Swing, Swing Together

CHAPTER 9

The day was perfect for boating. The Thames stretched ahead like a blue silk ribbon dividing the counties. The skiff cruised through the current at a respectable rate, and if Thackeray’s work with the sculls betrayed some inexperience, the splashes did not often carry as far as Harriet and Cribb. Constable Hardy, plainly a practised oarsman, rowed with his eyes fastened on Harriet, obliging her to take an unflagging interest in the scenery along the bank. Sergeant Cribb, who was supposed to be managing the rudder lines, was deep in Three Men in a Boat, a copy of which he had purchased in Henley. For a second reading it was providing extraordinary amusement.

The agreement was that they would row the mile or so to Marsh Lock and there take lunch. They tied up at one of the posts before the lock gates and Cribb put down his book and began distributing plates with hard-boiled eggs, which proved difficult to control with knife and fork. Two, at least, were lost overboard. The porkpie was more manageable, but the next course, a Dundee cake, by general consent was consigned to the water and sank like a stone. Thackeray commented that it was a wonder the boat had stayed afloat so long. As compensation a stone jar of beer was provided. Cribb made some remark about the rights of a person in custody and poured Harriet a half-pint glass. It was bitter, but it took away the aftertaste of the food.

While Thackeray settled in the bows for a nap and Hardy washed up, Cribb helped Harriet ashore and they approached somebody in shirt sleeves and a white cap who had for some time been eyeing them from a distance.

“Good day to you, lockkeeper,” said Cribb civilly, but with the air of a man who did not have to do his own rowing. “Capital for us, this weather, but busy work for you I dare say.”

“It’s the job I’m paid to do, sir,” the lockkeeper answered. Something in his tone suggested he was not wholly contented in his work, but Cribb ignored it.

“Interesting occupation, I expect, meeting such a variety of people.”

“I get all sorts, it’s true.” The lockkeeper looked Cribb up and down as if he were one of the more remarkable specimens.

“I was wondering whether you might remember a party coming through in a skiff like ours a day or so ago. Three men together.”

This hopeful inquiry elicited a frown.

“People I’d give something to meet,” Cribb explained, putting his hand in his pocket. “I heard they were somewhere along this stretch. Thought you might have seen ’em through your lock, one way or the other.”

Far from the hoped-for flash of recollection in the lockkeeper’s eye, a disconcerting redness was appearing at the edges.

“Name of Harris, I suppose, with George and Mr. Jerome K. Jerome, to say nothing of a dog. No, they haven’t been through, not today, nor last week, nor the week before. They’re people in a book and I spend the greater part of my time now telling folks they don’t exist, no more than Oliver Twist nor Alice in blooming Wonderland. I’d like to meet Mr. Jerome and tell him all the trouble he’s caused in my life. This was a tolerable job before that book of his appeared. I don’t get ten minutes to myself now from one day to the next. It’s doubled the traffic on the river. Doubled it. They come through here in their hundreds, half of ’em not knowing one end of a boat from the other, all decked up in their flannels and straw hats and asking for glasses of water and things I wouldn’t care to mention in present company. I don’t know what they think a lock house is. I shan’t stand it much longer. My wife’s threatening to leave. I can tell you, when she goes, so shall I, and they can go over the blooming weir to Henley for all I care.”

“I wasn’t talking about the book,” said Cribb, keeping his copy tactfully out of sight behind his back. “I simply wanted to know if you remembered letting three men through your lock. The book has nothing to do with it.”

There was a pause while the lockkeeper considered whether such an unlikely claim could have an iota of truth in it. He looked along the river and said, “It’s novices that cause the trouble. They read the book and before they’ve finished a couple of chapters they’re down at Kingston hiring a skiff. They throw in a tent and some meat pies and away they go just like them three duffers in the book. If they survive the first night at Runnymede, they spend the second in the Crown at Marlow-them that can get in-and next morning they come through here looking for the backwater to Wargrave. ‘There shouldn’t be a lock here,’ they say. ‘What’s this lock doing in our way? It isn’t in the book.’ ‘Yes it is,’ I say. ‘Marsh Lock. Page 220.’ The book is generally open on their knees, so they pick it up and frown into it and sure enough they find it mentioned. The reason why they never see it is that the backwater is mentioned first, even though it’s half a mile upriver from here. And do you think they’re grateful when I point it out? Not a bit of it. ‘Well, if we must go through the beastly lock,’ they say, ‘you’d better get the gates open or we’ll never make Shiplake before dark. When you’ve done that, be good enough to fetch us some fresh water while we’re waiting. Rowing is devilish thirsty work.’ ‘So is managing a blooming lock,’ I tell ’em. ‘You get out and work the paddles for me, and I’ll get you your blooming water.’ That shuts ’em up.”

