by Jon Cleary
‘You’re too cynical, Tim.’
‘No, just whimsical. You bring it on in me. Shall we go down and look at our house? The conditions there are a little better. Just.’
Lucas and Edith were appalled at the conditions that Nina and Michael had to live in; they didn’t appear to worry about Tim, he was English and accustomed to such living. They said nothing to him, though doing a poor job of disguising their reaction; but they had a lot to say to Nina when Tim took Margaret for a walk round the small island. Edith kept her mink coat on all the time, as if to emphasize her feeling that the fires, blazing though they were and supplemented by electric radiators, were useless in such a house.
‘You can’t live like this. You’ll have to get a better house. It’s not fair to Michael. He’ll grow up crippled with arthritis or something.’
‘I couldn’t live in these conditions myself,’ said Lucas. ‘We’ll have to do better for you.’
Nina shook her head. ‘This house was my mistake, not Tim’s. I’ll look around for something better. But you’re not to say a word to Tim, understand? He’s working hard and he’s perfectly happy.’
Out in the grounds Tim was saying, ‘Perhaps the boat-yard is not what I want for the rest of my life. But it’s a start.’
‘I still think you should have stayed in America,’ said Margaret. ‘You liked all our creature comforts, I know you did. You should have gone out to California, started something there.’
‘How did you know I liked the creature comforts?’
‘I know you better than you think. Prue used to say you were always looking at things, and you were. While you were, I was looking at you. And you lapped up everything the family could offer you. Everything but Daddy wanting to run you the way he runs the rest of us.’
They had been walking arm-in-arm, but now he moved away from her on the pretext of pulling off a switch from one of the willows that lined the river bank. He swung the switch back and forth, taking the heads off the yellow reed-feathers along the bank, like a destructive schoolboy who, for reasons he couldn’t name, had to abuse nature. Then he stopped, regretting the reed-feathers lying like gold dust on the thin snow that had fallen last night. He looked sideways at her, again like a schoolboy.
‘What else have you observed about me?’ He felt uncomfortable with her; her very youth somehow made her formidable. ‘Never mind, I don’t want to know. But obviously I should have been looking at you more closely.’
‘You could have done worse.’
At first he didn’t catch what she meant. Then he burst out laughing, more with surprise than amusement. ‘Meg, for Christ’s sake – ! I don’t play around – ’
‘I know that. That was why it was all so hopeless.’ She said it flatly, with no dramatics.
It might have been better if there had been dramatics: then he could have put it down to a crush on him. But he realized, with sickening certainty and no conceit, that she was in love with him. He slammed the willow switch against the trunk of a wych-elm, a substitute for her. He wanted to whip some sense into her, could feel the anger building in him as he stared at her.
‘Jesus God Almighty – Meg, do you know what you’re saying? Of course you do – ’ He saw the pain in her dark eyes. He threw the willow switch into the river, afraid of the angry trembling in his hands. He walked on and she fell into step beside him but did not put her arm in his this time. ‘Meg, I’m sorry, but you’ll have to put all this out of your head. I’m married to Nina and I’m in love with her and that’s that.’
‘Don’t you think I know it? I shouldn’t have told you. But it slipped out.’
‘You’ve got to be sensible – ’ He sounded as if he were talking to a schoolgirl; and he didn’t want to sound that way. This was far more serious, for himself as well as for her, than a fleeting schoolgirl fantasy. He began to wish she wasn’t so damned adult. ‘You’ll be unhappy, I suppose, for a while. But you’ll make me unhappy. And Nina, too, if she ever found out.’
‘She won’t. I’m not a bitch. And I said I’m sorry I told you.’
Out of habit he went to kiss her on the cheek, as he had done innumerable times; but at the last moment held himself back. ‘Let’s go back to the house. One thing I’m glad of – there are no tears.’
‘There may be tonight,’ she said. ‘But you’re safe for now.’
