The Boat Girls by Margaret Mayhew Read Free Book Online Page B

up from their washtubs and their gossiping and fell silent. They had lined and dark-skinned faces like gypsies, but they were unsmiling. Neither hostile, nor friendly; they merely stared. The sensible thing would have been to ask them where to find Miss Rowan and her boats, but their silence and their stares were unnerving. One of the dogs ran up and bared its yellow teeth at her. She reached the man she’d noticed standing on the stern. He wore a flat cap and a dark jacket with cord trousers and heavy boots, and his face was sharp as a weasel’s. He watched her with the same unreadable stare as the women, and in the same silence. As she passed him, he took the pipe out of his mouth and spat over the side of his boat.
    She came across the
Aquila
first, and a woman poked her head out of the cabin doors. She was youngish and wirily built, with short brown hair and wearing what looked like sailor’s serge trousers, a navy pea jacket and peaked cap.
    â€˜You’ll be one of my new trainees. Come aboard!’
    Frances scrambled clumsily over the side, hauling kitbag and bedding bundle after her.There was no real deck to speak of – just a small well at the stern which also accommodated a large wooden tiller and led to some kind of cabin.
    â€˜Come down backwards. It’s easier. Hand me your kit first, though. Thank God, you haven’t brought too much. Some of them bring trunks and there simply isn’t the room.’
    She lowered herself gingerly backwards into the cabin, cracking her head in the process.
    Miss Rowan was heaving her luggage onto a side bunk. ‘This is the butty cabin. It’s a bit bigger than the one on the motor because there’s no engine – that’s why I use it. I sleep on the cross-bed. You can have this one here, if you like. The other two trainees will have to go on the motor. First come, first served.’
    Frances rubbed her head, looking round. The gypsy caravan had been very similar but this was even smaller – no more than a few feet square, not much more than five feet high, and every inch put to use. The walls were lined from roof to floor with cupboards and stained with brown varnish. The cross-bed, breezily referred to, was invisible. Every shelf was crammed full, something hung on every hook and over every rail, and a miniature cooking stove was scorching her left trouser leg. But it was the brass that she noticed more than anything; it winked at her from every side. Brassknobs and handles and rails and hooks, and brass without any purpose other than to adorn – old horse brasses, old brass door handles and old brass bed knobs.
    â€˜It’s traditional,’ Miss Rowan said. ‘The boat people love their brass. So do I. You can put some of your stuff in that long cupboard above the bunk and there’s a locker underneath, as well as the little cupboard there at the end. Keep the space under it free, though, so you have somewhere to put your head at bedtime. While you’re getting yourself sorted out, I’ll make us a pot of tea.’
    Frances emptied the kitbag contents into the long cupboard and into the locker which was already partly occupied by a frying pan, tins of evaporated milk, sticks of firewood, a bottle of disinfectant, bars of soap, and what looked like a car battery. The small cupboard was useful for the oddments – her alarm clock, sponge bag, hairbrush and comb. Miss Rowan, meanwhile, had put the kettle on the stove, taken mugs off their hooks and lowered a hinged panel, revealing shelves stuffed with canisters and tins and an assortment of crockery.
    â€˜Our larder. I’m afraid the milk’s tinned. Do you have sugar? Take a pew on the coal box there.’
    She sat down on the lid of the coal box, whichdid double duty as a step. Miss Rowan had fixed the hinged panel so that it was propped on the edge of the side bunk.
    â€˜Our table.’ A spare plank of wood fitted neatly across the