CHAPTER 17
Jess had still not found the river. But she had found the canal, and in some ways that was better. The canal had a towpath so she could walk for miles without having to make a decision about which way to go, and although she knew she was travelling mainly south rather than west, the route was still taking her further and further away from her previous life, which was the main thing.
The canal also passed through towns and villages where she could buy food, and there was plenty of free drinking water from official water stops. These were normally locked and needed a specially supplied key to access the tap, so she got used to waiting for a boat to come along, fill their tanks and then ask if she could fill her bottle before the tap was locked again. No one minded helping the young lady, bedraggled and scruffy though she may have appeared.
But she was hungry again and dirty, and this time she had almost run out of money. She had camped overnight by a flight of locks and the continuous trickle of water over the gates was soothing in the cold night air, but it had started to rain and when she woke the skies were grey and rain fell in a persistent drizzle.
She stayed in her tent most of the day waiting for it to stop, and through a gap in the front cover watched a steady procession of narrowboats navigate the locks, their crew replete in waterproof gear, wielding their cranking handles or “lock keys”, she heard someone say, before continuing on their way up or down the canal.
The drizzle eventually subsided so she packed up her wet tent. She was now an expert at folding it and could get it back in the bag within twenty seconds. She set off downstream but she was tired and her feet dragged as she trudged along the towpath. The optimism and liberation she had felt in the first two weeks had gradually dwindled and the bare facts of her situation were becoming increasingly apparent. She needed to eat. It was still summer, but soon it would be autumn and the weather would only get worse. She needed to find somewhere, and it needed to be soon.
By late afternoon, the rain came back in earnest and she hastily threw up her tent behind a hedgerow in a field that bordered the towpath. She guessed it was only 5 p.m. or thereabouts, but she was going no further that night. She didn’t have the energy or the motivation and that alone gave her cause for concern. It would be fine tomorrow, she told her herself, this was just a bad day at the office. But she had nothing to eat. She had finished the cream crackers, banana and the last packet of vegetable soup the previous day, had not come across a village or canal shop since, and it had been almost forty-eight hours since the meal in the campsite. She would have to go and forage when the rain subsided, but for what?
After a couple of hours, she decided that given a choice between hunger and being wet, the latter was the lesser of two evils, and she could wait no longer. She crawled out of her tent and set off in the drizzle along the hedgerow bordering the field looking for berries, but the blackberries were not yet ripe and still inedible. She reached the end of the field and looked out over the gate at a field where a number of sheep grazed, oblivious to the rain. And then, to her right, she noticed a large patch of nettles and she remembered she had once seen a recipe for nettle soup.
She knelt down to pick a few from the base of the stalk and was immediately stung on the back of the hand. She squealed in pain and put her hand to her mouth, sucking on her injured knuckles and cursing herself for her stupidity. She felt a wave of hopelessness and suddenly wanted to cry.
But then she noticed some large dock leaves in the same patch, so she carefully picked two, wrapped her right hand in them and used them as a glove to pick the nettles. She managed to assemble a bundle of nettles enclosed in the safety of the dock leaves, but not without the vicious weed fighting back and stinging her again.
Eventually satisfied she had enough, she returned to her tent and assembled her stove in the entrance, gently feeding the nettles one by one into her tin cup of boiling water. She had read that the nettles’ stinging hairs were neutralised by boiling. To her relief, it proved to be true. Partly.
***
She’s gone to the school at the usual time. No one talks to her, not the mothers or the fathers or the children, but they all steal a glance and when she catches their eyes, they look away and shepherd their children away and give her a wide berth and then when the playground is almost empty she ventures in, looking, searching and Miss Hicks is coming out with her bag and some papers and because she’s nice she asks her and she says, “Oh, I thought you were off for a picnic,” and she says “Picnic?” and she says, “Yes, your husband asked if Leila could leave early, said you were all off for a picnic. Watch out for those nettles!”
“Leila!”
She was sitting up, feverish, hot with sweat but cold from the damp, shivering and frightened and confused. Leila.
She screwed her eyes tightly closed and clenched her teeth. She could hear her heart beating in her ears and her head pounding and feel her pulse twitching in her neck. She took several deep breaths to calm herself down and sat leaning forward, her heads supported by her hands, trying to compose herself.
After a while, she swept her hair back and put her hands behind her head and finally lay back, pulling her feet up towards her and tucking the sleeping bag under her legs to try and insulate them from the cold. She pulled the sleeping bag over her head and bathed in the warmth of her own breath.
Alone in her silent dark cocoon.