Chapter Four. The First Night on the Boat
I thought about that trip with my cousin now. George pulled us for a time and then Harris and I did. The boat felt very heavy and the lock very far. Perhaps, like Wallingford, it wasn't there anymore. We finally arrived at about half past seven. We were very tired. We weren't interested in finding a pretty place to stop. We only wanted to eat and sleep. We found a quiet place under a tree.
Harris and I wanted to eat immediately but George thought differently.
‘We should cover the boat first. It'll be easier before it's dark,' he said. ‘Then we can eat and relax.' Of course he was right.
Covering a boat shouldn't be difficult. The idea is to fix five hoops to the sides of the boat, then pass the canvas over the top of them. An easy job, we thought. No more than ten minutes' work. Maybe it is for some people. Not for us.
The first problem was the hoops: we couldn't fix them. We pushed and pulled them, hit and kicked them and finally they went in. However, we soon saw they were in the wrong place! We needed to start again. Of course it wasn't easy to take them out again now. Alone it was impossible. Two of us pulled and pulled. Then the ends of the hoops came out and we nearly fell into the water. Each hoop was in two halves. Sometimes, while we pulled the ends, the hoops broke in the middle, flew up into the air and hit us on the head.
We finally got the hoops fixed in the right places. Now we needed to put the canvas on. George stood at one end of the boat, Harris in the middle and Montmorency and I at the other. George took the canvas and fixed it in position at the front. He then passed it over the first hoops. Harris was waiting in the middle to pass it to me. But it was his first time - and I'm sure he'll never forget it. I don't know how he did it (neither does he): after ten minutes hard work the canvas was completely covering him. He couldn't get out. He became angry and moved from side to side, hitting George. George fell and soon they both were under it.
I didn't know what was happening. I followed George's instructions: I stood at my end and waited. I waited a long time. I saw the canvas move this way and then that way but I thought it was normal. Then we heard angry words. Montmorency listened, interested. I thought the job was difficult for George and Harris but I waited for them to finish. Finally George's head came out from under the canvas.
‘Come and help us, you fool,' he said. I'm always ready to help when I'm asked nicely.
Half an hour later the job was finished. Now we could think about supper. We took the kettle to the front of the boat to boil it. We went to the back of the boat to prepare our meal. If you sit and wait for a kettle to boil on the river, it never will. You must leave it and do something else. Don't look at it. If you're really thirsty for a cup of tea, this is what you should do: stand near the kettle and say in a loud voice ‘I don't want a cup of tea. I don't even like tea.' Then it'll boil.
This is exactly what we did. The result was that when supper was ready, the tea was too.
We were all very hungry. Nobody spoke for half an hour or more; we were too busy eating. Then Harris and George said ‘Ah!' and threw their plates onto the riverbank. Montmorency was happy too and lay down to rest. Finally I said ‘Ah!' too, sat back and I hit my head on one of the hoops. It didn't matter. It's amazing what food can do. Before supper we were all a bit upset. Now, with our stomachs full, we were friends with each other and with the world. We smoked our pipes and started to chat. Then George told us a story.
Once, when he was a young man, George's father was travelling with a friend. They met a group of other fellows at a pub and spent a very good evening with them. At the end of the evening, they went to their room and, in the dark, got into bed. But, by mistake, they both got into the same bed. One had his head on the pillow, the other had his head at the bottom of the bed. After a few moments George's father spoke quietly.
‘Joe! There's a man in my bed!'
‘That's strange, Tom. There's one in my bed too!' his friend answered.
‘What should we do?'
‘I'm going to push mine out!'
‘Me too!'
They both pushed and then both fell out of bed.
‘Joe?' George's father said quietly.
‘What?'
‘My man had the same idea and has pushed me out!'
‘My man too!'
‘Hmm! The same thing happened to my father,' Harris said. ‘Maybe it was the same pub.'
At ten o'clock we went to bed.
‘After a long day I'll sleep well,' I thought. I didn't. Perhaps it was the river sounds or my uncomfortable position (the boat was quite small). I woke up in the night. I felt hot and had a headache. I went out to get some cool air. It was a lovely night and the sky was full of stars.
