snubber on a long pound like Tring Summit you couldn't hear the racket of the diesel engine, which was a relief. The thumping throb of it was with them all day, from the moment they got it going in the morning until the moment it was switched off at night, when a blessed silence fell and the boats were quiet and still. She slept well at night – they all did because they were always tired out, exhausted by labouring away non-stop for hours and by spending so much time out in the fresh air. For the same reason they were always ravenously hungry, wolfing down thick doorstep slices of bread and jam or bread and peanut butter, and scraping their plates clean of whatever Ros had concocted on the little stove. Ros would cook things as she steered the butty – reach into the cabin to stir the stew-pot or test the vegetables. She could even peel potatoes with one arm hooked round the tiller, and chop and mix things going along, like the boatwomen did.

Out of the wind, the sun felt warm, which was
a change from all the cold and the wet. She lifted her face to it, shutting her eyes as they trundled along, thinking about the spring and the summer to come and how lovely it was going to be on the cut – much more like the recruiting picture of the happy, smiling girl. The alders and willows along the banks would be in leaf, there'd be flowers in the grass, lambs in the fields, crops growing, the woods and the countryside all turning green. Then Ros said something and she opened her eyes again.

‘What did you say?'

‘I said I hope that bloke isn't going to chuck things at us.'

‘What bloke?'

‘The one on the bridge ahead. Pass me a lump of coal.'

She fetched the coal and shielded her eyes. At that distance, all she could make out was a dark shape leaning over the parapet. ‘I can't see him very clearly.'

‘Nor can I. Let's hope he's friendly.'

People leaning over bridges were very often far from friendly – usually it was children throwing stones and clods of earth or spitting down on them, but sometimes it was older youths who threw harder and spat more and yelled abuse.
Dirty gippos!
It was a spectator sport and the narrowboats were considered fair game, never
mind that they were helpless to defend themselves, except with lumps of coal. Ros was the best shot and had scored many direct hits. Prudence watched the figure apprehensively. The motor was getting close to the bridge and she could see the man leaning further over with his arm raised. She thought, at first, that he was going to throw things at Frances, and then she realized that he was waving and shouting. Frances was shouting back and pointing behind her in their direction. The man waved again and reappeared on the bank beside the bridge-hole.

Ros lowered the lump of coal. ‘What's he on about?'

‘I think he wants a lift.'

As the butty chuntered nearer, Prudence could see the man more clearly. He was wearing an RAF greatcoat and cap and he was waving.

‘Do you think we should, Ros?'

‘Don't see why not – if Frankie reckons he's OK. You'd better give him a hand as we go past so he doesn't fall in.'

As the butty drew closer to the bridge-hole, she leaned over and held out her hand towards him. He grasped it and she pulled him on board and down into the hatches – the three of them squashed up together.

‘The name's Steve,' he said, grinning down at her. ‘Steve McGhie.'

‘I'm Prudence Dobbs. And this is Rosalind Flynn.'

‘Hi there, both of you. Thanks for stopping.' He sounded American, though it made no sense if he was in the RAF.

‘We didn't exactly stop,' she said. ‘We couldn't, I'm afraid. Where are you going to?'

‘Wherever's near a town. Somewhere where I can get on a train. I need to get back on duty.'

‘There's Leighton Buzzard ahead, isn't there, Ros?'

‘I can never remember, darling.'

‘We don't have a map, you see,' she explained, in case he thought they were really stupid. ‘And we've only just finished training.'

He whistled. ‘You girls handling these big boats all on your own . . . that's incredible. What're you carrying?'

‘I'm afraid we can't tell you that.' They'd been told never to talk to strangers about their cargo, or about where they'd been loaded or their destination. Careless talk cost lives. Anyone could be a spy. He didn't look like one but you could never be sure.

Ros was trying to manoeuvre the butty's heavy tiller. ‘You'll have to put him in the cabin, Prue. I can't steer properly with the three of us here.'

