by Kate Dunn
He stared at the shifting landscape, indifferent to his concerns. A motor cruiser went past them, heading northwards. The Dragonfly toyed with its wash. He hardly felt the movement of the boat when they were sailing, but sometimes, when they were on dry land, the ground would shelve away without any warning.
~~~
His mind kept wandering back to Charlotte.
The first time he’d seen her was at the top of the stairs coming down from the platform at Bath station. The light was behind her and other passengers were shovelling past him and he was so consumed with a hunger to see his son that he didn’t fully take her in at first.
It was Michael’s Christmas-time visit, which came after the main event – was it the day before New Year’s Eve, or the day before that? Such details had once seemed so important, so territorial. Michael had been eighteen the previous July and Colin went over to Paris on the Eurostar and took him out to lunch. He didn’t stay over, though Michael protested, “If I’d known that you wanted to I would have…” without specifying what, exactly.
He came lolloping down the stairs, against the flow of stragglers hurrying to catch the train. He was wearing a rucksack and held his arms above his head, to avoid bumping into people, or being bumped, but the effect was to make him look as if he were wading into water which would soon be beyond his depth.
“Hi Dad.”
Between them they fumbled the pass – they failed to kiss, they didn’t quite manage to slap each other on the back because of the rucksack and ended holding each other by the forearms, until they let go.
“Happy Christmas, son. Well, I suppose it’s happy New Year now, but – well, happy – whatever! Happy holidays! That’s what the Americans say, isn’t it? Covers a multitude of sins. How was your journey? Here – let me take that–” He kept on talking, knowing that as long as he did, it was OK, it would seem quite natural, for him to gaze at Michael. He began to pull at the rucksack. “Let me give you a hand,” and he kept holding on to the strap of the bag and making his offer of help, of slavish, I’ll-do-anything devotion, in any number of ways, “You must be worn out… why don’t I just… let me help you down the… let me… why don’t you let me…” until he became conscious that Michael was actually fending him off.
“You haven’t met Charlotte.”
He swung round as if he’d been caught red-handed. “Charlo–” The greeting died somewhere in his throat.
She was a woman in her thirties, and he’d been expecting a girl. She was dark, with fine hair that was not her best feature, asymmetrically cut, when, for some reason, he’d been expecting someone fair, someone fleet, someone else.
She looked as if she rarely saw the light of day. Her skin was on the blue side of white, and there was violet pigmentation round her eyes. She was lost in the first exhalation of a cigarette, her gaze blurred, her thinness accentuated as she breathed out. Colin could tell, without her saying anything, that she was here under sufferance. He could tell from the way she took another drag at her cigarette, from the way she lined her gloves up before putting them in her bag, from the way she hefted her suitcase and reckoned the distance down the stairs, from the way she sighed and began to pick her way down one step at a time, that she didn’t want to be in England, or in Bath, or with him. She was a study in ennui.
“Hello there, why don’t you let me take that for you?”
He supposed there was a kind of glamour to her: her pillar box red mouth, her pallor, her slanty little hat – who in England wore a hat like that? Who in France, come to that? She had too many rings on her fingers: big, silver, statement rings. Her hands were mottled with the cold. He could feel how freezing they were when, prompted by Michael, “Dad, this is Charlotte…” they shook hands with each other.
“Let me take your…”
Apparently out of reserve, but more to stake a claim to his son, to demonstrate ownership, she handed her case to Michael. They whispered to one another as they walked towards the car, while Colin led the way empty-handed, disbelieving.
Charlotte rarely seemed to eat, she drank litres of water every day and all her energy and focus went on smoking. She smoothed the packet ceaselessly, she felt the flint of the lighter with her thumb, she studied each cigarette before she lit it, feeling the balance of it between her fingers. She breathed smoke from her mouth like a spell, as if she were exhaling her own essence. Smoke signals, Colin thought. Her studied sophistication and her interest in a teenager didn’t quite add up although looking back now, he saw his own craving for Sally in Michael’s obsession with her. He could almost understand.
