Water Gypsies (21 page)

‘She’s going to crash,’ Joley said matter-of-factly. ‘Good job Dad ent here.’

‘If he was we wouldn’t be in this bloody mess, would we?’ Maryann said furiously.

In those seconds she became aware of several other things. One was that the women had pulled the boat out in the path of a horse-drawn joey, which was bearing down close behind them, the man at its tiller yelling at them, outraged. The other was confirmation of Joley’s observation that nothing now was going to stop the
Theodore
except a collision. All she could do was watch, hands pressed to her cheeks.

‘You cowing, stupid
idiots,’
she breathed.

Instead of managing the left bend, the
Theodore
shot across the turn and rammed, shuddering into the corner of the bank on the other side, leaving Dot with rope scorching through her hands. Sylvia, who had been leaning back, pulling desperately on the tiller, lost her balance on the jolt and fell in over the back into the water, in the company of the
Theodore
’s water carrier, which clunked and sploshed into the cut after her.

Sylvia surfaced, gasping, in the freezing water to see the front of the joey boat coming straight at her. With the speed born of survival instinct she flung herself round to the right of the
Theodore
as the two joeymen shafted and pulled, tweaking the fore end round to the left of the
Theodore
and made the bend.

Dot, standing shaken by the bridge, called to the men in her ringing voice, ‘That was a close one. We’re most terribly sorry!’

The joeymen eyed her with a contempt more corrosive than even Maryann could have managed and loud expletives trailed in the air behind them. A small but interested audience was gathering on the bank.

Maryann ran to help Sylvia out of the water. Her teeth were chattering convulsively and the black, slimy water poured off her. Her hair had turned an interesting shade of gritty grey. Otherwise she was perfectly all right.

‘Come on,’ Maryann ordered, holding on tightly to her rage. She led her back over the bridge to help Dot haul the
Theodore
round out of everyone’s way. As they joined the
Esther Jane,
Maryann saw all her children perched at various points on the cabin and gunwales, watching the events with fascination.

The three of them went into the cabin of the
Theodore,
Sylvia smelling abominable and dripping all over the floor, and Maryann let rip. She found she was trembling with fury at them making such a spectacle of her and of Joel’s boats. She hadn’t been deaf to the ribald comments levelled at them from some of the boatmen who’d been watching. After years of trying to prove herself as a boatwoman, a Bartholomew, of trying to belong, these two idiots had humiliated her completely in one afternoon. She let them have it with both barrels.

‘When I tell you to wait, you bloody well
wait!
’ she bawled at them. ‘What in God’s name did you think you were playing at, barging out in front of that other boat and bringing her in at that speed? If there’d been anyone else tied up at that corner you could’ve rammed them and sunk them, d’you know that? And you’ve gone and lost our water carrier, so unless someone fishes it out we’re going to have to get another one. D’you know how long that carrier’s been on this boat?’ She paused, glowering at them. Dot opened her mouth, then closed it.

‘I s’pose you think you know better than people who’ve been on the cut all their lives, coming along with your airs and graces, ’cause you fancy a little rest from painting your nails? Well, if you’re coming to work with me, you can sodding well do it properly or go back to wherever it is you come from!’

‘Look,’ Dot managed to say. ‘It was my fault, not Sylvia’s. I admit, I made a mess of it…’

‘Yes – not half you did!’ Maryann yelled. ‘I thought you said you knew what you were doing!’

They were silent. Maryann was surprised they didn’t argue. Sylvia was too busy dripping and shivering, but even Dot, whose face was puce with embarrassment, stood in silence, nursing her rope-burned hands under her armpits.

‘Get changed,’ Maryann ordered Sylvia contemptuously, finally running out of steam. ‘And then we’ve got the lock to get through. D’you think you can manage that without sinking us?’

Twenty-One

Maryann’s foul temper lasted long into the evening. She banged about in the cabin, slamming the pan down as she cooked bubble and squeak, snapping at the children. Her head was thumping and all she wanted was to lie down and forget today had ever happened.

‘You gave those ladies a talking to, daint you, Mom?’ Sally said as she waited for her food. Maryann knew the child was trying to break the tense silence around her.

‘Yes, I flaming well did!’ she retorted. ‘Coming here with their airs and graces, thinking they know better than anyone.’

