The Narrowboat Girl Read online

  The Narrowboat Girl

  Annie Murray

  Pan Macmillan (2012)

  Tags: Birmingham Saga, Book 1

  * * *

  Synopsis

  Book 1

  An absorbing tale of adventure and true love Young Maryann Nelson is devastated at the loss of her beloved father. But worse is to come when her mother, Flo, sees an opportunity to better herself and her family in a marriage to the local undertaker, Norman Griffin. Though on the surface a caring family man, Norman is not at all what he seems, as Maryann and her sister Sal soon discover.Unable to turn to their unsympathetic mother for support, the girls are left alone with their harrowing secret. But for Sal it is too much to bear . . . The chance of a new life opens up for Maryann when she befriends Joel Bartholomew. Aboard his narrowboat, the Esther Jane, she finds herself falling in love with life on the canal as she is swept away from Birmingham and all her worries. Until Joel's feelings for Maryann begin to change, awakening all the old nightmares that she had thought were long buried, and in panic and confusion she takes flight . . .

  ANNIE MURRAY

  The Narrowboat Girl

  PAN BOOKS

  Contents

  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

  PART ONE

  One

  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.

  ‘It is madam’s birthday,’ Nanny Firkin said, brewing tea for Harry. She was always mothering him, trying to feed him up. ‘Anyroad, I reckon ’er’s picked the best of the bunch.’

  While her dad gratefully drank his tea and ate Nanny Firkin’s sticky ginger cake, and Sal and Billy played with the other kittens, Maryann sat with her new pal in her lap, laughing as his fur tickled her bare knees. She could scarcely believe it: a living creature, so tiny and perfect and beautiful, and he was all hers . . . She stopped, looking carefully at him and turned to her grandmother who was sitting, as she always did, perched at the very edge of her chair as if in her long life she had never learned to take her rest and be comfortable.

  ‘Is this one a boy or a girl, Nan?’

  ‘Oh that’s a lad, that one. Tigerface I call ’im.’

  ‘Tigerface—’ Maryann cocked her head at him. ‘I think I’ll just call ’im Tiger.’ She nuzzled her cheek against him, brimful with delight. ‘Thanks, Nan. ’E’s the best ever.’

  Maryann lay cuddled up close to Sal that night on the bed they shared in the attic. There was a strong whiff of damp, but they barely noticed, being used to it. They had an army blanket and a couple of old coats, and apart from that they had to keep each other warm. The nights were still quite mild now but it was perishing cold in the winter. Now she was older, Sal refused to have a ‘bucket of wee’ by the bed and, however cold the night, if she needed to go, she took the key and went off down the yard to the freezing toilets. Maryann wasn’t so fussed and would go down and relieve herself in the bucket in Tony and Billy’s room if needs be. Sal was getting far too particular, she thought.

  ‘Move over,’ Sal moaned. ‘I’m half hanging off the edge of the bed over ’ere.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Maryann shuffled along the lumpy mattress. There was a pause. A mouse scuttled across the floor. ‘Tiger’s so lovely, ain’t ’e?’

  ‘Oh Gawd, not again. Yes, Maryann, ’e’s lovely. ’E’s the most perfect cat in the whole blinking world. Now will yer shurrup?’

  There was silence for a moment, then Maryann poked her in the ribs and Sal rolled over, giggling. ‘Oi, pack that in!’ But she was only pretending to be cross. The two of them snuggled up together. Despite being so different they were close. They’d had to be, the way their mom was.

  There’d been great excitement when they carried Tiger home. Nancy Black and three of her brothers had invaded to look him over until Flo Nelson unceremoniously shooed them out again. Maryann had spent the whole evening holding him and playing with him and even Flo admitted he was ‘awright, I s’pose’. Now he was asleep, exhausted, on a strip of rag by the range.

  Maryann lay looking up at the dim rectangle of sky through the uncurtained attic window. The nights were drawing in now. ‘I don’t want to leave Tiger when I go to school,’ she whispered. ‘I wish ’e could come too.’

  ‘Don’t talk so daft,’ Sal murmured. They lay together talking fondly abou
t the kitten’s antics until the downstairs door opened and they heard their father’s tread on the stairs. Flo Nelson was always harassed and irritable in the evenings and hustled them straight from playing in the yard up to bed out of her way. She had Billy to settle down and didn’t want any added trouble from them. But their dad always came up to say goodnight. Maryann squirmed with delight. It felt so cosy in bed, with Dad coming up to give them a kiss.

  He had been a stranger to them when he came home from the war in 1919. Sal had been eight then, and Maryann five and it had taken them some time to get used to one another. Flo, exhausted after years of coping with two young daughters alone, of scrimping and queuing and struggling, had expected a man to come home who she could lean on, who would take over. Instead, for those first years, she had an unpredictable, helpless wreck on her hands. Often she exclaimed angrily that the men who came home may have survived, but they were ‘no bloody good to anyone, the state they were in’. The girls didn’t understand what it was all about. They didn’t understand the war, or the suffering of the soldiers, or that the man who had come home was one who had changed and couldn’t fit in, wouldn’t, for a long time, be able to hold down a job. But they did know they were loved. Harry Nelson was a man who felt incomplete away from his family. He adored his children, and that separation, added to the horror and degradation of the war, had increased his trauma further.

  ‘How’s the birthday girl?’ he said, stooping his long body and sitting down on the bed.

  Maryann giggled.

  ‘That little Tiger of yours is asleep. Worn out.’ Maryann felt him rub her back with his warm hand and he gave Sal a pat. ‘Night night.’ He leaned down and kissed them both. Maryann felt his lips press her cheek, the prickle of stubble on his top lip.

  ‘Eh – ’ow about you sing to me, eh – our special song? Just the first bit. How’ds it go?’

  The song was one Sal had sung at school while the war was on, a prayer for the soldiers and sailors. She had told her father about it when he came home and they had sung it many times. Now they both piped up: