The Narrowboat Girl Read online

  The undertaker, Norman Griffin, was a tall, respectable-looking, middle-aged gentleman, his broad shoulders encased in a smart black coat with a white wool muffler at the neck, black gloves and shoes gleaming with polish and elbow grease. She could see, from under his bowler hat, that his hair was a faded ginger, and his complexion also had the faded freckliness of the redheaded. His manner was tactful and deferential. When they had driven back to the house from Lodge Hill and Mr Griffin had dispatched the carriages, he lingered in the street with them for so long that eventually Flo felt obliged to say, ‘Can we offer yer a cup of tea or summat for your trouble, Mr Griffin?’

  ‘Well, I must say,’ Mr Griffin said, rubbing his hands together, giving a practised, moderate, undertaker’s smile, ‘it’s a right cold day – I won’t stop for long, of course, but I’d be very grateful, I truly would.’

  Flustered moments followed of building the fire and Nanny Firkin fetching water for the kettle while Mr Griffin sat by the hearth, looking round the room and lighting up a cigarette. Maryann watched him. He had sat himself, without a by your leave, in the chair that had been Harry’s when he came home from work. Maryann gritted her teeth. She didn’t like the smell of Mr Griffin’s cigarette smoke (her dad had never taken to smoking), and even more she didn’t like him parking his backside in her dad’s chair, however much of a gentleman he was. Besides which, it was the most comfortable seat, so Nanny Firkin was left perched on a hard chair by the table.

  Flo laid out their handful of best cups and saucers and poured the tea after the eternity it seemed to take to get ready, while none of them had anything to say. She spooned condensed milk into the cups, her fingers trembling.

  ‘I’m afraid it’s a bit on the weak side,’ she apologized miserably, as if the tea was representative of their desolate state. ‘Get Mr Griffin some sugar, Maryann,’ she ordered, adding in a hissed whisper, ‘and don’t bring it in the packet.’

  Maryann tipped the large grains of sugar on to a saucer, found a spoon and dutifully offered it to Norman Griffin, coughing as his blue smoke wafted up into her nostrils.

  ‘Ah—’ Mr Griffin turned to her and she felt herself turn red under his close examination. ‘Thank you . . . er, my dear.’ Close up to him, as well as the smoke, Maryann could smell sweat and some other funny chemical smell. Without meaning to she wrinkled her nose. Now he had taken his hat off she could see his hair was thinning on top and was smoothed back with soap or Brylcreem. He sat very straight, with an almost military bearing. As well as his smell, Maryann disliked his affected way of talking as if he was really posh, and the way he had ousted Tiger from by the fire with a rough shove of his shiny shoes, their soles muddy from the cemetery.

  But they had to be polite and thankful to Mr Griffin. He had handled Harry’s funeral at a discount: the hearse pulled by gleaming black horses, the wreath, the cards announcing the death. In the circumstances, Flo Nelson had genuine cause for gratitude.

  ‘We couldn’t ’ve managed it – not proper like – without yer being so kind,’ she was saying, from a wooden chair opposite him, a tremor in her hands as she held her cup and saucer.

  The children sat round, dumb with misery; Maryann squeezed on to a stool next to Tony, each of them with one leg on, one off. Sal was sitting holding Billy, asleep in the dim gaslight. Cathleen Black had looked after him for the day and he’d worn himself out playing with Horace. Mr Griffin seemed to take for ever to drink his cup of tea. Maryann could see the strain in her mother’s face, her need to be left alone, not to have to be polite, to weep.

  ‘Of course, I understand your feelings at this inauspicious time,’ Mr Griffin was saying, clinking his half empty cup down on the saucer. His fingers were pale and stubby, the backs of his hands freckly and still red from the cold. ‘My own dear wife passed away not two year ago.’

  ‘Oh,’ Flo Nelson said, with an effort. ‘I’m sorry to ’ear that, Mr Griffin. I didn’t know.’

  ‘’Course I’ve only the one son – worked for me in the business for a bit, till ’e decided to go his own way. I tried to persuade him to stay – ’e made a beautiful coffin when ’e put his mind to it . . .’ As he spoke he looked round the room again. Sizing it up, Maryann thought.