“Colin – regardez!” Delphine demanded of him, holding up a single bead with some plaited twine attached.
“That’s very good – what is it?”
“A key ring, for Papa,” she said with considerable pride.
~~~
In sleepy, Sunday Sens, disaster struck. They had moored up on the town quay, looping the forward line through a rusted ring that Delphine could hardly lift on her own. All the rubbish bins were full and there were bottles piled up round them. They dropped the rear line in some dog shit and while he rinsed it in the river with distaste, she laid out her wares.
With the rope clean and his hands scrubbed until you could see the marks of the brush on his skin, Colin put the saucepan on to boil.
There was no gas.
A catastrophe of unimaginable scale: no gas. No gas meant no tea and no tea was an unimaginable deprivation.
He swallowed.
In a tone which sought to minimise the impact of what he was saying, for his own benefit as much as for hers, he tried to explain the situation to her. “I’m afraid we’ve run out of gas.” Put like that, it didn’t sound so bad. “The bottle’s empty,” as he went on, he contrived to keep the tremor from his voice. “We’ll have to find a garage…”
Delphine was unperturbed.
“It means there won’t be any tea–” he said in a rush, before he could compose himself “–for the moment.”
“There’s always Coca-Cola,” said his granddaughter, quick to spot an opportunity.
“That’s not the point,” he unclenched his jaw. After a moment he rallied himself. “We just have to find a garage.”
The two of them trailed round Sens, dragging Colin’s folding trolley behind them. The offending empty bottle rattled and bumped down kerb and over cobble stone. A plastic chain closed off the entrance to the first garage that they found; the second one was open for petrol sales but nothing else, although full bottles of gas in all sizes stood in a metal cage on the forecourt. Colin hooked his fingers between the bars and then let go. He licked his lips, searching for the truant taste of finest Ceylon. They struck out into the suburbs, right to the edge of town. There was a garage with a pick-up truck blocking the entrance to the kiosk, then another one with a closed sign up and the shutters down.
“We’ll have to buy a cup of tea…” he couldn’t keep the glumness out of his voice.
“And a Coca-Cola…”
“…in a café.” Images of not-quite-boiling water with the tea bag on the side came unbidden into his head. Warmed milk? He couldn’t even go there.
But in the whole of Sens there was not a cup of tea, with warmed milk or otherwise, to be had. There was a kebab shop open in a side street leading up to the cathedral (one of the oldest in France – oh sod the cathedral) and that was all.
He kept a grip on himself long enough to buy Delphine her Coca-Cola from the kebab shop and get them both back to the boat. Jittery with disappointment, he put the dismembered Primus stove back in the locker and shut the saucepan away.
“I’ll teach you Spit.” It was a kind of racing patience and he was wired and manic enough to keep slapping his hand down on the smallest pile of cards without ever giving her a chance. “You put the jack on the ten like that–” slap “–you can turn a couple more cards over so you always have five showing–” slap “–if I don’t have a cup of tea soon I’m going to go s
tark raving mad–” slap.
“Colin–” his granddaughter complained as he won the second game.
“It’s no good–” he stood up and rooted about in the locker. With jumbled hands he filled the saucepan from the water bottle and went steaming off down the quay. There were three or four boats spread out between the Dragonfly and the bridge and each one of them was locked up, their owners off exploring the town.
Well, good luck to ’em.
He stalked back and set the saucepan down beside the uneven rows of Delphine’s beads: two key rings, a bracelet, a pendant and a necklace, together with a small heap that she had lost interest in. Their imperfections pinked at his heart and for a little while he managed not to simmer or thirst. He taught her Damn It (like whist but with betting) and made a game of stealing her Coke when she was sorting through her cards.