I woke up again at six, George too. We tried to sleep but it was impossible. Why is it always like that? When you have to get up early you want to sleep until ten in the morning. When you don't need to get up, you can never sleep late.
We sat, with our rugs round us, and George told me another story. It happened before he lived with me. His watch stopped one evening at quarter past eight. However, he didn't know. He woke up in the dark and looked at his watch. Quarter past eight.
‘Oh no!' he said, threw the watch down and jumped out of bed. He washed and dressed and looked at his watch again. It was working now. Twenty to nine. He went downstairs. The house was dark. There wasn't a fire and there wasn't any breakfast ready for him. ‘Oh, Mrs G. is so lazy! Now I must go to work without any breakfast!' he said to himself. George pulled on his coat and went out. It was dark outside and the street was empty. He thought it was a bit strange but he was late and ran.
He arrived at Holborn. There were no buses, no shops open and only three people in the street. One of them was a policeman. George decided to ask him the time.
‘You'll know soon!' the policeman said. Then they heard a clock. One, two, three!
‘Oh, it's only three o'clock! I thought it was nine,' George said, surprised. The policeman looked at him in a strange way.
‘Perhaps you should go home,' he said.
But when he got home George didn't want to go back to bed. He decided to sleep in a chair. But he couldn't sleep. So he decided to make a fire and make himself breakfast. But he made a lot of noise and he was afraid of the police. In the end he sat in the chair and waited for Mrs G. to get up.
‘It was terrible,' he said. He hasn't got up early since then.
We woke Harris and looked outside. It was a cold day and the water was cold too. The idea of swimming before breakfast wasn't so nice now.
‘Who's going in first?' Harris asked. Nobody answered. I decided to wash in the river. I got out of the boat onto the riverbank. Then, holding onto a tree, I went slowly down to the water. It was very cold and I decided it wasn't a good idea to wash in it. But then I fell in.
‘Ah, look at old J.!' Harris said. ‘He's gone in!'
‘It's beautiful,' I said. It wasn't. ‘Come in and see for yourselves.' But they preferred not to.
I was cold when I got back on the boat. I wanted to get dressed fast. I picked up my shirt quickly and it fell into the water. George started laughing. I didn't find it funny and told him. He laughed even more. I became angrier and angrier. He laughed more and more. I turned to get my shirt out of the water. As I was pulling it out, I saw it wasn't my shirt after all. It was George's. Now I started laughing
too. I looked at George and laughed some more. The shirt fell into the water again. George thought that we were laughing at the same thing.
‘Aren't you going to get your shirt out?' he asked.
‘It's not mine!' I answered, laughing and holding my sides. ‘It's yours!' I've never seen a face change so quickly!
‘You fool!' he shouted. He couldn't see the funny side of it.
Harris offered to make scrambled eggs for breakfast.
‘I'm famous for them,' he said. ‘Once you try them, you'll never want anything else.' We became very hungry listening to him and gave him the frying-pan and eggs. However he found it hard to get the eggs into the frying pan. He certainly had a lot on his trousers and shirt. Then cooking them was difficult. He pushed them around the pan with a fork. Then, by mistake, he put his hand on the hot pan. He danced about the boat with his fingers in his mouth. George and I didn't know what scrambled eggs were. We thought the dancing was a necessary part of the cooking. Montmorency put his nose too near to the pan and then he danced about too. It was all very exciting.
We were disappointed with the breakfast, however. Harris used six eggs but there was only a teaspoon of something black at the end of it. ‘The pan was the problem,' he said. We decided not to have scrambled eggs again.
It was a lovely morning now and the sun was hot. There was no idea of time on the river. I sat down on the riverbank and closed my eyes. I could see the June morning in 1215 when King John put his name to the Magna Carta. The streets are crowded; people are waiting for the king. He rides into the town.
George spoke and brought me back to the present.
‘Have you finished resting? Perhaps you could help wash up,' he said sweetly. Poor me!
I found a small piece of wood and some grass. Then I got back into the boat. I cleaned the black frying-pan with the wood and grass and used George's wet shirt to finish the job.
