The Narrowboat Girl

PAN BOOKS

ONE

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

TWO

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Thirty-Three

Thirty-Four

Thirty-Five

Thirty-Six

Thirty-Seven

Thirty-Eight

Thirty-Nine

Forty

Forty-One

Forty-Two

Forty-Three

Forty-Four

Forty-Five

Forty-Six

Forty-Seven

Epilogue

Ladywood, Birmingham, 1926

‘Oi, Maryann – pack that in or your shoes’ll be all scuffs. You’ll ’ave our mom after yer!’

Sally Nelson sat primly on the step of the Garrett Arms, skirt pulled well down over her knees, thick blonde hair fastened back with a rag ribbon, and her baby brother clasped tight on her lap.
There was a frown on her round, pretty face as her younger sister skipped impatiently up and down, aiming kicks at the grime-encrusted wall.

Maryann turned, sticking her tongue out as she sprang back and forth, an ice cream in one hand and ample signs of it in evidence round her top lip. She stopped for a moment and stared down the
length of her skinny, scab-kneed legs to her feet, pushed into an old pair of cast-off shoes, their buckles dulled with wear.

‘They’re all scuffs any’ow, so what yer on about?’ She licked urgently at the ice cream before beginning again on her hopping and twirling, her bobbed, black hair flying
wildly round her face. ‘Oh – where’s our dad got to? ’E should be ’ere by now!’

Sally’s big-sister bossiness couldn’t rile her today. Maryann was as full of fizz as a bottle of Nanny Firkin’s dandelion and burdock and just as close to exploding with
excitement. It was 17 September, her twelfth birthday, the sun was still shining even though the summer was over and they were back to school, and today was the day their dad had promised
they’d go and fetch the kitten home from Nanny Firkin’s. Even though she’d have to share it with Sal and Tony and babby Billy, really it was going to be
hers
.

After school that day she’d come dashing home well ahead of Sal, her excitement even overcoming her wariness of her mother. ‘Mom! Mom! You there?’ She tore up the entry, to
find Flo Nelson in the yard still toiling away on the mangle outside the brewhouse. It was Monday, washday. Billy, with just a vest on, was stamping to and fro in a scummy puddle of washwater with
his little peter out on show, the lot. Wet clothes strung on lines along the yard, flapped against Maryann’s face.

‘Course I’m ’ere. Where else would I be, sunning meself in the South of France?’ Flo Nelson snapped, wiping her wet hands in an irritable gesture over her blonde hair to
keep it out of her face. She was a broad-hipped, rather stately woman, once as beautiful as Sal would one day be, but sagging now. Her manner was petulant and long-suffering. ‘And keep yer
grubby ’ands off of there. I ain’t been slaving away all day for you to come and bugger it all up. ’Ere—’ She reached down the front of her blouse for a twist of cloth
from which she took a sixpence.

Maryann’s eyes widened with glee. Mom was never going to give ’er a whole tanner! Blimey, she knew it was her birthday, but Mom never handed out even a farthing without being
asked
! Flo Nelson bent and hoiked her youngest son to his feet.

‘You and Sal go and find yerselves an ice cream – and get some drawers on ’im and take ’im with yer – ’e’s running me ragged.’

A beam spread across Maryann’s freckly face.

‘Ice cream, oh
ta
, Mom. Come on, Billy – eh Mom, what about Tony?’

Her five-year-old brother would be whining round her if he saw her with an ice.

‘’E’s round with Alec.’ Flo jerked her head towards the wall adjoining the next-door yard. ‘What ’e won’t know won’t hurt ’im. Make sure yer
finish ’em before yer get back ’ere!’ Her face surrendered to a rare moment of softness at the sight of her scallywag of a daughter. ‘Go on with yer, birthday girl. This
time twelve year ago I weren’t enjoying meself any too much I can tell yer.’

Sal was just coming along the road.

‘’Ere Sal! Our Mom’s being nice today – I’ve got a tanner!’

The girls found an Eldorado ice-cream cycle on the corner of Garrett Street and went back and settled by the door of the pub. Dad wouldn’t be back yet, however much Maryann willed him to
be. They’d long finished the ice creams, wiped Billy’s face and were trying to stop him crawling in to play on the beery, sawdust strewn floor of the Garrett Arms when the men started
coming out of the factories.

‘Awright, Sal?’ some of them said, coming into the Garrett for a pint or two after work. ‘Waiting for yer dad, are yer? ’E’ll be ’ere in a tick,
Walpole’s is out.’

Maryann noticed that when some of the men spoke to Sal, their voices altered, as if they were telling her a joke that Maryann didn’t understand. And one or two of them would give her a
wink. Sal favoured her mother’s fair looks: the pale skin, gold hair, the white, rounded body. Quite the young lady she was and they treated her almost as if she was a grown-up woman. They
didn’t do that to Maryann, a skinny whippet of a kid, with her black hair hacked off straight round her jaw and her face all freckles. She didn’t care: she was a tearaway, a tomboy,
besotted with animals and hungry for adventures.

