The smallest dog she had ever seen, very scrawny and dirty, was yelping in the entrance to the far lane.
Jonathan had slowed Heartsease down, but even so the tug was almost at the bridge, and there was no way for Margaret to cross and finish her job. She was turning Scrub towards the bitter water, nerving herself for the shock of cold, when she looked up the canal and saw her cousin gesticulating in the wheelhouse — he had another plan, and he didn’t want them to swim.
His hand moved to the big brass signal lever and pulled it right over. The tug surged on for a second, and then there was a boiling of yellow water beneath the stern as the propeller went into reverse. Heartsease suddenly sat differently, slowed, wavered and was barely moving, drifting through the water, nudging with a mild thud against the concrete pier on Margaret’s side of the gap. The bridges were still high at this end of the canal, because the surrounding land was high: it was only the mast and the funnel which wouldn’t slide under. Delicately, with short bursts of power from the propeller, Jonathan sidled round the projecting arm, just scraping the corner of the wheelhouse as they went past. Once through, he opened the wheelhouse door to lean back and watch the oily smoke fade as Heartsease settled down to her six-knot puff-puff-puff.
“Sorry!” shouted Margaret. “I was too frightened to think.”
“Not surprised,” he shouted back. “But it looked funny from here — you two great animals routed by that little rat of a dog. Couldn’t you lean down and turn the handles from the saddle?”
“No. They’re too low. How far is it to the next bridge? Scrub doesn’t understand about maps — the flapping makes him nervous.”
“Half a mile. Then a mile and a half to the one after. Get ahead and come up to that one carefully, just trotting along. There used to be an inn there, and more folk’ll be about by now.”
The next bridge opened from the right side and no one barked or shouted at her. Then came the stretch of bad towpath, all muddy hummocks, so she took to the fields and cantered along on the wrong side of the hedge, wondering why the canal wasn’t all in that kind of condition. The answer came to her at once, as she pictured the boiling khaki wake behind Heartsease. No ships had been using the canal for five years, so the water had barely moved; it had been when large engines had churned the surface about that the banks had needed constant looking after.
As she came up towards Sellers Bridge and the inn beside it, she settled Scrub to his easiest trot, and made sure that there was a square of red cloth loose at the top of her saddlebag.
She remembered the pub from her first exploration — a large, white, square building with broken windows. It hadn’t looked as if anyone lived there, but she slowed to a casual trot as a gentle curve brought the bridge into view. The whole narrow world — the world between the enclosing banks of the canal — seemed empty of people, but who could say what enemies mightn’t be about beyond them? As she wound at the handle she felt the blank windows of the ruined inn watching her, she felt the vast silence of the Vale listening like a spy to the slow clack of the cogs beneath her. This bridge was slightly different from the others: even though it opened from the “good” end, it turned on a pivot so that when it was open she was left with an awkward leap down to the bank. She decided it was safer to close it, but by the time she had watched Heartsease pass and had cranked the bridge shut she was shivery and sweating.
The next bridge was already open, and now the land fell away on either side of her so that she could feel the teeth of the wind out of Wales —and the banks would no longer hide the tug. Now they would be parading their wicked engine before all the watching Vale, twenty miles wide. At the bridge after that all went well, though it opened from the wrong side, but as Margaret was cantering on she heard a shrill cry and looked back to see a woman brandishing a saucepan while an arthritic old man hobbled away down the lane — for help, probably, for somebody young and strong to pursue them. Margaret bent over Scrub’s neck and let him stretch to a full gallop; she was sure they
could outrun any pursuit, provided they weren’t halted in their flight. Hungry, she felt into her saddlebag as soon as they were past the tug, and found a hunk of Rosie’s bread to gnaw.
It was two miles to the next bridge, a flimsy affair for foot traffic, where the canal crossed the narrow little barge canal from Stroud, all reeded and silted. Then a short stretch to Sandfield Bridge, which opened from the “good” side; then nearly a mile more to the bridge between Frampton and Saul. That one lay amid brooding woods which screened the next expanse of country, and it was already open. Frampton, she remembered, lay only a furlong from the canal, and beyond the woods was a long straightaway through windswept and shelterless country; so, as she was now well ahead of the tug, she took Scrub down the embankment, dismounted and led him along by the overgrown gardens of Saul Lodge. The canal here ran ten feet higher than the land. She was completely under cover as she walked below the stretching arms of the pine trees to a point, thirty yards on, where the curve was finished and she could climb up again until only her head showed as she spied out the long straightaway.
For five endless seconds she peered round a clump of withered nettle stems.
Then she had wrenched the startled pony round and was running back along the awkward slope. Up onto the path the moment it might be safe; into the saddle; galloping back and reaching at the same moment for the square of red cloth. Heartsease was only fifty yards the other side of the open bridge; desperately she waved her danger signal.
The water creamed under the stern as the propeller clawed at it to slow the tug down, but already they were through the bridge and Margaret could see that the momentum would take the tug round the curve before she could be stopped. Jo twirled the wheel and the bow swung towards the towpath; two seconds later it slid into the bank with a horrid thud. She jumped from her pony and ran along the path, but before she came to the place the still-churning engine had lugged the boat out into midstream again. Jonathan moved the lever to the stop position and opened the wheelhouse door.
“I hope that was worth it,” he called.
“Oh, Jo, we’re done for! Come and see! Can you turn the engine off without making smoke?”
He fiddled with the lever and the wheel, so that a quick spasm of power sucked Heartsease backwards to lie against the bank. Margaret caught the rope he threw and tied it to a thornbush; he scuttled down the engine room hatch, and almost at once the puff-puff-puff from the funnel died away. Lucy came up behind him, her face all mottled with oil and dirt, but stayed on the deck while he leaped ashore. Caesar fidgeted with his tether in the stern.
Margaret led Jonathan along under the embankment. The children peered again round the hissing nettle stems, down the mile-long line of water which rippled grayly in the sharp wind, to where Splatt Bridge sat across the dismal surface like a black barricade.
There were people on the bridge, about a dozen of
them, tiny with distance but clearly visible in the wide light of the estuary. Above them rose a spindly framework with a hunched blob in the middle.
“What on earth have they got there?” said Jonathan. “Mr. Gordon’s litter.”
VIII
THERE was no mistaking it. The freshening northwester had cleared every trace of haze from the fawn and silver landscape.
“Bother,” said Jonathan. “It’s strange how you never expect other people to be as clever as you are yourself.” He spoke in an ordinary voice, but looking at him Margaret could see the hope and excitement fading in his eyes as the colors fade from a drying seashell.