Offshore

by Penelope Fitzgerald

  ‘Louise!’

  ‘Didn’t you get my last letter?’

  ‘I don’t think so. They get lost sometimes.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘People fetch them from the office and mean to take them round, and then they get lost or dropped in the water.’

  ‘That’s absolutely absurd, Nenna dear.’

  ‘What does it matter anyway? Where are you, Louise, can I come right over and see you?’

  ‘Not right now, Nenna.’

  ‘Where are you calling from?’

  ‘From Frankfurt on the Rhine. We’re over here on a business trip. Too bad you didn’t read my letters. Has Heinrich arrived?’

  ‘God, Louise, who is Heinrich?’

  ‘Nenna, I know all your intonations as well as I know my own, and I can tell that you’re in a very bad state. Joel and I have a suggestion about that which we’re going to put to you as soon as we get to London.’

  ‘I’m quite all right, Louise. You’re coming here, then?’

  ‘And Edward. Exactly what is the position in regard to your marriage? Is Edward still with you?’

  Nenna was a child again. She felt her responsibilities slipping away one by one, even her marriage was going.

  ‘Oh, Louise, do you still have lobster sandwiches at Harris’s?’

  ‘Now, this boat of yours. What number is this I’m calling you on, by the way? Is that the yacht club?’

  ‘Not exactly … it’s a friend.’

  ‘Well, this boat you and the children are living on. I understand very well how people live year round in houseboats on the Seine, but not on the Thames, isn’t it tidal?’

  ‘Why, yes, it is.’

  ‘And this boat of yours – is she crewed, or is it a bareboat rental?’

  ‘Neither really. I’ve bought her.’

  ‘Where do you sail her then?’

  ‘She never sails, she’s at moorings.’

  ‘We were reading in the London Times that some kind of boat was sunk on the Thames the other day. In one of the small paragraphs. Joel reads it all through. He says it’s so long since he saw you and the girls that he won’t know you. In any case, as I said, we have certain plans which we’d like to put before you, and in the meantime I want you to say hello from us to young Heinrich.’

  ‘Louise, don’t ring off. Whatever it’s costing. I’ve never met young Heinrich.’

  ‘Well, neither have we, of course. Didn’t you get my letter?’

  ‘It seems not, Louise.’

  ‘He’s the son of a very good business friend of ours, who’s sent him to school at Sales Abbey, that’s with the Benedictines, and he’s currently returning home, he has permission to leave school early this term for some reason and return home.’

  ‘Does he live in Frankfurt on the Maine?’

  ‘On the Rhine. No, not at all, he’s Austrian, he lives in Vienna. He just requires to spend one night in London, he’s due to catch a flight to Vienna the next day.’

  ‘Do you mean that he expects to come and stay on Grace?’

  ‘Who is Grace, Nenna?’

  ‘What’s the name of this boy?’ Nenna asked.

  ‘His parents are a Count and Countess, in business as I told you, of course all that doesn’t mean anything now, but they’re in very good standing. He should have been with you last Friday.’

  ‘Well, he wasn’t. There must have been a misunderstanding about that … Oh, Lou, you don’t know how good it is to hear your voice …’

  ‘Nenna, you’re becoming emotional. Wouldn’t you agree it’s just about time that somebody helped you to restore some kind of order into your life?’

  ‘Oh, please don’t do that!’

  ‘I hate to cut you short,’ said Richard from the hatch, ‘it’s only that I can hardly expect my staff to be in time if I’m late myself.’

  His voice was courteous to the point of diffidence, and Nenna, giving way a little, let herself imagine what it would be like to be on Richard’s staff, and to be directed in everything else by Louise, and to ebb and flow without volition, in the warmth of love and politeness.

  ‘Goodbye, Louise. As soon as you get to England. – Forgive me, Richard, it was my sister, I don’t know how she got your number, I haven’t seen her in five years.’

  ‘I sensed that she wasn’t used to being contradicted.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘She was very firm.’

