Adrift by Helen Babbs

Author:Helen Babbs
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Icon Books Ltd

summer

heartland

Regent’s Canal

Angel to Little Venice

11. lost ways

We have been sucked in and swallowed up by the dark arch that drips. Its mucous, glistening walls curve in close, as though the bricks were the skin of a long, straight throat. Thin, grey stalactites grow downwards, sharp signs of a slow-motion melt. The boat noses towards a far-off speck of daylight, cleaving a dark, short-lived trail through tightly packed green weed that zips itself back up once we pass. Pike’s headlamp uncovers sprayed-on tags and hieroglyphs on the inner arch, and throws bending shadows up the walls – me made gigantic and ghoulish, hooded as I am against the tunnel’s dank weather and holding a ten-foot boat pole.

There is a hill between Angel and King’s Cross that lies in the canal’s chosen path. Instead of climbing up and over it via several locks, the waterway cuts straight through. The towpath ends abruptly in a tall brick wall and the canal disappears into darkness, folded in to its smallest possible proportions. For fifteen minutes or so we’re packed in a space between the above-ground and the underground, the weight of Islington pressing down, the tube network opening up below.

The tunnel is a moody cave that changes from one journey to the next. It is full of slippery echoes, and smells of wet clay, diesel and damp. The water itself is placid, raked only by slow boats and not by the wind, but it changes colour to suit the season. In summer it draws in luminescent duckweed blooms, in winter it will darken to a colour deeper than black.

Sometimes before going in we sit at the entrance, tracking the headlight of another boat slowly sliding towards us. There’s not enough room for two boats to pass. Once that boat is safely out we can enter Angel’s orifice, another two or three boats perhaps following behind, single file. On those days the tunnel is full of voices and extra loud with engines. But I like it most when we have it all to ourselves. It is a safe place, an embrace, somewhere a problem can be solved or at least left well behind. Distance and time become loose things in here. It feels like it could be a portal, like we might arrive at the other end to find everything has altered or a hundred years have passed. It can also be frightening. What would happen if all this collapsed, if the weight of all those buildings and buses above got too much for the bricks to bear?

When we reach the opposite tunnel mouth, it is a perfect ‘O’, the view above water reflected to create the illusion there is, in fact, no water at all and that we are travelling suspended in a perfectly round, silvered brick tube. As we slowly slip out, first the bow then the aft, cool night is replaced again with warm day.

It is in the Islington Tunnel that the connection to the past seems most strong. Even though it

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.