The River Folk (34 page)

‘I’ll not be the only one,’ Lizzie teased him. ‘What about Janice?’

Duggie feigned ignorance. ‘Janice? Who’s Janice?’

Lizzie, joining in the fun, pretended to sigh. ‘I see. Behind the times again, am I? Who’s the latest then?’

‘Well, there’s this very nice girl who works in the jewellers’ on the corner of Pottergate. Sheila, I think her name is. I was thinking of asking her out on Saturday night.’

‘You want to be careful, Uncle Duggie. If she works in a jewellers’, she might be able to buy things cheaper. She could have a ring on her finger before you know it.’

Duggie laughed loudly. ‘She might well, Lizzie, my love, but it won’t be me buying it for her.’

‘Aren’t you getting a bit old for all these young girls?’ Dan said.

‘I’m only thirty-four. They like an older, more mature man.’

‘Older, yes,’ Dan said. ‘Mature – never!’

‘You’re just . . .’ Duggie began, but then Lizzie saw him catch his lip. She guessed he had, in his teasing way, been going to say, ‘You’re just jealous,’ but even Duggie stopped short of such a barb.

Dan walked away down the deck, a lonely figure, his shoulders hunched. Lizzie stared after him and felt the familiar lump in her throat. Poor Dad, she thought, her love for him swelling in her breast. Whatever had happened that night, he was not to blame. She had to believe he was not to blame.

Now she murmured to Duggie, ‘Will Dad have to go to war, Uncle Duggie?’

‘Shouldn’t think so, love. For a start he might be too old and even if he isn’t, there are what they call “reserved occupations”. He does a very useful job moving supplies about on the water. You never know, business for ships like ours might even pick up. Strange old world,’ he mused more to himself than to the girl at his side. ‘A catastrophe like a war can even be the making of people.’

‘In business, you mean?’ Lizzie asked.

‘Aye, that and in a personal way too.’ He grinned at her. ‘Very character-building, is a war, young Lizzie.’

Soberly, Lizzie looked at him. The wind ruffled his dark hair, blowing it on to his forehead. For once his eyes had a serious, faraway look, as if already he was imagining himself sailing the high seas in a smart naval uniform.

Lizzie shuddered and reached out to touch his arm. ‘If – if you do go, Uncle Duggie, you will be all right, won’t you?’

The smile was back on his face as he patted her hand and looked down at her. ‘’Course I will, little Lizzie. It’ll all be over by Christmas anyway. I’ll be back before you’ve even missed me. You’ll see.’

Everywhere the talk was of the war, but towards the end of August the annual regatta still took place. It was held, as always, on the stretch of river between Westlands and Eastlands, near where Ted Oliver ran his ferry.

‘I’ve built a sea horse.’ Proudly, Tolly showed Lizzie the barrel with the wooden horse’s head he had made attached to one end. ‘Are you entering the cog boat race, Lizzie?’

She nodded and her eyes twinkled with mischief. ‘The blindfold race.’

‘You’re not!’

‘I am.’ She laughed. ‘The worst thing that can happen is that I end up rowing down the middle of the river and have to be towed back by a motor boat.’

‘No, no, you won’t. I reckon you know this river as well as any of the men.’

‘Are you going in for the greasy pole? My dad’s having it on his ship this year.’

Every year one of the keel ships had a fifty-foot pole fixed in the bows pointing out over the water with a flag attached to the end of it. The pole was well greased, or soaped, and the person who walked along it and retrieved the flag won a prize and, later, it was also used for a pillow-fighting contest.

The day was bright and breezy and everybody seemed determined to enjoy themselves. Lizzie lined up in her cog boat with six other contestants. Tolly was not one of them as he had promised to try to shout instructions to her. Duggie would do the same from the opposite bank.

Solemnly, the brown paper bags were given out to each participant to put over their heads and the starter fired a pistol. Lizzie began to scull her boat away from the bank, but above the noise made by all the watchers, she could not distinguish Tolly’s voice. For a moment she stopped sculling and let the boat drift, catching the feel of the current. Then, beneath the paper bag, Lizzie smiled and began to scull strongly in the direction she believed the opposite bank to be. It seemed to be taking her a long time and, for a moment, Lizzie thought she had miscalculated and that she was blithely sculling downstream to the amusement of all the onlookers. Then, quite clearly, she heard Duggie’s voice.

‘Come on, Lizzie. You’re winning, lass. Just another two yards. Come on.’

