Narrow Minds, page 27
I sighed. ‘Not really, we just don’t have a choice, with Geoff working now we absolutely have to be in Cambridge as soon as possible, just to get the kids to school.’ I shook my head with a grin. ‘Believe me, I wouldn’t do it if I could possibly avoid it.’
Sarah shook her head firmly. ‘No, I just wouldn’t do it; we’d have to find some other way, just travel at weekends or something.’ She looked worriedly at her husband. ‘This is Lawrence’s boat, and if he wasn’t there to drive it, I don’t know what I’d do.’
Obviously this wasn’t an argument I was going to win so I just nodded and gently changed the subject on to her cooking skills and what sort of equipment they had on their boat.
Later, lying in bed I went over the comments again. How on earth could you live this life if you weren’t both committed to it? ‘This is Lawrence’s boat.’ It echoed around and around in my head. I couldn’t imagine being able to get away with being fragile or girly in this environment, today had proved that. You have to have a slight amount of insanity and a certain ability to turn a blind eye to the possible dangers, my throbbing hand reminded me that those dangers can be very real and a situation can go from being safe to downright dangerous in the blink of an eye.
Four years, on and off, we’ve been puttering up and down this same stretch of canal and river. The three trips have all been very different. My hand throbbed again and I could feel the itching where the liquid that was still seeping out of the wound trickled into my palm. I stared out of the window, I was forty-five years old, was that too old to be taking on another great big project?
I rolled over on to my stomach, careful not to wake Geoff, and stared down the length of the boat. For another single moment I missed our house then, even more strongly and for the first time in four years I longed for our old life, a life that was easy, a big house, with enough money to live on, my lovely warm Aga, the huge bath, the big garden.
I sat up and climbed out of bed, moving quietly to put the kettle on. Why did I want this life? My hand throbbed and I winced as I quickly put the kettle down so that I could pick it up again with my uninjured one. What the hell was I doing? I turned the gas on and moved quietly down the boat to look at the kids, they both lay in their usual tumbled positions, what I was doing to them and how would all this effect them later? I swallowed against a sudden lump in my throat. It wasn’t worth it, I was only doing this because I hated the bills and the postman? Suddenly all my reasons for wanting this life back seemed banal and stupid, unreasonable and selfish, Sarah was wrong, I was wrong, I wasn’t brave at all and quite frankly I didn’t want to play any more.
Geoff’s hand on my shoulder almost gave me a heart attack. ‘What’s up?’ he whispered loudly.
I sniffed as the tears began and he got the whole sorry tale in one big blurt.
Depositing me with a pile of tissues on the bed he went to make tea.
Ignoring all my sniffling and snorting he sat down beside me and started moaning that he didn’t have any clean socks.
I stared at him incredulously, bloody socks? I think he was missing the point.
‘Tell you what.’ He dunked a biscuit in his tea and still staring at the wall he deliberately ignored my outrage at being taken to task over the laundry. ‘Why don’t I take the boat to Peterborough, tomorrow, you take the car and my dirty socks, find a launderette, sort the washing out and then you can have a wander round the town, buy a book, sit in Starbucks with one of those disgusting coffees you like so much. Take some time for you, you’ve been dealing with boat and rain and scary locks and psychotic children all week while I’ve been sitting around drinking tea and learning flaming suduko, it’s no wonder you’re having a meltdown.’ He gave me a hopeful grin, ‘It’s like the worst-case scenario of single parenting.’
I leant on his shoulder for a moment. ‘Thanks sweetie, I think I’d like that a lot.’
‘Good!’ He leapt up and took my cup away. ‘Now can we please get some sleep?’
Chapter Twelve
I Need Some ‘Me Time’
EVEN PETERBOROUGH IS GORGEOUS when the sun’s out. Shooting off early, I’d got all the washing done (five loads of it, I knew I was falling down on some jobs but really, I didn’t realise we’d got so short of everything), by ten o’clock and as Geoff wasn’t due into Peterborough until late afternoon I was free to wander the town.
