Chapter 17A: Aboard Traveller

Abba

I slept deeply. It was dark by the time I was awakened. It was strange. I had drifted into that dream again. The dream was so realistic that at first I was sure that it was six months earlier and I was back in college.

In that limbo time between sleep and full wakefulness, I slowly began to re-orientate myself and remember where I was. With a vivid understanding I also knew that Marcella had been cheating on me for months with that big lump; Shit. At one time the knowledge of that would have been devastating but why should I bother thinking about Marcie now? All the memories served to do was put my present life into perspective. Marcie was irrelevant and unimportant. What was important was the well-being of the young Victoria. What was also imperative was that I look after Kari and of course, Sarita.

For some minutes I lay there, 'life is good', I thought. 'Make the most of what you have ', a few other little anecdotes like that came to mind. It was time to concentrate on the facts of living.

The surroundings were so much warmer now throughout the vessel. Still in outdoor clothing, I was sweltering. Sarita had arrived and was talking to me about Victoria as if I had been awake. "She's coming out of it but she's in a lot of discomfort. I'm giving her some more painkillers. Assuming I was getting up, she continued, "You and I, in a short time, we need to talk."

As I struggled dozily to my feet she stayed there a few moments sorting through her medicaments. She always appeared to doing that. Was it something like others use worry beads?

Passing the tiny laundry there was nothing left to put through the washer. On the wall next to a thermostat I saw a thermometer, '22 degrees*'. "Phew!" I also observed, "Someone's put through the last of the washing and tidied up."

"Yes, it's all done," remarked Kari from the far side of the main cabin. As I approached, she sniffed, quite emphatically, "You, a shower, as soon as the washer's finished its cycle!" She spoke with mock brusqueness, and I had to work out her proviso was meant to ensure that I had hot water, it not all having been taken to do the laundry. "And then everything you've got on, it needs to be thrown in. Did nobody ever tell you to get out of wet clothes? You smell like our dog used to after playing in the rain."

Her demands never upset me. It was pleasant to feel someone had my interests at heart. I took pleasure in the fact that she could speak to me so easily and that I was her friend. Marcie would never have spoken to me like that. She might have demeaned me in front of others for not changing clothes but not teased me pleasantly. And certainly she wouldn't have immediately followed up in the way Kari had acted now. Her voice had already relented, "Come on, sit here."

Heh, I ponged*.

I was at a table next to the kitchen area. There was a bizarre feeling that nothing in our situation was out of the normal. Ostensibly, I could be on an everyday vacation on board a holiday craft.

I think Kari understood that I was slowly being reoriented. I looked around the now-tidied cabin and the functional work area, "A great little kitchen."

"This is the galley, not kitchen," I was emphatically told by, not one, but two females and I looked up as Sarita emerged from the other side of the cooking area. For the first time I was aware of the fact both were wearing nothing more than a large tee shirt with, presumably, knickers on underneath.

Sarita looked so inviting and, noticing my look, lowered one shoulder and bent a knee sideways in fun offering me an exaggerated sultry look.

No panties!

The clean surroundings made this situation quite different from her being half undressed in a tent. There was something really suggestive in what she was wearing or rather what she did not have on. I tried not to be rude and leer. Yes, of course it crossed my mind to wonder whether Kari had anything on under that tee-shirt.

And no, I was too polite to stare.

Fortunately I was able to cover the quick intake of my breath by praising the presentation of the plate that was thrust in front of me, "This looks good." A steaming large helping of food looked more than appetising. I had never appreciated how ravenous I was. Glancing at a large clock, "Is that right, Kari, the time?"

Ten-thirty.

Kari twisted around to follow my eyes to the clock on the wall. Her tee shirt was tightly drawn across her chest, I mentally corrected that, it was VERY tight across her substantial boobs. It was far too distracting for me. I had even slept with this girl with no clothes on. The experiences have been more than pleasant and quite erotic but although she was casually dressed now in a careless sort of way, she exuded femininity; no, it was sexiness, as she had never done before.

