Houseboat on the Seine: A Memoir

by William Wharton

  Next, I work on the gangplank. It’s too short to be of much use with the door of the wooden boat way up on the upper edge of the metal boat. The old gangplank won’t do at all, except as a sort of ladder. If I’m going to have Rosemary and the kids live out here, it’s got to be better than that.

  I go back to the lumberyard where I bought the roof-beam boards for my steps. This time I’m really getting into something. I calculate that, with the boat pulled as close to the shore as I can manage, cranking away daily with my winches, I’ll need boards at least six meters long to make a gangplank that won’t resemble some kind of obstacle course. Even so, I’ll also need a system to lift the land end if the water rises.

  It’s the same man in the yard. He remembers me. We go again into the special shed for these long beams. I actually find two beams eight meters long, that’s almost twenty-seven feet. We slide them out and line them up next to the car. Then I line myself up at the office. It turns out, I could actually buy a first-class stereo system for the cost of those two beams, but there’s no other way if we’re going to live on the boat; we can’t cross the water on the music of Mozart or Bach. I can’t ask the family to climb in through the windows.

  I shouldn’t even go into how I struggle those boards to the boat, but I will. Obviously, they’ll absolutely smash in the car roof. Also, they’re more than twice as long as the car.

  After I’ve paid and tried dragging one of the boards myself along the chemin de halage to the boat, making about five meters, getting nowhere, I ask Matt to give me a hand. His friend Tom and another friend of theirs, Sam, agree to help. Sam has only one arm. He lost his other arm making rocket fuel which exploded, for a handmade rocket more than three years before we bought the boat. He was only about thirteen when it happened.

  I drive them out on Saturday. They’re all impressed with how the downstairs boat is coming along. I show them how I hope to hook the gangplank to the bollards on each side of the doorway to the upper boat, and then have a system for lifting the shore end.

  Sam, who’s lived on houseboats with his parents most of his life, has good ideas and stops me from making at least ten different serious errors. I’m impressed. It’s difficult to accept all the ways a boat can frustrate the best intentions a certified landlubber such as I might have.

  At the lumberyard, we each put a rope sling over our shoulders and under the boards. At first we try two boards at a time, but that obviously won’t work. However, we can make it by hauling one board with the four of us carrying. Of course, this makes two trips. At the instigation of Matt, we go along the chemin de halage singing ‘Yo ho heave ho.’

  When we have the two boards at the bank, the problem is to lift the heavy ends up to and over the edge of the upper boat. Sam comes up with the best way. He scampers one-armedly up the old gangplank. We throw our rope slings up to him. He ties them together to make one long rope, then, along with Matt up there, Tom and me at the bottom, using the bollard of the upper boat to brace against, they pull the ends of the beams up over the edge. It’s a sweaty job, but finally both beams are in place spanning the water and up two-thirds of the bank. We tie them to those old bollards of the upper boat on each side of the door, using one-handed knots Sam knows how to tie. By drilling a hole at the end of each beam for the rope to go through, we fasten them tightly to the bollards.

  I’m ready to quit, but this band of bandits wants to go buy short boards to nail onto these big beams so we’ll actually have a gangplank. Sam slides, standing up, arm waving, down one of the boards like a tightrope walker. If he does that kind of thing all the time, I figure he’s lucky to have lost only one arm. He’s going to break his neck. I didn’t know Sam yet. He has no more fear of heights or danger than a panther.

  We measure to Sam’s exacting standards (he thinks in millimeters) and head back to the lumberyard. We hope to catch them before noon, when they close. We buy the same kind of wood I’d used to cover the floor of the lower boat, only we buy shorter pieces because they’re cheaper. I’m using up the cash I’d put away for myfrisette faster than I can think. But now we’re really moving along. When we get back, Sam and Matt have it all planned out. Tom and I are put to cutting planks to make the gangplank. They’re leaving about a quarter inch between planks. Sam insists we drive in only one large nail in each plank because with the crappy (his term) mooring system I have, this boat is going to budge back and forth about three or four feet at a time when the Seine starts pitching and rolling. These boards need to be able to swing with the movement or they’ll split, according to Sam.

