Houseboat on the Seine: A Memoir

  The Battle of the Beams

  But first the battle with the beams. I drag one through the window, bouncing over the support struts in the bottom of the boat, to the base of the ladder I’ve put in place leading to the upper boat. Then, rung by rung, I advance one end of this heavy brute up the aluminum ladder, the ladder I should have been using all along, until we reach the top and can lean the beam at the edge of the cut to the upper boat. I climb down the ladder and, midway, reaching out, manage to twist the beam so it’s sitting up on the narrow side. The angle doesn’t look too bad, but it doesn’t exactly look like a staircase either, more like a large, awkward half of a wooden ladder. I pull the other beam into place the same way. I try lining them up. I do this by eye. It’s about here when I’m in the upper boat, lining things up, that I accidentally bump the ladder so it slides and falls into the bottom boat. Now I have no way to get either out to the lower boat or down from the upper boat. I’ve figuratively painted myself into a corner. It’s the kind of situation I seem to find myself in too often.

  Risers, Steps, a Tug-of War and Dreams of Canaries

  Then, I remember the winch at the back of the boat. I gingerly work my way along the two-foot-wide overlap of the metal boat from under the wooden boat and come to the winch. It consists of two rather thin cables attached to a ratchet and pulley. I’m wearing gloves and as there’s nothing else to do, I lower myself over the edge of the upper boat and, hand over hand, waggle myself onto land. I give the winch an extra crank while I’m at it. The back end of the boat is now only about two feet from where I want it to be.

  I sit on the bank, still wet, top and bottom, and try to figure some easier way to climb back on my boat than hanging by the winch. I bring the rope down from the car, tie one end of it onto the old gangplank and throw the rope in a loop, sort of a poor man’s cowboy lasso and finally, after about fifty throws, manage to hook it onto one of the bollards and fish the other end of the rope out of the water.

  Now I have a tug-of-war on my hands. It’s me against the boat. But I finally do it and shimmy up onto the deck, tying the old gangplank more or less firmly in place so I can gingerly descend by it if necessary. I walk into the upper boat and look down the hole at my ladder. Now, how do I get down there? I’m still stuck. I’ve got to master this staircase soon or I’m going to go completely bananas.

  I actually slide down one of those planks, picking up three monster splinters in scattered parts of my body, but I retrieve the ladder.

  Now it’s time to measure. I start marking with a rule and pencil the locations for the stairs. I redo it about three times before it comes out right, that is, so ordinary people, not just kangaroos, can climb to the top or lower themselves into the lower boat.

  With this thought, I call it a day and drive home.

  ∨ Houseboat on the Seine ∧

  Six

  White as Driven Snow

  I’m not about to try explaining to the family what I’ve been doing. On the way home, I start dreaming again about having an aviary for canaries on the back two meters of the protruding lower-boat deck. I could lean out the back bedroom window of the upper boat and feed them. I’d build it with double mesh to keep away cats. I’ve had large canary aviaries in the past, but what with living in a small apartment here in Paris haven’t had much chance lately. It would be great.

  Over the next two days, I spend all my time building the staircase. First I buy more wood at the building-and-supply place. This wood is lighter weight than what I bought as the main braces for the sides. I’ve brought out my tools from Paris, both hand and power. I’m not really a ‘tool man.’ I inherited the hand tools from my dad, who had spent part of his life as a carpenter, and since then I’ve accumulated a Skil saw, a power drill, and a jigsaw. It isn’t much to tackle a job like this, but I feel ready after yesterday’s fiasco.

  The first thing is to cut the bottom of the beams so they line up with each other and, more than that, will be sitting flat on the floor, that is, when I lay the floor. I use the simple geometric laws about complementary and supplementary angles, and mark the cut. Of course, I don’t really believe it until my eye sees this has to be the correct angle. And believe it or not, it turns out to be about right. Sometimes method does pay off.