  ‘That’s so.’

  ‘Are you sure she’s your sister?’

  ‘As far as he’s concerned, I’m just a drifter,’ Nenna thought, smiling and thanking him. Richard patted himself to see that he had some matches on him, a gesture which appealed to Nenna, and walked off up the Embankment to call a taxi.

  I won’t go down without a struggle, Nenna thought. I married Edward because I wanted to live with him, and I still do. While she ironed Willis’s stiff underclothes which, aired day after day, never seemed to get quite dry, the accusations against her, not inside her mind but at some point detached from it, continued without pause. They were all the more tedious because they were reduced, for all practical purposes, to one question: why, after everything that has been put forward in this court, have you still made no attempt to visit 42b Milvain Street? Nenna wished to reply that it was not for the expected reasons – not pride, not resentment, not even the curious acquired characteristics of the river dwellers, which made them scarcely at home in London’s streets. No, it’s because it’s my last chance. While I’ve still got it I can take it out and look at it and know I still have it. If that goes, I’ve nothing left to try.

  She told Martha that she would be going out that evening and would quite likely not be back until the following day.

  ‘Well, where do we stay?’

  ‘On Rochester. I’ll ask them.’

  In less than a week the impeccable Rochester had been transformed into a kind of boarding-house. Nenna would never have dreamed before this of asking them to look after the girls. Willis, on his return from hospital, had taken up his quarters there, though he was no trouble, remaining quietly in the spare cabin without even attempting to watch the river’s daily traffic. He had not come up on deck when the PLA tug arrived, and the poor wreck had been towed away, still under water, but surfacing from time to time as though she had still not quite admitted defeat.

  ‘That’s just a launch tug,’ said Tilda, ‘under forty tons. It didn’t take much to move Dreadnought.’

  The salvage men returned what they could, including the iron saucepan, but Willis’s painting materials were past repair. Nothing was said about his next move, except that he could hardly expect his sister to take him in now, and that he was unwilling, under any circumstances, to move to Purley. Therefore the daily life of the Woodies, which had depended almost entirely on knowing what they would be doing on any given day six months hence, fell into disrepair. They had to resort to unpacking many of the things which they had so carefully stowed away. They repeated, however, that Willis was no trouble.

  When Nenna told them that she had urgent business on the other side of London and that she would have to ask whether Martha and Tilda could stay the night, Rochester accepted without protest, and they went over, taking with them their nightdresses, Cliff records, the Cliff photograph and two packets of breakfast cereals, for they did not like the same kind. Tilda, who had been vexed at missing the actual shipwreck, went straight down to Willis’s cabin to ask him if he would draw her a picture of it. Martha confronted her mother.

  ‘You’re going to see Daddy, aren’t you?’

  ‘I might be bringing him back with me. Would you like that?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  8

  BETTER take a cheap all-day ticket, the bus conductor advised, if Nenna really wanted to get from Chelsea to Stoke Newington.

  ‘Or move house,’ he advised.

  Although as she changed from bus to bus she was free at last of the accusing voices, she had time for a number of sec
ond thoughts, wishing in particular that she had put on other clothes, and had had her hair cut. She didn’t know if she wanted to look different or the same. Her best coat would perhaps have been better because it would make her look as though she hadn’t let herself go, but on the other hand her frightful old lumber jacket would have suggested, what was true enough, that she was worried enough not to care. But among all these doubts it had not occurred to her that if she got as far as 42b Milvain Street, and rang the bell, Edward would not open the door.

  It was the b, perhaps, that was the trouble. b suggested an upstairs flat, and there was only one bell at 42. The yellowish-grey brick houses gave straight on to the street, which she had found only after turning out of another one, and then another. On some doorsteps the milk was still waiting to be taken in. She still missed the rocking of the boat.

