Narrow Dog to Wigan Pier Read online

  I wonder was it against the law to knife someone while standing up?

  I was seen as a harmless if exotic figure, a sort of a Laughing Harry. People would come into my office to chat. To encourage them I liberated from the storeroom a six-foot picture of Lord Leverhulme, the founder of the Unilever empire, in full viscount drag, and put out a call for captions. This was thought rather daring. The winner was Kelly from accounts – Hello there, I’m your Avon representative.

  Monica and our little fat darling and I spread our holidays round our weekends and hired a VW Beetle, which was very good on snow.

  New custom-blended Blue Sunoco is gasoline power at its purest, gibbered the radio, and the tune runs in my head to this day. Powered with custom blend we drove in every direction – Muskoka, Haliburton, Niagara, Windsor, the Algonquin national park. Near Lake Muskoka we sat by the Moon River5 and sang the song. The real Moon River was a thousand miles and forty years away – but we’ll be crossing you in style, one day. We hired a canoe and at sunset paddled out on to Lake Muskoka, between the dark woods, the water incarnadine.

  We saw bears, we met Indians, we saw beaver dams. Mostly we saw maples. Pillarbox red and gold and peach for hundreds of miles, the branches a fascination of patterns and light.

  When the Good Lord made the Canadian woods6

  He was in one of his flamboyant moods

  Then when he made the Canadian fall

  He showed practically no restraint at all

  There are lots of squirrels in Toronto. They are black to soak up the last photon from the sun. They ran along our clothes-lines, and scattered snow on to our heads from the sidewalk trees.

  Winter in the city when the lights of Yonge Street, bold as blood, insult the night. Hovering over the morning traffic, with Eddie Luther, the CFRB7 commentator, as he told the people sitting in jams they were sitting in jams, and the people that weren’t that they weren’t. We went to an ice hockey match. Our taxi driver explained how he coached his lads to injure the opposition. Our neighbours took us in for Christmas and to a crowded service where people stood up and told how they hadn’t needed doctors.

  On the day we left, Lever Brothers gave us a patchwork quilt – We thought you would like this, Terry – we didn’t know what to get you because you have a funny attitude to big houses and big cars and stuff and seem to be a bit left-wing but we found this made by a special community that lives outside society.

  The quilt burned on the Phyllis May. Of everything we lost we valued it the most.

  Goodbye swinging Toronto. It wasn’t swinging really, just people on the radio playing a lot of Beatles records and saying it was Swinging Metro My God look at us swing did you see how we swung?

  We picked up our fat little one and headed for Toronto International Airport and from the air the prairies were white and sometimes thin lines crossed them and sometimes ridges but not often and they went on for thousands of miles.

  Go West, young man.

  * * *

  In Westfields, our house near Trowbridge, my dad would help me with my little tin watercolour box and one of the colours was called Grass Green but I never saw that green again until today.

  An overcast day with colours unbleached and the lake of grass a yellow Westfields green, a lake of grass as big as the Serpentine, which is pretty big. The PM2 looks out from the canal over the lake of grass to a line of pink balsam a quarter of a mile long and then trees a hundred feet high on the other side of the Douglas River – the very river that had borne us on its shoulders past the Asland Light.

  A heron a long way up. I had not seen a heron a long way up before. There was a wind and he was flying, not floating like herons do. Perhaps from up there he could check out all the fish in the canal and the Douglas River together, as they flowed each side of the green lake of grass. Or perhaps he wanted to go a long way up, for the hell of it.

  We will stay here, we said, for a while. This mooring is beautiful. And it’s the only place we have found where the dogs can run free for as long and as far as they like.

  Jim and Jess ran on the yellow-green grass in huge circles until they were winded and then they jumped back into the boat and lay panting and grinning, their eyes bright.

  We thought we had already seen the best canals, hitched at the most beautiful moorings, sailed the purest waters, but here in the north-west, between the Pennines and the sea, we are having to reconsider our position.

