Chaplin & Company Read online

  ‘Oh yes, well, the interior and all the wood you can see, it’s all solid mahogany. Solid. It’s heavy stuff, about three tons of it on board, but there’s no sinking her.’

  He gives the side of the boat a flat slap.

  ‘Some of the hardiest boats on the water, these ladies. She was originally used as a training vessel for the sailors stationed in Portsmouth, everyone had to learn to sail back then. And then they painted her up and kept her as an ornamental addition to the fleet. They’d bring her out on special occasions, like when the King came to visit and suchlike. So no, she never fought in a war, and neither did her neighbour. But they’re tough old birds, you won’t find many other boats built in 1910 in such good nick. And with all the original fittings.’

  The children have already disappeared inside the cabin and have begun to fiddle with the fittings. They are disappointed by the absence of weaponry but still curious enough to play with the brass porthole catches and the funny dials on the walls. The man with the grey whiskers and the blue cap gives a belly laugh and turns round to share it with the children’s parents. But they too have walked away and are making their way to a bench further up the towpath, talking amongst themselves. So he looks at his watch. He’ll close up the boats after this lot, it’s been a good day. He pats the cash in his shirt pocket.

  This is the warden for the Little Venice Marina and the western stretch of canal which goes from here up to Ladbroke Grove. His name is John Kettle and he will be an irritant to Odeline. He is the kind of person who has ended up acting a caricature of themselves, in his case a friendly, twinkling, Captain Birdseye figure. This works well enough on the parents who pay for their children to clamber around on his boats. But the children aren’t convinced. For a start he doesn’t feed himself properly, so hasn’t the approachable roundness and ruddiness that he needs for his role. He looks unhealthy, actually. His eyes are a washed-out blue and his discoloured nails betray a bad diet. His beard is tobacco brown around the mouth, teeth yellow. And the blue sailor’s cap is faded and grubby, threadbare around the edge of the peak. There is a white line of sweat-salt around the rim where it jams tightly on to his head. Holding his brain in, he likes to say.

  He keeps up a performance of jollity and manages to convince himself most of the time. He can’t remember when it started to be an effort.

  The children are joining their parents now. Before they go home they’ll stop at the barge cafe for ice creams that will leave sticky messes and bits of wrapper on the ground around the tables. The small plump woman doesn’t find it easy to bend down. The thickness around her middle feels solid and inflexible. She will lean heavily on the tables to pick up these bits of wrapper and the exertion will leave her heaving for breath and even hotter than she was before.

  When the children and their parents have gone John Kettle closes up his schooners, dropping the heritage boat signs into their cabins before yanking the hatches across. He shakes a tarpaulin over each deck and clicks the buttonholes on to their fasteners. He can’t be bothered to do every one. A sloppy job but he doesn’t care. It won’t rain tonight. He shuts the doors and doesn’t think to lock them – there’s nothing inside worth stealing. He double-checks the cash in his shirt pocket. He will spend this tonight on whisky, leaning on the bar in the brick pub by the bridge, The Lock Inn. This is where he goes every night. Warmth from the lamps on the windowsills, the chatter of other punters, his drink swilling amber on the old wooden bar: these things will fill his head. But it is not yet opening time, and he is no good at entertaining himself. His mind flicks through things to do. He is not someone who is all right on his own. He finds it hard to be jolly without someone there to witness him being jolly. He dreads, in fact, the silence of his own company.

  This dread feels like more than melancholy or boredom, it is something his mind runs from. This is how it comes to him in his dreams: he is on his own next to an enormous crack in the earth, the ground is dry and the horizon is empty of people in all directions. He knows what is coming before he even begins to hear the slow, steady approach of the creature crawling up to get him and take him down into that dark nothingness. The worst part of it is, he knows he will go. It is a pull like vertigo, it makes him want to jump. When that black leathery-winged monster appears out of its horrible lair, he will give no resistance, he will be weak and willing when it comes. He will let it take him in its talons and plunge. This dread is unspoken even to himself and keeps him looking, looking outwards for other people to shore him up against the pull of it.

  And so the jolly part of him keeps up its chatter.

