Chaplin & Company

by Mave Fellowes

  Vera kept absolutely still.

  ‘Sarge?’ said another voice. There was a pause.

  ‘Go in.’

  With the first blow to the door Vera tripped off the stool, which clattered underneath her, and pressed herself to the back wall of the barge. As the doors splintered inwards she looked around to check she had left nothing out. There was just her tracksuit top on the back of a chair. Everything else was hidden. There was another blow to the right-hand door and the top half came off its hinges and swung back. A head in a policeman’s cap ducked into the doorway to look inside.

  ‘She’s here.’

  ‘Bring her in,’ said the first voice.

  As the man in the doorway kicked open the bottom half of the door and stepped down into the barge, Vera backed along the wall, pulling the stool in front of her.

  The policeman lifted his hands up, smiling, as if she was holding a gun. He was tall, narrow-headed, stooped under the barge ceiling.

  ‘Speak any English?’

  Vera took the edge of the stool and lifted it towards him like a lion-tamer.

  ‘It’s going to need all of us, Sarge,’ the man called out. Two more men stepped into the barge and the first man edged towards her.

  Remembering this, Vera feels foolish. What did she think, that they could be scared away like pigeons? One of the two new arrivals stood in the doorway while the other sidled along the far wall and reached for the stool legs. ‘Come on now,’ he said, baring his teeth a little – she remembers the flash of yellow. She pulled away from him and shot back into the corner by the counter. The tall man lunged forward to grab the stool, knocking over the coffee machine and tipping a stack of salad plates on to the floor. They smashed at Vera’s feet and she looked down to see the triangles of patterned china washed up around her trainers.

  In the end they had shepherded her out like dogs with a sheep. At the threshold the tall man handcuffed her wrist to his. ‘No more funny business,’ he nodded slowly. ‘Quite a little fighter,’ he said to the others.

  ‘She looks bloody terrified,’ said the one with the teeth.

  At least in this place she has access to the news on television. For the first time she can know about everything that is happening at home, not just snippets of radio and other people’s discarded newspapers. She has seen terrible images of home. Tanks rolling into villages, along empty streets. Soldiers with flags. Women crying and pleading to the television cameras, lifting their children up to be filmed. They have declared it a civil war. When she told her roommate this, she seemed excited. ‘This means you can stay,’ she said. She had clasped Vera’s hand in her hard, warm palms. ‘They will recognise you as a refugee. It is a bad thing to say, but I wish I had your situation. I wish I was running from civil war. For me, it is just my family. And they will send me back to them.’

  Vera said, ‘But with a good lawyer?’

  ‘Yes. Maybe.’

  Nadra looked tired. She squeezed Vera’s hand once more and said, ‘You must find a good lawyer too. If you have money, pay for one. Then you have a good chance. Better chance than me.’

  Vera does not know how to begin to do this. She cannot afford to pay for a good lawyer; she has no money.

  And she has no energy. Even the effort of washing has left her exhausted. She can barely manage to shuffle out of her room, along the corridor and down the stairs to the canteen each day for meals. Hiding for so long has taken everything from her. Every day listening out, every day watching out. Her body is heavy as concrete. All she can bear to do is sit on her bunk, and think.

  And her thoughts here are turning to home, to life there before the troubles. Was there some hubris in thinking she could carry on learning, could perhaps one day travel? Could continue to follow her curiosity? What was so impossible about this idea of life? Her hopes had not weighed against anyone else’s. Her dreams took from no one. She had needed nothing from anybody else, except perhaps to be left in peace.

  Peace.

  The loss of peace – it swallows up everybody’s dreams.

  She flinches, interrupted by a loud thud on the door. It swings open and an officer puts his head round, then opens it wide when he sees her sitting on the bed.

  ‘Vera Novak? Visitor.’

