Houseboat on the Seine: A Memoir

by William Wharton

  He’s drawing away. If this wasn’t a serious flood, I hate to think what one would be. This was just about as bad as Mr. Sisley’s flood, at least from what I can see in the paintings – and they were done almost a hundred years ago. I watch to see what he’s doing next. He’s drawing inverted cubes up where the cables would be tied.

  ‘Now, this is the hard part, and I can’t see any way around it. We need to dig holes here and here.’

  He points with his pencil.

  ‘These holes need to be deep enough to hold two to three yards of concrete at least one meter deep. Into each of these, we drive two I-beams two meters long. They need to be at least fourteen-centimeter beams. But if we do this, and are tied tight to them, your boat will never budge. You won’t have a worry left: in the world.’

  How do I tell him I won’t have a cent left either and I’m too old to dig two holes that deep and mix that much concrete? Those days are gone forever. Maybe if I were twenty, yes, perhaps even thirty. But now? No way. He goes on. It’s as if he’s reading my mind.

  ‘I have a friend just up the road in Louveciennes who has an old backhoe. He mostly does ditch digging for people putting in sewers or things like that. But he never uses it at night, so it just sits there. I’m sure we can borrow it from him, and it won’t cost much at all. I know how to use one and it’s so close by we won’t have any hauling or transportation costs.’

  My God, he’s serious! How did I ever get into all this, and how can I get out of it? Should I?

  ‘With that backhoe, I can dig those two holes in three hours, clean as a whistle. My dad has a spotlight we can borrow, and you’ll just stand on the bank and hold it so I can see what I’m doing. It’ll be great fun. I love using big machines like that. Maybe we can find some other places we can dig things up, too.’

  He’s raring to go. He uses the phone on the boat to call this friend with the backhoe. Backhoe doesn’t actually mean much to me, except a hoe one must use backward. I don’t see how he can dig these holes he’s talking about, using any kind of machine, especially with only one arm to run it.

  But we’re on. He babbles away in French on the phone. When he puts the phone down he’s smiling. I’m hoping the smile means the guy just laughed in his face, but no. For only two hundred francs, we can have the backhoe any night after seven, till midnight. Sam is jubilant.

  Concrete Evidence

  ‘We’ll wait till that water goes down another meter, then we’ll start. The ground should be soft and be no problem at all. I’m sure the last of the water will be off the chemin de halage by then. First, we can buy our concrete at the big sand and gravel place in Sartrouville. That way, we can skip the middleman and have the concrete mixed while they’re rolling from there to the boat.’

  I’m listening, in fact I’m all ears and antennae. How can I stop all this without hurting Sam’s feelings and, I’m wondering if they’ll take my new Carte Bleu to pay for all this. I’ve had it only a month and haven’t used it yet. There’s no money in the bank, so until we can get some, it doesn’t mean anything anyway. I wonder how the French law takes care of a case like this. Is it fraud?

  But I don’t seem able to come up with anything to stop all this from happening. I’m paralyzed. The size of the project, the way we would be doing it, my total inexperience, and worst of all, my penury and unwillingness to admit to it, all gang up on me while I’m listening to Sam.

  He says the water should be back down enough by the end of the week. He’ll check with Tom and Matt to see if they can help, especially with the concrete. He wants me to drive him to Sartrouville right now so we can put in our order. I don’t understand why we don’t just telephone, but when we arrive there, I know why.

  It’s only about a fifteen-minute drive. We turn into a terrible conglomerate of large dump trucks, small pickup trucks and enormous concrete-mixing trucks. We park in an unused corner of this mêlée and stride across the wet yellow combination of sand, earth and gravel that covers everything at the base of a huge tower. Under the legs of the tower is a cement truck, and great metal slides are pouring in quantities of sand, gravel and cement. The noise is deafening. Added to it is the sound of both sand and gravel being moved up to the top by bucketed moving belts.

  Sam asks a few questions and motions me to follow him. We start up a stairway around the outside of this seething tower, on metal steps at an angle steeper than my gangplank at the worst moment of flood. Sam is dashing up those two steps at a time. The steps are perforated metal so I can see through to the concrete-mixing truck and all the activity below. I’m about ready to close my eyes, sit down, turn around and inch my way back to the ground. Sam looks back at me and waits.

