Narrow Margins (19 page)

Well, quite frankly, the guy went loopy.

‘What the f**k do you think you are doing?' he screamed, leaping up from his little stool-type box thing and beginning to literally dance with rage. Now I had read about this in books but always thought it was a literary plot device, but obviously not – this guy was really ‘dancing'. OK, he wasn't about to be drafted into the hallowed lines of
Hot Gossip
but he could have definitely been put to music. It certainly didn't help that he was wearing an all-in-one purple waterproof suit thingy so the whole scene looked very similar to a disco dancing, angry, purple Teletubby on ‘E'. I was having serious problems keeping a straight face.

‘We're mooring,' I shouted to him. ‘We did tell you we were coming in, but either you didn't hear us or ...' I let the sentence trail off, as the only other choice was to tell him that he was an ignorant bastard and even though I felt that would add fuel to his Teletubby dancing, I didn't feel I had the moral fibre to be responsible for someone having an aneurism first thing on a Saturday morning.

‘You can't just pull a boat in here, you stupid bitch,' he screamed, stamping his way down the mooring toward me. ‘You've just squashed my net.' He stamped past Geoff, who was still holding the boat off the wall with his body, and came toward me with one fist raised.

I watched him come down the boat, pure aggression in motion – even if it was purple and ridiculous motion – and had a momentary indecision. If I backed off and apologised, would he feel he had the upper hand and carry on with the aggression or would he calm down?

‘Look, I'm sorry about this,' I shouted down to him. ‘We did tell you we were coming in and your nets are fine, the boat hasn't touched them.' I pointed to Geoff who was in danger of disappearing into the river, and waited to see if he would calm down a little.

No. He just got redder in the face (ick, blood-red really clashes with purple – he now resembled an overweight teenage blueberry with an acne problem).

‘You stupid, fat bitch' (hey, I'm NOT fat), ‘nobody has the right of way here.' (Wrong, actually, this is a mooring and if he had bothered to read his fishing licence – if he had one – he would have noticed that boats have right of way for moorings.)

OK, the guy was spoiling for a fight and he obviously felt that I was an easy target; time to bring out feisty grrrl again.

‘Listen, I'm sorry if we have squashed your nets, which we haven't. I'm sorry if you decided to ignore us when we said we were coming in. I'm sorry you decided to sit in the middle of 100 foot of mooring like king shit. I'm sorry we won't acknowledge you, Lord of the River. But we're here, we're moored where we should be, and it's
you
who's in the wrong – now get lost. We will move her back in the spirit of cooperation but we're not leaving.'

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed, with a huge sense of relief, that Geoff had moved the guy's nets, had fastened Happy's front ropes to one of the rings and was now walking towards us. Mr Purple Teletubby also noticed this and began to back away, shouting as he went, ‘Spirit of cooperation? I think we are well past that. I was having a lovely day until you turned up, you stupid bitch. I don't want to fish any more.' And with that last ringing, adult rejoinder he turned and stamped past Geoff back toward his equipment – his undamaged equipment. Geoff and I looked at each other and got on with tying the boat up.

All was quiet for about five minutes until Geoff went inside to look for his coat. Mr Tubby looked up and, noticing that I was on my own again, stamped back up the length of the boat to have another go. Seeing him coming, I nonchalantly stepped back on to the back plate and opened the back doors.

‘Nobody has right of way here, you stupid cow. Anglers or boats – we are all equal you can't just pull in and push people out of the way.'

His voice was rising and so was my temper. It was so obvious that he had deliberately waited until he could have a go at me without Geoff there and I was absolutely damned if I was going to let some puffed-up (literally), middle-aged banker think I was an easy target just because I was female.

For each one of my children I have always had the same advice: violence proves nothing, shouting, screaming and swearing does no good, there is nothing that cannot be solved by quiet conversation and a little give and take on both sides.

Right, good advice. Well it would have been if I had taken it, but all that went out of the window completely. We stood there and screamed at each other like a couple of fishwives, with much swearing on both sides I am sad to admit, about the rights and the bylaws, and the fact that he was in the middle of a huge mooring and wouldn't move and that I was a stupid bitch. Eventually I gave up. He just kept repeating the same boring insults, I was called a stupid, f**king bitch so many times that I even considered suggesting some more interesting insults for him to use.