  THIRTY-THREE

  The boat Chaplin and Company sits in the water by the bridge at Little Venice. It sits alone. Most of the summer cruisers left a few weeks ago. The duckweed has broken up now, dissolved, lining only the water’s edge, hugging its litter – packets, bottles, cans – to the wall of the canal. The day is cloudy but windless, the water is unmoving and shows the bridge perfectly in its green-hued surface. Likewise, the boat’s reflection butterflies out beneath it, completely still, discoloured by the water and appearing almost as solid as the boat itself. The canal is quieter now; many of the geese have begun their migrations and the young ducks and moorhens have separated from their parents so are no longer moving around in noisy flocks. There are no birds around the boat, but their faint calls can be heard from beyond the bridge, where they weave between each other below the porthole of the barge cafe, waiting for scraps. There is the distant roar of traffic from the Westway, and the occasional noise of a car or bike on the small roads that run two or three metres above the level of the towpath. A halfworld up, a halfworld apart.

  These are the dead hours of mid-afternoon, when the momentum of the day stops, pauses, before tipping on towards the evening. The light is static and it is as if the earth itself has held its turning. These are the longest hours. In the sky above, even the clouds are not moving. Still as a photograph.

  But now, from beyond the bridge, there is the faint sound of an engine. It is the phut-phut of a very old motor, rising and falling like the rhythmic turnover of a steam train. Different to the constant drone of modern engines. The sound comes closer and a shape appears below the bridge. It is the low, flat shape of a packet boat. The sound of the motor is amplified as it moves through the blackness under the bridge, and then the boat emerges into daylight. Its bow pushes through the green surface of the canal, folding the water back in lines that travel out and out and wash the hem of duckweed up the concrete banks of the towpath.

  The boat moves slowly. As it comes out from under the bridge the line of sunlight moves along it, giving colour. Richly varnished cabin doors at the front have brass handles and hinges. The body of the boat is blue with a red border outline around its sides. There are four shining brass portholes along the length of the boat. In the centre of these is an arc of white writing that reads Chaplin and Company, underneath is written Est. 1936. The writing gleams so sharply it looks like lacquer. The bowl of the boat is tarred matt black. Old-fashioned rope buffers hang over the side. A man stands at the tiller, baseball cap jammed low over long hair which is as cleanly white as the script on the boat’s side. His expression isn’t clear, but he is holding himself still. Rigidly still.

  Then he pushes the brass handle away and the nose of the boat begins to swing in towards the bank. It is heading for the boat moored there, the one with tired decking, doors bleached by weather, a patchy blue body with chipped paint, yellowed plastic buoys hanging over the side – but whose lettering reads the same. The same arc, the same script, the same date beneath. A faded, discoloured version of the approaching vessel, a watery reflection.

  The second boat pulls in behind its twin and the timbre of its motor changes as the stern swings round towards the bank. As the knotted-rope buffers nudge the towpath’s edge, the man straightens the rudder and steps down into his cabin. The engine cuts out and the scene is silent again, only disturbed by the boat’s wake, which laps briefly at the bank and then subsides. The man steps on to the towpath with rope in his hand and leans down to knot it around a mooring hook. He does all this deftly despite his size, though the exertion shows when he lifts a sleeve to wipe the line of pink forehead beneath his cap, and blows out from beneath a thick white muzzle of moustache. He walks to the front of the boat and knots
the bow rope around another mooring hook.

  As he straightens he looks at the boat in front and his rounded chest pulls sharply upwards, as if in shock. He takes a step forward. The boats are so close they are almost touching, bow to stern. He brings one hand up and reaches out with it, touching a patch of bubbled blue paint which cracks under his fingers. He runs his hand along the side and around the old, blackened brass of a porthole. The glass is cracked and dusted with dirt. He takes off his baseball cap, his white hair flattened in a circle where it sat, and presses his forehead to the side of the boat. His eyes are closed. He is muttering something.

  After a minute the man straightens, looks along the towpath, to the left and right, and then steps aboard the weathered boat. He pulls a small brass windlass from his belt. He touches his fingers to the cabin doors and then pushes the narrow end of the windlass into the lock. With a grunt he wrenches it and splits the white plastic bolt from the wood of the door. The windlass clatters to the deck. He runs his hand up the door and pulls at the top corner. As it opens, he gasps.

