The locks on our stretch have counters on the paddle gear, because the water is metered now and every lockful is water the reservoir has to replace. Lock fourteen works itself every night at two. The bottom gates, the paddles, the fill, the top gates, the empty, in the order a boat going up needs them, at the pace of one person working a lock alone. The counter logs a boat. The level in the pound below drops by a lockful. Nothing is in the chamber, and the towpath camera shows the balance beams swinging with nobody on them.
I am the lock keeper on a flight of fourteen locks, which is a job that mostly means water, and lock fourteen uses a lockful a night that I cannot account for.
The lock.
The top of the flight. Two sets of gates, four paddles, a chamber that takes a narrowboat, and counters on the paddle gear that log every winding, because the canal company meters the water now and a lock worked is a lockful gone from the summit pound, and the summit pound is fed by a reservoir, and the reservoir is low.
At two it works itself.
The working.
Bottom paddles up, one, then the other, with the gap between that a person takes to walk round. The chamber empties to the lower level. Bottom gates open, the beams swinging, one, then the other, pushed. A pause, the length of a boat coming in. Bottom gates closed. Top paddles up, one, the other. The chamber fills, which takes six minutes and I can hear it from the cottage. Top gates open. A pause, the length of a boat going out. Top gates closed. Paddles down.
Twenty minutes. One person, working alone, going up. The counter logs a boat through. The level in the pound below drops by a lockful, which the gauge shows, and the reservoir gives it back, and I am asked about it.
The camera on the towpath shows the beams swing with nobody pushing and the paddle gear wind with nobody winding and the chamber fill and empty with nothing in it.
What has been checked.
The paddle gear, which is manual and cannot move without a windlass, and moves. The gates, which are chained at night now and move with the chains on.
The lock, at two, by me, on the lockside. The bottom paddle wound up beside me, the ratchet clicking, and nobody on the windlass, and I walked round with it, with whoever it was, to the other paddle, and it wound, and the chamber emptied, and the beam I was standing by swung in, against my legs, pushed, and I stepped back, and the gate opened, and in the chamber, in the dark, a boat came in.
I could not see it. I could hear it. The engine, an old one, slow, a single cylinder, the sound that every boat on the cut made sixty years ago and none do now. The bump of a hull on the chamber wall. A rope going over a bollard. And a voice, from the boat, a woman's, saying, up she comes, and the bottom gates closed, and the paddles, and the chamber filled around a boat I could not see, and at the top the gates opened, and the engine, and the boat went out onto the summit, and the gates closed, and the woman's voice said, thank you, and the lockside was empty and the counter said one.
Who.
The canal had working boats until the sixties, and the boat families, and the company's records have the last boats through this flight, and the last of them, in 1962, had a woman steering, alone, because her husband had died at a lock further down that same week, and the record says she had worked the boat up the whole flight on her own, fourteen locks, with the coal, to get it to the summit and sell it, because the coal was all they had, and that she had done it, and had tied up at the top, and had not been found on the boat in the morning.
The record does not say where she was found. It says the boat was sold.
She is working the flight. Every night, one lock, the top one, the last one, up, alone, with the boat, and the water goes, and she says thank you to the lockside, because a boatwoman thanks the keeper, and the keeper was asleep.
What is done about it.
The lockful a night is on the water return every month and the company has asked me why lock fourteen passes a boat at two in the morning every night when the flight is closed at dusk, and I have said, a working boat, and they have said there are no working boats, and I have said, there is one.
What I do.
I keep the locks.
A keeper works the lock for a boat coming through at night. That is the job, or it was, and it was not done for her, because the keeper in 1962 was asleep, and she worked fourteen locks alone in the dark the week her husband died and thanked the lockside at the top.
So I work it. At two I am at the bottom gates with my windlass, and when the boat comes, I wind. The paddles. The gates. I walk round, the way you do, and she is on the boat, and I am on the lockside, and between us the lock goes up the way a lock goes up with two people at it, which is faster, and at the top I open the gates, and she goes out, and she says, thank you, and I say, goodnight, safe trip, which is what the keepers said.
The counter still logs the boat. The water still goes. But the time is shorter, twelve minutes, not twenty, because there are two of us, and the company has asked why lock fourteen's night boat is getting faster, and I have said, she's got a keeper now.