I was with the Poet Macaque the other day, and obviously we were talking about writing – even though it was the pub quiz. It wasn’t surprising that we talked about the writing group, and what interesting things people write about, and for some reason one of us mentioned the word ‘boathouse’. Maybe it was me, I do have a fascination with them. My dad coached several local rowing teams in Cambridge, think of the Cambridge and Oxford boat-race, that sort of boat, so I was familiar with boathouses.
However, it’s not those sort of boathouses which fascinate me, it’s the smaller sort you see in films where it’s like a shed sticking out over water – a river or a lake, and boats are kept there, either on the water, or taken out and stored. There’s an echoey sound of the water, the slaps and laps, the gurgles and murmurs, and the reverberation of voices which are sometimes distorted so if you’re not looking you might not know who’s speaking. Boathouses appear in books too, and whether watched or read about, the viewer/reader knows they are places of significance. They might be where a romantic assignation takes place, or a murder, or secrets are revealed in the darkness – with maybe a lantern to add atmosphere and wavery shadows, voices maybe distorted, or maybe they come from the shadows, threatening and scary.
I really wanted to write about a boathouse by the time the quiz was over and we said cheerio to all and to each other, and husband and I strolled home through the quiet village. A couple of days later I began something. Who knows if it will ever be finished, and whether it will be a short story or something else:
The Boathouse
We bought the place because I fell in love with the boathouse. We had liked it well enough, but had payed more attention to the place which would become our home. The house had the large welcoming hall, the kitchen was large and had a pantry. Then – the living room, dining room and another anything room, plus a small room which could be a study. There was a wide, generous staircase sweeping up to a landing with a window looking down the drive towards the gates, four bedrooms and a bathroom – small but we would change that.
It had been un-lived in for quite a while, but there was no smell of damp or mould, just dust rising in the sun streaming in. There were odd items of furniture left behind, old rugs, bits and pieces of the previous tenants. There were no ghosts, but if there had been, they would have been benign.
I confess we hadn’t properly read all the house details – well, we had devoured the details of the actual property but other details about the outbuildings we’d just skimmed over. Boathouse I had taken to mean something like a garage but with storage for a boat.
When we visited it had been pouring down with rain. The house was bone dry inside and had a warm smell as if the previous weeks of sunshine had been trapped inside. We had visited again but another person was interested – or maybe the estate agent wanted to make a sale – and we decided to go for it. Other visits had taken place, and we did walk down to the lake but took photos and walked back planning picnics and maybe getting a bench to sit on so we could write and paint. But somehow we didn’t properly look at the boathouse.
Lois Elsden 