He does not look back.
The boy will steer the boat home. He will hold a steady course. He will keep on through the night until morning. He will not stop until he has brought her home.
THIRTY-FOUR
Odeline peers through the window of the oven. She has wiped the glass with a cloth but still can’t see the sausage rolls in the gloom, only the edge of the foil they are sitting on. There is a button with a bulb symbol on the panel of the oven, but when she presses it, it just clicks repeatedly. She opens the door and sticks out a finger to touch the top of a sausage roll. Stone cold. They should have been cooking now for ten minutes. Why did she not think of testing the oven before tonight?
She turns the temperature dial back to zero and opens the cupboard on the right, where the gas canister sits. It’s not connected. She leans on the kitchenette counter to peer behind the unit. At the back of the oven is a cascade of wiring. Nothing is connected to the wall. And there isn’t even a socket.
The whole place has come loose. The carpet squares unstuck from the floor. The wardrobe and bookshelves: no longer attached to the walls. The bed which crashes, hingeless, to the floor when she tries to pull it down.
British Waterways. When she came back from the detention centre three and a half weeks ago, she had to admit they’d responded to her complaint impressively. She returned to find they had revarnished the walls, repainted the outside and removed much of the personalised interior she’d protested about. But they didn’t finish the job. The plumbing has been only rudimentarily reconnected, so that she has just hot water from both taps in the sink. And this sink is where she has had to wash, floss and brush, since they also demolished the entire bathroom, leaving only the rhinestone mirror hanging on a random wall and the chemical toilet sitting in the open cabin. She has moved it into the engine compartment.
And now the oven. Odeline has already filled in a complaint form at the office in Lisson Grove; now she will have to go back to add this in an appendix. She doesn’t have time for these inconveniences – every hour of her day is valuable. In the last three and a half weeks, Odeline has been interviewing a team of lawyers to fight Vera’s case. She has settled on a firm called Morpe Partners, who have an 82 per cent success rate. She would have liked to find a higher rate, but this firm, it appears, has the highest available.
If Odeline has to spend every penny of her inheritance, she will. But, at these rates, she has to be certain she has the best possible service. She has interviewed each member of the team and paid for their time as she did so. She wanted assurances that these lawyers would not drop Vera’s case, that they would not make false or misleading promises, and that they would use every legal finesse available to make sure Vera is allowed to stay. She has asked each one to give a brief performance of how they would argue Vera’s case in court. Those who were unwilling to audition she has asked to have replaced. To lead the case she has chosen a 37-year-old woman who gave a clear and heartfelt account of her parents’ own battle for asylum. This woman has a first-class degree and fourteen years’ experience in immigration law.
The legal team at Morpe Partners believe that Vera has a good chance – the international recognition of civil war is going to help. Odeline has bought books on immigration law and the asylum process, and goes to their glass-walled offices daily, her notebook full of queries. The legal team have said that they are keen to resolve Vera’s situation promptly. But they cannot give a precise date.
Odeline has been to the detention centre only once since her first visit, to update Vera on the proceedings. It is a lengthy journey by coach and she has preferred to use her time constructively at the lawyers’ office. But it was good to see her friend. She bought her some hot chocolate powder, some cereal bars, and some Reader’s Digest magazines that she saw for sale at a stall on Harrow Road. She waited in the visiting room and sat at the same table, the one by the window. Outside, the miserable staff car park with its bins sitting on the islands of grass. And running around the whole compound, the teeth of the tall wire fence.
Vera’s squat figure came through a door and lumbered over to the table. She was in the same blue shirt, tracksuit bottoms and trainers as the first visit, and as emotional. As soon as she sat down her eyes began to crease into little pumps, pushing out tears, and her thick lips wobbled. Odeline kept her hands linked on her lap, out of reach. She waited for Vera to stop squeaking into her tissue before continuing with her news.
‘They couldn’t give me an exact percentage for the case to succeed, but they estimated between eighty-five and ninety per cent.’
‘That is wonderful,’ said Vera through the handful of tissue. ‘Wonderful.’
‘Would you be willing to testify to your mistreatment at the hands of your brother-in-law and the other extremists in your town?’
