Signals of Distress

by Jim Crace

  THE INN PARLOUR and the adjacent commercial room were rarely busier. Eighteen men and Katie Norris were waiting for their dinners. Aymer’s invitation to the Norrises to share ‘his’ table had been too optimistic. There were two tables only, the large oak formal table in the parlour – waited on by Mrs Yapp herself – and a softwood trestle in the commercial, reserved for the more raucous of the Americans and served by George. Everybody shared, though Katie had been spared the pressing thighs and invasive elbows of her fellow diners. She sat at the head of the parlour table on a seat with a straight, spindled back, and a laced cushion, much like a governess with eight slow learners. She was the closest to the fire. She felt both vulnerable and powerful, with such a retinue. All the men had narrow places on backless benches. Aymer Smith, with one arm strapped to his chest in its sling, could hardly find room to place his elbow on the table, but he was in no mood for complaining. His life had never been as purposeful as this. Even the unruliness of the Americans, even the wooden plates and earthenware cups (despite the evidence of glass and china in Mrs Yapp’s buffette), could not disturb his feelings of well-being.

  Here were two universes, the solemn and the jubilant, the reverential and the scurrilous, connected by an open door. The ten young ‘castaways’ (as they had named themselves) in the commercial were intemperate with beach-fever. They hadn’t spent a night ashore since leaving Wilmington, Carolina, with cotton for Montreal in mid-September. Now that their cargo east – the four hundred cows – had been prematurely landed, they would not sleep at home again until the westward cargo of emigrants from Wherrytown, Fowey and Cork had been shipped to quarantine at Grosse Isle in the St Lawrence and – the fourth side of the merchant square – a consignment of Canadian logwood taken south to Wilmington. They’d be hammocked for ten more weeks at least, curled in sleep like prawns – if, that is, the Belle was saved. If not, who knew when or how they’d see their families again? They were becalmed and idle and, almost, bored. Boredom, with such unpolished turbulents as these, would turn to mischief given half a chance – with women, money, fists. Their heartiness would sour unless the Belle was soon back at sea.

  Already there were one or two who’d seen a chin they’d like to punch, a silver timepiece or a pair of boots they’d like to lift, a mouth they’d like to kiss. But for the moment, over squabs, they were content to be at ease. At least there were no midnight watches to be kept. They’d not be called away from their food to pull in canvas. The sea would not upset their plates nor put a reckless angle on their drinks. They – almost – could forget the sea, and make the most of being safe and far from home, except they all had boat cough and their throats were never clear. They raised their drinks to the Belle (‘Long may we sail in her!’) and to America and to baffling ‘George, the parlourman!’ who kept their cups topped with rough beer and wine. They smoked their rations of Virginia. Soon they were singing in praise of squabs and calling out what fine pigeons Mrs Yapp and Katie were. ‘Would the ladies care to dance or sing a verse?’ If only Katie were a flirt! If only Mrs Yapp had Katie’s hair and throat! What then?

  The mate had chanced his arm with Mrs Yapp. He’d put a hand across her back when she’d reached over for the empty pie dishes. She hadn’t seemed to mind. He’d try again – and somewhere fleshier. ‘Don’t organize a search if my bed’s empty for the night,’ he said. ‘I’ll be in safe hands.’ The sailors laughed in unison at that. The mate was always claiming conquests, though he wasn’t equipped to be Lothario. His nickname on the Belle was ‘Captain Keg’, perfect for his size, his shape, his hollow self-importance and what mostly he contained, gas and beer. The only reason Mrs Yapp hadn’t pushed his hand away was because the mate was too much a gargoyle to be threatening, particularly in that low, unsteady light of oil lamps.

  If any man there was equipped to win the admiration of women it was the straw-haired deckhand, Ralph Parkiss. He was nineteen, tall and beautiful. This was his first trip on the Belle – and at least some of his adolescent softness had – so far – survived the rough life of the decks. He was not the hardened sailor yet. He had the kind of easy, guileless smile that could turn ice to steam.

  ‘That Mrs Yapp hasn’t even noticed you,’ one man told the mate. ‘She’s only eyes for baby Ralph. She hoped it was his hand across her butt, not yours.’

  ‘You keep off, Ralph,’ the mate said. ‘The lady’s mine!’

  ‘There’s younger and there’s finer down the coast!’ Ralph Parkiss defended his embarrassment by deepening it. ‘I’ve found myself a sweetheart already.’

  ‘Who is she, Ralph? A she-goat or a ewe?’

  ‘I know her name is Miggy, and she’s a fine sight. That girl down on the beach when we were rowed ashore, the one that had our ensign round her throat …’

  ‘The one dressed like a fellow, Ralph? You’d best find out what’s hidden in her breeches before you buy the ring.’

  ‘I will find out. If I’ve the chance.’

  ‘You better had. A cork’s no good without the bottle.’

  They drank another toast, ‘To Ralph and Miggy. Long may he sail in her!’ They banged the trestle with their pots. They shouted to be heard. They coughed, and laughed, and thanked the heavens that the Belle, with them aboard, had not gone down at sea.

  Next door the parlour company was less jubilant. The five oldest sailors talked quietly at one end of the table, uneasy in the company of the sandy-haired woman and the two dull-looking men, and wary of the captain. He introduced himself to Aymer, and tried to reassure the Norrises that the Belle would soon be fixed and heading off, with them aboard, for Canada. ‘There’s not a ship afloat that could have ridden out that storm last night and not had damage done,’ he explained.

