The Narrowboat Girl (4 page)

Mr Griffin leaned forwards, breathing loudly through his nose. ‘Oh dear, oh dear, now, now. I am sorry for your trouble, my dear. I do know what a terrible time this is for you . . . You
know, I feel very sorry for you, a woman left to fend for ’erself with family. Now if you need any help – if there’s anything I can do for you . . .’

Maryann squeezed her eyes tightly shut.
Go away, you horrible smelly old man!
her mind screamed.
Get out of our dad’s chair, and out of our house!

At last he stood up, seeming to take up half the room, and put his hat and coat on. Suddenly he turned and enacted a little bow towards Sal and Maryann.

‘Goodbye then, girls. You’ll help look after yer mother, now won’t yer?’ They sat, mute, not even meeting his eyes.

‘Thank you again, Mr Griffin,’ Flo said meekly. ‘I don’t know what to say, yer’ve been that good to us.’ She saw him to the door.

‘Goodbye, m’dear.’ Mr Griffin lingered for a moment. ‘Now don’t you go forgetting what I’ve said, will you?’

Flo stood on the step, staring thoughtfully after him as he disappeared into the smoky gloom.

December 1927

‘And where d’yer think you’re going?’

Flo’s question was flung furiously across the room, through the paper streamers which hung in sagging loops from yesterday’s Christmas festivities, at Maryann, who was by the door,
forcing her arms into the sleeves of her coat.

‘Out.’

Flo advanced on her, hands still black from shovelling coal.

‘Oh no you ain’t, yer little madam. You get back ’ere and find a civil tongue for Norm – for Mr Griffin for once in yer life. ’E’ll be ’ere any minute
and yer can sit there and be polite. There’s summat ’e wants to say to you all.’

But Maryann was already out and across the yard, still pulling the coat round her, the door rattling shut in Flo’s face. It opened again.

‘You get back ’ere, yer uppity little cow!’

Maryann disappeared at a run, down the entry to the street. She felt the cold come down on her like a weight, the raw air biting into her cheeks on this day of deep, silent midwinter. The
cobbles were icy and the slates glazed with it: the sun hadn’t broken through all day. She pushed her hands deep into her pockets, thrusting her chin down. She had on a pair of Sal’s
old stockings, held up with garters. Everything she had handed down from Sal was on the big side. She could feel the stockings wrinkling down her legs.

Flo’s angry words seemed to propel Maryann along the road. ‘I’m not staying in there – not to see
’im
,’ she said out loud, her breath swirling away
from her, thick and white.

She turned down towards Nanny Firkin’s. In her left pocket she found a halfpenny, and gripped her hand round it, squeezing hard. She and her mom had never been what you’d call close,
but nowadays all she ever seemed to be was on the wrong side of her. All year it had been like this, getting worse and worse. Since her dad had died and since Mr Griffin kept on coming round week
after week bringing presents: joints of meat, cakes, thrusting bags of sweets under their noses, sitting himself by their fire on Sunday afternoons. He had even begun to take off his shoes and park
them up against the fender as his socks steamed in the heat.

Maryann knew exactly what Mr Griffin wanted to say that afternoon. She was sick at the thought, because it had been coming all year. He was going to sit there in the chair, her
dad’s
chair, with them waiting on him hand and foot. There’d be her mom’s, ‘Oh yes, Mr Griffin, no, Mr Griffin,’ which had gradually turned into, ‘Oh yes,
Norman
, no, Norman,’ as Flo recognized a chance if ever she saw one. Mr Griffin was going to sit holding a cup of tea in those pudgy, freckled hands and tell them he was going to marry
their mom. And he would say it in that wheedling, smarmy voice which made Maryann want to be sick all over his shiny shoes.

She knew this as clearly as anything, because as his visits had become more frequent, Norman Griffin had come making hints and promises.

‘You’re a good woman, Mrs Nelson, showing such kindness to a poor old widower like me. You shouldn’t ’ave to spend the rest of your days slaving away on yer own . .
.’ ‘Nice little family you’ve got ’ere, Mrs Nelson – you need someone to take care of yer . . .’ And gradually, ‘You want to get yourself wed again, Flo
– the factory’s no place for a fine woman like you . . .’

