Love on the Waterways Read online

  Contents

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Milly Adams

  Why YOU love Milly Adams …

  Title Page

  Acknowledgments

  Dedication

  Maps

  Broaden your waterways vocabulary …

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Read on for an extract from Hope on the Waterways

  Copyright

  About the Book

  March 1944, West London

  It’s been five months since Verity Clement fled home for a life on Britain’s canals and she could never have imagined how tough it would get. Yet hauling cargo between London and Birmingham is far easier to face than the turbulence she’s left behind.

  When Verity’s sweetheart returns unexpectedly from the front line, she dares to dream of a brighter future. But life aboard the Marigold is never smooth sailing. New recruit Sylvia is struggling with demons from her past while crewmate Polly must carry on in the wake of devastating news. Verity does her best to help, but a shocking discovery is about to turn her own life upside-down.

  As the realities of war begin to take their toll, the waterway girls will have to pull together if they are to survive the uncertain times ahead…

  About the Author

  Milly Adams lives in Buckinghamshire with her husband, dog and cat. Her children live nearby. Her grandchildren are fun, and lead her astray; she insists that it is that way round.

  Milly Adams is also the author of Above Us the Sky, Sisters at War, At Long Last Love and The Waterway Girls. This is her second novel featuring the Waterway Girls.

  Also by Milly Adams

  Above Us the Sky

  Sisters at War

  At Long Last Love

  The Waterway Girls Series

  The Waterway Girls

  Why YOU love Milly Adams …

  ‘As usual I have thoroughly enjoyed this author’s book – it was absorbing and full of suspense … The historical information was interesting too and showed a forgotten side of the war led by women.’

  ‘I really enjoyed this … the characters and the way of life are all so very real feeling, and I am really pleased to see that there is a second book about these characters; so pleased, in fact, that I have already pre-ordered it:)’

  ‘Excellent book – what went on then was totally different. They contributed so much to the war effort. Very interesting, can’t wait for the next’

  ‘I loved this book, really good story, was sad when it ended’

  ‘I enjoyed this and will look forward to the next. Fans of Nadine Dorries and Donna Douglas will find this worth a look’

  ‘A good story about believable people, combined with fascinating history, and brilliantly accurate descriptions of life on board a narrow boat’

  Acknowledgments

  Many thanks to all those people and memoirs that helped with The Waterway Girls, Book 1, and in addition, to the Aylesbury Arm of the Grand Union Canal, which inspired me to think of it as a place of healing, which was essential to the novel. It really is a lovely six miles; tranquil and unspoilt.

  I must also thank Mr Pendse, an amazing orthopaedic surgeon who put together my shoulder after I was remiss enough to trip on the handles of my bag (why was I such an idiot?), and to Graham, my High Wycombe Hospital physiotherapist who beat and thrashed me (not really) to a stage where I could type and not hold up the writing of this novel.

  Mr Pendse also said, after digging, delving, plating and screwing, that I had the bones of a thirty-year-old woman, which has earned him my undying devotion. The same cannot be said of Him Indoors, who was heard to mutter, ‘Shame about the rest.’ Well really!

  To my newest ‘grand’: delicious little Miss Delilah Dore

  And my latest godchildren, equally delicious: Catherine, Sophia and Luke With love, of course

  Map of the London to Birmingham Grand Union Canel

  Broaden your waterways vocabulary …

  Basin – a partly enclosed area of water at the end of or alongside a canal, housing wharves and moorings

  Bilges – the bottom of the boat

  Butty – engineless boat towed by the motorboat

  Canal frontage – land abutting the canal

  Counter – deck

  Cut – canal

  Gunwale – inner ledge around boat

  Hold – where the cargo is carried; both motors and butties have holds

  Lock – the main means of raising or lowering a boat between changes in water levels on a canal

