Merle, meanwhile, was not enjoying her enforced loneliness. She had known of course that she was growing increasingly fond of Lottie, and despite the fact that the other girl was a good deal younger than herself, she had begun to rely on Lottie’s common sense. She had kept her job at the bakery but dreaded the lonely walk to work through the dark streets, and after only two days was beginning to think that it was just too risky. She kept imagining herself being bludgeoned to death for whatever was in her pockets, and thought that though the money was good, no job was worth dying for.
On the third day of Lottie’s absence, she voiced her fears to Mrs Piggott, who was sympathetic. ‘A gal in your condition didn’t ought to work at all, certainly not at a job which involves heavy liftin’,’ she said. ‘Suppose you start giving birth to that baby on your walk to work . . . have you thought of that, eh? There must be other jobs you could do, just for the few weeks before the birth.’
‘Well, I’ll have a go at getting something a bit easier, something which would mean a tram ride in both directions,’ Merle said. ‘But I suppose I’ll have to work my week out, else I won’t have enough money for me rent.’
She had half hoped that this ingenuous remark might lead to Mrs Piggott’s offering to forgo the money Merle paid her, but though the older woman might sympathise Merle knew, really, that she was not a charitable institution.
Accordingly, next afternoon, when she finished work at the bakery, she did the rounds of small local shops, without success. Feeling horribly lonely and unwanted, she did not go back to Mrs Piggott’s house, but wandered down to the canal. Oh, if only she had gone with Lottie, how much happier she would have been! Of course there was the risk of being recognised in Liverpool, but that no longer seemed such a terrible thing. She could have kept out of sight, and if Lottie did find her gran, then surely the old woman would not grudge a place under her roof to Lottie’s friend? Then Merle remembered that Gran had a canal boat, which might mean she could bring the pair of them back to Leeds. Why on earth hadn’t she thought of that earlier? Lottie had promised to return to the city in time for the birth, so if she had thought of it before, they could both have gone to Liverpool on the
Lucky Lady
, helping out not only on the journey from Leeds, but also on the return trip.
There was one snag, however. They had managed to scrape up enough money to pay Mrs Piggott a retainer to keep Lottie’s bed free until the younger girl returned. But if she had lost both her lodgers, she might easily have been tempted to let their room to someone else . . . and of course their well-paid though hateful jobs in the bakery would have gone. She was pretty sure the firm could not do without two workers and would have to replace them, no matter how reluctantly.
Merle was still hanging around the canal quayside when she recognised a figure cleaning down the decking of a nearby barge. It was the woman who had introduced Lottie to Nat and the
Lucky Lady
. Impulsively, Merle approached her. ‘I dunno if you remember me, missus,’ she began, ‘but you telled my pal about a feller who needed help on the Leeds to Liverpool journey, ’cos his wife were in hospital . . .’
The woman beamed. ‘Course I remembers you, pet,’ she said. ‘But if you’re lookin’ to see your pal, she won’t be back for the best part of two weeks . . . no, I tell a lie, ’cos they’ve been gone four days so mebbe she’ll reach Leeds a bit sooner’n that. The old
Lucky Lady
ain’t a fly boat, you see . . . them’s the ones that travel by night as well as by day. Now if she’d ha’ took a job aboard a fly boat, she could ha’ been back much earlier.’
‘Oh, I see,’ Merle said rather dully. ‘I don’t suppose you know of another boat what’s short-handed?’ Even as she spoke the words, Merle wondered why on earth she had uttered them. She had good lodgings in Leeds, a friend in Mrs Piggott, and a hospital bed booked for when her labour started. What was more, she did not imagine anyone would want to take on a helper who might give birth at any moment. She grinned apologetically at Betsy. ‘Sorry, sorry, I know the answer to that one. The thing is, I’m missin’ me pal and I’m in a job which starts at three in the morning so I can’t catch a bus or a tram, but have to walk. It weren’t too bad when there were the two of us, but to tell the truth I don’t know as I can stick it much longer only – only I need the money and – and . . .’
To her horror, Merle heard her voice begin to wobble and felt tears brim into her eyes and trickle down her cheeks. She half turned away, reluctant to let the woman see how upset she had become, but Betsy stepped ponderously down from the deck of her boat and flung an enormous arm round Merle’s trembling shoulders.
