Offshore (5 page)

‘We shall have Father Watson round again.’

‘I don’t think so, Ma. He missed his footing on the gangplank last time.’

‘I’m so tired of making excuses.’

‘You should tell the truth.’

In what way could the truth be made acceptable? Tilda had initiated the train of events, as, with her careless mastery of life, she often did. Pressed by the nuns to complete a kettleholder in cross-stitch as a present for her father, she had replied that she had never seen her father holding a kettle and that Daddy had gone away.

The fact was that she had lost the six square inches of canvas allocated for the kettleholder when it was first given out to the class. Martha knew this, but did not wish to betray her sister.

Tilda had at first elaborated her story, saying that her mother was looking for a new Daddy, but her observation, quick as a bird’s flight, showed her that this was going too far, and she added that she and her sister prayed nightly to Our Lady of Fatima for her father’s return. Up till that moment Tilda, in spite of her lucid grey eyes, showing clarity beneath clarity, which challenged the nuns not to risk scandalising the innocent, had often been in disfavour. She was known to be one of the little ones who had filled in their colouring books irreverently, making our Lord’s beard purple, or even green, largely, to be sure, because she never bothered to get hold of the best crayons first. Now, however, she was the object of compassion. After a private conference with Mother Superior, the Sisters announced that there would be a special rosary every morning, during the time set aside for special intentions, and that the whole Junior School would pray together that Martha and Tilda’s Daddy should come back to them. After this, if the weather was fine, there would be a procession to the life size model of the grotto of Lourdes, which had been built in the recreation ground out of a kind of artificial rock closely resembling anthracite. Sister Paul, who was the author of several devotional volumes, wrote the special prayer: Heart of Jesus, grant that the eyes of the non-Catholic father of Thy little servants, Martha and Matilda, may be opened, that his tepid soul may become fervent, and that he may return to establish himself on his rightful hearth, Amen.

‘They are good women,’ Martha said, ‘but I’m not going to set foot in the place while that’s going on.’

‘I could speak to the nuns.’

‘I’d rather you didn’t, Ma. They might begin to pray for you as well.’

She glanced up, apparently casually, to see if Nenna had taken this too hard.

Tilda appeared with a ball of oozing clay in her arms which she flung down on the table. Apparently carrion, it moved and stretched a lean back leg, which turned out to be Stripey’s.

‘She’s in voluntary liquidation,’ said Martha, but she fetched a piece of old towelling and began to rub the cat, which squinted through the folds of white material like Lazarus through the grave-clothes.

‘How did she get into this state?’ Nenna asked. ‘That isn’t shore mud.’

‘She was hunting rats on the wharf and she fell into a clay lighter, Mercantile Lighterage Limited, flag black diamond on broad white band.’

‘Who brought her in, then?’

‘One of the lightermen got off at Cadogan Stairs and walked back with her and gave her to Maurice.’

‘Well, try to squeeze the water out of her tail. Gently.’

The clay rapidly set in a hard surface on the table and the floorboards underneath it. Martha mopped and scraped away for almost half an hour, long after Tilda had lost interest. During this time it grew dark, the darkness seeming to rise from the river to make it one with the sky. Nenna made the tea and lit the wood stove. The old barges, who had once beaten their way up and down the East Coast and the Channel ports, grumbled and heaved at their cables while their new owners sat back in peace.

Without warning, a shaft of brilliant light, in colour a sickly mauve, shone down the hatchway.

‘It must be from
Maurice
,’ said Martha, ‘it can’t be a shore light.’

They could hear his footsteps across the gangplank, then a heavier one as he dropped the eighteen-inch gap onto
Grace
’s deck.

‘Maurice can’t weigh much. He just springs about.’

‘Cat-like?’ Nenna asked.

‘Heaven forbid,’ said Martha.

‘
Grace!
’ Maurice called, in imitation of Richard, ‘perhaps you’d like to come and have a look.’

Nenna and the two girls shook off a certain teatime drowsiness and went back on deck, where they stood astounded. On the afterdeck of
Maurice
, which lay slightly at an angle to
Grace
, a strange transformation had taken place. The bright light – this was what had struck them first – issued from an old street lamp, leaning at a crazy angle, rather suggesting an amateur production of
Tales of Hoffmann
, fitted, in place of glass, with sheets of mauve plastic, and trailing a long cable which disappeared down the companion. On the deck itself were scattered what looked like paving stones, and the leeboard winch had been somewhat garishly painted in red, white, and gold.