  Long pound – a long length of impounded water between two locks

  Moor – to secure a boat against the bank

  Motorboat – the narrowboat with an engine

  Prow or fore-end – front

  Short pound – a short length of impounded water between two locks

  Slide hatch – sliding ‘lid’ above cabin doors to keep out the rain

  Snubber – long strong rope for towing a butty along a long pound

  Stern – rear

  Straps – mooring and lashing ropes

  Wharf – structure built for cargo loading or discharge

  Windlass – L-shaped handle for operating lock paddles

  Bull’s Bridge, Southall, is the location of Grand Union Canal Carrying Company’s (GUCCC) depot

  Limehouse Basin, also known as Regent’s Canal Dock

  Grand Union Canal Paddington Arm runs into Regent’s Canal, leading to Limehouse/Regent’s Canal Dock

  Tyseley Wharf, Birmingham

  Chapter 1

  Monday 27 March 1944 – the Waterway Girls heading from Limehouse Basin to Alperton

  Polly Holmes steered the narrowboat Marigold along the centre of the canal while Verity Clement made a cuppa in the cabin. Though it was early afternoon, it was still so cold that frost glistened on the roof and coated the sixty-foot tarpaulin covering the cargo.

  Polly dug her chin deeper into her muffler and rested her elbow on the tiller, hearing the slap of water and ice against the hull of not only Marigold, but their motor-less butty, Horizon, on tow behind. Sylvia Simpson, the newest crew member, was at Horizon’s helm. Polly hooted the horn to her and listened, but whispered, ‘No doubt there’ll be no reply.’

  She was right and waited ten seconds before trying again. She sighed with relief as she heard a short toot. Clearly Sylvia was thawing a little, though there was a way to go until she stopped being angry at catching Verity’s cold.

  There wasn’t much traffic on the Paddington Arm of the Grand Union Canal so far and it meant that Polly could relax as she steered past bomb-damaged factories, terraces and warehouses. She felt she’d been travelling at three miles an hour for the whole of her life, not just six months. Mark you, she laughed to herself, they roared along at the heady speed of four miles an hour when unloaded. Crikey, how could she stand the excitement?

  Ahead loomed a bridge over which red London buses toiled, followed by a lengthy convoy of canvas-sided military lorries. Polly yanked he
r woollen hat with its oversized bobble low over her ears, her hands numb with cold. She pulled her gloves from her trouser pockets. Why on earth hadn’t she put them on earlier? She knew why; she was too busy thinking of her future with Saul, a boater, and that was not what she wanted to be doing, so instead she concentrated on the cold.

  ‘Damn you, weather,’ Polly groaned. ‘We’re supposed to be heading for the joys of spring, not suffering your temper tantrum. What on earth is all this snow and ice about? Don’t you know there’s a war on – and something’s brewing, to judge from the flurry of army transport all over the place. Are you the enemy, too, to cause us this much trouble?’

  ‘First sign of madness, ducky, talking to yourself,’ Verity called up from the cabin.

  ‘Madness helps,’ snorted Polly, sick to death of the ice that had clung, jagged and thick, around the hull and along the bank of the canal – which those on the boats called ‘the cut’ – for the last four days. She also loathed the swirling snow showers and the freezing mist, but which was worse? Oh, shut up, she told herself; look on the bright side, for heaven’s sake. So instead she thought of the cabin range belting out heat, drying their clothes and keeping them warm overnight. Life came down to the basics, she mused, but then she shook her head. She mustn’t muse, because it would lead her back to Saul.

  She opened the cabin’s double doors, shoved back the slide hatch and stepped onto the shelter of the cabin’s top step, hearing a wail from Verity. ‘Hey, now I’m in a draught.’

  Polly laughed. ‘Stop fussing, you’re a Waterway Girl now, and having a lord for a father cuts no mustard here, so just grin and bear it, like a trooper. You need a change of air anyway. And where’s my tea?’

  She grinned to herself, knowing she could tease her friend about her high-flown roots, but only so long as no boater heard. It had been struggle enough for the girls to be accepted on the canal, or cut, without having a ‘ladyship’ as a crew member.

