Narrow Dog to Wigan Pier Page 20

  I could see on the ship the cliques, the rejections, the pacts, the closing up. I suffered from these things and I could see other people getting hurt. On the last night we had our own little group and organized our table in advance and were sitting down when the shy chap on his own came down the room. He was terrified but had plucked up courage – Can I join your group for dinner?

  It was the last night but he was still friendless, bereft. But there was no room at our table.

  Was his hurt and embarrassment our fault? Were we a clique just like the rest? Could we not have found another chair or something? Were we guilty of not looking out, not responding, of selfishness and carelessness for others?

  But enough – despite the class divides, the heat, the language unknown to science, the oriental gentleman under the bed, we had a grand holiday.

  How many of us have had the chance to travel with a flock of rich English, and as the sun sets over the Java Sea, listen to their strange sad cries?

  * * *

  We don’t want to let you have her back, said the nurse. Everybody loves her.

  She put Jess on the floor and Monica got down and Jess licked her and then she came to me and threw her front legs round my neck. Her bandage was blue today.

  Today we were all going back home to the boat basin. The vet loaded us with medicines and instructions and Monica paid the bill and we were off, Jess trotting cheerfully to the taxi.

  It cost almost as much as when I was ill in America, I said.

  No it didn’t said Monica, and in any case you weren’t in hospital for three weeks.

  I never thought they could save that leg, I said. I knew there were lots of three-legged dogs and they do very well and we would love her just as much and she would still be Jess but Goodness I wanted that leg to be saved.

  Jess was meant to be a friend for Jim and we had been so disappointed when he hated her. He didn’t attack her but would leave the room when she came in. If he was on the bed with Monica and Jess arrived he would jump down and stalk out. The worst bit was the way he would lie in the corner and look at me.

  Then he seemed to be accepting her, especially in the spring, when he would sometimes lick her behind the ears, and sometimes he almost seemed to be running with her and chasing and playing, as I had imagined him to do.

  When we brought Jess back Jim was just inside the boat door, staring through the glass, and when Jess came down inside he screamed and huffed and whined and screamed and gasped and flung himself on her and burrowed his head under her chin and pushed and mounted her and staggered and screamed and there was no controlling him in his passion. So there was I holding Jess on the lead, and Monica wrestling with Jim, who is strong and determined and possessed of a demonic love and the furniture was going over and For God’s sake he’ll break her leg again!

  So we had one dog who was injured and one that appeared to have gone mad.

  Three days later Jim had calmed down.

  He went sort of quiet when she left for the vet’s, said Monica. And twice he tried to pull me down the towpath back to where the accident happened, but I thought he didn’t miss her and might even have been glad because he is the only child again. But although we have had him ten years we don’t really understand him. I mean he must have such deep feelings.

  Jess was unattended on the other side of the saloon and Jim hurled himself across the boat to love her some more, screaming and knocking her down.

  * * *

  Shortly after we retired I was sitting in the sun outside the boat at Hoo Mill when my son Clifford rang. Dad sorry to ring you on the boat but have you heard of Ernest Saunders?

  You mean Deadly Ernest, of the Guinness scandal?14

  Yes – we are going down to see Charles Dunstone15 at the Carphone Warehouse and they rang to say his special consultant Mr Saunders would be there. Can you come with me? I feel a bit nervous about him. He’s a famous criminal and I’ve never met any famous criminals and he might not be very nice.

  I thought he had Alzheimer’s so they let him out of jail.

  No, he recovered. He is the only person ever to recover from Alzheimer’s.

  I always enjoyed working with my son Clifford. Apart from the fact that he is a good businessman he makes me laugh.

  What were the offices like of the firm you saw today, Cliff?

  The hanging gardens of John Lewis, said Cliff.

  Then there was that meeting in the City, high over the Thames, with a dozen heavy hitters round the table. Far below one or two boats worked up and down the river. Soon we will be doing that, I thought. Those boats look so small and the water like rippled metal.