The wash of a passing collier rocked both boats and the enormous reverberation of her wailing hooter filled the air and made it impossible for them to speak. Maurice stood half in the shadow, half brightly purple, and at last was able to say.

‘It’ll make you think of Venice, won’t it?’

Nenna hesitated.

‘I’ve never been to Venice.’

‘Nor have I,’ said Maurice, quick to disclaim any pretence to superiority, ‘I got the idea from a postcard someone sent me. Well, he sent me quite a series of postcards, and from them I was able to reconstruct a typical street corner. Not the Grand Canal, you understand, just one of the little ones. When it’s as warm as it is tonight, you’ll be able to leave the hatch open and imagine yourselves in the heart of Venice.’

‘It’s beautiful!’ Tilda shouted.

‘You don’t seem quite certain about it, Nenna.’

‘I am, I am. I’ve always wanted to see Venice, almost more than any other place. I was only wondering what would happen when the wind gets up.’

What she must not ask, but at the same time mustn’t be thought not to be asking, was what would happen when Harry came next. As a depot for stolen goods
Maurice
, surely, had to look as inconspicuous as possible.

‘I may be going abroad myself quite soon,’ said Maurice casually.

‘Oh, you didn’t tell us.’

‘Yes, I met someone the other night who made a sort of suggestion about a possible job of some kind.’

It wasn’t worth asking of what kind; there had been so many beginnings. Sometimes Maurice went over to Bayswater to keep up his skating, in the hopes of getting a job in the ice show. Perhaps it was that he was talking about now.

‘Would you be selling
Maurice
, then?’

‘Oh yes, of course, when I go abroad.’

‘Well, your leak isn’t nearly as bad as
Dreadnought
.’

This practical advice seemed to depress Maurice, who was trying the paving stones in various positions.

‘I must ask Willis how he’s getting on … there’s so much to think about … if someone wanted a description of this boat, I suppose the Venetian corner would be a feature …’

He switched off the mauve light. None of the barge-owners could afford to waste electricity, and the display was really intended for much later at night, but he had turned it on early to surprise and please them.

‘Yes! I’ll soon be living on land. I shall tell my friend to take all his bits and pieces out of my hold, of course.’

‘Maurice is going mad,’ said Martha, quietly, as they went back onto
Grace
.

M
AURICE’S
strange period of hopefulness did not last long. Tenderly responsive to the self-deceptions of others, he was unfortunately too well able to understand his own. No more was said of the job and it rapidly became impossible to tell who was trying to please whom over the matter of the Venetian lantern.

‘What am I to do, Maurice?’ Nenna asked. She confided in him above all others. Apart from anything else, his working day did not begin till seven or eight, so that he was often there during the day, and always ready to listen; but there were times when his customers left early, at two or three in the morning, and then Maurice, somewhat exhilarated with whisky, would come over to
Grace
, magically retaining his balance on the gangplank, and sit on the gunwale, waiting. He never went below, for fear of disturbing the little girls. Nenna used to wrap up in her coat and bring out two rugs for him.

During the small hours, tipsy Maurice became an oracle, ambiguous, wayward, but impressive. Even his voice changed a little. He told the sombre truths of the lighthearted, betraying in a casual hour what was never intended to be shown. If the tide was low the two of them watched the gleams on the foreshore, at half tide they heard the water chuckling, waiting to lift the boats, at flood tide they saw the river as a powerful god, bearded with the white foam of detergents, calling home the twenty-seven lost rivers of London, sighing as the night declined.

‘Maurice, ought I to go away?’

‘You can’t.’

‘You said you were going to go away yourself.’

‘No-one believed it. You didn’t. What do the others think?’

‘They think your boat belongs to Harry.’

‘Nothing belongs to Harry, certainly all that stuff in the hold doesn’t. He finds it easier to live without property. As to
Maurice
, my godmother gave me the money to buy a bit of property when I left Southport.’

‘I’ve never been to Southport.’

‘It’s very nice. You take the train from the middle of Liverpool, and it’s the last station, right out by the seaside.’

‘Have you been back since?’

‘No.’

‘If
Maurice
belongs to you, why do you have to put up with Harry?’

‘I can’t answer that.’

‘What will you do if the police come?’

‘What will you do if your husband doesn’t?’

Nenna thought, I must take the opportunity to get things settled for me, even if it’s only by chance, like throwing straws into the current. She repeated –

‘Maurice, what shall I do?’

‘Well, have you been to see him yet?’