  ‘You’ve got yer ’ouse looking nice, Mrs Nelson. Daresay you’d move to a bigger place given the chance though, eh? Very cramped these yard ’ouses – with all the family you’ve got.’

  ‘’Er’s always managed,’ Nanny Firkin put in, sharply.

  ‘We ain’t got much chance of moving now,’ Flo said. ‘To tell yer the honest truth, Mr Griffin, I don’t know ’ow we’re going to manage with my Harry gone . . .’ Unable to hold back her emotion any longer, she burst into tears and Sal began sobbing as well. Maryann felt her own emotions swell inside her as if she might explode, but she wasn’t going to cry with him here! She folded her arms tight across her bony ribcage, pressing herself in.

  Mr Griffin leaned forwards, breathing loudly through his nose. ‘Oh dear, oh dear, now, now. I am sorry for your trouble, my dear. I do know what a terrible time this is for you . . . You know, I feel very sorry for you, a woman left to fend for ’erself with family. Now if you need any help – if there’s anything I can do for you . . .’

  Maryann squeezed her eyes tightly shut. Go away, you horrible smelly old man! her mind screamed. Get out of our dad’s chair, and out of our house!

  At last he stood up, seeming to take up half the room, and put his hat and coat on. Suddenly he turned and enacted a little bow towards Sal and Maryann.

  ‘Goodbye then, girls. You’ll help look after yer mother, now won’t yer?’ They sat, mute, not even meeting his eyes.

  ‘Thank you again, Mr Griffin,’ Flo said meekly. ‘I don’t know what to say, yer’ve been that good to us.’ She saw him to the door.

  ‘Goodbye, m’dear.’ Mr Griffin lingered for a moment. ‘Now don’t you go forgetting what I’ve said, will you?’

  Flo stood on the step, staring thoughtfully after him as he disappeared into the smoky gloom.

  Four

  December 1927

  ‘And where d’yer think you’re going?’

  Flo’s question was flung furiously across the room, through the paper streamers which hung in sagging loops from yesterday’s Christmas festivities, at Maryann, who was by the door, forcing her arms into the sleeves of her coat.

  ‘Out.’

  Flo advanced on her, hands still black from shovelling coal.

  ‘Oh no you ain’t, yer little madam. You get back ’ere and find a civil tongue for Norm – for Mr Griffin for once in yer life. ’E’ll be ’ere any minute and yer can sit there and be polite. There’s summat ’e wants to say to you all.’

  But Maryann was already out and across the yard, still pulling the coat round her, the door rattling shut in Flo’s face. It opened again.

  ‘You get back ’ere, yer uppity little cow!’

  Maryann disappeared at a run, down the entry to the street. She felt the cold come down on her like a weight, the raw air biting into her cheeks on this day of deep, silent midwinter. The cobbles were icy and the slates glazed with it: the sun hadn’t broken through all day. She pushed her hands deep into her pockets, thrusting her chin down. She had on a pair of Sal’s old stockings, held up with garters. Everything she had handed down from Sal was on the big side. She could feel the stockings wrinkling down her legs.

  Flo’s angry words seemed to propel Maryann along the road. ‘I’m not staying in there – not to see ’im,’ she said out loud, her breath swirling away from her, thick and white.

  She turned down towards Nanny Firkin’s. In her left pocket she found a halfpenny, and gripped her hand round it, squeezing hard. She and her mom had never been what you’d call close, but nowadays all she ever seemed to be was on the wrong side of her. All year it had been like this, getting worse and worse. Since her dad had died and since Mr Griffin kept on coming round week after week bringing presents: joints of meat, cakes, thrusting b
ags of sweets under their noses, sitting himself by their fire on Sunday afternoons. He had even begun to take off his shoes and park them up against the fender as his socks steamed in the heat.

  Maryann knew exactly what Mr Griffin wanted to say that afternoon. She was sick at the thought, because it had been coming all year. He was going to sit there in the chair, her dad’s chair, with them waiting on him hand and foot. There’d be her mom’s, ‘Oh yes, Mr Griffin, no, Mr Griffin,’ which had gradually turned into, ‘Oh yes, Norman, no, Norman,’ as Flo recognized a chance if ever she saw one. Mr Griffin was going to sit holding a cup of tea in those pudgy, freckled hands and tell them he was going to marry their mom. And he would say it in that wheedling, smarmy voice which made Maryann want to be sick all over his shiny shoes.

