Orla was bossing everyone around as Ed jogged as fast as he could down the uneven towpath without falling into the Grand Union Canal. She was tapping her foot and pointing her pen at Trevor, who was looking very hangdog. The rest of the crew were lurking by the canal gates with polystyrene cups of coffee, cigarettes and cowed expressions. It looked as though they had all been troubled by what had become known in the company as Orla’s Disease—fleas in the ear.
“Damndamndamndamn,” Ed muttered, banging his best aluminum briefcase against his knees as he ran.
Wavelength were making a video about safety for the British Waterways Authority, with the enthralling title Walking the Inland Waterways in Safety and he should have been here an hour ago. It was set just north of Watford, where the canal meandered through a landscape that was pleasantly rural rather than the grimy, grubby urban backdrop that London provided. It was a promotional feature that had taken a disproportionate amount of time to set up in comparison with their meager budget, and Ed wanted to get it finished as soon as possible and pack up. This was also due to the fact that for the past week his days had been governed by the need to get home in time to collect Elliott.
That he was late was also largely due to his son. Recently, Elliott had decided that he should make some sort of clothing statement about his personality every morning in the manner of Quentin Crisp and spent an inordinate amount of time in front of the bathroom mirror selecting which particular one of his seventeen Pokémon T-shirts he would wear to suit his mood. Ed’s chosen color would have been black. Deep, dark, potentially homicidal black. No amount of cajoling could persuade Elliott to grab the first one that came to hand and just wear it whatever like real men did.
To top it all, when the clock had swallowed twenty minutes and Elliott was finally happy with his choice of dress for the day, Nicola Jones was invariably waiting for them at the school entrance as he deposited the fashion-conscious Elliott to her care. She seemed intent, presumably out of sympathy for Elliott’s plight, on keeping Ed talking for ages. It had taken him ten minutes to edge away from her today and that was good going, because what with her fluffy hair, her breathy voice and her singsong laugh, she was quite a difficult person to leave. Subsequently, Ed had been late for work every day this week.
He was going to have to do something about it—the first thing being to sort out this silly mess with Ali. Orla looked up as he stumbled toward her, breathless. Her face was as dark as her suit, her lips pinched as if she’d been kissing a lemon. Correction, the first thing he needed to do was get back on track with Orla. Alicia and his marriage, at this moment, came a very close second.
His colleague, and newly acquired confidante, had been very busy this week, rushing in and out of the office at breakneck speed. They’d only managed to snatch snippets of conversation together, which had been restricted to purely work matters because there had always been other people around to overhear and he’d never found discussing his personal life in public very easy. Ed had apologized for standing Orla up, but he hadn’t really had the chance to tell her the full story. And he’d been meaning to phone her every night, but somehow the evenings were eaten away by cooking, washing, ironing, homework and eventual exhaustion.
Orla pushed back her crisp, buttoned cuff and looked at her watch pointedly. “You don’t mind that we’ve started without you? I thought we might lose the light.” It was ten-thirty in the morning. Orla might not have much of a sense of humor, but she gave great sarcasm.
“Sorry.” Ed puffed and tried to look pathetic and helpless in a masterful, in-control way. “I’ll explain everything later.”
“Yes,” Orla said. “You will.” She turned back to continue hounding Trevor.
Ed dumped his briefcase on the ground. There was nothing remotely useful in it, unless you counted yesterday’s copy of the Independent, but he thought it made a good impression and, in a week where the rest of his life was happily falling apart of its own volition, it suddenly was very important to him to make a good impression. He wanted Orla to know that her trust in him was not misplaced and that her judgment of his sublime, but so far concealed professional talents had been totally sound. And it wasn’t just because he was frightened of her, as was everyone else, but now he had good reason to want to impress her. If his aim to get back to Harrison Ford territory was ever going to be achieved, Orla was the one shining light on the horizon who could illuminate the tiny crack in the door he so much needed.
The man from the British Waterways Authority was big, bellowing and bearded. Appropriately named Mr. Rivers, he was standing on the canal bank posturing and wringing his hands with pent-up impatience while Trevor was struggling to fit him with a radio mike. Ed’s heart sank as he realized they were in for a long and painful morning trying to make a video with a man whose previous acting experience was probably restricted to small roles in his local amateur dramatics group. He also looked like the type who would be first in the queue to volunteer for pantomime dame come Cinderella time. Ed was always deeply suspicious of these butch, bristled types who whipped on women’s clothing given the slightest excuse. He let a sigh escape into the fresh morning air. Come back, singing tomatoes—all is forgiven!
“I’d like to go through the Waterways Code part,” Orla said, and Mr. Rivers nodded forcibly in agreement, being pleasant, as they all were, at this stage in the day. Len the cameraman and Mike the sound technician shuffled reluctantly away from the sanctuary of the canal lock gate, where they had been quietly helping two Nike-clad boys to let a battered, but brightly painted narrowboat through, and took up position. Mr. Rivers straightened his tie. Ed hovered because there was nothing really for him to do now that Orla had taken charge and he wasn’t really feeling manly enough to wrest control from her. So he fidgeted about behind everyone and got in the way.