‘Are they leaving tomorrow?’ Rose asked hopefully. Like Maryann, she wasn’t very good at coping with change in her life. She liked things to feel unchanging and secure.

‘No, bab – no such luck.’ Maryann sighed. ‘If only Bobby was about I’d have him back like a shot and manage two-handed. I wish to God I’d never let him go, only Mr Veater never gave me much choice.’ She turned and started dishing out the food. ‘We’re going down Oxford tomorrow, so we’ve got to put up with them.’

Ezra’s dark brows were pulled into a frown. ‘Ent you allowed no slip-ups when you’re grown big?’

‘What d’you mean?’ Maryann asked, perching wearily on the back bed.

‘Our dad says to me when I do summat wrong: when you’re starting out you’re allowed some slip-ups.’

Maryann sighed into a silence in which the children waited for her answer. She could see they were really puzzled by the intensity of her reaction to the two women. Even with the justification of the afternoon’s troubles, she could barely explain it even to herself, how having them there made her feel unsafe and exposed. The tight feeling inside her increased and her temples throbbed.

All afternoon she’d held onto her self-righteous anger. The power station was only a quarter of a mile south, looming huge over the landscape, creating its own pall of cloud from the chimneys and cooling towers which poured out smoke and steam. The afternoon had darkened and, although it was only about four o’clock, already dusk was falling as they slid through the black, refuse-strewn water, in the shadows of the cranes and gantries, to the wharf. Here the coal was lifted from the boat by grabbers onto conveyor belts, to be carried into the insatiable power station. Sylvia and Dot kept out of her way, only exchanging the tersest of remarks about what needed to happen next. By the time they were heading back, gunwales higher in the water, Maryann had calmed down, but her headache was setting in, and a sour, shameful feeling had come over her which she found hard to admit.

Ezra’s question made her feel even worse.

‘Yes, bab, we all make mistakes,’ she said, adding defiantly, ‘and there are some people need to learn from them more than others.’

It was a relief to get the children to sleep. Ada and Esther were all but weaned now, just having a drink from her sometimes at night to settle them. Once the children were down, there wasn’t much for her to do but go to bed herself, since there was no room to move about in the cabin. They were squeezed in tight as a pea pod. She was about to make herself a drop of hot milk to ease her head, when she felt the boat rock slightly, and there came a soft knocking on the door.

Sylvia was outside, looking solemn and upset.

So you damn well should,
Maryann thought, looking up at her. The sky had cleared and it felt very chill outside.

‘Look,’ Sylvia whispered, ‘if your children are settled for the night, Dot and I would really like to have a talk with you. Mend some fences, sort of thing. Will you come and join us for a cup of tea?’

‘I was just going to bed.’ It came out abruptly again. More so than she meant it to. How was she supposed to talk to these people? She couldn’t speak the way they did, could she?

‘
Please,
’ Sylvia said. To Maryann’s astonishment she heard tears in Sylvia’s voice. ‘We both feel ghastly about what happened today. And we can’t go on like this, can we? We’ve got to learn to work together somehow. We need to try and make friends.’

Maryann knew that what had happened had not been Sylvia’s fault. Why wasn’t Dot the one here eating humble pie, she wondered. She desperately didn’t want to go and sit with them, but she felt sorry for Sylvia and there was something sweet, almost pathetic, in the way she had asked. Grudgingly, she nodded. ‘I’ll be over in a minute.’

It was an uncomfortable feeling, being invited into what for years had been her own home. She stood out in the cold, starry darkness for a moment, knotted up inside with nerves. Why didn’t she just go back to her own cabin and go to bed? She knew suddenly that part of the reason she wanted to hold onto her self-righteous anger was that she was afraid. She realized that it was the word ‘friends’ that really frightened her. It had been different with Nance, who had known her for years. Of course Nance accepted her. But to try and be close to anyone else felt terrifying. How could she ever show them who she was, what she had come from?

She took a deep breath. They didn’t have to know anything about her, she reasoned with herself. Only what she wanted to tell them. All she had to do was try and patch things up so they could manage the work properly. For the sake of the boats. That was all that mattered. She tapped on the
Theodore’s
hatch.

‘Here she is … Come on in and sit with us for a bit.’

