Offshore

by Penelope Fitzgerald

  It must be Gordon playing downstairs. There were pauses, then he banged the keys plaintively, going over the passages he hadn’t been able to get right, then suddenly he put on a record of the Chopin and played along with it, always two or three notes behind.

  ‘Eddie, what do you want? Why are you here? Why?’

  He replied reluctantly, ‘My job’s up here.’

  ‘I don’t even know what you do. Strang Graphics! What are they?’

  They were both still standing up, facing each other, at about the same height.

  ‘Strang is an advertising firm. It’s small, that’s why it’s up here, where the rents are low. They hope to expand later, then they’ll move. I’m not going to pretend anything about my job. It’s clerical.’

  Edward’s references from the construction firm when he left Panama had not been very good. Nenna knew that, but she was sure it couldn’t have been Edward’s fault, and at the moment she couldn’t be bothered with it.

  ‘You don’t have to stay there! There’s plenty of jobs! Anyone can get a job anywhere!’

  ‘I can’t.’

  He turned his head away, and as the light caught his face at a certain angle Nenna realised in terror that he was right and that he would never get anywhere. The terror, however, was not for herself or for the children but for Edward, who might realise that what he was saying was true. She forgot whatever she had meant to tell him, went up close and took him tenderly by both ears.

  ‘Shut up, Eddie.’

  ‘Nenna, I’m glad you came.’

  ‘You are?’

  ‘Curious, I didn’t mean to say that.’

  She clung to him hard, she loved him and could never leave him. They were down on the floor, and one side of her face was scorched by Gordon’s mother’s horrible gas-fire, in front of which there was a bowl of tepid water. He stroked her face, with its one bright red cheek, one pale.

  ‘You look as ugly as sin.’

  ‘Wonderful.’

  There was a tapping, just audible above the piano. ‘Excuse me, Mrs James, I’m Gordon’s mother, I thought I’d just look in, as I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting you.’

  Nenna got to her feet, trying to pull down her jersey.

  ‘I hope you don’t find the gas-fire too high,’ said Mrs Hodge, ‘it’s easily lowered. You just turn the key down there on the right-hand side.’

  Not receiving any response, she added, ‘And I hope the music doesn’t disturb you. Gordon is something of a pianist.’

  ‘No, he isn’t,’ said Nenna.

  The mother’s face crumpled up and withered, then corrected itself to the expression of one who is in the right. She withdrew. Nenna was ashamed, but she couldn’t make amends, not now. In the morning she would beg sincerely for forgiveness, less sincerely praise Gordon as a pianist, offer to help pay to have the piano seen to.

  Then she looked at Edward and saw that he was furious. ‘You’ve only come here to hurt these people.’

  ‘I didn’t. I never knew they existed. Forgive!’

  ‘It’s not a matter of forgiveness, it’s a matter of common politeness.’

  They were quarrelling, but at first they were not much better at it than Gordon was at Chopin.

  ‘I want you, Eddie, that’s the one and only thing I came about. I want you every moment of the day and night and every time I try to fold up a map.’

  ‘You’re raving, Nenna.’

  ‘Please give.’

  ‘Give you what? You’re always saying that. I don’t know what meaning you attach to it.’

  ‘Give anything.’

  She didn’t know why she wanted this so much, either. Not presents, not for themselves, it was the sensation of being given to, she was homesick for that.

  And now the quarrel was under its own impetus, and once again a trial seemed to be in progress, with both of them as accusers, but both figuring also as investigators of the lowest description, wretched hirelings, turning over the stones to find where the filth lay buried. The squash racquets, the Pope’s pronouncements, whose fault it had been their first night together, an afternoon really, but not much good in either case, the squash racquets again, the money spent on Grace. And the marriage that was being described was different from the one they had known, indeed bore almost no resemblance to it, and there was no-one to tell them this.

  ‘You don’t want me,’ Edward repeated, ‘if you did, you’d have been with me all this time. All you’ve ever cared about is being approved of, like a little girl at a party.’