I was listening to her reply, "I'm afraid it is," she was referring to the time. "We all lay down with good intentions to be on our way by early evening." Instead, I was distracted and looked again at her tee shirt when she added laughingly, "I wondered when you'd notice?"

From the kitchen bar, Sarita was following my reactions and averted her head. It suddenly came to me that she was chuckling about something. She came out with, "We needed the sleep," in a strained voice.

It took me a few moments to realise that while she was continuing to talk on mundane matters, "It's only one degree above freezing outside. I reckon it'll drop below," she meant freezing point, before the morning," she was really amused at the non-spoken interaction between Kari and myself.

I was glad I was sitting at the table as Kari got up to fetch me a cup of coffee. She took a couple of steps away from me, making towards the kitchen bar and her tee-shirt rode over her thighs. I had to take a deep breath and look away but it was quite obvious that she, too, was wearing no panties. Bending down to concentrate on my food, it did cross my mind that there was a possibility of a tiny thong with the vertical string being concealed between her cheeks!

That made me more excited! What was the matter with me? I choked slightly on the food that refused to be swallowed, "Shouldn't we be already moving?" I enquired, with a mouthful. I shut up quickly as the ladies regarded my bad manners with stony faces.

I looked up as Kari placed the coffee in front of me.

"Sarita's right and anyhow, we were all frozen and overwrought and over-tired when we turned in. You haven't even been in bed properly. That's how we'll make mistakes."

I stood corrected. What they both said was right. Safety was more important than speed. How many times had I said that?

I turned my attention to Sarita, "Abba, I know you've made all the decisions so far," and she hastened to add, "And they were good ones but we have a problem."

I wondered what was coming as I chewed my last mouthful very carefully, "And that is?"

"It's Victoria."

I listened.

"She needs more stitches, inside. I need proper short-length curved suture needles, the correct gauge of suture thread. And she needs better sedatives and a local anaesthetic for where I'm going to mend a tear. I found it was too high to attempt with my 'sewing box' stuff."

She had my full attention then.

Kari, by her reaction, was already aware of the problem and continued, "Sarita found out that this canal passes by the edge of Canderwell." She indicated an open book on canals on one of the long benches, stretching over to pick it up.

Sarita took over in double pronged attack. "There's a big new county hospital there, details were in all the professional journals. They'll have supplies."

The pair of them had obviously been discussing this between them during my sleep. Should I be upset?

Sarita started, "We could get there in one hop but..."

Kari jumped back in, "Whatever we do, we can't go too far tonight otherwise we'll be stuck out, crossing the flat land of the Cereal Plain."

Geography: OK, I'd heard of The Cheshire Dairy Plain. But the Cereal Plain? Vaguely it was in the far recesses of my mind. I let it go. I dropped geography when I was fourteen, I had preferred history. This pair would tell me what I needed to know.

"It goes on for miles without a break, no locks. Part of the canal is raised by dikes* and it's in flat open countryside. We'll stick out like a sore thumb; surely you've seen the photos of canal boats sailing above fields of wheat?"

I'm not so sure I had but I was attentive as they put forward a proposal. It went without saying that they had decided this for the sake of little Victoria. I had to go along with their suggestion even though I knew Canderwell was well out of our way. Wasn't it? I needed a map. "Canderwell, it is to the east of us? I queried.

"Yes but can you think of a better solution?"

I couldn't. Victoria's health came first.

"So?"

Kari responded, being the self-appointed canal expert, "We only need to go another thirty miles tonight. It doesn't sound much; the first twenty is OK but after that, there are a dozen or so locks, mostly downwards and two or three as we rise up again to the level of the plain. Each lock can take twenty minutes, longer until we all know what we are doing."

They had it all sorted out but at the back of my mind was a concern. Were we ever going to get to Bow Valley? We were as far as away as when we started. And now, far from making in the right direction, we were going off at a tangent. They showed me where the canal divided in a Y junction just a like a road. We would take something called the Western Cut. Some four down. There was nothing for it though. "So I'll get kitted up," I declared.