  One of the heavy hitters was looking at us in a funny way. Would you gentlemen by any chance be related?

  Never seen him before in my life, said Clifford.

  At Carphone Warehouse the chief executive Charles Dunstone and I were working on his customer satisfaction scheme. Research Associates’ consumer work relies on organization of comments and no one else does it the same way. As I finished explaining each point Charles Dunstone was there first, waiting for me. It was almost as if he could read my mind.

  You can say what you like about the reasons for success in business – hard work, courage, determination, luck – they all help but it certainly does no harm if you are bloody brilliant.

  The door creaked open and Deadly Ernest came in. He looked just like he did in the pictures outside the courthouse in London.

  He was charming.

  When we got back to The Radfords Lucy’s husband Richard told us he was sitting in his office looking on to the garden when a fox walked across the lawn in broad daylight.

  Was it a fox, Richard, or a vixen?

  I don’t know.

  What do you mean, you don’t know? Did it have any balls, man, did it have any balls?

  Well it walked across the lawn in broad daylight.

  We have bought a boat, I said, and now it is time to get me a dog. Every retired man should have a dog. Every old man should have a dog. If he drops dead out walking the dog will stay by his corpse whining. If he goes blind the dog will take him for a walk. If he becomes destitute the dog will sit by him on the pavement next to his tin can. I have decided on my dog. I will have a pug. They have little flat faces and are cuddly and won’t need walking all the time.

  But you are going to France on your boat, said our friend who knows about dogs. A pug is not a good breather and he will choke in the heat.

  I went back to the book and read all the breeds in alphabetical order – when I got to W it said A Whippet is an easy dog, the ideal family pet. And there was a picture of a whippet with that great chest and lungs – looks like a good breather, I thought.

  In Grimsby there was barking and scratching and as the door opened six whippets came at us shoulder-high, each with a teddy bear in its mouth. We struggled in and sat down. There were kennels in the garden and whippets everywhere. There were beautiful mature whippets, puppies, nursing whippets, and in the corner a very old grandma whippet – comfortable, waiting to die. The whippets were all a soft fawn colour.

  These over here are the ones that are for sale, said the lady. Eight weeks old.

  The puppies were fighting and growling and rolling around. You can have a dog or a bitch, said the lady. The bitches are more popular, and more expensive. A bitch is more affectionate – she gives more and asks more. But some say a dog gives you more love, because he has deeper feelings.

  One little dog had an ear that stuck up and the other was broken and lay over his forehead and somehow made you think of a flat cap. He was trying to shag his auntie – that seemed to me to be a mark of vigour.

  Jim’s first act in our ownership was to escape from the car before we set off and try to run back to his front door. Then he settled in Monica’s arms, and threw up only once.

  At home he loved to race around the halls and rooms and lawns of The Radfords, and would sleep on my chest in the afternoons.

  Daddy�
�s Little Moon-mouse. I had not had a dog of my own before.

  So Jim trained with me as I prepared for the Late Show – a fourteen-mile hill race in Lanzarote when I was sixty-five. Over the mountains and down to the sea.

  The usual coarse remarks in the locker room – Lost a bit of weight at last, Terry – must be nice for you to see your dick again!

  The announcements of race results in the clubroom – there are a lot of results. Jim starts to howl. I think he is disappointed with some of the times, I explain.

  Out with the pack. Jim running happily on a slack lead.

  Until the pack splits – Look, those guys have gone the other way! We had a lovely big pack, all safe and strong. Now we are only a few. We’ll be attacked and pulled down and eaten. This is bloody stupid!

  It’s OK, Jim, don’t fret, steady old chap. We’ll see them again soon enough. Come on we are going up this hill by Moddershall – from the top I can see the Wrekin! Then we’ll go back to the club and you can wrestle with Roger’s Jack Russell he keeps in his inside pocket.

