Leontyne Read Free Page A

river, sometimes even as far as the Goodwin Sands, and throwing their grappling hooks on to ships bound for the Thames in order to get the pilotage before anyone else. His grandfather had been present at the disaster of the
Princess Alice:
a passenger boat full of Victorian families having a day out on the river collided with a small collier on a perfect summer’s afternoon. Many people were drowned, and those who were not choked to death on the effluent that came streaming out from London’s sewers just there. (To this day the largest tributary of the Thames is the treated sewage outlet a little further down the river.) Amongst the victims of this catastrophe had been the owners of the Crown and Anchor at Charlton. Ron Sargeant’s grandfather had bought the pub at once and from then on the Sargeants had become the most powerful family on that part of the river.
    We also spent a jolly day at Tower Bridge with the Keeper, Colonel Dalton, who, quoting V. S. Pritchett, called the bridge ‘a purple passage suitable for the archers at Agincourt’. The origin of the V-sign lay apparently in the fact that the French, when they captured English bowmen, would chop off the index finger on their right hand so that they could not draw a bowstring properly. To frighten the enemy, the English archers would hold up both fingers showing that they were whole. I discovered that the walkway at the top of the bridge between the bascules had been insisted upon by the City Fathers, so that the public would not have to wait to cross while it was opened for passing ships. The bridgemen became very speedy at opening the bridge, however, and nobody could be bothered to climb the stairs and cross over the walkway. Before long it had become a gathering place for ladies of the night and had to be closed. Colonel Dalton also told me that the bridge’s granite stones are merely cosmetic, there to hide the steelwork and make it resemble the Tower of London.
    Tower Bridge, like Blackfriars, Southwark, and London, is owned by the Bridges Trust, a City of London foundation. On the Thames, London Bridge is known simply as ‘The Bridge’, probably dating back to the time when it was the only bridge, and also because it is the point where all the tidal predictions are made for the river traffic. Blackfriars Bridge is supposed to mark the upper reach of the salt water in the Thames. Sea-water birds are carved on the down-river side and fresh-water fowl on the upper. How many bridge builders would have the time, patience or wit to do that in these days?
    On some days we seemed fated to meet lugubrious people. One was a river policeman who chatted for hours about the unfortunates whose bodies he had discovered in the Thames. The tide and the cold were the killers now, no longer the pollution. I suppose it is a
métier
like everything else, but on such a beautiful sunny morning it seemed strange to hear about the improvements he was trying for body recovery. Apparently it takes about three weeks for the gases to build up in the submerged corpse, which shoot it to the surface, by which time, he said, the limbs were becoming ‘a little loose’. Men and women, contradicting each other to the end, float in opposite ways.
    In the afternoon, I chatted to a gentleman from Trinity House, whose job it is to service the buoys and lighthouses round the coast of Britain. As we were talking he produced a flat piece of lead from his desk drawer. ‘A replica of the lead found in the stomach of the keeper of the Eddystone Rock Lighthouse,’ he said. It seems that this unfortunate lighthouse-keeper was standing on the rocks just below his lighthouse, which was burning fiercely. Looking up aghast, his mouth quite naturally fell open and in dropped the molten lead. Being a tough old boy he rowed ashore and told his unlikely tale which no one believed, but when he died three days later, an autopsy proved his story and the retrieved lead