  He decides to go and check on the new resident, that should keep him busy till opening time. He heads for the bridge, stopping in at the barge cafe on the way to say hello. The small plump woman who works there is foreign. She is called Vera and he is relieved about this, not being good with fiddly foreign names. She has a soft, kindly face, he thinks. Commie accent but she seems to understand what he says and speaks good enough English. ‘Afternoon, Vera,’ he calls, propped against the cafe’s doorframe. ‘Belter of a day.’ She looks up from the sink and blinks slowly in reply.

  Even on a day as hot as this the cafe owner, Mr Zjelko, forbids her to switch off the toasted sandwich machine – it takes a long time to heat up and the cafe sign promises ‘EXPRESS SERVICE’. Mr Zjelko has a chain of cafes in West London and sends his thugs to visit them unannounced, to check his standards are being kept to. Vera knows that she will be fired if she breaks one of his rules. Then what?

  John Kettle feels his duty here is done, a few bright words dispensed from a friendly warden. Is it Poles who have a reputation for surliness? Or is that just the Russians? In any case he can’t remember where this one comes from. Perhaps she never said. He has a feeling that she sleeps on board, which would be against regulations, this not being a residential mooring. He spotted her coming out of the barge early one morning, raised an eyebrow. She looked back scared as a rabbit in headlights. But rule enforcement has never been his thing. Anyway, since that morning he has popped into the cafe every lunchtime and received a sandwich on the house. Which suits him fine. He always gives her a wink as he goes out. Needn’t worry, love. He knows how to keep a secret.

  On John Kettle goes under the low bridge, making his crooked way towards the boat with Odeline inside. Even when he’s sober his walk is a stagger. He passes the two cruisers who have been moored here for the last week. Both retired couples. He salutes them and jabs a thumb over his shoulder at the trio of singing tramps by the railing. ‘Sorry about those,’ he says, ‘locational hazard.’ He passes the tattooed man’s boat. Arrogant bastard is stretched out on his roof smoking something which definitely doesn’t smell like tobacco. ‘Police are on their way,’ calls out John Kettle. Bloody gypsy doesn’t answer. John Kettle can’t be bothered to follow it up, too curious about Chaplin and Company’s new resident. He thrusts his nose forward and carries on.

  Here’s the old boat, then, a patriotic dame in red, white, blue. Weathered and bashed up but still she floats. Three hard raps on the roof and he pushes his face up against a porthole. The figure inside looks horrified. It stands frozen in a suit and a bowler hat, hands either side of its head, like John Kettle’s pointing a gun. A handkerchief is sticking out of the cuff of its suit jacket. Behind the figure is an easel with a blackboard on it, covered in chalky writing John Kettle can’t quite make out. ‘Aren’t you coming out to say hello?’ he shouts through the glass. ‘I’ve come to introduce myself.’

  The figure looks blank and then whips the bowler hat off, clutches it with both hands, puts it down on the floor, makes a lurch towards the cabin doors, opens them, and ducks through the doorway to come out on deck. As the suit straightens he sees that it’s a girl, a foreign-looking one, but she’s almost a head taller than him. She is standing bolt upright and still as a statue. He sees now that her suit is in fact an oversized tailcoat that hangs off her like a scarecrow’s. Must be thin as a broom. She’s wearing scu
ffed black shoes with the laces pulled so tight they’re bunching the leather. He brings his eyes up the baggy tailcoat – at the top is a pointy coffee-skinned pin-head with a mop of black hair. Big eyes.

  ‘Submariner John Kettle,’ he says and sticks his hand out. It isn’t taken. ‘I keep an eye on things round here,’ he winks. ‘What’s your name then?’

  ‘Are you the canal warden?’ Her voice is as English as cut-glass. And about as friendly.

  ‘That’s right,’ he replies. ‘I know everyone on this little stretch, and beyond.’ He leans in towards her and props himself on the corner of the boat. ‘I can fill you in on who to steer clear of – those three pissheads up there for example. And him.’ He tips his head in the direction of the next-door boat. ‘No-good gypsy that one, with his greasy ponytail. Just this morning I saw him taking water from the lockhouse, pinching more like. I’d like to get a better look at his licence, bet it’s dodgy as hell.’ She doesn’t look at the next-door boat but down at his grubby, oil-stained hand on her cabin roof. He removes it and shoves it into his trouser pocket.

