My mother thought Tommy was a good catch. Those were her exact words. She saw my life in terms of a fishing expedition, where I was the bait and Tommy was the prize-winning fish who had swallowed my hook. All I had to do was reel him in.
I didn’t much like her analogy, but she was right about Tommy. He was a good man, he was steady, honest and loyal. In every way, he was a good catch.
If I had any doubt, it was in his lack of an impetuous streak. It sometimes made me wonder if life with Tommy would be exciting, but my mother thought excitement could be overrated. Now, after almost forty years of marriage, he will still stop whatever he’s doing if asked a question. I sometimes wonder if he’s capable of walking and thinking at the same time.
He can chat whilst doing things, even tell a rambling story, but when asked something requiring consideration, Tommy will stop whatever activity he is involved in. He will tilt his head to one side, invariable the right, and deliver a short ‘hmm’ to indicate his thought process has begun.
People often mistake this idiosyncrasy as wisdom, and maybe it is. His answer will be delivered before he takes another step or continues with whatever task was employing his skills. And Tommy does have skills; he’s an engineer.
When we first met, I thought him terribly clever, and he is, with anything mechanical. But emotionally, he can be a bit slow on the uptake and doesn’t always arrive at the destination.
We were lucky when we got married, managing to buy a little house. But it needed a lot of work. Tommy was a natural when it came to stonework or carpentry, and he had friends who were plumbers and electricians. I was allowed to paint, but only walls, not woodwork, so I began to restore our small garden to something like its former glory. Tommy helped me with the lawn, but I did the flower beds, mostly accomplished with cuttings supplied by friends and family.
I used to stand at the kitchen sink, when Tommy was at work, staring out the window at our postage stamp of a lawn. I pictured our two future children, one girl, one boy, playing on that lawn with a puppy, and giggling. It always made me smile, imagining that future scene. But we never did have children, never found out why, and what good would it have done to know whose fault it was. Better just to accept what life has planned for you than look for excuses.
It was a shame we were never blessed; Tommy would have made a good father. He would have doted on a daughter and schooled a son in all things mechanical. And I would have enjoyed being a part of it.
My sister had children, and we saw quite a lot of them when they were younger. But that dream I had of seeing my own brood, playing outside my kitchen window, never came to fruition.
We did get a puppy. We called him Monty. Tommy made a great fuss of him, taking him to the pub and out for walks along the canal towpath. That was where Tommy got his fascination with narrow boats. There was a wharf near us where they repaired and restored working and pleasure boats. Tommy got to know the men who worked there as they spoke the same language. By then Tommy had moved in management and I think he missed the oil and grease on his hands. He always looked more comfortable in dungarees than he did in a suit.
The day Monty drowned was a terrible one for both of us, but Tommy took it particularly hard, blaming himself for the accident, even though there was nothing he could have done to prevent it. He kept saying that he should have kept Monty tied up while he helped Dave winch an engine back into position.
Monty was a Lakeland Terrier. He loved to chase ducks, which were ever-present on the canal. I don’t think he would have harmed them; he was just playing. A passer-by saw Monty chase a mallard, which fluttered noisily into the canal. Monty followed him into the water.
The woman said she would have tried to rescue Monty if she had realised he was in trouble, but assumed all dogs could swim. Tommy heard her shouts and turned to see his ever-present companion struggling to stay afloat, his head barely above the water. Tommy didn’t hesitate, he jumped into the canal. But by the time he had waded out, his feet dragging in the soft clay which lined the canal, Monty was beyond saving.
For some time after that, Tommy couldn’t go back to the canal basin. He said he couldn’t get the look in Monty’s eyes out of his head. It must have been almost six months later that his friend Dave from the boat yard, knocked on our front door. He had a little puppy in his arms. He didn’t say anything about the dog, but asked Tommy if he could help them with a bit of a puzzling engineering problem.
Tommy was gone for the whole afternoon. When he returned, he had that little puppy with him. He didn’t say much, other than telling me the puppy needed a home, and a name. We called him Alfie.
That summer I watched from my kitchen window as Alfie and Tommy played together on my little back lawn. He told me, quite casually one evening, that labradoodles happen to be very good swimmers, and they have webbed paws. The lads in the boat yard had picked him out specially.
It was towards the end of that summer when Tommy, quite out of the blue, said we ought to travel a bit, and see more of the world. I’d never been taken with the idea of flying. No matter how many times Tommy tried to convince me it was much the safest form of transport, it didn’t seem so to me.
I told him I’d prefer to use the safest method of travel, not the almost safest. He thought for bit, like he always has, only this time his fingers were playing with the soft hair on Alfie’s head. Tell you what, he said, why don’t we get ourselves a narrow boat.
The canal basin was a nice place to linger on a sunny day. The deep throbbing sound of those diesel engines was soothing as they chugged post. People always waved to you, too there was something about the pace of life on a canal which made people smile. Occasionally, I’d take sandwiches down there for a picnic lunch when Tommy was busy helping in the yard. And Alfie was always pleased to see me. He was a lot more tolerant of the ducks than Monty had been, but they still gave him a wide berth. I think they might have guessed he was a good swimmer.
Tommy worked on our boat almost every weekend for two years. We had a bit of a grand ceremony when it was lowered into the water; with champagne and everything. Well, it wasn’t real champagne, but the sandwiches were real smoked salmon.
There were still a few finishing touches to be made to our boat, but we enjoyed the odd day out in it. It was a very peaceful way of getting around and it brought us together, all three of us. Alfie was fascinated by the wildlife, usually spotting anything long before we did, but although he was a good swimmer, he rarely ventured into the canal. I wondered whether he could sense Tommy’s apprehension and held back.
Tommy was offered early retirement, the company was downsizing, most of the production going abroad apparently. We had no children to worry about, had put away a tidy sum over the years, and I knew Tommy had itchy feet, or itchy rudder hand. We’d often talked about exploring the canal network, or he’d talked about it and I’d listened.
We spent the next winter planning, and in the early spring The Brindley, named after a canal engineer, was stocked with everything we could think of. We let our house to a young couple with two young children. I was happy that my little lawn was finally going to get a family playing on it, even if it wasn’t my family. Alfie made friends almost every where we moored, and Tommy found lots of people happy to chat about engines, bow thrusters, and all things narrow boat.
I no longer had a lawn to look at from my kitchen window. But every weekend the canal towpath would be busy with families, many with dogs, and I eventually got to see children playing outside my window while I made Tommy’s lunch.