Signals of Distress (12 page)

B
Y NOW
, in the last hundred yards through Wherrytown, Aymer Smith and Ralph Parkiss were far too cold to speak. Their six-mile walk had been ten miles.
They’d faltered in the snow and dark, misled by the preacher’s foghorn into believing that the sea had moved inland and they were lost. They’d had to trust Whip to set the path.
At last they’d seen the harbour light and found the inn courtyard where the tackle room, its door left open all day, was piled with drifting snow. The covered alleyway offered their first
shelter from the night. All they wanted now was a fire, some dry clothes and Mrs Yapp to fortify them with her tea against the influenza which Aymer promised would justly follow on from such
‘a foolish expedition’. The inn was empty, though. And cold. Just like a ghost ship. They rang the handbell in the parlour a dozen times, but no one came. They searched the rooms. Aymer
would have changed into warmer clothes, except his bags and books and clothes were gone and his bed was stripped. He felt a little stripped himself, and liberated too, of home, possessions and
proprieties. He even put his arm round Ralph’s big shoulders and called him ‘Friend’. They had been friends – if
silent
friends – as soon as they had swayed the
Cradle Rock.

Ralph managed to coax the parlour fire alight. He knelt in front of it and toasted herrings from the kitchen for their supper. Whip fell asleep at once across the hearth. Aymer did his best to
dry himself in the low heat. He smelled of smoke and herrings, and the smell spread through the empty levels of the inn. It was Ralph who guessed that everyone had gone to chapel. The pair of them
chuckled like boys; to have escaped the hymns was almost worth the journey. They would be comrade-masters of the inn, until the captain and his men came back to find the meddler Smith and the dog
returned and not fled on the
Tar
. But not a trace of Otto. Where is he now? Why did you let him go? would be the only questions to be asked. But there were deeper mysteries in Otto’s
first night out. What comforts would he find in snow? What would he have for supper? How would he reach his allocated place on earth and die where he was born, Amen? How joyous was he to be
free?

A
YMER
S
MITH
had fled the smoke and herrings of the parlour. (‘My chest and throat are raw, Ralph. My nose already is a
tap. I shouldn’t be surprised if I were feverish by breakfast time.’) He was sleeping, fully clothed, on his sheetless bed. Whip, exhausted by the snow and cold, curled at his side, her
nose tucked in between her legs. She didn’t know or care that Aymer was (brother Matthias’s judgement, endorsed by faithful Fidia) a blunderer, a bore, a hypochondriac, a meddling and
self-serving man. She had adopted him.

Robert and Katie Norris hadn’t waited at the chapel door to shake the preacher’s hand. They had returned from evensong ahead of Mrs Yapp and all her other guests. They hurried
through the parlour, nodding briefly at Ralph Par-kiss by the fire, took a lighted candle from the mantel, and almost ran along the corridor and down the flights of steps to what they thought would
be an empty room. They hadn’t come out of the chapel edified by hymns or by Mr Phipps’s passages from
Ornithologia
, but impassioned rather by the holy, warming congruence of
worshippers at church, their thighs in contact on the pew, their two thumbs touching on the shared hymnal, their voices mating when they sang.

Katie Norris had forgotten how beautiful her husband’s voice could be. His voice, her hair. She didn’t mind that he was not a handsome man, that he was thin-haired, shortsighted,
bony, clerkish in his manner and his speech. What mattered was his kindness to her, his steadfastness. Who’d emigrate to Canada for the sake of curls, blue eyes, a lordly nose, fine skin?
Good looks do not the lover make.
No, what a woman needs is not a beau but someone – Katie Norris loved the word –
resolute
.

Katie had a resolution of her own, that she would be with child before she put to sea. A pregnant woman, she’d been told, would get a bunk on board a migrant ship, a decent place at table,
and generally would be coddled by the sailors. But, more than that, she wanted to take away a child from home, a child not made in Canada, a blessed, honeymooning child. She’d only hoped that
Robert would indulge this wish without inflicting too much hurt on her. In those days before the wedding to Mr Norris, the local notary-cum-ledgerworm, and their departure from the village forty
miles inland from Wherrytown, her elder married sister and her ma, not pleased to lose their Katie to the colonies, had warned of ‘duty’ and ‘indignities’ and ‘getting
used to manly ardours’. They had not mentioned that manly ardours might be shared by wives. Perhaps they didn’t know. So no one had prepared Katie for how satisfying baby-making would
prove to be. Their wedding night, just a fortnight and one day ago, had been a shock, a revelation. To think that mellow-singing, thin-haired Robert could be so
resolute
in bed! Where had he
learned such sorcery?