‘Look, we’ve lost four days already – engine trouble – but we’re headin’ for the Liverpool docks with a cargo of general merchandise. Maud – that’s me daughter – has gone ashore to get some grub what we’re short of, but she’ll be back in mebbe ten, fifteen minutes, and then we’ll set out. Maud and me share the main cabin but if you don’t mind squeezin’ into the little rear one, you’re welcome to a ride up to Liverpool. And if that baby comes betimes, well, I’ve helped many a woman what’s misjudged her time to give birth, so I dare say you could be in worse hands than old Betsy’s.’
Merle could not believe her luck and was stammering her thanks when she suddenly remembered that she had given notice neither to her landlady nor to her employer, and that there was money owing. She hesitated, but only for a moment. Oh, the sheer joy of meeting up with Lottie again . . . perhaps she might even see Baz, tell him she still loved him, ask him if he had missed her. Quickly, before she could change her mind, she went aboard the barge, which she now saw was called the
Wanderer
. ‘Thank you ever so much, Betsy. I’ll come as I am,’ she said. ‘Only I’ll have to write a quick note for me landlady because she’s been awful good to us. I – I suppose you’ve not got a piece of paper and a pencil you could loan me?’
Pencil and paper forthcoming, Merle scribbled a short explanatory note, fished a penny out of her pocket, and wrote Mrs Piggott’s name and address on the other side of the paper. Then she beckoned to a small and very dirty boy who was hanging around on the quay. ‘Will you take this note round to the address on the back?’ she enquired. ‘I’ll give you a penny . . . no, tuppence . . . if you’ll take it straight away.’
The boy hung back, his expression rueful. ‘I can’t read, missus,’ he said huskily. ‘But if you tell me the address, I’ll go straight round.’
Merle was happy to do so and saw the urchin off with a lightening of the heart, for she liked Mrs Piggott and had no wish to cause her anxiety.
She had barely returned to the barge when a young woman crossed the quayside and stepped aboard, staring very hard at Merle as she did so. ‘Who are you?’ she asked gruffly. ‘And where’s me mam?’
‘Me name’s Merle and your mam’s gone below to brew a pot of tea,’ Merle said shyly. ‘I guess you’re Maud. Your mam’s offered me a ride back to Liverpool so if there’s anything I can do to help, please tell me and if I can do it, I will.’
By the time the
Lucky Lady
reached the Appley Locks, Nat and Lottie were working as a team; indeed, Nat told his young friend that anyone would think she had been born to working a canal barge.
‘Well I was in a way,’ Lottie said as the big wooden doors of the last lock swung shut behind them. ‘I know I was only a kid at the time, but even quite small kids can deal with the locks once they’re strong enough to turn the key. And haven’t we been lucky with the weather these past couple of days? Constant sunshine and not a drop of rain, and wild flowers bursting into bloom everywhere. It makes the work much easier when the weather’s good, doesn’t it?’
Nat agreed that this was so, adding that spring was a good time to bring a baby into the world. ‘I shall buy Mrs Trett a big bunch of lilac before we reach Liverpool; she’s mortal fond o’ the scent,’ he added. ‘She puts it on the middle of the table when we’re havin’ a meal, and in the window when we ain’t, so folk can see it as they pass along the towpath. Of course I’ll have to pay for it, but I don’t grudge it. By ’eck, there’s nothin’ like a wife goin’ off for a few days to mek her husband ’preciate her.’
This made Lottie laugh as she pointed out that Mrs Trett could scarcely have been accused of ‘going off’, but Nat, though he joined in her laughter, said that for whatever cause, he and his missus had never been parted before and he sincerely hoped that it would be a good while before they were parted again.
‘Don’t you fancy a large family then?’ Lottie asked. ‘I should have thought it was a case of the more the merrier.’
Nat shook his head. ‘That’s not for me and the missus; too many mouths to feed and not enough space,’ he said decidedly. ‘Two kids would be just fine with say a couple o’ years between them.’ He jerked his chin at the shore along which they were passing. ‘This here’s Parbold; nice little village. If you’re carryin’ grain and want it ground into flour, there’s a windmill in Parbold what does a grand job, and a bit further on there’s the Ring o’ Bells pub. The landlady there’s got a fine bit o’ garden and I reckon she’ll sell me a big bunch o’ lilac; there’s a tree grows close to her back door, so we’ll stop off for half an hour or so.’
