Offshore

by Penelope Fitzgerald

  ‘I’m not sure. I’ve never worked it out exactly.’

  ‘They’re not worth talking about anyway. I expect they talk about us.’

  ‘Oh, do you think so?’

  ‘They say “There goes that Mrs Blake again. She turns me up, she looks so bleeding bored all day”.’

  Richard did not like to have to think about two things at once, particularly at the end of the day. He kissed Laura, sat down, and tried to bring the two subjects put to him into order, and under one heading. A frown ran in a slanting direction between his eyebrows and halfway up his forehead. Laura’s problem was that she had not enough to do – no children, though she hadn’t said anything about this recently – and his heart smote him because he had undertaken to make her happy, and hadn’t. Nenna, on the other hand, had rather too much. If her husband had let her down, as was apparently the case, she ought to have a male relation of some kind, to see to things. In Richard’s experience, all women had plenty of male relations. Laura, for instance, had two younger brothers, who were not settling very well into the stockbrokers’ firm in which they had been placed, and numerous uncles, one of them an old horror who obtained Scandinavian au pairs through advertisements in The Lady, and then, of course, her Norfolk cousins. Nenna appeared to have no-one. She had come over here from Canada, of course. This last reflection – it was Nova Scotia, he was pretty sure – seemed to tidy up the whole matter, which his mind now presented as a uniform interlocking structure, with working parts.

  Laura was very lucky to be married to Richard, who would not have hurt her feelings deliberately for the whole world. A fortnight with her parents, he was thinking now, on their many acres of damp earth, must surely bring home to her the advantages of living on Lord Jim. Of course, it hadn’t so far done anything of the kind, and he had to arrive at the best thing to do in the circumstances. He was not quite satisfied with the way his mind was working. Something was out of phase. He did not recognise it as hope.

  ‘I want to take you out to dinner, Lollie,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You look so pretty, I want other people to see you. I daresay they’ll wonder why on earth you agreed to go out with a chap like me.’

  ‘Where do you go when you take people out to lunch from the office?’

  ‘Oh, the Relais, but that’s no good in the evening. We could try that Provençal place. Give them a treat.’

  ‘You don’t really want to go,’ said Laura, but she disappeared into the spare cabin, where, unfortunately, her dresses had to be kept. Richard took off his slippers and put on his black shoes again, and they went out.

  6

  MARTHA and Tilda were in the position of having no spending money, but this was less important when they were not attending school and were spared the pains of comparison, and they felt no bitterness against their mother, because she hadn’t any either. Nenna believed, however, that she would have some in the spring, when three things would happen, each, like melting ice-floes, slowly moving the next one on. Edward would come and live on Grace, which would save the rent he was paying on his rooms at present; the girls, once they were not being prayed for at the grotto, would agree to go back to the nuns; and with Tilda at school she could go out herself and look for a job.

  Martha could not imagine her mother going out to work and felt that the experiment was likely to prove disastrous.

  ‘You girls don’t know my life,’ said Nenna, ‘I worked in my vacations before the war, wiping dishes, camp counselling, all manner of things.’

  Martha smiled at the idea of these dear dead days. ‘What did you counsel?’ she asked.

  The girls needed money principally to buy singles by Elvis Presley and Cliff Richard, whose brightly smiling photograph presided over their cabin. They had got the photograph as a fold-in from Disc Weekly. If you couldn’t afford the original records, there were smaller ones you could buy at the Woolworths in the King’s Road, which sounded quite like.

  Like the rest of London’s river children, they knew that the mud was a source of wealth, but were too shrewd to go into competition with the locals from Partisan Street for coins, medals and lugworms. The lugworms, in any case, Willis had told them, were better on Limehouse Reach. Round about Grace herself, the great river deposited little but mounds of plastic containers.

  Every expedition meant crossing the Bridge, because the current on Battersea Reach, between the two bridges, sets towards the Surrey side. The responsibility for these outings, which might or might not be successful, had worn between Martha’s eyebrows a faint frown, not quite vertical, which exactly resembled Richard’s.

  ‘We’ll go bricking to-day,’ she said. ‘How’s the tide?’

