Offshore (12 page)

‘Your kitty’s split open, my love.’

‘No, she’s not. She’s been eating a seagull. If she was open you’d see all the feathers.’

Harry had a bottle in his hand.

‘Are you going to get drunk?’

‘The stuff in this bottle? Couldn’t drink that. It would burn me if I did. It’d fucking well burn anybody.’

It was spirits of salt. He looked at her with the points of his eyes, the whites still rolling. The bottle was in his right hand and he swung it to and fro once or twice, apparently judging its weight. Then he moved towards the wharf, coming round to meet her on
Grace
.

Tilda clambered over the washboard, and clinging on by fingers and toes to the strakes, half slithered and half climbed down the side, gathered up the cat and skimmed across to
Rochester
. The side-ladder was out, as she very well knew.

‘Oh, Mrs Woodie, will you look after me? Martha told me to come here. I came here straight away.’

‘What’s that you’re carrying?’ asked Mrs Woodie, resigned by now to almost anything.

‘She’s my pet, my pet, the only pet I’ve been allowed to have since I was a tiny kiddie.’

Mrs Woodie looked at the distended animal.

‘Are you sure, dear, that she’s not …’

‘What do you mean, Mrs Woodie? I believe that there’s an angel that guards her footsteps.’

The hold of
Rochester
had changed, in the last few weeks, from below decks to a cosy caravan interior. There was a good piece of reversible carpet put down, and Tilda seated herself, open-mouthed, in front of the television, where
Dr Kildare
flickered. Mrs Woodie began to cut sandwiches into neat squares. ‘Where are you?’ she called to her husband.

Woodie appeared, somewhat put out. ‘I’ll take a cup to Willis. He’s still dwelling too much on the past, in my opinion.’

‘Tell him Tilda’s here.’

Willis came in quietly and sat beside the child on the locker, covered with brand new flower-patterned cushions.

‘Where’s your sister?’

‘Out with Heinrich.’

‘With the German lad? Well, he seems nice enough. He wouldn’t remember the war, of course.’

Tilda began to tell him exactly what had been happening in
Dr Kildare
, so far. She said nothing about Harry, because, for the time being, she had forgotten all about him.

Richard came back from work that evening later than he had hoped. Disappointed that there were no lights showing on
Grace
– it had never occurred to him that Nenna would not be there tonight – he was turning to walk along the Embankment to
Lord Jim
when he caught sight of a stranger on
Maurice
. He therefore changed direction and went along the wharf.

‘I’m a friend of the owner’s,’ he said. ‘Good evening.’

There was no reply, and he noticed that the gangplank was down between
Maurice
and
Grace
. Something was not quite right, so without hesitation he dropped down onto the deck.

Harry did not look up, but continued paying out the flex until he rounded the corner of the deck-house and could see Richard without bothering to turn his head. He put down the pair of pliers he was holding and picked up a heavy adjustable spanner.

‘What are you doing on this boat?’ Richard asked.

‘Who made you God here?’ said Harry.

The light was fading to a point where the battlements of the Hovis tower could only just be distinguished from the pinkish-grey of the sky. When Richard came a couple of steps nearer – it would never have occurred to him to go back until the matter was satisfactorily settled – Harry, looking faintly surprised, as though he couldn’t believe that anything could be quite so simple, raised the adjustable spanner and hit him on the left side of the head, just below the ear. Richard fell without much sound. He folded up sideways against the winch, and immediately tried to get up again. It would have been better if he had been less conscientious, because he had broken one of his ribs against the handle of the winch and as he struggled to his feet the sharp broken edge of the bone penetrated slightly into his lung. Harry watched him fall back and noted that a considerable quantity of blood was coming away at the mouth. He wiped the spanner and put it away with his other tools. He was reflecting, perhaps, that this had been an easier job than the electrical wiring. Carrying the bag of tools, he disappeared up the wharf towards Partisan Street and the King’s Road.

Heinrich and Martha were walking back to the Reach hand in hand. ‘That’s Maurice’s pub,’ she told him, ‘he’ll be in there now,’ and, as they got nearer, ‘I wish the Venice lantern was still there, it looked nice at night,’ but in reality there was no need to say very much.

The foreshore was dark as pitch, but the corner street lamps palely illuminated the deck of
Maurice
. The body of a man lay across the winch, with an arm drooped over the side.

‘Martha, don’t look.’

Often, as the night drew on, a number of people were seen to lie down in odd places, both in Partisan Street and on the Embankment. Maurice’s customers, too, were unpredictable. But none of them lay still in quite this way.

