... having been breathed out

Mission Actually Finish Some Books 4/9: Offshore, by Penelope Fitzgerald

What a delightful novella. Fitzgerald’s prose manages to be both economical and atmospheric, her characterization keenly observed in a way that communicates absurdity and poignancy all in a few brush strokes. Offshore is a sort of Impressionist ensemble piece about a group of people living in house boats on the Thames one autumn in the early 1960s—their circlings round each other, their alliances both natural and uneasy, and their eventual lettings-go.

Nenna set out to walk. A mile and a half down Green Lanes, half a mile down Nassington Green Road, one and a half miles the wrong way down Balls Pond Road, two miles down Kingsland Road, and then she was lost. As is usual in such cases, her body trudged on obstinately, knowing that one foot hurt rather more than the other, but deciding not to admit this until some sort of objective was reached, while her mind, rejecting the situation in time and space, became disjointed and childish. It came to her that it was wrong to pray for anything simply because you needed it personally. Prayer should be beyond self, and so Nenna repeated a Hail Mary for everyone in the world who was lost in Kingsland Road without their bus fares.

“Rochester? Grace? Bluebird? Maurice? Hours of Ease? Dunkirk? Relentless?”

Richard was quite correct, as technically speaking they were all in harbour, in addressing them by the names of their craft. Maurice, an amiable young man, had realised as soon as he came to the Reach that Richard was always going to do this and that he himself would accordingly be known as Dondeschiepolschuygen IV, which was inscribed in gilt lettering on his bows. He therefore renamed his boat Maurice.

—Penelope Fitzgerald, Offshore

……I kind of love her already.