  He might be in or he might be out. There was a light on in the hall, and apparently on the second floor, though that might be a landing. Nenna struggled against an impulse to rush into the fish and chip shop at the corner, the only shop in the street, and ask them if they had ever seen somebody coming out of number 42b who looked lonely, or indeed if they had ever seen anyone coming out of it at all.

  The figure turning the corner and walking heavily down the road could not under any circumstances have been Edward, but at least it relieved her from the suspicion that the street was uninhabited. When the heavily-treading man slowed down at number 42, she couldn’t believe her luck. He had been out and was coming in, although the way he walked suggested that going out had not been a great success, and that not much awaited him at home.

  As he stopped and took out two keys tied together, neither of them a car key, Nenna faced him boldy.

  ‘Excuse me, I should like you to let me in.’

  ‘May I ask who you are?’

  The ‘may I ask’ disconcerted her.

  ‘I’m Grace. I mean, I’m Nenna.’

  ‘You don’t seem very sure.’

  ‘I am Nenna James.’

  ‘Mrs Edward James?’

  ‘Yes. Does Edward James live here?’

  ‘Well, in a way.’ He dangled the keys from hand to hand. ‘You don’t look at all how I expected.’

  Nenna felt rebuked.

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘I’m thirty-two.’

  ‘I should have thought you were twenty-seven or twenty-eight at most.’

  He stood ruminating. She tried not to feel impatient.

  ‘Did Edward say what I looked like, then?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What has he been saying?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, I very rarely speak to him.’

  Nenna looked at him more closely, trying to assess him as an ally. The cuffs of his raincoat had been neatly turned. Somebody must be doing his mending for him, as she was doing Willis’s, and the idea gave her a stab of pain which she couldn’t relate to her other feelings. She stared up at his broad face.

  ‘We can’t stand here all night on the pavement like this,’ he said, still with the two keys in his hand.

  ‘Then hadn’t you better let me in?’

  ‘I don’t know that that would be quite the right thing to do.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well, you might turn out to be a nuisance to Edward.’

  She mustn’t irritate him.

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Well, I didn’t care for the way you were standing there ringing the bell. Anyway, he’s out.’

  ‘How can you tell? You’re only just coming in yourself. Do you live here?’

  ‘Well, in a way.’

  He examined her more closely. ‘Your hair is quite pretty.’

  It had begun to rain slightly. There seemed no reason why they should not stand here for ever.

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ he said, ‘I do remember you. My name is Hodge. Gordon Hodge.’

  Nenna shook her head. ‘I can’t help that.’

  ‘I have met you several times with Edward.’

  ‘And was I a nuisance then?’

  ‘This isn’t my house, you see. It belongs to my mother. My mother is taking your husband in, at considerable inconvenience, as a kind of paying guest.’

  ‘He’s the lodger?’

  ‘She only agreed to it because I used to know him at school.’

  Abyss after abyss of respectability was opening beneath her. How could Edward be living in a house belonging to somebody’s mother, and, above all, Gordon Hodge’s mother?

  ‘Why do you very rarely speak to him?’

  ‘We’re just living here quietly, with my mother, two quiet chaps working things out for ourselves.’

  A wave of cold discouragement closed over her. The disagreement about where they were to live had come to seem the only obstacle. But perhaps Edward was altogether better without her. Perhaps he knew that. He must have heard her at the door.

  ‘Well,’ said Gordon, ‘you’d better come inside, I suppose.’ Once the key was in the lock, he pushed forward with both hands, one on the front door, one on Nenna’s back, so that in the end she was propelled into number 42. Gordon’s mother had an umbrella stand and a set of Chinese temple bells in her hall.

  ‘Carry on up.’ They passed two landings, Gordon following her with majestic tread, but faster than one might expect, since although he had lost time in hanging up his raincoat in the hall, he reached the door first, and opened it without any kind of announcement, and Edward was standing, with his back to them at first, thinner and smaller than she remembered, but then she always made the mistake when she hadn’t seen him for a bit – he turned round, protesting, and it was Edward.

