The Boat

The next day I started work in the packing room of Rob and his business partner Tom’s office. It took me a few minutes to figure out the first few holders. Once I did that, I could do them without thinking. Then, I just had to repeat the process two thousand times to get the first batch out. I thought it best not to count.
But it wasn’t that monotonous. Rob and Tom would come down every hour or so and talk garbage for fifteen minutes. It was always nice hearing their footsteps down the stairs and knowing Rob had just watched a dumb YouTube video and wanted to share it.
Rob would also come down for a fag just as regularly. He’d smoke it from outside the office but still be poking his head inside so we could converse. Then Tom would come down, “Rob for Christ’s sake, stop breathing your smoke in here. What’s the point of going outside if you’re just going to breathe the smoke back in?!”
Rob would just look at him and puff. He would eventually move away, in his own time.
The boat was cold at night. To counteract it, I would get in bed very early and read for a while. By the time that was over, the blankets had warmed and there was an insulation I had made in the little surface area between my body and the blanket. I woke sweating in the mornings, but I knew as soon as I left the insular space I would not be able to return and I would be cold again, so I usually stayed in bed for a while in the morning too.
You really do forget you’re on water. Occasionally you’re reminded when there is one of those subtle cracking sounds water and metal bring on randomly, or when another boater passes and creates a wave to rock you.
But the work was fine. When eight came around I would walk up to the crossroads. I would wait for the red van and when it came, I would put my thumb out and Rob would pick me up. Rob was a well lived in man. When he was sixteen, he had gone to India to get his spirituality, training under a yogi there.
“They have all these street markets and street shops right,” he told me, “and people sell everything, and I mean everything. There was this man selling second hand false teeth. They were right there on the street. People would come up, pick up some pairs, put them in their mouths to try and then put them back, trying to find the best fitting pair.”
“There was also this bloke cleaning ears. He was on the side of the road and he was cleaning ears. I thought why not, so I sat down next to him and he gave me the run down, the works. After wood, I swear I tell you, I never heard clearer in my life.”
“I was on this bus yeah, and it was packed, man it was packed. And we pulled up at the next stop and this guy was there with a wheelchair. He had no legs, just arms and his wheelchair. He was a little bloke. The bus doors opened and this guy climbed out his wheelchair. Then the bus driver roight, comes out and picks him up. I was close to the door, so he just hands the guy to me. ‘Hold,’ he said. He plonks him in my arms and jumps back in his seat. So I’m there with this poor fully grown bloke with no legs, but his arms wrapped around me like a baby. He was just looking at me while I held him. It was mental.”
Sometimes Rob and Tom would come down from their office and just pat me on the back, “Jay, you’re the best in the world at assembling these holders. There’s nobody better, nobody more experienced with these things.”
It felt good to be the best in the world at something.
Unlike his smoking compadre, Tom was on a health kick. He was at the gym every day and he said his knee was sore one morning.
“This right knee, been bugging me on and off for months.”
Rob piped up, “See this,” he said flexing and extending his leg, “look at that, perfect. Never had any issues with it. And you know what I do for exercise? Nothing, absolutely nothing.”
“I did burpees this morning,” Tom said ignoring Rob as he normally did, “I think that’s what did it.”
“What’s a burpee?” Rob asked.
We looked at him and laughed.
“No really,” he said, “never heard of it.”
Tom demonstrated a burpee and Rob just watched, a fag hanging out of his mouth and the corner of his lip raised.
“What the fuck was that?” he said, “that looks stupid as fuck.”
Tom told me I distract Rob because Rob, he believed, was what they call a child. When focused, he could punch out work and get things done like nothing you ever saw, but you had to keep him focused. He was also just as capable as doing jack for weeks at time, and this magically coincided with the weeks I had been spending there.
“When you first meet Rob, you think he’s just some geezer,” Tom said. “Then you actually get speaking with him, and you realise he knows more about sustainability than anyone you’ve ever met.”
Rob too spoke affectionately about Tom.
“Tom is a prick. But everyone needs a prick, don’t they? I use him, the prick.”
Tom was from old school English lineage with relatives in high places and castles. Rob loved to make fun of the way Tom mentioned what school he went to and who he’d known back from his days at Oxford or Cambridge or Eton or wherever. Tom told him to fuck off when he did, but telling Rob to fuck off was a futile enterprise.
There was a time when I moored the boat too tightly and the water changed levels. I came back in the afternoon to a slanted boat. The water had dropped to such a degree half the boat closest to the bank was sitting on the canal floor. So for two nights, I just slept on a tilt, waking every few hour or so on the floor, then climbing back on the mattress again.