Narrow Dog to Wigan Pier Read online

  About the Book

  At seventy-five, Terry and Monica Darlington had done everything they could think of doing, including building a business and becoming athletes and running a literary society. Lately they had become boating adventurers and Terry a bestselling writer.

  In their Midlands canal town in November, life was looking dull and short on surprises.

  Then their famous canal boat was destroyed by fire. Within a few days they had bought a new one and they headed north in the Phyllis May 2 – to Liverpool, Lancaster, York, the Pennines and Wigan Pier. Terry recorded the journey and alongside it the story of his life and his marriage and his whippet Jim, with his broken ear like a flat cap, and Monica’s whippet Jess, the Flying Catastrophe.

  Another classic Narrow Dog book, this gloriously funny, affecting and beautifully told story brims with canals and rivers and whippets, and adventures all over the world, and the famous and fascinating people the Darlingtons have met.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Epigraph

  1. STONE – The Grimpen Mire

  2. THE MERSEY AND LIVERPOOL – Paradise Street

  3. LIVERPOOL AND THE RUFFORD BRANCH – The Kingdom of the Mad

  4. THE RIBBLE AND THE LANCASTER CANAL – The Glittering Path

  5. THE LANCASTER CANAL – Further North You Cannot Go

  6. THE LEEDS AND LIVERPOOL – Simon Rodia Funny Little Guy

  7. ASTON – Stone-next-the-Sea

  8. WILLINGTON – Sunlight Crowding through Tall Windows

  9. SHARDLOW TO THE TIDAL TRENT – Yellow Fish

  10. NORTH TO YORK – Bends and Meanders

  11. DEWSBURY – Demonic Love

  12. THE PENNINES – The Ghost Train

  13. STONE – In a Somer Seson, Whan Softe Was the Sonne

  Notes

  About the Author

  Also by Terry Darlington

  Copyright

  Narrow Dog to Wigan Pier

  Terry Darlington

  To our grandchildren

  Bethan, Rhiannon, Max, Leila, Cicely, Greg, Felix

  Special thanks to our agent David Smith of Annette Green

  Authors’ Agency, who suggested I write this book

  … love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking together in the same direction.

  Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

  CHAPTER ONE

  STONE

  The Grimpen Mire

  What did it feel like when you watched your boat burn up?

  Jim Francis is dead – Two whippets are a conspiracy – Jesus Christ would want me to go to Europe – The Loch Ness Monster – Peter Scott was quite sure there was something there – You are probably clinically insane – The Creature from the Black Lagoon – Time to hand in our chips – The Phyllis May began to roar like a Bunsen burner – Our poor buckled Phyllis May

  Jim Francis is dead1

  You know Jim

  Jim Francis

  Well he’s dead

  Arnott told me

  On the towpath

  How is Jim I said

  Dad is dead he said

  I mean it’s ridiculous

  Jim gone

  He had so much power in him

  He leaves so much space

  When I was in trouble

  Jim said Come here

  And he took an envelope and a pencil

  And worked it out in a minute

  You can’t just delete Jim Francis

  He was too big too clever too kind

  But Jim Francis is dead

  It’s ridiculous

  JUST LOOK DOWN the running club, I said to Monica – Haddon and Vernon and Jack and Doctor Ian – all gone. My coach told me in seventy-two that no one who had run a marathon had ever died. Now all my mates are dead, or they have got palpitations, or strokes, or third sets of hips. Our generation thought we had got it all worked out, with our marathoning and our communes, and our home brew and our rock and roll and our poetry.

  Every generation thinks it has got it all worked out, said Monica. Now let me concentrate on this bloody dog.

  Jim and his new friend can have little puppies, I had said to the Lady Who Knows about Whippets. Little maggots, all wriggly. Little darlings.