  ‘Come on, you’ll get used to it. It only looks high. We aren’t much higher up than a ten-story building. It isn’t much farther, come on.’

  He’s started his loping again, two steps at a time. I look back and see some workmen coming up behind us. I’m trapped. Even I, with my massive cowardice, could never inch my way, on my duff, past these heavy-footed men with their yellow construction hats.

  I close my eyes, grab hold tight to the thin metal pipe inside railing and continue, inching a step at a time as those behind me shake the entire structure with their heavy thumping feet. After what seems two years, I open my eyes, and there’s Sam leaning over the railing on the outside, looking to see if I’m still behind him. I close my eyes and brace myself for the inevitable tumbling crash to the yellow mud below. When I open them again, I’m only about ten feet from a platform where Sam is waiting. I count those last steps and smile sheepishly. Sam is gentleman enough not to say anything. I’m already worrying about getting back down!

  Sam knocks on the door of a small cabin at the top of this miniature Leaning Tower of Pisa. We go in. It smells thickly of tobacco smoke, old sweat, obscenities and concrete. My vocabulary of French obscenity is becoming greater than my entire scope of the French language.

  Sam uses his stump to work his way to a desk in the corner. Nobody seems to be objecting to his pushing up to the front. Maybe I’ve discovered one advantage to having only one arm.

  Later, I ask Sam about it and he says that wasn’t it, it’s just that most of these men work for big construction companies and come up here to laugh and chat with the guys. This is something they enjoy; they’re in no hurry. They’re mostly drivers of the concrete trucks, which is no fun in itself. When they’re on the work site, they need to regulate the flow of concrete into the hampers, a filthy, dangerous and fatiguing job.

  Sam apparently gets our order in and arranges for delivery at the boat the coming Saturday. He uses my credit card and then folds the receipt into his pocket. I begin to understand why nobody minds Sam’s butting into line. They’re as afraid as I am of going down that metal matchstick of a staircase.

  We go out and I stay just one step behind Sam all the way, keeping my eyes focused on his back. I’m halfway down before I can risk a look over the side, and it’s worse than I’d imagined. I’m stopped cold, and it takes almost a minute to make myself begin walking down again. Sam waits for me but doesn’t say anything. He must think I’m a real wimp. I guess I am. I’m not particularly afraid of heights, not as bad as Matt or Rosemary, but this is just too much of a test for me.

  We get back to the boat, and Sam starts right away dragging boards from everywhere on the boat and piling them on the gangplank. He searches out my two hammers and the nails I have left. I’m just watching him; he smiles up at me as he lines the boards on the outside edge of the still-descending gangplank.

  ‘I’ll bet tomorrow we can start building those forms in the holes for the concrete.’

  He says this while the chemin de halage is still under almost a foot of water. But I have to admit it is going down fast now. I’ve got to face it sooner or later. Up till now I’ve been afraid to ask.

  ‘Sam, what can I pay you for all this work? Do you work by the hour or the day, or what? I could never get these things done a
lone.’

  He smiles his sweet, reasonable smile again and shakes his head.

  ‘No way. I love doing projects like this. The only trouble is I can’t keep skipping school all the time. Pollicott, the Vice Principal, will have my ass. Maybe we’ll put off building the forms another day. I only have one class in the afternoons on Fridays. I’ll be here by ten, and we can get to work.’

  ‘But you can’t just work like this for nothing. You have special skills and knowledge. I have to pay for your time at least.’

  ‘OK, let’s say a hundred francs a day. But you don’t need to pay except when you have the money.’

  ‘That’s a good deal for me. I’ll have some money by Saturday, and I’ll pay you then. I need a rest, too, to finish up some paintings I’ve started.’

  ♦

  That night, I tell Rosemary about climbing up the monster tower to buy the concrete. She says I should let Sam do crazy things like that if he wants to, but I should know better. I tell her how we’ve decided I’ll pay him a hundred francs a day when he’s working on the boat.