  He must have forgotten what Tilda’s like, she thought, and she felt frightened. But Edward went on to tell her that she didn’t really care for the children, she only liked to think she did, to make herself feel good.

  So far neither of them had raised their voices, or only enough to be heard above Gordon’s din. But when she made a last appeal, and told him, though feeling it was not quite true, that Martha had asked her to bring her father back, and then, very unwisely, referred again to Mrs Hodge, and the house, and the single bed, and even the temple bells, and asked him why he didn’t come to his senses and whether he didn’t think he’d be happier living with a woman, whether she was on a boat or not, he turned on her, upsetting the bowl of water in front of the gas fire, and shouted:

  ‘You’re not a woman!’

  Nenna was outside in the street. In leaving the room, swelling for the first time with tears, she had collided awkwardly with Gordon’s mother, who supposed she could stand where she liked in her own house, and even if Edward had called after her, she would not have been able to hear him. She walked away down Milvain Street as fast as it was possible for her feet to hit the ground. The fish and chip shop was still lighted and open. She had expected to spend that night with Edward and wake up beside him, the left-hand side, that had become a habit and it was a mistake, no doubt, to allow marriage to become a matter of habit, but that didn’t prove that she was not a woman.

  She walked down street after street, always turning to the right, and pulled herself up among buses, and near a railway bridge. Seven Sisters Road. It was late, the station was shut. Her hands were empty. She realised now for the first time that she had left her purse behind in Edward’s room. That meant that she had no money, and the all-day bus ticket was of course also in the purse.

  Nenna set out to walk. A mile and a half down Green Lanes, half a mile down Nassington Green Road, one and a half miles the wrong way down Balls Pond Road, two miles down Kingsland Road, and then she was lost. As is usual in such cases her body trudged on obstinately, knowing that one foot hurt rather more than the other, but deciding not to admit this until some sort of objective was reached, while her mind, rejecting the situation in time and space, became disjointed and childish. It came to her that it was wrong to pray for anything simply because you felt you needed it personally. Prayer should be beyond self, and so Nenna repeated a Hail Mary for everyone in the world who was lost in Kingsland Road without their bus fares. She had also been taught, when in difficulty, to think of a good life to imitate. Nenna thought of Tilda, who would certainly have got on to a late night bus and ridden without paying the fare, or even have borrowed money from the conductor. Richard would never have left anything behind anywhere, or, if he had, he would have gone back for it. Louise would not have made an unsuccessful marriage in the first place, and she supposed her marriage must be unsuccessful, because Edward had told her that she was not a woman.

  Nenna had no more than an animal’s sense of direction and distance, but it seemed to her that the right thing to do would be to try to reach the City, then, once she got to Blackfriars, she knew where the river was, and though that would be Lambeth Reach or King’s Reach, a long way downstream of the boats, still, once she had got to the river she would be on the way home. She had worked in an office in Blackfriars once, before Tilda came.

  That meant turning south, and she would have to ask which way she was headed. She began to look, with a somewhat dull kind of hope
fulness, for somebody friendly, not too much in a hurry, walking the opposite way, although it would be more reasonable, really, to ask somebody walking the same way. Handfuls of sleet were beginning to wander through the air. Radio shop, bicycle shop, family planning shop, funeral parlour, bicycles, radio spare parts, television hire, herbalist, family planning, a florist. The window of the florist was still lit and entirely occupied by a funeral tribute, a football goal, carried out in white chrysanthemums. The red ball had just been introduced into Soccer and there was a ball in the goal, this time in red chrysanthemums. Nenna stood looking into the window, feeling the melted hail make its way down the gap between the collar of her coat and her body. One shoe seemed to be wetter than the other and the strap was working loose, so, leaning against the ledge of the shop window, she took it off to have a look at it. This made her left foot very cold, so she twisted it round her right ankle. Someone was coming, and she felt that she couldn’t bear it if he, because it was a man, said, ‘Having trouble with your shoe?’ For an unbalanced moment she thought it might be Gordon Hodge, pursuing her to see that she would not come back, and make a nuisance of herself to Edward.