‘Not yet. But of course I ought to. As soon as I can find someone to stay with the girls, for a night or two if it’s necessary, I’m going to go. Thank you for making my mind up.’

‘No, don’t do that.’

‘Don’t do what?’

‘Don’t thank me.’

‘Why not?’

‘Not for that.’

‘But, you know, by myself I can’t make my mind up.’

‘You shouldn’t do it at all.’

‘Why not, Maurice?’

‘Why should you think it’s a good thing to do? Why should it make you any happier? There isn’t one kind of happiness, there’s all kinds. Decision is torment for anyone with imagination. When you decide, you multiply the things you might have done and now never can. If there’s even one person who might be hurt by a decision, you should never make it. They tell you, make up your mind or it will be too late, but if it’s really too late, we should be grateful. You know very well that we’re two of the same kind, Nenna. It’s right for us to live where we do, between land and water. You, my dear, you’re half in love with your husband, then there’s Martha who’s half a child and half a girl, Richard who can’t give up being half in the Navy, Willis who’s half an artist and half a longshoreman, a cat who’s half alive and half dead …’

He stopped before describing himself, if, indeed, he had been going to do so.

Partisan Street, opposite the Reach, was a rough place, well used to answering police enquiries. The boys looked on the Venetian corner as a godsend and came every day as soon as they were out of school to throw stones at it. After a week Harry returned to
Maurice
, once again when there was no-one on the boat, took away his consignment of hair-dryers, and threw the lantern and the paving-stones overboard. Tilda, an expert mudlark, retrieved most of the purple plastic, but the pieces were broken and it was hard to see what could be done with them. Maurice appreciated the thought, but seemed not to care greatly one way or the other.

W
ILLIS
deeply respected Richard, whom he privately thought of, and sometimes called aloud, the Skipper. Furthermore, although he had been pretty well openly accused of dishonesty at the meeting, his moral standards were much the same as Richard’s, only he did not feel he was well enough off to apply them as often, and in such a wide range of conditions, as the Skipper. It didn’t, thank heavens, seem likely that a situation would ever arise in which there was no hope for Richard, whereas, on the other hand, Willis considered that for himself there was scarcely any hope at all if he could not sell
Dreadnought
. £2000 would, according to his calculations, be more or less enough for him to go and spend the rest of his days with his widowed sister. He could hardly go empty-handed, and the benefits of the move had been pointed out to him often.

‘My sister’s place is on gravel soil. You don’t feel the damp there. Couldn’t feel it if you wanted to.’

Nor, however, did you see the river, and Willis would have to find something else to fill the great gap which would be left in his life when it was no longer possible to see the river traffic, passing and repassing. Like many marine painters he had never been to sea. During the war he had been an auxiliary coastguard. He knew nothing about blue water sailing. But to sit still and watch while the ships proceeded on their lawful business, to know every class, every rig and every cargo, is to make inactivity a virtue, and Willis from
Dreadnought
and from points along the shore as far as the Cat and Lobster at Gravesend had honourably conducted the profession of looking on. Born in Silvertown, within sound of the old boat-builders’ yards, he disliked silence. Like Tilda, he found it easier to sleep when he could hear the lighters, like iron coffins on Resurrection Day, clashing each other at their moorings all night, and behind that the whisper of shoal water.

Tilda, in spite of her lack of success with the convent’s colouring books, wished to be a marine painter also. Her object was to paint exactly like Willis, and to put in all the rigging with a ruler, and to get everything right. She also wanted to have a Sunday dinner, whenever possible, in the style of Willis, who followed the bargemen’s custom of serving first sultana pudding with gravy, and then the roast.

As an artist, he had always made an adequate living, and Willises, carefully packed in stiff board and oiled paper, were despatched – since a number of his patrons were in the Merchant Navy – to ports all over the world for collection. But these commissions, mostly for the originals of jokes and cartoons which Willis had managed in former times to sell to magazines, had grown fewer and fewer in the last ten years, as, indeed, had the drawings themselves. After the war the number of readers who would laugh at pictures of seasick passengers, or bosuns getting the better of the second mate, diminished rapidly.

A few distant correspondents, untouched by time, still asked confidently for a painting of a particular ship.
Dear Willis – As I am informed by those who ought to know that you have ‘taken the ground’ somewhere near London River, I expect you can tell me the whereabouts of the dear old
Fortuna,
built 1892, rigged when I last saw her in 1920 as a square foresail brigantine. Old ships never die and doubtless she is still knocking around the East Coast, though I suppose old Payne may have made his last port by now … I should be interested in an oil painting on canvas, or board (which I suppose would come a bit cheaper!!), showing her beating around the Foreland under sail in fairly heavy weather, say Force 6 …
Willis could only pray that the writers of such letters, stranded in ports which the war had passed by almost without notice, would never return, to be betrayed by so much change.

