Revenge of the Tide Read Free

and along the pontoon to the Scarisbrick Jean, the narrowboat Malcolm and Josie shared with their cat, Oswald. Not long after I’d moved in, I had heard them talking about ‘Aunty Jean’ and for a while I’d thought they had a third person living on the boat with them, until I realised that Aunty Jean was their affectionate name for the boat itself. A friendly name. Maybe I should think of a pet name for mine.
    The first time I saw the boat, I knew it was the one. It was above my price range, but my finances had seen a recent improvement and as a result I was looking at boats I’d previously discounted. It needed work, but the hull was sound and the cabin was bearable. I could just about afford to buy it and do the renovations for a year or so, provided I budgeted carefully and did the work myself.
    ‘ Revenge of the Tide. Odd sort of a name for a boat,’ I’d said, the day I decided to spend the bulk of my savings on it. Cameron, the boatyard owner and the broker for boat sales, was standing beside me on the pontoon. He wasn’t a fabulous salesman; he was in a hurry to get on with the countless other tasks he had waiting. He was fidgeting from one foot to the other and was clearly only just managing to hold back from saying, ‘ Do you want her or not? ’ It was a good job for him that I’d already fallen in love.
    The Revenge of the Tide was a seventy-five-foot-long barge of a type known as a Hagenaar, named for the canals of Den Haag, under whose bridges the boat was low enough to pass. It had been built in 1903 in the Netherlands, a great beast of a boat, a workhorse. The masts had been removed and a diesel engine added after the Second World War, and it had been used for transporting goods around the Port of Rotterdam until it was sold in the 1970s and moved across the English Channel. Ever since then, a steady stream of owners had been using it either for moving cargo, for pleasure trips or as living accommodation, with varying degrees of commitment and success.
    ‘The owner bought her just before his second divorce,’ said Cam. ‘He managed to con his missus because he bought the boat with all the savings he had stashed away. He wanted to call her just Revenge , I think, but it was a bit too obvious so he called her Revenge of the Tide instead.’
    ‘I might have to change the name,’ I said, as Cam took me into the office to sign the paperwork.
    ‘You can’t do that. Bad luck to change a boat’s name.’
    ‘Bad luck? What, worse than having a boat named after a failed marriage?’
    Cam grimaced.
    ‘Anyway, the last owner changed the name, didn’t he?’
    ‘Yeah. And he’s just getting divorced for the third time, and having to sell his boat to pay for it. What does that tell you?’
    So I left the name as it was, because I didn’t need any more bad luck in my life. Besides, the Revenge had character, had a soul; living aboard such a majestic, beautiful boat made me feel a bit safer, a bit less lonely. And it looked after me and hid me away from view. Boats were supposed to be female, but I always thought of the Revenge as male: a big, quiet gentleman, someone who would keep me safe.
    ‘So what time are your London mates turning up?’ Josie asked.
    ‘Oh, lord knows. Late, probably.’
    Josie was like a warm cushion, fleecy and brightly coloured. There was barely room for the two of us on the narrow bench. Her greying hair was fighting the breeze to escape from the loosely tied ponytail on the back of her head. At least the sun had come out, and the early evening sky overhead was blue, dotted with white clouds.
    ‘What are they going to make of us lot, do you reckon?’
    ‘I’m more worried about what you’ll make of them.’
    A few days after I’d moved in, I had poked my head out of the wheelhouse to be greeted by the sight of Malcolm sitting on the roof of the Scarisbrick Jean smoking a roll-up and wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts. It was early, barely light, and the spring