  I cut the stairs and make braces for under each step. I drill holes to screw in the braces, so as not to split the wood, then drive ten-centimeter screws into these holes. The smell of wood and sawdust is a comfort after the unmitigated smell of oil. It’s such a delight to feel more or less in control of what I’m doing, too.

  When I finish screwing in the last step, I practice going up and down a few times. Going up is easy. I just lean forward and if I want, climb on all fours, but it isn’t necessary. Coming down is harder. I find it best to go the first four steps facing down, then, as my shoulders come to the cut between the two boats, I turn and go the rest of the way backward, the way one would on a ladder. It isn’t perfect, but it’s good enough for me.

  I’ve been doing all this work alone because school has started and the rest of the family is busy. I’m about ready now to deal with the floor. I decide first to put in Styrofoam over the oil between the struts, which are set fifty centimeters apart. I’ll use Styrofoam three centimeters thick. I do the calculations and go back again to the supply house. It turns out they sell the Styrofoam in panels two-meters-fifty by one-meter-twenty. It also is sold at this place only in packets often. A quick guess from my figures shows I’ll need at least two packets.

  They’re getting to know me in the office, and I’m waited on quickly. I’ve been passing myself off as a professional, but that has to be one of the most transparent lies I’ve ever tried to pull. They don’t care. It’s just that I need to pay the TVA and can’t recuperate it. I’m learning. I’m spending money so fast I can see us opening up the boat as a poorhouse boat, just for our family.

  The Styrofoam is light but very bulky. I take one package at a time on top of the car and quickly discover that almost no matter how slowly I go, the stuff wants to take off, fly away on its own. It keeps fluttering over my eyes out the windshield like butterfly wings. The second load I tie down more carefully. The supply-house people are very generous about giving me all the string-fiber rope I need. I think they’re beginning to wonder what the hell I’m going to do with all the Styrofoam.

  The next part is easy, too. I cut the Styrofoam with an ordinary kitchen knife and before long, I don’t need to measure but can cut it right in place. Having the floor all white makes the entire lower boat seem much lighter, so much so, I figure I’ll line the walls with the stuff. It’ll be good for insulation, too.

  I buy another two bundles and start cutting them to fit between the side bracings of the boat. At first, I try gluing them to the walls, but no glue or mastic I find will stick to the seventy-some years worth of oil that is soaked into those walls, so I learn to cut each section about one-eighth-inch wider than I need, then jam it into place. It works fine.

  Of course, now the oil-soaked ceiling looks terrible in comparison, so back I go again and buy two more packs. I use the same squeeze-in system to fit these panels. But I find they want to fall down almost as fast as I put them up, even when I increase the amount of extra width. So I buy a packet of lath and, cutting them a fraction of a centimeter longer, I wedge them sideways in under the ceiling pieces of Styrofoam, and that holds things together.

  After about a week’s work, it all looks white and beautiful. A surgeon could operate down here if he were a damned fool and romantic enough. I walk on the struts and try not to step on the floors, although it doesn’t matter. The Styrofoam is mostly for insulation, not for beauty. But I like the way it takes so much of the oil curse off the boat. I even begin to feel the oil smell isn’t as bad.

  ∨ Houseboat on the Seine ∧

  Seven

  The Floor Plan

  Saturday, I order the wood to floor the boat. First I buy pieces like American two-by-fours to lay across t
he struts so they run along the length of the boat. I try drilling into the struts to hold them in place, but that’s impossible. The steel is as hard as, well – steel. I break three specially tempered metal bits trying.

  After much worrying at it, I finally realize I only need to place the lengths crosswise to the metal beams, fifty centimeters apart. I mark their location on the metal struts with the same blue chalk I used to mark in the windows. I calculate I’m going to need twenty (the length of the boat) by five (the width of the boat) by two (the number of boards for each meter of width). This comes to two hundred meters of board. I drive down and order this, haul it back in several loads on top of my car. I carry them down the bank and push them through the window. It doesn’t take long to position them on the struts.

