Downstream
By andy
- 495 reads
I was born near here. In a pokey little cottage close to the river.
It flooded the day I was born. The first thing that the midwife said to
my mother when she walked in the door was 'so your waters have broken
then'.
And now I'm thinking of moving downstream. After sixty eight years.
Throwing myself in with as many possessions as I can carry and letting
the current take me. All the way to Hull.
I couldn't pick a better day to do it than today. The trees are at
their peak now and it would be such a treat to float under their boughs
and stare up at the yellow and red leaves while the ducks paddle
alongside.
I think I'm at the end of my tether you see. Reckon that it's time to
take a trip.
Time for a steam boat captained by a lazy, gin swigging man who's no
better than he should be to chug up to Farndon and take me aboard.
"Let's go miss, let's go while the goings good. It's time for your
blood to race, your face to go numb and your spirits to soar".
I mean you wouldn't think that it was too much to ask would you? To be
able to end up where you started. And that's all I really want here
now. Now that the village is so different. To go back to that cottage.
Especially since my brother has died. He didn't understand it when I
kept going on about returning. Spitting on the floor and pushing the
peak of his cap back. 'Think they're in flaming Acapulco'.
Samuel was never in. Which upset mother. She thought that it was
because of the attentions of the pig killer and turned him down in the
end. Which she should never have done. She was terribly lonely after
Dad was killed at Ransom and Marles in Newark during the war. It was an
important target apparently. So much death for such tiny little things.
Bodies and blood and ball bearings rolling all over the floor.
And he was ever so good to her too. Constantly bringing her gifts of
pig bits. The house was full of them. It was horrible really. Coming
home to find your Gran at the dinner table with half a pigs face
sitting on her plate. At least the eyes used to be taken out.
He loved the river though, did Samuel. That's why he was never in. He
used to spend hours with it. Throwing stones in over and over again and
just sitting there as the ripples reached out to touch the banks. Going
up to Kirks Bay for a dip with the rest of the kids and then sloping
off on his own to go swimming in places that he shouldn't have. Looking
at his watch and counting down on his fingers to see if The Packet
would blow it's hooter, which it normally did, as regular as clockwork,
and then running out to watch it sail past.
The only thing that interested him at school was when they looked at a
book which had the sea or a great river in it. Running back from Grand
Scruttons hut with the things in his satchel. And then that was that
for the next week or two. It seemed to take him over completely.
He'd shout odd things at the barges as they came up and down all the
while, half of them Flammable and the other half Non Flammable. 'Leave
the albatross!' he'd yell; 'whatever you do, don't shoot the
albatross'. Or else he'd be hopping about with a patch over his eye or
throwing bits of wood in and start crocodile shooting.
But the river never meant anything like that to me. I didn't trust it.
It's a powerful thing is the Trent. Especially after they dredged it to
help the barges go up and down and to try and stop the flooding.
No. I was always happy watching the birds in the Willow Holt, or
playing in the Pops, climbing trees and making camps; always a whole
gang of us.
It's changed so much here you wouldn't believe. Much of this village
was just fields when I was a little girl. And Mum used to tell me that
you didn't go down Marsh Lane after dark. It was nothing you see. It
was just marsh.
And now houses have sprung up everywhere. And every time a newcomer
moved in Samuel seemed to get a bit odder. It was the swanky boats in
the harbour that hurt him the most, because he'd never been able to
afford much. He was the ferryman for a while. Taking across those who
wanted to go and walk over to Fiskerton and Southwell. Old Charon they
called him in The Brit. And there was always a stool for him.
Gran used to cut her reeds near here, at the bottom of Wyke Lane. An
old basket maker she was. You could have sharpened the bluntest knife
you could find on her hands, and by the time you were finished have a
blade keen enough to slice the moon in two. I think that she was more
upset when the pig killer was turned down than mother. With his feet
and his brawn and his chitterlings. You'd never think a woman of her
age could have eaten as much. She began to look a bit like a pig, with
those whiskers growing on her face.
Mind you she could say the same thing about me. I catch myself
sometimes you know, on my hands and knees, with my nose pushed up
against the carpet having a good sniff. The bungalow's built on top of
an American food dump you see, and we're all slowly sliding into a pit
of rotten potted meat. A couple of people have had to move
already.
Poor old Samuel went totally funny in the end. And nobody really
understood what he was going on about. He gave up the ferry when he
went into the Brit and saw one of the newcomers sitting on his stool.
I've never seen a face go so black. Just like the sky before it splits
apart and let's the rain crash down, it was. And that same stillness in
the air too. Everybody waiting, like a gunfight.
And then he just threw his cap on the floor. 'You'll never get across
now you realise', he told the poor man, 'however many coins you shove
under your grey and heavy tongue. One hundred years wait for you my
son. Oh yes'.
He became a bit of a recluse after that. And even when you did see him,
strolling by the river with a sad look in his eyes, he'd tell you
something daft about how he was going upstream to find Mr Kurtz, or to
call him Ishmael.
It's hard to let go though isn't it. That's the problem. To stand there
waving as the newcomers sail in from downstream or upstream, or
wherever and take the reins. But you worry that if you do let go the
whole thing will just vanish.
Cynthia drove round the village every night for a week last month with
one of those loudspeaker things that the politicians used to use, and a
group of her finest girls following her round wearing black armbands.
Some thought that she was making a fool of herself and the troop. But
nobody had volunteered to take her place you see. And after being Brown
Owl for twenty years it's only fair to expect somebody else to have a
go.
I'm better off out of it, now. And I just want to go back. Back to the
cottage where my Mother, Gran, Dad and Samuel lived. Before the ball
bearings were targeted and the pig killer started coming round.
It isn't too much to ask, is it? I mean you're meant to improve on your
account when you're brought into this world aren't you? That's the
general way of things. Move up a little bit. Well I don't want to do
that. I just want to go back there. I can walk down the road each
morning and every single person that I look at is a stranger. I only
need to say hello of course. But I can't bring myself to. I feel like a
ghost sometimes. It's terrible. Like being a stranger in your own
house. And so I'd rather have the company of ghosts than be surrounded
by people that are new to me at this late stage.
That, or be rescued by Mr Orner.
There used to be swans on this river you know. I remember once sitting
in the Brit and looking out as the flood water came up to the window,
and there was a swan swimming past. And I'm sure it looked me right in
the eye. Beautiful it was. Gliding past, moving it's neck this way and
that to take in the new scenery.
I'll never be able to afford to move back. Where I was born, and my
mother before me. They're all the rage now you see; cottages. And it's
at that end too. In the middle of Millionaires Paradise, as we call it
nowadays.
Oh well. I'll just have to keep my eye on the river; and wait for The
African Queen.
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