Kari spoke up, "I'm OK outside for the next few hours on my own. You can help cast off. Then you come back down here and have a rest and keep an eye on Victoria."

It must have been prearranged because as I was finishing my meal, Sarita came in with a bundle of clothes which she plonked next to Kari.

She disappeared saying she was fetching my outdoors' stuff as Kari started to get changed. She first sorted out her unflattering sports bra and knickers and laid them out. Leaning forward she pulled off her tee shirt, freeing her breasts.

Kari knew exactly what she was doing and grinned. "You like me like this?" she teased, displayed the utilitarian underwear before stepping into the knickers.

I managed to put a hand on her naked bum and kissed her. "You're lovely but I don't want you to get cold."

She dropped the knickers from her hand and, without a stitch on, came and ostentatiously pressed her top into me as she gave a sweltering kiss. "That'll keep me warm outside," and then she danced away laughing; managing to make no secret of the fact she was displaying her complete nude beauty to me.

She was magnificent; tall, smiling, showing her teeth with a big grin, long-limbed, full breasts bouncing. Sarita, looking on, couldn't stop laughing at my obvious reaction that perked up even more as Kari claimed, "And you're sharing my bed tonight and it won't be just to keep warm. We've waited long enough."

They both giggled as Kari now drew on her underwear and then silk long johns. Within a few minutes she was attired in her bulky top and as I drew on my outdoor stuff she grabbed one of the old stained sleeping bags, "For my legs," she uttered. "See you outside."

Throwing my jacket on, I emerged in the darkness to discover the motor was already gently phut-phutting away in neutral. Then it was a case of my struggling under awkward branches to the bow where I untied the mooring rope. Pushing the front away from the bank with the long boathook, it gently eased diagonally into midstream. It was OK, there was hardly any current to move the vessel out of its course as I clambered along the edge of the gunwale to the stern and released the mooring rope there, letting it run around a thick branch of a tree to come free, then coiling it on board.

Kari slipped the engine into gear and it rumbled quietly into action. It appeared to progress perfectly. With the slowest speed initially engaged, Kari quietly confided the reason she was hardly going at walking pace, "Until my eyes get used to the night vision," and we eased into the central channel of the canal and straightened up.

Ten minutes later, the speed increased as her eyes got accustomed to the dimness. "I'll be OK from here on. If I need you, I'll change the speed of the motor or take it out of gear. Come up then."

As I dropped down, I left the bulky jacket in the wet room where I could grab it quickly in a hurry. I returned through the long narrow passageway. Sarita was waiting, "Get everything off. We'll put your things through the washer and they'll be dry and warm when you next need them."

Standing under a warm shower in a heated environment was a luxury that I had forgotten. It was some minutes before I adjusted to the ordinariness of the situation, being in a clean and warm environment and soon the normality of the situation was reinforced as I gathered a dry large bath robe around me. I stopped for a moment to consider the previous owner of the luxuriously soft towelling. Was he dead now? I couldn't linger on such thoughts. The future was what was important.

I never even had a chance to put anything on but just dropped between some clean sheets and was asleep in seconds. Later, Sarita explained how the need for sleep is accentuated after a stressful event.

What awoke me was the change in tempo of the boat's engine. Like a rocket, I was up and flying to the stern, beating Sarita by a mile.

Poking my head up, Kari quietly announced. "We're not the only ones on the canal." and she indicated a brilliant light in the distance, which was approaching us, "What do we do? Bloody hell, you have no clothes on!"

I withdrew down below and, having ample time to don my warm coat, I announced, "We moor up and are absolutely silent and pretend the boat's been here for weeks. OK?"

With that, I dived back and pulled on trousers and shoes and was instructing Sarita to ensure all the curtains were drawn and to put out all the lights and stay with Victoria and keep her quiet. I had no reason to think that those approaching us were dangerous but wasn't prepared to publicise our location on the canal to anyone.

