The Lock-Keeper's Cat

Source written for Revision Library (original, copyright-free). Fictional narrative created for 11+ comprehension and spelling practice.

Freya Adeyemi-Clarke had never lived on a boat before, and she was quite sure she never wanted to, not really, though she would not have admitted that to her grandmother for all the tea in Millbrook Quay.

Nana Iris had moved onto the narrowboat two summers ago, trading her terraced house for sixty feet of dark green paintwork and a chimney that always smoked slightly crooked. She met Freya at the towpath gate wearing a jumper three sizes too big and waved as though Freya's train might otherwise glide straight past the village and out towards the hills.

'You've grown at least an inch,' Nana Iris announced, which probably was not true, but Freya let her believe it anyway.

That evening, the boat rocked gently against its mooring ropes, and somewhere further along the canal a lock gate groaned open like an old door reluctant to be disturbed. Nana Iris explained that the gate had creaked in exactly that way for forty years, ever since Mr Kaczmarek had first taken over as lock-keeper. 'It isn't a graceful sound,' she said, 'but it has let every boat safely through this stretch of water since before your mother was born. Some things do not have to be elegant to be important.'

The next morning, Freya met Dev Chowdhury, who lived on the boat moored just behind Nana Iris's and could name every lock between Millbrook Quay and the next town without pausing for breath. Together they balanced along the towpath wall, hunting for the flat stones Dev swore were lucky, though he could never quite explain the rule that decided which ones counted. Mr Kaczmarek called down from the lock-keeper's cottage, his voice rough with age but warm all the same, and invited them in to see the winding gear, where a tabby cat named Rudder dozed on a stack of ropes and blinked at them without much interest.

By the time Freya had wound the great iron paddle high enough to let the water surge through, her arms were aching, but she felt strangely steady, determined not to be the one who asked to stop first. From the lock wall, the whole village opened out below her: the crooked chimneys, the boats tilted slightly where the water ran shallow, and far along the canal, the small dark shape of the next lock gate, waiting patiently for the water to find its level.

'It looks so ordinary from up here,' she murmured.

'Most important things do,' said Mr Kaczmarek, and turned to grease the great iron paddle until it moved without a sound.