Offshore. Alan Hollinghurst
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the saloon Maurice, who had come rather late, was saying something intended to be in favour of Willis. He was incurably sympathetic. His occupation, which was that of picking up men in a neighbouring public house, with which he had a working arrangement, during the evening hours, and bringing them back to the boat, was not particularly profitable. Maurice was not born to make a profit, but then, was not born to resent this, or anything else. Those who felt affection for him had no easy way of telling him so, since he seemed to regard friend and enemy alike. For example, an unpleasant acquaintance of his used part of Maurice’s hold as a repository for stolen goods. Richard and Laura were among the few boat owners who did not know this. And yet Maurice appeared to be almost proud, because Harry was not a customer, but somebody who had demanded a favour and given nothing in return.
‘I shall have to warn Harry not to talk about the leak either,’ he said.
‘What does he know about it?’ asked Willis.
‘He used to be in the Merchant Navy. If people are coming to look at Dreadnought, he might be asked his opinion.’
‘I’ve never seen him speak to anyone. He doesn’t come often, does he?’
At that moment Lord Jim was disturbed, from stem to stern, by an unmistakeable lurch. Nothing fell, because on Lord Jim everything was properly secured, but she heaved, seemed to shake herself gently, and rose. The tide had lifted her.
At the same time an uneasy shudder passed through all those sitting round the table. For the next six hours – or a little less, because at Battersea the flood lasts five and a half hours, and the ebb six and a half – they would be living not on land, but on water. And each one of them felt the patches, strains and gaps in their craft as if they were weak places in their own bodies. They dreaded, and were yet painfully anxious, to get back and see whether the last caulking had given way. A Thames barge has no keel and is afloat in the first few inches of shoal water. The only exception was Woodrow, from Rochester, the retired director of a small company, who was fanatical in the maintenance of his craft. The flood tide, though it had no real terrors for Woodie, caused him to fret impatiently, because Rochester, in his opinion, had beautiful lines below water, and these would not now be visible again for twelve hours.
On every barge on the Reach a very faint ominous tap, no louder than the door of a cupboard shutting, would be followed by louder ones from every strake, timber and weatherboard, a fusillade of thunderous creaking, and even groans that seemed human. The crazy old vessels, riding high in the water without cargo, awaited their owner’s return.
Richard, like a good commander, sensed the uneasiness of the meeting, even through the solid teak partition. He would never, if he had taken to the high seas in past centuries, have been caught napping by a mutiny.
‘I’d better see them on their way.’
‘You can ask one or two of them to stay behind for a drink, if you like,’ Laura said, ‘if there’s anyone possible.’
She often unconsciously imitated her father’s voice, and, like him, was beginning to drink a little too much occasionally, out of boredom. Richard felt overwhelmed with affection for her. ‘I got Country Life to-day,’ she said.
He had noticed that already. Anything new was noticeable on shipshape Lord Jim. The magazine was lying open at the property advertisements, among which was a photograph of a lawn, and a cedar tree on it with a shadow, and a squarish house in the background to show the purpose of the lawn. A similar photograph, with variations as to size and county, appeared month after month, giving the impression that those who read Country Life were above change, or that none was recognised there.
‘I didn’t mean that one, Richard, I meant a few pages farther on. There’s some smaller places there.’
‘I might ask Nenna James to stay behind,’ Richard said. ‘From Grace, I mean.’
‘Why, do you think she’s pretty?’
‘I’ve never thought about it.’
‘Hasn’t her husband left her?’
‘I’m not too sure what the situation is.’
‘The postman used to say that there weren’t many letters for Grace.’
Laura said ‘used’ because letters were no longer brought by the postman; after he had fallen twice from Maurice’s ill-secured gangplank, the whole morning’s mail soaked away in the great river’s load of rubbish, the GPO, with every reason on its side, had notified the Reach that they could no longer undertake deliveries. They acknowledged that Mr Blake, from Lord Jim, had rescued their employee on both occasions and they wished to record their thanks for this. The letters, since this, had had to be collected from the boatyard office, and Laura felt that this made it not much better than living abroad.
‘I think Nenna’s all right,’ Richard continued. ‘She seems quite all right to me, really. I don’t know that I’d want to be left alone with her for any length of time.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, I’m not quite sure that she mightn’t burst into tears, or perhaps suddenly take all her clothes off.’ This had actually once happened to Richard at Nestor and Sage, the investment counsellors where he worked. They were thinking of redesigning the whole office on the more modern open plan.
The whole meeting looked up in relief as he came back to the saloon. Firmly planted on the rocking boat, he suggested, even by his stance in the doorway, that things, however difficult, would turn out reasonably well. It was not that he was too sure of himself, simply that he was a good judge of the possible.
Willis was thanking young Maurice for his support.
‘Well, you spoke up … a friend in need …’
‘You’re welcome.’
Willis half got up from the table. ‘All the same, I don’t believe that fellow was ever in the Merchant Navy.’
Business suspended, thought Richard. Firmly, but always politely, he escorted the ramshackle assembly up the companion ladder. It was a relief, as always, to be out on deck. The first autumn mists made it difficult to see the whole length of the Reach. Seagulls, afloat like the boats, idled round Lord Jim, their white feathers soiled at the waterline.
‘You’ll probably have plenty of time to do something about your trouble anyway,’ he said to Willis, ‘it’s quite a long business, arranging the sale of these boats. Your leak’s somewhere aft, isn’t it?… you’ve got all four pumps working, I take it … one in each well?’
This picture of Dreadnought was so wide of the mark that Willis found it better to say nothing, simply making a gesture which had something in common with a petty officer’s salute. Then he followed the others, who had to cross to land and tramp along the Embankment. The middle Reach was occupied by small craft, mostly laying up for the winter, some of them already double lashed down under weather-cloths. These were for fairweather people only. The barge-owners had to go as far as the brewery wharf, across Maurice’s foredeck and over a series of gangplanks which connected them with their own boats. Woody had to cross Maurice, Grace and Dreadnought to rejoin Rochester. Only Maurice was made fast to the wharf.
One of the last pleasure steamers of the season was passing, with cabin lights ablaze, on its way to Kew. ‘Battersea Reach, ladies and gentlemen. On your right, the artistic colony. Folk live on those boats like they do on the Seine, it’s the artist’s life they’re leading there. Yes, there’s people living on those boats.’
Richard had detained Nenna James. ‘I wish you’d have a drink with us, Laura hoped you would.’
Nenna’s character was faulty, but she had the instinct to see what made other people unhappy, and this instinct had only failed her once, in the case of her own husband. She knew, at this particular moment, that Richard was distressed by the unsatisfactory nature of the meeting. Nothing had been evaluated,