‘I checked it out, it only gets really soft closer in,’ she said when I protested. ‘We don’t want to have to lug the boat any further than absolutely necessary. We’ll be all right from here.’
‘You’re the expert.’ Which she was. Annis could manoeuvre a Land Rover with dreamlike ease. Learnt it on a driving course somewhere.
Untying the tarpaulin in the rain was harder than tying it on, especially since my rope craft was nil. Those beautiful secure knots that untangle themselves when you pull on them were quite beyond me. My knots were the muttered-curses-and-broken-fingernail type. Everything took longer than expected, was more difficult, wetter, windier, colder. When eventually we managed to get the thing off the trailer the RIB proved spectacularly heavy. Fortunately dismounting the engine was easy. We first carried, then dragged the inflatable to the water’s edge, aiming for a dead-looking tree in the gloom. The river was in noisy spate; I had to use my torch to make sure we didn’t slither down the steep bank and pitch straight into its swirling waters. Launching the boat didn’t look to be at all easy. We were in the middle of a shouted discussion about it when the thing displayed a watery will of its own and launched itself, aided by the wind and me slipping in the mud. We both dived for the long trailing rope and managed to stop the boat from disappearing into the darkness. After we managed to tie it to a fallen branch of the dead tree we trudged back and got the engine. By the time we had carried it to the boat and mounted it again I was too wet, scratched, bruised and narked off to even complain about it and Annis was grimly quiet. She got the engine started easily and ran against the current while I untied the rope from the log and climbed back in.
As we turned away from the shore the current swiftly pushed us along into the wet darkness. The engine puttered bravely but at this stage was mainly used to provide steering. Any legitimate night traffic on this stretch of the Avon would run navigation lights of course, unlike us, but there was nobody out on the water. Not running navigation lights was the flotsam: the fallen branches, the wooden crates, the plastic dustbins blown into the river, some of which we bumped into on the dark water. It doesn’t take much to pierce the skin even of a RIB — what can inflate can deflate — but so far we were lucky. The current brought us downriver much faster than I had anticipated. The centre of town with its lights, police patrols and security cameras suddenly reared up out of the dark. If anything, the current speeded up. Now it was possible to see just how much debris the river was carrying downstream with us. The three arches of Pulteney Bridge loomed dark and low above us as we inexorably drifted towards it on the swollen river. The roar of the weir beyond echoed through them. The black water swirled and eddied, producing a wave against the mossy stone of the bridge. Not until it was nearly too late did I see that the right-hand arch for which we were aiming was blocked with a plug of massive branches and an assortment of flotsam.
‘Steer left, quickly, left!’ I shouted to Annis.
‘It’s called port!’ she shouted back irritably as we just missed colliding with the cutwater. We were speeding up alarmingly as the middle arch swallowed us. ‘Grab the chain or we’ll go over the weir, the current’s too strong.’
Leaning as far as I dared over the edge I managed to get my right hand on to one of the chains hanging from the masonry. I gripped one of the handholds on the rib hard as the drift tried to pull me out of the boat. I felt my joints pop but managed to stop us racing ahead.
‘I can’t hold this long,’ I shouted over the roar of the weir. Its thundering mouth seemed to be inches away. A plastic beer crate shot past us and seconds later disappeared into the swirling, sucking waters.
‘Well, you’ll just have to!’ Annis wiped strands of wet hair from her face with a gloved hand. ‘We’re pointing the wrong way, I need to run full throttle against the current to get us across to the other side. I’m not sure we can do it!’
‘I’ll let the boat turn round on the current, get ready for when I let go!’
First slowly, then rapidly as the current caught the starboard side, the boat swung round as I pushed. Annis opened the throttle further and further. ‘Let go!’
We slipped backwards, away from the bridge. As soon as we cleared the cutwater on the downstream side she opened the throttle all the way. The little engine strained and screamed. We were suspended in mid-stream, unmoving despite our bow wave. I refused to turn around and stare into the roaring waters behind us. Then, hardly perceptibly at first, with agonizing slowness, we began to make headway. But after only a few seconds of progress the boat slipped sideways, caught by a different current, and got pushed back several yards before Annis managed to bring it under control. Our engine was battling away, just ten yards or so from our objective, a rusty old landing stage and a set of iron steps that led up to the colonnaded walkway. Normally well above the waterline, it was in danger of becoming swamped.
‘Just aim for the wall, we can pull ourselves along!’ I had spotted a garland of cables running along the base of the walkway, just above the waterline.
Annis did as I asked and the slimy walls seemed to advance on us rapidly. We rammed inelegantly against the side and the manoeuvre had pushed us another few yards back, but with the engine going at full throttle and me pulling hand over fist we reached the landing stage after only a couple of minutes. I hastily tied the painter to the ironwork.
The plan had been for Annis to set me down, retreat and then return at my signal but it was obvious that it took both of us to land the boat. ‘I’ll be here!’ she assured me. ‘Just don’t be bloody ages. It only takes one copper with good eyesight to come along and look over the parapet and we’ve had it.’
She stopped me as I made to climb out, grabbed my face in both hands and kissed me goodbye. I ran up the steps, climbed over the little padlocked gate and moved along swiftly in the deep shadows of the walkway. I reached the slipway’s wrought-iron door and half unslung the rucksack. Subtlety costs time. I’d bought the biggest bolt cutter in the shop and made short work of the padlock. I flung it into the river, stowed the bolt cutter and moved into the slipway. It was dark down here in the narrow canyon into which the jetsam of Garfunkel’s cellars had spilled. Once I had negotiated the gas bottles, kegs and crates I arrived at the elevated end in front of another locked door. This one had its original lock, though well maintained and used, as I discovered when it surrendered to my picklocks after less than a minute.
The car park was cluttered with building materials, mobile toilets, a corrugated metal lockup, a portable shelter for the work gang and heaps of stuff under tarpaulins, all of it only dimly lit by the distant street lamps. I hugged the left side and peered through the porte cochère into Orange Grove. Not a soul to be seen. I hurried across the exposed expanse and gratefully slipped into the shadows at the foot of the scaffold. From the bottom to the top it was covered with pale blue tarpaulin, bleached of colour by the orange glow from the little street lighting that reached into this sea of grey. The scaffolding had swallowed both security cameras that used to cover the car park. Nobody had thought it worthwhile to have them repositioned while work was being carried out. Heads would roll. .