We rake and dig and pull up weeds, mostly orties (nettles), until the bank is bare. We pour on ten sacks of fertilizer, somewhat superfluous, considering the rich soil left by the river in the wake of each flood, but we’re into doing things properly. Next, we plant our tulips over the bank, along with narcissus, daffodil and crocus. After this, I hand-spread our special shade-oriented grass.
Soon, with much loving care and watering, we possess a gorgeous lawn, a lawn we have no intention of mowing. The bank is too steep. There are tulips growing like brightly colored Easter eggs over the berge. We also have the springlike sprouting of other bulbs, a scattering of yellow, white and purple. The whole thing looks like an Easter basket. We know the garden is very amateurish, but we love it.
One Sunday, I look out the window and there are fishermen scattered, like dragons, throughout our Easter basket. They are tramping down our new grass, our tulips, our carefully planted impatiens. Speak of impatience! I run out onto the gangplank shouting and screaming at them as if I’m a madman. I am mad, not crazy-mad, but very ‘angry-mad.’ They shout back how the bank is public property and they can use it if they want, but, finally, reluctantly leave. Most of them are teenagers.
It is apparent that both for our convenience and the safety of others, as well as the survival of our garden, we must build a fence along the top of our berge at the edge of the chemin de halage. The Le Clercs have a fence all around their property, except on the river edge. It’s about five feet high, made of sharpened pickets placed close together. It makes their berge virtually a fortress. This is reinforced by a heavy oaken door with a large bell that must be rung before the door will be opened. It allows for a maximum of privacy, and many days I envy them, but it’s illegal. I don’t know how they got away with it. One cannot erect a fence along the chemin de halage that cannot be seen through and is higher than a man can step over. I know my inseam is thirty inches, so I decide to build a pointed picket fence thirty-two inches high, the length of Matt’s inseam. It seems fair enough, a compromise.
I paint it dark brown, the color of the earth along the bank, so it won’t violate the visual purity of things. It works out very well, so much so that several other boat people erect similar fences at low cost, since the pickets are only roof lathing and the cut I’ve designed doesn’t call for much wastage. I also buy a sign saying ATTENTION CHIEN MfiCHANT!!! That is, Look out, mean dog. I put this sign on the door to the gangplank.
It seems to help, at least we don’t have fishermen in our garden. Feeling guilty, I build a small wooden dock between our berge and our upriver neighbor, just for the fishermen. That’s OK except that fishermen in general are loud, and worse yet, earlyl
But live and let live. However, the next season, I buy ten pyracantha bushes and plant them all along the fence. They have a lovely year-round green leaf, are fast growing, and produce beautiful, small, highly fragrant blossoms, then gorgeous red, yellow and orange berries. Most important, they are covered with stiff, sharp thorns! We are rapidly becoming more than amateur as gardeners.
Per Square Meter
When we first bought the boat, our fee for the right to park it on the river, called our droit de stationnement, was paid to the local city hall of Le Port Mairie. It was the grand sum of sixty-nine francs a year, or about fifteen dollars. We had a legitimate droit de stationnement because of the Arctic explorer who put the boat in place originally. This declared droit de stationnement became important in determining our right to stay. As time passes, the cost of this ‘right’ goes up a bit at a time, nothing serious. Then, Les Fonts et Chaussees at Bougival contact us and want some money paid to the state of France for the space we take up in the river, as well as the place along the berge. We agree. The figure they quote per year is not outrageous.
Then, there’s the question as to whether the boat in the water now is indeed the boat to which the droit de stationnement had been granted. The original wooden boat was named Le bateau Lymnee, named after a small mammal in the Arctic. The point they’re making is that this boat is no longer in the water, and the metal hull we have now is merely a beheaded corpse to a boat that is functioning on the river as a pusher. In other words, the cabin and the motor constitute the real boat, not the crew cabin and oil cargo section we had bought.
This discussion goes on for over three years, during which we cannot be sure our boat is legitimately moored. It brings about many a sleepless night for me, the great worrier. This all comes up well after the incredible effort with Sam to secure the boat safely.
