Houseboat on the Seine: A Memoir

by William Wharton

  ‘Tom, I’m going to shift my weight from the post to the two boards nailed to each side of it. When I do that, you give a few hard whacks on top of the post where I’ve been standing. I think that should be enough.’

  Tom nods. Sam jumps to the edges of the planks, and Tom starts pounding on the post. It goes down about four more inches. Sam stays on the side boards. He gives the signal to the guy operating the concrete slide to start the concrete again. He makes a sign with his hand and says, in French, ‘Lentement. ‘Slowly.

  Like an orchestra conductor, Sam directs the concrete pouring until it’s up to the tops of the forms. He signals for a stop, and Matt and I continue shoveling the concrete and making a smooth top surface. Tom has found two huge rocks somewhere and puts them one on each side of the post so Sam can get down. Sam lowers himself slowly, and it all stays in place. We find another board and lay it across the forms, over the concrete, and load it with all the stones and rocks we can find. The truck has moved to the other hole. We carefully take off our concrete slide board and start installing it there. So far, so good, but I’m dripping with nervous sweat and some honest sweat. Sam is cool as a Popsicle. Tom and Matt have worked up a sweat, too.

  The pouring of the second hole is about like the first, except the forms don’t float. I’m amazed again when we use up exactly the amount of concrete left and the hole is just filled when we’re finished. Tom, Sam and Matt put another board across the top of the poured concrete, resting on the forms as before, topping it with rocks, while I help the drivers clean off the concrete on their truck with our hose. I keep looking back at what we’ve just finished and can’t believe it. It’s only about five minutes to eleven. We’ve managed to have all that concrete poured in less than an hour. The concrete truck drives off, more impromptu trimming of the willows. I look, but nobody seems to be watching from the Le Clerc boat. I’ll try to straighten it all out later.

  When the truck’s driven off, Sam checks everything and gathers us together.

  ‘Now we’ve got to hustle over to Chez Mollard and buy the I-beams to pound in before the concrete sets. I’d meant to do it yesterday, but there wasn’t time. I have my heavy drill, and we’ll need to drill holes in each of the I-beams, so we won’t have much time. I called Mollard this morning, and they close for lunch at noon, so we’d better be on our way. These babies are going to be heavy. Drilling and pounding them in isn’t going to be any picnic either.’

  So we gather up rope, a blanket and some planks that Sam insists upon to put on the roof of the car so the weight will be distributed. We’re off for Mollard’s by eleven-thirty. It seems as if we’re always rushing. I imagine when one is working with concrete it’s like that. Time, tide and concrete wait for no man.

  We’re there twenty minutes before they close. Sam directs us back to the section where I’d bought my steel bars and my first I-beam. Nobody looks particularly happy to see us. But Sam knows exactly what we want and points them out. I go into the first office to make arrangements and then to the front office to pay before they close me out. Rosemary was paid, so I have some money now. I give Sam his two hundred francs and Tom, with some reluctance, takes another hundred. Matt won’t take any.

  ‘Come on, Dad, it’s my boat, too, you know.’

  I don’t argue too hard. I’m pleased he feels this way. I love the idea of family, of family helping each other, of everybody being part of what’s going on.

  When I come back, they’ve already loaded four huge I-beams on the roof. Even with Sam’s planks to distribute the weight, the roof’s sagging. After I give the man in the yard my receipt from the office and while everybody is hanging around to see us out, Sam motions me over to another part of the yard. It’s where they store great rolls of chain, all sizes. He walks over to one of the biggest, with links a quarter of an inch thick and each link more than an inch long.

  ‘That’s what you need to hold your boat in place. It’s galvanized and will never rust. After all this work, it’d be dumb tying the boat up with that rusty, rotting cable you have there.’

  I nod. I’m beginning to be afraid these guys here at Mollard are about to throw us out. One thing you don’t do is delay a Frenchman from his lunch; laissez-faire and all, but first things first. I’m also a bit concerned they might come chasing us for another reason. I paid for the I-beams with my Carte Bleu again. It was so much faster that way, and everybody was in a hurry. I’ll put some money into the BNP with a check tonight.

