So the chances of the cat changing the course of history, even if she’d been missing four days, were infinitesimal, especially if we continued to make such excellent time.
“I say,” Terence said, unpacking the bread and cheese he’d bought for lunch in Abingdon, “if we’re able to keep this up, we should be able to make Day’s Lock by one,” he said. “There’s nobody on the river.”
Except for a single boat coming up the river toward us with three men in it, all in blazers and mustaches, and with a small dog perched on the bow, looking alertly ahead. As they drew nearer, their voices came to us clearly across the river.
“How much farther before it’s your turn, Jay?” the rower said to the one lying in the bow.
“You’ve only been rowing ten minutes, Harris,” the one in the bow said.
“Well, then, how far to the next lock?”
The third man, who was stouter than the other two, said, “When do we stop for tea?” and picked up a banjo.
The dog caught sight of our boat and began barking. “Stop that, Montmorency,” the bow-lier said. “Barking’s rude.”
“Terence!” I said, half-rising to my feet. “That boat!”
He glanced over his shoulder. “It won’t hit us. Just hold the lines steady.”
The banjo player strummed a few out-of-tune bars and began to sing.
“Oh, don’t sing, George,” rower and bow-lier said in unison.
“And don’t you get any ideas about singing either, Harris,” Jay added.
“Why not?” he said indignantly.
“Because you only think you can sing,” George said.
“Yes,” Jay said.” Remember “The Ruler of the Queen’s Navy’?”
“Diddle-diddle-diddle-diddle-diddle-diddle-dee,” George sang.
“It is them!” I said. “Terence, do you know who that is? It’s Three Men in a Boat, To Say Nothing of the Dog”
“Dog?” Terence said contemptuously. “You call that a dog?” He looked fondly at Cyril, who was snoring in the bottom of the boat. “Cyril could swallow him in one bite.”
“You don’t understand,” I said. “It’s the Three Men in a Boat. The tin of pineapple and George’s banjo and the maze.”
“The maze?” Terence said blankly.
“Yes, you know, Harris went in the Hampton Court Maze with this map and all these people followed him and the map didn’t work and they got hopelessly lost and they had to call out for the keeper to come and get them out.”
I leaned out for a better look. There they were, Jerome K. Jerome and the two friends he had immortalized (to say nothing of the dog) on that historic trip up the Thames. They had no idea they were going to be famous a hundred and fifty years from now, that their adventures with the cheese and the steam launch and the swans would be read by countless generations.
“Watch your nose!” Terence said, and I said, “Exactly. I love that bit, where Jerome is going through the lock at Hampton Court and someone calls out, ‘Look at your nose!’ and he thinks they mean his nose and they mean the nose of the boat has gotten caught in the lock!”
“Ned!” Terence said, and the three men in the boat waved and shouted, and Jerome K. Jerome stood up and began gesturing with his outstretched arm.
I waved back. “Have a wonderful trip!” I called. “Watch out for swans!” and pitched over backward.
My feet went up in the air, the oars hit the water with a splash, and the luggage in the bow toppled over. Still on my back, I made a grab for the carpetbag and tried to sit up.
So did Professor Peddick. “What happened?” he said, blinking sleepily.
“Ned didn’t watch where he was going,” Terence said, grabbing for the Gladstone bag, and I saw that we had hit the bank head-on. Just like Jerome K. Jerome had done in Chapter Six.
I looked over at the other boat. Montmorency was barking, and George and Harris appeared to be doubled over with laughter.
“Are you all right?” Jerome K. Jerome called to me.
I nodded back vigorously, and they waved and rowed on, still laughing, toward the Battle of the Swans and Oxford and history.
“I said, hold the lines steady,” Terence said disgustedly.
“I know. Sorry,” I said, stepping over Cyril, who had slept through the entire thing and who consequently missed his chance to meet a Truly Famous Dog. On the other hand, remembering Montmorency’s proclivity for fights and his sarcastic manner, it was probably just as well.
“I saw someone I knew,” I said, helping him pick up the luggage. “A writer,” and then realized that if they were just now on their way upriver, Three Men in a Boat must not have been written yet. I hoped when it came out, Terence wouldn’t read the copyright page.