This carried on, to the vast amusement of a growing audience, until Geoff stuck his head out of the back of the boat and, as expected, Mr Tubby put his head down and scurried off with his parting shot: ‘Oh I'm not discussing this, you've ruined my day.'

Geoff made sure he hung around me and kept a firm eye on Mr Tubby as he stamped about packing his kit up and complaining loudly about horrid, nasty boat people, to anyone that would give him half an ear. I did notice that none of the other anglers had come to his defence, but were all sitting, very quietly, as far away as possible.

By now it was past midday and, unable to put it off any longer, I grabbed Sam and steeled myself to walk past the still ranting angler on my way to the supermarket, which had been the original reason for the stop here.

Geoff and I agreed that he would stay with the boat – not that we really expected Mr Tubby to do anything to it in such a public place, but better safe than sorry. Sam and I put on our coats and, taking another deep breath and Sam's hand, I prepared to walk past the angler, as he, very slowly, packed up his equipment.

He looked up as I approached and opened his mouth, but I got in first. Very quietly and with as much dignity as possible, I explained, ‘I'm not going to discuss this any more, and certainly not in front of my son.'

The deep colour crept up his face again.

‘Your son should know what type of person you are; you are a stupid, inconsiderate bitch ...'

I grabbed Sam's hand and firmly walked away from the now almost apoplectic angler, knowing that he would stop screaming as soon as he noticed Geoff walking toward him, and, sure enough, as he spotted him stepping off the boat, he grabbed the last of his kit and scuttled away.

Unfortunately the car he was loading it into was parked just past us. I slowed in indecision for a moment. I really didn't want to break into a run in an attempt to get around the corner and away from another confrontation; it would look stupid and would frighten a small boy. Sam, as helpful as ever, decided at this point that he didn't want to go shopping and grabbed the step rails of the local pub, which he held onto with a death grip, bringing us to a complete halt, and allowing Mr Tubby to catch up.

Deciding that I really couldn't deal with another stupid screaming match, I ignored him completely and bent down to explain things to Sam, as Mr Tubby stamped past. He deliberately allowed his fishing box to swing round and hit me on the back of the head. There were a couple of men sitting in the small beer garden, boaters, from the look of them (they are the only type of people who would sit in a beer garden in minus-degree temperatures) and while one shouted ‘Hey' at the retreating Mr Tubby, the other stood up, raising his eyebrows at me, but I just shook my head, asking him to let it go and mouthing, ‘Thanks, but no.' The last thing I wanted was a Western-style punch-up between boaters and anglers, ranging across the packed Saturday morning riverfront of Ely; that sort of escapade didn't even bear thinking about.

Finally disengaging Sam from the steps, we stood together, watching, while Mr Tubby backed his car angrily on to the road and powered away. I wondered if he knew how close he came to being thrown into the river.

I would like to think that he had a blow-out on the way home and ended up in a ditch, or his engine exploded, or that he was a miserable little misogynist that still lived with an overbearing and man-hating mother who blamed him for her husband leaving, but I know that life isn't that kind. He was probably the accountant for a large company and suffered from stress. Whatever he was, I hoped he wasn't married – I would have to feel really sorry for his wife.

For the next couple of weeks I was worried that we would run into him again, but he obviously felt that fishing elsewhere would be a good idea. Personally, I agreed with him totally.

Chapter Twenty-one
Why is the Rum, Ahem, Money Always Gone?

B
Y THE BEGINNING OF
March, we were still making slow but steady headway on the refurbishment. We had purchased that last large item, which was a much-needed set of kitchen units, but, in doing so, had spent the last of our money. The new kitchen was proving more than a little challenging to fit, due to the curved walls, the diesel lines and many other little problems that wouldn't have occurred if we had been attempting to fit it into a nice square room.

We had argued about the kitchen for weeks, changing the design, even at one point changing the location, until, finally, we decided on a plan that neither of us was entirely happy with but that was as good a compromise as we were likely to get.

This purchase put us firmly in the red and, knowing what the outcome would be, I had been trying to avoid any sort of ‘money' discussion for weeks, until one evening Geoff physically sat me down and said, ‘We're out of money. We can exist for about another two months but after that we are totally stuffed.'

