Free The Boat Girls by Margaret Mayhew Page A

further along the wharf: someone was playing an accordion and singing. Another boatman.
    A cold winter’s night, an’ I run by the light
    Of Waddington’s headlamp, the moon.
    The fore-end is boastin’ a thin skim of ice
    An’ I reckon ’twill thicken up soon
.
    The goin’ is slow and there’s two miles to go
    And the boozer there shuts in an hour
,
    But ’tis just the same way on a mornin
’
in May
    When the chestnut bloom’s in flower
.
    There were several more verses on the tribulations of narrowboat life, each finishing with the same refrain about the chestnut blooming. Her brain had stopped spinning, her senses were calmed. She lay quietly in the dark, listening.

Five
    THE GIRL SAID, ‘I’m not at all sure it’s going to suit me. I’ll have to see.’
    She had climbed into the same train carriage, carrying a heavy suitcase and a bulky roll of bedding which Prudence had helped her put up onto the overhead rack. Then she had plonked herself down on the seat opposite and started to munch a bun produced from a paper bag. She was a large girl with big hands and feet and a square jaw. Her name was Janet and she was a trainee as well, she announced, having spotted Prudence’s bedding also up on the rack. There were more buns in the bag, but she didn’t offer one. She went on talking through mouthfuls.
    â€˜I’ve been in two minds, haven’t you? I mean, how can they expect us to do men’s work? We won’t have the strength.’ From the way she’d carried the suitcase and the bedding, she seemed just as strong as a man. ‘I didn’t fancy any of theservices, you see, and I thought this might be a good idea, but now I’m not so sure. We have to work from dawn to dusk, you know. They don’t give us any time off until we’ve finished the first trip and, even then, we only get a few days’ holiday before we have to start the next one. I told the woman at the interview that we ought to get more days off but she just said it was the way it worked. I don’t know how they think we’ll cope, do you? And I’m not going to be put upon. I won’t stand for that.’
    She talked most of the way to Southall, devouring two more currant buns. Prudence soon learned that she had been a shorthand typist with a lace-making company in Nottingham, that she had an elder brother called Rodney who was at sea in the Merchant Navy, and that she lived with her widowed mother. Her mother had seen the advertisement about canal jobs for women in the
Nottingham Guardian
newspaper and thought it sounded quite nice, and that it would keep her out of the services.
    â€˜She didn’t want me getting called up, you see, and being preyed on by soldiers. A lot of service girls are immoral, she says, specially in the ATS.’
    Her mother had thought much the same, but Prudence couldn’t imagine soldiers preying on Janet who looked capable of taking care of herself.
    They arrived at Southall station to discover that the van which was supposed to meet them wasn’t there. Janet said she’d a good mind to go straight back home but, after twenty minutes or so, it turned up and took them to the depot of the Grand Union Canal Carrying Company at Bulls Bridge. A man in the office sent them to find a Miss Rowan and the training boats,
Aquila
and
Cetus.
    The boats, tied up in a long row along the wharf, were painted in lovely bright colours but the people on them were not so lovely. They stared in silence, and when Janet asked one old woman where Miss Rowan’s boats were she went on staring as though she’d been spoken to in a foreign language.
    Janet sniffed. In a loud voice she said, ‘Dirty gypsies. I hope we don’t have anything to do with them.’
    They found the boats eventually, but not Miss Rowan. Instead, another trainee called Frances appeared and said that she’d arrived the day before and that