The Boat in the Garden

For ten years Mr Hartley had been building a boat in his back garden. It sat between the house and the gate, it was painted blue, and by the end of the summer it would be ready. Then he was going to take it to the river, and from the river to the sea, and from the sea to France.

"Why France?" people in the street asked him.

"Because I went there on the train once," he said, "and nobody understood a word I said. I spoke very clearly. I said everything twice, louder the second time. Nothing. So this time I am taking my own boat, and I am going to speak even more clearly."

In the spring, a woman bought the house next door. She was from Norway. She was quiet, she smiled a lot, and she spent her evenings at her kitchen window, watching the boat.

Mr Hartley went to the wall between the two gardens. "HELLO," he said. "MY. NAME. IS. HARTLEY. I. HAVE. BEEN. BUILDING. A. BOAT."

The woman smiled.

"TEN. YEARS," he said, and showed her ten fingers. "You do not speak English, do you? Never mind. NOBODY. DOES."

She opened her mouth, but he had already started on the next thing, so she closed it again.

All summer it was the same. When he was cutting wood, she was at the wall. When he was busy with the paint, she was at the window. He told her everything in his big, clear voice, because that is how you talk to a person from Norway.

"NOT. A. BAD. DAY. IS. IT?" he said one morning.

She smiled.

"YOU. HAVE. NOT. BEEN. WATCHING. ME. ALL. DAY. HAVE. YOU?"

She smiled.

"SHE. IS. NOT. BAD. IS. SHE?" he said, with one hand on the side of the boat.

The woman looked at the boat for a long time. Then she looked at the bottom of it. Then she smiled a little less.

At the end of the summer the boat was finished. It was too heavy for one man, so Mr Hartley asked two people from the street and the woman next door, who could carry more than both of them. "CAN. YOU. HELP. ME. CARRY. IT?" he said to her, and showed her with his arms. "TO. THE. RIVER."

They carried it to the river and put it in the water. Mr Hartley stood in the middle of it, very proud.

"FRANCE!" he said.

Then the river began to come through the bottom of the boat.

"Ah," said the woman next door, in perfect English. "I have been trying to tell you about that since April. There is a hole at the back, under the paint. You have been covering it with paint all summer."

Mr Hartley looked at her. "You speak English."

"I have been speaking English all summer," she said. "You have been speaking louder. Every time I started, you said the next thing, a little louder. It is not a bad boat, is it? It just has a hole in it."

The water was round his legs now. Mr Hartley looked at the boat he had been building for ten years. Then he spoke to it, one word at a time, in his biggest voice.

"BOAT. STOP. THAT."

It did not understand him either.