Her husband had, on that first night of ‘duty and indignities’, proved to be a virtuoso. The man could sing
and
touch! He’d caressed her beneath her wedding shift until
her breathing had seemed so frail and heavenly, her mouth so dry, her thighs so open and invaded by his hand that she had cried out in the night too loudly. And Ma, a wattled wall away, had cursed
‘that Robert Norris’ for his cruelty and called to the newly weds, ‘Enough’s enough!’ For Katie Norris, babymaking was no indignity. So when – in Wherrytown
chapel – her husband sang, ‘Our Home in Thee, Our Lord, Thy Life and Light Afford, A Pathway to Thy Side, and Let Our Love Abide’, and every syllable of his stood out so that the
other women turned around to see whose voice it was, Katie let her thumb cross over his. She stroked his fingernail. She couldn’t wait to get him home in bed, alone. They wouldn’t have
to suffer Mr Smith’s foul coughing nor the fear that he might hear them making love, or see her passing water in the pot. Thank heavens that the tiresome man was gone! They’d have the
bedroom to themselves. She’d wrap her hair around his head. She’d count his ribs and nipples with her tongue. She’d sit on him by candlelight while he sang hymns to her.

Robert had his hand on her bottom as they ran along the corridor. Already she had got her bonnet off and pulled the ribbon from her hair. He lifted up her skirts when they arrived outside the
bedroom. She yelped and snapped his hand between her thighs. His fingers were icicles. His face was icy too.

‘Let’s get warm in bed,’ she said.

They’d hardly entered the room and dropped the door latch when Whip was barking at their knees and jumping up at Katie’s skirts. She tried to force the dog outside. The candle
toppled from its holder, fell onto the bedroom boards and lost its light. She put her boot against Whip and pushed her into the corridor. ‘Where are you, Robert, my sweet love?’ she
said. ‘Come here.’ And then again, more softly and more richly, ‘Come here. Come. Here.’

‘Hello. Is that you?’ said Aymer Smith. He sat up now in bed and could be seen in silhouette against the windows of the room. ‘Mr Norris, Mrs Norris? How very pleasant. And so
you are returned?’

‘We are,’ said Katie, ‘yes.’ Her bones had liquefied. Her chest and throat were quivering like some trapped thrush. She found her husband’s hand, still icy
cold.

‘Then, pray, will you address yourselves to this small mystery, which causes me, perhaps, some distress but which might afford a little entertainment for yourselves.’ He sniffed and
coughed and chuckled. Good humour in adversity. He judged it struck the proper note with Katie Norris and her hair. He wished there was light enough to see her hair. ‘I have returned from my
expedition along the coast to find my bedclothes taken off and my belongings stowed somewhere – perhaps
else
where is better said – and no one in the inn to put the matter right.
Do you suppose there are sheet-thieves about? Hot beef, stop thief. Is that our cry? Or should we look to that odd fellow George, or even Countess Yapp, to shed some candlelight upon their
whereabouts?’ When there was no immediate answer from his fellow guests, he cut short their silence: ‘And you, dear friends? You passed a tolerable day, I trust? Myself, I have been
lost in snow, and taken on the meanest touch of influenza, but not before I shook the Cradle Rock. That is an excursion you are advised to take before you leave these shores …’ Again
he coughed and sniffed and chuckled. He couldn’t stop himself. He was so happy.

Katie Norris whispered something. And then she spoke a bit too audibly, ‘You tell him, Robert!’

‘Your clothes and bag, your cakes of soap, your books,’ said her husband, ‘are taken by our landlady …’

‘Indeed?’

‘Indeed, they are. I do believe she thought you were not here. That is to say, she feared you might have left. And that your few possessions might be payment for your bill
…’

‘The Inn-that-has-no-name, has no rhyme nor reason to it, either. Excuse me while I solve this mystery …’ He blundered to the door. The Norrises were forced to stand apart and
let him through. He smelt of fish and damp. ‘I will return with light,’ he said. He and the dog had gone before the Norrises could say another word. Perhaps the less they said the least
harm done.

Robert put his arm round Katie’s waist.

‘Not now,’ she said. ‘He’ll be back too soon … I wonder if he’s got his trousers on?’