“I’m sure!” said Cribb. “But we haven’t come to ask for water. Just tell me when you last had three men together through your lock.”

“With a dog,” added Harriet, and realized as she said it that Cribb had not mentioned this because it seemed too much like provocation. She wished she had drunk lemonade instead of beer.

“Three men and a dog,” said the lockkeeper slowly. “You’re asking me, are you?”

“I am indeed,” confirmed Cribb, chinking the coins in his pocket to show good faith.

“Three men and a dog. Three men is quite common,” said the lockkeeper. “Dogs is not so common. Only your real fanaticals actually go so far as to take a dog along with ’em.”

“But it isn’t unknown?”

“Last time were yesterday, towards teatime. Small white dog, it was, but don’t ask me the breed. I don’t know a bulldog from a beagle.”

“There were three men, though? Do you remember them?”

“I don’t recall things that easy, sir.”

“Sixpence apiece?” offered Cribb.

“For a florin I might remember the name of the boat as well.”

“Done.”

“It were the Lucrecia. Neat little skiff built not above a year, I’d say. The wood were light in colour, without many varnishings. Fine set of cushions, too, dark red plush.”

“And the men?”

“You do have that florin with you?”

The exchange took place.

“I reckon the one at stroke weighed all of fifteen stone. Bearded he was, and red-faced. Turned fifty, I’d say, but able to pull a powerful oar just the same. His hair was sandy-coloured and he had bright yellow braces. He were talking plenty, and it didn’t seem to matter that the others wasn’t listening. The voice matched his build. He’d have passed for a Viking, that one would, if he’d worn a helmet on his head instead of a boater. Sitting at bow was a smaller man. A queer sight they made rowing that skiff. He was dark-complexioned, the small fellow, Jewish if I can spot ’em, and with arms that barely reached the oars. I don’t know what difference he was making to the movement of the boat, but he couldn’t have got up much of a sweat-begging your pardon, young lady-for he was still wearing his blazer. Oh, and he had pebble glasses so thick you could hardly see his eyes behind ’em.”

“You’ve earned your florin already,” said Cribb. “Do you remember as much about the third man?”

“Most of all, because he was the one that spoke to me as I worked the gates for ’em. A rum cove he was, that one. He didn’t talk natural at all. He might have been standing at a pulpit instead of sitting in a boat. ‘Be good enough to explain, lockkeeper,’ he said, ‘why this lock does not appear in our itinerary, which we faithfully compiled from Mr. Jerome K. Jerome’s celebrated work.’ I gave him my usual answer and the little man at bow turned up page 220 and squinted at it. ‘He’s right,’ he says. ‘It’s here in the book. We went up the backwater to Wargrave. It is a short cut, leading out of the right-hand bank about half a mile above Marsh Lock.’ ‘That,’ says the other, ‘is of no consequence. It is merely a retrospective reference. If there is a lock here as there appears incontrovertibly to be, then Jerome ought to have mentioned its existence at the appropriate point in the book. The omission is inexcusable.’ ”

“What was his appearance?” Cribb asked.

“For the river on a summer afternoon, very odd, very odd indeed. Pin-stripe suit and grey bowler. He was built on slimmer lines than either of the others, round-shouldered and white-faced, with tortoise-shell spectacles and buck teeth. I’d know him again.”

“I can believe you,” said Cribb. “Did you discover by any chance where they were making for?”

“Haven’t I said as much already? They’re doing the book, like everyone else. They’ll have spent last night on one of the Shiplake islands and today they’ll be making for Streatley. They’ve got two days there. If you’re wanting to meet ’em, that’s where you’ll catch ’em, for sure.”