  You are a very foolish person, said the Lady Who Knows about Whippets. Breeding whippets requires knowledge and intelligence, neither of which you possess. Whippets are driven by forces beyond our understanding and an entire male and a female whippet in a household would lead to destruction and despair. In any case your Jim is ten – too old. He won’t know what to do because he has never done it. He will fail and all will be sadness and pain.

  Jim, fail? He’s a man’s dog – a manly dog – a proper dog – no problemo in that department. Jim fail? Never.

  He will fail, said the Lady. But we have available a spayed rescue bitch that no one has managed to keep – an excellent dog. Just because she can jump a seven-foot wall from a standing start she has sometimes been a difficulty. But you are retired and have got nothing to do and can give her the attention she needs. If you can’t manage her you can give her back – it will be her fourth home and she isn’t two yet.

  Jess is a red brindle with a white flash on her chest and a white muzzle and a white tip to her tail and white socks. She is a shade taller than Jim, and thinner. No potter could catch her brindling in his glaze, no sculptor her grace. Beside her the beautiful Jim, the pedigree Jim, looks like Edward Heath.

  When I was a little boy I had an encyclopaedia which explained that a candle fired at a plank would go straight through. There was a photograph to prove it. I remember it every time Jess runs towards me at forty miles an hour.

  Jess has no concept of going for a walk – she just runs away. In fact she is half wild, and leads Jim on, forming a pack to raise hell against every dog, cat, rabbit or squirrel that thinks it might share the earth with them. One whippet is a liability – two are a conspiracy.

  We got Jess mainly to be a friend for Jim. They would not grieve so much in kennels if they were two. But for Jim it was yet another betrayal and he would lie and stare at us accusingly and leave the room if Jess appeared.

  It was a year before Jess realized that she had a home and her face opened and her brown eyes softened and she began to look straight at us. It was not an easy year but Monica and I had fallen in love with her and Jim was beginning to realize she was not going away.

  This dog, said Monica, has demonstrated every bad habit a dog can possess. She has been shut up in a small garden all her life and never made any proper relationships or been given any intelligent training. Some fool has taught her not to accept a pork scratching until you say the word.

  Say the word, I said.

  I don’t know the word, said Monica.

  Pieces of eight! I said, Shazam! Open Sesame! Jumping Jack Flash! Edward Heath! European Monetary Union! A piece of cheese for old Ben! New custom-blended Blue Sunoco! Elementary, my dear Watson! Give me the moonlight, give me the girl…

  Shut up, said Monica.

  Monica and Jess looked at each other in despair.

  I am now an established WRITOR, I said to Monica later – the oldest young writor in Britain. I have written two bestsellers. People stop me in the street and shout to me across the cut. They call me Terry and want to be my friend. They write from all over the world. Only yesterday a chap in New Zealand emailed to tell me that his father read Narrow Dog to Carcassonne before he died. A lady wrote to say she read a little of Indian River every night and then went to sleep. Then there was the girl who wet herself on the train laug
hing at Jim. People say they have read my books many times and ask Where is the next one? I must follow my destiny and produce another work. I owe it to society. We’ll have an expedition – another impossible dream, like crossing the Channel or sailing down to the Gulf of Mexico. Perhaps Holland or Germany. I shall picture the colourful characters and the waterside cities and address the main historical issues of the twentieth century and Jim will get up to mischief and so will Jess and I will tell funny stories and it will be the Narrow Dog Trilogy.

  If you are looking for someone to climb up and down the lock ladders of Northern Europe with a rope between her teeth, said Monica, then I suggest you try the lonely hearts section of the New York Review of Books. Some mad old Harvard professor might give you a try. Some ill-favoured skinny Boston babe. Me, I had enough of it when we went to Carcassonne. What’s the point of spending fifty grand to wear ourselves out and risk our lives and our health and not even be sure to get the money back? Why don’t you write books at home like everyone else? It’s because you can’t get it up unless you are fighting the current in some desolate sound, pursued by carnivorous reptiles. Why don’t we stop all this and live out our days in peace? God knows there are few enough days left.