  Who else, after all, could it have been? But in her relief Nenna forgot the quiet reasonable remarks which she had rehearsed at the bus stops, and in the buses, all the way to Stoke Newington.

  ‘Darling, darling.’

  Edward looked at her with grey eyes like Tilda’s, but without much expectation from life.

  ‘Darling, aren’t you surprised?’

  ‘Not very. I’ve been listening to you ringing the bell.’

  ‘How did you know it was me?’

  ‘Nenna. Have you come all this way, after all this time, to try to get me to live on that boat?’

  Nenna had forgotten about Gordon, or rather she assumed that he must have gone away, but he had not. To her amazement, he was still planted just behind her.

  ‘Edward, Nenna. You two seem to be having a bit of a difference of opinion. Yes, let’s face it, you’re in dispute. And in these matters it’s often helpful to have a third party present. That’s how these marriage counsellors make their money, you know.’

  This must have been a joke, as he laughed, or perhaps any mention of marriage was a joke to Gordon, who walked past Nenna and settled himself between them in a small chair, actually a nursing chair, surviving from some earlier larger family home and much too low for him, so that he had to try crossing his legs in several positions. He creaked, as he settled, as a boat creaks. Had he really been at the same school as Edward? His feet were now stuck out in front of him and Nenna could read the word EXCELLA on the soles of each of his new shoes.

  ‘Get out!’

  Gordon sat quite still for a few seconds, then uncrossed his legs and went out of the room, a room in his own house, or rather his mother’s. Because it was theirs, he knew how to shut the door, although it did not fit very well, without any irritating noise.

  ‘You’ve always known how to get rid of my friends,’ Edward muttered.

  Nenna was no more able to deny this than any other woman.

  ‘He’s hateful!’

  ‘Gordon’s all right.’

  ‘We can’t talk while he’s around.’

  ‘His mother has been very good to me.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous! To be in a position where you have to say that someone’s mother has been very good to you – that’s ridiculous! Isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘
Where did you meet these Hodges anyway? I never remember you ever talking about them.’

  ‘I had to go somewhere,’ Edward said.

  They had plenty of time, and yet she felt that there was almost none.

  ‘Eddie, I’ll tell you what I came to say. Why won’t you come over to us for a week, or even for a night?’

  ‘That boat! It’s not for me to come to you, it’s for you to get rid of it. I’m not quarrelling with you about the money. If you don’t want to sell it, why can’t you rent it out?’

  ‘I don’t know that I can, right away.’

  ‘Why, what’s wrong with it?’

  ‘She’s a thought damp. It would be easier in the spring.’

  ‘Didn’t I see something in the paper about one of them sinking? I don’t even know if they’re safe for the children!’

  ‘Some of them are beautiful. Lord Jim, for instance, inside she’s really better than a house.’

  ‘Who lives on Lord Jim?’ Edward asked with the discernment of pure jealousy, the true lover’s art which Nenna was too distraught to recognise.

  ‘I don’t know, I don’t care. Well, the Blakes do. Richard and Laura Blake.’

  ‘Have they got money?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘They live on a boat because they think it’s smart.’

  ‘Laura doesn’t.’

  ‘What’s this Richard Blake like?’

  ‘I don’t know. He was in the Navy, I think, in the war, or the RNVR.’

  ‘Don’t you know the difference?’

  ‘Not exactly, Eddie.’

  ‘I bet he does.’

  Things were going as badly as they could. From the room immediately beneath them, somebody began to play the piano, a Chopin nocturne, with heavy emphasis, but the piano was by no means suitable for Chopin and the sound travelled upwards as a hellish tingling of protesting strings.

  ‘Eddie, is this the only room you’ve got?’

  ‘I don’t see anything wrong with it.’

  She noticed now that there was a kind of cupboard in the corner which was likely to contain a washbasin, and a single bed, tucked in with a plaid rug. Surely they’d do better making love on board Grace than on a few yards of Mackenzie tartan?

  ‘You can’t expect us to come here?’