When she dares to look up, her eyes fall on the baby. In her smile there is a black square where one of her front teeth should be.
‘Ah! Look at the little one. He’s a right beautiful boy. What a fine babe, a fine babe. I’ll just be putting on a boil for coffee.’ Finally, she raises her eyes. ‘Coffee? I spice my own.’
‘Yes, thank you Mrs Unger.’
‘Angela. Feel free to call me Angela.’
‘Angela then. I am Constance and this is my sister, Verity. This is Rafe.’
‘Now that’s a strange name, ain’t it? If you don’t mind me sayin’.’
‘Yes, but it suits him, I think.’
Angela steps back into her nestled domain with the strings of her bonnet streaming down her back, heavy boots clomping the linoleum. Each time she moves, a swish of her striped, cotton skirts fall upon all the surfaces in the space she dwarfs. The outside of the cabin, and the sides and doors, are decorated with colourful motifs of castles and roses. Brass hoops are on the chimney and the portholes shine from tender polishing.
‘Look ahead!’ Captain Emil calls out to the other boatmen.
Emil and Angela’s three sons give the horses a tug and they begin to tow along the path of one of the premier freight arteries of the country. The horses lean steadily into their collars, until the stretchy cotton towline is taut. With a minute or two’s effort of sustained heavy pulling, the first load is on the way. The captain’s narrowboat leads the other two, and as it rises up, meeting the first of twelve locks, the aroma of Angela’s special spiced coffee greets the passengers.
The sisters stand like figureheads, their lavender and blue cloaks rippling against a faint breeze. All they see and hear embraces their senses. It is during the unexpected excitement of seeing a great balloon blowing across the strawberry fields of Hackney that Constance first notices two men on the towpath, both dressed in unusual black jackets, their silver buttons gleaming in the mid-afternoon sun. They pull their caps down, place their hands in their pockets and walk along close to the edge. Her palms go sweaty and she is astonished to feel fear grab her throat.
‘Verity, look. Are those two men following us?’
‘Captain Emil, do you know those men?’ Verity asks.
‘No, never seen them before.’ One hand on the rudder, he waves to them.
When his greeting is not returned, the captain calls out.
‘Hallo! You must have permission to walk the towpath.’
Still there is no acknowledgement from the two strangers, except a further tug on their caps.
‘The Inspector will grab them soon, I’d imagine. We’ll keep an eye on ’em.’
Onward they drift, as the eastern landscape of London diminishes with each clip of the horses’ studded shoes. Coffee is welcome just at this moment. Soothing, warm and thick, it coats their throats and lifts their spirits.
Angela’s dark head appears through the cabin hatch, and from down below the mouth-watering aroma of frying onions travels the length of the boat. She whistles a long, low sound that signals their early teatime. The men are famished; their last meal was taken at past ten this morning and it is now five o’clock. Before the gaunt wharves of east London disappear and the highway of water takes them further north into the City Road Basin, they eat.
Bertie has been itching to enter Angela’s domain and takes this opportunity to haul her hamper to the galley door. At the heart of it all stands Angela at the black-leaded range, the centre of their home.
‘To share.’ Bertie opens the hamper.
Angela glances down at the densely-packed food.
‘The wages. They include your meals,’ she says. ‘You are our guests.’
Angela removes the top of the bargee pail: a large cauldron filled with two earthenware pots that rests on the flat top of the range. Simmering in a rich broth in one of the pots is a substantial knuckle of ham, the other is filled with vegetables. Tucked in beside the pots are three linen-wrapped parcels of suet pudding, one filled with beef and ale, another with lamb and kidney, and the last is a sweet pudding of cinnamon and raisin. Angela has removed the lid of the well-stoked coalhole on top of the corner of the range and placed a spider pan over the fire; the potatoes and onions it contains continue to sizzle in animal fat.
‘I’m afraid I have poor offerings to share compared to this feast,’ Bertie says.
Angela turns her face away to hide her blush. She is at once proud and embarrassed.
Constance sits near the bow without a plate of food. Another sighting of the two men who followed them earlier has diminished her appetite.
‘You are quiet, sister,’ Verity steadies herself. ‘Have you not eaten? Bertie is beside herself. She is rattling on about the best suet pudding ever to reach her lips. I must say that Angela has … Constance, what is it?’
Constance looks straight ahead at the low-hanging trees. She remains perfectly still.
‘There. Under the weeping willow. One of the men.’
Verity tries to move further starboard.
‘No. Stop.’ Constance grabs her sister’s skirts and pulls her back. ‘Do not let them see you searching for them. The other man … No, Verity, do not remove your spectacles. The other is a few feet north, near the timber yard.’
Both men weave in and out of stacks of planks until their short, square-shaped, black jackets fade from view.
‘I will alert Captain Emil. If they are thieves, may they melt off the earth like snow off the ditch.