‘Yes,’ Vera nodded. ‘I can tell them about that.’
‘We need to arrange a meeting as soon as possible.’
‘How much is this costing?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Odi, you must not spend your savings on me.’
‘Yes I must.’
At this, Vera’s lip shook and the tears began to pump out again. Embarrassed, Odeline took her notebook out, but before she could note anything down, Vera had thrown her squishy little hands across the table and was clasping Odeline’s, trapping the notebook and pen inside her hot grasp.
‘Thank you. Thank you, Odi. You don’t know how I am so grateful –’
‘All right,’ said Odeline and straightened her fingers to escape. ‘Can I just write this down?’
‘Of course. I am sorry.’
Odeline put the cap of the biro from one end to the other and bent over her notebook.
‘I can’t believe it,’ Vera said, wiping each eyebrow with the tissue. ‘I can’t believe someone can do this for me. You are a true friend.’ Odeline, underlining the words ‘Willing to Testify’ in her notebook, felt the corners of her mouth pull into a smile. A big, beaming smile, which – she couldn’t help it – pulled back to expose her teeth and made her forget what she was writing.
‘It makes me happy,’ she said, looking up.
But something had caught Vera’s eye:
‘Odi, new shoes!’
Odeline looks down beyond the tails of her coat at her new plimsolls. Black canvas with an elastic half moon in the centre and a lightweight rubber edging. Another discovery on Harrow Road. £1.50 a pair and an elegant alternative to her brogues. Almost like a tightrope walker’s slippers. After wearing them for a morning she had gone back to the stall and bought six more pairs. They were sublimely comfortable, soft and giving, and yet hugged her feet more securely than the brogues ever had. They were so thin soled that she felt she could be walking barefoot, a shoeless joe! And they didn’t have the brogue’s hard heel – so that now, standing in her boat, she doesn’t have to sink her head into her shoulders to avoid scraping it on the ceiling. Life one centimetre lower is a lot easier.
But the sausage rolls! She opens the oven door and lifts them out on the foil. She checks her pocket watch. The minute hand is above quarter to, the hour hand on six. People will be arriving in under fifteen minutes. The cartons of white wine are set up in a row along the sideboard but she hasn’t even organised the seating yet, or put out glasses, or plates for the sausage rolls, which will have to be eaten cold. Very cold – there are crystals of ice around the bases where they have not yet defrosted. She opens a top cupboard and takes out eight of the tall glasses with sliced limes cascading down the side, and eight lime green formica plates. There is a bag of charcoal in the cupboard behind the remaining plates and she lifts it out, remembering the dismantled barbecue in the end cupboard. Looking into the bin bag with the rusted barbecue parts inside, her heart sinks. She has thirteen minutes to put this together.
There is a tap on the porthole and she looks up to see John Kettle’s grinning beard behind the glass. ‘Ahoy there!’ He wriggles his fingers in a wave. Sh
e shoots him a dark look and carries the bag of barbecue parts up, dumping it on the deck. It is windy outside, a brisk autumn evening. The edges of the trees are yellowing and leaves are swirling through the air, landing on the water.
‘You cannot look in through people’s portholes, John Kettle,’ she snaps. ‘It is extremely intrusive.’
He straightens. ‘I’m here for the party,’ he says with the side of his mouth, a rolled cigarette clamped between his lips. He is looking neater than usual, denim shirt tucked into his jeans, which are tightly belted. His top button is done up and a roll of grey-bearded neck spills over it.
‘You’re early,’ says Odeline, and tips the corners of the bag so that the barbecue parts come clattering out.
‘What’s this you’re doing then?’ He wanders a step or two along the towpath, towards the front of the boat. His walk is swaying, a sort of sashay. He takes the cigarette out of his mouth with a thumb and forefinger and blows smoke into the air.
‘Have you been drinking?’ barks Odeline.
‘Not today,’ he says. ‘You have to take each day as it comes. Life is a journey, you know, Odeline.’
‘What?’
‘But I do have something to celebrate.’
Odeline lifts up the black pan of the barbecue and looks in bewilderment at the jumble of metal parts on the deck.