She led the way down and, of course, he cracked his head.

‘Sorry. I should have warned you.'

He took off his forage cap and stood, head bent, rubbing it and looking round. His hair, she saw, was almost exactly the colour of clean new straw.

‘Say, this is real homey, but kinda small.'

He was much too tall to stand upright and what with the broad shoulders and the bulky greatcoat, he filled up most of the spare space.

‘We're used to it,' she said. ‘Would you like a cup of tea? Or there's cocoa, if you'd prefer.'

He gave her a close-up smile. White teeth, blue eyes, a snub nose. Everyone else looked so clean, while they always looked so dirty – always covered with grease or coal or oil or mud.

‘That's real nice of you, Prudence. Cocoa'd be great, if you've got some.'

‘Would you like to sit down?' She pointed to the side bunk. The bedbugs had hopped over from the motor but they only seemed to come out at night.

‘Sure. Thanks.'

Once he'd sat down she could manage to edge past him to get to the stove and put the kettle on. He watched while she put the cocoa powder into mugs and opened a tin of milk.

‘Do you take sugar?'

‘Only if you've got enough.'

They were running low but he was a guest as
well as some kind of foreigner – she didn't like to ask exactly what kind – which meant he must be treated with special consideration. As soon as the kettle had boiled, she poured on the hot water and added evaporated milk and some sugar. She gave him one of the mugs and handed another out to Ros. It seemed rude to leave him alone in the cabin, so she perched on the edge of the coal box with hers.

‘You're in the RAF?' Obviously he was, but she felt obliged to make polite conversation.

‘Yeah. Stationed at a place called Cranborough. It's just a one-street village in the middle of nowhere with a great big airfield. I'm on Halifaxes.'

‘Really?'

‘Four-engined bombers,' he added. He took a swallow from the mug and she saw him flinch.

‘Is it all right – the cocoa?'

‘Oh, sure.' He lifted the mug to her. ‘It's great. Thanks.'

‘How far away is Cranborough?'

‘To tell you the truth, I've no idea. I don't have a map either. They gave us a forty-eight so I took myself off to see a bit of England. I've only been over here a couple of months. Got on a train, then a bus, then I walked, and then I got lost. Couldn't figure out where I was at all. No signposts and no folks around to ask. Then your boats came along. First time I've seen any boats like that.'

‘They're narrowboats,' she said. ‘The real boat people paint them all over with pictures – the ones who live and work on them all the time. Would you like a biscuit?'

‘Sure. If you can spare it.'

She reached for the biscuit tin and he took one of the rich teas. They were stale but maybe he wouldn't notice.

‘Back home, we call these cookies.' He took a bite and chewed slowly. If he'd noticed the staleness, he didn't say anything.

‘Really?'

‘I'm from Canada,' he told her, tapping the side of his shoulder where there was a badge. ‘Winnipeg, Manitoba. Know where Winnipeg is?'

‘I'm afraid I don't – not exactly.' She'd heard of it, of course, and they'd learned about Canada at school. Lumberjacks and log jams. Fur trapping. The Hudson Bay Company. Mounties. Prairies. Rockies. ‘Is it near the Great Lakes?'

‘They're further east. Winnipeg's sort of in the middle of Canada, where two big rivers join together. One flows up from the Mississippi and when that floods we get them too. That's what the name means: muddy water.'

‘Does it really?'

‘Yeah. It's Indian. We get a lot of our names and words from those guys. They were there long before we were.'

‘Yes, I suppose they were.'

‘It's nothing like England,' he went on. ‘Not round Winnipeg. It's prairie land and so flat you can see a dog coming thirty miles away. Then when he's gone past, you can see him going for another thirty miles after that.'

‘Can you really?'

‘Yeah, you
really
can.' He grinned. ‘Pretty much, anyway.'

He was teasing her, of course, but in a nice way. He looked round the cabin. ‘Where do you sleep in this place?'

‘Where you're sitting,' she said.

