Water Gypsies by Annie Murray Page A

sympathy coming from the young man, along with his gangly, rather pathetic look. He could only have been in his early twenties and looked as if, had she laid the burdens of her soul upon him as he suggested, his knees might have buckled under the strain.
    ‘I don’t think so, not today, thank you,’ she said, as if refusing wares from a fish salesman.
    ‘Well, just remember – Jesus is the way,’ he said earnestly. ‘And I will pray for you, Mrs Bartholomew. I trust you will do the same for me.’
    As she nodded, he touched the brim of his hat again and turned away, and she watched his long, skinny form move along the wharf, looking out for other boaters who would stop and listen to his message. Boaters whom he no doubt saw as the unschooled and unsaved souls of the cut whom he must rescue.
    Thinking of him now as she struggled through her chores, Maryann knew how close she had come to blurting out her woes to him – a young man, wet behind the ears and a complete stranger! But in her fear and loneliness he was the one person who had asked about her concerns, and who might listen. But then, on hearing, how sharply he would have condemned her! She was contemplating nothing less than the murder of a child in her womb! She was a terrible mother, a terrible woman. But, she thought defiantly, what did that young lad know about being a mother? How could he judge her?
    More tears ran down her cheeks.
    ‘Oh, Nance, come back! O God, forgive me for feeling like this!’
    She pushed her hands down into the bottom of the dipper and straightened her arms, leaning over the warm water. She was so lost in misery that she didn’t move until she heard Joel’s voice talking to the children as they all came across the wharf.

Ten
     
    Joel Bartholomew stood at the tiller of the Esther Jane later that morning as they made their way, empty for the moment, through Birmingham and out to the coalfields. It was grey and overcast, the warehouses and factories black as shadows as they closed in on each side, and the air darkened by a pall of smoke. Joel breathed in the fume-filled air, then coughed. The Birmingham sky was cluttered with chimneys, the tallest and blackest being those of the fires of industry, belching aggressively into the clouds and creating further clouds themselves. Many more belonged to the endless rows of houses, which seemed to Joel so gloomy and confining. But he only caught glimpses of them: the cut showed him little of Birmingham’s life, and it saw little of theirs.
    Joel took in less than usual of his surroundings that morning, beyond an automatic watchfulness for the care of his boats, because his mind was restless. Men steering the horse-drawn corporation refuse boats out from the centre of Birmingham to Small Heath tip or to the incinerator at Hay Mills would have seen the Esther Jane and her butty heading towards them, washing flapping over the hold of the Theodore, and Joel at the tiller, burly, bearded, cap pushed down over his thick hair, his wide-sleeved brown jacket buttoned against the cold. They might have heard his racking cough as he drew nearer, from the damp getting into his lungs. But as they drew alongside and shouted, ‘Mornin’!’ or ‘How d’you do?’ as was customary among the politer boaters, they received only the vaguest, most half-hearted response.
    When they were approaching Camp Hill locks, Joel signalled back to Bobby. The boats were on a short strap as they were empty, so they were not far apart. Bobby jumped off the butty at one bridge-hole in Sparkbrook and ran forwards to jump aboard the Esther Jane at the next.
    ‘You come and steer her through,’ Joel ordered, pushing his windlass through his belt. ‘I’m going off for a bit.’
    ‘But …’ Bobby tried to protest. Maryann said the exertions of lock-wheeling made Joel’s cough worse and that Bobby should stay off and do it, but Joel was not in the mood to be argued with.
    ‘Can I come, Dad?’ Joley called, but too