‘Just got back from the Waterways office,’ he continues, taking another suck of his cigarette. ‘Reinstated!’
‘As canal warden?’ She picks out the grill and the barbecue tongs, both brown with rust, and rests them down on the deck.
‘That is correct. Can’t keep a good man down.’
‘So you’re allowed to harass people legally again.’
‘I’m going to do the job properly this time. Really look after things. I’ve got a plan to do plant boxes down the towpath. Brighten up the whole area.’
Odeline doesn’t answer. She is trying to identify which of the metal bars are the legs, and which make the stand for the barbecue pan to sit in.
‘Trying to set something up? Need some help from your friendly canal warden?’
‘Do you know how these things work?’
‘Leave it to me,’ he says and jumps on board.
‘You can put that out,’ says Odeline. ‘This is a non-smoking boat.’
John Kettle chucks the fag end into the water and squats down to look at the barbecue parts. ‘I’ll have this up in no time,’ he says. ‘Mechanics was my thing. Submariner Kettle, can tinker with metal –’
‘I’ve got to arrange the seating indoors,’ she says, stepping back down into the cabin.
‘Right you are, lassie. I’ll give a shout when we’re ready to spark her up.’
Odeline hears him whistling as she unstacks the chairs she has taken from outside the barge cafe. She arranges them into rows of four on either side of the cabin. She has folded the bed up against the wall to make more space. She looks around the interior. Although the low orange and brown chair is still in the corner, it certainly looks far more handsome without all the personalised furnishings it came with. The natural wood floor is stunning: wide boards of varnished pine. The porthole brass and windows gleam now. British Waterways even cleaned the compass glass.
‘And we’re all set,’ calls John Kettle from the deck. ‘Bring up your fuel and your fodder!’
Odeline balances the foil tray of sausage rolls on top of the charcoal bag and carries them both up. The barbecue is perched on the deck like a rusty UFO. She slides the foil tray on to the deck and hands the bag to John Kettle, who shakes the coals out into the barbecue pan. ‘No meat?’ he says.
‘There is sausage inside the rolls.’
‘Righto. And we need a touch paper, please. Anything will do.’
Odeline goes back inside and looks for some paper to use. She won’t waste a page of her notebook, obviously, or the A–Z, or her account book, which she is now using to keep a log of lawyers’ costs in case they charge for extra hours. (Her mother had warned her about lawyers in the typed pages of instructions that Odeline followed after her death.) She looks in the receipt box that lives beneath the bed. Clearly she can’t use her school certificates, or her birth certificate, or her passport. Or the letter confirming ownership of Chaplin and Company. Or any of the pages from her mother’s daily logic puzzle books. Or the stack of Arundel Magic business cards that her mother had printed for her – these are precious things.
There is one other item in her cardboard box, a brown envelope containing a letter written in green-ink capitals, a simple drawing of a house, a signature with a flourish over the letter O. She takes it outside and hands it to John Kettle. He pushes it under the coals and takes the lighter from his shirt pocket to set it alight. The flame eats into the corner of the brown envelope and then bursts into dancing orange as it reaches the white paper inside. Odeline watches as the line of fire crumbles her father’s letter to ash.
A horn booms along the water. Odeline turns to see two boats coming down the canal in convoy. She recognises the stacked roof of Ridley’s Saltheart, the silhouette of upturned bicycle, wheelbarrow, and string-bound towers of chopped wood, like an alternative city skyline. The boat behind is Angela’s wide-hipped orange barge. Odeline can see her at the tiller, hair piled up and buxom like a belle époque barmaid. ‘Quick!’ she says, and transfers the sausage rolls one by one from the foil on to the barbecue grill.
‘You leave this to me,’ says John Kettle, picking up the tongs. ‘See to your guests.’
‘All right.’
‘You’re welcome.’
Ridley’s boat steers in and he throws a rope across to Odeline as he cuts the engine. ‘Feels like the end of summer, doesn’t it,’ he says, pointing to the sky, the clouds rushing across it. ‘Hello, John.’