  I had a really good run in Lanzarote – I think I was fourth in my age group. There weren’t many in my age group but there were more than four. Between you and me I felt a bit rough afterwards – worse than I remembered when I was younger. It needed a couple of pints of San Miguel to reboot the system.

  I heard the other day a chap over seventy has run a marathon in under three hours.

  Derek Palmer was always a bit of a rival to me in the marathon club. Of course all the chaps were rivals all the time, and any change in the hierarchy of speed would cause much grief, hilarity, and comment.

  Derek is thinner than Jim, and older than me, but faster. He’s a lovely bloke but every time I meet him I feel inferior.

  One day Derek was out training and he was taken short and he slipped behind a bush for a while and came out and ran hard to catch up.

  He tripped and fell and hit his head and lay by the side of the lane unconscious.

  The pack came back for him and sent for a car and took him to hospital.

  Please relax, ladies and gentlemen, said the nurse. I know how worried you have all been but I am pleased to tell you Mr Palmer is not going to die. In fact he is going to be all right. He’s got concussion, but he’ll be out in a day or two. He is very fit, and his heart rate and blood pressure are that of a man thirty years younger. The consultant was astonished. There was just one question he raised – why has Mr Palmer got grass growing out of his arse?

  Research Associates, now managed by Lucy and her husband Richard, moved out of The Radfords, leaving its thirty rooms to two pensioners and a whippet.

  There we are, I said, our career is over, our house and offices are to be sold. The race is run, the bets paid out, the scores added up. It’s all over bar the twilight years in the back bars of Stone. We have brought up a family; been valiant for business efficiency and poetry and sport. I know I have not achieved the thing I wanted most – to be a writer. You could say my life has been a failure, a desert of shame. But not many people have done everything they wanted to do.

  The day we put The Radfords on the market was the day of the Twin Towers atrocity, and selling it was not easy. In the end we fled south on the boat and left the great house in Lucy’s hands. She sold it for thirty times what we had paid for it and started smoking again.

  Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.16

  I dreamt about Manderley sorry Westfields sorry The Radfords every night for six months and then every other night for another six months and now I don’t dream about it much at all.

  Our new house is down the road nearer the centre of Stone. It is a narrowhouse, just twice as wide as the PM2. We bought it from Georgia our daughter, who had converted it from an old shoe workshop. It has three storeys and a cellar and you live upstairs. It has an alley on the side and looks out over a pub car park and a square. The garden is like one of those little walled ones at the Chelsea Flower Show.

  Within a hundred yards there is a convenience store, a Chinese takeaway, a pub, a church, a flower park,17 a chip shop, an Indian restaurant and a tattoo parlour. Everything you need, really.

  My studio is in the roof and I have a big window and a high ash for my window tree and a spire across the square and lots of shelves and two copiers and a big desk. Jim and Jess lie under my feet.

  It’s great.

  Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.

  The day we set out to sail round the UK the Phyllis May sank at its moorings because of a loose stern gland and the canals were closed because of Foot and Mouth.

  We waited at home and waited and waited and watched the cattle burning on the telly until the canals were freed and we sailed south.

  Down the Grand Union, past the Houses of Parliament, across the West Country to Bristol and up the Severn Estuary. We loved travelling with Jim, though he hated the boat, and everybody loved our skinny little puppy with the heartbreak eyes. I began to write little joke passages about him, and sent them to friends so they would know where we were on the cut and that we were still alive.

  Andrew Davies,18 the television writer, is an old school-friend. This stuff is good, he said. You are not wasting a word. Keep sending me this stuff. You should write a little book about whippets and flowers.

  No, I said, if I am to write I want to be a real WRITOR like you, and write a real book.

  First I chose a title – Narrow Dog to Carcassonne.

  Then I bought a lot of travel books.

  Then I bought twenty books on how to write,19 and read them and took notes. I preferred the American books – hard-arse, practical.