  ‘High water Gravesend 3 a.m., London Bridge 4, Battersea Bridge 4.30,’ Tilda chanted rapidly. ‘Spring tide, seven and a half hour’s ebb, low tide at 12.’

  Martha surveyed her sister doubtfully. With so much specialised knowledge, which would qualify her for nothing much except a pilot’s certificate, with her wellingtons over which the mud of many tides had dried, she had the air of something aquatic, a demon from the depths, perhaps. Whatever happens, I must never leave her behind, Martha prayed.

  Both the girls were small and looked exceptionally so as they crossed the Bridge with their handcart. They wore stout Canadian anoraks, sent them by their Aunt Louise.

  Below the old church at Battersea the retreating flood had left exposed a wide shelf of mud and gravel. At intervals the dark driftwood lay piled. Near the draw dock some longshoremen had heaped it up and set light to it, to clear the area. Now the thick blue smoke gave out a villainous smell, the gross spirit of salt and fire. Tilda loved that smell, and stretched her nostrils wide.

  Beyond the dock, an old wrecked barge lay upside down. It was shocking, even terrifying, to see her dark flat shining bottom, chine uppermost. A derelict ship turns over on her keel and lies gracefully at rest, but there is only one way up for a Thames barge if she is to maintain her dignity.

  This wreck was the Small Gains, which had gone down more than twenty-five years before, when hundreds of barges were still working under sail. Held fast in the mud with her cargo of bricks, she had failed to come up with the rising tide and the water had turned her over. The old bricks were still scattered over the foreshore. After a storm they were washed back in dozens, but most of them were broken or half ground to powder. Along with the main cargo, however, Small Gains had shipped a quantity of tiles. At a certain moment in the afternoon the sun, striking across the water from behind the gas works, sent almost level rays over the glistening Reach. Then it was possible for the expert to pick out a glazed tile, though only if it had sunk at the correct angle to the river bed.

  ‘Do you think Ma’s mind is weakening?’ Tilda asked.

  ‘I thought we weren’t going to discuss our affairs today.’ Martha relented and added – ‘Well, Ma is much too dependent on Maurice, or on anyone sympathetic. She ought to avoid these people.’

  The two girls sat on the wall of Old Battersea churchyard to eat their sandwiches. These contained a substance called Spread, and, indeed, that was all you could do with it.

  ‘Mattie, who would you choose, if you were compelled at gunpoint to marry tomorrow?’

  ‘You mean, someone off the boats?’

  ‘We don’t know anybody else.’

  Seagulls, able to detect the appearance of a piece of bread at a hundred yards away, advanced slowly towards them over the shelving ground.

  ‘I thought perhaps you meant Cliff.’

  ‘Not Cliff, not Elvis. And not Richard, he’s too obvious.’

  Martha licked her fingers.

  ‘He looks tired all the time now. I saw him taking Laura out to dinner yesterday evening. Straight away after he’d come back from work! Where’s the relaxation in that? What sort of life is that for a man to lead?’

  ‘What was she wearing?’

  ‘I couldn’t make out. She had her new coat on.’

 
‘But you saw the strain on his features?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘Do you think Ma notices?’

  ‘Oh, everybody does.’

  When the light seemed about right, striking fire out of the broken bits of china and glass, they went to work. Tilda lay down full length on a baulk of timber. It was her job to do this, because Martha bruised so easily. A princess, unknown to all about her, she awaited the moment when these bruises would reveal her true heritage.

  Tilda stared fixedly. It was necessary to get your eye in.

  ‘There’s one!’

  She bounded off, as though over stepping stones, from one object to another that would scarcely hold, old tyres, old boots, the ribs of crates from which the seagulls were dislodged in resentment. Far beyond the point at which the mud became treacherous and from which Small Gains had never risen again, she stood poised on the handlebars of a sunken bicycle. How had the bicycle ever got there?

  ‘Mattie, it’s a Raleigh!’

  ‘If you’ve seen a tile, pick it up straight away and come back.’

  ‘I’ve seen two!’