‘Perhaps it’s Harry,’ Martha said. ‘If it is, and he’s dead, it’ll be a great relief for Maurice.’

They walked steadily nearer, and saw blood on the deck, looking blackish in the dim light.

‘It’s
Lord Jim
,’ she whispered.

The sight of a lord, knocked out by criminals, exactly fitted in with Heinrich’s idea of Swinging London.

‘It’s Mr Blake,’ said Martha.

‘What should we do?’

Martha knew that with any luck the police launch would be at
Bluebird
. ‘They go there to fetch the nurses on night shift and give them a lift down to hospital.’

‘That would not be permitted in Vienna.’

‘It’s not permitted here.’

They were both running along the Embankment. Loud music, complained of by the neighbours on shore, thumped and echoed from cheerful
Bluebird
on the middle Reach. You could have told it a mile away. The river police duty-boat, smart as a whistle, was waiting alongside.

In this way Richard, still half-alive, was admitted to the men’s casualty ward of the Waterloo Hospital. One of the young probationers from
Bluebird
was on the ward, and came in with an injection for him, to help him to go to sleep.

‘Isn’t it Miss Jackson?’ Richard said faintly. He had been trained to recognise anybody who had served under him, or who had helped him in any way. Miss Jackson had assisted with the removal of Willis. But Richard’s polite attempt to straighten himself and to give something like a slight bow made the damage to his lung rather worse.

They patched him up, and he dozed through the night.

The long pallid hospital morning passed with interruptions from the nursing, cleaning, and auxiliary staff, all of whom gravitated to the bed, where they were received by the nice-looking Mr Blake, who was in terrible pain, with grave correctness. The probationers told him to remember that every minute he was getting a little better, and Ward Sister told him not to make any effort, and not to try to take anything by the mouth. ‘I’m afraid I’m being a bit of a nuisance,’ Richard tried to say. ‘You’re not supposed to talk,’ they said.

When he was left to himself his mind cleared, and he began to reflect. He remembered falling, and the deck coming up to hit him, which brought back the sensation – although it hadn’t done so at the time – of the moment just before the torpedo hit
Lanark
. He also remembered the look of the adjustable spanner, and it seemed to him appropriate that having been knocked down with a spanner his whole body was now apparently being alternately wrenched and tightened. There must surely be some connection of ideas here, and he would get better quickly if he could be certain that everything made sense.

Next, having reviewed, as well as he could, his work at the office, and made a courageous but unsuccessful attempt to remember whether there was any urgent correspondence he hadn’t dealt with, he let his thoughts return to Nenna. Yesterday, or was it the day before yesterday, or when was it, he had gone first up the ladder on to
Lord Jim
, but Nenna had gone first into the cabin. Thinking about this, he felt happier, and then quite at peace. It was rather a coincidence that she was wearing a dark blue guernsey exactly like Laura’s, with a neck which necessitated the same blindfold struggle to get it off. About the whole incident Richard felt no dissatisfaction and certainly no regret. He could truly reflect that he had done not only the best, but the only thing possible.

At the end of the morning a very young doctor made his rounds and told Richard on no account to talk, he was only making a routine check-up. ‘You can answer with simple signs,’ he said reassuringly, ‘we’ll soon have you out of here and on four wheels again.’ Less sensitive than the nurses, he evidently took Richard for a quarrelsome garage proprietor.

‘No bleeding from the ears?’

The young houseman appeared to be consulting a list, and Richard, anxious to help a beginner, tried to indicate that he would bleed from the ears if it was the right thing to do. As to the exact locality of the pain, it was difficult to convey that it had grown, and that instead of having a pain he was now contained inside it. The doctor told him that they would be able to give him something for that.

‘And absolute quiet, no police as yet. We had an officer here wanting you to make a statement, but he’ll have to wait a couple of days. However,’ he added unexpectedly, ‘we’re going to bend the regulations a little bit and let you see your children.’

From the no-man’s land at the entrance to the ward, where the brown lino changed to blue, Tilda’s voice could be heard, asking whether she and her sister might be allowed to bring Mr Blake a bottle of Suncrush.

‘Is he your Daddy, dear?’

‘He is, but we haven’t seen him for many, many years, for more than we can remember.’

‘Well, if Dr Sawyer’s given permission …’

Tilda advanced, with Martha lingering doubtfully behind, and swept several plants from the loaded windowsill to make room for the Suncrush.

‘Do you remember us, Daddy dear?’