  It’s OK with me. I don’t exactly relish the idea of hammering on that slanting gangplank anyway. And, quickly, it’s becoming a gangplank all right. Soon, all four of us are up there; it happens before our eyes. Two hammering, two cutting boards. In just that afternoon, we have it done. I can’t believe it.

  Sam shows me how I can use the outside heavy beams from the old gangplank to erect verticals on either side of our new gangplank with braces underneath and between. This would enable us to lift the end of the gangplank as the boat rises with the water. He wants this contraption just about at water’s edge. He says it will also keep the gangplank from shifting too much with the ebb and flow of the river. All I need do is drill big holes in those old boards, set them in cement, then buy an iron bar at Chez Mollard to pass under the gangplank and through the holes. The idea is that I move up the iron bar into the higher holes as the water rises. It all seems like overkill to me, but then I don’t yet know the force and unpredictability of this river. That will come soon enough.

  Sam, with that left hand of his, makes good drawings of what I need to do. He’s holding the paper with his stump and drawing like a draftsman. I’m amazed. With this drawing, even I can build this ‘Bridge Over the River Quay.’ As darkness falls, we drive home.

  ∨ Houseboat on the Seine ∧

  Eleven

  Family Arrangements

  In the morning, Sunday, that is, I invite the rest of the family to see how our boat is coming along. They are properly impressed. If they weren’t, I’d have divorced the whole kit and caboodle of them. The gangplank is a great success. I show off some of the furniture and rugs I’ve been buying. Rosemary likes the things I chose.

  Now we start figuring out where everyone is going to sleep. At first, Matt wants to sleep in the crew cabin, but to go down in there, he’d need to come out from the house part of the boat, walk across the deck and climb down the ladder through the hatch. Matt doesn’t especially look forward to that, particularly with winter coming on.

  One of the things I found at Abbe Pierre’s is a three-quarter bed with a good mattress and drawers for storage under it. The wood is oak and the handles on the drawers are brass. I don’t know how it wound up there at Abbi Pierre’s but it’s perfect for our boat. The question is whether Rosemary and I will sleep on that bed in the living room, in front of the first large-view window. If so, the girls would sleep in the back bedroom. An alternative is that we sleep back there, with the girls in this new bed and Matt roughing it out in the crew cabin. There’s also a small entry into which we could put a tiny bed, big enough for Camille. She’s the youngest and the shortest. The bed can’t be more than five feet long, but it tucks nicely into a corner there above where the steps go down into the lower boat.

  We figure we’ll work it out. In fact, we do right there. We decide Kate will sleep on the bed in the living room, the new one. Rosemary and I will be in the back bedroom, and Camille will sleep in the entry. Matt will be sleeping in the crew cabin; he’s gone up and down the steps several times out there now and is comfortable with the idea. I promise I’ll bring light and heat down into the room. He’ll have space to store all his clothes, his airplanes, chemicals, animal and plant collections. Generally, storage is going to be a serious problem on the boat.

  Matt tries out the bed. It was definitely built for a small French sailor, but by sleeping corner to corner, it’s big enough. Matt stretches
out on it and is excited with the whole idea.

  Only Kate is anxious about the boat sinking. I don’t blame her, but I’ve become convinced that with this metal hull, we’re safe. Every time some methane gas explodes, like a whale fart from under the boat, she jumps. Also, sleeping in that bed, she’d be sleeping right over where the board blew out when the upper boat sank. I try not making too much of that. I wasn’t going to tell her at all, but figured it wouldn’t be quite fair. But then, the wooden boat isn’t even in the water now, so it doesn’t matter.

