Water Gypsies (2 page)

‘Thanks,’ Maryann whispered, tears welling in her eyes. ‘You’re golden you are.’

‘Nah,’ Nance said easily. ‘It’s not every day you have twins, is it?’

Maryann was ashamed of the state of the stove, all grease and rust spots. She hadn’t got round to cleaning or blacking it. She watched Nance move about so capably. Nancy had taken to the life and never looked back, especially as she’d had to risk so much to be with Darius, leaving her violent husband, Mick, to whom she was still officially married. Except during the unhappiest time of her marriage, Nance had always been full of wiry energy, a tomboy as a child, who now managed the all-weathers, ever-demanding work of the cut with vigour and enthusiasm. She even looked the part, with her dark hair and earrings glinting in the light from outside. But just as Maryann was about to pour out her woes, her fear of how she was going to manage, Nance turned, the teapot in her hands.

‘I’ve got news for you an’ all – I’m expecting again!’

Maryann swallowed the lump in her throat and tried to smile. She knew how much this meant to Nance. Her marriage to Mick had been childless and she’d ached for babies of her own. Now she already had Darry, Sean and Rose, but at the turn of the year she’d miscarried and Maryann knew how upset she’d been.

‘Oh, Nance – that’s lovely!’ Maryann hoped Nance couldn’t hear the tears in her voice. ‘I’m ever so pleased for you both!’

They spent half an hour, snatched away from Nance’s chores, drinking tea, and Nancy handed her a good hunk of bread with more butter than the scraping of wartime frugality allowed.

‘You should have triple ration today!’ she said, as Maryann ate ravenously. The twins slept and for the moment Maryann felt quite lifted out of herself and less desperate as she reminisced with Nance. She even managed to doze for a little after Nance left, and the twins, exhausted from the process of coming into the world, slept on.

Joel got back in late that night when Joley, Sally and Ezra were already asleep on the
Esther Jane.

‘Two little ’uns, then?’ he said in wonder. His thick beard glowed bronze in the lamplight and he sat, his burly form perched on the edge of the bed, staring at the two little girls. In the light from the oil lamp, the look on his tired, gentle face at the sight of his new daughters filled Maryann with a deep, poignant joy. There was such pride, such tenderness, in his eyes. She told herself how ungrateful she was being to feel so burdened by the arrival of these little ones. She’d made Joel so happy! He was always cock-a-hoop at the births of their children. And she couldn’t help remembering the last one, when he first saw their little Harry with his pale hair, now in his grave in a Banbury churchyard. Joel had been heartbroken when they lost him. It was the only time she had seen him cry like a child himself.

‘I think that one looks like an Esther,’ Maryann said, pointing at the dark-haired infant who was lying dozily beside her. ‘And madam here – ’ the ginger-headed one was at her breast, a tiny fist flailing in the air – the fidgety one – well, she seems more of an Ada to me.’

Joel’s eyes met hers and he reached over to stroke her head, drawing her closer to kiss her lips.

‘Thanks, my little nipper. Thanks, my lovely.’

Maryann smiled back at him, her feelings twisting inside. He was so loving, his children meant so much to him after his years of struggling on alone with his father. How could she ever deny him this joy and satisfaction? But couldn’t he see it was wearing her down, all of it, week by week, until she wondered if one day she would just drop with exhaustion and sink under the waters for good?

Two

‘Hello, my sweet little bird.’

Joel’s warm hand moved over her in the darkness. They were in their bed in the
Theodore,
the babies Esther and Ada deep in a snuffling sleep together in a nest of bedding on the floor. The other children were with Bobby on the
Esther Jane
to keep them from being disturbed by the twins’ nightly squalling when they woke to be fed.

Maryann lay facing the back wall, the bulwark between cabin and cargo, eyes squeezed closed. Joel’s hand brushed her hair back and kissed the nape of her neck. This whiskery tickling used to make her giggle so she couldn’t keep up any pretence of being asleep. And the girls were nearly six weeks old now; her stitches had healed. Her husband wanted her. What reason could she find for depriving him any longer? Yet the thought filled her with dread.

Opening her eyes, she turned slightly towards him. There was nothing to see. The lights were out in the cabin, checked curtains drawn across the bedspace.

