Narrow Dog to Wigan Pier Page 16
Never forget your geography teacher – Fighting outside with guns – An international sportsman – We headed for Thorne sideways – Could you train me for the marathon? – The wind blew me down in the mud – It had carved up one of those whippet dogs – One day soon I will knock on the door – Pirates that run down narrowboats – Outrageous old boats – This cancer must be cut out of our economy – The only way to appoach a city – On the left was Mama Cass – Jim was in love – A sixty-pound anchor coming at my chest – A man shuffled towards her – Under the fence, bloody, helpless – We have her on a morphine drip
OUT ON TO the stream again for the thirty-mile passage from Torksey. Taking it a bit easier, enjoying the wide skies, the high-builded clouds, the slap of the ripples on the hull, the green banks and now and then willows and the foliage and swans and Is that a hawk?
The noise and movement of the boat is not upsetting Jess today though she is still with me like the poor. Jim should be well used to long passages after France and the USA and he has remembered that and returned to his bed.
How quickly the hour passes when you are off the tiller. Hardly have you stretched out in your chair when the clock bongs out the half, and gives an apologetic coughing click bong on the quarter and then – WAKE UP, you are on!
In my early days of affluence I bought a mechanical marine barometer and a matching chronometer with bongs and hung them in my office. When we bought the Phyllis May we hung our brass beauties by the door but they stopped working and so we bought a new set, with modern quartz movements that did not break down all the time. They burned with the Phyllis May. Then we found a gentleman who mended clocks so we now have the original set on the PM2. I have learned to tell the time by the bongs – eight bongs at midday and then one at half past then two at one o’clock and so on until eight bells at four o’clock and then start over. I hope I am not boring you.
Oh My God I have got a wave behind me, and a big wake on one side – I am running ashore! I flung the tiller round and the boat slowed and sand and mud rattled against the rudder and I revved up hard and the PM2 swung round and back and was free. I was a hundred yards from the bank but was I on the inside of the bend?
Yes, I was.
Never ever forget your geography teacher. He may wear tweed sports jackets and grease his hair and keep rabbits but one day his teaching will bear fruit – for instance if you are trying to work out which side of the river has the sandbanks or if you are going to Thailand and think you are going to Tibet.
And now what’s going on? We are there! We are at Keadby, at the lock into the South Yorkshire Navigation. But where is the lock? I can’t see the lock!
Go back, go back! shouted Monica and I turned against the current and inched back along the high broken quays.
There, there!
An entrance concealed among the twists and folds of the quay, an entrance that would have confused an invading force of boat commandos with years of training and a global positioning system. I swung in and bashed the PM2 against the throat of the lock. I used to be able to do this, I thought.
There was a plastic cruiser waiting for us and we rose slowly. When we had risen we were parked in a little holding basin to await the swinging of a road bridge while the lock-keeper bustled around, interrupting his British Waterways duties from time to time to arrange his daughter’s wedding on his mobile phone, or pop up to Thorne for some root canal treatment.
* * *
The town of Boston Massachusetts has many marvels.
The John Hancock Tower, a blue mirror sixty storeys high, was completed in the late seventies, and at once began to shower the citizens of Boston with glass panels forty-four feet square. Every pane had to be replaced. And it swayed so much that many on the upper storeys were seasick. A huge machine of weights and cables was installed on floor fifty-eight to stabilize it. It is the highest building in Boston and everyone loves it.
On the outskirts of Boston is the Paul Revere Motel. Sometimes it was not easy to get a room in Boston and on one business trip I finished up there with my lady colleague. Truck tyres hollered just past my window – I was partly underground. I complained to the manager – Give the room to the girl, he suggested.
In the night there was fighting outside with guns. For breakfast in the morning there was a coffee machine and a basket of doughnuts. Here, give the girl a doughnut!
