‘Revenge of the Tide. Odd sort of a name for a boat,’ I’d said, the day I decided to spend the bulk of my savings on it. Cameron, the boatyard owner and the broker for boat sales, was standing beside me on the pontoon. He wasn’t a fabulous salesman; he was in a hurry to get on with the countless other tasks he had waiting. He was fidgeting from one foot to the other and was clearly only just managing to hold back from saying, ‘Do you want her or not?’ It was a good job for him that I’d already fallen in love.
The Revenge of the Tide was a seventy-five-foot-long barge of a type known as a Hagenaar, named for the canals of Den Haag, under whose bridges the boat was low enough to pass. It had been built in 1903 in the Netherlands, a great beast of a boat, a workhorse. The masts had been removed and a diesel engine added after the Second World War, and it had been used for transporting goods around the Port of Rotterdam until it was sold in the 1970s and moved across the English Channel. Ever since then, a steady stream of owners had been using it either for moving cargo, for pleasure trips or as living accommodation, with varying degrees of commitment and success.
‘The owner bought her just before his second divorce,’ said Cam. ‘He managed to con his missus because he bought the boat with all the savings he had stashed away. He wanted to call her just Revenge, I think, but it was a bit too obvious so he called her Revenge of the Tide instead.’
‘I might have to change the name,’ I said, as Cam took me into the office to sign the paperwork.
‘You can’t do that. Bad luck to change a boat’s name.’
‘Bad luck? What, worse than having a boat named after a failed marriage?’
Cam grimaced.
‘Anyway, the last owner changed the name, didn’t he?’
‘Yeah. And he’s just getting divorced for the third time, and having to sell his boat to pay for it. What does that tell you?’
So I left the name as it was, because I didn’t need any more bad luck in my life. Besides, the Revenge had character, had a soul; living aboard such a majestic, beautiful boat made me feel a bit safer, a bit less lonely. And it looked after me and hid me away from view. Boats were supposed to be female, but I always thought of the Revenge as male: a big, quiet gentleman, someone who would keep me safe.
‘So what time are your London mates turning up?’ Josie asked.
‘Oh, lord knows. Late, probably.’
Josie was like a warm cushion, fleecy and brightly coloured. There was barely room for the two of us on the narrow bench. Her greying hair was fighting the breeze to escape from the loosely tied ponytail on the back of her head. At least the sun had come out, and the early evening sky overhead was blue, dotted with white clouds.
‘What are they going to make of us lot, do you reckon?’
‘I’m more worried about what you’ll make of them.’
A few days after I’d moved in, I had poked my head out of the wheelhouse to be greeted by the sight of Malcolm sitting on the roof of the Scarisbrick Jean smoking a roll-up and wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts. It was early, barely light, and the spring air was so cold that Malcolm’s breath came in clouds. His hair stood up on one side of his head as if it had been ironed.
‘Alright?’ he’d called across to me.
‘Morning,’ I’d said, and had almost gone back down below when curiosity got the better of me. ‘You okay over there?’
‘Yeah,’ he’d said, taking a long, slow drag. ‘You?’ As though it were entirely normal to be sitting on the roof of a narrowboat at five in the morning wearing nothing but your underwear. I hadn’t known his name then. I’d seen him coming and going, of course, and we’d exchanged nods and greetings, but it still felt a bit peculiar to be sharing the dawn with a man who was just a scrap of grey flannel away from naked.
‘Aren’t you cold?’
‘Oh,’ he’d said, with dawning comprehension. ‘Yeah. Fucking freezing. But I can’t go inside: Josie’s just had a shit and stunk the whole boat out.’
In the first few days and weeks of boat ownership, living in the marina had felt like being in a foreign country. The pace of life was slower. If someone was going to the shop they would shout at you and ask if you wanted anything bringing back. Some of them turned up unexpectedly and sat on your boat and talked about nothing for three hours and then went away again, sometimes abruptly, as though the flow of conversation had dried up or some other, more pressing engagement had surfaced. Sometimes they brought food or drink with them. They helped you fix things, even if it wasn’t immediately apparent that the thing in question needed fixing. They gave you advice about which chemicals you should use to keep the toilet working. They laughed a lot.