Sitting in Starbucks I revisited my feelings from last night, it didn’t make any difference and it didn’t matter which way I studied the problems, I just couldn’t work out whether I had pushed my family to do the right thing. There was no doubt that the next two to three years was going to be hard work but the question kept coming up, ‘is it worth it?’
There was one big difference on this trip and it was undoubtedly Charlie shaped. She’d arrived on the old boat looking for a family and happy to try a new way of life. Now, however, she was a hulking teenager with all the little idiosyncrasies that teenagers have, wild mood swings, a need to be by herself and an intense desire to consider us all ridiculous and downright damaging to her self-image.
As so often happens in times of crisis, the phone rang, I checked the screen and smiled. ‘Hi, Mum.’ I grinned down the phone. ‘Just the person I need to talk to.’
There was a small silence. ‘Oh dear, not more trouble?’ Mum sounded quite subdued.
I pushed aside my worries for Charlie’s wellbeing and focused on the phone. ‘Are you OK? you sound a little frazzled.’
‘Your father’s having some real problems with his ankle.’ She sniffed. ‘And I’m having some trouble with my knee so between us we’ve only got two good legs and they seem to want to go in different directions.’
‘Well, let’s start with Dad’s ankle.’ I wandered over to the counter and ordered another Mocha – this sounded like it was going to be a long conversation. ‘I thought that was all healed up, he broke it nearly three years ago.’ I stopped and thought for a moment. ‘Didn’t they put all sorts of plates and screws into it to hold it all together?’
My father had broken his ankle while falling from the roof, he’d been walking with a stick ever since, his swollen ankle and leg had never really healed properly. I have to admit I’d felt that due to his age he was as mobile as he was likely to be and hadn’t really given the whole thing a lot of thought.
‘That’s the problem.’ Mum sighed again. ‘Some of the screws have worked themselves out and are now pushing out of the bones. He’s in quite a lot of pain and I’m no use, my knee is getting worse and worse so we’ve only got two good legs between us and just lean on each other whenever we go out. I feel about one hundred and five.’
Mum had damaged her knee playing badminton about twenty years ago, at the time the treatment had been to remove the cartilage but I was beginning to suspect that now it would be a different story. I kept quiet – there was every possibility she would soon need a new knee.
I realised Mum had been talking while I had been reminiscing and hurriedly concentrated on the conversation again.
‘… So we’re going to sell the boat.’ I only heard the final part of her statement and consequently panicked.
‘What, my boat?’ I was horribly confused. ‘Why would selling our boat help your collective legs?’
‘Not your boat.’ My mother huffed as she realised I hadn’t been paying attention to what she’d been saying. ‘We’re selling our boat.’ She paused for a moment. ‘And the house in France.’
‘Oh.’ I couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t sound condescending. ‘I can understand selling that great big sailing boat of yours, it takes a lot of work to get it running properly and with you two at the helm both of you with dodgy bits.’ I stopped talking, at some point I really must install that filter between brain and mouth, I’d been intending to do it for years but never quite got round to it.
But I had a point, the Emmarie is very exciting. The wretched thing heeled over in the slightest wind and scared the life out of me every time we went out on it. For Charlie, each trip was just one long sequence of screams, she really hated it. Sam just hung over the side and giggled. ‘Why sell the house in France? It’s beautiful over there.’
Mum and Dad also owned a big three-bedroomed country house in La Chapelle de Brain just outside Redon. They’d bought it about five years ago and had done a lot of work to it. Now, it was gorgeous, set in a huge wooded garden and backing on to the river, it was an oasis of country tranquilité . We had visited a couple of times and I had always harboured a secret desire to learn French and move over there. The people were lovely and time always seemed to slow when we visited.
Mum sighed and said, ‘It’s just the travelling and now that your Dad’s got to have a series of operations to get all this metalwork out of his leg it’s just all too much, we really should have done this when we were younger.’ She paused for a moment. ‘It’s going to take ages to heal up and we just won’t be able to go anywhere for a while.’