As well as the worst hotel in the world (apart from the Airport Hotel, Lagos, of course) Boston in those days boasted the best restaurant. The No Name restaurant1 had no name, as the name implies, but wherever you went in the world travellers would talk of the fish – oysters, scallops, lobster, bluefish. They would talk of the buzz, the fun of standing on the quay in the rain with your crate of beer or bottle of wine, queuing to go in. Do I mean queuing, in the rain, to get into an unlicensed restaurant? Yes, really.
Not least of the marvels in Boston was Boston Billy. Bill Rodgers2 was a shy sandy-haired man, once a pot-smoking student. He was the winner of the Boston Marathon four times and the New York four times and the best runner in the world. Long-legged, slim, not too tall, he ran easy – he did not pump or throw – he tended towards the style I call the floater. It is lovely to watch. The feet do not land on the ground – they caress it as they pass. Bill Rodgers could lay one five-minute mile on another and not give a feeling of speed or of trying but he was here and now he has gone.
Nice of you guys to come over, said Bill Rodgers.
I did not find it easy to reply – I was in the presence of one of the greatest athletes in the world and he had spoken to me! But I told him that Tom was thirty-seven and a bank manager and Major Bill was forty-five and had his own research firm and I was forty-three and had my own research firm too and we had started a marathon club just for veteran athletes – the only one in the world – and this was our first club event. Then I told him that the bats printed across our crimson tracksuits were Indonesian flying foxes, which were primates and very clever and made love upside down and the motto on our tracksuits Sapientia atque Levitas meant wisdom and lightness of heart or cunning and low body weight, whichever you prefer. And I told him he was marvellous and he signed me a flyer for his running shop and said we were doing good for the sport of road-running and wished us all the best and our new club too.
I don’t think I bored him, but he would not have shown it, and not many people spoke to him as he sat in his corner.
Weave a circle round him thrice,4
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honeydew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
I left him drinking a Bud light, resting, waiting his hour. Gentleman Bill, Boston Billy, King of the Road.
It had been nice of Bill to ask us to his pre-race party just because we had visited his shoe shop, and now we are in a room packed with international sportsmen and Harvard jocks. Marathoning was not so well known in those days and veteran athletics was not so well established and old men like ourselves were figures of some interest. Track stars, quarterbacks, basketball players, expat stars over on attachment approached us and spoke to us as equals – spoke to me, the second eight oarsman, the jogger, the despair of my PE teacher at school, the bearer of sick notes, the coward, the one-eyed weakling – they spoke to me as an international sportsman leading an official UK team! I think we were indeed in some way official – my coach had told me. But he had also told me the veteran qualifying time was three hours, when it was three thirty. What the hell – we were here!
We were walking back to the hotel when a young woman approached us, pointing at the bats on our tracksuits – Gee the bats – the Sumatran fruit bat of course – you know I work with bats.
She told us about working with bats, taking her time. As her conversation did not seem to be moving towards offering sexual favours to the intrepid sportsmen from a foreign land we let it run out and said farewell.
The next day Major Bill and Tom and I ran from Hopkinton to the P
rudential building in company with ten thousand others and finished the marathon in close to three hours.
Major Bill stopped outside Wellesley College at mile thirteen and from the hundreds of yelling babes chose the prettiest and took her in his arms and kissed her with enthusiasm and ran off to storms of applause, his Union Jack shorts helping to brighten the rainy day.
Some way ahead Bill Rodgers was breaking the American record.
* * *
Up on the South Yorkshire Navigation the wind was like a runaway train. It spun us round and flung us into the bank behind two barges, and Monica had to pole off the front of the boat while I did what I could with the engine from the back.
We have listened to tropical storms machine-gunning the roof; we have seen raindrops that would fill a pint tankard and watched them explode as they hit the cut. We have seen these things in Virginia and in Florida and now we have seen them in Yorkshire. They last much longer in Yorkshire.
We stayed for a couple of days waiting for the wind to drop, lying in the cabin at night as the rain drummed on us and the wind rocked us, little kids with Mummy and Daddy downstairs and you can just hear their talking and their laughter.