  The sun emerged from between the cloud, just for a moment, as it had at Limehouse Basin yesterday, when the pallets of aluminium were being unloaded from the rusty merchant ships moored at the wharf, to be swung immediately by cranes into the queue of narrowboat holds.

  Polly wondered now, as she had when they secured their tarpaulins, if the aluminium would be used for fighters or bombers, once they delivered it to Tyseley Wharf in Birmingham? Who knew, but it would be something connected with the war effort. Her grin faded.

  No, not the war, because it reminded her that Saul might be trying …

  She forced herself to remain in the present, peering behind at the butty and giving another short hoot on the horn. Sylvia replied immediately, this time with a toot-toot-toot. Good. Anyway, Sylvia wasn’t the only one with a cold. Polly coughed, her throat sore, her nose running. She wiped it on her sweater sleeve. Her mum would be shocked – or would she? Probably not. Her mum was used to the state of her by now.

  Verity tapped Polly’s leg, squinting up at her from the depths of the tiny cabin, her blonde hair escaping from her woollen hat. ‘I’ve made cocoa instead. I’ll bring it up.’ Before she did, though, Verity called back, ‘Dog, don’t come up; stay curled on Mistress Polly’s bed in the warmth. And, Mistress Polly, this cocoa will put hairs on your chest and clear that cold.’

  Polly sniffed, grimaced and eased the tiller slightly. ‘Not sure that I find the thought of hairs on my chest has much to recommend it.’

  Verity laughed and put three steaming mugs on the cabin roof. One was covered with a side-plate and wrapped in a mitten. She shook her head at Polly. ‘You are remiss, my girl. You should have trained that dog to keep the fire going.’

  As she said this, she propped herself up against the cabin, wearing a blanket over her shoulders, held together with the Inland Waterway badge they’d all been awarded after completing their Ministry of War Transport training. It was a training that had enabled them to manage cargo-carrying canal boats and replace the boaters who had gone off to war, before the Reserved Occupation order had come in for twenty-five-year-old boaters and over. It was an age-limit that proved discretionary, because the younger men had almost immediately been encompassed by the RO, too, for a while – a decision that had just been reinstated, thank heavens, thought Polly.

  She watched the wind whip away the steam from the mugs and wished that her fear could be as easily dispersed. Saul, at twenty a year older than she was, had been denied permission to sign up in 1943. He should therefore have been tied to the cut, but to her horror he had tried to break through the RO in the New Year and sign up for the army, but had hurt his leg in a lock fall and it was for that reason he had been refused.

  She looked up now, as starlings swirled above the canal – swirling, swirling, just like her mind, because at Limehouse they’d heard that Steerer Mercy’s son-in-law had just enlisted, despite the RO. How? – that’s what Polly wanted to know. And how dare he, because it would encourage Saul; and he’d probably die, like her twin, Will. She made herself concentrate on the tiller beneath her elbow, the mug in her other hand. She sipped, swallowed, breathed deeply and dragged up the words of Bet, their instructor: ‘You’ve passed, but it’s the cut that will really teach you how to be strong women, no matter how scared you are.’

  She straightened; of course, that’s right, she was strong and formidable, even if she was damned frightened. She sipped again, really tasting the thick, soothing drink, and finally registered that Verity was still leaning against the cabin, staring at her, muttering, ‘Polly, my girl, you look as though you’re going into bat against those sprouting chest hairs – all fierce and then worried. What’s up?’

  Polly laughed. ‘Trying to work out how to train Dog to keep the fire going.’ She saw a narrowboat pair approaching; they were unloaded and therefore high in the water, on the way to pick up cargo from Limehouse Basin. She steered off-centre into shallower water to allow clear passage. Steerer Simms tipped his hat and called, ‘’Ow do.’

  ‘How do,’ the girls called back.

  Verity watched the boats pass, and to Polly it looked as though a cloud had passed over her friend’s face and had left her miserable. Polly guessed why and her heart sank. What a pair they were, although Verity’s problem was far more pressing than her own.