“Where’s my net?” Professor Peddick said. “These waters are perfect for Tinca vulgaris.”
It took us till noon to get the luggage stowed and tied down again and to disentangle Professor Peddick from his Tinca vulgaris, but after that we made excellent time. We were past Little Wittenbaum before two. If we didn’t have any trouble at Day’s Lock, we could still be to Streatley by dinnertime.
We came through Day’s Lock in record time. And ran bang into a traffic jam.
The reason the river had been so empty before was because the entire armada had gathered here. Punts, canoes, outriggers, double-sculling skiffs, covered rowing boats, eights, barges, rafts, and houseboats jammed the river, all of them heading upstream and none of them in a hurry.
Girls with parasols chattered to girls with parasols in other boats and called to their companions to pull alongside. People on launches strung with banners reading, “Lower Middlesex Musical Society Annual Outing” and “Mothers’ Beanfeast” leaned over the railings to shout to people in pleasure boats below.
Clearly none of them had to be anywhere at a certain time. Middle-aged men on houseboats sat on the decks reading the Times while their middle-aged wives, clothespins in their mouths, hung up the washing.
A girl in a sailor dress and a beribboned straw hat poled a flat skiff slowly among them and stood there laughing when the pole stuck in the mud. An artist in a yellow smock stood motionless on a raft in the middle of the melee, painting a landscape on an easel, though how he could see said landscape over the flower-decked hats and parasols and fluttering Union Jacks, I had no idea.
A rower from one of the colleges, in a striped cap and jersey, cracked oars with a pleasure party’s paddles and stopped to apologize, and a sailboat nearly crashed into them from behind. I yanked on the lines and nearly crashed into all three.
“I’d best steer,” Terence said, scrambling up to change places when our boat hit an empty slot between a four-oared outrigger and a dinghy.
“Excellent idea,” I said, but rowing was worse. Facing backward, I couldn’t see anything and had the feeling I was going to run into the Upper Slaughter Ironmongers’ River Excursion at any moment.
“This is worse than the Henley Regatta,” Terence said, pulling on the lines. He maneuvered the boat out of the main current and off to the side, but that was even worse. It brought us into the midst of the punts and houseboats that were being towed, their towlines stretched across our path like so many tripwires.
The people towing weren’t in any hurry, either. Girls pulled a few feet and then paused to look laughingly back at the boat. Couples stopped to look longingly into each other’s eyes, letting the towline go limp in the water, and then remembered what they were supposed to be doing and yanked it up sharply. Jerome K. Jerome had written about a couple who’d lost their boat and gone on, talking and towing the frayed rope, but it seemed to me a greater danger was decapitation, and I kept glancing anxiously behind me like Catherine Howard.
There was a sudden flurry of activity upriver. A whistle shrieked and someone cried, “Look out!”
“What is it?” I said.
“A bloody teakettle,” Terence said, and a steam launch puffed through the crowd, scattering the boats and sending up a trem
endous wash.
The boat rocked, and one of the oars unshipped. I made a grab for it and the carpetbag, and Terence raised his fist and cursed at the steam launch’s vanishing wake.
“They remind one of Hannibal’s elephants at the Battle of the Ticinus River,” Professor Peddick, who had just awakened, said, and launched into a description of Hannibal’s Italian campaign.
We were in the Alps and in traffic all the way to Wallingford. We sat in line for Benson’s Lock for over an hour, with Terence taking out his pocket watch and announcing the time every three minutes.
“Three o’clock,” he said. Or “A quarter past three.” Or “Nearly half past. We’ll never make it in time for tea.”
I shared his sentiment. The last time I’d opened the carpetbag, Princess Arjumand had stirred ominously, and as we pulled into the lock I could hear faint meowings, which luckily were drowned out by the crowd noise and Professor Peddick’s lecturing.
“Traffic was responsible for Napoleon’s losing the battle of Waterloo,” he said. “The artillery wagons became stuck in the mud, blocking the roads, and the infantry could not make its way past them. How often history turns on such trivial things, a blocked road, a delayed corps of infantry, orders gone astray.”