I don’t think it is quite so windy today, I said on the third morning, knowing that I lied. Anyway we can’t stay here among the ruined pubs and the desolation, visiting the working men’s club. Not even Billy Gracelands, Elvis’s lost brother, singing the fifties on a Saturday night will hold me.
Monica gave a push to the bow, and I gunned the engine and pulled the tiller round so we held the middle of the cut and we headed west for Thorne, sideways.
* * *
Here I am sitting in The Radfords on a Sunday night, lulled by a good dinner and a few glasses of dandelion wine and the fact I had run twenty miles in training that morning and the telephone rang.
Is that Terry Darlington, captain of Stone Master Marathoners?3 Chris Brasher5 said I should ring you. I want to run a marathon and I understand you are the captain of the only marathon club in the UK. I live in London but I can travel to see you – could you train me for the marathon?
I got so many calls – the marathon club had become a national club, with members all over the UK. We did only marathons, in the UK and overseas, with no one under the ages of thirty-five for women and forty for men. This caller sounded as if he was in his twenties and I was bored turning away people who did not qualify and wanted me to bend the rules.
Look, I don’t want to waste your time – my club is just for veterans. I am so sorry to disappoint you, but it is the unique thing about the club. There are lots of general athletic clubs in London that might be able to help. How old are you by the way?
Seventy-three.
Oh goodness me, my word. Sorry to be negative – your voice fooled me. Come up next weekend and we’ll fix you up with your uniform – you will always have to wear it training or racing with the club. Lovely red uniform – lots of badges and your name on the front. We’ll hit you for your joining fee and we’ll chat about fixing you up with a coach in London. Are you moderately fit now?
I used to do some dancing and am in quite good shape.
And your name?
Ernest – Ernest Dudley.
The writer who had invented Doctor Morelle and Miss Thrale for Monday Night at Eight.
* * *
On the South Yorkshire Navigation the PM2 was going to meet a large number of low bridges that block the canal. These are known as swing bridges, or lift bridges, or bastard bridges that hold up the traffic and don’t work and this key is broken and I think I am going to burst into tears.
Monica is on the tiller. The wind, coming hard over the Pennines and across the plains north of Sheffield, over Pontefract and Wakefield, over the green fields and the low banks, had pushed the PM2 into the bank and held her like a lover. I got my fat and stiff body over the side, and waving my lock key strode up to the bridge.
After five minutes, in a bush I found a tablet of stone. In this tablet was set a bronze plaque with writing on it – a Rosetta Stone6 for boaters.
It had taken centuries to decipher the Rosetta Stone and I wondered if the chap who finally did it has got a mobile phone and could offer a few tips. Much of the writing had been attacked with hammers or shat on by birds or just rotted off. Hiding among patches of moss was a keyhole – a British Waterways keyhole for my British Waterways key. I looked hard at the writing again and I could see some shreds of meaning in it. I tried to turn the key. At this point any boater will collapse in tears of laughter – he tried to turn a British Waterways key!
But it turned, and over the road there was a click and a thump. I walked to the red and white pole that was sticking up in the air and pulled a lever and a hooter started to scream and the pole came down across the road.
A tractor appeared and stopped.
I began to walk across the bridge to put down the other barrier and the wind blew me down into the mud.
A Range Rover appeared and the driver hooted.
A train came by alongside us with a noise like an earthquake, and hooted.
I caught hold of the rail on the bridge and pulled myself up and tried to pull the bridge open. The man in the tractor shouted something and the wind flung me against the bridge. I pulled again and the bridge did not move. I wondered what would happen if I ran away. The man in the Range Rover got out and the wind blew him down into the mud.
The hooter on the bridge carried on screaming.
By the railway track was a signal box with a long staircase and a woman came down this staircase and walked to the bridge and crossed it and stood by me and we pulled at the bridge together. I’m not supposed to do this, she said.
The man from the Range Rover joined us and the bridge began to shift.
Not all the dozens of bridges ahead of us were like that. Some were better, and some were worse.