Willis sometimes took Tilda, in her character as an apprentice painter, to the Tate Gallery, about two and a half miles along the Embankment. There was no Tube then to Pimlico, and they proceeded by a series of tacks to Victoria. At Sloane Square Underground Station Willis pointed out the mighty iron pipe crossing high in the air above the passenger line.

‘Look, that carries the River Westbourne, flowing down from Paddington. If that was to take and start leaking, we’d all have to swim for it.’

Tilda eyed the great pipe.

‘Where does it come out?’

‘The outfall? Well, it’s one of the big sewers, my dear, I’ll get the name right for you.’ He made a note.

The other passengers drew back from the dishevelled river dwellers, so far out of their element.

Laura was doubtful whether the little girl ought to be allowed to go out like that alone with an old man, and not a very scrupulous one at that, for a whole afternoon. She told Richard a number of stories on the subject, some of them taken from the daily papers, and suggested that he might turn the matter over in his mind. But Richard said it wasn’t necessary.

‘You told me yourself that he was dishonest.’

‘It isn’t necessary.’

Willis and Tilda usually stopped on the way at a little shop in the Vauxhall Bridge Road, which seemed glad of any kind of custom, to buy a quarter of aniseed marbles. These were sold loose, but were put into a special paper bag overprinted with the words

COME ON, CHILDREN, HERE’S A NEW HIT!

FIRST YOU ROLL IT, THEN YOU CHEW IT
.

Willis had never known many children, and until Nenna had come to the boats he had rather tended to forget there were such things. The very distinctive taste of the aniseed marbles, which were, perhaps, some of the nastiest sweets ever made, recovered time past for him.

Once at the Tate, they usually had time only to look at the sea and river pieces, the Turners and the Whistlers. Willis praised these with the mingled pride and humility of an inheritor, however distant. To Tilda, however, the fine pictures were only extensions of her life on board. It struck her as odd, for example, that Turner, if he spent so much time on Chelsea Reach, shouldn’t have known that a seagull always alights on the highest point. Well aware that she was in a public place, she tried to modify her voice; only then Willis didn’t always hear, and she had to try again a good deal louder.

‘Did Whistler do that one?’

The attendant watched her, hoping that she would get a little closer to the picture, so that he could relieve the boredom of his long day by telling her to stand back.

‘What did he put those two red lights up there for? They’re for obstruction not completely covered by water, aren’t they? What are they doing there among the riding lights?’

‘They don’t miss much, do they?’ the attendant said to Willis. ‘I mean, your little granddaughter there.’

The misunderstanding delighted Tilda, ‘Dear grandfather, are you sure you are not weary? Let us return to our ship. Take my arm, for though I am young, I am strong.’

Willis dealt with her admirably by taking almost no notice of what she said.

‘Whistler was a very good painter. You don’t want to make any mistake about that. It’s only amateurs who think he isn’t. There’s Old Battersea Bridge. That was the old wooden bridge. Painted on a grey ground, you see, to save himself trouble. Tide on the turn, lighter taking advantage of the ebb.’

It was understood that on their return they would have tea on
Grace
.

‘How old do you think I am, Mrs James?’ Willis asked, leaning quietly forward. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve never thought about it. It’s my experience that everybody thinks how old everybody else is.’

There was no help for it. ‘Well, perhaps nearer seventy than sixty.’

Willis’s expression never changed quickly. It seemed to be a considerable undertaking for him to rearrange the leathery brown cheeks and the stiff grey eyebrows which were apparently supported by his thick-lensed spectacles.

‘I don’t seem to feel my age while I’m on these little expeditions, or when I’m drawing.’

Now he wouldn’t have time for either. Cleaning ship, and worrying about the visits of intending purchasers, occupied his entire horizon.

His ideas proceeded from simplicity to simplicity. If the main leak could be concealed by showing only at low tide, Willis thought that the equally serious problem of rain – for the weatherboards were particularly weak in one place – could be solved if he stood directly under the drip, wearing a sort of broad waterproof hat. He was sure he had one stowed away somewhere.

‘He’s no idea of how to sell anything except his drawings,’ Woodie told Charles, ‘and then I doubt whether he charges enough for them. I should describe him as an innocent.’