A few more strokes and Lizzie felt the boat jolt against the bank and a huge cheer went up from the crowd. She removed the bag and turned to look back at her competitors. Three were tangled up with each other in the middle of the river, shouting and swearing, to the vast enjoyment of the watchers. One was rowing vigorously upstream against the current and another was sculling, supremely unaware, downstream. The last one hadn’t even got away from the opposite bank and seemed to be going round in circles. Then, on the far bank she saw Tolly jumping up and down with excitement and waving his congratulations at her win.

Later, Duggie won the greasy pole competition and Tolly won the barrel race and everyone enjoyed the ale and sandwiches aboard a barge anchored in the middle of the river.

Although no one knew it at the time, it was to be the last time the regatta was held, for on Sunday 3 September war became a reality. The news was greeted by a lot of people with a sense of relief. At least the dreadful waiting was over.

‘Well, now we know. Now we can get at ’em.’ Duggie rubbed his hands gleefully as his father turned off the wireless and sat down in his chair. The whole family was squashed into Bessie’s kitchen to hear the Prime Minister’s broadcast.

‘We’ll just be left with young boys and old men to run the country,’ Dan grumbled, ‘whilst all the able-bodied men are away playing soldiers.’

There was silence until Bert’s quiet voice said, ‘It’ll not be a game, son.’

Usually, it amused Lizzie to hear her daddy addressed as ‘son’ by his own father, but this morning, she was not smiling. Her face was serious, her eyes wide with anxiety as she listened intently to the conversation around her.

‘Women did all sorts of things in the last lot,’ Bessie murmured. ‘Drove ambulances, worked in factories, even went to the Front as nurses. ’Spect they will again.’ Lizzie felt her grandmother’s gaze upon her. ‘Even Lizzie here. She’ll have to do her bit.’

‘She’s far too young,’ Dan said quickly. ‘Besides, I need her, ’specially if Duggie’s going.’ A strange bitterness crept into his tone as he added, ‘At least she’s capable of being a good “mate”, even though she is a woman. She won’t sit in the cabin all day doing her embroidery.’

Lizzie didn’t understand his words or the look that passed between him and Bessie.

‘Of course I’ll stay with you, Dad,’ she said, leaning against Dan’s shoulder and smiling up at him.

Dan returned her smile and for a brief moment the haunted look went from his eyes. ‘Aye, you’ll never leave your old dad, will you, love?’ he murmured softly.

‘If it lasts as long as the last lot,’ Bessie still insisted, ‘she’ll have to do as she’s told in another three or four years’ time and it won’t be you doing the telling, our Dan. Not this time.’

When Duggie volunteered and was accepted into the Merchant Navy, Lizzie became her father’s official mate aboard Mr Sudbury’s ship, which he had skippered for the last sixteen years.

‘You’ll not always be able to take the lass with you, Dan,’ his employer had warned. ‘We shall more than likely get asked to go on some very odd missions, so just be prepared. By the way, I’m going to have the ship fitted out with a small diesel engine. You can still make use of the sails whenever possible, but it’ll cut out wasted time waiting for a tow. Things are going to change, Dan,’ Lizzie heard Mr Sudbury say to her father. ‘And if we’re to survive, we’ll have to change with them.’

Dan bemoaned the fitting of a noisy, smelly engine to his beloved keel, but Lizzie loved its rhythmic phut-phut-phut. ‘Wouldn’t Uncle Duggie have liked it, Dad? I know just what he’d say. “Should have had one years ago.” ’

Dan’s only reply was a baleful glance. ‘I don’t know why Mr Sudbury’s bothered to have one fitted. Trade’s dropped off that much, we look like being laid up for weeks. Everything’s coming in by the ports on the west coast now. Besides, we’re not allowed to move in the hours of darkness, so where’s the point? The only cargo I’ve got this week is fifty tons of cement for building air-raid shelters.’

‘It’ll pick up again, Dad. It’s bound to.’

A cold spell during the early months of 1940 kept the
Maid Mary Ann
moored at Elsborough and though Lizzie could find plenty to do ashore, Dan chafed at the enforced idleness. But when warmer weather came, with it returned some of the trade to the east coast ports.

Towards the end of May, Dan said, ‘You can’t come with me tomorrow, Lizzie.’

‘Why not? Where are you going?’

Her father seemed tense and anxious and his answer was evasive. ‘Oh, just into the Humber, but Mr Sudbury said you were not to go. He’s sending one of his men down to go with me.’

The following morning, Lizzie helped her grandmother pack a basket of food for Dan.

