One of my favourite books of last year was The Great Western Beach by Emma Smith, a memoir of her childhood living by the sea. I simply loved it as you will see if you check out my review here.
So I was delighted when Bloomsbury sent me Maiden's Trip by the same author and this arrived last week and was read immediately and straight through and, once again, I loved every single word.
In 1943 Emma Smith signed on with the Grand Union Canal Carrying Company under their wartime scheme of employing women to make use of boats lying idle. Emma, with companions Nanette and Charity set off with a boat full of steel and sailed it up the canals to Birmingham. All of them were eighteen and had led very sheltered lives and had no idea what they were letting themselves in for.
They learned how to handle a pair of 72 foot long canal boats, how to navigate hazardous locks in the rain, how to splice ropes, bail out bilge water and keep the engine going. They lived off kedgeree and fried bread and jam and got more and more dirty and tougher as the weeks went by so that by the time of their return journey where their cargo was coal, they were experienced and wiser women.
This book is a joy from start to finish. Emma Smith's writing style is just so clean and concise, readable and yet full of depth and insight. Just look at this description of taking the boats through one of the long low tunnels where all is dark: "Each of us longed in a queer strained way to be free of this suffocating womb of rotting bricks; each of us nursed a primitive fear....after forty minutes of prayer we were free. No bigger than the head of a pin we saw the farther opening. As it grew and grew, reflection making a full round circle of it......we slid out into a sweet daylight amazed to find it snowing for we had forgotten the weather and, in our pitchy black, thought of day as golden and leafy with birds singing"
I have been on several canal boat holidays and, while the hardships are pretty non-existent, I have passed through such a tunnel where, in the old days, the crew would lie flat on their backs on the top of the barge and walk it through with their feet on the roof of the tunnel, and I well recall the relief of getting out of the darkness. I also remember working the locks and the panic that set in when I was at the wheel and the water poured in behind us to raise us up to the next level and the realisation that the boat was being hurled forward and would crash into the lock gates. I slammed the boat into reverse which held us in the middle of the lock so that we were in the right position to exit and remember the release of tension when we sailed serenely out into the smooth water. By the time I had done this several times I began to get the hang of it and guided the barge the rest of the week with great aplomb each time we reached a lock.
One day while the boat is moored the three girls go to the local baths as they are simply filthy:
"The bath attendant gave us each a towel and a small cake of soap and led us to three adjoining cubicles. Here she unlocked the taps and filled the mammoth baths with steam water. Then she left us. We stripped our filthy garments off and wallowed up into our necks. It was marvellous.
Hi! shouted Emma,
What's the matter?
There's a man looking at me through the window"
Later, on another stop they visit a bookshop "Book shops have an international personality, a calming reflective personality, uninfluenced by place or time or fashion, even by wars. That musty smell, how rich it is. We lingered for nearly an hour and we might have been anywhere in the world. An old man pottered about in the background and though he took no notice of us, we sensed we were welcome"
I could not resist putting that paragraph into this review. After reading the Great Western Beach last year, I decided I liked Emma Smith, she was my kind of person, and after reading this particular paragraph I am even more sure of this.
The three girls argue, get irritable and sniffy with each other, fall out, make up and over the period of their journey bind themselves together. One of the crew, Charity, cracks her head against a low bridge and has to abandon the trip and a lugubrious Wilfred, a vague acquaintance, takes her place. He teaches them poker "So with hatches tight shut and the red an white check curtain drawn across the port hole and the stove a furnace we took our first lessons in poker.....jersey by jersey we relieved ourselves of the overpowering heat and even in shirt sleeves sweated the dirt out of us in streams. Whisky we remembered afterwards as a dim accompaniment, but only the cards were alive and we were in a coma"
A crack on the head does not stop Charity rejoining the boat as she is determined to finish the trip which they do in great style. Emma Smith says that it must have been an amazing imposition for the canal people when these ignorant young girls were foisted on them and yet, apart from the odd run in with a barge trying to push in and take advantage of their inexperience, they met with nothing but friendliness and understanding.
I hadn't the faintest idea that a scheme such as this existed in the Second world War and this was a real eye opener for me. Having been on the canals myself, ok in much more comfort I know, I found the descriptions of the boat and their problems with steering and getting the boat stuck on the mud (yes I did that too) and having to be hauled off brought back happy memories. Of course, I was just playing at being a canal boat captain, Emma, Nanette and Charity were working damned hard and sweating blood and being soaked to the skin, but these memories did help me empathize with them and feel a kinship. Particularly when you are steering the boat and it is simply tipping it down and you are handed cups of tea at regular intervals and you drink it with water dripping off the rim of your sou'wester hat and, yes, thoroughly enjoying yourself.
"Never before, she thought have I felt so able, has my body worked with such understanding of itself and she remarked herself at every move, appraising the pull, the balance the neat spring that evolved like a dance pattern in obedience to the tune of her mind. Never again, she thought, will I breathe so purely an air medicined with country snow and sappy boughs....now was a crystal, sparkling as a crystal, as hard and clear and actual...now was infinite. Now, thought Emma with tingling arms, was enough, enough"
I started and began last year's review of the Great Western Beach by saying I loved this book. I am now going to end this review exactly the same.
I loved this book.
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