Worlds End

"Shut that fucking dog up". From the Mudlark's 6' square deck, Betty
glared at the dog, a Camel cigarette between bent yellowed fingers, a
chipped white mug in her hand. With her home-cut grey hair, hairy chin,
blue smock, worn grey trousers and down at heel deck shoes she could
have been an old Cornish fisherman.

She was a retired French teacher, prodigious reader and Labour Party
member, with 'Jobs not Jails stickers' in her windows. She spoke her
mind, punctuating conversations with swearing as enthusiastic as it was
energetic. On sunny days she'd sit outside in a grubby vest, reading a
bent double paperback, sucking on a cigarette and supping whiskey from
her mug.

She read almost anything, with scant regard for genre or literary
merit, though she preferred detective novels. I'd dig out books to swap
- Raymond Chandler, John Irving, Nadine Gordimer - and find myself
leaving with a Dick Francis or Mills &; Boon. Like the Mudlark, the
books she'd extract from the piles stacked around the room were damp
and mildewed, smelling of stale smoke.

Once a week the Patel's teenage son (a fiery blush staining his cheeks
above his downy moustache) would carry 3 laden plastic bags down her
gangplank: a mix of ready meals, apples, milk, tea, bread, cheese, fags
and whiskey. If I visited bringing books or gifts (groceries or duty
free cigarettes), she'd pour a measure of own-label whiskey into a cut
glass and hand it to me, then turn her back to fill her chipped white
mug with Special Malt. In that narrow room, with its curtained-off area
for her bed and bucket, we'd get slowly drunk, talking about books and
politics, enveloped in smoke and listening to the suck and bubble as
the boat lifted off the mud or the creak and groan of the gangplanks
when the wake from the river bus churned up the river. Sometimes I'd
still be there when the boat squelched back down into the mud
again.

The Mudlark was a landing craft that fetched up on Chelsea Reach after
the Normandy landings. When it had more patches than sound planks it
was set inside a new steel hull (a droning pump dealing with the
rainwater). The hull is now all that's left from Betty's day. A
2-storey superstructure has been built on it, with yellow woodwork and
UPVC windows. Where Betty made do with a sink and bucket, there's now a
bath and flushing toilet.

Most of the boats have been renovated now and the moorings have
smartened up. Boats are brightly painted, the plants on deck colour
coordinated and in terracotta pots. The changes aren't just in
appearance. Smarter boats are expensive, so they attract a different
sort of person, some of whom are here only 3 or 4 nights a week or for
a few months over the summer. A nod, a brief hello and they're on their
way. Where Betty spent time, they spend money.

When Betty died, her son went through her possessions, taking away a
small leather suitcase and 4 plastic bags. The following week, we
gathered to say goodbye to her, launching daffodils onto the water as
her son and granddaughter sprinkled her ashes into the ebbing tide. Her
curling books and broken-down furniture I burnt on the beach at low
tide, warming my hands at the fire and raising a toast to Betty with
Special Malt from a chipped white mug.

What couldn't be burnt was taken away by Worlds End Waste.