Hambleden Marina was a private marina and boat yard that sat downstream of the weir at Hambleden Lock. Beverley says you can’t live on the river without coming to an accommodation with the powers that be – in this case, Father Thames.
‘Not that they necessarily know that’s what they’re doing,’ she said.
Apparently, most people thought the little rituals they performed – the occasional bottle of beer left out in a riverside garden, the champagne broken on the bow of a boat, the odd bit of bank work or rewilding done on an adjacent property – that these were harmless little superstitions. Others entered directly into a pact because the blessing of the Old Man of the River could raise wild flowers out of season and cause HSE inspectors and bank managers to let things slide until the business picks up.
Occasionally, late at night, I wonder whether this is true of Mama Thames and whether, perhaps, her blessing can make an old man kick his heroin habit and take up his trumpet again.
It is at times like that I remember the wisdom of my mother who once told me – ‘As yu mek yu bed, na so yu go lehdum par nam’. But she means it in a good way.
I figured the owner of Hambleden Marina must know what bed they’re climbing into. Because when the Summer Court of Father Thames moves in, it’s a little hard to ignore.
The Showmen had put in a token appearance, setting up a steam-powered merry-go-round with an authentic period automatic organ that some joker had programmed to play a medley of James Brown’s and Tina Turner’s greatest hits, and a couple of mini roundabouts and roller coasters to keep the kids happy. Behind them, on the field closest to the main road, were their caravans, motorhomes and horses. The marina proper was choked with boats, triple and quadruple parked in some places so that they stuck out into the channel like temporary piers. At the far end of the longest of these piers was a large boat that looked like someone had jammed an Edwardian tea pavilion onto a flat-bottomed barge and painted everything white and nautical blue. I didn’t need telling that this was the heart of the Summer Court.
A red-faced white man with mutton chop whiskers, a flat cap, a string vest, braces and cor blimey trousers directed us over to the parking area at the back of the caravans. By the time I’d slotted myself into a minuscule spot between a Toyota Land Cruiser and a Ford Fiesta that I’m pretty sure had once been two separate cars.
But at least by the time we’d squeezed out the car with the luggage, Beverley had turned up to help us carry it. One of the impromptu boat piers actually extended all the way out to a nameless islet that sat midstream and planks had been laid down to form a crude pontoon bridge. The little island was where the kids would pitch their tents and apparently me and Bev were going to guard the bridge, because halfway across she stopped to show off her home from home.
This turned out to be the Pride of Putney, a nine-metre traditional gentleman’s day boat built in the 1920s, with mahogany and brass fittings. Designed to motor rich people up and down the Thames, it had been refitted so that the bench seats in the aft passenger cabin could be rearranged to make a double bed. There was no internet or other electronics, which goes some way to explaining why Bev had been so vexed with me about her erstwhile sabbatical on the upper Thames.
‘Though I got used to it,’ she told me later. ‘Plus I quickly figured out which pubs and houses had free Wi-Fi.’
I threw my luggage into the boat and, while Bev and Abigail went to pick a site for the tent, I set off to find Oxley and pay my respects. This is important amongst the Genii Locorum, who like a bit of respect and are not above flooding your back garden to get it. Oxley, despite being Father Thames’s right-hand river deity, usually keeps a modest establishment, a tiny house in Chertsey and an old-fashioned caravan when on the road, but this time he had the second biggest boat.
It was a flat-bottomed, flat-roofed, clapboard sided, green painted shotgun-shack on a raft called the Queen of the Nile. Moored centrally so that Oxley could sit on the roof under an awning and be, if not the master of all he surveyed, then at least responsible for keeping the whole mad enterprise from flying apart. Given that we had that much in common, I probably shouldn’t have been so surprised that he gave me a hug when I joined him on the roof. He was a short wiry man with long arms that I suspect could have easily lifted me above his head.
‘Good timing,’ he said as I sat down next to him in a deckchair with Property of Merton College stamped across the faded stripes of its canvas back. Raindrops started to splat on the awning above us as the leading edge of the storm crossed the river and hit the marina. There were shrieks as adults ran for shelter and children ran in circles – a dog started barking.
From our perch it was easy to spot Beverley and Abigail scurrying along the pontoon bridge to the Pride of Putney. Beverley stopped while Abigail climbed inside, looked over at Oxley’s boat, spotted me, waved and then ducked inside, too.
‘Is that Peter?’ called Oxley’s wife Isis from below.
‘It is, my love,’ called Oxley.
‘Ask him if he wants tea.’
I said I did and then waited as Oxley was summoned down the stern ladder to help fetch it. Isis climbed up with the biscuits, which she placed on a folding table. She had an oval face, pale white skin and extraordinarily dark brown eyes. According to her and Oxley she had once been the notorious Mrs Freeman, aka Anna Maria de Burgh Coppinger, mistress and co-conspirator of the fraudulent Henry Ireland. As far as me and Postmartin could tell from the existing records, this was true. Which meant that she was supposed to have died in 1802. Which meant that it was possible that in some way she’d caught practical immortality from her husband. Something that Lady Ty didn’t think was possible.
The Doctors Vaughan and Walid wanted a tissue sample.
Something I didn’t think was practical.
There were only two deckchairs – Isis took her husband’s and motioned me back down into mine. When Oxley made it up the ladder with the tea tray he saw how things lay and sensibly sat cross-legged at his wife’s feet.
Isis gave ritual reassurance that drinking her tea and scoffing her Lidl custard creams would not bind me into perpetual servitude, and I duly ate and drank and was merry.
It began to bucket down, shrieks of annoyance and joy floating up from the marina around us.
I watched Oxley sitting in his faded blue Oasis T-shirt and frayed khaki chinos. The idea that he was born back in the ninth century seemed a little bit distant. But my biology teacher at school had been adamant that if you plucked an original Homo sapiens sapiens out of the Rift Valley and put him in a suit he could have walked in and taken a substitute RE class no problem.
I have a clear memory of me saying that would be a waste, since think about what he could tell us about being a caveman. But, you know, I’m not sure whether I actually did ask that or just wished I had.
Certainly I don’t remember getting an answer.
Anyone who’s taken statements from multiple witnesses to the same event will know how malleable memory is. And yet Oxley had been around for quite a lot of the period of my Key Stage 3 History Curriculum, and there were other Rivers who were even older.
‘You’re about twelve hundred years old, right?’ I said.
Oxley stared at me a moment before nodding slowly.
‘I should say something of that order,’ he said. ‘Now you come to mention it. But if it’s wisdom you’re after, you’re asking the wrong man.’