Aymer found the parlour occupied by an advance party of some of the younger fishermen. Their nets had been blessed by Mr Phipps. Now they were hoping to have their spirits fortified by Mrs
Yapp’s hot wine and beer before the Sabbath ended and the moment came to set off for the pilchards. Aymer rang the parlour handbell, but no one came.

‘They’s steppin’ down from chapel,’ one man said. ‘There in’t no point in shaking that, not till they’s back inside.’

Aymer took his damp tarpaulin coat off its hook and went out of the inn’s front door. He put his coat on, underneath the granite lintel, and went down into the lane. He was impatient to be
back amongst the Norrises in candlelight, with Katie Norris in her nightshift just three yards away. And Miggy Bowe to dream about. How fortunate, for him at least, that Duty had brought him west,
the bearer of bad news. His life had blossomed since the
Tar
had docked in Wherrytown and he had come ashore! He’d moved the Cradle Rock. He’d freed an African. He’d bested
Mr Walter Howells. He had new friends, the Norrises, Ralph Parkiss, some of the kelpers at Dry Manston. Even George the parlourman. The dog! The hairy little dog was his friend, too! And, best of
all, he had the prospect of a wife – though, when he tried to summon Miggy Bowe in his mind’s eye, he couldn’t picture her. What colour were her eyes? How had she worn her hair?
Instead, his mind was full of Katie Norris, her freckled calves upon the pot, her sandy hair a flapping flag of colour on the sea.

An older fisherman approached the inn, a length of newly blessed net on his shoulder. ‘Good evening, sir.’

‘Indeed it is.’

‘A bitter night, though.’

‘But a well-shaped Universe,’ Aymer said.

‘Amen to that. That’s worth a cup of anybody’s time.’

Aymer waited while Whip relieved herself against the stone and then went chasing smells. The snow had almost stopped, but what had already fallen was hard and biscuity underfoot. Aymer put his
hands into his coat, whistled for the dog and set off up the lane.

The next men that he met were two sailors from the
Belle
: ‘Captain Keg’, the portly mate, and a taller, younger deckhand. ‘Good evening, gentlemen. Or should I say the
contrary, that it is a dreadful evening and fearful cold?’

The Americans stared at Aymer with theatrical delight. ‘Well now!’ the mate said to his companion. ‘And lookee lookee here, see what the dog’s brought home!’ They
stopped and grinned at him. Aymer was impatient with their ‘sauciness’. He walked on. They followed him until – to loud American guffaws – he collided with George the
parlourman.

‘Ah, just the fellow. George? Let’s see if you are worth the shilling that you’ve had.’

George seemed at a loss for words for a moment, and then he said, ‘It’ll take more than a shilling to save your tail …’ and added, ‘… sir!’

Again the two Americans were laughing, inexplicably. Aymer felt excluded from some joke. It was a feeling he was accustomed to. He joined the laughter with a lifeless ‘Ah-ha’, and
then took George by the elbow and spoke softly: ‘We must not fence, George. It is too cold and late to fence. Can you throw any light on this? My bed is stripped. My bag and my possessions
are no longer in my room and Mrs Norris says that Mrs Yapp has taken them in lieu of payment …’

George was smiling now from ear to ear. ‘We thought you had eloped with the captain’s dog,’ he said, ‘and taken that Otto Africanus as your valet. But now you’re
back, so that’s all right, so long as Otto’s nice and snug on this cold night inside the tackle room. I hope he is.’

‘Well, he is not …’ Aymer hadn’t given much thought to Otto. He’d provided food. He’d sent for a physician. He’d set the fellow free. And that was
that. The man would be, well, sleeping somewhere else by now and on his way to … Aymer didn’t know the names of any towns that could be walked to in a day. He’d done his duty and
hadn’t considered that there might be consequences, repercussions. ‘Well, he is not,’ he said again, with some attempt at firmness.

‘Then, Mr Smith, you’d better turn about and find some place to hide unless you want a beating. For kidnapping. And dognapping. And soapnapping. And knapsacking. And walking out
without your trousers on.’ Again there was much laughter, though not from George.

Aymer put his hand up to his mouth. What did the sailors know? What had they seen? Was he observed when he pulled back the bolt, when he was masturbating in the alleyway, when he was peeping
through the curtains at Katie’s naked thighs? He coughed, and sniffed, but didn’t chuckle. ‘I cannot think,’ he said, ‘that this is any of my making
…’