Ward Sister was still complaining that children were not allowed to see the patients unattended. By good fortune, however, another visitor arrived; it was Willis, who took charge at once of the two girls. Richard’s catastrophe had brought him to himself. Gratitude, felt by most people as a burden, was welcome to the unassuming Willis.

‘Well, Skipper, it’s sad to see you laid low. Not so long since I was in here myself, but I never dreamed …’

Willis had not quite known what to bring, so he’d decided on a packet of Whiffs. In his ward at the Waterloo they’d been allowed to smoke for an hour a day. ‘But I can see it’s different in here,’ he said, as though this, too, was a mark of the superiority of Skipper. Richard did not smoke, but Willis had never noticed this.

‘I think he wants to write something for you, dear,’ the nurse said to Martha. Tilda, unabashed, was out in the pantry, helping the ward orderlies take the lids off the supper trays. Richard looked at Martha and saw Nenna’s puzzled eyes, though they were so much darker. He painfully scrawled on the piece of paper which had been left for him:
HOW IS YOUR MOTHER
?

Martha wrote in turn – it didn’t occur to her to say it aloud, although Richard could hear perfectly well –
BUSY, SHE’S PACKING
.

WHAT FOR
?

WE’RE GOING TO CANADA
.

WHEN
?

But this Martha could not answer.

Laura was sent for, and arrived back in London the following afternoon. She dealt easily and efficiently with Richard’s office, with the police, with the hospital. There she spoke only to Matron and the lung specialist. ‘It’s no use talking to the ward staff, they’re so overworked, poor dears, they can’t tell one case from another!’ The ward sister had actually drawn her aside and asked her whether she did not think it would be a good idea to let her husband see his children more often in the future.

Richard was still not allowed to speak – he was not recovering quite so fast as had been expected – and he could make little reply when Laura told him that this was exactly the kind of thing she had expected all along, and that she would see about disposing of
Lord Jim
immediately. Her family, applied to, began to scour the countryside for a suitable house, within reasonable commuting distance from London, in good condition, and recently decorated, so that she could move Richard straight there as soon as he was discharged from hospital.

N
ENNA
felt that she could have made a better hand at answering Louise if only Edward had taken the trouble to return her purse. It wasn’t only the money, but her library card, her family allowance book, the receipt from the repair shop without which she couldn’t get her watch back, creased photographs, with Edward’s own photograph among them, her address book, almost the whole sum of her identity.

After all, she thought, if she did go away, how much difference would it make? In a sense, Halifax was no further away than 42b Milvain Street, Stoke Newington. All distances are the same to those who don’t meet.

Halifax was equally far from the Norfolk border, to which Laura had removed Richard. The
FOR SALE
notice nailed to
Lord Jim’s
funnel saddened her and if possible she approached
Grace
from the other direction. If she had told Richard about Harry, and about
Maurice
’s dubious cargo, he wouldn’t have had to lie in a pool of blood waiting for her own daughter to rescue him. But curiously enough the regret she felt, not for anything she had done but for what she hadn’t, quite put an end to the old wearisome illusion of prosecution and trial. She no longer felt that she needed to defend herself, or even to account for herself, there. She was no longer of any interest to Edward. The case was suspended indefinitely.

As Louise seemed unwilling to come to the boats, Nenna was obliged to take the girls to tea at the luxurious Carteret. It was an anxious business to make them sufficiently respectable. On the twelfth floor of the hotel, from which they could just get a view of the distant river, they were delighted with their prosperous-looking aunt. Taller, stronger, not so blonde but much more decisive than their mother, she still seemed perpetually astonished by life.

‘Martha! Tilda! Well I’ll be! I haven’t seen you both for such a long time, and you’re both of you just! Well, how are you going to like us in Canada?’

‘Louise, that depends on such a number of things. We have to sell
Grace
, to begin with.’

‘What would happen if I pressed that bell?’ Tilda asked.

‘Well, somebody would come along, one of the floor waiters, to ask if we wanted tea, or cakes, or any little thing like that. Go on, you can press it, honey.’

Tilda did so. The bell was answered, and their order arrived.

‘Is that right, dear?’

‘Yes, those are the things Martha and I like. Are there any boats in Canada?’

‘No shortage of boats, no shortage of water.’

Tilda’s mind was made up in favour of the New World.

‘But I’m not sure that we ought to leave Maurice, though,’ she said, licking each finger in turn. ‘Now that he won’t have Ma to talk to, and there’s no Mr Blake to get up a subscription if he goes down, I’d say he might lose heart altogether. And then the police are always coming round to interrogate him.’