  While we are reconsidering our position in the Douglas Valley one day from Wigan, I can tell you of a day on the PM2.

  It begins with the creeping.

  At twenty-five to six Jim comes into the cabin, crawling on his belly like a snake. Very slowly he stands up then springs into the air, landing on me with his legs stiff. I shout and wake up. Monica says something disrespectful in her sleep. Jim finds a space near the bottom of the bed and goes to sleep.

  At twenty to seven Jess puts her nose under the duvet and then the rest of her and pushes and pushes until her nose is level with my feet, which she begins to lick.

  At seven o’clock I get up and put on the kettle just too late for the news headlines on the radio.

  After breakfast I get on to the stern and drive the nose into the bank, then swing out and away and Monica and the dogs walk alongside.

  The PM2 is noisier than the Phyllis May, with a canally clatter, but never mind, look at the dogs. Monica is a graceful walker, but a whippet, which is no good for anything else, moves like a catspaw of wind on a canal surface, like a swallow touching the water, like a branch swaying. It is not possible to prove the feet touch the ground because they flick so delicately along, and the balance of the narrow body is so subtle, so sure, that part of your mind balances with it. No artwork can compare with the beauty of these animals moving because, no good for anything else, they move exceeding well.

  It is important to keep the boat in just the right position alongside the dogs. If it gets ahead they pull and you can’t keep your balance and you go slower and slower and the boat gets further ahead and the dogs pull harder and harder and you all finish up in a pile of legs on the towpath.

  But if the boat falls behind Jim starts to scream – You fool, you’ve forgotten Mon. I keep telling you we must stick together. Leave her behind and she’ll get eaten or join someone else’s pack. Fall back! Fall back! We are a pack! When will you get the idea? We are a pack!

  As a treat Monica lets the dogs off the lead and they rush off and Jess works the hedge and as soon as there is a gap she is through it. We don’t like her running away but at least these days she comes back.

  At the locks the whippets are fastened to a piece of gear and watch the slow-motion fun with all the heaving and the pouring water and lockside chat. If it is sunny they lie down and look blissful and the other boaters stroke them. If it is raining we put their coats on and they look bloody miserable.

  We moor up and after lunch we all have a nap and at four o’clock on the button Jim tells us It is four o’clock it is four o’clock four o’clock hurry hurry Raus! Raus! and time for my afternoon walk and then my dinner.

  The bloody animal can tell the time, Mon. It’s Rolex the Wonder Dog, the Canine Chronometer.

  A bit of writing and a check through the emails – fan letters and family and the Lancaster Evening News wants a special picture down the wire and there is a funny dripping in the engine room, Terry, and why didn’t you look at it before when I said and a talking book and a lamb chop and a bottle of Fitou – Remember the vineyards near Carcassonne?

  Boater’s midnight – nine o’clock – we just can’t stay awake we just can’t.

  This lovely bed is three inches wider than the one on the Phyllis May and how sweet to stretch out and is that the rain on the roof again and the trees are thrashing and the PM2 is moving like a cradle.

  Goodnight sweetheart. Wigan Pier tomorrow.

  * * *

  It was a face which darkness could kill8

  in an instant

&nb
sp; a face as easily hurt

  by laughter or light

  ‘We think differently at night’

  she told me once

  lying back languidly

  And she would quote Cocteau

  ‘I feel there is an angel in me,’ she’d say

  ‘whom I am constantly shocking’

  Then she would smile and look away

  light a cigarette for me

  sigh and rise

  and stretch

  her sweet anatomy

  Let fall a stocking

  Lawrence Ferlinghetti was a hell of a poet. You could understand what he was on about, which was often girls who seemed real girls like that one and San Francisco which seemed unreal but great. He ran the City Lights Bookshop, where the beat poets and novelists9 came – Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Ken Kesey, Allen Ginsberg. We looked at the noticeboard where the mail was pinned waiting for them to call in.

  To me, and many others, the City Lights Bookshop was the centre of our hope for new ideas, for change. It was the most important place on earth.