  Downstairs, I show how I can divide that whole space into a writing room and office for Rosemary and me, a painting studio, and a small apartment in the area behind the steps. Matt or Camille can sleep back there when I have that part finished. Rosemary will have another small office in our bedroom with a desk along the right side as she comes in.

  We make a list of the things I need to buy, especially the small bed for Camille, bed sheets, covers, all of which we’ll buy at Abbe Pierre’s. They dry-clean everything that comes in, so it isn’t exactly a true flea market. We take a walk along the chemin de halage and look into some of the other boats. Most of them are fascinating, with lovely plantings and ingenious gangplanks. Even though it’s a bit cold, there are men playing on the boule court.

  We drive home with everybody excited. It seems that, after all, we’ll actually be living on the boat and soon I can have a studio out here with place to paint and places to store paintings. One of the miseries of being a painter is that one doesn’t sell them all. This is inconvenient in terms of survival, but even more inconvenient, because they soon begin to take up a big part of one’s living space.

  Back to Painting

  I’ll build painting-storage racks in the center section downstairs two tiers high, with the same system I used in my Paris studio before it burnt down, that is, tough nylon strings woven up and down from ceiling to floor, held by big staples. First I’ll need to build a framework to pound the staples into, but that shouldn’t take long. Considering everything that’s gone on so far and what still needs to be done, it’s nothing, and it will certainly improve my life.

  I’ll tell you, being surrounded by hundreds of paintings while you’re trying to concentrate on one – the one on the easel in front of you, the one that’s going to be the best painting you’ve ever made – can seem futile sometimes. But that’s part of what being a professional painter is all about. A good painter somehow always remains an amateur at heart, a lover, a lover of his work.

  Monday, Abbe Pierre’s is closed and I don’t have any spare cash anyway, so I bring out my paintbox and a painting easel. Driving to the boat, I tie the easel on the roof of the poor Hillman. That roof is beginning to look a little the worse for wear.

  Then, I set the easel up by that back window in the lower boat and paint the first of what will become a large number of river paintings. The pirate boat with its forecastle and upper deck is beautiful on the right side of the painting. My Breton neighbor sees me and smiles. That’s the first smile from her.

  I paint away all morning, working up the drawing and under-painting. I discover how important sap green and raw sienna are in the painting of river water, at least Seine River water. I also discover the river is getting more green than the black it was when I first saw this boat. Also the smell is definitely improved, or else I’m immune now.

  It’s a sunny day. I have a lunch packed and sit at our new table, new to us, anyway. The chairs are comfortable as well as strong. I feel I’ve moved in. All I need is one of those captain’s caps with the little bill on front, the kind M. Teurnier always wears. It’s probably as good as a beret for hiding my bald paté.

  I not only have the water functioning, but also the water heater, so now I can wash my few dishes. The boat is beginning to seem a friendly place, not just a locale for mortal combat. I decide to clean things up, sweeping all the upstairs, mopping and wiping anyplace where there’s still mud we didn’t find before. I’ll need to put frisette over the lower parts of the walls. The water has ruined the brocade I’d put on before. The brocade on the ceiling seems all right. I’ll go along with some of the paste I have left from when I put it up in the first place, stick it back up again where it’s hanging down. I pull off the brocade on the walls I’ll need to replace.

  Temporarily, I’ll nail over this part with simple imitation wood paneling that comes like plywood. It has grain and grooves to make it look more real. It’ll be enough for now. If I do any more actual wood paneling after I finish the bottom boat, I’ll probably turn into some kind of tongue-in-groove man.

  ∨ Houseboat on the Seine ∧

  Twelve

  Moving In!

  I make up the beds with the new sheets and the blankets from Abbe Pierre. The place is beginning to look homey all right. I wipe off and wash everything in the kitchen. Actually, the women had already done this while we were laying the wood floor downstairs. I think I’m just going around putting my personal mark on things. I can be like that. I imagine it’s an archetypal form of marking possession, like dogs or wolves.