‘Who’s Maurice, dear?’ asked her aunt rather sharply.

‘Maurice is on
Maurice
, just like the Blakes were on
Lord Jim
.’

‘Ah, yes, Richard Blake, he called me up.’

‘How could he?’ Nenna cried.

‘You remember, he’s the one I had to call his number to get you, that’s when we were in Frankfurt. I told him then that when we came to England we’d be staying at this hotel. It suits us all right, although Joel keeps saying that the service was so much better before the war.’

‘But what did he say?’

Nenna’s question caused confusion, which Louise gradually sorted out. What had this Richard Blake said, well, she got the impression that he was counting on coming to a series of Transatlantic insurance conferences in the spring, and he was either coming to Montreal first, or to New York, she couldn’t remember which order it was, search me, said Louise, she hadn’t thought it mattered all that much.

‘I don’t know whether it does or not,’ said Nenna. ‘He was going to show me how to fold up a map properly.’

‘Joel can do that for you, dear.’

‘We shan’t be able to take Stripey,’ said Tilda, continuing the course of her own thoughts. ‘She won’t leave
Grace
. Mrs Woodie bought her a basket, a very nice one made by the blind, but she wouldn’t get into it.’

‘Mrs Woodie?’

‘A kindly lady, somewhat advanced in years.’

‘She’ll enjoy being back at school with girls of her own age,’ Louise quietly observed to Nenna.

Mr Swanson came in, greeted everybody, and ordered a rye.

‘Well, von Furstenfeld called me today, their boy’s arrived safely in Vienna, and they’re more than pleased, Nenna, with the spirit of hospitality you and your family extended to him. I owe you a debt of gratitude there.’

Martha smiled, perfectly tranquil.

Joel Swanson did not understand, nor did he ever expect to understand, exactly what was going on, but the kind of activity he seemed to be hearing about, in snatches only, was more or less exactly what he’d expect from his wife’s relatives. He smiled at them with inclusive good will.

With
Lord Jim
and
Grace
both on his books, Pinkie felt doubtful about his chance of selling either. Of course, they were at the opposite ends of the price range. But the market would be affected, particularly as the disappointed broker hadn’t hesitated to tell everyone how lucky he’d been not to drop a packet on
Dreadnought
, which had gone straight to the bottom like a stone in a pond. It was awkward, too, from the sales point of view, that Richard had been aboard one of these barges when he got knocked over the head. Thank heavens he hadn’t got to try and sell that one. Poor old Richard, torpedoed three times, and then finished off, near as a toucher, with an adjustable spanner. Pinkie consulted the senior partner.

‘Not everyone’s buy. But if someone’s looking for an unusual night spot …’

On
Grace
there was, after all, not so very much to be done. The barges, designed to be sailed by one man and a boy, could be laid up in a few days. Only the mast gave trouble. Not all Woodie’s efforts could succeed in lowering it. ‘I’ve another idea about your mast,’ he said every morning, coming brightly across, but the thick rust held it fast. As to the packing, Mrs Woodie, eager to give a hand, was disappointed to find so little to do. The James family seemed to have few possessions. Mrs Woodie felt half inclined to lend her some, so as to have more to sort out and put away.

Unperturbed, Stripey gave birth. The warm hold of
Rochester
was chosen by the sagacious brute, and Willis, always up very early, found her on the ruins of the new locker cushions, with five mud-coloured kittens. Martha presented all but one to Father Watson. The presbytery needed a cheerful touch, he had so often hinted at this. But the priest, who had a strong instinct of self-preservation, transferred the litter of river-animals to the convent, as prizes in the Christmas raffle. With relief, he discussed the emigration of the James family with the nuns; so much the best thing – if there was no chance of a reconciliation – all round.

The night before Nenna and her two daughters were due to leave England, storm weather began to blow up on the Reach. There had been a good deal of rain, the Thames was high, and a north-westerly had piled up water at the river’s mouth, waiting for a strong flood tide to carry it up. Before dark the wind grew very strong.

A storm always seems a strange thing in a great city, where there are so many immoveables. In front of the tall rigid buildings the flying riff-raff of leaves and paper seemed ominous, as though they were escaping in good time. Presently, larger things were driven along, cardboard boxes, branches, and tiles. Bicycles, left propped up, fell flat. You could hear glass smashing, and now pieces of broken glass were added to the missiles which the wind flung along the scoured pavement. The Embankment, swept clean, was deserted. People came out of the Underground and, leaning at odd angles to meet the wind, hurried home from work by the inner streets.