The Beauforts went back to London in the afternoon, Lucas and Edith convinced that Nina had condemned herself to a life of poverty, Margaret angry and ashamed that she had exposed her feelings to Tim. They stayed another week in London but did not come down to Stoke Bayard again. Tim and Nina went up to visit them and Nina stayed at the Savoy with Michael for a couple of nights. Edith and Lucas said nothing more about the way in which the Davorens were living, but when Tim came up on the last day Lucas took him aside.
‘I meant what I said, Tim. If you want to expand that boatyard, call on me. Don’t go to a bank. No point in getting into their clutches,’ he said with a banker’s smile.
Nor in yours, Lucas old chap. ‘I shan’t think of expanding for at least another year.’ He returned Lucas’s smile, turning the conversation into a joke between them: ‘If you want any help with the oil fields out in Abu Sadar, call on me. My Arabic is rusty, but I can always brush it up.’
‘Didn’t know you spoke Arabic. The young fellers all speak English out there, but the old guys never bother to learn. You’d think they would, dealing with us all the time.’
‘Just what we English used to say in our Empire days.’
‘You being whimsical again? You can’t joke about the Arabs. They’re going to be a pain in the ass to us some day. Well, now we’re off to Paris – Edith and Meg want to go. Never liked the French myself. They’re a pain in the ass, too. Never can trust them.’
‘What about the English?’
Lucas winked, refusing to take the bait. ‘Time we were leaving.’
Farewells were said. The Beauforts hugged Michael, squeezing affection into him as if giving him blood. Nina hugged and kissed her parents and sister; Tim watched carefully, alert for any sign that she wanted to go home with them. He shook hands with Lucas, kissed Edith on the cheek. Then he had to say goodbye to Margaret.
He took her hand, felt the tension in her fingers. ‘Enjoy Paris. I was there only once, but I loved it.’
‘Why don’t you come with us now?’
He kissed her quickly on the cheek, extricated his fingers from hers. ‘I’m a working man with a wife and kid to support.’
He turned away from her, still feeling the tension in her even though he was no longer touching her.
3
It snowed heavily during the night and for the next two days. All the pipes in the house froze, and Tim moved Nina and Michael down to a hotel in Henley. He went back to the house and invited the Hamills and their children in to join him; they would be a little more comfortable than in their caravan. Tim stoked up the fire in the living-room, kept it going twenty-four hours a day, and he and the Hamills camped in the room. They boiled ice for drinking water and poured hot water down the toilet to break up the ice in the sewage pipe. Nina phoned twice a day from the hotel and Tim, lying unconvincingly with a half-frozen tongue, told her things were fine. On the third night the snow turned to rain and it rained for the next three days. By then Tim, telling Steve Hamill not to worry about the cost, had insisted that Eileen Hamill and the two little girls be moved down to join Nina and Michael in the hotel at Henley.
On the sixth morning Tim, who had been dozing in a chair, half-awake all night, sat up as Steve shook him. ‘We’ve got to get out, mate. The bloody river’s at the front door.’
Tim hastily did up his boots. He looked around the living-room, at first saw nothing that he wanted to save from the flood; then he noticed Steve’s paintings and sketches hanging on the wall. He grabbed them and raced upstairs with them, wrapped them in blankets and laid them on the bed in the main bedroom. When he got downstairs and into the hall
Steve was at the front door with a skiff.
‘Lucky I got this before the bloody thing went under.’ The water was rising by the minute, flooding into the house through the open door. ‘We better head for the boat-yard. And pull like buggery. If we can’t get across that current, we’re going to finish up half-way to France.’
Brown water, looking as thick as soup, was rushing down past the house as they slid the skiff away from the front door. The island had already disappeared; the house stood in a brown swirling waste. The usually placid Thames raged past in swift, yellow-flecked ropes of current. Logs and trees bobbed and whirled like drowning dancers; a panic-stricken dog went by, only its head showing, chasing a sheep’s carcase. The rain was still falling, shutting out the slopes of the valley, deadening every sound but the hiss and death-rattle gurgle of water.