Some of the boats were owned by people who only turned up at the marina at the weekends, or less often if it was rainy. One of them, a narrowboat in a state of considerable disrepair, was owned by a man with wilder hair than Malcolm’s. I’d only seen him twice. The first time, I’d called a cheery hello on my way past his boat, and got a vacant stare in response. The second time, he’d been walking across the car park with a carrier bag that looked heavy and chinked as though it was full of glass bottles.
Then there was Carol-Anne. She lived in a cabin cruiser that should by rights not have been moored in the residential marina, but she got away with it because she did actually live there. She was divorced, with three children who lived with their father in Chatham. She would say hello and then try and talk to you for hours about how grim things were and how difficult it was to manage. All the other liveaboards tried to avoid her and, after a couple of weeks, I did too.
The rest of them were wonderful.
Joanna had turned up with a plateful of dinner once. ‘You eaten? Good, we made too much.’
We’d sat together at the dinette, Joanna drinking from a can of lager which she’d found in my fridge, while I tucked into shepherd’s pie and peas.
‘I’m not used to people bringing me dinner,’ I’d said when I’d finished.
Joanna had shrugged. ‘It’s no bother. Glad not to throw it away.’
‘People here are very friendly,’ I’d said, aware at the same time of what an understatement this was. It was like suddenly finding yourself part of a big family.
‘Yes. It’s the whole boat thing. You get used to it, after a while. Not like living in London, huh?’
Not like living in London, I’d thought, not at all.
Mixing London friends with marina friends had the potential to be a recipe for pure disaster: they’d have nothing in common, other than perhaps that Simone occasionally read the Guardian on a Saturday. Lucy would turn up in her vast, tank-like all-terrain luxury vehicle that did about twelve miles to the gallon and had never been outside the M25; Gavin would be wearing incredibly expensive designer shoes that would be ruined in the muddy puddles around the dock that never seemed to dry up.
And then there was Caddy. Would she even come?
At some point in the future, the Revenge of the Tide would be a fantastic party boat, big enough for lots of people to socialise in and crash out on – but not yet. If they all turned up, some of them would have to sit on the deck, and some of them would probably never even set foot below deck – there simply wouldn’t be room. They would all have a laugh about it and then they would walk back up to the main road and go to the pub. The other liveaboards would make some remarks about city dwellers, laugh a lot, drink more beer and end up going back to their own boats in the early hours.
They would be here soon. Josie closed her eyes against the low sun and breathed in, a smile of contentment on her face as though she were sunbathing on a yacht in the Mediterranean instead of an old Dutch barge on the Medway.
‘We’ll love them,’ she said at last. ‘We love everyone. Unless they’re real snobs.’
It had got to the point where I didn’t actually care what my city friends thought. At the start of this year I had cared very much. It had mattered what I thought, what I wore, what I said, what music I listened to, what p
ubs I drank in after work, and what I did at the weekends. London was a vast social network where you met people in bars and clubs, at the gym, at work and at events, in parks and at the theatre, at salsa dance nights in the local pub. You spent enough time with them to establish whether they were on your wavelength, and eventually decided whether they could be classed as friends. People came and went in and out of your life in a transitory fashion, and it never really seemed to matter. There was always someone else to go out with, always an invitation to some party or gathering. So I had plenty of people I knew, and in London they would generally be called friends, or mates. But were they? Were they people you could call on in a crisis? Would they stay with you if you were ill, or in danger? Would they protect you, if you needed protecting?
Dylan would. Dylan had, in fact.
‘They’re not snobs, not really. But to be honest I think it’s going to be a bit of a shock for them. I think they’re expecting some kind of gorgeous loft apartment squeezed into a boat.’
‘Rubbish, you’ve done a fabulous job.’