  I wrote the first two chapters and rewrote and rewrote. I sent them to Andrew who sent them back with lots of comments, most of them critical. He was afraid I would be offended, but I wasn’t. I had lost my way and now I was back on track. I rewrote again.

  Then I sent the chapters to the Literary Consultancy,20 a firm in London, together with some money and heard back from Alan Wilkinson. He said I had a Voice, and that was a Good Thing, and the stuff was promising, but do this, do that – this is your opening sentence, you can develop Monica’s character.

  I did exactly what he said.

  Then I emailed the chapters to Annette Green Authors’ Agency.21 We were moored opposite Windsor Castle.

  David Smith rang in a few hours. This one will sell six figures.

  It hammered with rain and then the sun came out and the swifts threw themselves around like anything.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THE PENNINES

  The Ghost Train

  My dog died of grief in Gdansk

  The incredible leaping producer – The citadel of Carcassonne is beautiful and startling – I did not say a word, just dribbled lightly – Thirty tons of shit and an actor – They were starting to get worried about the esses – Let’s hear it for the guys in special effects – I like to ambush and frustrate the reader – Rivers run down your neck – Water is necessary to the whole activity – How the nation dealt with Jive Bunny – My pockets full of water – Personally I prefer sexual reproduction – Destruction to your boat

  IN RAMSGATE THE sun is shining, the lines tapping on the masts of the yachts. No narrowboats apart from us. Narrowboats can’t get to Ramsgate unless they are prepared to spend seventeen hours sailing from London round the North Foreland. If you try that you will die, many an old salt and bearded narrowboater told us.

  We had tried and we had not died and now we were setting out on the afternoon tide for Calais.

  We had done what we could to reduce the risks. Monica had learned to swim and we had attended a ship-to-shore radio course. We were jogging three miles a day to keep fit. The bow of the Phyllis May had been enclosed and the front windows sealed. Grab rails were installed all along the roof. Jackstays – straps – ran down the side of the boat and a safety harness to clip on to them. Life jackets of course and one for Jim and emergency flares and an anchor. We had a pilot
on board and an escort vessel.

  It didn’t stop us being scared.

  Monica was on the tiller when we sailed out into the choppy blue tide, which swept us past the Goodwin Sands towards Dover. We tried to turn left to cross the twenty-mile stream and the tiller snatched and heaved. Terry, I can’t hold her!

  But once we had made the turn into deep water it was easier.

  Our pilot on the Phyllis May had decided we were going to make it and was asleep below with Jim on his lap. Keith Wootton, the producer of the ITV canal series Waterworld,1 was on the pilot vessel with his cameraman.

  In the middle of the Channel the vessel came near and Keith leapt on to our roof. The jump was extraordinary, but to carry a great camera on his shoulder at the same time! The Incredible Leaping Producer got some excellent footage, particularly of us crossing the six-foot wake of a ferry as we approached Calais, and he won a prize3 for it.

  It’s all in Narrow Dog to Carcassonne,2 of course, except for the new bits and here is another new bit. Before leaving Stone I had rung a leading canal magazine and said I was going to France and writing a book. Are you sailing across the Channel? asked the editor.

  Yes, I said.

  I think that is stupid, he said, and launched into his reasons as I hung up on him.

  In Calais I rang another canal magazine and offered an article about the crossing to France. My readers are not interested in that sort of thing, said the editor. It is not the sort of thing they do themselves.

  So no climber is interested in an account of climbing Everest because they are not likely to do it themselves? I asked.

  He printed a picture the size of a postage stamp showing our boat in the Channel and a long letter from a chap who gave firm and detailed explanations about crossing the Channel, advising against it. He had not done it himself.

  These were our first contacts with the dark side of adventure and fame. We learned that if you accomplish something most people will appreciate you, but some feel threatened or jealous. It is all about the territory people feel they occupy. The negative editors moved on, the magazines became our friends, and there is much more interest these days in river and estuary cruising and France.