Offshore. Alan Hollinghurst

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СКАЧАТЬ know how it is with children; she’s well one day, not so well the next.’ Nenna’s attitude to truth was flexible, and more like Willis’s than Richard’s. ‘And Martha’s the same, it’s only to be expected at her age.’

      Nenna had hoped to alarm the curate with these references to approaching puberty, but he seemed, on the contrary, to be reassured. ‘If that’s the trouble, you couldn’t do better than to entrust her to the skilled understanding of the Sisters.’ How dogged he was. ‘They’ll expect, then, to see both your daughters in class on Monday next.’

      ‘I’ll do what I can.’

      ‘Very well, Mrs James.’

      ‘Won’t you come as far as the boat?’

      ‘No, no, I won’t risk the crossing a second time.’ What had happened the first time? ‘And now, I’m afraid I’ve somewhat lost my sense of direction. I’ll have to ask you my way to dry land.’

      Nenna pointed out the way through the gate, which, swinging on its hinges, no longer provided any kind of barrier, out onto the Embankment, and first left, first right up Partisan Street for the King’s Road. The priest couldn’t have looked more relieved if he had completed a mission to those that dwell in the waters that are below the earth.

      ‘I’ve got the supper, Ma,’ said Martha, when Nenna returned to Grace. Nenna would have felt better pleased with herself if she had resembled her elder daughter. But Martha, small and thin, with dark eyes which already showed an acceptance of the world’s shortcomings, was not like her mother and even less like her father. The crucial moment when children realise that their parents are younger than they are had long since been passed by Martha.

      ‘We’re having baked beans. If Father Watson’s coming, we shall have to open another tin.’

      ‘No, dear, he’s gone home.’

      Nenna felt tired, and sat down on the keelson, which ran from end to end of the flat-bottomed barge. It was quite wrong to come to depend too much upon one’s children.

      Martha set confidently to work in Grace’s galley, which consisted of two gas rings in the bows connected to a Calor cylinder, and a brass sink. Water came to the sink from a container on deck, which was refilled by a man from the boat-yard once every twenty-four hours. A good deal of improvisation was necessary and Martha had put three tin plates to heat up over the hissing saucepan of beans.

      ‘Was it fun on Lord Jim?’

      ‘Oh, not at all.’

      ‘Should I have enjoyed it?’

      ‘Oh no, I don’t think so. Mrs Blake threw cheese straws into the stove.’

      ‘What did Mr Blake say?’

      ‘He wants to keep her happy, to make her happy, I don’t know.’

      ‘What did Father Watson want?’

      ‘Didn’t he talk to you at all?’

      ‘I daresay he would have done, but I sent him out to fetch you, with Tilda, she needed exercise.’

      ‘So he didn’t mention anything.’

      ‘He just came down here, and I made him a cup of tea and we said an act of contrition together.’

      ‘He wanted to know why you hadn’t been to class lately.’

      Martha sighed.

      ‘I’ve been reading your letters,’ she said. ‘They’re lying about your cabin, and you haven’t even looked at most of them.’

      The letters were Nenna’s connection, not only with the land, but with her previous existence. They would be from Canada, from her sister Louise who would suggest that she might put up various old acquaintances passing through London, or find a suitable family for a darling Austrian boy, not so very much older than Martha, whose father was a kind of Count, but was also in the import-export business, or try to recall a splendid person, the friend of a friend of hers who had had a very, very sad story. Then there were one or two bills, not many because Nenna had no credit accounts, a letter-card from an old schoolfriend which started Bet you don’t remember me, and two charitable appeals, forwarded by Father Watson even to such an unpromising address as Grace.

      ‘Anything from Daddy?’

      ‘No, Ma, I looked for that first.’

      There was no more to be said on that subject.

      ‘Oh, Martha, my head aches. Baked beans would be just the thing for it.’

      Tilda came in, wet, and black as coal from head to foot.

      ‘Willis gave me a drawing.’

      ‘What of?’

      ‘Lord Jim, and some seagulls.’

      ‘You shouldn’t have accepted it.’

      ‘Oh, I gave him one back.’

      She had been waiting on Dreadnought to watch the water coming in through the main leak. It had come half way up the bunk, and nearly as far as Willis’s blankets. Nenna was distressed.

      ‘Well, it goes out with every tide. He’ll have to show people round at low tide, and get them off before it turns.’

      ‘Surely he can do some repairs,’ said Martha.

      ‘No, Fate’s against him,’ said Tilda, and after one or two forkfuls of beans she fell fast asleep with her head across the table. It was impossible, in any case, to bath her, because they were only allowed to let out the bathwater on a falling tide.

      By now the flood was making fast. The mist had cleared, and to the north-east the Lots Road Power Station had discharged from its four majestic chimneys long plumes of white pearly smoke which slowly drooped and turned to dun. The lights dazzled, but on the broad face of the water there were innumerable V-shaped eddies, showing the exact position of whatever the river had not been able to hide. If the old Thames trades had still persisted, if boatmen had still made a living from taking the coins from the pockets of the drowned, then this was the hour for them to watch. Far above, masses of autumn cloud passed through the transparent violet sky.

      After supper they sat by the light of the stove. Nenna was struck by the fact that she ought to write to Louise, who was married to a successful business man. She began, Dear Sis, Tell Joel that it’s quite an education in itself for the girls to be brought up in the heart of the capital, and on the very shores of London’s historic river.

       2

      TILDA was up aloft. Grace’s mast was fifteen foot of blackened pine, fitted into a tabernacle, so that it could be lowered to the deck in the days when Grace negotiated the twenty-eight tideway bridges between Richmond and the sea. Her mizzen mast was gone, her sprit was gone, the mainmast was never intended for climbing and Tilda sat where there was, apparently, nowhere to sit.

      Martha, СКАЧАТЬ