  I rig a railing to hold on to when coming up the gangplank. I keep looking around for things that should be done before we start living out here. We have heat, the catalytic butane heaters and two electric heaters with oil inside them. Electricity heats the oil, so they radiate.

  As I said, we have water. The John is working, even though one needs to go up two steps to sit on it like a throne. I’ve rigged a PCV pipe from the toilet outlet on the upper boat to run down the outside of the lower boat and into the water. I need to find a septic tank small enough to fit into the back of the lower boat and still large enough for our family. That will come.

  I should put in for a phone. I don’t think this will take too long. The Frenchman from whom I bought this boat had a phone put in and paid for poles all along the berge for the phone line. I’ll call from the apartment for somebody to come out and install it.

  I buy some Styrofoam at the building-supply place, two-centimeter-thick sheets, and spread them on the floor of the upper boat. I cover the Styrofoam with carpets, my Abbe Pierre carpets. After I have them spread around, it feels like walking on deep pile rugs. So, as far as I’m concerned, once more we’re ready to live on a houseboat.

  That weekend we move in. Friends help by lending us three American-style station wagons, and we bring everything of any value from the apartment out on the boat in two trips.

  Our lease on the apartment is up at the end of the month, so that’s no problem. Now we’ll do a mad clean-up job to bring that apartment into the kind of pristine condition the French expect after they rent to someone. They actually expect it to look better than it did when the renter moved in. This one sure as hell does. But we’re accustomed to this. Next weekend, that will be the project.

  I’ll work all the week on the apartment first, doing the heavy work like shampooing carpets and cleaning the woodwork, then we’ll just scrub and paint. Our kids will help out. We’ve moved often enough.

  The entire family seems content with the idea of living on a boat. I hang used inner tubes all around the sides. I buy them for almost nothing from a big place in Paris where they sell new tires. I paint them white with black stripes. These are mostly patched and not very impressive, but I have ropes tied tight to them, so if anyone falls in, we can throw one of these out and pull the victim in.

  That Saturday night, we sit around, almost forgetting we’re actually floating on the water. There’s virtually no movement, and with the drapes from the apartment, hung up and pulled closed, we’re independent of the world. I begin to wish there were some way I could pull up that gangplank, like a drawbridge for a medieval castle, so we’d really be cut off.

  Sunday morning, the sun comes out and shines through the windows on the river side of the boat. We have breakfast in that sunlight, croissants from the baker just up the street. We’re all bubbling over, like playing house.

  Monday, they all go off to schoo
l. Camille looks back as she goes down the gangplank with her schoolbag over her shoulder.

  ‘Gee, Dad, it’s like a real house. Nobody at school will believe me.

  Tying Things Up

  The next days and weeks I try to divide between working on the boat and painting. I need paintings to pay off my debts. The family seems to enjoy living on the boat, especially not having to make the long trip in from Paris.

  In a month I’ve finished eight paintings, river paintings. I’ve painted looking both ways from the roof of the upper boat. The roof is made of metal with ridge lines running horizontally. It’s great being up there – I have views up and down the Seine, from where it curves going up to Paris to where it curves around the island.

  I also paint from the docking stage of the boat club, about two hundred meters from our boat, away from Paris. Monet, Sisley and Renoir painted from here a hundred years or so ago. This gives me a different perspective, down low, because the dock from which they launch the sculls is at water level. It’s great because there aren’t too many people hanging around, the way it is when I paint in the Paris streets.

  Meanwhile, I divide my time between tacking up frisette in the lower boat and shoveling away at the sandbar so I can tuck the back end of the boat in where it belongs. I finally do get it almost lined up with the other boats. I find lengths of cable on the berge all coiled up under some abandoned wood. I pull it out and spread it along the chernin de halage. I’m wearing heavy gloves because the cable has needlelike barbs from where some of the outside strands of the cable have rusted and broken. When I have it spread out, I can see that although it doesn’t look so great, it’s strong, and I can use it to tie the boat to the bank.