Great, ‘stuffed' again. Obviously this was one problem that wasn't going to go away by ignoring it. I knew it was going to have to be me that went back to work, but I was completely adamant that I was, under no circumstances, going to resume my former position as a contract Helpdesk Manager; the whole prospect, with its huge amount of paperwork and long hours was just too horrible to contemplate. I did, however, have everyday skills such as typing and office admin that would get me a nondescript position that would just keep our heads above water until the boat was finished, and Geoff could go back to work.

The other reason it had to be me was that Geoff didn't damage himself when using power tools, which was something I did with alarming regularity, much to Geoff's horror whenever he saw me pick up a drill or a sander. The idea of me using a circular saw was just anathema to us both.

On one memorable occasion I had been using the drill with a sanding brush wire thingy on the end to clean pipes and had somehow missed, and the sanding brush had entwined itself into my sock and most of the way into my shin before Geoff rushed up and hit the off button. (I have been handed manual sandpaper ever since and I don't think he was convinced I was actually safe with that.)

One week later, I had a job. Manpower, one of the employment agencies in Cambridge, had found me the perfect position; they had taken one look at me and sent me for an interview just outside Ely. It was a great job, well actually it was a really rubbish job, but it suited me down to the ground: a small maintenance company had opened a satellite office and there was only me and one other woman, Bev, working there – she was as acidic as they come – but we got on well. After such a long time of really doing ‘not a lot', it was very odd to be back at work again, odd but rather nice. All I had to do was chase gas engineers about and dish out jobs to them, making sure that all the details were entered into the company's antiquated computer system.

Bev didn't really care what time I got in or if I came in early and went home early, as long as the work was done, so we were both happy. With a regular source of money finally arriving in our bank account every month, we could relax a little and spend the last of our savings on things that the boat needed and not on the tedious business of actually staying alive.

By the end of April, the kitchen was definitely taking up space – I would like to say it was completed but we were still missing the worktops, which made cooking a meal rather difficult. The worktops had, in fact, been installed once but Geoff had made a slight miscalculation and had cut the hole for the sink in the wrong place, so new worktops were required. These, of course, were out of stock so we had to wait. Yet again, we lived on takeaways for a couple of weeks.

When the kitchen was finally complete, the last item to be installed was the water purifier, which dispensed water via a third tap at the kitchen sink – real, clean drinking water; after months of living on bottled water – it was the luxury I was most looking forward to. When it was finally flushed through and ready to be used, we all lined up with glasses. I was reminded of a bunch of excited youngsters and their first taste of alcohol. It was an amazing feeling to just press a button and have real drinkable water flow into a glass – fantastic.

I now know why boat people are so different to your average Joe living in a house; it's because the things that are so normal to Joe are a source of wonder and amazement to us.

‘Water! Water from a tap!'

‘Yeah, how cool is that!'

Good grief, we're back in the Stone Age, next we'd be saying what a wonderful invention the wheel was.

It had been so long since we tried to cook on the horrible hob that we had completely forgotten how noisy and awful the stupid thing was, and it came as a crashing disappointment to be reminded in such an audible way. We turned it on and a whole minute might have actually elapsed before we had to turn it off and vacate the kitchen until it had whimpered itself into silence again. Geoff sighed, grabbed his tool kit, dug the wretched contraption out of the worktop and, with the look of a man on a mission, disconnected it from both electrical connection and diesel feed before proceeding to strip the despised thing down to its component nuts and bolts. He figured that, as we couldn't use it in its current state, there was nothing to lose and we would probably have to buy another one anyway.

There is something quite endearing about a very, very smug husband. A couple of hours later, he had worked out that one particular widget, component thingy had been put in back to front. He had taken it out, turned it around, cleaned everything up and re-installed the hob back into the work surface. He turned it on and we stood and watched it light and heat up, all in blessed silence.

I had to remember to be extra nice to hubby for the next 24 hours and make sure that I kept telling him what a clever lad he was, especially as a new hob and installation would have cost us well over £500. What with all the savings and Geoff in a great mood, probably due to being able to wrap himself round one of my speciality triple-decker, fully fried egg and bacon sarnies, something he hadn't been able to indulge in for over six months. I felt entirely justified in buying a celebratory pair of boots the next day (they were in the sale and too good a bargain to miss out on – honestly), so everybody was happy.