Through Harrowby Tunnel

Text 1: Two Mile, by Edna Rowntree

An original novel extract.

Her father’s hand had swollen to the size of a loaf by the time they reached the mouth of Harrowby Tunnel, and Nell knew before he said it that she would be taking the boat through alone.

“Keep her to the right,” he said from the cabin step, white about the lips. “Hand on the tiller, eyes on the far end. Two mile. You’ve seen me do it a hundred times.”

She had seen him. She had never done it. She was thirteen, and the October night had come down over the cutting like a lid.

The headlamp on the cabin roof threw a weak yellow cone ahead of the bow, and the tunnel took it and swallowed it. Within a hundred yards the arch behind her had shrunk to a grey coin, then to a thumbnail, then to nothing, and the engine’s thud came back at her off the brickwork doubled and trebled, until it seemed that a whole fleet of boats was labouring close behind her.

Water fell on her from the roof. It came in single heavy drops that struck the back of her neck like fingers. The walls were furred with something white and soft that glistened as the lamp passed. She did not look at it.

At the half-mile the lamp went out.

There was no warning, only a darkness so whole that she put her free hand up in front of her face and could not find it. The engine thudded on, the boat thudded on, into nothing, and she understood that she could not tell whether the bow was swinging towards the wall or away from it, and that she would not know until it struck.

Keep her to the right.

She held the tiller still. She made herself breathe. Slowly she began to listen: to the slap of the wash against the right-hand wall, close and quick, and the duller answer from the left, further off. Close and quick. Further off. The tunnel was talking to her. She steered by its voice.

It was a long time before she saw the far end. It came as a pale freckle in the black, and then it was a coin, and then it was the night sky with stars in it, and the clean cold air of the open cut pouring over her face like water from a jug.

Behind her, on the cabin step, her father had not said a word the whole way. He reached out with his good hand and touched her shoulder, once.

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