  He ducks his head and steps down into the engine room.

  Immediately, he sees the fold-down shelf that Walt Chaplin used as a bed, and the engine compartment underneath. The engine has been replaced with a three-valve model. The fuel gauge reads empty. All the surrounding wood is new – pine rather than oak. But whoever did it has replicated the engine compartment exactly. A boiler has been fixed on to the internal wall and there is a large black case parked in the corner. But the compass still sits in the ceiling of this room, the bowl of glass murky with dust and flaked paper. He taps at the glass and the needle quivers. He looks around the engine room doorway and sees a bathroom cubicle has been added, with a chemical toilet, sink and showerhead. He steps through to the main cabin and his eyes travel down the length of it. He knows the dimensions, the curves and the corners of it. He has built them himself. He has re-created every inch in oak.

  When he was last here the cabin was empty of furniture, just stacked with different crates and sacks of cargo. As he looks around, he feels anger at the objects and built-in units that invade the space. They should not be here. There are pictures stuck to the walls. He walks around the cabin and pulls these down, one by one. They leave pins in the walls and he works these out with his fingernails. He rolls them up and then untacks the strips of film reel stuck to the porthole glass above the bed. He slips these into the middle of the roll and takes it to the engine room, where he posts it out of the porthole on to the towpath. They land on their ends and open outwards as they fall flat. On the top is an image of a clown in white with black ballet shoes, a crushed top hat and a rosebud mouth in a circle of spotlight against a black backdrop. He is listening to something invisible in his palm, his eyes round with wonder.

  The man goes to the shelving unit, unloading handfuls of books and videos on to the floor. He tilts the shelves backwards and bumps them up the steps to the deck. Heaves them on to the towpath. He goes back in and stacks the books and videos into piles, carries each pile up to the deck and drops it on the towpath. He picks up the orange and brown chair (with an Arnott’s biscuit tin on the seat), lifting it high as he backs up again to the deck. He puts this on the towpath next to the shelves.

  Back inside, he can’t stop: unplugs the mini fridge from the kitchen and carries this out, then some food packets that have been left out on the kitchen surface. He wheels the large plastic case out of the engine room and fills it with any loose thing he can see: a paper bag of film reels, a postcard of two punks with the message ‘WELCOME TO LONDON’. Up to the deck again, he swings the case on to the towpath and goes back down to the cabin. He puts the lid back on a brown cardboard box that is on the bed, and rolls the mattress and quilt around it, then carries this bundle outside to put it next to the other things. There is a screwdriver on the floor and he starts to unscrew the bed from the wall. He unscrews, with some difficulty, the rest of the cupboard units from the kitchen, and the counter which juts out from the wall. He even detaches the cooker. He carries these things outside one by one so as not to knock the cabin doors. It is time-consuming, back-wrenching work – he hasn’t emptied the cupboards, so each of them is an even heavier task than it needs to be. He undoes the light fittings between each porthole and pulls the wiring out from the wall. He unhooks the rhinestone mirror from the bathroom, painstakingly removes the chemical toilet and carries them outside.

  Then he comes back in to unscrew the boiler from the engine room, takes his sweatshirt off and drags the boiler along the floor on it. This is the hardest work yet: heaving it up and over the side of the deck on to the towpath. It hits the ground with a tinny crack.

  There are dark arcs of wetness around the breast of his shirt and down his entire back, but he puts his sweatshirt back on, now lined with oil and dirt from the boiler. He looks around the walls of the main cabin. Against the bleached, worn planks, the shapes of the cupboards and light fittings are drawn in rich, shiny varnish.

  When he knew this boat the floors were waxed canvas over oak boards. He bends down and touches the carpet that is here now, squares of ribbed orange felt that are faded to yellow in the areas below each porthole. He pulls at a corner and sees boards underneath; they are pine and look as though they are in good condition. He pulls harder and rips up a whole piece of carpet. The glue has dried and it pulls up easily. Yes, the boards underneath are hardly damaged. Good colour. He tugs at another corner of carpet, then another, and he moves along the cabin doing this with each square, stacking them as he goes along. When they are all up he takes the squares out and puts them on top of the boiler.