Finally, in desperation, I send Rosemary, my kindergarten-teacher wife, to discuss the problem with M. Le Cerb at Les Ponts et Chaussees in Bougival, three kilometers upriver. After all her years of taming kindergarten children, a mere director for the rivers and bridges of France is as nothing. It’s decided, albeit begrudgingly, that they will accord to our beloved monstrosity the rights and privileges originally pertaining to the Bateau Lymnee, but we cannot use the name of the barge, Ste. Marie-Tkerese, as the boat name for postal references. Ste. Marie-Therese is the name painted on the bow of our metal hull. I paint it over.
The final round is working out the system whereby the value of mooring places will be established by Les Ponts et Chaussees. It’s decided to charge by the square meters of displaced water in the river. For this, our boat, at twenty-seven meters by five meters, comes to one hundred and thirty-five square meters, for which we are to pay twenty francs per square meter per year, the sum of twenty-seven hundred francs. That, too, we think is fair enough, but many of our neighbors can’t, or won’t pay, and organize a group of riverboat inhabitants to fight the decisions made. In the end, I hope ‘in the end,’ it is agreed to accept the decisions regarding the square-meter proposal, the cost per meter being equivalent, approximately, to cost per square meter of land for rent on the banks of the river, although none of the land on the river is rented. It’s a complicated but interesting conclusion, very French. We, in our family, are mostly interested in maintaining our mooring at almost any cost. We now have such a commitment, both economically and emotionally, to the river life we’re living. We dread giving it up.
The Swimming Rabbit
As a kindergarten teacher, Rosemary had kept, despite my qualms about captive animals, quite a menagerie of small pets. There is at a minimum, one rabbit, usually dwarf, several guinea pigs, some hamsters that are always escaping, a turtle and goldfish. In spring there is also a contingent of three baby ducklings. By June, these are no longer ducklings, but full-grown, quacking monsters. By that time, the children in kindergarten are afraid of them. Usually, it’s Memorial Day, May Day in France, when we take the ducks down to our old water mill in Burgundy and put them on the pond, where they live happy lives.
Most short vacations, such as Christmas or Easter, Rosemary can work it out with some of the parents to take one or more of our zoo home with them. But the long summer holiday is another affair. ‘Farming out’ our farm to an American community that is mostly transient can be a challenge. Often, we take a good part of the beasts down to the mill, including the turtle and goldfish. When our children were young, these pets were always well cared for and gave much pleasure.
But one Easter, we can’t find a place for the rabbit. This is a surprise and something of a shock, because usually at Easter the rabbit is easily placed. We aren’t going to take Jimmy, the rabbit, down with us; it’s too difficult to transport him except in a cage, and we don’t have enough space in the auto. We decide to leave him in my studio with an adequate supply of proper rabbit food and some water. Even the children, after much consideration, are convinced Jimmy will be all right.
After Easter, we aren’t back at the boat five minutes, having had a fine relaxing holiday in the beautiful countryside, when Mme. Le Clerc is at our door. She’s holding Jimmy by the ears in her arms. She asks if the rabbit is ours. My first impulse is to deny. I don’t know how she’s gotten the rabbit, and I don’t want to know. From Mme. Le Clerc’s face, I
can tell it’s trouble.
‘M. Wharton, I know this must have something to do with you and your family.’
I invite her into the boat. She keeps a firm hold on Jimmy’s ears. She stares at me, madly, in the eyes.
‘I was looking out from my kitchen window in my dressing gown and what do you think I saw?’
I figure a wild guess won’t hurt.
‘A rabbit?’
‘Yes. It was a white rabbit swimming past our boat. A white rabbit all smeared with black oil. You know, monsieur, rabbits are not supposed to swim.’
‘Yes, I know that.’
‘I called for Claude to launch the small boat and catch this phenomenon, this white rabbit swimming down the river on Easter morning.’
I wait. This is even worse than I expected. I’m wondering how Jimmy escaped. It doesn’t seem possible. Maybe he chewed his way through the metal hull and the boat is in the process of sinking.
