Boatman's dream 34

James Bellingham-Smythe had a thick skin.  Dealing with resistance was par for the course for him.  Part of his skill-set.  More a character trait.  He swung out of Lord Bowall’s drive.

Unusually, he made a snap decision, and instead of turning back to Weston, he turned towards Street.  He needed a cheap waterproof to keep in the car. It was only eight miles or so through the villages to the outlet centre.  He felt like spending some time mooching around, maybe have a coffee.  He switched his phone off.

Intermittent rain still fell across the Levels, obscuring the view of the Polden Hills.  He didn’t pass a single car. 

A junction up ahead seemed to lead nowhere.  The road seemed to peter out.  He braked late, locking a wheel in the loose gravel.  The turn to the left was barely a track and almost doubled-back in the direction he’d come.  He looked to the right.  It seemed to head roughly east.

“Right it is, then.”  He said aloud to himself.

The road quickly narrowed and turned ninety degrees over a hump-backed bridge. 

He drove cautiously.

A modern bungalow was set back slightly from the bend.   A river flowed past the garden and under the bridge.  Two small boats were moored by the lawn.  He stopped to look, flipping life options.  It seemed idyllic, but what would you do in the middle of this?

On a track beside the bungalow, an elderly man and woman were leading a bull between two fields.  Bellingham-Smythe waited.  The man gave a wave as he shut the gate.  Bellingham-Smythe waved back.  Idyllic, but not for him.

He eased over the bridge.  Twenty or thirty crows rose into the sky just where the river disappeared behind trees.  He assumed he’d startled them, then he noticed a dun-coloured sail about pass behind the wood.  It was a small lateen rig similar to an Arab dhow.   The crew must have had to take the mast down to get under the bridge.

He looked at the GPS to see what river it was.  It could have been the Brue, but there were a number of small rhynes and drains all very close together.  The boat had him perturbed.  It was a strange sight on so small a waterway.  And the lateen sail?  In the short time he’d lived around here, he’d become accustomed to oddities.

He looked after the boat for a moment, then pressed on.  Some of the villages were no more than a couple of farms.  Others had a pub or two; an old, low church crouched at the edge of one of them.

Through the misting rain he noticed an amber beacon.  He slowed the car.

ROAD AHEAD CLOSED

An arrow pointed along a small lane.

DIVERSION VIA SHIPTON AND SLAKE

“This is where the GPS comes in.” he thought.

“Bloody hell!"  he shouted at the empty interior. "That takes me almost back to Bowall’s Farm.”

He thought about turning around and heading back to Weston, but swung the car into the narrow drove.  A plan is a plan.  He’d get to Street one way or another.  He just hoped there wasn’t a truck coming the other way.

The land on either side was completely flat.  The only signs of life were grazing cattle and a gas engineer who managed to squeeze his van past without slowing down.

There was water everywhere – in small ditches that ran beside the road, in wider drains that the road occasionally crossed, and in what he took to be the river Brue.

As the road curved past an expanse of pastureland, he saw the lateen sail.  He pulled the car up just as the rain started falling heavily again.  He lowered the passenger window.

The sail was heavy canvass, made heavier by the rain.  The hull was open, with rowlocks for four oars.   It looked a bit big for the waterway.  There were four people aboard.  He tried to get a better look, but hail began falling noisily onto the roof.  Visibility went down to nothing.  Lightning flashed and a bolt struck a high-tension cable in an adjacent field.  He rolled the window back up and waited.

When the worst had passed, he drove on carefully, slowing for flash-floods and almost missing the village of Shipton.  A little further, he made out a sign indicating Slake.  The GPS showed a better route straight ahead. 

He reached the main A39 and turned left for Street.  By the time he parked at the outlet centre, the rain had slowed to a light drizzle.

He paid for an hour’s parking and found a café.

The windows beside the faux leather armchair were steamed-up.  He stirred sugar into his cappuccino and thought about the boat. 

He never knew those waters were navigable.  Pity the poor buggers in weather like this.  He assumed it must have been some kind of re-enactment group – Bible-bashers bringing the Grail up to Glastonbury.  Who knows? 

All sorts of strange buggers around here.