‘He knows a fair amount about boats.’

‘He lives in the past. He was asking me about some man called Payne who seems to have died years ago.’

Richard saw, with reservations, where his duty lay, and put
Dreadnought
on the market through the agency of an old RNVR friend of his, who had gone into partnership, on coming out of the forces, as an estate agent in Halkin Street. Perhaps ‘acquaintance’ would be a fairer description than ‘friend’, but the difference was clearer in peacetime than it had been during the war.

The agent was up-to-date and wished, as was fashionable in those years, to give an amusing turn to the advertisement, which he thought ought to appear, not where Willis had thought of putting it, in the
Exchange and Mart
, but in the A circulation newspapers.

‘… Whistler’s Battersea … main water … no? well, main electricity … two cabins, one suitable for a tiny Flying Dutchman … huge Cutty Sark type hold awaits conversion … complete with resident Ancient Mariner … might be persuaded to stop awhile if you splice the mainbrace …’

The senior partner usually drafted these announcements himself, but all the partners felt that, given the chance, they could do it better.

‘The
Cutty Sark
was a tea clipper,’ Richard said. ‘And I don’t think there’s any question of Willis staying on board. In fact, that’s really the whole point of the transaction.’

‘Did this barge go to Dunkirk?’

‘A number of them were drafted,’ Richard said, ‘
Grace
was, and
Maurice
, but not
Dreadnought
, I think.’

‘Pity. It would have been a selling point. How would it be, Richard, if we were to continue this discussion over a very large pink gin?’

This remark, often repeated, had earned Richard’s friend, or acquaintance, the nickname of Pinkie.

Since this meeting, Richard had had a further debate with his conscience. It was, of course, the purchaser’s business to employ a surveyor, whether a house or a boat was in question, and Pinkie would not be offering
Dreadnought
with any kind of guarantee as to soundness, only, after all, as to quaintness. On the other hand, Pinkie seemed to have lost his head to a certain extent, perhaps at the prospect of making his mark by bringing in something novel in the way of business. Surely he hadn’t been quite so irritating as a watchkeeping officer in the
Lanark
? But the weakest element in the situation – the one most in need of protection, towards which Richard would always return – the weakest element was certainly Willis. He had begun to neglect himself, Laura said. She had gone along once to pay a casual visit and found one of Nenna’s youngsters, the little one, cooking some kind of mess for him in
Dreadnought
’s galley. Richard rather liked Willis’s pictures, and had got him to do a pen and wash drawing of
Lord Jim
. He saw the old man as in need of what, by current standards, was a very small sum to enable him to wind up his affairs.

Richard was not aware that he was no longer reasoning, but allowing a series of overlapping images – the drawing of
Lord Jim
, Tilda cooking – to act as a substitute for argument, so that his mind was working in a way not far different from Maurice’s, or Nenna’s. But the end product would be very different – not indecisive and multiple, but single and decisive. Without this faculty of Richard’s, the world could not be maintained in its present state.

Having explained carefully to Willis what he was about to do, Richard invited Pinkie out to lunch. This had to be at a restaurant, because the only club that Richard belonged to was Pratt’s. He had got himself put up for Pratt’s because it was impossible to have lunch there. There was, too, something unaccountable about Richard – perhaps the same wilfulness that induced him to live offshore although his marriage was in a perilous state – which attracted him to Pratt’s because celebrations were only held there for the death of a king or queen.

The restaurant to which Richard invited Pinkie was one at which he had an account, and there was, at least, no difficulty in knowing what drinks to order. Pinkie sucked in his drink in a curious manner, very curious considering how many gins he must have in the course of the week, as though his glass was a blowhole in Arctic ice and to drink was his only hope of survival.

‘By the way, Richard, when are you and Laura going to give up this nonsense about living in the middle of the Thames? This is the moment to acquire property, I’m sure you realise that.’

‘Where?’ Richard asked. He wondered why Pinkie mentioned Laura, then realised with sinking heart that she was no longer keeping her discontent to herself, and the echo of it must have travelled for some distance.

‘Where? Oh, a gentleman’s county,’ Pinkie replied, wallowing through his barrier of ice, ‘Say Northamptonshire. You can drive up every morning easily, be in the office by ten, down in the evening by half past six. I calculate you could spend about 60 per cent of your life at work and 40 per cent at home. Not too bad, that. Mind you, these Jacobean properties don’t come on the market every day. We just happen to be more lucky at laying hands on them than most. Or Norfolk, of course, if you’re interested in small boats.’