‘No kidding? How about the other girl? Where the heck does she fit in?'

‘There's another bed that lets down out of a cupboard.'

‘Well, it's real cosy. Not like our huts on the base. They sure aren't cosy. Those stoves they have don't heat a thing.'

‘Is it very cold in Winnipeg in winter?'

‘Boy, is it ever! Colder'n you'd ever get here. Twenty below at least. Frozen from November to March – lakes, rivers, every darned thing. Ice so thick you can drive a truck over it and snow six feet deep sometimes. But we're used to it. I tell you – I've felt a darned sight colder in England than I've ever felt back home.'

‘Really?'

‘Yeah, really. Our summers are a lot hotter than yours too – hot and humid with mosquitoes the size of your hand. We've got a cottage by a lake where we go to cool off then – not like your English cottages, though. What you'd call a log cabin. We go swimming and boating and fishing. And we cook the fish in the open over a fire. It's real nice there. Nice in winter, too, but then we have to cut holes in the ice to catch the fish.'

‘Do you go skating?'

He grinned. ‘Boy, do we go skating! I'll say we do. We learn to skate before we can walk. I tell you, we can get along better on ice than on the ground.'

Ros called down. ‘Better get moving, Prue.'

‘It's the Marsworth locks soon,' she told him. ‘I have to go ahead and see if they're ready for us.'

‘What if they're not?'

‘I have to shut and open things to let the water in and out. There are six of them close together and then another one soon after. And there'll be some more after that before we get to Leighton Buzzard.'

He drained the mug and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. ‘Sounds like a lot. I'll come and give you a hand. Work my passage.'

The downhill locks were all against them, which meant twice the work. On her own she would have been rushing about, straining at beams and
wrestling with paddles, but he made it easy. He moved the beams as though they weighed nothing, whipped the paddles up and down as though he understood all about locks.

‘I'm an engineer,' he told her when she commented. ‘I know how things work, specially engines.'

She was impressed. Engines were beyond them. They could start the National – eventually – and stop it, but they couldn't cope with anything in between.

At Leighton Buzzard they tied up for the night.

‘How about we go to a movie?' he said. ‘What you call the pictures.'

‘I'll ask Frances and Ros if they'd like to.'

‘I meant just you. We could find something to eat after, maybe.'

‘But I thought you had to catch a train.'

‘No rush. I'll get one later.'

She hesitated. ‘I ought to ask the others what they're doing. See if they'd like to come too.'

‘Sure. Go ahead.'

Frances and Ros smiled and said they didn't want to play gooseberry. They were going to find a bath and a decent meal, in that order. Ros offered the loan of her lipstick and powder, which was kind of her because there wasn't much left of either. Prudence washed her hands and face and combed her lank hair and wished she'd taken
the trouble to do her curlers the night before. When she peered at her reflection in the powder-compact mirror, she wondered why on earth he had asked her. Why not Ros who was so glamorous? Or Frances who had such confidence? Why
her
?

He was waiting on the wharf, leaning against a wall and smoking a cigarette. He threw the butt away. ‘All set?'

There was a long queue outside the cinema and when they finally got inside, the film wasn't very good but she scarcely noticed because of him sitting next to her, so close that his arm lay against hers. She wondered if he would put it round her, like most of the servicemen were doing with their girls, and what she would do, if he did. She'd never been out with a man to the pictures before, or anywhere else; nobody had ever asked her – except for Mr Simpkins and he didn't count. But the Canadian went on smoking a cigarette and watching the big screen where the Hollywood actors and actresses all looked so perfect that they hardly seemed like real people.

Afterwards, they found a café down a side street. It wasn't very good, either – a shabby place with smeary glass-topped tables, tarnished cutlery and a cracked linoleum floor. The menu was sausage and mash, or liver and mash, or bubble and squeak – she had to explain to him what
that
was. They both chose the sausage and mash, and the waitress who took the order was rude. She felt ashamed of England.