At Wallingford the traffic abruptly disappeared, the punts stopping to camp and start supper, the Musical Society disembarking and heading for the railway station and home, and the river was suddenly empty.
But we were still six miles and another lock from Muchings End.
“It’ll be nine o’clock before we get there,” Terence said despairingly.
“We can camp near Moulsford,” Professor Peddick said. “There are excellent perch above the weir there.”
“I think we should stay at an inn,” I said. “You’ll want a chance to clean up. You’ll want to look your best for Miss Mering. You can shave and have your flannels pressed and your shoes shined, and we can go to Muchings End first thing in the morning.”
And I can sneak out with the carpetbag after everyone’s gone to bed, and return the cat without being seen, so that by the time Terence gets there tomorrow morning the incongruity will already be correcting itself. And he’ll find Tossie holding hands with Mr. Cabbagesoup or Coalscuttle or whatever his name is.
“There are two inns in Streatley,” Terence said, consulting the map. “The Bull and The Swan. The Swan. Trotters says it brews an excellent ale.”
“It hasn’t any swans, has it?” I said, glancing warily at Cyril, who had awakened and was looking nervous.
“I shouldn’t think so,” Terence said. “The George and Dragon doesn’t have a dragon ”
We rowed on. The sky turned the same blue as my hatband and then a pale lavender, and several stars came out. The frogs and crickets started up, and more faint mewings from the carpetbag.
I pulled up sharply on the oars, making a good deal of splashing, and asked Professor Peddick exactly where his and Professor Overforce’s theories differed, which got us to Cleve Lock, where I jumped out, fed the cat some milk, and then set the carpetbag in the bow on top of the luggage as far from Terence and Professor Peddick as possible.
“The action of the individual, that’s the force driving history,” Professor Peddick was saying. “Not Overforce’s blind, impersonal forces. ‘The history of the world is but the biography of great men,’ Carlyle writes, and so it is. Copernicus’s genius, Cincinnatus’s ambition, St. Francis of Assisi’s faith: It is character that shapes history.”
It was fully dark, and the houses were lit by the time we reached Streatley.
“At last,” I said as we sighted the quay, “a soft bed, a hot meal, a good night’s sleep,” but Terence was rowing straight past it.
“Where are you going?” I said.
“To Muchings End,” he said, pulling hard on the oars.
“But you said yourself it’s too late to call,” I said, glancing yearningly back at the quay.
“I know,” he said. “I only want a glimpse of where she lives. I won’t be able to sleep, knowing she’s so close, until I’ve seen her.”
“But it’s dangerous to be on the river at night,” I said. “There are shoals and eddies and things.”
“It’s only a short way,” Terence said, rowing determinedly. “She said it was just past the third island.”
“But we won’t be able to see it at night,” I said. “We’ll get lost and go over a weir and be drowned.”
“There it is,” Terence said, pointing at the shore. “She told me I’d know it by the gazebo.”
The white gazebo gleamed faintly in the starlight, and beyond it, across a sloping lawn, was the house. It was enormous and extremely Victorian, with gables and towers and all sorts of neo-Gothic gingerbread. It looked like a slightly smaller version of Victoria Station.
Its windows were all dark. Good, I thought, they’ve gone to Hampton Court to raise Catherine Howard’s ghost or off to Coventry. I’ll be able to return the cat easily.
“There’s no one there,” I said. “We’d best start back to Streatley. The Swan will be all booked up.”
“No, not yet,” Terence said, gazing at the house. “Let me gaze a moment longer on the hallowed ground whereon she walks, the sacred bower wherein she rests.”
“It does look as though the family has retired for the evening,” Professor Peddick said.
“Perhaps they’ve only got the curtains drawn,” Terence said. “Shh.”
That seemed unlikely, given the pleasantness of the evening, but we obediently listened. There was no sound at all from the shore, only the gentle lap of water, the murmur of a breeze through the rushes, the soft chirrup of frogs crocking. A meowing sound from the bow of the boat.