‘I think we’d better pack him a bit extra, love,’ Bessie murmured. ‘I reckon he’s going to be gone a few days.’

‘A few days?’ Lizzie stared at her. ‘Where’s he going and why can’t I go? And who’s this man going in my place? Do you know more than he’s told me?’

‘Calm down, calm down,’ Bessie smiled, but Lizzie noticed that the anxiety in her eyes was still there. ‘All I know is that Mr Sudbury told ya dad it’s something to do with the government or the War Office, or somebody.’

‘What? Some sort of job for them, you mean?’

Bessie shrugged. ‘I don’t know and I don’t even think your dad does. Mebbe this bloke who’s joining him will know more. Now,’ she added briskly, closing the lid and putting the peg through the fastening, ‘can you carry this, love, ’cos I’ve packed enough to feed an army?’

‘I know, I’ll borrow Mr Eccleshall’s pram wheels.’ Lizzie darted out and across the yard to knock on Minnie’s door. When their children had outgrown their old pram, Stan Eccleshall had removed the body and had fitted a sturdy wooden box on to the wheels. Through the years, it had seen good service for all his neighbours in Waterman’s Yard.

At Miller’s Wharf her father came down the gangway to help her lift the heavy basket aboard.

‘I ought to be coming with you,’ Lizzie grumbled. ‘Who’s going to look after you?’

‘I wish you could come, Lizzie. I’ll miss you, but he seems like a nice chap who’s come. He’s lost three fingers off his right hand so he didn’t pass his medical for service, but it doesn’t seem to stop him being able to handle a ship.’

‘You . . . you will be careful, won’t you, Dad?’

‘Of course, now give us a hug and off you go back home to your gran.’

Lizzie watched him board and then cast off for him, waving to both him and the stranger on the deck of the
Maid Mary Ann
.

‘Lizzie.’ A familiar voice spoke behind her and she turned to smile at Tolly as he came to stand beside her. ‘You not going on this trip, then?’

Lizzie shook her head. ‘They won’t let me.’

Tolly was gazing thoughtfully after the ship as it moved out into the middle of the river and began to sail downriver. Lizzie’s gaze was still on her father’s vessel, but Tolly glanced back upriver and then suddenly, he gripped her arm. ‘Look. Just look!’

Lizzie turned to see several more of Mr Sudbury’s ships coming down the river, following the
Maid Mary Ann
.

‘Now just where,’ Lizzie murmured, ‘are they all going?’

‘I don’t know,’ Tolly said, his gaze on the unusual sight. ‘But it must be for something very important.’

‘You’re like a cat on hot bricks, Lizzie,’ Bessie grumbled. ‘For heaven’s sake find yourself something useful to do.’

‘I’m just worried where Dad’s gone, Gran. He’s been gone three days.’

‘Well, you’re often away longer than that. How do you think I feel when I don’t hear from you for days on end?’ Bessie’s needles continued to click as she sat beside the range, knitting a pair of socks.

‘That’s different. You know I’m with him then. You know I’ll look after him.’ She caught her grandmother’s comical expression and laughed too. ‘Oh, you know what I mean. We look after each other.’

Bessie chuckled softly, ‘Aye, I know what you mean. You’re a good girl, Lizzie.’ There was a slight pause as she appeared to be thinking. ‘I tell you what, love. You can go up to Miss Edwina’s school for me. I’m running short of wool. She’s become one of the mainstays of the local branch of the WVS and she’s organizing all this war work that us housewives can do at home and still feel we’re “doing our bit”, as they say.’

Bessie, at sixty-five, now found it difficult to get about and rarely left the confines of the yard. She still struggled to the river now and then to watch the ships and she managed to get into the town once a week to do her shopping. But the effort exhausted her and her legs and feet pained her constantly.

Lizzie, despite her youth, realized that her grandmother still needed to busy herself to blot out the worry over Duggie. She jumped up, relieved to have something to do herself, something that might take her own mind off worrying about her father for a little while. She was missing, not only him, but the river too. She longed for the open air, the breeze in her face and the sounds and smells of the river. In Waterman’s Yard, she felt stifled.

‘Right,’ she said. ‘I’ll go now.’

At the school, the door was opened by a tall, young man of a similar age to herself, who was vaguely familiar. Lizzie stared at him and he stared back. His fair hair was smoothed back and he was smartly dressed in a suit, white shirt and tie. But it was his bright, blue eyes that made her remember him.

‘Hello, Lawrence,’ she said at the same moment that his face broke into a grin, creasing the lines around his eyes, and he said, ‘Lizzie!’