  ‘Where do I buy diesel for my boat engine?’ Posh as a queen, she sounds.

  He barks out a laugh. ‘Ha! You’ll have a job getting that engine going. Have you seen the date on her side? She’s almost as antique as my two old ladies. I heard she’d been abandoned up by Scrubs Lane and British Waterways knew they’d get more if they sold her with a Little Venice mooring. She was towed down. I’ve never seen her go under her own steam. Anyway. What do you do?’

  ‘I’m an artist.’ No hint of a smile. Snooty way of talking, her mouth hardly moves. But he’ll push on.

  ‘Oh well, you’ll find plenty to paint round here. Lovely spots up the Regent’s Canal, and Little Venice of course. We get plenty of artists here, ’specially on weekends if the weather’s all right, come up to paint a nice canal vista. Lots of them interested in painting my girls, the Phoebus and the Peggy May, fine-looking both of them and classical models in the Edwardian style. You ought to bring your sketchbook and pencils up. There’s a good bench up there to sit on, gives a sterling view.’

  She doesn’t look impressed. He rocks forward on to his toes, feeling her height looking down on him, and continues. ‘So is it just you here then, no hubbie? They said it was a single lady who’d bought the Chaplin but I presumed there’d be a feller, unusual to find a boat run by a lady on her own. You look young to be setting up on the water, if I can say so.’

  The girl’s eyebrows press down and her forehead folds, she is glaring at him. He takes a step back and opens his mouth to say something but is cut off by a hand appearing from the cuff of her coat. ‘Your presumptions are chauvinist. Sexist. Ageist.’ She flicks her fingers up one by one. Bony brown fingers. The voice is shrill, out of date. Her lips are tight and white-rimmed. ‘Do not disturb me again,’ she says, and continues to glare as she steps back down into her cabin. She slams the doors behind her. He hears the locks shunt across.

  Odeline yanks the curtains over the portholes. Enraged! Violated! She huffs and she puffs and she listens to the crossness of her sounds. Her rehearsal has been disrupted. Presumptuous, bigoted little man! Her focus is lost.

  She sinks on to the low armchair, her knees jut out in front of her.

  The truth is that even before the interruption she was finding it difficult to translate her routine into this new space. The dimensions are unforgivingly tight and she had to adapt her preparatory exercises, moving sideways down the length of the cabin. And she can’t stop looking. In her bedroom in Arundel her surroundings became invisible. When she entered the performance mindset she would leave her tawdry room with its beige waffle carpet and bumpy wallpaper. She would stop seeing her bookshelves, her costume rail, the posters on her wall. All she could see was the blinding brightness of the spotlight that shone upon her, and the bluish faces of her imagined audience illuminated in the darkness. She was on an empty stage, in a circular beam of light that followed her around as she moved. When she mimed she was contained in that circle. It was all she needed, all she knew.

  She can’t find that spotlight here. Light leaks in from every porthole, her attention is leaky and diffracted. Whenever she lets go and tries to transport herself, to really go, she bumps into something. Her wrist is still twingeing from knocking it on the gold wall light.

  ‘It will be good discipline,’ she says aloud, jabbing her trouser leg with a finger to make the point. To motivate. ‘I must learn to move with smaller, tighter gestures. Marcel Marceau created drama in the raising of an eyebrow and I must strive for the same precision. The same subtlety.’ She pinches her thumb and forefinger together and looks at their shape, their slender tawniness. She has expressive hands. ‘It is not about grand or flamboyant gestures,’ she tells herself, ‘it’s about timing. Everything is in the timing.’

  Back to work, Odeline.

  Stand up.

  Put on your bowler hat.

  Now watch as she becomes the mime.