  She knew this as clearly as anything, because as his visits had become more frequent, Norman Griffin had come making hints and promises.

  ‘You’re a good woman, Mrs Nelson, showing such kindness to a poor old widower like me. You shouldn’t ’ave to spend the rest of your days slaving away on yer own . . .’ ‘Nice little family you’ve got ’ere, Mrs Nelson – you need someone to take care of yer . . .’ And gradually, ‘You want to get yourself wed again, Flo – the factory’s no place for a fine woman like you . . .’

  Late in the summer, when a reasonable period of mourning was seen to have passed, and Flo had wept and worried and worked so hard in the brassware factory she had turned scrawny, she started going out for the odd walk with Mr Griffin on a Sunday afternoon, returning with flushed cheeks and a hard, determined look in her eyes.

  When he came to the house Maryann tried to avoid even looking at him. She hated him being there and refused to speak to him unless forced to. Sal was more biddable. She missed her father but brushed out her long, pale hair on a Sunday, made tea and was polite. Maryann pulled hideous faces behind his back and dropped dust and dead ants in his tea, reduced to being childish by her powerlessness over the situation. She missed her dad with a terrible ache in her that never seemed to get any less.

  She kicked at a rotten piece of wood on the pavement and it skittered into the gutter. She bent over and spat on it. ‘Norman! Bloody sodding Norman!’ She stamped and spat until tears ran down her cheeks.

  Walking on, wiping her eyes, she crossed over the railway and went along to the spot where there was a hole in the fence and she could get down to the cut, scrambling down through scrubby bushes and alongside the wall of a warehouse on to the path. Down here it felt even more cold and utterly still. Fog hung thickly over the canal so that she could see only a few yards ahead: the factories, chimneys and warehouses were all shrouded in the saturated air. The place felt completely deserted. It was Christmas of course, and she saw the water of the canal was frozen over. Near where she was standing a stick poked up, frozen in at an angle, black against the grey ice. She walked along the path in the eerie whiteness, in towards the middle of Birmingham, over a little humpbacked bridge and past the Borax Works towards the wharves at Gas Street. Ahead of her she could just see the ghostly shapes of the wharf buildings and in front of them two rows of joeys, the boats which mainly did journeys of a day there and back. They were tethered shoulder to shoulder along the Worcester Bar. As she moved closer, she became aware of a sound coming to her intermittently through the fog. She wasn’t alone down here then. Someone was coughing, a laboured sound which went on and on.

  Then she saw him, on the path in front of her, close to a boat which was tied by the bank. He was bent over, coughing from drenched-sounding lungs and struggling for breath. At first she assumed he was an old man, but as she approached, intimidated, yet somehow fascinated as well, she saw this was not so. He was quite unaware that she was there because he had to submit completely to the process of coughing and this made him seem somehow vulnerable. Maryann was also drawn by the look of him. He had a thick head of curls and a beard, all deep auburn, which appeared to glow in the greyness of the fog like a sanctuary lamp in a church, and he was clad in thick, brown corduroy trousers and heavy boots, and a thick jumper with a worn, black worsted jacket over the top and a muffler at the neck. As he stooped, hands pressing on his thighs, one hand also held a black cap.

  She saw that the boat by which he was standing was a horse-drawn family boat, and she noticed too that the man’s hands, clasped so tightly on his thighs, were black with coal dust. Near him, on the ground, was a galvanized bucket.

  At last the fit passed and he stayed in the same position for a moment, seeming exhausted by it, let out a low groan and shook his head quickly from side to side as if to shake the fit off. Then, still bent over, he raised his head and looked up along the path. Maryann felt her heart beat with panic, and she stayed quite still. For a moment the two of them looked at each other in silence. The man had a round face, though his cheekbones jutted a little, adding a chiselled look to it. His eyes, from the distance at which Maryann stood, looked dark and his gaze was strong and unflinching. He stared at her without hostility. Just looked, taking her in. Then slowly, he straightened up and replaced the cap on his head.

  ‘’Ow long’ve you been stood there?’ His voice was soft and quite gentle.