Returning to the deck, it was I who controlled the boat as Kari jumped ashore, screwed mooring stakes in the ground and fastened us up next to the towpath. I hoped the swirling water would have calmed by the time the distant vessel had arrived at our location. She went all around the outside to ensure that all curtains were pulled closed and that the front awning was tightly lashed as it had been fastened up weeks ago.

"Get on board," I insisted, "and get below. And when you move through the vessel, go slowly because, as the boat rocks, the water is disturbed. I was only to soon aware of the fact that both diesel motors were extinguished. It was eerily silent without even the gurgle of the engine cooling water gently splashing into the canal. She even switched off the battery emergency power so no forgotten low voltage lamp would be illuminated.

Descending after her, I broke out my recurve bow and arrows and issued the crossbows. God! it was a dark, below. I retrieved the guns from the bow rather than let them fall into someone else's hands. Damn! I wish I knew how to fire those automatics!

It must have been a good quarter of an hour before it drew up to us. That light had been broadcasting its existence from miles away. I stayed below, near the bow, and saw the blinding searchlight mounted high on its bow illuminating our cabin through the thick curtains.

As it drew level, there was noisy disturbance of water behind the stern of the approaching boat. "He's in reverse," whispered Kari.

I signified that I had understood by, what I hoped, was an imperceptible signal from my hand.

There was a bump and the other vessel started grinding gently alongside us. I eased one crack of a curtain, stood back, and looked into a window of unseeing, staring faces from an illuminated cabin that glided past just above water level.

"Robin. Are you there?" a man called out. He didn't appear to be aggressive. "Robin! Come on, it's only me, Dave and Sheila but Sheila's not with us any more."

We made no response.

"Robin, I'd know 'Traveller' anywhere."

That was the first I'd heard of the name of our vessel. A bit dense, aren't I? I discovered later it was painted on the bows in gold lettering.

"You weren't here yesterday."

He was shouting too loudly. I had no idea where we were in relationship to possible dwellings. There could be occupied houses nearby. "I have to get rid of him."

"Don't shoot him."

That had not been my intention but, even so, I took the bow with me as I emerged onto the tiny rear deck. The other vessel's stern was level with ours and a woman was pleading with the other steersman to leave us alone.

I laid my weapon on the deck as I climbed up but saw Kari, out of sight from them, already at my feet. She had her crossbow loaded and on the catch. I responded to his demands by insisting, "Don't shout, your voice can be heard miles away."

"I told you so, Dave," I heard from his companion.

"Hey, you're not Robin; what are you doing on board Traveller?"

"Dave, this isn't our boat either. Use some common sense. It's more than likely that your friend, Robin, he's dead. You don't want to be bothering people and that's a man."

The last bit I didn't understand.

He ignored her completely, "You get on board at the port?"

I nodded and quietly explained, "If I were dead I'd be happy to let anyone have my possessions. No use to me six feet under."

I could hear a worried voice pleading with her man, "Told you so, Dave. Leave him alone. He's not the only one using others' things. This is Pete's anyhow."

"Are you travelling in the day, then? We thought we'd play it cool and stay hidden and move at night."

I snorted, "Stay hidden? We saw you miles away and we moored up. That mobile lighthouse of yours is enough to attract all and sundry. How come you stopped here? How did we attract your attention?"

"We were by this way last night."

"You came this way yesterday?" I didn't understand.

"Bloody women," he still yelled across to us, "they left half our things at the Waterways Office in Frimstone when we took on diesel. We had to go back for everything."

I could see by his companion's attitude that that wasn't her interpretation of things. It crossed my mind, 'How long would they stay together? And what about the others down below?' I said nothing.

"I'm sorry," I replied. "We tend to travel at night, just a few miles and lay up during the day. We've hardly seen anybody for almost a week." I sensed Kari was giggling as she saw my fingers crossed, behind my back, at the blatant lie.

"See, Dave, you should use some common sense," his companion responded but she caught sight of Kari's outline poking out of the lower hatchway, "Watch it!" she urged in alarm, "they've got a gun pointed at you."

