Theo emerged from the cabin, stood next to Neila, squinted as the light swept his face.
“We’ll throw you a line,” continued the woman. “Fill our buckets. Then we open the gate.”
“No,” repeated Neila, calm and ready. “I won’t have enough to get to the next pump, and I can’t pay for more than what I’ve got.”
A shrug.
“We’ll turn back.”
“You’re going north.”
“We’ll turn back,” she repeated, resigned. “We’ll turn back.”
The woman on the bank hesitated, sensing a bluff to be called, uncertain where the cards lay. Then Theo said, “I was at Newton Bridge.”
The torch turned to his face, caught it in a tight circle of white. The figures on the bank were still, waiting.
“I served the queen. My name is Theo Miller. If she has a court…”
Silence in the darkness. Silence on the water.
“We’ll wait a little while,” he added, glancing at Neila for permission. “Then go back.”
Torches shone into their eyes.
Then three of the figures on the bank turned away and headed into the night.
Neila pushes the rudder this way and that.
Even the slow, tepid canal has energy, a life of its own. Take your eye off the current and you’ll drift, bump into walls, into locks, break against the ice she
holds the boat in the middle of the water and waits.
Theo brings her tea.
Holds her in his arms.
She puts her head on his shoulder.
Shivers a while in the cold, until she is a little warmer.
Holds them still, in the middle of the water.
Dawn pricked the eastern horizon with a hot needle of pinkish red.
The sun rose behind the low clouds, then emerged for a moment, glorious, between a band of low and high, before vanishing again into the greyness.
It started to snow.
Theo sat with one hand on the rudder, waiting, while Neila pretended to sleep inside the cabin.
After a while Theo realised that he too was sleeping, and jerked hard awake.
A man stood on the bank of the canal, flanked by a woman and another man. His skin was pale olive-brown, his eyes were flecked coffee, his hair was curly almond, exploding around his head. He stood bent to one side, favouring his left leg, and moved with a long, dragging limp. Wore oversized jogging trousers and a grey tracksuit top, and didn’t seem to feel the cold. He looked across the water at Theo and didn’t smile.
“So,” he grunted. “Still alive.”
They moored.
Theo stood on the back, and didn’t help with the ropes like he usually did, and put his hands in his pockets
then took them out
put them back
watched the man and the man watched him, and Theo was afraid.
Neila hesitated, but the momentum of the boat was already carrying them to the side, too late to turn back now. She watched Theo’s throat, the involuntary curling-in of his lips, the way he turned his gaze away at last, unable to meet the man’s eye, and thought for a moment, as she tied off, that Theo wasn’t even going to get off the narrowboat, but they’d be stood there in the cold freezing their…
Then he looked up.
Seemed to reach a decision.
Stepped off the boat.
The man in grey walked towards him slowly, stood before him, thought about the world for a moment, lips twisting as if they might smile, then dipping as if they would scowl.
Reached a decision, and punched Theo in the stomach, once, hard and precise, a short distance to send the blow but placed to cause pain, and as Theo buckled forward, he reached out and caught the smaller man by the hair, pulling his head back, so his body contorted like a lightning bolt, every part bending away.
Theo didn’t struggle or claw at his attacker.
For a moment they stood watching each other’s eyes, before with a shrug the man let go of Theo’s head and turned away, letting him fall to the ground to pull in breath. Neila moved forward quickly, caught him under the arm, whispered, “The wrench, or in the kitchen there’s…”
He shook his head.
Put his hand on hers, grateful, warm, squeezed once, stood up, bending over the pain, and followed the man in grey along the canal.
The two men walked a little distance away, then turned into the city.
Neila stood on the stern of her boat, and watched the woman who watched her.
After a while the woman got bored, and flicked dirt out from under her nails with the stub of a dried-up stalk.
Neila watched.
The woman finished.
Cracked the stalk in two.
Threw it away.
Sat on the long beam of the lock gate, waited.
The two women regarded each other as the snow thickened, and Neila was shivering, and so was the woman.
Then Neila said, “For fuck’s sake,” and went into the cabin, and put the kettle on, and made two cups of tea, and offered one to the woman. “Want a cuppa?”
The woman hesitated, then smiled, nodded and followed her inside.
“Ever had your fortune read?” Neila asked as the woman made a direct line for the heat of the stove. “I’ll get the cards.”
Three hours later, the man in grey and the man called Theo returned to the boat. Theo carried a bag containing two tins of tuna, one tin of peaches in sugary liquid, a bottle of flat lemonade, a toilet roll, a biscuit tin and an object wrapped in oiled cloth.
The man’s name was Corn. He joined them for supper and ate voraciously, and said almost nothing, except for once, when dinner was served.
“Blessed is her name, blessed are her hands upon the water, blessed is she the mother who gives life to the children in the mist, blessed are her hidden ways. Let the bars be broken let the journey end there is nothing at the end except darkness and the quiet place where all things fade amen.”
The words, a headlong chant, a habitual stream. The woman whispered a silent “Amen” as they finished, and they ate, and when they had finished Corn stood and shook Neila’s hand, and said, “Thank you,” and walked away, and the woman followed, and they slept the night by the side of the canal, and no one bothered them.
In the morning.
Theo opened up the object wrapped in cloth and said, “It’s… wrong… to have it on your boat and not tell you. Only half of the ammunition is live, the rest is blanks—it’s easier for… I’m sorry I brought it on without your permission but with Corn there it was difficult to explain why the…”
“I don’t want it on the boat. What happened, why is there…”
“I’ll go. I’ll go now and…”
“I don’t want it on my boat,” she repeated, knuckles white as she clung to the table.
“I’ll go.”
“Why do you have to have it?”
“To get my daughter back.”
“You’re going to kill… you’re going to kill someone.”
“You always knew what this was. You always knew. You always knew why I came here, you—I’m sorry, that’s unfair that’s making this… it’s not about… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…”
“Give me the gun.”
He gave her the gun.
She’d never held a gun before. She was surprised how heavy it was, how cold the barrel was in her hand. Theo watched it for a while then blurted, “There’s a woman. Her name is Heidi. She loves my daughter. She took her but she’s married to this man, he took her, took my daughter too, and Heidi, she said that they had to protect her but he only agreed in order to
Heidi never had a daughter, you see. She never had a daughter and now she’s got mine and that’s…”
Neila stood up without a word. Went to the back of the boat, turned on the engine, held the gun over the water and