  We pile into the car. We’re absolutely riding on the shocks. How much shock can a shock absorber absorb? Do they go into shock? I ease us out of there into the lunchtime traffic. Sam suggests we don’t try driving down the chemin de halage because we might get stuck in the mud, and besides, it’s too bumpy, so we park up on the road. We carefully slide one of the I-beams from the top of the car, scraping as little paint off the top as we can. Poor Hillman. It’s called a Hillman Husky, but it isn’t that husky!

  It takes all four of us to carry each of those beams down to the chemin de halage. I can’t imagine how they managed to heft them up onto the roof. Maybe the guy in the yard at Mollard’s helped them, probably just to rush us out of there.

  When we have the four beams down on the chemin de halage, I’m ready for lunch. I figure we’ll all go across to Sisley’s café and have ham or cheese sandwiches with some beer. But I didn’t figure on Sam and concrete.

  ‘Hey, you guys, first we’ve got to push these babies into that concrete before it begins to set. And when we do it, we’ll need to make sure we don’t start the forms floating again. We should be drilling those holes in the beams, too, but we’ll need to do that when they’re in place; now, it’ll probably be better because then we can line up the holes. So, we’ll keep these stones and planks in place. We can stand on the plank to give us some leverage when we start pounding with the sledge.’

  Sam climbs up onto the plank, placing his feet near the edge of the form, especially on the downhill side, where the pressure is the greatest. Tom, Matt and I puff and strain until we’ve got one beam up to Sam and vertical. He lines it up near the middle of the block, then lifts and plunges it in, wiggling it back and forth as it settles down.

  Tom then climbs up and starts pounding on top of the beam.

  He pounds until he can’t lift the sledge anymore. Then Matt climbs up and takes his swings. By the time it’s my turn, the I-beam is almost as deep as we want it. Sam has set it straight up and down, not tilted the way mine was. I ask about this and he tells me he’ll explain later, but it will be all right. We’re in his hands. I wonder if Matt and Tom are as confused as I am.

  Now we take the next beam and do our best to work it vertical and as close to the other beam as Sam wants it. He’s twisting it so the beams are exactly parallel. Then he begins to rock this beam back and forth until it’s obviously through the concrete. Again, we start pounding it in, till it’s the same depth as the first one. Sam has been running around with another, smaller sledge smacking this beam to keep it parallel. We’re all about ready to drop.

  I stagger over to the second concrete ‘deadman’ behind Sam, along with Tom and Matt. I’m finding out how the age difference really cuts one down. I’m hoping there will be some difficulties to slow us up so I can recoup my strength. But no. Sam is standing up on the edge of the deadman, motioning Matt and Tom to push one of the two remaining I-beams up to him and vertical. I give a shove with all my strength to help clear the edge of the form. Sam goes through the same actions as with the last one, working it into place and level.

  ‘Now, Tom, knock it down in and I’ll stand over here at the post so there’s no chance the form will float up.’

  He sets himself into position, and Tom picks up the sledgehammer and starts to swing. He takes ten healthy cuts, then puts down the head of the sledge so Matt can continue. Sam is measuring all along. Matt tries to match Tom, but Sam calls him off after eight swings. Sam jumps down and measures the height of the beam sticking above th
e concrete. He lowers his eye and sights on the first concrete deadman and the posts over there. He seems satisfied.

  ‘OK, now we’ll set in this last beam and we can go fill up our stomachs.’

  He checks to see if the form is floating. It’s fine. He climbs up again. Tom, Matt and I struggle with the last beam. We have just enough strength to fix it in the right spot of drying concrete so Sam can maneuver it into position. He wiggles it a few times using his whole body, holding it against his chest with his left arm and right stump. He’s still balancing on those boards around the concrete. He gives the sign that we should start with the pounding.

  It’s my turn, so I climb up on the opposite corner and start swinging with all my might. Twice I miss and just barely avoid hitting Sam on his booted foot. I manage seven swings and then I’m totally kaput. Tom takes over and, with his ninth swing, pounds it in deep enough to satisfy Sam. Sam packs the concrete around the two beams after he’s sure they’re level enough. He jumps down and wipes his hand, covered with concrete, on his jeans.