"It's OK," I tried to placate them; "We won't fire. It's only to protect ourselves but you really ought to be more careful."

"I told you, David Warner," I heard him being warned again. He ignored his companion, and addressed us, "How can you see at night?"

"Your eyes get used to it."

"Oh, where are you headed?"

"The Trent and Mersey." It was the only canal that I had heard of. No way was I going to divulge my true destination.

"I'd be careful about the Midlands, I've heard bad reports. If you're going further north and east, I would keep west by way of Stourport and Wolverhampton's OK. Take the Shropshire Union."

I had no idea what he was talking about, "Thanks for the guidance."

"Is there any trouble ahead?"

"Very little that we've seen." I decided to say more, "But there's bad reports in a couple of the Three Chimneys." I'm afraid I just made something up rather than say nothing. I didn't want to let on where we had come from. No wonder rumours were spread.

But we learned more from him, "It's Ok behind us but don't go towards Birmingham. We stopped in Destcaster. Give it a miss. The natives were very unfriendly. We'd have been better at Canderwell. Oh, you can get diesel at Frimstone if you rig up a 240 volt extension cable and we've been using the water from Destcaster without any ill effects for the last three days. The locals say that they've a separate source, but they've been hit by the flu as hard as anybody else. It's an infection spread from person to person." He stopped for a bit to listen to his companion. "Oh yes, it was spread by the water at first but now it's just spreading; we're hoping the worst of it's over."

He had been no threat but I was relieved when he made it clear that the conversation was over. His boat was drifting into the bank now and he slipped it into gear, took control of the steering, and the vessel slowly re-adopted the centre of the channel. "Bye," I called out to his, "Cheerio."

We studied the loud departure as his brilliant light mounted on the cabin beamed a swathe of brilliance that appeared to illuminate the whole the canal and its banks, spreading over onto distant trees.

"Are we ready to move off?"

"I'll just get in the moorings, if you take the rudder." Kari popped below to start the motors and I saw Sarita behind her, also with a crossbow in her hands. The look of determination on her face said she was not going to be caught napping either. "They thought that was a gun," she said indicating the weapon that Kari had now unlatched and placed on the side.

We both grinned as Kari spoke to her as well, "I reckon we're about half an hour from the locks. You need to get properly dressed, both of you, and then we'll all three take us through. Better learn what we need to do. It's good that he was coming this way. The locks should all be in our favour now."

At the time I didn't understand what she meant but it made more sense half an hour later when the reduction of revs brought both of us back on deck, fully kitted up for the frosty night. Kari guided us very slowly in through the open gate of the first lock, giving a commentary, "Because he's just come down to this lower level, this water's at our level," she indicated. "Now watch carefully how we go in." She inched forwards with little room to spare on both sides. Then she gave a slight burst on reverse thrust so we didn't bump against the lock gate in front of us.

The narrow berth was only some seven feet, or so, wide. I learned this was what determined the narrow width of the canal boats that differed on different canals. The most expensive item to construct two hundred and seventy years earlier were the locks and the narrower and shorter they were, the cheaper the canal was to construct. The length and width of the stone or brick-built structures also restricted dimensions of the canal boats which were different on different waterways. Oh, Kari took great delight in relating all these facts.

I climbed up the steel ladder set into the enormous stone blocks that make up the wall of this lock and looped the mooring ropes bow and stern around the small capstans on the lock side. "They're like that so we can tighten them up as the canal boat rises with the level of the water." Then I learnt how it was done under her supervision.

Kari showed Sarita how to keep the ropes taut and explained why and then climbed out up the high ladder to follow me. We both pushed the rear gate, the lower one, shut. It was easier than I expected.

And then she showed me how to use the implement, a lock key, she called the tool she had brought from the vessel. Turning it, the sluices opened, the water started to flow from the higher pound into the stone enclosure. As it did so, we saw, not just the level of water rise, but it visibly lifted the canal boat up higher as measured against the blocks of stone that made up the lock walls.