‘Claude made a heroic rescue just as this rabbit was about to drown. He brought him back to our boat and his fur was all stuck down with water and oil. It was a very sad-looking rabbit. Is it really yours, M. Wharton?’
Here’s another chance to deny, get out of it, like Saint Peter, but she’d never believe me, anyway.
‘No, Mme. Le Clerc, it is my wife’s.’
Rosemary has come over at the critical moment to soothe shattered nerves. She reaches out for Jimmy, lifts him by his ears from Mme. Le Clerc’s grasp and cuddles him in her arms.
‘Yes, it is the rabbit of my kindergarten. The children will be so pleased you saved him. Thank you.’
Mme. Le Clerc isn’t willing to let go as easily as that.
‘It took all the afternoon to clean and dry the poor creature and to feed it. It was starving. It really is a very nice rabbit; we’ve become quite attached to it. Are you sure you would like to keep it?’
Rosemary gives her a very professional smile and pets the rabbit once more.
‘Oh, yes. We must have it. The children would be so unhappy if I did not bring him back tomorrow when school starts. I shall tell them of Jimmy’s adventure and about how you and M. Le Clerc so heroically saved him. Is it possible for you to come to our school with me so they can meet you? It would be very exciting for them. Perhaps M. Le Clerc can come, too.’
I figure she’s gone too far. Rosemary can set up the most incredible scenes without trying. She should be in the U.N. She’s wasted on kindergarten children. Mme. Le Clerc breaks all out in smiles.
‘I would like to, and so would Claude, but we can’t. I don’t speak English, and the children are all American in your class, aren’t they? Thank you so much for inviting us.’
‘That’s unfortunate, Mme. Le Clerc. But I assure you, when I tell them the story of the escape and rescue, they will want to write thank-you notes to you and your husband.’
She’s done it again. Mme. Le Clerc leaves smiling. I take Jimmy downstairs and put him into his cage, feed him, although there was plenty of food left, and look for how he could have gotten out. There’s, of course, no hole in the hull but, by searching around, I find where he’d climbed up the staircase ladder and squeezed between the two boats and thence onto the deck, from which he probably took a plunge, purposefully or accidentally, I’ll never know, into the Seine. So be it.
That next day, Rosemary, after carrying off Jimmy in the car to school, tells, with great dramatics, I’m sure, the story of Jimmy’s adventure in the Seine to the kindergarten children. Then she puts out paper, pencils and crayons so they can draw and write thank-you notes. There are wonderful pictures of M. Le Clerc pulling Jimmy out of the Seine, of Mme. Le Clerc looking out her window in her dressing gown at Jimmy floating down the river, of M. and Mme. Le Clerc cleaning and feeding Jimmy.
That evening, Rosemary delivers all the notes along with a bouquet of flowers one of the mothers has brought to her as teacher. M. and Mme. Le Clerc are delighted. So ends the drama. Thus, despite a bad beginning moving the boat into place, we have good relations with our downriver neighbors.
Our Garage
Although Port Marly, along the banks of the Seine, is a small town, it has most of the services one would find in any French village. Along with our ten restaurants, we have several garages servicing and selling autos, from Volkswagens through Alfa Romeos to Mercedes. There is one small garage at the end of the Rue de Paris that specializes in repairing American autos.
We have our repairs done there, although we don’t have any American autos, because the place was so highly recommended, and also because we’ve consistently had good work done there on our antiquated autos.
Another reason is that Andre, the chief mechanic, is such a special person. He looks like a university professor and is very willing to explain any work that needs to be done on our long-suffering autos. He also gently explains what the alternatives are to the repairs he suggests. He is very good about letting me stay around the shop and watch the work in progress. I keep hoping someday I’ll be able to fix my own autos, but as I progress in what I know about the insides of automobiles, they in turn become more and more complicated, so I’ve lost hope.