She carried on skipping about. Walpole’s were out! Walpole’s, a firm making aluminium ware, was where her dad worked, the only man she cared about. After all these years he had a
proper job and was earning a good wage and everything was getting better and better. Next year Sal would turn fourteen and there’d be two wages coming in. Then Mom’d never have to take
in washing again.

Sally turned from bending over Billy to find Maryann shinning up the lamp-post on the corner by the pub.

‘Oh get down before yer kill yerself,’ she snapped. ‘’Ere, look – it’s our dad. Yer that busy fooling about you’ve missed ’im coming.’

Maryann slithered down the pole and tore along the road, all sharp knees and skirt flying.

‘Dad!’

Harry Nelson, a tall man with a lean, tired look, watched his daughter’s wild progress along the street, followed more sedately by her older sister and baby brother. Harry stopped,
throwing his coat over his shoulder, a grin spreading across his face. He held his arms out as Maryann catapulted herself at him.

‘’Eh – you’re getting too big for that!’ He laughed, fending her off.

‘Dad, Dad – can we get the kitten now?’

‘Well—’ He eyed her, teasing. ‘I had in mind a couple of pints with the lads first.’

‘Oh
Dad
!’

He laughed. Harry Nelson had big, tombstone teeth and needed only to part his lips to look as if he was smiling. ‘There’ll be no peace till we do, will there?’

‘She’s been keeping on and on,’ Sal said, trying to sound superior, although in truth she was almost as thrilled about the kitten as Maryann.

Maryann dragged him by the hand. ‘Come
on
then!’

Nanny Firkin lived in a back house on a yard off Ledsam Street, along from the Borax factory. It was a short way across Ladywood, the other side of the railway shunting yard
and the cut in which lay the sluggish, scum-ridden water of the Birmingham Mainline Canal to Wolverhampton. The house where Maryann and the rest of the Nelsons lived was also a back house, with two
tiny bedrooms on the first floor and an attic, but Nanny Firkin’s house at the far end of the yard was more by way of a cottage: two up, two down, with a little patch of garden at the front,
and Maryann loved going there. Nanny Firkin, a widow of some years, loved animals too and told Maryann she was a ‘chip off the old block’.

When they reached Ledsam Street, Maryann ran on ahead, heart pounding with excitement, up the entry to Nan’s and across the greyish-blue bricks of the yard. The door was open, as it nearly
always was, and one of Nanny Firkin’s cats, an exceptionally hairy ginger tabby, was curled, asleep on the front step. Maryann peered into the dark kitchen, which smelled of coal and onions
and the sour odour of the parrot’s cage.

‘Nan? It’s me, Maryann! Dad’s brought us up for the kitten.’

‘I didn’t think it’d be long before you made an appearance.’

Nanny Firkin limped over to the door, a twinkle in her eye. She was a tiny lady, thin as a wisp, who lived on next to nothing and was always dressed stiffly in black, but with a little wizened
face from which looked two eyes, watery and blue, and brimming with warmth and vivacity. She was full of affection for her granddaughters and son-in-law. It was her own daughter Flo she found it
less easy to rub along with, forever mithering and carrying on, although Nanny Firkin had done everything in her power to help Flo while Harry was away fighting – and the pair of them once he
came back from France. Flo was a houseproud chit but lazy and self-pitying with it. Always hankering for a spick and span house but thinking it ought to get done by magic instead of knuckling down
and doing the work herself. Flo Nelson called her own mother’s house a ‘bloody flea-ridden menagerie – yer go there alone and you come back with company.’

But Maryann had hardly ever caught a flea at her nan’s. She’d be more likely to pick up company of that sort at her friend Nancy’s house in another yard across Garrett Street,
if the truth be told.

Nanny Firkin’s kitchen was a cosy place. Her grandmother had been chopping an onion at the table and the kettle was hissing on the hob over the black range. Beside it was squeezed the old
chair with its horsehair stuffing bulging out through holes in each of the arms. In one corner, balanced on a crate, was the cage where Walt her parrot lived, named after her late husband.

‘Talks to me a darn sight more than Walter the flesh and blood man ever did,’ Nanny Firkin often said.

‘’Ello, Walt!’ Maryann called to him.

‘’Ello,’ Walt said. ‘’Ello.’ And added a metallic sounding shriek for good measure, closely resembling the noise that came from one of the factories behind
the yard.

When Harry Nelson appeared at the door with Sal and little Billy, Maryann was already bent over the black cat who was lying under the big chair with her litter. Out of the mass of warm, hairy
bodies, Maryann saw a tiny face, tiger-striped grey and black, with shiny brown eyes gazing up at her.

‘Oh look, Nan! Look at this one – the little tabby!’

She took the creature on her lap and it settled there, seeming quite content.

‘Ain’t they grown, Nan!’ Sal exclaimed. ‘No, Billy – yer must be gentle with ’em.’ She restrained Billy’s strong, pinching fingers.

‘Oh Nan, can I ’ave this one!’ Maryann looked into the animal’s eyes and knew he wanted to be hers. ‘Look at the way ’e’s looking at me.’ The
kitten twisted playfully on to its back and pawed at her fingers.

‘Don’t I get a say then?’ Sal stood over her, but she was smiling in spite of herself at the kitten’s antics.