The ice breaker is a short iron boat kept by the depot for the look of it, the kind that a team of men rocked from side to side to smash the ice ahead of the horse. It has a strain gauge on its mooring for the heritage people. Every night the gauge reads a rocking. Side to side, the rhythm of men on the rail, for an hour. And in the morning, along the cut ahead of it, there is broken ice, floating, in plates, on water that is four degrees, in a month when the canal has not frozen for thirty years.
I am the depot foreman on a canal, and the ice breaker on the wall outside the office is a thing the heritage people love and a thing I have stopped walking past at night.
The boat.
An ice breaker. Iron, short, with a rail down the middle, and the way it worked was a horse pulled it and a dozen men stood on it holding the rail and rocked it, side to side, together, so that the hull smashed the ice as it went, and the boats behind could move. It is moored by the depot. It has a strain gauge on its mooring line because the heritage trust wanted to know how the wash from passing boats affected it.
Every night the gauge reads a rocking.
The rocking.
Side to side. The rhythm of it is a rhythm anybody who has seen the old film knows: a dozen men on a rail, leaning together, one side, the other, a second each way, and the gauge shows it, the line going taut on one side and then the other, for an hour, from about two.
The boat is on the wall. It does not move along the cut. It rocks on its mooring, with nobody on it, and the water round it slaps against the wall the way water does when a hull is being thrown from side to side.
In the morning there is ice. Along the cut, ahead of the boat, for a hundred yards, broken ice, plates of it, floating, an inch thick, on water that my thermometer says is four degrees, in a month when there has been no frost. It melts by nine. There is more the next morning.
What has been checked.
The gauge, replaced. It reads the rocking.
The boat, at two, by me, on the wall beside it. It began. The hull went over, towards me, the rail coming down, and back, and I could hear them. Boots on iron. A dozen pairs, shifting together, and the breath of men working, and one voice, calling the time, the way you would have to, and I could see the rail, empty, going over and back, and the water throwing itself against the wall, and on the water ahead of the boat, in the dark, the ice, coming, in a sheet, from nowhere, on a night with no frost, and the bow of the boat going into it, and the crack, and the plates going out to the sides, and the boat was on its mooring and did not move and the ice broke ahead of it anyway.
Who.
The depot's book has the winter. The bad one, in the sixties, when the canal froze for weeks and the boats were stuck and the coal in them was needed, and the depot had sent the ice breaker out with a crew every day for a month, and the crew had been the depot's men and the boat families' men, and on the last day of the freeze the boat had gone into ice that was thicker than it looked and had gone over, the way they could, with the men on the rail, and it had been, the book says, a bad day, and the book gives a number, and it is three.
They are breaking the ice. Every night. On the boat, on the rail, with the horse that is not there, ahead of the boats that are not stuck, in a winter that has not come for thirty years, and they are making the ice themselves, I think, because without ice there is nothing to break, and a crew on an ice breaker with nothing to break is not a crew.
What is done about it.
The gauge readings go to the heritage trust and the trust has asked me why a moored boat is being rocked with a force that matches their models of a full crew, and I have said, it is a full crew, and they have asked me to elaborate, and I have sent them the book.
What I do.
I run the depot.
An ice breaker crew was told when to stop. The depot foreman stood on the bank and when the cut was clear to the next lock he called them off, and they came in, and there was tea, and that was a day. Nobody called them off on the last day. The boat went over before anybody could.
So I call them off. At two, when the rocking starts and the ice comes, I stand on the wall by the bow, in my coat, with the depot lamp, and I let them break the hundred yards, which they do, and then I call it. The way the foreman called it, which the book has, which is, that'll do, lads, she's clear, bring her in.
The rocking stops. The rail comes level. The water settles. And the boots, on the iron, go to the stern, and off, onto the wall, past me, a dozen pairs, and I have started putting the urn on in the depot at half past one, and leaving the door open, and in the morning the mugs on the rack are twelve fewer than I left them and are in the sink, and the ice along the cut, since I started calling them off, is only where they have broken it, in a line, a hundred yards, which is the width of a channel a crew leaves for the boats behind, and then it stops, because they have done their job, and I have told them so.