  ‘How about Tom and Matt? They’re working, too.’ I hadn’t thought of that. I can’t be paying out three hundred francs a day or we’ll be broke in a hurry. I’ll need to think about it. That evening and all the next day, I work to finish up three paintings I’d already gotten up to different points between drawing and final glazing. They come out great, considering the little time I have, and the pressure. I end up Thursday night making simple baguette frames for new ones.

  ∨ Houseboat on the Seine ∧

  Fourteen

  Two Holes in One

  Friday, when I drive up to the boat, Sam’s already there. He’s pulling the wood off the gangplank and piling it up on the chemin de halage near where we’ll be doing the digging. He says he’s skipped his second-period class and taken the RER train out. He has the sledgehammer and has sharpened some of the two-by-four-sized boards so we can drive them in at the corners where we want the hole. The water has gone down considerably; it’s about half a foot lower than the level of the chemin de halage.

  We work all day driving in those posts, cutting and nailing the boards to them. We aren’t going all the way down into the hole with our form, just deep enough to stop the concrete from flowing away over the edge of the hole. I can’t believe how Sam has it worked out and how hard he works. He’d be worth more than a hundred francs a day if he didn’t do anything at all, just figured things out. But, in reality, he works three times as fast and as hard as I do. He always seems to know just what’s the next thing that needs to be done, then how to do it. The more I work with him, the more I wonder what it is I’ve been learning all my life.

  We have the forms built and dirt packed on the outside of them as it starts to turn dark. Dirt, hell, I should say mud. It’s like clay not quite ready for turning into pots. Sam shows me the light he’s borrowed from his dad and the extension cord that we’ll run along the gangplank and into the heavy-duty socket I used for running the sander. When we switch this on, it’s really bright. Sam shows me where I’m to stand for each part of the work as we dig. He’s telephoned his friend with the backhoe again, and things are all set for six o’clock.

  Just then, the rest of the family comes home. They’re astonished at what we’ve done, just as I am. Sam is anxious to be off and pick up the backhoe, but Rosemary talks him into staying on with us for dinner. Sam calls home so they know where he is. Rosemary goes to the phone and talks to Barbara, Sam’s mother, and tries to explain what’s going on and how he’s invited to dinner with us. Sam comes back on the phone and says he won’t be late and she shouldn’t worry. I’ve wondered if there was someone worrying about Sam, besides me.

  We sort of rush through dinner – spaghetti with meatballs and fruit cocktail for dessert. I eat faster than I should most of the time, but Sam, with his one hand, just shovels it in. He cuts the spaghetti with his fork, then sort of slides it to the edge of the plate and pushes it into his mouth. At a quarter to six, we’re on our way.

  We arrive at Sam’s friend’s house in plenty of time, and Sam drives the backhoe in front of my car along route N13. I keep on my emergency flashers just behind him because he can’t go any faster than twenty kilometers an hour. It’s peak traffic, and we’re sitting ducks, easy targets for some of these wild French drivers dashing home for dinner. Luckily, their aim isn’t too good; so we make it to the boat.

  Not only have I never seen a backhoe, I’ve never really watched one in operation. I’ve driven by street repairs going on but never actually taken the time to look. Sam rolls in beside the boule court and onto the chemin de halage. He lines the backhoe up with our hole, and after I’ve switched on the light, starts dropping the hoe down into the hole and scraping away. It’s a tough balancing act as he carefully lowers the mouth of the hoe inside the forms and scrapes away. It reminds me a bit of the oil wells along the road in Los Angeles. It’s like a big bird taking drinks out of a dish.

  When he pulls the hoe out filled with dirt, he lifts it high and swings over with the machine to the downhill side of the hole, dumping the load into the water. He explains over the noise of the machine how we’re lucky we don’t need to rent a truck and carry the dirt off. I can’t help but worry about the Le Clercs when all this mud rolls up against their boat. But then, the water is so muddy anyway, they probably won’t notice.

