Marion heard the engine first. A narrowboat, she thought, some idiot running late for the Sallow Lock before the paraffin lamp went out at ten. The diesel chug carried flat across the water, the way sound does at night on a canal with nothing else to carry it.
The pound below the lock was empty, though. She'd checked it twenty minutes ago with the torch, out of habit, the way Ted had taught her before his knee gave out and the trust sent her up from Braunston to cover his rounds. No boat. No light. Just the gates themselves, both of them, grinding on their hinges as if something heavy leaned against the top one and then the other, in turn, slow.
She went out in her coat over her nightdress and stood on the balance beam with the torch. Nothing there. The gates settled. Water slapped once against the brickwork and went still.
Back inside, the log lay open on the desk. She hadn't opened it.
Ted's logbook had a green cloth cover gone soft at the corners, his handwriting in it going back eleven years, the same cramped forward slope, the 7s crossed the old way. She'd been using a fresh page since Monday for her own entries. Someone had written on the Tuesday and Wednesday pages, though, the two days Ted had been in Leamington having the knee looked at. Marion knew for a fact he'd been forty miles away, because she'd driven him to the station herself. Same platform every time, he liked the far end near the vending machine, said the coffee from the near one gave him heartburn.
Tues. Narrowboat Coriander through at 11pm, deep pound, no trouble.
Wed. Two boats through in company, would not give names. Levels correct on departure.
His hand. Not a good forgery of it. His hand, the actual small tics of it, the way his 8s never quite closed at the top.
Marion stood there a long time with the torch still on, though the room had its own light. She thought about ringing Ted. Gone eleven, but his knee kept him up most nights anyway, he wouldn't mind. The signal down here was two bars if you were lucky though, and something about picking up the phone felt like it would spend an evening she didn't have yet.
She went out again instead. Stood at the top gate with the torch pointed down into the chamber, at the black water twenty feet below the lip, walls slick and ladder-rung green. She thought, the way you think a stupid thing at one in the morning, that if a boat did come through tonight she would simply not open the gates for it. That was the whole of her plan. Don't work the paddles. Don't turn the windlass. Let whoever it was sit outside in the dark and wait for morning like everybody else had to.
At twenty to twelve the engine came again, closer this time. Under it, quieter, someone on a boat deck said her own name, the way Ted said it, with the stress wrong on the second syllable. Marion, not Marion.
She went back inside and did not answer. She sat on the edge of the bed with her coat still on and counted the strikes of the clock on the mantel, lost count somewhere after nine, started again.
In the morning the log lay open on the Thursday page. Nothing was written on it. The pen was lying across the desk with the cap off, though, her pen, the blue one from the drawer, and the nib had been pressed down hard enough into the wood beneath the paper to leave a mark. Over and over. In a shape almost like a word she couldn't quite make out.
She left the logbook where it was and went to check the paddles, because the pound still needed checking, whatever else was true.
"Huddersfield Narrow Canal - Lock 36" by Tim Green aka atoach is licensed under CC BY 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/.