‘My girl … My lovely… ’ He was easing up her shift, kissing her breasts, and she stiffened against him. She was alarmed at herself. Hadn’t she always loved his caresses? Loved being held and cuddled close? Making love with Joel was such a solid, reassuring thing. She loved lying with him in the cosy light from the lamp, taking time to look into his face, stroking the strong hairs of his beard, seeing the love in his eyes. She would run her hand across the firey hair on his chest, down over his belly, its comforting softeness into which she could burrow, teasing, nuzzling, yet tight like a drum when he tensed. She had been so afraid at first, at the thought of lovemaking, after her stepfather. But she had pushed those memories away, buried them deep and learned how to love Joel.

And yes, she did love him, with all her heart, and would have turned to him happily, tired as she was, if it was not for the thought of another child. She lay beside him stiffly, frightened to respond. She couldn’t face all that again. Not the sickness, the feeling so done in that sometimes she nearly fell asleep at the helm of the butty, the gruelling agony of birthing them … and all that even before the constant worry of their little lives. Of them toppling off the boats, catching in the locks, or falling sick like their poor Harry, who never got better.

‘Joel?’ she whispered. ‘I can’t. Not another babby. Not yet.’

He nuzzled her, stroking her belly. It was stretched now, used. A place for people to stop in for a while, she thought, like a cabin. She felt like a battered old boat, trying to keep moving on.

‘You won’t, will you? Not so quick after the last?’

‘I don’t know,’ she pleaded. She knew nothing about how her body worked, what she could do to keep things under control.

Joel lay back with a long sigh which cut right through her. Her ghosts, her insecurities, crowded in. She hated to hurt him, to refuse him anything. She knew how kind he was, how loving. He didn’t complain about any of her shortcomings. But what he called his ‘bit of loving’ was so important to him. He never tired of her: she was his wife and he needed it from her. What if she couldn’t give it to him? What then? He had taken her in, saved her, and her greatest fear was that of being without him.

‘Joel?’ She reached over and kissed him and Joel took this as a sign that he should continue. They clung together in the darkness and soon she heard his quick gasps of need and pleasure as he moved on top of her, and she felt the bite of him entering her, that pain of the first time after a birth. But the sharpness did not last and she held him close as he rested in her afterwards. He laughed softly, close to her ear.

‘Back to normal,’ he whispered. ‘My dear one. With our lovely family. We’ll make Number Ones out of them again – you’ll see. We will.’

His arm round her waist, he fell into a deep, satisfied sleep.

The next day they set out to take coal to Birmingham. Bobby Jenks, a twenty-year-old lad from another boating family, had been working with them for a couple of years. Working a motor and butty two-handed with children had soon proved too much for Maryann. ‘Bow-hauling’ the butty, having to haul it by hand with ropes into locks, was almost too much for her small frame, and she worried constantly about the children’s safety. They needed a third hand. They’d had a succession of helpers, but now Bobby had stuck – he was a good worker who’d been steering boats solo by the age of seven or eight. He was a strong, cheerful lad, with a head of wild hair and a sudden, cheeky smile. His family, the Jenks, were a much respected family of Number Ones who had been working boats for generations, but had now also sold out to Samuel Barlow. Bobby had been schooled in the true boatman’s qualities of agility and hard work, as well as a quiet courtesy, and Maryann had never had any problems with him joining them. Though she was only a few years older, she had developed a motherly fondness for him.

Joel had worked short trips with the monkey, or motor boat, during those weeks. Maryann stayed tied up at Sutton Stop to get to grips with looking after two extra children and to go and be churched in the parish of Longford. One day, when Nancy and Darius tied up there again, she was able to leave the twins with Nance and go into Coventry to collect new ration books and indulge in a beautiful long soak in the public baths. She knew she’d had more rest than most boatwomen had after their births.

The twins took it out of her good and proper and she often felt weak and tired, but Nance had been a marvellous support. Darius had left her with them for a couple of days, working his boats two-handed with a lad on board, and she helped Maryann stove the cabins and scrub and clean them. She’d washed the curtains and crochet work, hanging them in a flapping line along the
Theodore
to dry in the August sunshine, then polished the brass strips on the chimneys and knobs on the doors.

Maryann sat feeding the babies, watching helplessly, but with relief and gratitude as Nance whisked about, while Joley, Sally and Ezra played with Darry, Sean and Rose on the bank. Darius had tied a rope to the branch of a tree and knotted a stick onto the bottom to serve as a seat. The older ones were having a fine time, swinging and whooping as they did so.