As soon as Tim and Steve pushed off they had to start rowing furiously. The current swept them straight at the raised bridge that connected the island to the main bank; but there was no island and no bank and it stood like an upturned long-boat stuck on a hidden reef. Tim saw the bridge rushing at them; he dug in his oar and they skidded past with inches to spare. Then he quickly started rowing again. They had to row diagonally across the river if they were not to be swept round the bend and past the boat-yard. A mile downstream there were a lock and a weir and the thought of crashing into one or plunging over the other made him and Steve row furiously.
The river was normally forty to fifty yards wide at the bend; now it was closer to a hundred. The current tore at the skiff, muscling it off an even keel as it struggled sideways across the wide sweep of the bend. Tim was blinded by rain and each time he opened his mouth to gulp in air he choked on the water he took in. Cold and stiff, he must have pulled a muscle: every time he pulled back on the oar he wanted to yell with the pain in his side. He had got into the skiff without any thought that they might be in any real danger, but now he saw they stood a better than even chance of having the skiff overturned and their being flung into the river. He saw Steve, the man afraid of water, throwing frantic glances back over his shoulder, looking for the far bank and safety.
Everything flung itself against them as they battled their way across the current: the swirling water, the rain, logs and debris. A dead cow hit the skiff head-on in a blind charge; the boat swung round, tipping dangerously, and for a moment Tim thought they were going to go under. Then the skiff righted itself, the two men dug in their oars and they swept down towards the tiny jetty that ran out from the slope below the yard. They hit it with a thud, the skiff splintered and tipped over and Tim and Steve were flung into the freezing water.
Tim grabbed at the jetty as the water tore at him, pulled himself up on to it. He clutched at Steve as the latter was about to be sucked under the platform. Water was already lapping over the jetty and Tim could feel it moving on its pilings. As Steve struggled out of the water, the whole jetty leaned dangerously to one side. Both men scrambled to their feet and ran.
They leapt on to the cobbled slope as the jetty was swept away by the flood. They staggered up the slope and sat down heavily, exhausted by their efforts, weak with relief at their narrow escape. It was fully a minute before they stood up, both of them wavering on unsteady legs.
‘Jesus wept!’ Steve Hamill let out a cry of agony. ‘Look at that!’
Coming downstream, like runaways down a hill, were his caravan and studio shed. They went past at speed, the caravan a bright mocking note, bobbing and dancing like something on a carnival carousel, in the brown raging flood. As it went past the boat-yard the shed, which had been upright, suddenly tipped over. Its floor opened and paintings and canvases shot out and went skimming down the river, riding the current like gaily-coloured surf-boards that had lost their riders.
Tim looked at Steve. The Australian’s face was wet, water streaming down his cheeks, but it was impossible to tell whether it was rain or tears. The look on his face, however, was that of a man seeing his life’s work going pell-mell down a huge drain.
4
The rain stopped the next day, but it was almost a week before the flood fully subsided. The yard lost two-thirds of its boats, sunk or smashed; all the moorings and slipways and the work-shed went downriver. Tim and Nina, the house abandoned, living now in the hotel in Henley, drove up at the end of the week and took stock of the damage. Eileen Hamill stayed at the hotel to look after the children and Steve drove up with the Davorens.
‘It will take us at least six months to get things back to normal,’ Tim said. ‘We’ll never be ready for summer.’
‘What about the insurance?’ Nina asked. ‘Maybe we could buy all the boats we need.’
Tim looked around at the havoc. ‘The insurance won’t cover everything by a long chalk. You want to stay on, Steve?’
The Australian shrugged. He was utterly depressed, unrelated to the casual, happy man the Davorens had known. ‘I’m willing. But I don’t know if the wife wants to. Did she tell you? One of my paintings finished up stuck under the bridge all the way down at Henley. She saw some kids chucking stones at it, using it as a target. She’s more upset at what happened than I am. I think she’d like to move somewhere else, right away from here.’
