When everyone was seated onboard, the man with the pole said, “Push us away from the jetty, sir.”
The man with the conductor’s bag pushed us away from the jetty. “You are free of the jetty, Captain Scott,” he told him.
“Captain Scott?” we gasped. “As in Captain Scott, the explorer?”
“But he is dead!” Tony whispered to us.
If the man with the pole heard what we said, he never let on that he did. As the cool, clear waters lapped and gurgled their way under the punt, we wondered what lay in store for us on the far side of the river.
As the punt slid serenely across the river, I dipped one of my hands into the water. As I trailed my fingers through it, I thanked my God for such a fine day.
Pushing his pole into the river bottom, the man walked the entire length of the punt, propelling it forward. Then, removing his pole, he returned to his original position, and started all over again.
Glancing into the water, where I was still trailing my fingers, I thought I saw something, something swimming about just below the surface. I thought it might be a fish. Feeling a bump, my attention was drawn away from the fish, to our arrival on the far side of the river.
“Mind your step,” the man with the pole advised.
Stepping onto the jetty, I was so happy to be on my favourite side of the river.
Mum faltered halfway between land and boat. “Watch your step,” the man with the pole advised.
“Come on, mum,” Maria urged.
“You can do it,” Tony said to her.
“Think of the picnic,” I said temptingly.
Taking a final, brave step, mum joined us on dry land. As I watched the rest of the passengers alighting, I truly believed the man with the pole had the best job in the world.
“Which way shall we go?” mum asked us.
“Left,” Maria chose.
“Right,” Tony chose even louder.
“Gerrard, which way do you want to go?” mum said, offering me the final say.
“Left, of course,” I answered.
“Then left it is,” mum said to us.
“Hurray!” Maria and I cheered.
Mum led the way forward. Tony held up the rear, a sulky expression etched on his face. Maria and I, however, ignored him.
Seemingly oblivious to Tony’s sullen mood, mum scorched the way forward, searching for the best place to hold our picnic. Pointing to a soft, grassy area, she said, “That is a nice spot.” Opening her picnic bag, mum produced a red and white checked tablecloth. Having laid the tablecloth on the ground, she removed the picnic goodies from out of her bag. We had orange squash, crisps, biscuits and rosy red apples to clean our teeth after the feast.
Delving a hand into her bag, mum searched for her book; the latest Mills and Boon novel. Having found it, she lay into the soft grasses, ready for a good read. We, however, had other, more adventurous ideas on our minds – like exploring!
“Don’t go too far,” mum warned us, as she opened her book.
Although we heard her words of advice, we took little or no notice of what she had said. Didn’t she know we were daring explorers, with dark, undiscovered continents to find?
“Are you coming, Tony,” Maria asked.
Tony, however, still wanted to go in the other direction. He groaned, “It’s not fair. We always go this way…”
“You know that’s not true,” she told him, “The last time we were here, we went in the other direction, your direction.”
“I don’t remember that,” he answered morosely.
I knew only too well that he did, but chose not to say so for fear of an even greater sulk coming on.
“Are you coming?” Maria asked him again.
“All right,” he grumbled, “but I want to see the canal – and the weir.”
We agreed – anything for peace.
Maria was the oldest, at eleven, I was next, at nine, and
Tony was the youngest; he was only seven years of age. To someone raising children nowadays, it might seem foolhardy, allowing three children to go exploring so close to a river and canal. These, however, were innocent days, when matters of health and safety were far from most people’s minds. Moreover, despite all of the playing and exploring we did, we never had an accident. They were good days…
We explored; deep within the high gasses we were Captain Scott crossing the Arctic, pirates marauding our way through the Caribbean, and also mutineers of the Bounty. Tony visited the canal and the weir, Maria collected loads of shells at the water’s edge and I found a genuine fossil. It was brilliant.
The sun sinking low in the sky signalled to us that it was time to find mum. “It’s time we were going home,” Maria said to Tony and me.