‘I’ve still got a long way to go. And there isn’t a single thing on my boat that I’ve bought new. Unfortunately that lot don’t really get the recycling ethos.’
‘Seriously? But your boat’s looking fabulous. And you’ve done it all yourself. Not many of us have done the fitting out on our own.’
‘At least the tide’s coming in.’
The hull was presently sitting comfortably on a cushion of mud, the boat steady. When the tide came in, it would rise on the water and, depending on the weather, rock gently for six hours or so, until the tide ebbed again. The boat looked much better when it was floating, and of course the mud didn’t always smell particularly nice.
Josie looked across the pontoon. ‘Who’s this?’
The sight of the shiny 4x4 pulling into the marina car park meant that some of the London lot had arrived, and in fact it turned out to be most of them. Lucy was first to jump down. She’d made an effort to dress down in jeans and boots, but the boots still had heels on them. Almost immediately she sank down into the earth and from our position on deck we heard her shout, ‘Fuck!’
From the back came Gavin and Chrissie, and someone else, from the passenger side – at first I couldn’t see who it was, and then he came round the front of the big bonnet and I could see him, in all his glory.
‘I don’t believe it,’ I murmured.
‘Ooh, he looks nice,’ said Josie.
‘It’s Ben.’
‘What, the gorgeous one?’
‘Yes. The one in the jacket is Gavin. I used to work with him. The blonde girl is Lucy, and the other one is Chrissie, she’s a model.’
I stood up on the deck and waved. It was Ben who saw me and returned the wave, and then they all started picking their way across the car park towards the marina, carrying various things between them. Gavin was almost hidden behind a huge bunch of flowers. ‘You’ll need a great big vase for that lot,’ Josie said under her breath.
‘Mm. I think I’ve got a milk bottle somewhere.’
We laughed conspiratorially and for a moment I wondered why I’d decided to hold this party in the first place. It was like a crashing together of two worlds, two different planets that I’d inhabited – one of them had been home before, and the other one was home now. I had a foot in both worlds, and to be honest I wasn’t completely comfortable in either.
‘Hello!’ Lucy had reached the end of the pontoon and was looking at it uncertainly. ‘Can I walk on this?’
‘Of course you can,’ said Ben, marching past her. ‘Can we come aboard?’
He was at the bottom of the narrow gangplank. Even from here I could see how blue his eyes were.
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Come up.’
He made it on to the deck, taking my hand for balance although he didn’t need it. It was enough reason to pull me into a hug. He smelled delicious.
‘I didn’t know you were coming,’ I said.
‘I didn’t know either. I was round at Lucy’s and she said I could tag along. You don’t mind?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Er, hello? Someone give me a hand?’
Ben held out his hand for Lucy and she wobbled up the gangplank, followed by Chrissie and Gavin at the end.
‘Guys, this is Josie.’
Josie stood up, a little awkwardly. ‘Hi. I live on that boat down there.’ She pointed down at the Scarisbrick Jean, sitting forlorn and slightly at an angle on the mud. Oswald was lazing on the roof enjoying the sunshine, one leg elevated elegantly in the air while he cleaned his bottom.
‘Oh, cool,’ said Lucy. ‘It’s – oh. A lovely boat.’
There was a pause, and then, just when it was about to get awkward, Malcolm appeared through the door to the wheelhouse, wiping the back of his sooty hand over his sweaty forehead, and said, ‘I’ve put the garlic bread on the stove. Alright?’
Three
It got better as the evening wore on, which was a relief. By the time I had done the first tour, Carla and Simone had arrived by train and taxi, and after the second tour the boat and the deck and the pontoon were full of people, most of them from the marina, outnumbering the townies and making the party come alive.
Joanna and Liam came with the lasagne and two whole cheesecakes, Maureen and Pat brought more beer, Roger and Sally brought a keg of their homebrew and a bag full of home-made bread. Diane and Steve came without their children but with a two-way baby monitor, which worked just fine given that their boat was only about ten feet away. Joanna had also brought a present of a couple of strings of fairy lights, which were duly strung up around the deck and made the boat look pretty and festive as the sun set at last and darkness fell.
