We continued our pointless journey down the river. When she eventually tired of reading her own article, Mum, back in her folding chair, shouted at Nev, ‘I hope you don’t expect me to play the Little Lady, doing all the ironing and cleaning and cooking. You’re bloody lucky I’m here at all. I should be out writing a feature. Do you know how in demand I am?’
Nev, who was steering the boat, replied: ‘Why don’t you go off and write your feature then? You could even fight the flab if you walked the thirty miles or so back to London.’
‘Don’t be silly. Do you think that just because you’re a man you’ve got a right to tell me what to do?’ She grabbed her captain’s hat and stomped towards the steering wheel. ‘Get off. It’s my turn.’
After a brief tussle, Nev shrugged and handed it over. ‘Just try not to run aground this time.’
We came up to a lock. There was a shriek. ‘Nev! What do I do?’
‘Take your foot off the power,’ he shouted, and she did – but not in time. We hit the brick wall of the lock with a loud crunch.
‘Tell your wife to put the boat into neutral,’ shouted the lock keeper as the boat whined and juddered helplessly against the side of the lock, and Will and I helped Nev tie the ropes. Mum raised her nose in a westerly direction. Nev took over once more and told Mum to get away from the wheel and stay out of harm’s way.
‘That was your fault,’ she yelped. ‘You didn’t tell me how to stop it.’
‘Oh, shut up, you hideous bat. There can only be one captain of this ship and that’s me. Once we get through this lock I’m going to have to assess the damage.’
While we waited for the lock to fill up, Mum decided to tell Dominic and Will why they shouldn’t mistake her for the kind of mum who helps her children with their homework or cheers them on at the school sports day. ‘You’re more likely to find me in a glamorous bar, interviewing a famous celebrity,’ she said, pushing up her hat and leaning against the side of the lock. ‘My career is far more important for me to do all those things silly women do. Anyone can bake a cake. I’m part of an exclusive club which holds the media power in London.’
‘Tower of London?’ said Dominic, hopefully.
‘It’s a miracle we’re not mentally deranged,’ said Tom, lackadaisically. He was sitting on the bank, reading. ‘I’m going to have to spend a significant portion of the money left to me in your will on psychiatric fees.’
‘I just don’t see the point in pretending to be something I’m not.’
Despite this, she did then pretend to be something she wasn’t: a bridge. Once through the lock, we all climbed back on the boat. Mum was the last one on. She pushed the boat off from the side, but being in the middle of a tirade about why on earth working-class people had to walk around with so few clothes on the moment the sun came out, she failed to notice that her feet were going in one direction and her hands, which were raised against a pillar, were going in the other.
‘Oh no!’ she screamed. ‘Help!’
Nev turned round to see his wife forming an arch over the water, her behind raised high above her hands and feet, but he was steering the boat and too far away from her to help. Dominic had escaped downstairs to look at photographs of London landmarks, Will and I were on the roof with our dead, dying and wounded insects and Tom was back on the deck, making the most of Mum’s folding chair while he could.
Theoretically, Tom could have saved her. He was only a few feet away. But he looked at her, raised his eyes, and said, ‘Try not to make too much of a splash.’ Will and I sat and watched, frozen. I looked over at Nev. He had his hand over his mouth. ‘Somebody help me!’ she pleaded, before plopping into the water.
We looked down. For a few seconds all you could see was the captain’s hat, floating between the boat and the wall of the lock. Then Mum appeared, her bouffant flattened, mascara running down her cheeks, spluttering.
‘Quick!’ she shrieked. ‘Throw me something! Throw me something to hold onto!’
Tom looked around, stood up, stretched, and chucked the folding chair at her. It landed with a splash a few inches away from her head before sinking out of view.
‘Oh,’ said Tom, peering over the boat and scratching his head. ‘That didn’t work.’
I threw her a rope and pulled her up to the side of the boat until she reached the ladder that ran along its side. With her waterlogged trousers, black-lined face and dripping black hair hanging in clumps from the side of her head, she looked like a deranged rock star trawled up from the riverbed.
When she dried off, after Nev made her a cup of tea and I got her a dry towel to wrap around herself, she dissolved into self-pity.
‘It was awful,’ she said, shivering. ‘I’ve never been so scared in all my life … I had a moment of blind panic. And I hate getting my hair wet. Why didn’t anyone help me?’
I shrugged. ‘Couldn’t really make it in time.’
‘And I couldn’t leave the wheel,’ said Nev. ‘If I had, the boat might have crushed you when you fell in the water.’
‘I was reading,’ said Tom, picking his nose.
‘This whole holiday was your stupid idea,’ Mum snapped at Nev. ‘You know I hate larking about on rivers. I don’t like the countryside, I don’t like mud, I don’t like water and I don’t like being stuck on a boat with four horrible boys and a useless man.’
Given her track record, you might think that now would have been a good time for Mum to sit out the rest of the holiday and stay in a place where she could cause as little damage as possible, like below deck. And at first, deprived of her folding chair, she did indeed disappear into her cabin and indulge in a much-needed (for us) bout of splendid isolation. But she went back to her old ways the very next day.
It was somewhere around Teddington that she decided to take over once more. Initially, Nev refused to let her. He pointed out that her attempts to drive the boat had not been entirely successful.
‘Would you have me chained to the kitchen, cooking and cleaning?’ she wailed, sweeping her arms in the air. ‘Who paid for our house by scribbling away? Whose brains got Tom a scholarship to Westminster? And yet here you are, trying to be the big man. I must say, I find your attitude highly offensive. I suppose you also think that unmarried women are useless nuisances, spare mouths? I wonder how the sisterhood would respond to this, should I write an article about it.’
‘Why don’t you do us all a favour and put a sock in it?’ Nev snapped, which was quite a strong reaction for him. ‘I’ve never patronized you, and given your horrible cooking, the kitchen is the last place I’d want to keep you.’
‘Give me that steering wheel, you. I’ll show you.’
Mum no longer had on the captain’s hat, but she did her best to look authoritative nonetheless as she stood at the prow of the boat. She kept both hands on the wheel and looked ahead. A pleasure cruiser passed and people on it waved; she ignored them. A bunch of kids on a boat similar to ours pointed at her and shouted, ‘Look, it’s Cher.’
We needed to refuel. We came up to a river marina, but getting into it required a degree of skill. A jetty ran around it and it was, of course, filled with boats. Nev, who had been at the back, taking a series of deep breaths with his eyes closed, attempted to take over for this key bit of manoeuvring.
‘I’m perfectly capable of controlling my craft,’ she announced, pushing him away, ‘even if it does hurt your phallic pride too much to let me.’
‘Liz, you’re going in too fast,’ he said, as calmly as he could manage. ‘Take it out of gear.’
Rather