The Narrowboat Girl Read Online Free PDF

gradually turned into, ‘Oh yes, Norman , no, Norman,’ as Flo recognized a chance if ever she saw one. Mr Griffin was going to sit holding a cup of tea in those pudgy, freckled hands and tell them he was going to marry their mom. And he would say it in that wheedling, smarmy voice which made Maryann want to be sick all over his shiny shoes.
    She knew this as clearly as anything, because as his visits had become more frequent, Norman Griffin had come making hints and promises.
    ‘You’re a good woman, Mrs Nelson, showing such kindness to a poor old widower like me. You shouldn’t ’ave to spend the rest of your days slaving away on yer own . . .’ ‘Nice little family you’ve got ’ere, Mrs Nelson – you need someone to take care of yer . . .’ And gradually, ‘You want to get yourself wed again, Flo – the factory’s no place for a fine woman like you . . .’
    Late in the summer, when a reasonable period of mourning was seen to have passed, and Flo had wept and worried and worked so hard in the brassware factory she had turned scrawny, she started going out for the odd walk with Mr Griffin on a Sunday afternoon, returning with flushed cheeks and a hard, determined look in her eyes.
    When he came to the house Maryann tried to avoid even looking at him. She hated him being there and refused to speak to him unless forced to. Sal was more biddable. She missed her father but brushed out her long, pale hair on a Sunday, made tea and was polite. Maryann pulled hideous faces behind his back and dropped dust and dead ants in his tea, reduced to being childish by her powerlessness over the situation. She missed her dad with a terrible ache in her that never seemed to get any less.
    She kicked at a rotten piece of wood on the pavement and it skittered into the gutter. She bent over and spat on it. ‘Norman! Bloody sodding Norman !’ She stamped and spat until tears ran down her cheeks.
    Walking on, wiping her eyes, she crossed over the railway and went along to the spot where there was a hole in the fence and she could get down to the cut, scrambling down through scrubby bushes and alongside the wall of a warehouse on to the path. Down here it felt even more cold and utterly still. Fog hung thickly over the canal so that she could see only a few yards ahead: the factories, chimneys and warehouses were all shrouded in the saturated air. The place felt completely deserted. It was Christmas of course, and she saw the water of the canal was frozen over. Near where she was standing a stick poked up, frozen in at an angle, black against the grey ice. She walked along the path in the eerie whiteness, in towards the middle of Birmingham, over a little humpbacked bridge and past the Borax Works towards the wharves at Gas Street. Ahead of her she could just see the ghostly shapes of the wharf buildings and in front of them two rows of joeys, the boats which mainly did journeys of a day there and back. They were tethered shoulder to shoulder along the Worcester Bar. As she moved closer, she became aware of a sound coming to her intermittently through the fog. She wasn’t alone down here then. Someone was coughing, a laboured sound which went on and on.
    Then she saw him, on the path in front of her, close to a boat which was tied by the bank. He was bent over, coughing from drenched-sounding lungs and struggling for breath. At first she assumed he was an old man, but as she approached, intimidated, yet somehow fascinated as well, she saw this was not so. He was quite unaware that she was there because he had to submit completely to the process of coughing and this made him seem somehow vulnerable. Maryann was also drawn by the look of him. He had a thick head of curls and a beard, all deep auburn, which appeared to glow in the greyness of the fog like a sanctuary lamp in a church, and he was clad in thick, brown corduroy trousers and heavy boots, and a thick jumper with a worn, black worsted jacket over the top and a muffler at