‘Look here, is it Wednesday or Thursday?’
‘I don’t know, Ed, whichever you like.’
Given so much free choice, he had melted immediately, and by good fortune they had several hours alone on the boat. The girls were at school, and no misery that Nenna had ever felt could weigh against their happiness which flowed like the current, with its separate eddies, of the strong river beneath them.
Perhaps the whole case was breaking down, to the disappointment of the advocates, who, after all, could hardly be distinguished from the prosecution on both sides. So little was needed for a settlement, and yet the word ‘settlement’ suggested two intractable people, and they were both quite humble. Nor was it true, as their accusers impartially suggested, that she or Edward preferred to live in an atmosphere of crisis. They both needed peace and turned in memory towards their peaceful moments together, finding their true home there.
When Nenna was not in the witness box, she sometimes saw herself getting ready for an inspection at which Edward, or Edward’s mother, or some power superior to either, gave warning that they might appear – she could only hope that it would be on a falling tide – to see where she could be found wanting. Determined not to fail this test, she let the image fade into the business of polishing the brasses and cleaning ship. The decks must be clear, hatches fastened, Stripey out of sight, and above all the girls ought to be back in regular education.
‘You’re both going in to school on Monday, aren’t you, Martha?’
Martha, like her father, and like Richard, saw no need for fictions. She gave her mother a dark brown, level glance.
‘I shall go in, and take Tilda with me, when the situation warrants it.’
‘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.
&
nbsp; ‘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.
4
MAURICE’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.
5
WILLIS 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, wheneve
r 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.
Offshore Page 4