Late in the summer, when a reasonable period of mourning was seen to have passed, and Flo had wept and worried and worked so hard in the brassware factory she had turned scrawny, she started
going out for the odd walk with Mr Griffin on a Sunday afternoon, returning with flushed cheeks and a hard, determined look in her eyes.

When he came to the house Maryann tried to avoid even looking at him. She hated him being there and refused to speak to him unless forced to. Sal was more biddable. She missed her father but
brushed out her long, pale hair on a Sunday, made tea and was polite. Maryann pulled hideous faces behind his back and dropped dust and dead ants in his tea, reduced to being childish by her
powerlessness over the situation. She missed her dad with a terrible ache in her that never seemed to get any less.

She kicked at a rotten piece of wood on the pavement and it skittered into the gutter. She bent over and spat on it. ‘Norman! Bloody sodding
Norman
!’ She stamped and spat
until tears ran down her cheeks.

Walking on, wiping her eyes, she crossed over the railway and went along to the spot where there was a hole in the fence and she could get down to the cut, scrambling down through scrubby bushes
and alongside the wall of a warehouse on to the path. Down here it felt even more cold and utterly still. Fog hung thickly over the canal so that she could see only a few yards ahead: the
factories, chimneys and warehouses were all shrouded in the saturated air. The place felt completely deserted. It was Christmas of course, and she saw the water of the canal was frozen over. Near
where she was standing a stick poked up, frozen in at an angle, black against the grey ice. She walked along the path in the eerie whiteness, in towards the middle of Birmingham, over a little
humpbacked bridge and past the Borax Works towards the wharves at Gas Street. Ahead of her she could just see the ghostly shapes of the wharf buildings and in front of them two rows of joeys, the
boats which mainly did journeys of a day there and back. They were tethered shoulder to shoulder along the Worcester Bar. As she moved closer, she became aware of a sound coming to her
intermittently through the fog. She wasn’t alone down here then. Someone was coughing, a laboured sound which went on and on.

Then she saw him, on the path in front of her, close to a boat which was tied by the bank. He was bent over, coughing from drenched-sounding lungs and struggling for breath. At first she assumed
he was an old man, but as she approached, intimidated, yet somehow fascinated as well, she saw this was not so. He was quite unaware that she was there because he had to submit completely to the
process of coughing and this made him seem somehow vulnerable. Maryann was also drawn by the look of him. He had a thick head of curls and a beard, all deep auburn, which appeared to glow in the
greyness of the fog like a sanctuary lamp in a church, and he was clad in thick, brown corduroy trousers and heavy boots, and a thick jumper with a worn, black worsted jacket over the top and a
muffler at the neck. As he stooped, hands pressing on his thighs, one hand also held a black cap.

She saw that the boat by which he was standing was a horse-drawn family boat, and she noticed too that the man’s hands, clasped so tightly on his thighs, were black with coal dust. Near
him, on the ground, was a galvanized bucket.

At last the fit passed and he stayed in the same position for a moment, seeming exhausted by it, let out a low groan and shook his head quickly from side to side as if to shake the fit off.
Then, still bent over, he raised his head and looked up along the path. Maryann felt her heart beat with panic, and she stayed quite still. For a moment the two of them looked at each other in
silence. The man had a round face, though his cheekbones jutted a little, adding a chiselled look to it. His eyes, from the distance at which Maryann stood, looked dark and his gaze was strong and
unflinching. He stared at her without hostility. Just looked, taking her in. Then slowly, he straightened up and replaced the cap on his head.

‘’Ow long’ve you been stood there?’ His voice was soft and quite gentle.

Maryann swallowed. She had been ready to run if he was angry or strange, but didn’t feel the need now. The man didn’t talk like Birmingham people, she noticed.

‘Only a minute.’

‘What’re you doing out? It’s Christmas, ent it?’

Maryann shifted her weight from one foot to the other. She felt conscious of her stockings, wrinkled round her ankles. ‘Well, you’re ’ere.’

‘Well – yes, that’s true.’ She thought she heard him give a wheezy chuckle.

‘Why?’

He indicated the boat. ‘I live ’ere. We ent s’posed to be ’ere – brought a load of coal from Cannock to the Borax Works – before Christmas that was. And got
blooming iced in, dint we? They ent ’ad the icebreaker out to free us up. I’ve been smashing it up at the edge ’ere to give ’er a wash out.’ He indicated the bucket.
‘Got to get the coal washed out, see, before we can put a new load in.’