Above the river, the seagulls kept on the wing as long as they could, hoping the turbulence would bring them a good find, then, defeated and battered, they heeled and screamed away to find refuge. The rats on the wharf behaved strangely, creeping to the edge of the planking, and trying to cross over from dry land to the boats.

On the Reach itself, there could be no pretence that this would be an ordinary night. Tug skippers, who had never before acknowledged the presence of the moored barges, called out, or gave the danger signal – five rapid blasts in succession. Before slack tide the police launch went down the river, stopping at every boat to give fair warning.

‘Excuse me, sir, have you checked your anchor recently?’

The barge anchors were unrecognisable as such, more like crustaceans, specimens of some giant type long since discarded by Nature, but still clinging to their old habitat, sunk in the deep pits they had made in the foreshore. But under the ground they were half rusted away.
Dreadnought’s
anchor had come up easily enough when the salvage tug came to dispose of her. The mud which held so tenaciously could also give way in a moment, if conditions altered.

‘And how much anchor chain have you got? The regulation fifteen fathoms? All in good condition?’

Like many questions which the police were obliged to put, these were a formality, it being clear that the barge-owners couldn’t answer them. It could only be hoped that the mooring-ropes were in better case than the anchors. The visit was, in fact, a courteous excuse to leave a note of the nearest Thames Division telephone number.

‘Waterloo Pier. WAT 5411. In all emergencies. Sure you’ve got that?’

‘We’d have to go on shore to telephone,’ said Woodie doubtfully, when his turn came. He was thinking of taking
Rochester
’s complement straight to Purley in the car, whether Willis agreed or not.

‘What do you think of this weather, officer?’

The sergeant understood him, as one Englishman to another. The wind had ripped the tarpaulin off some of the laid-up boats, and huge fragments of oilcloth were flying at random, wrapping themselves round masts and rails.

‘You want to look out for those,’ he said. ‘They could turn nasty.’

The Thames barges, built of living wood that gave and sprang back in the face of the wind, were as much at home as anything on the river. To their creaking and grumbling was added a new note, comparable to music. As the tide rose, the wind shredded the clouds above them and pushed a mighty swell across the water, so that they began to roll as they had once rolled at sea.

Nenna and Martha had absolutely forbidden Tilda to go above decks. Banished to the cabin, she lay there full of joy, feeling the crazy desire of the old boat to put out once again into mid-stream. Every time
Grace
rose on the swell, she was aware of the anchor chain tightening to its limit.

‘We’re all going ashore,’ Nenna called, ‘
Rochester
’s gone already. We’re just taking a bag, we’ll come back for the rest when the wind’s gone down.’

Tilda put on her anorak. She thought them all cowards.

No-one knew that Maurice was on board ship, because there were no lights showing. Certainly not a habitual drinker, he was nevertheless sitting that night in the darkness with a bottle of whisky, prepared for excess.

It wasn’t the uncertain nature of his livelihood that worried him, nor the police visits, although he had twice been invited to accompany the officers to the station. So far they hadn’t applied for a search warrant to go over the boat, but Maurice didn’t care if they did. Still less did he fear the storm. The dangerous and the ridiculous were necessary to his life, otherwise tenderness would overwhelm him. It threatened him now, for what Maurice had not been able to endure was the sight of the emptying Reach.
Dreadnought, Lord Jim
, now
Grace
. Maurice, in the way of business, knew too many, rather than too few, people, but when he imagined living without friends, he sat down with the whisky in the dark.

When he heard steps overhead on deck, he switched on the light. Making two shots at it before he could manage the switch, he wondered if he’d better not drink any more. Of course, that rather depended on who was coming; he didn’t know the footsteps. Someone was blundering about, didn’t know the boat, probably didn’t know about boats at all, couldn’t find the hatch. Maurice, always hospitable, went to open it. His own steps seemed enormous, he floated up the steps, swimming couldn’t be so difficult after all, particularly as he’d become weightless. Reaching the hatch at the same time as the stranger outside, he collided with it, and they fell into each other’s arms. Not a tall man, quite young and thin, and just as drunk, to Maurice’s relief, as he was.

‘My name’s James.’

‘Come in.’

‘This is a boat, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is it
Grace
?’

‘No.’

‘Pity.’

‘You said your name was James?’

‘No, Edward.’

‘Never mind.’

Edward took a bottle of whisky out of his pocket and, unexpectedly, two glasses. The glasses made Maurice sad. They must have been brought in the hope of some celebration to which the way had been lost.

‘Clever of you to come on the right night,’ he said.