When they returned to the galley, Annie had shed her jacket and was pouring hot water into mugs. “Here, take your things off,” she said. “Just toss them over the sofa. I’m afraid there’s no such thing as a cloakroom here.” The cabin, with both radiator and woodstove, was warm, and Kincaid was glad to slip off his coat and scarf.
“You’ve even got a bath in your loo,” blurted Kit, when he’d added his own anorak to Kincaid’s. “What do you—I mean, you don’t just flush it straight into—”
Annie Lebow came to his rescue matter-of- factly, as if discussing the disposal of sewage was an expected part of everyday conversation. “There’s a holding tank. Marinas usually have pumping stations where you can clean out. Nasty job, but it goes with the territory.”
She set their mugs on the dining table, along with an earthenware sugar bowl and milk jug, then retrieved a map from the nearest bookcase.
The map, like the Gogarty book, was well used, the edges tattered and the creases worn thin. Annie motioned them to sit on one side of the table, but rather than joining them, leaned over from the table’s end and spread out the map, facing it towards them. A net-work of broad multicolored lines snaked across central England.
Kincaid quickly found the burgundy thread that represented the Shropshire Union Canal.
Following his gaze, Annie touched the central section of the Shroppie, then traced a path north to Manchester and Leeds, then south again, down the Trent and Mersey Canal to Birmingham, and
beyond that, London. “I’ve done the circuit several times in the last few years,” she said. “And the Llangollen Canal, of course, down into Wales, but I seem to keep coming back to where I started. Homing instinct, I suppose, like a pigeon.”
“You’re from this area, then?” Having added milk to his tea, Kincaid sipped it carefully, feeling the welcome warmth begin to thaw him from the inside out. “I thought I recognized a local accent.” As he looked at Annie Lebow in the warm light of the cabin, he realized she was younger than he’d first thought, perhaps only in her early fi fties.
Too young for retirement, certainly, and he wondered how she could afford the life she led, not to mention a boat of such quality.
“Southern Cheshire, near Malpas,” she answered readily enough, but went on quickly, as if it were a subject she didn’t want to pursue.
Tapping the map with a neatly trimmed fingernail, she said, “There are so many miles of navigable waterway now, more than anyone could have imagined thirty or forty years ago, when the canals were in their worst decline. Of course, it’s almost all pleasure traffic now.
The working boats are a thing of the past.”
“Is that such a bad thing?” Kincaid asked, hearing the obvious regret in her words. “Surely it was a hard life, and the boat people uneducated and illiterate, as well as poor.”
“A hard life, but a good one,” Annie said, suddenly fierce. “They had their independence, and the Cut. Very few would have chosen to give it up.” Then she shook her head and gave a rueful laugh. “But you’re right, that’s rich, coming from me, with all this.” She swept a hand round, indicating the boat and its fittings. “Imagine that the living space for an entire family was seven feet by seven feet, a good deal less than the size of my sitting room. The rest of the boat would be taken up with the cargo. Imagine no electricity, no hot water other than what you could boil on the range, no plumbing”—here she smiled at Kit—“no refrigeration, and the women had to help their husbands with the locks and the cargo as well as caring for their children.”
“No baths?” Kit quipped. “No school? That doesn’t sound half bad.”
“You could probably adapt. After all, the Idle Women did, and most of them came from comfortable homes.”
“Idle Women?”
“During the war the government recruited women to work the narrowboats. They were anything but idle—the nickname came from the IW badges they were given by Inland Waterways when they finished their training. No one had ever seen all- female crews before. They caused quite a sensation, but it wasn’t long before they earned the respect of the traditional boaters. For many of them, nothing else in their lives ever equaled the experience.” Once again a hint of wistfulness echoed in her voice, but she went on with another flash of a smile at Kit. “One of the best- known female trainers was called Kit, like you. Kit Gayford. You should read about her sometime.”
“Are you here for long?” Kincaid asked, and saw her hesitate briefly before she answered.
“A few days, I think. I don’t keep to a fixed schedule. That’s one of the perks of the boating life. You?”
“Just until the New Year. No perks in my job, I’m afraid.”
“What is it you do?”
“Civil servant,” Kincaid said quickly, and saw Kit’s startled glance.
“Quite boring, actually.”
He tried to work out just exactly what had prompted him to fudge the truth. It was not that he suspected Annie Lebow of criminal pursuits—and his instincts in that department were well honed—
but that he still sensed a watchfulness, a wariness, about her, and he didn’t want to rupture the fragile connection they’d made.
But even his innocuous response seemed to startle her. She stared at him for a moment, the pupils in her green eyes dilating. Then she stepped back and began folding the map without meeting his gaze again. Kincaid had the distinct sensation of walls going up and
alarm bells ringing, and all the camaraderie of moments earlier dissipated like smoke.
When Annie had tucked the map back into its spot in the bookcase, she picked up her barely touched tea and set the mug in the galley sink. The message couldn’t have been clearer if she’d shouted.
“Um, I suppose we’d better be going,” Kincaid said into the awkward silence. As he stood, he glanced at the window and found an acceptable excuse. “The light’s fading. If we’re not careful we’ll be blundering home in the dark. Thanks for the tea and the hospitality.”
Kit looked disappointed, but set his mug in the galley without protest.
“I hate winter afternoons, they draw in so early,” murmured Annie, almost as if she were speaking to herself. She stayed at the sink, rinsing cups as Kincaid and Kit put on their coats, but when they were suitably bundled up she wiped her hands on a tea towel and followed them up into the foredeck.
The pale blue dome of the sky had flushed a translucent rose and the light breeze had died, leaving the air utterly still. The boat’s mirror image gleamed on the surface of the canal, near and yet enticingly distant. Kincaid had turned to thank their hostess once more when Kit spoke.
“Can I see where you steer, before we go?”
“Kit, I don’t think—”
“No, it’s all right,” said Annie, her mood seeming to shift once again. “You can go along the edge—it’s called the gunwale. But be careful not to slip. The canal’s not deep, but the water’s very cold.
You can freeze more quickly than you’d think.”
“I won’t fall in.” Kit grinned at them, then turned and walked lightly towards the stern, his trainer-clad feet sure on the narrow ledge of the gunwale, one hand outstretched so that his fingertips traced the edge of the boat’s roof.
As Kincaid made an effort not to hold his breath, he heard Annie’s quiet chuckle. “He’s a natural. And it helps to be young.”