‘Ahoy there, my gypsy friend.’ John lifts a hand as he prods a sausage roll into the middle of the grill with the tongs. ‘I’ve good news to share with you once I’ve finished my shift at the campfire.’
Ridley crooks his eyebrow at Odeline, making the gold rings quiver. He is wearing a sheepskin waistcoat over a vest and a pair of shorts, but the tattoos make him appear cosily sleeved and trousered. ‘Pull me in then,’ he says, and Odeline pulls the rope through her hands until the Saltheart’s steering deck is bumping against her new rope buffers. Ridley ducks his head into his cabin. ‘Philip,’ he shouts. ‘Moor us up the other end.’ The tall, suited opera singer steps out from the other end of the cabin and steps a long leg over on to the Chaplin and Company, holding the tiller to pull himself across.
Angela’s boat is now cruising into the towpath, and Odeline can see that there are more people next to her on the rear deck. The badger-haired man with his accordion slung over a shoulder, the blonde actress with the ear plaits, the fringed poet with the rectangular mouth, and the two identical little girls.
She had forgotten that the children would be coming. It was Ridley’s idea to have the music and performance gathering in her newly decorated boat. It is starting to feel like a bombardment, that she is being ambushed from all sides.
Ridley comes out of his cabin holding his bow and fiddle. ‘Mustn’t forget this!’ Odeline rushes into her cabin and goes to the sideboard. Should she pour the drinks now or wait until everyone is on board? She pours four, squeezing the wine-carton tap until the glasses are almost full. She goes over to check the bed is sufficiently secure against the wall. She rearranges the chairs so that they are slightly further apart. In comes Philip the opera singer from the rear deck, and Ridley from the front. He puts his fiddle down on one of the chairs. She can smell burning pastry from the barbecue outside.
‘Would you like a drink?’ she says, thrusting a glass of wine at Philip.
He takes it. ‘Very generous, thank you.’
‘Would you like a drink?’ She hands one to Ridley.
‘Thanks,’ he says. ‘Is John in charge of catering?’
‘Yes,’ says Odeline, as Angela and her boisterou
s boatload thump down the steps into her cabin. Her little cabin with her posters on the wall and her shelves full of books and her wardrobe full of clothes darned by her mother. She burns as she sees these people look around, taking it in. The girls, wearing matching pink dresses, run up to the bookshelves and run their fingers along the spines. Hands off! Odeline wants to shout, but Ridley is standing just by her and she wants to seem relaxed.
‘Handsome boat,’ says the badger-haired man.
‘It’s lovely,’ says Angela, coming over, her girls gripping on to her myriad skirts. ‘Thank you so much for having us.’
‘Would you like a drink?’ says Odeline, thrusting out another glass.
‘I think we should drink a toast,’ says Ridley, filling more glasses from the wine cartons and handing one of them to her. He lifts his glass. ‘To Odeline, who has been working so hard on our friend Vera’s behalf.’
‘No, no,’ blinks Odeline, feeling them all look at her. She buries her nose in the glass of wine. It smells sharp, like the crate of shoes in the Costumerie at the Cirque Maroc.
‘Hear, hear!’ John Kettle’s face appears through the cabin doors in a haze of smoke. ‘And the rolls are ready. Shall I bring them in?’
Odeline turns to pick up the formica plates and lay them out on the counter. John comes down the steps slowly, hands under the foil tray of sausage rolls as if he is carrying a crown on a cushion. ‘Put them down here,’ says Odeline, and he slips the foil on to the edge of the counter. The sausage rolls are flaking, blackened, not quite recognisable, but smell quite good.
‘Goodness,’ says Angela. ‘What delicacy is this? Are they Arabic?’
Odeline starts putting them on to the plates.
‘Can I help myself to a drink then?’ says John Kettle.
‘You can have water.’
‘No, thanks, trying to give it up.’
‘You can only stay if you don’t drink alcohol,’ says Odeline, handing him two plates of sausage rolls. ‘Give some of these out.’ Ridley steps in to help deal out the plates and Odeline turns to fill a glass with cloudy hot water from the sink. ‘Here you go,’ she says to John Kettle as he comes back to the counter.
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