Sylvia welcomed her so kindly that, to her irritation, Maryann found tears in her eyes and tried fiercely to blink them away, though she knew Sylvia had seen them. She sat on the side bench near Dot, who was perched on the edge of the back bed, knitting something with big needles out of thick orange wool. Sylvia came and sat on Maryann’s left and poured the tea. She’d obviously managed to wash her hair, as it was pale and silky looking again. She was such a fragile-looking thing, she didn’t look strong enough for this life, Maryann thought, sipping the tea. Sylvia could make a good cup of tea, though, she’d give her that. The oil lamp was burning and it was as cosy as ever inside. It felt very strange, though, being here with these strangers with their possessions about: a bar of Pears soap, a pretty mirror edged with shells and a little pink washbag. Sylvia’s trousers were hanging over the range, still steaming, and there was a copy of
Woman’s Own
on the table, a woman with glossy chestnut hair smiling from the cover. Maryann eyed it curiously. She wanted to reach out and turn the pages, and was surprised by her sudden hunger to see what was inside.

‘Look,’ Sylvia said carefully, ‘we seem to have started off on completely the wrong foot with you. What happened today was our fault entirely…’

‘No – it was my fault,’ Dot said robustly. She looked different with her hair loose over her shoulders, making her look voluptuous and much more feminine. Somehow it looked wrong, as if the hair belonged to someone else. Maryann wondered how old she was. ‘I misunderstood your boy when he shouted over to us – I thought you wanted us to follow on. And I must say’ – she began to sound rather heated – ‘that it wasn’t exactly my fault if I could barely understand a blasted word the child was saying. I think it’s a bit thin if you won’t accept an apology that’s genuinely meant. I mean, dammit, I’ve said sorry. Haven’t you ever made a mistake?’

Maryann thought of some of the terrible mistakes she made when she started out on the cut and the shameful feeling nudged harder inside her. How would she have felt if no one had forgiven her? But she felt so lost without Joel, and worried and tense about taking charge of the boats with strangers on board whose background she didn’t understand, that it was easiest to take it all out on them! And there was something about Dot especially which made her hackles rise. The way she strode about on her buxom legs and that
voice.
Sylvia was well spoken all right, with her tinkly voice, but she didn’t have the posh, overpowering blare that Dot had. She stared back at her, feeling her expression harden, about to make a curt reply.

But Sylvia was saying, ‘The thing is, Maryann, we’ve never worked together before either, and we haven’t got used to each other yet – or your family…’

Maryann turned to her, frowning. ‘I thought Mr Veater said you were a team?’

‘Well, if he did, he got it wrong. We only met on the train coming up here. We’ve done our training trips, but not together. Quite a lot of the girls dropped out and we were leftovers for the moment – spare-wheelers, as Kit would say.’

‘We are new girls, it’s true,’ Dot said, ‘but we aren’t as bad as … well, as we were today. That was me getting the wrong end of the stick and then putting too much oomph into it altogether. But we’ve both come through quite a few sticky situations on the Grand Union. We’ll do our best not to let you down again.’

‘The thing is – ’ Sylvia cut in again rather intensely before Maryann had a chance to speak – ‘we so love the life here, and we think you’re
marvellous,
how you manage and everything. I just don’t know how you do it with six children. I struggle with only two even when I’m living in a house.’

‘What?’
Maryann was nonplussed. ‘You’ve got children?’

‘Oh yes – a girl and a boy. Kay’s twelve and Dickie’s ten.’

‘Twelve!’ Maryann blurted. The woman’s children were older than her own!

Sylvia gabbled on nervously. ‘As a matter of fact I was going to ask you if I might put up some pictures on the walls. Dot, dear, pass my bag over, will you?’ She showed Maryann a picture of two smiling faces, a girl and boy side by side. The girl’s hair was shoulder length, waving prettily round her cheeks and darker than her mother’s, though she had a look of Sylvia.

‘Her face is the same shape as yours,’ Maryann said, peering in fascination at the picture. ‘You can see the likeness. She’s pretty.’

‘Thank you.’ Sylvia smiled. ‘Of course, Dickie’s the image of his father.’ The boy had a squarer face, a rather thin mouth and narrow eyes, but was handsome in his way. Maryann took another look before handing it back.