When a small peniche appeared on the horizon, the two of them climbed ashore and did a Robinson Crusoe caper of deliverance. Delphine wasn’t interested in the prospect of tea, but she liked doing the dance. They lined themselves up, ready to assist the new arrival with their ropes.
“It’s Tyler,” called Delphine, waving. “Bonjour Tyler! Hello!”
Colin stayed long enough to help with the mooring before hurrying off to find his saucepan.
“We’ve run out of gas – would you mind?”
Tyler hesitated for a moment, contemplating the saucepan he was holding. “You could come and have coffee with me…”
“Tea–” he said, before he could stop himself.
“You Brits are all the same. What is it with you and tea? Sure, you can have tea, or coffee, or–” She glanced speculatively at the sky, crinkling her face in the late afternoon sun, “I could fix you a drink…”
“Tea would be fine.”
She lowered a ladder bolted to some plywood towards him and Colin set one end on the ground. “My attempt at a gang plank,” she grinned. “Welcome aboard.”
Tyler showed them to seats on a small shaded deck at the stern, with that enviably frank, uncomplicated, easy manner that Americans have made their own. Except, Colin noticed, she wasn’t that uncomplicated. She had a smile which spread, then somehow faltered; a stammer of a smile, which lacked the courage of its convictions. From time to time she would inspect her fingers, examining them singly as if looking for calluses, before wiping her hands on her shorts. As he peered round her, trying to see down into the galley and check on the kettle’s progress, she said uncertainly,
“I don’t really do much entertaining, as such. You folks are… well. You know…” She hooked her right arm behind her head and then, after some reflection, let it fall. “I don’t really… I haven’t… not anymore.”
Delphine had given up listening long ago. “Are those your pictures?”
“Those–?” Tyler swung round inquiringly, as if it were possible that some other artist might be exhibiting on her boat. “Oh, those…”
In his parched and weakened state, Colin could see that in every window of the cabin there was a picture, framed and hung so that it faced outwards. As he rose to take a closer look, the saucepan still in his hand, she turned away, and he noticed that her movements took up more space than would normally be required, in spite of her efforts to confine herself. She made her way down the steps into the cabin as if she were putting on a cardigan that was too small for her.
“The kettle!” she called behind her, by way of explanation.
Delphine was grimacing at the artwork. “They are affreuses – these images.”
“Affreuses?”
“Terrible. I could paint these pictures. With my left hand, I could paint them.”
“Keep your voice down…”
“But it is true, non?”
“Well…”
It was true; the pictures were not very good: well-meaning watercolours in doubtful shades, the perspectives all awry. He moved from one which depicted what could just conceivably be a group of Charolais cattle coming down to the waterside to drink, to another which showed a woeful vase of hydrangeas, and then on to a townscape and beyond that, something which looked like a small London bus, but must be a boat, pulling up in a lock. He and Delphine exchanged a glance.
“Tea!” Tyler, holding a tray high against her chest, made her way back onto the deck. “Oh, you’re looking at my work.” She put a reverential emphasis on the word.
“Yes…”
“I’m just… you know… well.” She handed him a mug of hot water and said, with a little more conviction, “I have a selection of teas, actually. Roiboos, green tea, just plain ordinary old English breakfast, rosehip, fennel…”
“Plain ordinary old English breakfast sounds just the ticket,” he answered, contemplating the hot water with a sense of hope which had been compromised, but not extinguished.
She handed him a sealed sachet. “I’m not really, you know… I’ve only just begun my life as an artist. Oh Lord of Lord City, I haven’t warmed the milk–”
“It’s fine,” cried Colin, keeping a tight grip on his mug. “Cold milk’s just great.”
She hooked her arm around the back of her head. “So what do you think of my pictures, then?”
“Your pictures are just great,” he answered, not looking at Delphine as he assembled the component parts of his tea.
“I’m an artist too,” announced his granddaughter, drily. “I make papier-mâché beads.” She took little persuading to go and fetch a sample of her wares.
“I’m really loving what you are doing here with this necklace – it’s so… expressive.”