  The next part is easy but expensive. I calculate the number of square meters I’ll need to floor this lower boat. It’s twenty by five meters, or 100 square meters. I go back to the building supply outfit and start looking around for the least expensive wood that will do the job. After almost giving up, I find some wood long enough, five meters, and cheap enough. It’s wood used to make shipping crates and is called bois de chauffage. It’s unmilled and comes in random lengths and widths. I’m getting into big bucks now.

  Thanks to one of my best buyers, I’ve sold four paintings this past week, so I have the money. I also buy five kilos of number-six, or six-centimeter, nails. This is long enough to go through the floorboards, then through the depth of the wood I’m calling floor joists. I’m glad my dad isn’t here to see the crazy way I’m doing this job.

  I ask about delivery costs and time of delivery for the flooring wood, then decide I can do it myself, definitely quicker and cheaper. I spend the better part of the next day hauling this wood back to the boat.

  The men working in the yard are nice enough to let me go through the stacks and choose the best boards. I try to avoid large knots that might fall out, or pieces that are really rough and unfinished. When I’ve made my choices and set them aside, they make quite a pile. The average width of the boards is about eight inches.

  I put the poor Hillman to the test again. I find I can take five boards at a time. I’m getting a real workout pressing those five-meter boards up on top of the car, tying them down, then unloading them and piling them on the chemin de halage. The boards hang over the front and back of the car more than the length of the Hillman itself. I hate to think what Rosemary would say if she saw me misusing her lovely automobile so ruthlessly.

  There are over eighty boards, so that means sixteen trips. I lose count after about the seventh load. I’m thinking about Camus and The Myth of Sisyphus. Just as it’s getting dark, I unload the last boards. I consider moving them all down to the edge of the water for safety, but I’m too tired. I push in three boards through the window and climb in over them. I want to test my theory as to how this is going to work. I start at the back of the boat, the flat end where we cut out the first window. The boards fit lengthwise perfectly from one side of the boat to the other. I don’t have to cut anything off there. Up in the bow of the boat, it narrows, and I’ll need to cut to shape.

  I jam the boards into place before nailing anything, checking to see that the joists are still lined up, then get out my hammer and nails. I go along pounding in nails and hoping for the best. My theory is to let gravity help me keep all this in place. By pushing the boards tight against each other and nailing into the joists, nothing can move. It’s all held by the weight of the floor itself. I put three nails in at each joist, or thirty nails across each board. In all, I drive ninety nails in, three boards. When it’s wide enough so I can stand, it’s solid as I could ever wish.

  It’s getting too dark to work, so I quit, leaving the hammer and box of nails just where I finished. I know now I’m going to need help, as my arm is about to fall off. I can nail reasonably well, but enough is enough. I figure on organizing a big nailing party next Saturday.

  The Nailing Party

  When I park the car and go up to the apartment, I make my announcement. Matt’s willing; he has his cast off and is walking around fine. He’ll do his weekend homework tonight. Rosemary says she doesn’t think she can help with the nailing, but there has to be something she can do. There sure is.

  We work out a list of friends we think might be willing or able to give us a hand. After about ten phone calls, I have three volunteers. We’re going to make a sort of picnic out of it, potluck. The crew will be, besides myself: Matt, Robin and Donna Cody, Neil and Barbara Austin, plus my painting buddy, Jo Lancaster. Most of them teach at the same school as Rosemary.

  We agree to meet at the boat by nine o’clock. Robin and Neil say they’ll be there. We, that is, my family, take off from Paris at seven-thirty. We can beat most of the traffic that way. When we arrive, Robin and Donna are already there, Robin with hammer in hand, a good Stanley. Donna has a big pot of spaghetti and one of her outstanding rhubarb pies.

  It’s a beautiful day, a real Indian summer day. The leaves from the maples and willows on the bank are falling like snow from the slight frost the night before. I take everybody up the old gangplank, then down the new stairs to see how it looks. It almost looks like new construction with just the white, and now, at the far end, those few boards I’ve nailed in place.