Finally, as the level equated that in the upper pound of the canal, we found we could easily push the upper lock gate open. Re-boarding, we took in the mooring ropes and the boat eased out through the open gates and along the higher level of water, the upper pound, as we learnt to call the stretch of water between one lock and another.

Ten minutes later there was another lock and we moved through this one quicker, knowing now what to do. A quarter of an hour after that, there was a double lock. It took me a moment or so to realise how we should negotiate that. Fifteen minutes after leaving those we came to another single, followed soon after, by what was called a staircase of three locks altogether.

There was a lot of rushing about to do until Kari, who had looked at the map carefully, announced, "Now we're OK for a while and then we drop down another triple staircase, a double and a single. That's Frimstone Waterways Depot. If we needed fuel we could get it there."

I suppose Kari had found it easier to memorise the features because the symbols on the map meant something to her. They did to me now. I think I would be able to read the map better, now that I understood what the little darts meant.

"Are we stopping there?"

She was on the same train of thought as I was." I think we could moor up. There would be moorings there and no one would notice one extra alongside amongst the others. I'm sure we would stand out if we went further because we're on the plain then."

There was little difference in the procedure of negotiating descending locks from rising ones and we found Frimstone had a lot of berths for vessels where we should remain inconspicuous if we tied up. Frimstone was not a big place but had a few cottages, some Waterways buildings and couple of work boats painted blue. Access was by a single track road some distance from any public highway.

We chose an empty berth near the extremity of the moorings between a couple of other narrow boats. Then I went along all the narrow boats quietly, one at a time, checking and discovered that, as far as I knew, none was occupied.

It was a relief because it was difficult to keep talking in whispers. I didn't forget to move over to each of the cottages and discovered nothing pointed to their being occupied. Frost, over the roof tiles, led me to suspect they had not been heated for some days but even so we would keep a low profile during our stay.

Someone, presumably David and company, had broken into the small shop and we also took some confectionary; chocolate bars and the like. We also stocked up on rice and pasta-style food, after all, it was free.

It was no later than three-thirty, another four or five hours to daybreak. This time, as I descended into the living accommodation of the vessel, it felt so different. I'd had a shower a few hours earlier. I'd not got too cold running along the locks' sides.

For the first time, I didn't t feel exhausted and felt we could relax.

Already Kari was poring over plans of the route on one table, "Look. Once we cross the plain, we have a couple of locks and, another hour or two, we'll get to this place where the hospital is. The canal skirts along the eastern edge of Canderwell."

I examined the plans she had opened. They didn't show the town in detail but probably not even a modern map would pinpoint the location of the new hospital accurately. Studying the map, I commented, "That's not going to take all night, tomorrow."

"No, it's about fourteen miles across the plain, see the canal twists a little over the most minute of contours. The greater part of it is in a boring straight line, though we come back on ourselves as we climb out of the valley. It's fifteen miles as the crow flies but more like twenty this way. I reckon it will only take about five hours. We have one set of locks soon after we move off and then a couple more after an hour. After that, there are hours before we reach the others. We should allow about eight hours, that means if we leave at six this evening we'd be able to tie up in the early hours.

I wasn't so sure I wanted to wander around a strange town in the night and said as much.

Sarita made her thinking known, "We'll need to go to get my things in the daylight as there won't be any power. I'll have to be able to see what I sort out. Putting on lights will only attract attention."

"Great," I heard the response next to me as Kari bumped her bottom into me. "Not just one night in a clean comfortable bed, but two! No reason to stay up is there?" She stared at Sarita, "And you're keeping an eye on Victoria," she stated pointedly.

This got a snigger from Sarita who, by now, was getting a drink from the fridge. "OK, I know what you want to do. I'm leaving you two alone," and with that she had disappeared, taking with her a cup of juice.

"Bout time too."

I'd never taken Kari for the aggressive type but with a push I found myself on my back on the bed and even as I tried to ease off my sweater, I found her tugging at my trousers.

"Heh, stop it," I yelled once and then gave up as I yielded to the onslaught.