  The man stood very close to her, pretended to look in the window, advanced with a curious sideways movement and said –

  ‘Like flowers?’

  ‘Not at the moment.’

  ‘Fixed up for the night?’

  Nenna did not answer. She was saddened by the number of times the man must have asked this question. He smelled of loneliness. Well, they always moved off in the end, though they often stayed a while, as this one did, whistling through their teeth, like stand-up comics about to risk another joke.

  He snatched the shoe out of her hand and hurled it violently away from her into the Kingsland Road.

  ‘What you going to do now?’

  Nenna shook off her other shoe and began half walking and half running as fast as she could, not looking behind her, Laburnum Street, Whiston Street, Hows Street, Pearson Street, a group at the end of Cremers Street who stood laughing, probably at her. One foot seemed to be bleeding. I expect they think I’ve been drinking.

  Where the Hackney Road joins Kingsland Road a taxi drew up beside her.

  ‘You’re out late.’

  ‘I don’t know what the time is.’

  ‘A bit late for paddling. Where are you going?’

  ‘To the river.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘People jump in sometimes.’

  Nenna told him, without much expecting to be believed, that she lived on Battersea Reach. The driver twisted his arm backwards to open the door.

  ‘You’d like a lift, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘I haven’t any money.’

  ‘Who said anything about money?’

  She got into the warm interior of the taxi, reeking of tobacco and ancient loves, and fell asleep at once. The taxi-man drove first to Old Street, where there was a garage open all night for the trade, and bought a tankful of petrol. Then he turned through the locked and silent City and towards the Strand, where the air first begins to feel damp, blowing up the side streets with the dawn wind off the river.

  ‘We can go round by Arthur’s in Covent Garden and get a sandwich, if you want,’ he said, ‘that won’t break the bank.’

  Then he saw that his fare was asleep. He stopped and had a cup of tea himself, and explained to the Covent Garden porters, who wanted to know what he’d got in the back, that it was the Sleeping Beauty.

  The taxi drew up opposite the Battersea Bridge end of the boats. Only the driver’s expression showed what he thought of the idea of living in a place like that. But it might suit some people. Carefully, as one who was used to such endings, he woke Nenna up.

  ‘You’re home, dear.’

  Then he made a U turn and drove away so rapidly that she could not make out his number, only the red tail light diminishing, at more than legal speed, down the deserted Embankment. She was, therefore, never able to thank him. Although it must be three or four in the morning, there were still lights showing on Lord Jim. Richard was standing on the afterdeck, wearing a Naval duffle coat, Arctic issue.

  ‘What are you doing, Nenna, where are your shoes?’

  ‘What are you doing, Richard, standing there in your greatcoat?’

  Neither of them was speaking sensibly.

  ‘My wife’s left me.’

  She must have done, Nenna thought, or he wouldn’t call Laura ‘my wife’.

  ‘Surely she’s only gone to stay with her family. You told me so.’

  Although it was very unlikely that they could be disturbing anyone they both spoke almost in whispers, and Nenna’s last remark, which scarcely deserved an answer, was lost in the air, drowned by the wash of high tide.

  ‘I haven’t liked to say anything about it, but you must have noticed, that evening you stayed to have a drink with us, that my wife wasn’t quite herself.’

  ‘I thought she was,’ said Nenna.

  Richard was startled. ‘Don’t you like her?’

  ‘I can’t tell. I should have to meet her somewhere else.’

  ‘You probably think I’m an obstinate swine to make her live here on Lord Jim. I couldn’t really believe she wouldn’t like it. I’m afraid my mind doesn’t move very fast, not as fast as some people’s. I wanted to get her right away from her family, they’re a disrupting factor, I don’t mind telling you.’

  ‘Do they play the piano?’ Nenna asked. She could no longer feel her feet, but, glancing down at them, not too obviously for fear Richard should feel that he ought to do something about them, she saw that both of them were now bleeding. A hint of some religious association disturbed her. In the convent passage the Sacred Heart looked down in reproach. And suppose she had left marks on the floor of the taxi?

