The Windlass

Original fiction written for Revision Library; no external source reproduced.

Amara had always thought canals were just wide, quiet ditches until the Saturday her uncle Desmond asked her to come and help him move his narrowboat along the Slough Arm of the Grand Union Canal.

The morning was still and cool, mist lying low over the water like a blanket that hadn't yet been folded away. Desmond had owned the boat, a sturdy old vessel called The Kingfisher, for seventeen years, ever since he retired from teaching. He kept her moored close to the old brickworks, where swallows nested each summer under the eaves of a crumbling warehouse.

'You'll need both hands and a good ear,' Desmond said, handing Amara a heavy iron windlass. 'This turns the paddles that let the water in and out of the lock. Turn it too fast and you'll strip the gear; too slow and we'll be here till teatime.'

Amara gripped the windlass and studied the black metal spindle at the top of the lock gate. Somewhere behind them, a moorhen called out across the reeds, a sharp, clicking sound that echoed off the brick walls of the lock chamber.

'Six locks between here and the junction,' Desmond explained, checking the little laminated map pinned inside his jacket. 'Each one lifts us about two metres. By the time we reach the top, we'll have climbed the height of a house.'

The work was slower and heavier than Amara had expected. She leaned her whole body into the windlass, feeling the mechanism resist and then, gradually, give way. Water rushed and gurgled through the paddle gate, the level in the lock chamber rising steadily until it matched the canal beyond. Desmond showed her how to read the water, how to judge from the small waves and eddies exactly when it was safe to open the great wooden gates.

By the third lock, her arms ached and her palms had reddened where the windlass handle had rubbed against her skin. Yet she found she did not want to stop. There was something satisfying about the rhythm of it, about watching The Kingfisher rise slowly out of the shadowed lock chamber into full daylight, water streaming off her hull.

'It's like the boat is climbing stairs,' Amara said, watching the narrowboat settle level with the towpath.

Desmond laughed. 'That's exactly what a flight of locks is. A staircase for boats.'

They worked their way through the remaining locks as the mist burned away and the towpath filled with dog walkers and cyclists. At the fifth lock, an elderly woman leaned on the gate to watch, remarking that she hadn't seen anyone work a windlass with such care in years. Amara felt a small, private pride at that.

By the time they reached the junction, the sun stood high overhead and Amara's shoulders were properly aching. Desmond eased The Kingfisher into a mooring beneath a row of willow trees and cut the engine.

'Well,' he said, wiping his hands on an old cloth. 'What do you make of canal life?'

Amara thought about the question properly, the way her uncle always encouraged her to. She thought of the windlass, heavy and cold in her hands, the moorhen's cry, the boat rising like something coming up for air.

'I'd like to learn to steer her too,' she said. 'Properly, I mean. Not just the locks.'

Desmond smiled, the kind of smile that didn't need any words to go with it, and passed her the tiller.