There was no sign of Caddy. I wondered if I’d been enthusiastic enough with my invitation. For a long time she had been the closest thing I had to a best friend in London, and I missed her, I wanted to see her again. If I couldn’t invite Dylan, there was nothing stopping me asking Caddy. But she hadn’t made it.
I’d only spoken to her a few times since I’d left. She still hadn’t forgiven me properly for leaving in such a hurry. When I called her, it seemed to take her several minutes to thaw out before we could relax enough to have a laugh.
‘What sort of a party?’ she’d asked.
‘Oh, you know. Just a party. Maybe to show off the boat.’
‘Will there be any nice blokes there?’
A mental image of Malcolm had flashed through my mind. ‘Well…’
‘Oh, alright, then. I guess so. You’ll have to text me the address.’
‘How’s the club?’ I’d asked, the way I always did.
‘It’s alright. Quiet at the moment. New girls started last week, crap most of them. No real competition any more.’
There was a pause. She knew what I was really asking and she always left me hanging. Sometimes she made me ask it; sometimes she took pity on me.
‘Dylan’s not been in the club much. Fitz has got him doing something, I think.’
‘How is he?’
‘Grumpy, same as always.’
And she’d laughed.
Where was she?
I found myself penned into the corner of the dinette by Malcolm and Joanna, somehow involved in a protracted discussion with Lucy about the toilet system and how it worked.
‘But what about the shower?’ Lucy shouted above the chatter in the cabin. Joanna was heating up bread in the galley, banging cupboard doors open and shut in the vain hope of finding a baking tray.
‘What about it?’ Malcolm said, his voice challenging. He had a thing about his hair – he never used shampoo to wash it, which wasn’t a problem as far as he was concerned, but he got defensive if he thought someone was suggesting he was in some way grubby or unkempt.
‘Well,’ said Lucy, ‘not putting too fine a point on it, it’s a hose.’
‘I know it’s a hose,’ I said. ‘It won’t always be a hose.’
Oh, God, I?
??m drunk, I thought. I’m drunk already.
I looked at my watch. Caddy should be here by now. Why wasn’t she?
Malcolm said, ‘Most people have bathrooms on board but, just in case, there’s showers near the office. They’re kept really clean and nice.’
‘Oh, you mean like on a campsite?’ Lucy said, although the closest she had come to camping was two half-day visits to Glastonbury, and even then she had stayed in a hotel.
‘Yeah, kind of. But cleaner,’ Malcolm said.
‘Look, I’m building a bathroom at the end. A proper one with a bath,’ I said, anxious that she wouldn’t think I was intending to spend the rest of my life roughing it.
Malcolm coughed.
‘I’ll have it ready by Christmas, honest. It’s going to have a proper bath, and after that I’m going to install an outdoor shower in my conservatory.’
‘Your what?’
‘I’m going to put a sliding roof on, beyond the bedroom. There’s going to be about ten feet or so of deck that I can open up to the elements, with a shower. Then right at the bow I’ll put another room – maybe an office or a snug or something.’
‘It sounds like a lot of hard work,’ said Joanna with a sympathetic smile.
‘It’s alright,’ I said. ‘I can work at my own pace.’
‘How’s the money side of it? Five months without an income would kill me,’ said Lucy.
That’s because you spend all your money on clothes, I found myself thinking. ‘It’s not going too badly. I’ve still got savings.’
‘I thought you spent it all on the boat?’
‘Not quite all of it.’
There was a pause. I was waiting for her to say something else – daring her. Malcolm was looking from me to Lucy and back again.
‘So what job was it you did in London?’ he asked.
‘Sales,’ I said, before Lucy could answer. ‘You heard of ERP software? It stands for Enterprise Resource Planning. It’s a big software package: you sell the core system to multinational organisations and then after that you keep trying to sell them bolt-on modules. You know, accounting modules, human resources, that kind of thing.’