Maryann nodded and moved closer. The long hold of the boat was black with coal dust and the rope fenders were grubby with it too, but apart from that she looked in good trim. She was painted red
and yellow, with castles painted in the panels of the cabin doors, roses round the edge, and on the side of the cabin was painted her name,
Esther Jane
. Maryann looked at her with great
curiosity, at the painted water can on the roof, the brass trimmings on her chimney, from which drifted dense yellow smoke. She looked round.

‘Where’s yer horse?’

‘Old Bessie? Stabled up. Having a rest.’

‘Can I see inside?’

The man smiled. She saw he had big, square teeth. The smile creased up his face and gave him a comical, cheeky look. ‘You’ll get dirty.’

Maryann shrugged. ‘Don’t matter.’

‘Come on then – just for a minute but mind where you put your ’ands.’

She thought he seemed pleased. He climbed aboard ahead of her and when she stumbled climbing down into the boat, he gripped her arm. He felt very big and burly and strong.

‘Go easy!’ Another low chuckle came from him. For some reason he seemed to find her rather amusing. ‘You don’t want to hurt yourself. Look – that’s the tiller
– what we steer the boat with. Now, come on in.’

He opened the cabin doors and Maryann found herself stepping down into a miniature house. The man, who was too tall to stand upright in the cabin, sat down on a bench along the side, and
gestured for her to sit beside him.

‘There you go – this is our ’ome in ’ere.’

She gazed round, astonished. It was like being in a magic story where everything had shrunk. In front of her was a little black-leaded range, which made the cabin so stifling hot that Maryann
unbuttoned her coat and took it off. There was a brown and white teapot and a big brass kettle, well polished, on the hob, which gave off a lovely warm glow. To her right was what looked like a
cupboard, which jutted out into the cabin, and further back, a little area where there was another bench, divided off by red and white check curtains, tied back at each side. On the near side of
the cupboard and on shelves on the wall by the stove were pretty china plates, some with lattice edges with velvet ribbons threaded through and tied in a bow. The man watched her taking it all in
with some amusement.

‘We pull this down ’ere—’ He opened a small cupboard in front of him and the flap folded outwards. ‘That’s our table. That cupboard you can see’ –
he pointed towards the back – ‘folds down for a bed.’

‘But it’s so . . .
small
!’

‘It’s small all right.’

‘Don’t you ’ave a house to live in an’ all?’

‘Nope. I was brung up on ’ere – lived ’ere all me life. Only time I been on the bank was in the war.’

She gaped at him. ‘I’ve never seen in one of these before.’

‘I can see that!’

‘Who lives on ’ere with you then?’

‘My dad, my little sister, Ada – she’d be a bit younger ’un you I’d think – and Jep, that’s our dog. They’ve gone off to get us some food and see
about who’s going to get the ice broke up. We can’t stick around long, you see – ’ave to get moving. We was s’posed to be at Napton by Christmas but we got stuck
’ere. We ent starving yet though. ’Ere—’ He reached to a little shelf at the side of the cabin. ‘Want a bit of this?’

‘Ooh yes!’

She took the two thick squares of Cadbury’s chocolate, nibbled and sucked slowly, making them last. The man bit some off too, smiling at her enjoyment. He had such a kind face, she
thought, somehow old and boyish at once.

‘How old’re you?’ Maryann said.

‘Me? Old as the hills.’

She frowned. ‘’Ow old’s that?’

‘I’m going on twenty-nine. What about you, since we’re asking?’

‘Thirteen. What’s yer name?’

‘Joel Bartholomew. And what’s yours?’ He was making a game of it. Maryann found the corners of her mouth turning up.

‘Maryann Nelson. I’ll
always
be Maryann Nelson.’

‘Will you? Why?’

‘’Cause no one’s going to make me be called anything else.’

‘Well – that’s settled then.’ Joel watched her carefully, rubbing his huge hands on the legs of his trousers. Then he stirred himself. ‘Best get on – the
others’ll be back soon and they won’t take to me idling.’

They stepped back out on to the bank. It felt very cold outside after the snug little cabin. Joel showed no sign of being cold, but he saw her shivering.

‘D’you live far, Maryann?’

‘Garrett Street.’

This meant nothing to him. ‘Shouldn’t yer be at home?’

Maryann shrugged, miserable again at the thought of home. ‘I wish I could come with yer.’