“That means another ride on the punt!” Tony and I cheered. Life was good, them; in fact it had never been better.
“Mum!” we called out upon our return.
“What is it, my darlings?” she asked hugging us with affection.
“We saw the canal – and the weir,” Tony told her.
“And look at these shells,” Maria said to her.
Looking into her bucket, mum said, “There’re a bit whiffy,”
Maria stared disappointingly into her bucket, and then she said, “I’ll wash them again in the river.”
“That will have to wait until later, when we are home,” mum told her. “Help me to pack the bag, for we must be off.”
Maria and Tony helped her to pack the bag. I, however, stood still and silent, watching them do it.
Seeing this, mum said, “Is everything all right, Gerrard?”
“You never asked me what I found,” I explained.
“Oh, I’m so sorry, my dear,” she said to me. “Did you find something?”
“Yes…”
“Can I see it?”
“Here,” I said, handing her what I had found.
“That’s beautiful! What is it?” I told her that it was a fossil. “It must be thousands of years old,” she said as she returned it to me.
“It’s millions of years old,” I proudly informed her. “It’s at least sixty-five million years old – perhaps even more!”
Looking at her wristwatch mum said, “Come on, we have a punt to catch…”
The man with the pole helped mum aboard. Following her lead, Tony, Maria and I stepped aboard. Because it was the last trip of the day, the punt was crammed full of people, perhaps a bit too full. The man with the pole, however, didn’t appear to notice. We set off away from the jetty.
There were still quite a few pleasure boats about. They avoided our fragile punt. It was an unwritten law of the river. Having offered my seat to a woman who had up until then nowhere to sit, I sat on the sloping bow. Although he gave me an un-approving look, the man with the pole did not reprimand me for doing this.
By the time we were halfway across the river, I was sore from sitting on the hard wood of the bow. I shuffled about, trying to make myself comfortable. For a few minutes this tactic worked, but then cramp attacked one of my legs. I stood erect in the punt, trying to make the pain go away.
“What are you doing?” the man with the pole asked me. I tried to explain, to tell him what I was doing, but a boat suddenly sped past, barely missing us in the process. Then its bow wave slammed hard into our vessel. Losing my balance, I fell over the side of the punt and into the water.
The current was strong, and it soon carried me away from the punt. “Stop the boat!” mum shrieked. “Gerrard fell into the water! Save him!”
The man with the pole, however, had no way of following me downstream; the best that he was able to do, to help me, was implore those passing in boats, to go save me.
One of the boats suddenly stopped, and then turning round, it made a beeline for my head, bobbing up and down in the watery distance.
Seeing this, Tony and Maria cheered. Although I was a distance away from the punt, I heard them. I tried to stay up in the water. Warbling it’s gre
eting, the boat arrived alongside me just as I disappeared under the water for a third time.
I gasped for air.
Mum screamed.
Tony blinked.
Maria trembled.
A fish of some description swam past me.
A hand grabbed hold of me. It pulled me out of the water. I was saved.
“There you are, misses, he is safe and sound,” my rescuer, it was am man, said to mum, when he brought me to the jetty a few minutes later.
“Thank you, thank you,” mum sobbed. “I feared I had lost him.”
“He’s a tough cookie,” the man told her. “It will take more than a dunking in the Thames to finish that one off.” Having said that, he gunned the throttle and sped away from the jetty.
Slapping me across the back of my head, mum said, “That will teach you to go standing up in the punt.”
“Ow!” I hollered. “That hurt!”
“It was supposed to! I don’t know what your dad will say to you, I really don’t, coming home in those wet clothes.” Luckily, it was still warm and my clothes were dry by the time we got home.
Did dad find out about my unfortunate accident on the river? Well, mum told him nothing about it, nor did Maria. And I certainly said nothing about it.
Tony? What about Tony? Do you think he said anything about it? Let me put it this way, for the remainder of the summer, every time we visited the far side of the river, we turned right.
THE END
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