Andre is also willing for me to paint in the shop, the atelier. During minor operations on our motorized fleet, I’ve made some of my best paintings, right there on the shop floor. Every time I see him, he asks how my painting is coming along, and sometimes comes up to our boat to see the work. I gave him several photocopies of the paintings I’ve done, along with an original sketch of him leaning into the maw of a huge Cadillac; not ours, thank God.
The owner of the shop walks his dog past our boat every day along the chemin de halage and stops to look at the paintings I keep changing in the windows of the boat. He’s always asking when I’ll be showing in Paris. I read somewhere that everybody should have a good mechanic and a good dentist. I add to that a good doctor. We have all, except the dentist, here in Port Marly.
The Laundry
We originally had an American washer and dryer on the front deck of the boat. We’d bought them from Americans at the American School of Paris who were going back to the States. They lasted three years, but then the continual damage from the weather destroyed the washer and damaged the dryer. In time, I threw out the washer and moved the dryer inside into the front cabin, where it still is, despite a few replacements of the drive belt and a solenoid.
So, now, on the way to do our shopping in Le Pecq at the Casino market, we drive to the local Laundromat and do the wash. After the shopping, we stop by and pick up the wet clothes, which we then take home and put in the dryer. It works out quite well.
There is also, near us, an old woman who takes in wash and irons it by hand. It’s grimly expensive and we can’t afford it, but I love to watch her. She doesn’t use an electric iron but has an old cast iron one sitting on a stove to keep it hot, and she continually checks it to maintain just the right temperature.
It’s like watching a ballet to see her iron a shirt with that iron, all the right movements and never a moment’s hesitation or delay.
Twice I’ve painted her, once from the window and once from the deep corner of her tiny workroom, looking out past her and through the window into the street. While I was painting her, I’d bring a good glass of beer from the routier café across the street. Each time, she’d nurse it for about an hour. I did some good paintings and had interesting conversations with this gentle, hardworking old lady. I took photos of the two paintings, had them enlarged and gave them to her. She couldn’t believe what I’d done and stuck them on the wall in front of her with shirt pins.
The Barber
Our barbershop, also Rosemary’s coiffeur, is just up Jean-Jaures from the boat. M. Dubois is the proprietor. He gives me a very good haircut and trims my beard about once a month. Rosemary goes just about as often. He starts with washing the hair and does mostly scissor-clipping and, if necessary, works with thinning shears. In my case, this isn’t necessary; my hair thins itself, somewhat overenthusiastical
ly, but my beard can sometimes use some thinning. Each time I have a haircut, I’m so pleased I wonder why I don’t go more often. It doesn’t take long to look for the answer. It costs too much.
M. Dubois is one of the best sources of information about what’s going on in the town. He’s a part of the local administration and shares willingly what he knows as he clips away. His wife has had a bad hip and finally a hip-replacement operation, so she limps. It’s been much pain and it shows on her face, although she’s a very kind and attractive woman.
Bakers
We have two bakeries. One, quite close on Jean-Jaures and the other up on the Route de Versailles. The nearer one is more a patisserie, with fancy cakes, etc., as well as bread. The other has better bread, but nothing fancy. Unfortunately, it’s a longer walk up there, so we often use the nearer shop. The owner of the shop on Jean-Jaures has been in several competitions for fancy foods and has trophies and awards to show for it in the window of his shop. He also does some catering.
The Grocer
There is a grocery store at the corner of Jean-Jaures and Rue de Paris. This store has had quite a history just in the time we’ve been on the boat. It was originally run by an older couple who didn’t keep up with things, so it came to be a place where you bought only emergency items, things you forgot while shopping. Or sometimes on Monday, when the regular shops were closed, one would shop there.
They sell the shop to a young couple. These young people really work to make the place go. They keep their stock up and prices much different than at the large stores in Paris, Le Pecq, or St.-Germain-en-Laye. They put in a Xerox and a fax machine and are generous with their prices to use them. It comes in handy for me often. They stay on for about five years, then realize it’s too small a place and too much work to justify the small profit they make. We all, everyone in the village, hate to see them give up.
Houseboat on the Seine: A Memoir Page 21