Tim took Nina’s arm and they walked back to the car. The sky had cleared and the sun was shining; the flood-damaged valley was exposed pitilessly in the pale silver-gold light. Upstream the island was above water again; even at this distance it was possible to see the mark just below the upper-storey windows of the house where the flood had peaked. The boat-yard was thick with mud and debris, all of it beginning to smell as the sun shone on it. It looks like a battlefield, Tim thought. And I’ve just lost the battle.
‘I hate to say it, but I don’t want to start all over again. And that’s what it would mean.’
Nina felt a mixture of surprise, relief and disappointment. She had never seen him defeated before; or anyway so ready to accept defeat. In the time they had been married he had made compromises, but always with a wry insouciance that let her know he was granting concessions to please her. But this was a surrender of himself for himself: for the first time she saw a weakness of character that she had never suspected.
‘What worries me is what will happen to Steve?’ He looked across at the Australian moving through the wreckage of the yard; Steve picked up a rudder, looked at it as if wondering what to do with it, then threw it aside. ‘You should have seen the look on his face when everything he owned went past here the other day. I think it was then I realized how lucky we are.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘We could lose a lot. This, for instance – even a lot more.’ He gestured at the yard. ‘But we could never lose everything. He was telling me yesterday. He has exactly fifty-two pounds in the bank and that’s all.’
Her disappointment in him was giving way to relief for herself. My character is no better than his. ‘I don’t want to stay here if you don’t. But what will you do?’
He had done a lot of thinking: that was evident as soon as he spoke. ‘I could go to work for your father again.’
‘Back in Kansas City?’ She tried to keep the excitement out of her voice.
‘Not just yet, perhaps later. I could work for the oil company now it’s set up an office in London. I don’t know what I’d do, but I’m sure your father could find something for me.’ There was just a hint of sarcasm in his voice, as if he were adding salt to his own wounds.
‘We’ll have to call him right away. They’re leaving Paris for Cherbourg tomorrow, to catch the ship.’ She was pushing him, but she was confident now she was taking no risk.
They called Lucas that afternoon at the Crillon in Paris. ‘Sure, I can find a place for you,’ said Lucas. ‘I’m sorry about the boatyard. You sure you want to come and work for me?’
‘Lucas, it wasn’t exactly easy for me to make this decision – ’
‘Sure, I understand. But I had to ask.’
Lucas came to London alone, on t
he boat train. Edith and Margaret had wanted to come back to London for a few more days, but he insisted that they take their booked passage on the Ile de France from Cherbourg. He expected some heated discussion in London and he did not want any interference from the women. He expected he would get enough from Nina.
He was right. ‘You can’t do this, Daddy! You can’t expect us to go out to Abu Sadar, taking Michael to a place like that – ’
‘You and Michael don’t have to go. All I’m asking Tim to do is go and learn the business at the source. He said he could speak Arabic – that’s not much, but it’s more than he has to offer in the London office.’
You son-of-a-bitch, thought Tim, using an Americanism because it had just the right amount of bite to it. There were four-letter words on the tip of his tongue, but he held those back. He was surrendering to Lucas and he was going to do it as gracefully as possible. To do so, he knew, would take some of the edge off Lucas’ satisfaction.
‘I’ve given it a lot of thought since you called me, Tim. If I put you into the London office, I’d have to move someone sideways to make way for you – ’
‘Why do you have to move someone?’ Nina demanded. ‘The company is big enough – just make another position.’
‘Tim wouldn’t like that, would you, Tim?’
The old son-of-a-bitch is co-opting me on his side while he’s cutting my balls off. ‘We don’t want any nepotism. At least none that will show.’
‘I’m not going to Abu Sadar and I’m not letting you go!’
‘Drop your voice, darling heart, or we’ll be thrown out of here.’
‘We shouldn’t have invited her to lunch,’ said Lucas. ‘Women should be left out of business discussions.’
Lucas had checked into the Savoy again and Tim and Nina, leaving Michael with Eileen Hamill, had come up by train. They were having lunch in the Grill, a setting not designed for family rows.
‘Do you want to go to Abu Sadar?’ Nina said.