What the canal keeps
The submarine was eventually removed from the Aldermoor Canal in August—a painstaking operation that took eleven days, three cranes, and a reinforced flatbed truck. A small crowd gathered on the last morning to watch it go. Declan stood among them, his hands in his pockets, watching the hull rise above the rooftops and disappear around the bend toward the motorway.
Nobody told him where it was being taken. Everyone had been told it would be assessed for heritage preservation, but that the process could take years. Priya left the waterways authority and took a job with an investigative archive organisation in London. She was still working on it.
The canal was refilled on a grey Tuesday. The water rose over the exposed silt, over the flattened shape where the submarine had lain for eight decades, over all the ordinary debris of a city that never stops dropping things in its own waterways. By afternoon, you could not tell anything had been there at all. Within a week, the footbridge regulars were back with their coffees and their dogs and their morning routines, looking at a canal that looked like every other canal. Declan stopped there most mornings on his way in. He never quite stopped looking at the water. You don’t, once you know what can be underneath it.