  ‘Of course I wouldn’t have suggested taking her to live anywhere that was below standard. I had a very good man in to see to the heating and lighting, and the whole conversion was done professionally. But I suppose that wasn’t really the point. The question really was, did being alone with me on a boat seem like a good idea or not?’

  ‘She’ll come back, Richard.’

  ‘That won’t alter the fact that she went away.’

  Richard evidently felt that memory must keep to its place, otherwise how could it be measured accurately?

  ‘Nenna, you’ve hurt your foot!’

  Overwhelmed by not having noticed this earlier, by his failure of politeness, observation and helpfulness, all that had been taught him from boyhood up, Richard proceeded at the double onto the Embankment, to escort her on to Lord Jim.

  ‘They’re all right, honestly, Richard. It’s only a scrape.’ That was the children’s word. ‘Just lend me a handkerchief.’

  Richard was the kind of man who has two clean handkerchiefs on him at half past three in the morning. From the hold, where everything had its proper place, he fetched a bottle of TCP and a pair of half-wellingtons. The boots looked very much too big, but she appreciated that he wouldn’t have liked to lend a pair of Laura’s. Or perhaps Laura had taken all her things with her.

  ‘Your feet are rather small, Nenna.’

  Richard liked things to be the right size.

  ‘Smaller than standard, I think.’ He seated her firmly on one of the lights, and, without mistake or apology, put each of her feet into one of the clean boots. Each foot in turn felt the warmth of his hands and relaxed like an animal who trusts the vet.

  ‘I don’t know why you’re wandering about here in the dark anyway. Nenna, have you been to a party?’

  ‘Do you really think I go to parties where everyone leaves their shoes behind?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know. You lead a bit of a Bohemian existence, I mean, a lot more Bohemian than I do. I mean, I know various people in Chelsea, but they don’t seem very different from anyone else.’

  ‘I’ve come from a bit farther than Chelsea tonight,’ Nenna said.

  ‘Ple
ase don’t think I’m being inquisitive. You mustn’t think I’m trying to find out about your private affairs.’

  ‘Richard, how old are you?’

  ‘I was born on June 2nd 1922. That made me just seventeen when the war broke out.’ Richard only estimated his age in relationship to his duties.

  Nenna sat moving her feet about inside the spacious wellingtons. It was the river’s most elusive hour, when darkness lifts off darkness, and from one minute to another the shadows declare themselves as houses or as craft at anchor. There was a light wind from the north-west.

  ‘Nenna, would you like to come out in the dinghy?’

  Too tired to be surprised by anything, Nenna looked at the davits and saw that the dinghy must have been lowered away already. If everything hadn’t been quite in order he wouldn’t, of course, have asked her.

  ‘We can go up under Wandsworth Bridge as far as the Fina Oil Depot and then switch off and drift down with the tide.’

  ‘Were you going to go anyway?’ asked Nenna. The question seemed of great importance to her.

  ‘No, I was hoping someone might come along and keep me company.’

  ‘You mean you’d left it to chance?’ Nenna couldn’t believe this.

  ‘I was hoping that you might come.’

  Well, thought Nenna.

  They had to go down the rope side-ladder, Richard first. Her feet hurt a good deal, and she thought, though not wishing to be ungrateful, that she might have done better without the boots. However, she managed to step in amidships without rocking Lord Jim’s dinghy by an inch.

  ‘Cast off, Nenna.’

  She was back for a moment on Bras d’Or, casting off, coiling the painter up neatly, approved of by her father, and by Louise.

  It had been a test, then, she remembered, of a day’s success if the outboard started up first time. Richard’s Johnson, obedient to the pressed button, came to life at once, and she saw that it had never occurred to him that it mightn’t. Small boats develop emotions to a fine pitch, and she felt that she would go with him to the end of the world, if his outboard was always going to start like that. And indeed, reality seemed to have lost its accustomed hold, just as the day wavered uncertainly between night and morning.