  Maryann swallowed. She had been ready to run if he was angry or strange, but didn’t feel the need now. The man didn’t talk like Birmingham people, she noticed.

  ‘Only a minute.’

  ‘What’re you doing out? It’s Christmas, ent it?’

  Maryann shifted her weight from one foot to the other. She felt conscious of her stockings, wrinkled round her ankles. ‘Well, you’re ’ere.’

  ‘Well – yes, that’s true.’ She thought she heard him give a wheezy chuckle.

  ‘Why?’

  He indicated the boat. ‘I live ’ere. We ent s’posed to be ’ere – brought a load of coal from Cannock to the Borax Works – before Christmas that was. And got blooming iced in, dint we? They ent ’ad the icebreaker out to free us up. I’ve been smashing it up at the edge ’ere to give ’er a wash out.’ He indicated the bucket. ‘Got to get the coal washed out, see, before we can put a new load in.’

  Maryann nodded and moved closer. The long hold of the boat was black with coal dust and the rope fenders were grubby with it too, but apart from that she looked in good trim. She was painted red and yellow, with castles painted in the panels of the cabin doors, roses round the edge, and on the side of the cabin was painted her name, Esther Jane. Maryann looked at her with great curiosity, at the painted water can on the roof, the brass trimmings on her chimney, from which drifted dense yellow smoke. She looked round.

  ‘Where’s yer horse?’

  ‘Old Bessie? Stabled up. Having a rest.’

  ‘Can I see inside?’

  The man smiled. She saw he had big, square teeth. The smile creased up his face and gave him a comical, cheeky look. ‘You’ll get dirty.’

  Maryann shrugged. ‘Don’t matter.’

  ‘Come on then – just for a minute but mind where you put your ’ands.’

  She thought he seemed pleased. He climbed aboard ahead of her and when she stumbled climbing down into the boat, he gripped her arm. He felt very big and burly and strong.

  ‘Go easy!’ Another low chuckle came from him. For some reason he seemed to find her rather amusing. ‘You don’t want to hurt yourself. Look – that’s the tiller – what we steer the boat with. Now, come on in.’

  He opened the cabin doors and Maryann found herself stepping down into a miniature house. The man, who was too tall to stand upright in the cabin, sat down on a bench along the side, and gestured for her to sit beside him.

  ‘There you go – this is our ’ome in ’ere.’

  She gazed round, astonished. It was like being in a magic story where everything had shrunk. In front of her was a little black-leaded range, which made the cabin so stifling hot that Maryann unbuttoned her coat and took it off. There was a brown and white teapot and a big brass kettle, well polished, on the hob, which gave off a lovely warm glow. To
her right was what looked like a cupboard, which jutted out into the cabin, and further back, a little area where there was another bench, divided off by red and white check curtains, tied back at each side. On the near side of the cupboard and on shelves on the wall by the stove were pretty china plates, some with lattice edges with velvet ribbons threaded through and tied in a bow. The man watched her taking it all in with some amusement.

  ‘We pull this down ’ere—’ He opened a small cupboard in front of him and the flap folded outwards. ‘That’s our table. That cupboard you can see’ – he pointed towards the back – ‘folds down for a bed.’

  ‘But it’s so . . . small!’

  ‘It’s small all right.’

  ‘Don’t you ’ave a house to live in an’ all?’

  ‘Nope. I was brung up on ’ere – lived ’ere all me life. Only time I been on the bank was in the war.’

  She gaped at him. ‘I’ve never seen in one of these before.’

  ‘I can see that!’

  ‘Who lives on ’ere with you then?’

  ‘My dad, my little sister, Ada – she’d be a bit younger ’un you I’d think – and Jep, that’s our dog. They’ve gone off to get us some food and see about who’s going to get the ice broke up. We can’t stick around long, you see – ’ave to get moving. We was s’posed to be at Napton by Christmas but we got stuck ’ere. We ent starving yet though. ’Ere—’ He reached to a little shelf at the side of the cabin. ‘Want a bit of this?’

  ‘Ooh yes!’

  She took the two thick squares of Cadbury’s chocolate, nibbled and sucked slowly, making them last. The man bit some off too, smiling at her enjoyment. He had such a kind face, she thought, somehow old and boyish at once.