Tony Williams

A Lock-Keeper

Muttering about breakfast, he trudges down to work the gate,
disturbing ducks which flounder off to the neighbouring carr,
leaving a scummy swell to press on the concrete shore.
Painted lines speak mysteries of volume, pressure, weight,

a peeling scale above a trough, a weed-encrusted grate.
The dropping level absorbs all the patience he can muster,
and staring down at the silted mud-bank of his chore
he might be entirely unaware of the waiting boat,

closed-faced and scornful, pouring silent ire
on freights of families, who lounge out where the ore
would lie in a heap, dredged from some rural scar
they are heading westwards to investigate.

The reed-beds shiver when he clears his throat;
sharp and half-submerged, they rock and tether
the buoyant, coal-black coots in the still water
and rot steadily upwards from the root.

Companion Piece

As children in the English Midlands our history lessons were usually tied to the Industrial Revolution, and one school trip involved a visit to the local canal, by then disused except for a single narrow-boat that chugged up and down a truncated stretch for educational purposes, manned by volunteer enthusiasts. We got as far as the first lock, which was derelict or at least not put through its paces for the likes of us. I didn’t really believe it could work anyway — opening a gate to make water levels rise? Come off it.

Nowadays Britain’s canals “are enjoying something of a renaissance”, as the travel brochures would have it. Having been superseded by rail and road and fallen into disuse, they’d mainly become fairly dirty and dismal places — where vegetation did indeed seem to “rot steadily upwards from the root”, though I doubt that such a thing is botanically possible. But lots of them have now been redeveloped, and you can hire narrow-boats and barges and toddle off on a holiday round the region, stopping at down-at-heel provincial pubs or upmarket urban quaysides according to your taste. Very nice too.

I wanted my lock-keeper to be a miserable sod. He’s one of those enthusiasts, Fred Dibnah’s bitter brother, working at a job he loves in the service of an industry utterly different from the one it was designed for, resenting the holiday-makers who now populate the river and make his life possible. They’re a necessary evil, the modern reality which both enables and sours his living in the past. To some extent I sympathise with him, but I’d be one of those tourists; I suppose it’s a mixture of sympathy and scorn. He needs to watch his blood pressure.