  ‘Well, that’s something worth having done, I’d say. Where can we find something to eat around here?’

  I give up on my idea of feeding them at the café. I look at my watch. It’s twelve-thirty. The routier restaurant down the street should be open. They give a good, hearty meal for fifty francs, and no sandwich at a café is going to be enough for these three, or me, after this morning’s work. I tell them what I have in mind. By the smiles all around, I know I’m right. We’re about ready to leave when Rosemary comes out onto the gangplank.

  ‘Come on in. You guys must be starved. I’ve cooked a chicken and made a pizza. We also have some beer.’

  There are even bigger smiles on their faces. This is better than any restaurant de routier could give us. We start washing the cement off our hands, faces, boots. We leave the boots on the gangplank. Even so, we’re a fairly raunchy bunch when we sit down. We wipe out that chicken and pizza, even destroying a big bowl of salad.

  ∨ Houseboat on the Seine ∧

  Fifteen

  Dead Man Tales

  After lunch, we sit down while Sam draws out his idea for connecting the big perches to hold the boat in place, that is, away from the land in high flood. It turns out, he explains, that Mollard doesn’t carry a long-enough length of metal tubing to reach from the deadmen, with their I-beams, to the bollards of the metal boat, where he intends to attach them. He’s investigated in a catalog and found two different lengths that would fit together like parts of a telescope.

  He’ll then, after we have them in place, drill a hole through to keep them from sliding. It sounds look a good idea. I hate to think of the cost for such a system, but after all the concrete and beams, not counting the entire cost of the boat, it’s the only solution, Sam explains.

  ‘We can go now to pick them up. But first, this is how we’ll do the hookup.

  ‘On the quay it will be easy. I’ll drill big holes through the two beams in line, then we’ll drill holes in the perches so we can slide a pin through the beams and through the perche on the inside of the beams. They can swing up and down with any flooding or rocking of the boat, and still have enough give for sideways motion when necessary, but not too much.’

  He draws this out so we all have the idea. I have to admit it’s a great solution. I nod along with the others. I feel for my card in my pocket. ‘In for a penny, in for a pound,’ or maybe that should be ‘in for a centime, in for a franc’ – lots of francs, phantom francs, like my phantom paintings. More likely, in for a couple years, at the least – in prison, that is. It’ll give me time to write more letters to my painting constituents. I won’t tell them how I’m spending the money, or where I am; they’d never believe me anyway.

  Sam continues drawing. This time it’s more complex.

  ‘On the boat, at each of the bollards we’ll make a collar out of strip metal. We’ll wrap it around the bollard under the ties and drill holes through the ends. We’ll also drill holes through the perches so we can do the same kind of connection we’ve done on the land. It should work fine, and I’m sure we can get everything we need at Mollard’s.’

  Great, I think, but what are we doing with perches anyway? I’ve had many birds in my life and I’ve always made perches for them, that I understand. In fact, a part of my dream for this boat is to have an aviary on the back end of the boat, but perches, now? I’m also somewhat concerned about going back to Mollard’s after using my empty new card this morning and now using it this afternoon. I still haven’t had a chance to deposit money in the account; things have just been going too fast. I don’t tell the boys anything about my worries – no sense ruining their lives.

  Telescopic Perches

  So, we go to Chez Mollard again, around a corner to where they store their longest bars and tubes of metal. Sam finds what he’s looking for, and the four of us pull out the pieces he indicates. They’re heavy! I take the bill up to the office again. When I come back, all relieved, with PAYE stamped on it, they’ve already tied two of the poles to the roof of the car. Each is eight meters long – that’s about twenty-five feet! Sam walks around the car, jumps on the back bumper.

  ‘I think Tom and I should stay here while you take these to the boat. The two of you can unload them on the chemin de halage if you lift off one end at a time.’

  We agree to this, so we leave Tom and Sam in the yard while we cautiously work our way back through Le Pecq. We have a real struggle unloading these metal tubes, even with Sam’s parting instructions.

  When we drive back into Mollard’s, they’ve already been experimenting with sliding one tube into the other. Sam’s torn between sliding the one all the way into the other or carrying them separately the way we did the first two. I can’t believe it.

