and a tank in the desert.
The fat legs of the typists are getting ready
For the boys and the babies. At the back of my mind
An ant stands up and defies a steam-roller.
GAVIN EWART, ‘Serious Matters’
Last year, at the hot end of spring, in the small town of Hanmouth on the Hain estuary, a rowing boat floated in the middle of the muddy stream. Its stern pointed inland, where the guilty huddle in cities, its prow towards the ocean, five miles down the steady current. There, all our sins, at the end of all the days and weeks, will be washed away. The boatman dipped his oars deep. There was something thoughtful in the repeated movement. The current was running quickly, and his instructions were to keep the boat where it lay, in the centre of the slow flood, the colour of beer and milk.
‘Most of my customers,’ he said to his single passenger, ‘want to go to the same place. They want to be rowed across the estuary to the pub.’
‘What pub would that be, then?’ his passenger said, with a touch of irritation. He was a man fat in rolls about the middle, the top of his bald head wet and beaded. His gingery-white hair shocked out to either side, weeks away from a respectable haircut. A life of taxis, expense-account drink, and hot greasy lunches had marked him. Bachelor; or divorced more like; let themselves go in the circumstances.
‘It’s the Loose Cannon,’ the boatman said. ‘It’s over there, behind you. You can see the lights. On the spit of land where the river Loose meets the Hain estuary. It’s a joke, a sort of joke, the name of it.’
The man did not turn round to look. Never been in a boat before. Thinks he can drown in two yards deep. His right hand gripped the boat; the left was on the camera about his neck. At his feet, a black case, halfway between a briefcase and a suitcase in size, was laid carefully flat.
‘Easier to get there this way,’ the boatman went on, between his strokes. ‘At the end of the spit. Between the estuary and the Loose. Car park’s near a mile off. Easier to get me to row them across from Hanmouth jetty.’
‘Nice pub, is it?’ his passenger said. Taking an interest at last.
‘Old pub,’ the boatman said. ‘Very. Just that and the lock-keeper’s house over there. Not called the Loose Cannon properly. Someone’s joke. On the licence, it’s the Cannons of Devonshire. Been called the Loose Cannon as long as anyone knows. As long as I’ve been here. Because of the river, there, the one joining the estuary.’
On the ramshackle jetty, ten feet long, the girl with the cropped hair stood where they had left her. Two more heavy cases were at her feet. In the mid-evening light, her features were indistinct. She was an outlined shape, a black silhouette in the deepening blue, a watching upright shadow.
‘You want to go there?’ the boatman asked.
‘?’
‘To the pub. To the Loose Cannon. Most of my customers—I go back and forth like a shuttle in a loom, most of the summer.’
‘No.’
‘There’s nowhere else to go, if you’re crossing the estuary.’
The passenger gave the boatman a brief, city, impatient look. ‘Just what I asked for,’ he said. ‘I want you to row out into the middle of the estuary and keep the boat as steady as you can for twenty minutes while I take some photographs. That’s all.’
‘You’d get some nice snaps from the Loose Cannon lawn,’ the boatman said.
‘Wrong angle. Too high.’
‘That’s a lot of trouble to go to just to get a nice holiday snap or two,’ the boatman said.
The passenger said nothing. The boatman paused, and let the boat float a little downstream, swinging as it went. This was the time of day he most admired. A daylight wash at one end of the sky, behind the far hills, and at the other, the beginning of a warm blue night. The moon was like a fingernail paring, hung above the church, flat on its back. In the half-light, the blossom of the fruit trees in the gardens shone out; the stiff little white flowers on the horse-chestnuts in the churchyard were like bright candles; over a wall, a white-flowering clematis poured and mounted like whipped cream. The disorganized up and down of the town’s gables, house-ends, extensions and rooftops started to be punctuated by the lighting of windows. Here and there curtains were being drawn. The lights of a town like Hanmouth shone out across water for miles at night.
‘Busy this time of year anyway,’ the boatman said. ‘Always busy. People like to come out for the day. For an afternoon. For an evening. Very historic town. Third most picturesque town in Devon, it won, four years back. Don’t know who decides these things. Thomas Hardy came here for a holiday as a boy. You know who Thomas Hardy was?’
‘Yes,’ the passenger said. ‘We did him for O level. I got a B. You’re not from round here.’
‘No,’ the boatman said. ‘You never lose a Yorkshire accent. I’ve been here twenty years. Won’t start saying “my lover” to strangers now. And before that on holiday, every year, since I was a boy, almost.’
‘Like Thomas Hardy.’
‘Like Thomas Hardy. I worked for a steel firm in the north, thirty years. Got laid off. Firm went under. Got a good pay-off first, though. I was a manager. Good job. They said they’d see me all right. Madam says, “Let’s move somewhere we want to live. Hanmouth, that’s the place we want to be.” She was the one who loved it, really loved it. “You can do anything,” she said, “turn your hand to anything. Lot of old people in Hanmouth, very glad to have someone change a light bulb for a couple of pound.” She died five years later. Cancer. Very sudden. Never get over something like that. She wanted to be buried in the churchyard, but they don’t bury anyone there any more. She’s in the city cemetery, like everyone else who’s dead. Still go to pay my respects, every Saturday. Is that so strange?’
‘Just here,’ the passenger said. He opened the camera case hanging from his neck. It was a bulky black object, with a black hole where the lens should have been; not like the pocket-sized silver digital jobs people had these days. The boatman pressed against the seaward current and, fifty feet out in the estuary, they were as steady as a rooted waterweed.
The photographer bent down cautiously, and opened the case at his feet. The boatman could smell his perspiration. In the case, there were three lenses, each resting in a carved-out hollow, and there were other devices the boatman could not have named, each in its specific and bespoke place in the charcoal-coloured foam. The photographer lifted the middle-sized lens out, shutting the case with the same care, not making any sudden moves. It was as if there were some unappeased and hungry beast in the boat with them.
‘I’m seventy now,’ the boatman said. ‘You wouldn’t think it, people tell me. This keeps me fit.’ It was true: his wiry arms had lost flesh, but still pulled firmly; his heart, he considered, beat slowly in his narrow chest. He had kept his hair close-shaven in a way that chimed with the way some young people kept it, though it was white now. ‘There was a boatman before me, there was always a boatman. Running them as wanted from Hanmouth pier to the
