Offshore. Alan Hollinghurst

to have a look at his chronometers. They often didn’t work well in small boats – they were affected by changes of temperature – he didn’t know whether Nenna had found that – and, of course, by vibration. He was able to give her not only the time, but the state of the tide at every bridge on the river. It wasn’t very often that anyone wanted to know this.

      Laura put the bottles and glasses and a large plateful of bits and pieces through the galley hatch.

      ‘It smells of something in there.’

      There was the perceptible odour of tar which the barge-owners, since so much of their day was spent in running repairs, left behind them everywhere.

      ‘Well, dear, if you don’t like the smell, let’s go aft,’ said Richard, picking up the tray. He never let a woman carry anything. The three of them went into a kind of snug, fitted with built-in lockers and red cushions. A little yacht stove gave out a temperate glow, its draught adjusted to produce exactly the right warmth.

      Laura sat down somewhat heavily.

      ‘How does it feel like to live without your husband?’ she asked, handing Nenna a large glass of gin. ‘I’ve often wondered.’

      ‘Perhaps you’d like to fetch some more ice,’ Richard said. There was plenty.

      ‘He hasn’t left me, you know. We just don’t happen to be together at the moment.’

      ‘That’s for you to say, but what I want to know is, how do you get on without him? Cold nights, of course, don’t mind Richard, it’s a compliment to him if you think about it.’

      Nenna looked from one to the other. It was a relief, really, to talk about it.

      ‘I can’t do the things that women can’t do,’ she said. ‘I can’t turn over The Times so that the pages lie flat, I can’t fold up a map in the right creases, I can’t draw corks, I can’t drive in nails straight, I can’t go into a bar and order a drink without wondering what everyone’s thinking about it, and I can’t strike matches towards myself. I’m well educated and I’ve got two children and I can manage pretty well, there’s a number of much more essential things that I know how to do, but I can’t do those ones, and when they come up I feel like weeping myself sick.’

      ‘I’m sure I could show you how to fold up a map,’ said Richard, ‘it’s not at all difficult once you get the hang of it.’

      Laura’s eyes seemed to have moved closer together. She was concentrating intensely.

      ‘Did he leave you on the boat?’

      ‘I bought Grace myself, while he was away, with just about all the money we’d got left, to have somewhere for me and the girls.’

      ‘Do you like boats?’

      ‘I’m quite used to them. I was raised in Halifax. My father had a summer cabin on the Bras d’Or Lake. We had boats there.’

      ‘I hope you’re not having any repair problems,’ Richard put in.

      ‘We get rain coming in.’

      ‘Ah, the weatherboarding. You might try stretching tarpaulin over the deck.’

      Although he tried hard to do so, Richard could never see how anyone could live without things in working order.

      ‘Personally, though, I’m doubtful about the wisdom of making endless repairs to these very old boats. My feeling, for what it’s worth, is that they should be regarded as wasting assets. Let them run down just so much every year, remember your low outgoings, and in a few years’ time have them towed away for their break-up value.’

      ‘I don’t know where we should live then,’ said Nenna.

      ‘Oh, I understood you to say that you were going to find a place on shore.’

      ‘Oh, we are, we are.’

      ‘I didn’t mean to distress you.’

      Laura had had time, while listening without much attention to these remarks, to swallow a further quantity of spirits. This had made her inquisitive, rather than hostile.

      ‘Where’d you get your guernsey?’

      Both women wore the regulation thick Navy blue sailing sweaters, with a split half inch at the bottom of each side seam. Nenna had rolled up her sleeves in the warmth of the snug, showing round forearms covered with very fine golden hair.

      ‘I got mine at the cut price place at the end of the Queenstown Road.’

      ‘It’s not as thick as mine.’

      Laura leaned forward, and, taking a good handful, felt the close knitting between finger and thumb.

      ‘I’m a judge of quality, I can tell it’s not as thick. Richard, like to feel it?’

      ‘I’m afraid I can’t claim to know much about knitting.’

      ‘Well, make the stove up then. Make it up, you idiot! Nenna’s freezing!’

      ‘I’m warm, thank you, just right.’

      ‘You’ve got to be warmer than that! Richard, she’s your guest!’

      ‘I can adjust the stove, if you like,’ said Richard, in relief, ‘I can do something to the regulator.’

      ‘I don’t want it regulated!’

      Nenna knew that, if it hadn’t been disloyal, Richard would have appealed to her to do or say something.

      ‘We use pretty well anything for fuel up our end,’ she began, ‘driftwood and washed-up coke and anything that’ll burn. Maurice told me that last winter he had to borrow a candle from Dreadnought to unfreeze the lock of his woodstore. Then when he was entertaining one of his friends he couldn’t get his stove to burn right and he had to keep it alight with matchboxes and cheese straws.’

      ‘It’s bad practice to keep your woodstore above deck,’ said Richard.

      Laura had been following, for some reason, with painful interest. ‘Do cheese straws burn?’

      ‘Maurice thinks they do.’

      Laura disappeared. Nenna had just time to say, I must be going, before she came back, tottering at a kind of dignified slant, and holding a large tin of cheese straws.

      ‘Fortnum’s.’

      Avoiding Richard, who got to his feet as soon as he saw something to be carried, she kicked open the top of the Arctic and flung them in golden handfuls onto the glowing bed of fuel.

      ‘Hot!’

      The flames leaped up, with an overpowering stink of burning cheese.

      ‘Lovely! Hot! I’ve got plenty more! The kitchen’s full of them! We’ll make Richard throw them. We’ll all throw them!’

      ‘There’s someone coming,’ said Nenna.

      Footsteps overhead, like the relief for siege victims. She knew the determined stamp of her younger daughter, but there was also a heavier tread. Her heart turned over.

      ‘Ma, I can smell burning.’

      After a short fierce struggle, Richard had replaced the Arctic’s brass lid. Nenna went to the companion.

      ‘Who’s up there with you, Tilda?’

      Tilda’s six-year-old legs, in wellingtons caked with mud, appeared at the open hatch.

      ‘It’s Father Watson.’

      Nenna did not answer for a second, and Tilda bellowed:

      ‘Ma, it’s the kindly old priest. He came round to Grace, so I brought him along here.’

      ‘Father Watson isn’t old at all, Tilda. Bring him down here, please. That’s to say …’

      ‘Of