  Lawrence Ferlinghetti came from behind the arras. Where are you folks from?

  He was balding, average build, jeans, fifties, could have been a teacher or run a gift shop. But he didn’t look like everyone else – he looked more intelligent, more kind. He didn’t look more brave, though he had commanded a submarine chaser at Normandy.

  Lucy waved at him from her stroller – Tookie, tookie, she said.

  Her first word was an attempt to say cookie. Her second was Woof. Lawrence Ferlinghetti stroked her hair.

  We live in London, we said. Your city is lovely. We have driven down Route 101 from Seattle, down the Redwood Highway and El Camino Real, and we have seen some grand stuff, but when we came over the Golden Gate that was the best moment. We have ridden on the cable cars, been to Chinatown, cruised on the trip boats in the bay, eaten at Fisherman’s Wharf. San Francisco must be the best city in the world. There is nothing missing here, nothing wrong.

  It could be nearer to London, said Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

  In the sixties London was a long way away.

  Lawrence Ferlinghetti talked with me about my writing as if I were a real writer not a piddling amateur and thanked us for coming into his shop and suggested a bookshop in London where we might keep up with the news and gave us a book of his poems and signed it with a message. If I had had a book of poems I would have given it to him but I didn’t have a book of anything, but Lawrence Ferlinghetti didn’t expect anything. He knew I was a piddling amateur but he still accepted us and wished us well, though we made him sad for London.

  A young man with long hair came out from behind a stack of books. I think he had been listening. If you are looking for up-to-date writing I can heartily recommend this book, he said, holding out a sheaf of stapled papers printed and illustrated with stencils. Only fifty cents.

  Fine, I said, and added it to my selection from the shelves. It was in the style of OZ10 magazine in England – crazy, ill produced. I have it still.

  I am Craig, said the young man.

  Woof, said Lucy.

  Craig explained that he was a starving writer who often came to the City Lights and he lived in a special house down by the Bay and we should all stay there and save money on hotels and meet his other starving friends.

  We thanked him but explained we were leaving the city the next day. But by the way our fridge had become overstocked and perhaps he would like to join us for dinner that evening and help us out.

  When Craig knocked on our door at the Mermaid Motel he had brought with him a friend who was mainly beard. David was joint editor of the magazine. I guess they both lived by selling it on the streets. David was a quiet soul, skeletal, with a religious air.

  I broke out a case of Japanese Kirin beer and we sat down and did a grand job of emptying the fridge. After the meal we read poetry to one another. We didn’t understand their poetry, and though they were very polite, it seemed they didn’t respond to my favourites.

  Then I picked up the Gideon Bible and read the verses from 1 Corinthians 13, substituting love for charity.

  Love suffers long, and is kind; love envies not, love brags not itself, is not puffed up. Does not behave itself unseemly, seeks not her own, is not easily provoked, thinks no evil. Rejoices not in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth.

  David put his fingertips together and leaned forward and nodded and closed his eyes and Craig said Man, man.

  Encouraged, I read one of my own poems. It was not as good as 1 Corinthians 13 but seemed in the right key –

  I am a butterfly

  And I live in the summer sky

  Winter’s first breath

  Will chill me to death

  I used to feel sad

  Till I heard someone say

  The best works of God

  Only live for a day

  The world was going to change and the change had just begun and we were where it was beginning. An alternative to the military blockheadedness of the fifties, a view that looked forward not back. A view with its own stupidities, and its sweetness would decay soon enough and start to stink, but not yet and at least we had movement again.

  The Summer of Love had not yet arrived, and the first time I heard the word psychedelic was from David, and Scott McKenzie11 had not sung his song, but we had come to San Francisco and met some gentle people there.

  Have these cigarettes, said David – smoke them down the coast. You won’t find better. Monterey tomorrow? Very nice.

  Peace, man said Craig to me, and Peace, man to Monica and Peace, man to Lucy in her carry basket.