  Sam keeps digging away, somehow avoiding the forms we’ve put in and pulling the dirt out carefully. It’s somewhat like watching a swallow build a nest with mud. Every so often, he has me take a rule and drop it into the hole to see how deep it is. He has calculated we’ll need to go down at least a meter or we’ll have concrete left over. Right there is an idea that could give me nightmares.

  As soon as the first hole is finished, he whirls the backhoe and rolls along the chemin de halage to the place for the other hole. It all goes as before, except some of the dirt is beginning to pile up on the fence between the Le Clercs’ and our place. Sam insists it will all wash away or if not, when the water is down some more, I can take a stiff broom along with my hose and brush it away. He’s been right about things so far, so I just take it on faith.

  We finish the second hole at about eleven o’clock. He’s promised to have the backhoe returned to the owner by midnight. Matt’s been out helping us, holding the light sometimes, or measuring. There’s nothing much more we can do, except when one of the forms begins to float up a bit, we give it a few whacks with the sledge. Matt’s as impressed as I am. It is amazing to watch Sam run this machine, almost as if it’s some kind of toy.

  The last thing, after we’re finished, we hose off the backhoe, washing away all the mud before we return it. When we’re finished, it looks clean enough from what we can see with the lamp. Matt lights Sam’s way back to the road from the chemin de halage while I go up and turn my car around.

  We ease our way out onto N13 again. The traffic isn’t so bad at this time of night, but I keep cringing, expecting one of these madmen speeders to just run up my back. But all goes well.

  When we finally make it, I give the two hundred francs to Sam, who, in turn, gives it to the owner of the backhoe, who, after checking over his machine, takes it, and I presume, goes to bed. Then I drive Sam up to the RER and he catches one of the last trains back to Paris. I drive home to the boat and am more than glad to snuggle into bed with Rosemary. It’s been a long day.

  On Saturday, Sam and Tom arrive at about nine-thirty. The concrete truck is supposed to arrive at ten. I’m standing on the gangplank, squirting mud off things as they rise clear of the water. I also see the enormous yellow concrete truck breaking and cutting its way through M. Le Clerc’s beautiful willow trees. There go the beginnings of my somewhat tenuous friendship with my downriver neighbor. These trees of his hang out over the path, and there’s just no way to slide this twelve-foot-high monster past without a little impromptu trimming. I just hope all the noise won’t wake the Le Clerc family. Some kind of su
it, proces, the French call it, would be what I don’t need at this point. But c’est la vie.

  The three of us start working madly to build a splashboard and slide for the concrete when it swooshes down from the truck into the hole. We don’t have time to build two, so we’ll shift it to the second hole after we’ve poured the first.

  Sam posts us all where he wants us when the pouring starts. We watch as the truck, like an enormous sea monster working its way through seaweed, emerges. Sam indicates where he wants the concrete poured. He speaks good, American-accented French. The driver hops down from the cab and looks. He nods. He swings the slide for the concrete around and lines it up with our hole. Sam puts another brace on our splashboard. Matt and I are on either side of the hole with shovels. Tom is bracing the slide trough brace with his feet. We’re ready – at least as ready as we’ll ever be. The mixer has been turning all the time. The man at the control for the concrete slide shouts to the driver of the truck, who’s leaning out the door to see what’s going on. Sam gives the signal and the concrete starts pouring out, solid-state oatmeal mush, splashing all over us. It’s going well, and I’m beginning to swallow the lump in my throat. I’ve never liked oatmeal anyway.

  Matt and I are pushing the concrete from the center out toward the sides of the hole. It’s sure coming out fast! Sam’s watching the level carefully. He’s the first to see that the forms are beginning to float, to lift. He springs through the air, over the concrete, like an antelope, and balances himself on the post that is lifting. He signals the operator to hold the concrete. Sam has us level off the concrete already poured. He turns to Tom.

  ‘Tom, go find the sledge. I think it’s just inside the door where I put it last night. Hurry!’

  Tom lets go of the brace for the splashboard, dashes across the chemin de halage, pulls himself up onto the gangplank and runs to the door. Rosemary is standing there holding the sledge out for him. I notice the rest of the family is standing there at the door watching this (so far) near debacle. Tom comes running back with the sledgehammer. Sam is still balancing himself on the post.