  ‘Wait a minute, Sam. Matt and I could just barely lift a single one off the roof of the car. We’re in no real hurry.’

  ‘OK, then we’ll take them apart again and tie them on the same way as before.’

  ‘Sam, you’re an absolute madman. We’ll all wind up with double hernias.’

  It’s a little bit like the chicken, the fox and the grain as to whether we should carry these two to the boat, leaving two of us here in the yard, or try to make it with all four of us plus the two metal tubes. We decide to risk it.

  And we make it. A couple times I’m ready to give in but don’t say anything. Sam suggests that all three of the passengers jump out before I turn down to the chemin de halage. I drive on, carefully, close to the boat. All four of us lower the putative perches to the ground.

  It’s almost four o’clock. I’m ready to quit. Sam wants to push the tubes together in their telescopic way just to see if they’re really long enough and strong enough to do the job. His idea is that we use a rope to pull one of the tubes up onto the boat near a bollard, first. Then with him holding up the other end, standing in the dinghy, we slip one into the other like a giant telescope.

  We manipulate the bankside tube into position to slide into the first one. To me, it sounds like a gigantic version of threading a needle, but I can’t come up with a better way except to hire a crane or a helicopter.

  Pulling the one end up to the front bollard and tying it there isn’t too much of a hassle, but now the other end is sunk in the water. Tom, Matt and I slide, pull, bully the bankside tube down the bank so one edge is more or less in line with Sam, who has taken out the little boat and muscled the other end of the tube into the boat with him. I don’t even look.

  Tom is by the water’s edge. He has high boots on. I’m in the middle and Matt’s at the top. Sam keeps giving us directions for lining the tubes up. We seem to miss at least twenty times. Then, finally, after what seems hours, but is probably more like five minutes, Sam gives the signal PUSH! and we push like crazy, Sam still giving directions. It reminds me bizarrely of helping my wife have our first baby. And just as with the baby, it suddenly, swiftly, glides in as the baby slid out.

  Matt, with our help,
pulls the land end up toward the concrete deadman and puts it down near the beams we’ve pounded in. The telescopic, elongated perche is resting on the deadman. Sam gives us instructions to let go so he can see how strong our contraption is; it’s obviously long enough.

  It doesn’t budge. Before we have a chance to cheer, Sam has leaped from the boat and one-handedly pulled himself up onto the perche, then swung his leg up so he has the perche straddled. Then he stands up on the pole and tightrope walks his way to the bank with a final spring.

  ‘Just like downtown. Couldn’t ask for anything better than that, could we? Let’s push the other one in place before it’s too dark.’

  At least they could all have groaned, but I’m the only one. Sam has moved the dinghy to the rear of the houseboat. Maybe we’re getting better or are just lucky, because on about the second trial, we shove that bank tube straight into the boat tube. Sam does his trick again, and we all applaud.

  Holes in the ‘I’s

  Monday I drive into Paris to pick up Sam at his parents’ boat. He shows me the smaller boat he’s built by himself in the space between his parents’ boat and the bank. It’s beautifully and cleverly designed with a plethora of personal inventions to help him be independent with his missing arm.

  He has a good workshop on his boat and most every tool I’ve ever seen. He’s set aside his power drill and some bits as well as everything needed to do some welding. We carry them up to my car. His parents are both working and his sister is in school. We drive through reasonable traffic out to our boat. He says the two of us are enough to do what needs to be done today, but he can’t do some things by himself.

  We plug in the extension cord, mount a metal bit into his drill and start on the holes in the concrete-bound I-beams. It takes a while for the bits to start penetrating the steel, and Sam stops every few minutes, allowing the steel in the bits to cool so they won’t lose their temper. Each hole takes about ten minutes. When he’s finished, he shoves the pin through the two holes and has me lift the end of the perche over the pin so he can get a good lineup for drilling these holes. He has to give me a hand, his only, but we work it into place. He does some more measuring and marking, then begins drilling with a slightly smaller bit. This goes more quickly, and in five minutes he’s finished, drilling straight through from one side to the other. When he comes through the second side, he pulls out the drill and bit, lowers them carefully to the ground, pulls back the welding mask he’s been wearing to protect his eyes from flying bits of metal and smiles.