  She nudged her friend with her boot. ‘Anyway, to get back to my chest, Miss Verity Clement, no hair would dare to sprout beneath my two vests and three sweaters; or if the thought ever crossed its mind, it would have a monumental struggle to survive.’

  She must keep up Verity’s spirits until the poor girl met her estranged boyfriend, Tom, at the Alperton pub this evening. How would it go, after so long? She didn’t dare think. Verity forced a laugh, a cocoa moustache running along her top lip. Polly sipped, and dug for a handkerchief, coughing and blowing her nose.

  She realised then that Verity was pointing to the third of the mugs. ‘I know Sylvia can make her own in the butty cabin, but it’s my apology to her, for spreading my wretched germs. Please say you’ll take it. She still gets me so on edge, and I haven’t the patience for that today.’

  Polly gulped her own cocoa. ‘Right you are. After all, you need to conserve your energy for the almost impossible task of making yourself beautiful for this evening.’

  Verity laughed, long and loud.

  Polly grinned back, relieved, and asked, ‘What time did Tom say?’ Tension immediately swept across Verity’s face and her blue eyes darkened, and Polly could have kicked herself. They were close to another bridge, and Polly didn’t give Verity a moment to brood, but nudged her again. ‘Keep an eye on the parapet, Verity.’

  They both peered ahead, ready to sidestep any children intent on hurling debris at the boater ‘scum’. There was no one on this bridge, just as there had been no one at the others; the children were fair-weather bullies, it seemed.

  Polly slowed and hooted, to warn any approaching boats that they were entering the narrow bridge-hole and that they should give way. She called for Dog,
who hurtled from the cabin, wagging her tail. ‘Good girl, Dog, you might as well come with me and stretch your legs. Take the tiller, Verity, and pull her in really tight to the bank, so I can get off.’

  Verity laughed again. ‘Pull in tight, indeed. Teaching your grandmother to suck eggs, Captain Holmes?’

  ‘That’s enough cheek, Grandma. There’s another bridge in a hundred yards, so pull in tight again and I’ll jump back then.’

  Verity pulled a face at her, taking over the tiller, and Polly muttered, ‘I’ll present your cocoa with fulsome apologies for the cold you gave Sylvia, but I confess to you now that I’ve made it worse, by calling Sylvia “Rudolf the red-nosed reindeer” first thing this morning.’

  Verity pretended to be shocked, but then almost wept with laughter. ‘Well, her nose is alarmingly red at the moment, and life would be so much easier if she found at least one or two things amusing.’ She suddenly grew serious. ‘But do your best, Polly. I don’t want Sylvia being sniffy – literally and metaphorically – when we arrive at the pub, and if she’s rude to Tom … He’s got to love me again, you see, he really has.’

  Polly shook her head, reaching out and holding Verity’s hand. ‘He already does, or why would he be coming?’

  Verity’s grin didn’t reach her eyes. She pointed to the towpath. ‘I’ve pulled in, Polly, so stop rabbiting on, and just deliver the drink.’

  Polly gave her hand one last squeeze, grabbed the mug of cocoa, left the plate and half jumped off onto the towpath, calling back quietly so that Sylvia couldn’t hear, ‘Didn’t spill a drop, and don’t worry about Sylvia being difficult this evening. I’ll sweep her down the other end of the pub to sing a duet with my lovely Saul. Come on, Dog.’

  Dog followed, running backwards and forwards, sniffing, while Polly waited for the butty to reach her. When it did she stepped on board the prow deck – or ‘counter’, as it was called on the narrowboats – again with no spillage, while Dog stayed ferreting about on the bank. She walked rather than ran along the slippery, frosted top planks laid over the cargo, checking the tarpaulin as she went, reaching the cabin roof and finally easing herself onto the counter, holding out the cocoa. ‘Cargo’s all tickety-boo. And cocoa for you, courtesy of Verity. That’s one of Mum’s knitted mittens it’s sitting in.’