Spilt Wine

26. Barging into the Burgundy

Saturday 12 April 1986

Dressed in Louis' blue work trousers and a bulky maroon wool sweater, Catherine looked like a seasoned deckhand as we motored Vrouwe Catharina past the upstream gates and into Écluse 74. She glanced at her watch, and from the foredeck, she called back to me in the wheelhouse, "You're twelve seconds late for the ten thirty rendezvous."

I chuckled. "I'll try to improve. This is only our first lock."

Vrouwe Catharina handled easily, responding to my helm and engine movements, and she slowly came to rest against her fenders alongside the starboard rim of the full chamber. Catherine pointed at a bollard as she looked back at me, and seeing my exaggerated nod, she dropped the eye of the mooring line over her indicated target.

I stepped ashore to close one gate while the lockkeeper closed the other, and I was back aboard and looping a bollard with the stern line before the lockkeeper started opening the downstream sluices to drain the chamber.

"Locks are easier to transit downbound since the water level slowly recedes with none of the churning, turbulence and back eddies of a filling chamber in an upbound lock. Descending, it's simply allowing the mooring lines to run out smoothly without snags or riding turns," I explained this and other safety elements to Catherine as we stood on the side deck, tending the lines.

"Yes, I remembered these from my péniche experiences. But it is good to have it refreshed."

"A good refresher for me, as well. We need to remember to review the locking and mooring procedures frequently and not become complacent."

"My uncle had a big plaque in the wheelhouse with red letters. Complacency and Inattention are the Major Causes of Accidents."

We quickly worked our way down through the two locks, and shortly before eleven, we were out on the broader Saône and turning to head downstream in its rather strong current. "There's still a lot of water coming down," I said as Catherine rejoined me in the wheelhouse.

"I remember the Saône here and upstream as a much more peaceful stretch of water in 1967."

"So you're thirty-one, thirty-two this summer. You don't at all look your age."

"Your memory for numbers. Your calculations are so quick!"

"That's why I failed math in school."

"How do you mean? That doesn't make sense."

"I always had numbers in my head and saw answers to problems immediately in my mind, but I couldn't figure out the complex way the teachers wanted me to solve the obvious. I didn't understand what they meant by showing my work, so I accepted being stupid and inept at math, as they told me I was."

Steadying from the turn, I increased the engine speed to 1800 rpm. "To pass time when I was stumped by trying to figure out one teacher's methods, I taught myself to do squares and square roots in my head. I had seen an obvious progression, a sequential relationship. The teacher had no interest in what I was explaining to her, and she told me it wasn't the sort of math I needed to concentrate on in Grade Five."

"What do you mean with this progression, this sequence?"

"The square of the next number in sequence is the sum of the current number squared plus itself and the next number in sequence."

"Okay, you've really lost me this time."

"A simple example – the square of two is four, the square of three, the next number in sequence, is two squared plus two plus three, which is nine. The square of five is twenty-five, so the square of six is twenty-five plus five plus six, which totals thirty-six. The square of twenty is four hundred, so the square of twenty-one is four hundred plus twenty plus twenty-one, which totals four-forty-one. Very obvious and very simple."

"And none of the teachers realised your ability?"

"None."

"And besides math, what else did they miss?"

"Starting with Grade One, Miss Grannan –"

"You remember your first-grade teacher's name?" Catherine interrupted.

"Yes, of course, I do. Anyway, Miss Grannan asked the class the first day of school, Who knows the alphabet? A few of us put up our hands, and I was the second one chosen to get up and recite it. I asked her, frontwards, backwards or Underwood? She said, No more playing. You're in school now, you must learn to be serious. She told me to sit down."

"Underwood?"

"My grandfather had an Underwood typewriter in his store, and I memorised the qwerty keyboard sequence."

"I'm sure you still know it, and the backwards one too."

"Of course, I do. I knew them at the age of four, and I still do – but back to you. I had guessed you were still in your early to mid-twenties when I was first introduced to you after you had married Louis. That was four years ago, shortly after his father's de ..."

I suddenly pointed forward through the wheelhouse window. "Look! There's Saint-Jean-de-Losne." Relieved to have a diversion from mentioning Louis and death in one breath, I continued, "It's such a short leg on the river between the canals. To our left is the Franche-Comté; to our right is the Burgundy." I continued a stream of words to maintain the conversation shift. "Only four and a half kilometres to the entrance of canal de Bourgogne. It's little more than a hundred metres beyond the bridge between Saint-Jean-de-Losne and Losne, then to starboard. Jean-Luc asked me to blow our horn as we near his office. He wants to help with our lines at the first lock up into the basin."

My well of words was about to run dry when Catherine pointed. "Look, isn't that Jean-Luc, waving from the quai?"

"Mind your ears, I'm going to toot him a greeting."

Catherine purred an echo. "Baaawoooom – such a wonderful voice she has, so deep and mellow."

"We'll have to turn to starboard now." I chuckled. "That's what one short horn blast means."

"Well do that, then. Head in closer and let's cruise by slowly. This is such a pretty setting. Can we moor here?"

"Yes, it's quite lovely, isn't it? We could moor here if the river weren't still a bit high. The edge of the quai is still flooded. You remember the broad sloping steps down from the street? We'd be high-and-dry on a step if the river dropped quickly."

I blew a breath of relief that Catherine is here in the present and not dwelling on the tragedies – the ones so very recent and the ones buried deep in her past. I watched Jean-Luc jog along the quai, moving ahead of Vrouwe Catharina, pausing to raise his camera for some shots, then running to catch up again and pass us to repeat the cycle.

"He's getting many wonderful photos, I'm sure," Catherine said excitedly, watching him and waving at the people who had stopped on the quai and roadway at the sound of our horn – many had remained admiring our passing. "I want copies."

A few minutes later, Jean-Luc stood at the rim of the chamber, nearly three metres above us, when we motored under the little bridge and into the first lock of canal de Bourgogne. Catherine's first attempt at a line toss hit him squarely in the chest. Perfectly aimed, but a bit too strongly thrown. "Seems I'm much stronger than that thirteen-year-old kid on the péniche," she apologised.

I mused that her strength is far more than physical, but I wondered how deep her emotional strength is. Is it a frail shell ready to crumble? A façade held up with props like a Hollywood cowboy town set?