  With a tile in each hand, balancing like a circus performer, Tilda returned. Under the garish lights of the Big Top, every man, woman and child rose to applaud. Who, they asked each other, was this newcomer, who had succeeded where so many others had failed?

  The nearest clean water was from the standpipe in the churchyard; they did not like to wash their finds there, because the water was for the flowers on the graves, but Martha fetched some in a bucket.

  As the mud cleared away from the face of the first tile, patches of ruby-red lustre, with the rich glow of a jewel’s heart, appeared inch by inch, then the outlines of a delicate grotesque silver bird, standing on one leg in a circle of blue-black leaves and berries, its beak of burnished copper.

  ‘Is it beautiful?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the dragon?’

  The sinuous tail of a dragon, also in gold and jewel colours, wreathed itself like a border round the edge of the other tile.

  The reverse of both tiles was damaged, and on only one of them the letters NDS END could just be made out, but Martha could not be mistaken.

  ‘They’re de Morgans, Tilda. Two of them at one go, two of them in one morning.’

  ‘How much can we sell them for?’

  ‘Do you remember the old lady, Tilda?’

  ‘Did I see her?’

  ‘Tilda, I only took you three months ago. Mrs Stirling, I mean, in Battersea Old House. Her sister was married to William de Morgan, that had the pottery, and made these kind of tiles, that was in Victorian days, you must remember. She was in a wheelchair. We paid for tea, but the money went to the Red Cross. We were only supposed to have two scones each, otherwise the Red Cross couldn’t expect to make a profit. She explained, and she showed us all those tiles and bowls, and the brush and comb he used to do his beard with.’

  ‘How old was she?’

  ‘In 1965 she’ll be a hundred.’

  ‘What was her name?’

  ‘Mrs Wilhemina Stirling.’

  Tilda stared at the brilliant golden-beaked bird, about which there was something frightening.

  ‘We’d better wrap it up. Someone might want to steal it.’

  Sobered, like many seekers and finders, by the presence of the treasure itself, they wrapped the tiles in Tilda’s anorak, which immediately dimmed their lustre once again with a film of mud.

  ‘There’s Woodie!’

  Tilda began to jump up and down, like a cork on the tide.

  ‘What’s he doing?’

  ‘He’s getting his car out.’

  There were no garages near the boats and Woodie was obliged to keep his immaculate Austin Cambridge in the yard of a public house on the Surrey side.

  ‘I’m attracting his attention,’ Tilda shouted. ‘He can drive us home, and we can put the pushcart on the back seat.’

  ‘Tilda, you don’t understand. He’d have to say yes, because he’s sorry for us, I heard him tell Richard we were no better than waifs of the storm, and we should ruin the upholstery, and be taking advantage of his kindness.’

  ‘It’s his own fault if he’s kind. It’s not the kind who inherit the earth, it’s the poor, the humble, and the meek.’

  ‘What do you think happens to the kind, then?’

  ‘They get kicked in the teeth.’

  Woodie drove them back across the bridge.

  ‘You’ll have to look after yourselves this winter, you know,’ he said. ‘No more lifts, I’m afraid, I shall be packed up and gone till spring. I’m thinking of laying up Rochester in dry dock. She needs a bit of attention.’

  ‘Do you have to manage all that packing by yourself?’ Tilda asked.

  ‘No, dear, my wife’s coming to give me a hand.’

  ‘You haven’t got a wife!’

  ‘You’ve never seen her, dear.’

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Janet.’ Woodie began to feel on the defensive, as though he had made the name up.

  ‘What does she look like?’

  ‘She doesn’t much care for the river. She spends the summer elsewhere.’

  ‘Has she left you, then?’

  ‘Certainly not. She’s got a caravan in Wales, a very nice part, near Tenby.’ Although Woodie had given this explanation pretty often, he was surprised to have to make it to a child of six. ‘Then in the winter we go back to our house in Purley. It’s an amicable arrangement.’