“There,” Terence said. “Did you hear that?”
“What?” said Professor Peddick.
“Voices,” Terence said, leaning out over the gunwale.
“Crickets,” I said, edging toward the bow.
The cat meowed again. “There!” Terence said. “Did you hear that? It’s someone calling us.”
Cyril sniffed.
“It’s a bird,” I said. I pointed at a tree by the gazebo. “In that willow. A nightingale.”
“It didn’t sound like a nightingale,” Terence said. “Nightingales sing of summer ‘in full-throated ease and pour their souls abroad in ecstasy.’ This didn’t sound like that. Listen.”
There was a snuffling sound in the front of the boat. I whirled round. Cyril was standing on his hind legs, his front paws on the stack of luggage, sniffing at the carpetbag and nudging it with his flat muzzle toward the edge.
“Cyril! Don’t!” I shouted, and four things happened at once. I dived forward to grab the carpetbag, Cyril started guiltily and backed against the wicker basket, Professor Peddick said, “Take care you do not step on the Ugubio fluviatilis,” and leaned sideways to pick the kettle up, and Terence turned round, saw the carpetbag toppling, and dropped the oars.
I tried, in mid-lunge, to avoid the oar and the professor’s hand, and fell flat, Terence intercepted the basket, the professor clutched his kettle of fish to his breast, and I caught the carpetbag by a corner just as it toppled over. The boat rocked dangerously. Water slopped over the bows. I got a better grip on the carpetbag, set it on the stern seat, and pulled myself to a sitting position.
There was a splash. I grabbed for the carpetbag again, but it was still there, and I peered at the bow, wondering if the oar had gone in.
“Cyril!” Terence shouted. “Man overboard!” He began stripping off his jacket. “Professor Peddick, take the oars. Ned, get the life preserver.”
I leaned over the side of the boat, trying to see where he’d gone in.
“Hurry!” Terence said, pulling off his shoes. “Cyril can’t swim.”
“He can’t swim?” I said, bewildered. “I thought all dogs could swim.”
“Indeed. The term ‘dog paddle’ is derived from the instinctive knowledge of swimming Canis familiaris possess
es,” Professor Peddick said.
“He knows how to swim,” Terence said, stripping off his socks, “but he can’t. He’s a bulldog.”
He was apparently right. Cyril was dog-paddling manfully toward the boat, but his mouth and nose were both underwater, and he looked desperate. “I’m coming, Cyril,” Terence said and dived in, sending up a wave that nearly sunk him altogether. Terence started to swim toward him. Cyril continued to paddle and sink. Only the top of his wrinkled brow was still above the water.
“Bring the boat to port, no, starboard. To the left,” I shouted and began rummaging for the life preserver, which we had apparently packed on the bottom. “As bad as the Titanic” I said, and then remembered it hadn’t sunk yet, but no one was listening.
Terence had Cyril by the collar and was holding his head up above the water. “Bring the boat closer,” he shouted, spluttering, and Professor Peddick responded by nearly running him down. “Stop! No!” Terence shouted, waving his arm, and Cyril went under again.
“To port!” I shouted. “The other way!” and leaned over and grabbed Terence by the scruff of his neck. “Not me!” Terence gasped. “Cyril!”
Between us we hoisted a very waterlogged Cyril into the boat where he coughed up several gallons of the Thames. “Put a blanket round him,” Terence said, clinging to the bows.
“I will,” I said, extending my hand. “Now you.”
“I’m all right,” he said, shivering. “Get the blanket first. He catches chills easily.”
I got the blanket, wrapping it round the massive shoulders that had proven Cyril’s downfall, and then we set about the tricky business of getting Terence back in the boat.
“Keep low,” Terence ordered, his teeth chattering, “we don’t want anyone else to go in.”
Terence was no better at following directions than Professor Peddick had been. He persisted in trying to get a leg up over the bow, a motion that caused the bow to slant at an angle almost as bad as that of the Titanic.
“You’ll capsize us,” I said, wedging the carpetbag under the seat. “Hold still and let us haul you in.”