  Just then, Neil and Barbara Austin arrive. She’s carrying a monster tray filled with lasagna. Luckily, the upper boat still has the butane stove working so we can heat these goodies up before we eat. Next comes Jo Lancaster, and he has four bottles of wine and two hammers.

  ‘Three red for the he-men and one white for the fish course.’

  We start carrying down the boards and pushing them through the windows. The women are a big help with this. When we have enough boards down, we push several boards in place. Now we have a real platform from which to nail. We space ourselves, distribute nails and start pounding. The only rule is no pounding down bent nails. Either they go in straight or they have to be broken off or pulled out. Actually, the wood is reasonably soft and easy to nail. How I’d love to have some real oak. Hard to nail, but it would be beautiful.

  By lunch, we’re about halfway done. I’m beginning to worry about the nails lasting. The supply house is closed on Saturdays. I consider changing from three nails for each joist to two. If we do that, we can probably make it.

  We set out the lunch on the table I’ve glued back together and cleaned off. We buy three baguettes, and the women have set things up so we serve ourselves. Most of us pull chairs out onto the chemin de halage. This old path the donkeys used to pull the barges up to the locks has been converted by us into a picnic ground. It’s beautiful with the yellow and red leaves all around us in the sunshine.

  It’s Robin who, between bites of lasagna, brings us the inevitable question.

  ‘Will, what in heaven’s name are you doing here with this boat? It can’t go anywhere. You’re working yourself to a frazzle, we never see you around anymore. The smell of the river is like a sewer and the inside of the boat smells like death itself.’

  ‘Robin, it’s a question I’ve been asking myself since I got involved with this. At first, I was sure it was all some kind of nightmare accident and would disappear when I woke up, or, maybe just sink, or float away, or I’d work up the nerve to walk away from it, give it up as a bum deal.’

  I slurp up some spaghetti. I like to eat spaghetti with a fork and a spoon, twisting it around the fork while fending off the slippery stragglers with the spoon. I look up at Robin to see how he’s taking this.

  ‘But then, Robin, little by little, like some kind of an addiction, I find myself attracted to the whole idea of living on this boat. It’s been taking up an enormous part of my time and I’m way behind with my painting, but the very lunacy, difficulty, the immensity of the project, right from the beginning, has gotten into my blood. I love trying to figure out solutions to the impossible, or what seems to me impossible. Oddly enough, it’s so much like painting, I suspect it was predesti
ned. I don’t have any other answer.’

  Barbara Austin is sitting beside me. She tosses her long hair back with a shake of her head.

  ‘I can understand that. It must be something like having kids. It just happens to you, so your life isn’t yours anymore, everything seems to blow away out of hand. Then, the more involved you become, the more bizarre it all looks. You can’t back out and at the same time, you want to go on and find what comes next, how are the kids going to grow up, what’ll they be like. Can I do it better than my parents did? All the questions. It’s beyond your control, it just pulls you along.’

  ‘Yeah, Barb, that’s a big part of it. And the same as with having kids. As you do it, you find yourself continually growing to match the challenge. I know I’m a better person in many ways for having gone through with this thing so far. I have more confidence in myself, in what I can do, but more important, I’m a hell of a lot more humble, finding out all the things I cant do, have no idea even how to start.

  ‘Watching some of these river people and the kinds of problems they can handle, emergency-type situations, with such aplomb, is a revelation and amazement to me. I think it’s also the feeling of being a pioneer, doing things I’ve never done, testing the limits of my endurance, all those sorts of experiences become important. I know when I go back to painting, I’ll be a better painter because of the hellish kinds of projects I’ve been doing here. I’m improving my French, too. I know words for things in French now I don’t even know in English. I’m learning to curse like a French sailor. That’s mind-expanding.’

  I didn’t intend to make such a speech, but as I’m rolling on, partly stimulated by the wine, I sense that what I’m saying is about what I’m really feeling. I stop and concentrate on the spaghetti. Rosemary has come over from where she’s been pulling weeds after finishing her lasagna.