  Was there not, on the whole of Battersea Reach, a couple, married or unmarried, living together in the ordinary way? Certainly, among the fairweather people on the middle Reach. They lived together and even multiplied, though the opportunity for a doctor to hurry over the gangplank with a black bag, and, in his turn, fall into the river, had been missed. Bluebird, which was rented by a group of nurses from the Waterloo Hospital, had been at the ready, and when the birth was imminent they’d seen to it that the ambulance arrived promptly. But, apart from Bluebird, the middle Reach would be empty by next week, or perhaps the one after.

  Martha, who had decided to stop thinking about the inconvenience they were causing, asked Woodie not to stop at the boats; they would like to go on to the New King’s Road.

  ‘We want to stop at the Bourgeois Gentilhomme,’ she said, with the remnants of the French accent the nuns had carefully taught her.

  ‘Isn’t that an antique shop, dear?’

  ‘Yes, we’re going to sell an antique.’

  ‘Have you got one?’

  ‘We’ve got two.’

  ‘Are you sure you’ve been to this place before?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I shall have to pull up as near as I can and let you out,’ said Woodie. He wondered if he ought to wait, but he wanted to get back to Rochester before she came afloat. He watched the two girls, who, to do them justice, thanked him very nicely, they weren’t so badly brought up when you came to think about it, approach the shop by the side door.

  On occasions, Martha’s courage failed her. The advantages her sister had in being so much younger presented themselves forcibly. She sharply told Tilda, who had planted herself in a rocking-chair put out on the pavement, that she must come into the shop and help her speak to the man. Tilda, who had never sat in a rocker before, replied that her boots were too dirty.

  ‘And anyway, I’m old Abraham Lincoln, jest sittin and thinkin.’

  ‘You’ve got to come.’

  The Bourgeois Gentilhomme was one of many enterprises in Chelsea which survived entirely by selling antiques to each other. The atmosphere, once through the little shop-door, cut down from a Victorian billiard-table, was oppressive. Clocks struck widely different hours. At a corner table, with her back turned towards them, sat a woman in black, apparently doing some accounts, and surrounded by dusty furniture; perhaps she had been cruelly deserted on her wedding day, and had sat there ever since, refusing to have anything touched. She did not look up when the g
irls came in, although the billiard table was connected by a cord to a cow-bell, which jangled harshly.

  ‘Where’s Mr Stephen, please?’

  Without waiting for or expecting a reply, Martha and the reluctant Tilda walked through into the back office. Here no conversion had been done to the wretched little room, once a scullery, with two steps down to a small yard stacked high with rubbish. Mr Stephen, sitting by a paraffin heater, was also writing on pieces of paper, and appearing to be adding things up. Martha took out the two tiles and laid them in front of him.

  Well used to the treasures of the foreshore, the dealer wiped the gleaming surfaces free, not with water this time, but with something out of a bottle. Then, after carefully taking off his heavy rings, he picked each of the tiles up in turn, holding them up by the extreme edge.

  ‘So you brought these all this long way to show me. What did you think they were?’

  ‘I know what they are. I only want to know how much you can pay me for them.’

  ‘Have you any more of these at home?’

  ‘They weren’t at home.’

  ‘Where did you find them, then?’

  ‘About the place.’

  ‘And you’re sure there aren’t any more?’

  ‘Just the two.’

  Mr Stephen examined the gold and silver bird through a glass.

  ‘They’re quite pretty tiles, dear, not anything more than that.’

  ‘Then why did you take your rings off so carefully?’

  ‘I’m always careful, dear.’

  ‘These are ruby lustre tiles by William de Morgan,’ said Martha, ‘with decoration in gold and silver – the “starlight and moonlight” lustre.’

  ‘Who sent you in here?’ Mr Stephen asked.

  ‘Nobody, you know us, we’ve been in before.’

  ‘Yes, but I mean, who told you what to say?’

  ‘Nobody.’

  ‘Mrs Wilhemina Stirling,’ Tilda put in, ‘ninety-seven if she’s a day.’

  ‘Well, whoever you’re selling for, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but these tiles can’t be by de Morgan. I’m afraid you just don’t know enough about it. I don’t suppose you looked at what’s left of the lettering on the reverse. NDS END. William de Morgan had his potteries in Cheyne Walk, and later he moved his kilns to Merton Abbey. This is not the mark for either one of those.’