Thorne is a nice place, though most of its industry is dead and the high street shows it. A fine pub at the waterside and over the other side of the canal are fields where you can run whippets.
Monica took Jim and Jess for a walk. They were on the lead, ready to turn into the woodland, when the cat struck.
It was a heavy ginger cat, with a bell and mad staring eyes. It came out of the hedge and stood for a moment and flung itself on Jess and raked its claws across her forehead, tearing her skin. Monica pulled the furious dogs away and the cat very slowly went back into the hedge and no doubt to its home, looking back as it went, holding close to its heart the secret that it had carved up one of those whippet dogs that chase you but they are cowards really and no match for a bold ginger tom with yellow claws and mad staring eyes.
It’s awful, said Monica. They keep trying to find ways to get off the boat and hunt down that cat and kill it. I can’t let them off the lead at all. And poor Jess, always in trouble. We can’t stay here now. It’s the New Junction Canal next, then the Aire and Calder Navigation, where the great ships used to come in from the Humber.
* * *
Ernest Dudley came to Stone on many Sundays to train. There was half the traffic that we see now and most of the population were still in bed getting over Saturday night so we had North Staffordshire more or less to ourselves.
Ernest was slim, not tall, with an elfin face and white hair. He got on well with Sandy Risley, his coach in London, and ran some marathons and wrote a book about it all and lectured on the ocean liners7 – always wearing his Stone Master Marathoners uniform.
Stone athletes ran marathons all over the world, and our ladies won many of them. We organized our own marathon, the Flying Fox, which became the UK veteran championships. In 1986 Monica became the UK champion over fifty with a time of three hours and thirty-six minutes. For three years she was the captain of the club, and led our successful veteran cross-country team, Hell’s Grannies.
Nowadays the club is open to all ages and races all distances and has a hundred members. I feel very proud when I see an SMM pack on the road.
Ernest has gone to sit by the fire with Dr Morelle and Miss Thrale. He was ninety-seven. One day soon I will knock on the door and join them, maybe on a Monday night around eight.
* * *
Style is what you leave out, and the New Junction Canal leaves nearly all of it out. Take me away, shining road, take me north where all is stripped and simple.
I was born in Lincolnshire, a county which is mainly sky. The RAF is based there, because the RAF needs a lot of sky. I was there long enough for a part of me to be colonized by those plains, those dykes, and the green lines of the crops and the wind and the clouds stacked and chasing. Like the country the New Junction Canal crosses.
From the boat you look across the low towpath over the fields to the horizon. Some drains but little else. No banks, no trees, no hedges. Like a road, the canal is level with the land. A bit like the Canal du Rhône à Sète, which crosses the blue lakes of the Midi as if it walks on water, with just a few stones on each side of the canal – everything else left out.
Always the wind, the wind, on the New Junction Canal and one lock and five miles and it’s over and turn left on to the Aire and Calder Navigation, which is where the big boys play. Like the New Junction Canal, but broader, more scruffy. Plenty of water, let’s punch into the wind, yo ho ho.
The barges carrying coal, sand, petroleum to Leeds and Sheffield have gone to their last moorings, but here is a black commercial boat some way behind us. Leave the lock gates open – plenty of room. We know how to behave with the commercial traffic. I never put a foot wrong with that one. Politesse, respect, is the key. We’ll wait for them, we’ll wait. These guys are working and I am just an old-timer on a pleasure boat. Soon enough the commercial traffic will be gone, but the system was built for them and they have worked it for generations. They are simple folk, but with hearts … OH I SAY! The tug is coming into the lock and coming and coming For Christ’s sake I gave you plenty of room look your bow is right over us – black and as big as a block of flats – you’ll crush us like a fly!
Look Monica at those buggers on that barge – oily and ragged. They are not sailors – they are pirates that run down narrowboats in the big locks and pick over the bones of the wrecks. OK, OK, you go out first – by heaven that was close. I think that gypsy almost waved. I think I’ll go down and have a shudder with Jess.