‘You can start off nice and fresh now, can’t you?’ Nance said, blacking the stove.

‘It looks lovely,’ Maryann said, gloomily wondering to herself how long it would last.
What’s the matter with me?
she asked herself. She never seemed to feel she could get on top of things somehow. She’d wanted to keep such high standards on the boats, like some of the boatwomen whose curtains and pinners were immaculate, their brasses winking in the sun against the bright colours of the boats. She dreaded their scorn. They seem to accept her because she had married Joel, who was so respected, one of the old families of Number Ones who owned their own boats, even though the declining trade had forced them to sell out to Essy Barlow before the war.

‘You’ll soon pick up,’ Nance said. ‘Eh —’ she turned to look at Maryann, cloth in hand – ‘I hope Darius’s going to get us a load up to Brum one of these days. I want to go and see our mom.’

Maryann nodded. She couldn’t say she felt the same about seeing her own mother.

‘Still gives me a shock when I go there – the mess! Great holes and that all over the place. I’m glad we were out of it, really.’

They had been aware of the Blitz, of course. Who couldn’t be? And there were a few hairy nights round Birmingham, Coventry and the London docks when the bombing had come frighteningly close. But in many ways life went on much the same on the cut, war or no war, except for identity cards and ration books. The sides of the locks and the bridge-holes were painted white, and they’d had to keep the hatches closed at night and paint over the lamps on the boats for the blackout regulations, but in the countryside and along the cut things went on much as usual, except that now there was an increase in traffic. More loads to fuel the war effort: to make munitions and vehicles, to build air strips and shadow factories.

They travelled into Birmingham from the north side, along the Bottom Road or Birmingham-Fazeley Canal. Maryann knew this was most people’s least favourite trip. They came in from the collieries, their boats loaded up and low in the water. Once they’d got past Minworth, coming into Brum, the cut became more and more filthy, walled in by factories and warehouses and built over so heavily that it seemed steeped in muck and gloom. On top of that the locks were all single, so instead of being able to breast up the motor and butty side by side and put them through, the butty had to be bow-hauled in with a rope, which was exhausting. Thank heavens they had Bobby with them!

It was here you could see a few more signs of the war. She caught glimpses of fat, fish-shaped barrage balloons in the sky. As the city closed in, she was filled with an increasing sense of unease. Her mother still lived here and her two brothers, and it was where she came from, yet Birmingham could always arouse the painful memories buried inside her, which she tried strenuously never to think about. Above all, she dreaded ever seeing
him.
What was he calling himself these days? she wondered. To her he had been Norman Griffin, undertaker, wrecker of her family, thief of her childhood, and the man responsible for her sister’s death. He had disappeared afterwards, and none of them knew where he was. But he must be somewhere, could easily still be in Birmingham.

Once, just once after all this time, she thought she saw him. It was a few months ago when they were tied up at Tyseley, one smoky, drizzling winter night. A figure walking along the wharf caught her eye, making her freeze inside. Moving along the row of warehouses ahead of the boats was a dark figure, burly, hat pulled down so that she could see nothing of his face except the glowing tip of a cigarette. There was something in the build, the gait … Maryann stepped down onto the coalbox and peered out.

‘Mom – what’re you doing?’ Joley asked, puzzled at his mother bobbing in the hatches.

‘Nothing – just eat your piece,’ she snapped.

Narrowing her eyes, she watched, heart thumping, as the figure moved further along then out of sight. Joley had squeezed in front of her.

‘Who was that?’ he said, following her gaze.

‘No one, Joley. Come on – let’s see if we can find a scrape of jam to go with that, eh?’

It was ridiculous, she knew. He was long gone with his foul, cunning ways. With his disfigurement he wouldn’t be able to con his way into another family to trap its daughters in fear and shame. Margaret had seen to that. Little Margaret, whose widowed mother had innocently taken on the ‘respectable Mr Lambert’ as he was calling himself then, after he left Maryann’s mother. Margaret, whom he had pushed past the bounds of sanity. Margaret, who was in the asylum now … The feelings began to rise in her, swelling until her very veins seemed ready to burst with rage, with shame. She was breathing as if she had been running. No, she must push this away! All the memories he brought with him of her past, of her dead sister Sal. That wasn’t the man she saw – it was a mistake. Norman Griffin belonged to the past and there he must stay. Ever since that day she had frozen out those thoughts. She was never going to think about the past again.