“You can buy it if you like,” Delphine offered, with an eye to the main chance. “They’re all for sale.”
“I do like. I really like. Does this bracelet go with it?” Tyler asked, picking up a string of softly collapsing paper balls.
Colin sipped his tea with a brief premonition of the watercolours he might soon be involved in purchasing on a reciprocal basis.
“Yes – and the key ring.”
“Oh, I am so in need of a key ring.”
“It is possible you need earrings too?”
“You know, you’re right there – I do.” The proffered earrings were drooping greyly. “They’d make a wonderful… present. For someone.” She patted the pockets of her shorts. “Am I going to be able to afford all this? I need to lay my hands on some ready money here.”
In spite of the intensity of his telegraphed warnings, Delphine stated a hugely over-inflated price and to her great credit, Tyler paid up without hesitation; she even let her keep the change.
“It’s cool, the exchange rate’s working in my favour at the moment.” She made Delphine, who was richer than she could have believed possible and newly enslaved, tie the necklace round her neck. “Am I going to be just the most chic woman in this goddam town, or what?”
The kind of peace which comes late on Sunday afternoons settled round them. In the distance they could hear the affronted barking of a dog; beneath the surface some perch shimmered and then disappeared. Colin could feel the breath of the evening on the back of his neck, warm and benign.
“Can I fix you that drink?”
He shivered as if he had been roused from sleep. “Sorry, I was miles away.”
Tyler inclined her head, and the silence rippled round them as green and gold as the river.
“What’s the name of your boat?” he asked, to make conversation.
“Sabrina Fair.”
“Wasn’t that a film by Billy Wilder?”
“Yay!” She made an odd gesture, like doing a high-five on her own, her palm meeting thin air. “It’s about an American girl who’s been to Paris. She has this great line: she says she wants to be at the centre of things, not standing on the sidelines watching, and that’s how I’d like to be but I’m not, because that’s exactly what I do: I stand aside and watch. And paint, sometimes,” she added as an afterthought, catching at her lip. “Can I fix you a drink?” she asked, altering the emphasis thi
s time, changing the inflection, making it into a whole new question.
Colin’s eyes slid to his granddaughter, who looked as if she would soon be crashing her head to her knees with boredom once again.
“I’ve got satellite TV,” said Tyler following his gaze. “In case that makes a difference–”
It did make a good deal of difference. Delphine settled down to watch The Simpsons in the cabin, with her cash and another Coke, her face suffused with reflected yellow rapture. As the distant traffic droned and an ancient pedestrian walked along the quay and two teenagers kissed on the parapet of the bridge and the river licked and lapped at the boat, Tyler, drink by drink, told him all the things that she wasn’t.
“I’m not really a people person, you see. I thought I was, but it turns out that I’m not… I’m not married now – I got my get out of jail free card a couple of years back… I’m not into having a relationship any more. Once bitten would be OK, once bitten would be fine, but if you’ve been swallowed whole and then spat out… To tell you the truth, I’m not that good at painting, but God I just adore doing it… Don’t get me wrong Colin, if I’m being overly negative here, I love my life and I wouldn’t change anything about it…”
Listening and sipping his glass of wine, he thought it would be easy to repay these tumbling confidences with his own list of all the things he’d failed to be, but it seemed to him that what mattered more was who and where he was now – an old geezer, high on the sweet river air, drifting through France.
“What will you guys do for food this evening? With no gas?”
Colin shrugged. “Get a kebab. Delphine’s probably sick of my cooking by now.”
“You’d be very welcome…”
He was aware of her tentative face beside him, conscious of her anxious kindness, the breeze of her, the outdoorsiness of her brown arms.
“How do you manage the boat all on your own?” he responded, wondering if he sounded evasive, when he didn’t mean to be, entirely.
“I’m good. I’m really good. I’m nimble and I’m organised and I don’t mind asking for help. And I love doing it.”