We chatted for a few more minutes and I avoided questions about the boating life. Then after sending my love to Dad I put the phone down and concentrated on my coffee.
Strangely enough, even though the conversation hadn’t really been a happy one, I felt much better. Mum was right, if you’re going to do something stupid do it while you’re young enough to cope with the traumas. I looked down at my still weeping hand, we had enough problems without having health problems as well so waiting another ten years to sort myself out really wasn’t an option.
I mulled the question over all day, trying new scenarios for life, one where we go back to working with computers and two where we just get a house and sell this boat, three where we try to make this work. But as I wandered down the waterfront waiting for Geoff to pull in, I still didn’t have a definitive answer.
Sitting in the shade of a big tree I had been so deep in thought that I hadn’t really noticed the huge fair behind me. I only really re-joined reality when a huge wet nose was stuck into my face, followed rapidly by a warm wet tongue.
‘Hello again.’ A voice drifted over my shoulder. ‘You look miles away. Oh for goodness’ sake, dog, leave her alone.’
I struggled against Bertie’s enthusiastic greeting to give Audrey a feeble wave. ‘Hi, Audrey, you made it all right then.’ I laughed and pushed the big Labrador away. ‘Give over Bertie, or at least get a breath mint.’
Audrey sat down beside me and stretched her legs out in the sun. ‘Yeah we got here,’ she paused to drag Bertie away. ‘Titchmarsh was a bit of a bitch, though, how was it when you came through?’
I shuddered. ‘Horrible, smashed two windows, dented the front, trashed our Aerial and gave me the heebies which will last for about a month.’
‘Oh my God.’ Audrey looked a little stunned. ‘Fairy Girl was just thrown about a bit.’
‘How do you do it on your own, Audrey?’ I stroked Bertie and stared out over the river. ‘Even with a small boat it must be fairly hairy sometimes.’
Audrey looked at me for a long moment. ‘I suppose so, but I think it’s the adrenaline that keeps me going.’ She smiled and stood up. ‘I need to move the boat, I’m not staying here tonight – it’s going to be bedlam,’ she said and waved a hand at the rides and lit stalls behind us. ‘You going to take the kids?’
I turned around and looked at the fair, I hadn’t even considered that. ‘Yes, I think they could do with a bit of fun.’
She nodded. ‘Ah well, better go, catch you again some time.’
With that she and Bertie headed off.
I watched her go and thought about my parents, both now well into their seventies, after years of rushing about the world buying tumbledown houses and doing them up they had finally reached the end of their tether.
I honestly never expected them to finally slow down, but now sitting here feeling tired and worn-out, I could understand Mum’s sentiments. Was there a time where you just switch over to being old, or middle-aged and everything changes? Do you wake up one morning and say to your reflection, ‘Today I need a tweed suit, a blue rinse and some sensible shoes?
I sighed and got to my feet as Minerva pulled in further down the waterfront. I needed a long hot bath and a week in Spain. Squaring my shoulders I marched toward the boat ready to catch ropes. I wasn’t going to get either so I might as well get on with what needed to be done.
None of us were really happy to see the next morning. We’d had a late night, full of coloured lights and loud music, candy floss and fast rides. We’d discovered that Sam was a speed junky with no fear of heights and that Charlie now had a certain sense of her own mortality, something she certainly hadn’t possessed a year ago.
Geoff and I had wandered the fair waiting patiently beneath each swooping, screaming monstrosity, neither willing to go on the rides and both thankful that as we had two children we actually didn’t need to.
During the long walk back to the boat (we’d taken Audrey’s example to heart and had also pulled well out of town), Geoff had asked me how I was feeling.
‘Fine, fine.’ I grinned at him. ‘A good coffee always does the trick.’
‘Look, how are we going to do this?’ He peered into the darkness trying to keep Chaos and Disorder in sight.
‘Do what?’ I staggered around in the dark, cursing my ridiculously bad vision.
Geoff grabbed my arm and steered me around a bend in the riverside. ‘Move the cars and get everybody and the car in the same place at the same time.