  She pulls a string of coloured handkerchiefs from her cuff and hangs them over the blackboard. Then rummages through her suit pockets, turning each one inside out. She shrugs at the audience. The pockets all empty. She takes off her shoes, peering inside each one and shaking them. They are empty too. She puts her hands on her hips, tips to the side and shakes her head, nothing comes out, she swings to the other side, nothing comes out. She clutches her face in panic. Her mouth is turned down in a tragic mask. All is lost! She drops to her hands and knees and begins to hunt underneath the audience’s chairs, pressing her head down to the floor to inspect every inch.

  ‘Ugh!’

  A patch on the orange carpet stops her. It is a stain, sunk into the nylon fuzz, the shape of a heart, browny-red in colour. A disgusting stain, just where she was about to put her hand. She sniffs it and recoils. Barbecue sauce.

  Late afternoon and the heat is letting go of the day. This is a noisy time on the canal, with geese honking their way back to their nests, beginning to flap and paddle with their feet and then setting off, flying low down the middle of the water. Their wings make a beating sound: tarpaulin flapping in the wind. The people who have been sitting out on the hot metal balconies of the tower blocks begin to lift themselves off their deckchairs, off their towels, and disappear indoors. Balconies will begin filling again with the things moved inside to make space for sunbathing: bicycles, children’s toys, pot plants, bits of kitchen equipment. The canalside is empty, tourists have finished their visits. Parents head home, slowly, with their children tugging at their hands. The barge cafe is closing up and Vera is turning the tables on to their sides to fold their legs beneath them. She stacks them against the barge door, pulls the collar of her aertex to wipe the sweat from her top lip and takes a moment to look up. The sky is a brilliant blue with a criss-cross of white trails left by aeroplanes.

  THREE

  Walter Chaplin was a boat builder in Stoke Bruerne. In 1936 he built his first engine-powered narrowboat, the others of his fleet being butties and tugs built for local canal companies. He made it a smaller size of forty foot – better for solo steerers – with a raised rear deck to help navigation. He built the length of the boat as one long cabin with basic plywood flooring nailed over strutted supports. He laid a waxed canvas over this. He put the engine at the back of the cabin, and boxed it into a separate room with walls and a doorway. Then he lowered the roof of this room, in order to set a compass into the ceiling. He knew it was a vanity. He spent money on having the compass made, the needle set into the bowl of glass and the hand-painted wheel of directions. The frame of the compass was brass, like his portholes and the windlass he had made to match the boat, with the date inscribed, sunk deep into the handle. ‘1936’. Another extravagance. He allowed himself to order brass handles too for the tiller and cabin doors, and felt foolishly proud. After finishing every section he would step back and look. His pride swelled as he watched it take form.

  Walter Chaplin and his wife, Ann, lived i
n a small bargee’s cottage across the yard from his boatshed, although it silently felt to them both as though he lived in the boatshed and she in the house. His comings home at the end of the day felt more like visits. Past the age for children now, she missed the ones she had never had, and her sadness for them kept him at his work. He couldn’t stand her disappointment, the reproach of it. When he thought up calm sentences to console her, he knew she didn’t feel their comfort.

  He had worked long, simple days building this boat; it was the first he could paint his name on. A long time ago he had dreamed of a boat like this one. Back then he imagined he would name her Chaplin and Son. The specialist enamel took four weeks to arrive from the warehouse in Glasgow and he had a sign painter do the lettering in the traditional Dutch barge script. Chaplin and Company. Est. 1936. Red with an outline of white on navy blue. A lot of the working boats were nondescript, barely stained. This one would be recognised.

  The boat was commissioned to carry packets – mail, parcels and other deliveries – between Birmingham and London, and Walter hired a company of steerers who did the run. These were usually apprentices from other boatyards around Stoke Bruerne. An occasional packet run gave them a bit extra.

  Then war was declared and the waterways were taken under Government control. Pill boxes were built along the length of the Grand Union and Home Guard manned the industrial wharves. Chaplin and Company was commissioned with wartime cargo and carried it proudly. Tons of aluminium ingots up to the artillery factories in Birmingham, coal and canned rations down to London. It took the letters of Birmingham’s fighting sons back to their families. Hopeful and hastily written replies would fill the return boat in elasticated bundles. Much bad news was carried. Much sad news safely delivered. For Walt these letters were his most important cargo.