Terry Darlington - Narrow Dog to Wigan Pier

About the Book

At seventy-five, Terry and Monica Darlington had done everything they could think of doing, including building a business and becoming athletes and running a literary society. Lately they had become boating adventurers and Terry a bestselling writer.

In their Midlands canal town in November, life was looking dull and short on surprises.

Then their famous canal boat was destroyed by fire. Within a few days they had bought a new one and they headed north in the Phyllis May 2 to Liverpool, Lancaster, York, the Pennines and Wigan Pier. Terry recorded the journey and alongside it the story of his life and his marriage and his whippet Jim, with his broken ear like a flat cap, and Monicas whippet Jess, the Flying Catastrophe.

Another classic Narrow Dog book, this gloriously funny, affecting and beautifully told story brims with canals and rivers and whippets, and adventures all over the world, and the famous and fascinating people the Darlingtons have met.

CONTENTS

Narrow Dog to Wigan Pier

Terry Darlington

To our grandchildren

Bethan, Rhiannon, Max, Leila, Cicely, Greg, Felix

Special thanks to our agent David Smith of Annette Green

Authors Agency, who suggested I write this book

love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking together in the same direction.

Antoine de Saint-Exupry

CHAPTER ONE

STONE

The Grimpen Mire

What did it feel like when you watched your boat burn up?

Jim Francis is dead Two whippets are a conspiracy Jesus Christ would want me to go to Europe The Loch Ness Monster Peter Scott was quite sure there was something there You are probably clinically insane The Creature from the Black Lagoon Time to hand in our chips The Phyllis May began to roar like a Bunsen burner Our poor buckled Phyllis May

Jim Francis is dead

You know Jim

Jim Francis

Well hes dead

Arnott told me

On the towpath

How is Jim I said

Dad is dead he said

I mean its ridiculous

Jim gone

He had so much power in him

He leaves so much space

When I was in trouble

Jim said Come here

And he took an envelope and a pencil

And worked it out in a minute

You cant just delete Jim Francis

He was too big too clever too kind

But Jim Francis is dead

Its ridiculous

JUST LOOK DOWN the running club, I said to Monica Haddon and Vernon and Jack and Doctor Ian all gone. My coach told me in seventy-two that no one who had run a marathon had ever died. Now all my mates are dead, or they have got palpitations, or strokes, or third sets of hips. Our generation thought we had got it all worked out, with our marathoning and our communes, and our home brew and our rock and roll and our poetry.

Every generation thinks it has got it all worked out, said Monica. Now let me concentrate on this bloody dog.

Jim and his new friend can have little puppies, I had said to the Lady Who Knows about Whippets. Little maggots, all wriggly. Little darlings.

You are a very foolish person, said the Lady Who Knows about Whippets. Breeding whippets requires knowledge and intelligence, neither of which you possess. Whippets are driven by forces beyond our understanding and an entire male and a female whippet in a household would lead to destruction and despair. In any case your Jim is ten too old. He wont know what to do because he has never done it. He will fail and all will be sadness and pain.

Jim, fail? Hes a mans dog a manly dog a proper dog no problemo in that department. Jim fail? Never.

He will fail, said the Lady. But we have available a spayed rescue bitch that no one has managed to keep an excellent dog. Just because she can jump a seven-foot wall from a standing start she has sometimes been a difficulty. But you are retired and have got nothing to do and can give her the attention she needs. If you cant manage her you can give her back it will be her fourth home and she isnt two yet.

Jess is a red brindle with a white flash on her chest and a white muzzle and a white tip to her tail and white socks. She is a shade taller than Jim, and thinner. No potter could catch her brindling in his glaze, no sculptor her grace. Beside her the beautiful Jim, the pedigree Jim, looks like Edward Heath.

When I was a little boy I had an encyclopaedia which explained that a candle fired at a plank would go straight through. There was a photograph to prove it. I remember it every time Jess runs towards me at forty miles an hour.

Jess has no concept of going for a walk she just runs away. In fact she is half wild, and leads Jim on, forming a pack to raise hell against every dog, cat, rabbit or squirrel that thinks it might share the earth with them. One whippet is a liability two are a conspiracy.

We got Jess mainly to be a friend for Jim. They would not grieve so much in kennels if they were two. But for Jim it was yet another betrayal and he would lie and stare at us accusingly and leave the room if Jess appeared.

It was a year before Jess realized that she had a home and her face opened and her brown eyes softened and she began to look straight at us. It was not an easy year but Monica and I had fallen in love with her and Jim was beginning to realize she was not going away.

This dog, said Monica, has demonstrated every bad habit a dog can possess. She has been shut up in a small garden all her life and never made any proper relationships or been given any intelligent training. Some fool has taught her not to accept a pork scratching until you say the word.

Say the word, I said.

I dont know the word, said Monica.

Pieces of eight! I said, Shazam! Open Sesame! Jumping Jack Flash! Edward Heath! European Monetary Union! A piece of cheese for old Ben! New custom-blended Blue Sunoco! Elementary, my dear Watson! Give me the moonlight, give me the girl

Shut up, said Monica.

Monica and Jess looked at each other in despair.

I am now an established WRITOR , I said to Monica later the oldest young writor in Britain. I have written two bestsellers. People stop me in the street and shout to me across the cut. They call me Terry and want to be my friend. They write from all over the world. Only yesterday a chap in New Zealand emailed to tell me that his father read Narrow Dog to Carcassonne before he died. A lady wrote to say she read a little of Indian River every night and then went to sleep. Then there was the girl who wet herself on the train laughing at Jim. People say they have read my books many times and ask Where is the next one? I must follow my destiny and produce another work. I owe it to society. Well have an expedition another impossible dream, like crossing the Channel or sailing down to the Gulf of Mexico. Perhaps Holland or Germany. I shall picture the colourful characters and the waterside cities and address the main historical issues of the twentieth century and Jim will get up to mischief and so will Jess and I will tell funny stories and it will be the Narrow Dog Trilogy.

If you are looking for someone to climb up and down the lock ladders of Northern Europe with a rope between her teeth, said Monica, then I suggest you try the lonely hearts section of the New York Review of Books. Some mad old Harvard professor might give you a try. Some ill-favoured skinny Boston babe. Me, I had enough of it when we went to Carcassonne. Whats the point of spending fifty grand to wear ourselves out and risk our lives and our health and not even be sure to get the money back? Why dont you write books at home like everyone else? Its because you cant get it up unless you are fighting the current in some desolate sound, pursued by carnivorous reptiles. Why dont we stop all this and live out our days in peace? God knows there are few enough days left.