“From the top,” Orla suggested.
Mr. Rivers straightened his tie again.
“And—action!” Orla walked backward along the towpath, following the script on her clipboard and smiling widely in an attempt to make Mr. Rivers feel comfortable and relaxed as he launched into his speech about the joys of water. Mike and Len shuffled along next to Orla with the videocam rolling and the sound boom being buffeted by the wind, avoiding the outcrops of brambles and stinging nettles while simultaneously trying not to step in dog poo. Ed trailed behind her, trying to look usefully decorative.
Mr. Rivers went into David Bellamy overdrive. “Waterways are beautiful things.” Orla smiled widely. Mr. Rivers grimaced tightly back. Ed studied the green slime frothing delicately with what might be chemical waste that formed the Grand Union Canal. “But take care and watch out for hidden danger.” Orla grinned. Mr. Rivers, encouraged, pointed at an imaginary but potentially dangerous thing with a suitably serious expression. “Not all towpaths afford easy, carefree walking.”
Orla smiled sympathetically. Rivers was really getting into his stride now. Ed noticed that the narrowboat had cleared the lock and was chugging serenely toward them. On its side in yellow lettering he saw for the first time the words ESCAPE! CANAL HOLIDAYS FOR YOUNG OFFENDERS. Someone had painted out YOUNG OFFENDERS and graffitied-in, YOBBOS! On the roof of the narrowboat several young men, presumably the aforementioned offenders and certainly yobbos, had gathered. Most of them looked like they had very recently escaped. Ed’s nostrils filled with the scent of trouble. Orla and Mr. Rivers carried on, oblivious.
“Keep noise to a minimum. Be courteous and considerate to all other canal-users,” advised Mr. Rivers earnestly.
At this moment, the young men on top of the narrowboat dropped their trousers and waved their bottoms in the air. “You’re a bunch of fucking arseholes!” they shouted in unison to the tune of the conga. “A bunch of fucking arseholes! Da, da, da, da. Da, da, da, da!” A beer can was jettisoned from the barge, hitting Mr. Rivers squarely on the head and showering him with a sprinkling of froth—not unlike that floating on his canal. Then the bared bottoms sailed on by, captured on film for the authorities by Mike.
“And—cut!” Orla said, showing one of her fingers to the jeering teenagers as they departed and shouting, “Assholes yourself!” after them.
She mopped the dazed and trembling Mr. Rivers down with a pristine white handkerchief and straightened his tie. “Let’s start again from the top. Everyone ready?” Everyone nodded. “And—action.”
“Waterways are places of beauty…” he said with a tremulous voice.
“Cut, cut!” Orla waved her arms. “Let’s skip that bit and pick it up further down. Take it from… ‘Watch out for…’”
Mr. Rivers composed himself and straightened his tie. He bared his teeth, jaw locked, at the camera. “Watch out for concealed mooring pins, ropes or other discarded objects that may lie dangerously across your path.”
Orla smiled and some of the tension sagged out of Mr. Rivers, the pain of being bombed with a beer can receding in the face of Orla’s urgings. His voice grew stronger. “If a person accidentally falls in the water, don’t automatically jump in after them. Lie down and try to reach them with a stick. Or throw them a rope.” Mr. Rivers demonstrated both maneuvers admirably to the back of the stalls. “Crouch down, so that you are not pulled in yourself, and find something inflatable to keep them afloat until help arrives.”
Orla was nodding and smiling.
Mr. Rivers smiled back. “In any emergency situation always stay calm. Think before you act.”
This was going well now. The sun was shining, the birds were tweeting, the yobbos had yobbed off. Ed stretched his neck with relief. A heron landed majestically on the far bank. Waterways were, indeed, places of beauty. Orla smiled benignly at Mr. Rivers again—just before she tripped over Ed’s briefcase, which he had abandoned earlier right in the middle of the towpath.
“Orla!” he shouted in warning, scaring the heron away.
But before Ed could reach out to her, she had stumbled forward and cannoned into Mike and Len, knocking both them and their recording equipment into the murky depths of the canal. Orla followed shortly with a loud splash and an earsplitting scream. Mr. Rivers rushed forward to help and she grabbed at his hand, pulling him in after her.
Trevor ran up and down the bank, tearing at his hair and screaming, “They’re all going to drown! They’re all going to drown!”
This was clearly a state of emergency. Ed, fixed rigid, deep in his state of shock, tried to keep calm and think before he acted. He crouched down and looked round him for a stick or a piece of rope. As he saw Orla struggling to the bank of the canal, coughing up green water and with slime plastering her hair to her head, he realized that he had nothing remotely inflatable about his person and that any help that was going to arrive had better be bloody quick.