  I am an arteest, Monica. Without my art I will wither away. What do I say to the fan who read a bit of my book every day and it cheered him up when he had cancer? What do I say to the young people who send me pictures of their whippets and say More Jim please? I know I am seventy-five and there is not much time but all the more reason. It’s like Jesus Christ said about the talents2 – if you’ve got it, use it. You can’t argue with Jesus Christ. I bet Jesus Christ would want me to go to Europe.

  Write a novel, said Monica. Write a novel like everyone else. You said you were going to do something about the Loch Ness Monster. Go to Inverness and do some research – you can get there in a day. Then sit at home and write a novel.

  No one ever spotted the Loch Ness Monster quicker than me. I had just arrived on the shore of the loch and she rolled out, her eye glinting inside a wave, her back oily black. Twenty yards away her tail brushed the surface from underneath, then she turned on her side and was gone. Whether it was really Nessie or a wave reflected from a far shore I never found out, because I did not see her again, but I thought it was a sign, and my novel Narrow Dog and the Loch Ness Monster would be the best thing I ever did.

  The story had begun to come to me when our friends Pauline and Ray on their narrowboat Lady Rose told us how they had spotted a corpse in the fens. The shoulders first, which stuck out like a sort of bag, then the hair. OmiGod the hair.

  The police questioned them for three days. How long had they known the deceased? How did they know the body was there? Why did they not report it sooner? Why did they make these mistakes on this form? Why are their navigation lights not working? Pauline and Ray decided never to report anything to the police ever again, even if they came upon a bus full of Girl Guides upside down under a bridge. Horseman, pass by3 – that’s our motto now, said Ray.

  But what a story, I said, what a story. And I went away and a plot grew in my mind, starting with the discovery of poor Ben McFee in Loch Ness.

  They bumped alongside and Grandad prodded the bag with the boathook and it was soft but something underneath it was heavy. He shoved and hooked but the bag would not turn over. Ginger took up the other boathook and they heaved and tugged and the bag partly turned then it slipped back and Grandad swore but then they got it firm and turned it over and held it.

  Oh My God, said Grandad.

  The thin beard was red as life, but the skin on the face was china white, and the eyes bulged and stared, and the lips were drawn back from the teeth in a terrible smile.

  Oh My God, said Grandad. It’s Ben McFee!

  My studio is up in the roof but I could have been anywhere. I could have been on a plinth in Trafalgar Square. I was possessed. Time meant nothing. My novel had me in its jaws and raced away down the labyrinthine ways of mine own plot.4 The heroine on the brink of womanhood, the fearless Ginger her friend, the Phyllis May banging through a storm on Loch Ness, the villainous Russians, Jim, the mega-yacht, the Monster. I was having a lovely time. I even got the Red Arrows into it.

  I used to be married to an adventurer sort of fellow, said Monica. We went away a lot and did expeditions and I had to dodge alligators and shiver in cathedral locks, but at least I used to see him quite often. Now he goes up into his studio and comes down late at night gibbering about temperature gradients and plesiosauruses and food stocks and shoals of fish called bleak and how Peter Scott was quite sure there was something there, and Sonic Drogues and Monsters dancing in the moonlight. I know I complained about the adventures but this is as bad. Any more of this and I shall start to give some encouragement to my little friend down the bridge club who brings me runner beans.

  You are a miserable little woman, I said, ancient person of my heart.5 But have no fear. It is finished. Consummatum est.6 I am sending it to my editor and my agent – they will be delighted. They will be astonished. Best thing I have ever done. Now I can carry on writing bestsellers and stay at home – no more dicing with death, no more impossible sea crossings, no more paperwork to be organized by poor Mon with brutish foreigners. I am not a travel hack now – I am a literary Figgar, pushing the omelette of the human imagination and painting the subtlest colours of the heart. In my hands I hold three hundred and fifty pages of deathless prose. Pass the stamps and the bubble envelopes – like Chaucer said, whom I so much resemble – go, litel bok.7

  It did not take long for my editor and my agent to come back.