  Hush little baby sleep there soon, said David.

  Tookie tookie, said Lucy.

  * * *

  It’s a sort of a turning point, I said. It’s where we leave all these little towns and the lovely country and start to move on Manchester. And it’s very famous – The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell and all that. It’s sort of symbolic of the real north. Anyone writing about the north has got to do Wigan.

  A thirty-foot plastic cruiser had paired up with us to share the double locks, and Monica and I were fully exercised trying not to crush it like an egg. The two chaps on board were in their fifties, small, fat, and one wore a hat that looked like a cross between a fishing hat with flies and the headgear worn by Jeff Chandler as Cochise for the more formal moments of Broken Arrow.12 (I always admired Jeff Chandler – such a manly figure, and was disappointed to read in his girlfriend Esther Williams’s13 autobiography that he was never happier than when he slipped into a polka-dot dress.)

  Anyway the hat was as I say a fishing hat, but bristling with tall feathers, hung with charms and loaded with badges. Our new companion appeared without it – Has your hat been arrested? I asked.

  He put it on again – It is very popular in public houses, he explained. It is even better now I have had the lights fitted. I have had a number of proposals of marriage.

  He turned on the lights. His hat now looked like a pheasant that had flown into a Christmas tree, and after a terrible struggle had strangled itself in the light flexes.

  It is very popular in public houses, said his friend. He has received a number of proposals of marriage.

  Here comes Wigan – a house, a garage yard, a tip, a ruined factory, sliding towards us among the dark greens of high summer. Wet high summer. Here we are – this must be it. Broken windows, walls defaced, and the George Orwell pub. We had been told not to approach the lock round the corner or we would be vandalized, so we pulled in to the right, or starboard side, as we sailors like to put it.

  This is the back door to a nightclub, said Monica. They come out on to the towpath to smoke. They will throw butts at us and break our windows.

  OK, I’ll pull back to Wigan Pier.

  Of all the works of man Wigan Pier is among the most hopeless. It is a slight increase in the width and height of the towpath, maybe for twenty feet, and a couple of wooden beams and
steel girders hanging into the canal. The beams and girders were installed by students in the eighties. No one knows whether they are in the right place.

  Opposite is the large and inviting George Orwell pub. Inside were many mansions,14 and a big kitchen off the main bar. In all the saloons and snugs and lounges there was not a soul. A cheerful Chinese gentleman appeared. Why are you so empty? I asked.

  A bit early perhaps.

  It was twelve thirty on a Saturday.

  The only bitter they did was John Smith’s. We ordered two Lancashire hotpots and while we waited we could hear the chef singing in the kitchen. Does he do ‘Love Letters In The Sand’? I asked.

  He normally favours a more modern repertoire, said the Chinaman, but I’ll ask him.

  The hotpots were salty and the potatoes were hard. We were drawing to a close when the chef appeared – a tall ginger lad. You have not finished your vegetables, he said. But because you have come to our pub, as a mark of appreciation I am giving you a free sweet – a cinnamon and apple pudding.

  He put it in front of us and watched us eat it. It was OK but each mouthful was a hundred calories.

  We had nearly got back to the boat when a large man shouted from the other side – You mustn’t moor there – they will throw butts at you and break your windows. You must go round the corner.

  Round the corner was the lock, where we would be vandalized. We moored up equidistant from the nightclub and the lock, hoping that by careful positioning we had found a spot where we could last the night. We screwed up the special lock on the saloon door and left a light on so the criminals would know we were in. That’ll terrify them.

  I wish I could leave a warm glow in the heart of any Wiganer who reads these words, but the waterside around Wigan pier is a disgrace. When you see the broad canal, all the space, and the patches of civilization – a cottage with roses, an apartment block – and you see these amenities surrounded with junk and desolation you are tempted to set to and clean the place up yourself. And look at what is not there – no waste bin, no water tap, nothing for boats. But miles of rings along the towpath – pathetic rings because no one will want to moor.