This seemed like a good idea to Lottie, though she warned her companion that he might well meet someone who would tell him of the arrival of his new son or daughter. Nat had confided, as they passed through Wigan, that he did not mean to let anyone tell him the news but would hear it for the first time from his wife’s lips. ‘I ain’t a superstitious man but I reckon it’ud be bad luck to get the word from anyone but the missus,’ he said, looking shyly at Lottie. ‘So if you’d not mind visitin’ the Ring o’ Bells an’ buyin’ the lilac for me, I’d be rare obliged. I’ll moor up just afore the junction and stay in the cabin while you run back to the pub.’
Lottie agreed to do this, though she could not help wondering how they would manage to get all the way from the junction to the canal basin down by the Stanley Dock without meeting someone who knew Nat and would holler out any news he had acquired. This was a particularly busy stretch of the canal, with villages almost running into one another, so the risk was obviously great. When she put this theory to Nat, however, he grinned but shook his head. ‘The missus is in a maternity hospital a fair way from the canal, and unless another bargee’s wife is in the family way no one’s likely to go a-visiting. Her pains came on her sudden an’ I had a deal o’ goods to deliver, so there ain’t more than half a dozen folk at most who know where she is right now.’
He had been at the tiller whilst Lottie alternately led George – who did not need any help since he knew every inch of the towpath – or nipped down to the cabin where she was preparing their evening meal. As she emerged, her face flushed from bending over the cooking pot, Nat pointed ahead. ‘Here’s Burscough coming up,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Burscough is a real bargee village. It’s a grand little place and the cottages an’ houses crowd all along the canal, so when a feller and his wife want to retire it’s usually to Burscough that they come. Many o’ these houses have been in the same family for years and years, passed down from father to son like, when the pa’s too old to handle the barge no more, and the son’s eager to tek over. My old dad lives a bit further along and normally we’d stop off for a cuppa and a chat, but I dursen’t do that in case he’s had news from my missus. So if he’s about, I’ll just give him a wave as we go by.’
‘Won’t he be hurt and think you’re avoiding him?’ Lottie suggested. ‘After all, we’re a fair way from Liverpool still, so why should he know any more than anyone else?’
Nat shrugged. ‘Likely you’re right, but I don’t mean to chance it. That there’s his house, the one wi’ the red-painted shutters. See?’
Lottie saw the house and at the same moment, as Nat steered the barge into midstream and turned his face somewhat ostentatiously away from the houses beside the towpath, she saw something else: a woman, hurrying away from the canal, head down, walking fast for someone clearly not in the first flush of youth.
Lottie knew her at once, without the shadow of a doubt, knew the shape of her, the way she walked . . . Even her clothes, a heavy black skirt and a maroon blouse, with a patched grey shawl flung across her shoulders, were as familiar to Lottie as the back of her own hand. She shrieked: ‘Gran! Oh, Gran, it’s me, Sassy! Wait . . . I’m coming!’
And before she had thought, she had jumped, jumped clear across the widening stretch of water which separated her from the towpath. She might have made it, landed safely, but behind her Nat shouted in alarm and before her the old lady took absolutely no notice, but continued on her way. Lottie turned her head to tell Nat that it was her gran, her own gran, that she would know the old lady anywhere, and as she did so her feet grazed the bank, failed to land squarely, and she plunged into the water, striking her head sharply on a mooring post, scarcely feeling the pain of the blow or the coldness of the water. Her last thought was that she must not give way to the swirling darkness which encompassed her; she had seen Gran! She must . . . she must . . . and Lottie lost consciousness.
She came round muzzily to find herself back in the dream. She was being rocked in a reed cradle and a woman was bending over her, brown-faced, brown-eyed, with a fine beak of a nose and a wide generous mouth. A roughened hand stroked down the side of Lottie’s cheek, then smoothed back the hair which draggled across her forehead. ‘Gran?’ Lottie said thickly, and was surprised to find that she could talk, that she was not a baby in a reed basket as she had supposed. ‘Oh, Gran, I do love you so, and I never meant . . . I never would have . . . I’d have come back like I promised only I was knocked down by a bus an’ lost me memory. I didn’t know who I was, or where, or why.’