  They both said the novel was bollocks.

  For three months of the year the sun does not rise in Stone Staffordshire. It grudges a cold glow behind a fog that hangs at a hundred feet, and in the middle of the afternoon it goes somewhere else.

  After Christmas the pubs are empty and everyone has a cold – the one where someone is standing on your face. All you can do is wait for the spring – it’s worth it, but it is a long wait and many go mad. It’s worse if you have lost your job.

  I am old and I’ve been around and have lots of memories. I have been much blessed but like most of us I have made a lot of mistakes, suffered my share of humiliations, caused unfair grief to the innocent, and generally ballsed up any amount of stuff. Now it was all coming back.

  Sometimes you are moored on the side of the cut and you have no fenders because they came off at the last lock. When a boat comes by you swing against the side, but not with a thud – with a hard knock that runs up your whole body. That is how the memories were returning – my mental fenders had gone and I was crashing against the follies of my past.

  Othello’s occupation’s gone,8 I said. A week ago I was famous and now I’m just another writer who can’t get published. I am a wreck upon the sand.9 There’s only one thing worse in the universe. People who see me cross the street. And no one is answering my letters.

  In the publishing industry it is accepted that a communication can be ignored if a reply requires any thought or commitment. By comparison the brutish worlds of international manufacturing and consultancy operate with oriental courtesy. Across the years I had fought and won some ground but now my letters and emails were again being diverted to Father Christmas, who had better things to do than write back to a chap who didn’t believe in him.

  I saw rudeness and snubs all round. I got caught up in a correspondence with some Good Ole Girl who decided I had insulted the state of North Carolina because I said it made me think of how the earth looked at the dawn of creation. The worst thing was I was caring about all this.

  I knew I was losing contact with reality and tried to look into my own mind. I was an arteest, and I knew arteests were keen to be loved and admired because they had been deprived of attention and approval when young. I had a damaged personality, but this was part of being a writer, and I must accept it and enjoy the good bits. There were few better bits than looking at a p
age and knowing it was good and you had made something that no one else had ever made, no one else could ever make, that had not been there before.

  We have had two thousand letters, said Monica, and two have been hostile. The fans are lovely, and they are thrilled when we reply to them. You are depressed. We both worked too hard on the voyage down the Intracoastal Waterway and now you have exhausted yourself with your Loch Ness Monster. You are suffering a reactive depression. In fact you are probably clinically insane. Why don’t you go for a walk with the dogs? Walking is very good for depression. There won’t be any mud on the towpath – it’s too cold. Look at dear little Jess, how she loves you, and your Jim. Look at their little faces. Let me put their coats on. Here, take these pork scratchings with you.

  The towpath was covered with ice and Jim and Jess pulled me along, skidding. I commanded them to come to heel and they took no notice.

  Oh well there is a good hedge here. Should be safe enough – what is the point of a whippet if it can’t run? Young hearts, run free.10

  Jess is faster than Jim and was well ahead as the dogs took off south from Aston Lock at forty miles an hour. Aston Lock which looks out over all the world. What spires, what farms, are those?11 Aston Lock where all our adventures have begun.

  I tried not to think about my latest letters to Santa, about the fools wasting my time with a proposed film project, about the bastards who had tried to steal my ideas and my staff from my business in the eighties, about that job applicant I was rude to in Uttoxeter forty years ago, about the literary festival down south that didn’t know if they wanted me because I was not really important, and the fog in the sky pressed down on me and I had a sore throat.

  A blizzard of barking.

  I ran towards the noise. The dogs had broken through the hedge. I could just see over the snowy branches – Jess was chasing a sheep, and Jim was hard behind. As I watched, the sheep fell off the bank on to the ice of a large pond and Jess leapt after her. They faced each other and Jim stood on the bank raising hell.