  He walks back along the towpath to the boat behind. He goes inside for a few moments and comes out carrying a toolbox, a plastic fuel can and a stack of papers crammed into a plastic bag. The papers are all different sizes and colours, torn at their edges. There are rows of numbers in the corners of some of the sheets and degree angles marked out. The man carries the bag and the toolkit over and puts them on to the deck of the first boat. On the towpath the discarded cupboards are stacked high, watching him. The orange and brown chair waits patiently beside them. As he walks past, he hears a rip beneath his feet. He looks down at the sound. He’s torn the corner of the clown poster. He stares at it a moment, and at the other things around.

  He makes a decision: drops his toolkit, dumps the fuel can and his bag of papers on to the deck of the old boat. And then, load by load, he takes all of these possessions to the boat behind, the boat he built, carrying them in through the cabin doors, placing them carefully on the varnished wood floor. The kitchen cupboards he arranges in a U shape at the end like she had them, putting the oven in the middle of them and the sink on the right, with the fridge below, still connected to its gas canister. All is as it was. It takes him almost three hours. He screws the boiler to the engine room wall and parks the big black case in the corner. He opens up the bed, unrolls the mattress and quilt on to it, then folds the bed up and props it against the wall. He sets up the chair with the Arnott’s tin next to it. He pins the picture of the black and white clown on the wall opposite the bed, pushing the ripped corner under the edge of the pin. When all these things are in place, he lays the squares of orange carpet on to the planked floor of his boat.

  When he comes out his face is a mask, unblinking. This is the moment, the absolute moment of his life. Every muscle of his body aches. But he has done the right thing.

  He walks back along the towpath towards the old boat. He unscrews a cap on the steering deck and pushes in the nozzle of his fuel can. Keeps his eyes cast down as it flows out. Screws the cap back on and leans on his knee to stand. Walks to the bow and unties the rope from the mooring hook, then does the same with the rope at the stern, throwing it on deck before stepping on himself. There is no wind and the water is still but the boat’s nose begins to turn away from the bank slightly, as if it wants to go. As if she is ready to go. The buoys nudge gently at the bank and the boat seems to release, to si
nk very slightly into the water, giving a sound like a sigh.

  The man knows this sound, he remembers it.

  He leans down into the engine room and switches the motor on. It takes a few seconds to come to life and then rises to a humming pitch. He blinks his eyes. Thank you. Thank you. The boat starts to move forward off the mooring. The man picks up the old windlass from the deck and tucks it into his belt. He takes hold of the tiller and touches the handle of the windlass with his other hand, feeling the familiar grooves. He stands upright and looks along the roof to the open canal ahead. There are silent glistening channels running over his red cheeks and into his moustache. The tears run on down and make dark drops on the chest of his sweatshirt. They fade and mix with the oily lines and smudge from the boiler.

  The boat is moving into the middle of the water and heads out, away from the barge cafe, the blue-railinged bridge, the willow tree of Little Venice island, the heron standing at the water’s edge. Past the balconies of the tower blocks, past the shape of the dirty brick spire in their centre. It travels out past the skateboard park and the allotments, past the eyeless warehouses with their boarded windows, under bridges, past a squat supermarket building. The engine turns over, gently, happily, and it chugs along a blind stretch of canal where a woman walks weightless in crumpled beige clothes, lashless eyes looking out behind pale panels of hair. She lifts a birdlike hand to her mouth when she sees the boat, grips the other around a chain of amber beads hanging from her neck. She stands there, frozen, as it passes her. On and on, the boat travels. It continues out past the last tower blocks, towards the edges of West London, out through once bombed suburbs, past the dockyards, the wharves, and the derelict factories, through unlit patches of countryside and towns where the canalsides have been left to rot, through water edged with litter and industrial waste, where banks of billboards have been built to keep this from view, under bridges and over aqueducts, through tree tunnels of forgotten waterways, through lock and lock and lock.