Witness account · 3 min read · Set in The Vale of Aldermere ·
The Soldier at the Aldermere Lock
A retired lock-keeper in Aldermere Vale describes a soldier in an old grey greatcoat who stood at the top sluice every evening for a week and asked each boat that passed for its papers.
- reliability: corroborated
- witness: Harold Bett, retired lock-keeper
I kept the Aldermere top lock for thirty-four years, from the day they took the lock off the coal barges to the day they put the gates on the heritage list, and I have seen a good many strange things come down that cut. But I will say this plainly: the soldier was the strangest.
It was the week of the first heavy rain in September. The river was up over the sill and the lock was running high, and I was on the bank with the paddles when a man came along the towpath from the direction of the old ferry house. He wore a long grey greatcoat with the collar turned up, the sort the army issued before the first war, and a peaked cap pulled low, and he walked very slowly, with one hand on the wall for balance.
He stopped at the top sluice and stood there. I asked whether he needed help. He did not answer. He watched the water come through the gate for a long time, and then he turned to the first narrowboat coming up the cut, which was the Tamsin, skippered by the Pardoe brothers, and he held up his hand.
"Papers," he said.
The elder Pardoe laughed and asked what he meant. The soldier said it again, quite patient, and the younger Pardoe handed him the licence and the registration from the wheelhouse, and he looked at them for a long time and then gave them back and nodded and stepped aside. The Tamsin went up through the lock.
He did this every evening that week. Every boat that came up the cut, he asked for its papers. Narrowboats, a timber barge, a dinghy with an outboard that the owner had borrowed for the weekend. He did not ask the fishermen on the bank. He did not ask me. And when a boat went through without papers, he would stand at the sluice with his hand raised until the bow had passed under the arch, and then he would lower the hand and walk back along the towpath toward the ferry house, very slowly, in the gathering dusk.
On the Friday I asked the Pardoes what he had been looking for. The elder one said he had not known. He said the soldier had seemed to be counting the boats, not checking them, and that when the Tamsin had gone up the cut the man had said, quite clearly, "That's one more, then."
I checked the lock book the next morning. I found no entries that week for the Tamsin, or any other boat that the soldier had questioned. The Pardoes say they filled in the book themselves. The entries are in their hands. They do not remember writing them.
I have not seen the soldier since. But I know the river, and I know that the sluice gate has not been opened properly since the Friday, and I know that when a boat comes up the cut now, at dusk, the lock keeper stands at the top gate and calls out, before anyone else can, "Papers, please."