I decided to push my luck a little. ‘Well you could take the boat and the kids through Stanground tomorrow morning early as planned. I’ll walk back and pick up the car and the washing, go and do a big shop, meet you at Whittlesea. We can transfer all the washing and shopping on board, then one of us can take the car on to March, check out the moorings and put the car in the car park for the night.’ Good grief it was like planning a military campaign.
‘OK.’ Geoff grinned, his teeth flashing white in the darkness. ‘You get another boat- and child-free day and we’ll meet you at Whittlesea.’
We walked for a moment in silence just enjoying the peace and quiet, I could see the boat ahead of us, the kids were sitting on the roof, their silhouettes showing against the moon.
‘Oh no!’ Geoff suddenly blurted out, ‘We can’t do that.’
My heart sank, I had just planned another hour with coffee and a book before I had to set out for Whittlesea. ‘Why not?’
‘Because you’ll miss doing Dracula’s lock and the Whittlesea bend.’ Geoff grinned at me. ‘And I know you’d want to add those to your ‘things I have done on my own’ list.’
There is a big problem with having no night sight, when the person who is acting as your eyes runs away, giggling, there is no way you can catch him.
Seven o’clock the next morning, I waved the boat off and turned back for the walk towards Peterborough. It was a lovely morning, with more than a hint of autumn in the air, the mist rose in lazy spirals from the river and heavy dew glistened in the morning sun, turning patches of grass, hedges and all the spiders’ webs into glittering art pieces.
I certainly didn’t rush and it took me about an hour to get back into town. The car was just where I’d left it (never an absolute certainty in Peterborough), and after taking a moment to get my bearings I headed for the nearest Tesco.
I’d been at Whittlesea for an hour or so before Geoff, kids, dog and boat turned up.
Charlie clambered out of the boat and stretched, then showed me her arms. ‘Look, this is awful, I’ve got muscles.’ She bent her arm at right angles and her skinny arm changed from a piece of string to a piece of string with a small knot in it. I wasn’t really that impressed.
‘Don’t worry, I don’t think you’re going to give Schwarzenegger a run for his money just yet.’ I laughed and gave her a poke. ‘You got here all right then.’
She pursed her lips at me. ‘Yeah, but Geoff tried to kill us.’
I looked askance at her and she grinned. ‘We were a bit too close to one of the lock walls and the Gunwales got hung up on one of those big metal rings, the water kept dropping away and finally she fell off and hit the water with a hell of a splash.’
‘Whoops!’ I grimaced. ‘I bet your dad wasn’t happy about that.’
She shrugged and started rummaging through the shopping bags as she was joined by her ever-hungry younger brother.
After they had raided the groceries and scampered off, Geoff also started nosing through the bags. Finally finding a bag of doughnuts, he settled down to enjoy the late sunshine. ‘I’m going to try and get the day off on Tuesday so that we can both get her through Salters Lode and Denver.’
‘Oh, thank God for that.’ I had been almost on the verge of panic about getting through the two locks, especially having to pull the tight right-hand turn out of Salters and round toward Denver. ‘Do you think they’ll let you take it?’ I crossed both fingers and sent a quick prayer up to whoever might be listening.
‘Well, we haven’t any work on, so I can’t see why not.’ Geoff shrugged.
‘When’s your interview for that other job?’ I asked, the sooner the better as far as I was concerned.
Geoff heaved a sigh. ‘The bloke who’s interviewing is away on holiday so it isn’t until the end of October, I’d have to check the exact day.’
‘Three weeks at the most then.’ I laughed. ‘They can’t fail to be impressed by your general attitude and huge willingness to work.’
Geoff frowned. ‘You have a lot more faith in my interview technique than I do.’ He shook his head and looked worried for a moment. ‘I don’t want to appear too desperate but honestly if I don’t get this job I think I’ll scream.’
A scream, for a moment I thought that one of the kids was just putting sound effects to Geoff’s words but as the hubbub from the front of the boat grew I realised that something was seriously wrong.