  ‘You have no need to give the details of the storm,’ said Aymer. ‘I was at sea last night myself. I cracked a shoulder bone.’ He didn’t want to say to the captain that he had tumbled from his bed. ‘I fell across the deck when we were struck and scarcely kept aboard.’

  ‘You’ve been baptized then, Mr Smith …’

  ‘No, Captain, I’m a Sceptic.’

  ‘… and need not fear the sea again. You’ve sea salt in your blood.’

  ‘We have no need to fear the sea at all, I think. And as for sea salt in my blood, then that is true of all of us, whether we be sailing men or Hottentots.’ He gave the captain time to contradict, and set a thoughtful profile for Katie Norris. ‘I speak, of course, about the chemistry of blood. It is not much known, but the elements of calcium, potassium and sodium are found in equal rations in our blood as in the oceans.’ He sought a metaphor that was grand enough, and memorable: ‘Our veins are tides. Our blood is brine. The organisms of our blood …’ (are fish, he’d meant to say. But this would strike a comic note) ‘… are common to us all. The grandest captain of a ship, the meanest Negro slave, are both ancestors of the seas. What is your view?’ He hoped the captain had the brains to take the hidden meaning.

  ‘My view is, Mr Smith, that I leave chemistry to chemists. And they, I hope, will leave me well alone and let me go about my business. That’s all that any man can ask.’

  ‘That is exactly what we seek in Canada,’ said Robert Norris, seeking something else as well, to keep the evening civil.

  ‘You’ll find it, sir, so long as you’re not frightened of hard work, plain food … and ice! They’ve winters there that make the weather here seem tropical.’ The captain called along the table to a stringy, grey-haired sailor, the one whom Walter Howells had hauled out of the sea that day. ‘John Peacock, tell these good people that tale we had the other night, about the frozen boat.’ Anything to keep Smith quiet!

  John Peacock put his pipe down on his plate and, winking at his comrades, commenced with ‘It was last October and …’ He told – in fixed and tested sentences which seemed as mannered as a psalm – how two brothers from below Quebec agreed to row a gentleman from Boston across the St Lawrence to the southern bank: ‘They should’ve known better. At that t
ime of year! But they couldn’t refuse the fare he’d promised them. They’d end up rich, and wouldn’t have to row a boat again, except to get back home. And why go home when you are rich? They got midstream. And then they felt the tugging on the oars and something banging up against the boat. They thought it must be beavers, snapping at the wood. A beaver’s got more tooth than brain. But it was ice. And ice with teeth that’s worse than beavers’ teeth. It lay hold of the keel. And all their rowing, all their prayers, all their cursing language, couldn’t get them to the bank.’

  The Norrises were grimacing, not sure how seriously to take the sailor’s tale. The talk of storms and ice was not encouraging.

  ‘Perhaps we’d better take a passage to Australia,’ said Katie. ‘They’ve no ice there.’

  ‘There’s ice-mountains floating in the Tasman Sea,’ said Aymer. ‘You should read the journals of Captain James Cook or Sir Joseph Banks. They had their share of bergs off Botany Bay …’

  Comstock hushed Aymer with the flat of his hand (the selfsame hushing gesture that Matthias, his brother, used) and said, impatiently, ‘Listen, sir, if you will. He’s not done yet. Come on now, John. Let’s hear the end of it.’

  ‘The end of it is that the brothers’ boat was frosted into solid water, so suddenly they hadn’t any chance of being saved,’ continued John Peacock, looking Katie Norris in the face.

  ‘Why did they not simply walk ashore on solid ice?’ asked Aymer. He would not be an uninquiring listener.

  ‘Like penguins, sir?’

  ‘Why not, indeed?’

  ‘Because their hands were frozen to the oars and – excusing me my language, Captain, and the lady – their backsides had iced on to the boat …’

  ‘Then why not shout for help?’

  ‘Ah, when they opened up their mouths, to cry for help, as you advise them, Mr Smith, their tongues and lips were welded by the cold.’ He pointed at the Norrises. ‘You’ll need to watch for that when we set sail for Canada. Best not to talk on deck.’ For once the laughter from the parlour matched the drunken din in the Commercial. ‘Their families drove a cart and horses out on the ice to rescue them. They lit a fire – midstream – to thaw them out. But that hard river ice did not give way. Nor did the boatmen or their passenger begin to melt. It wasn’t till mid-March that the ice released the boat. And then it went downstream towards the sea before it could be saved.’ He held a finger to his lips. ‘It isn’t over yet.’ He picked his pipe up, drew on it to keep the tobacco burning. He made the silence at the table last. He took his time. He much preferred to smoke than talk.

  Now – his voice macadamized by nicotine – he told the diners at the inn how the brothers and their passenger floated down the St Lawrence ‘sitting as straight as three proud men in church’, with backbones of ice and oars frozen to their hands. ‘You’d think they were alive,’ he said. ‘Or ghosts.’

  ‘They were picked up within a day by a sailing ship. She was the Lizzie Wilce, and she was heading out off Anticosti Island in the Gulf for Liverpool. The boatmen and the Bostonian had been dead five months. But they looked as fresh as eels. The captain tried to bring them round with slaps across their backs. And brandy. He thawed them out in front of the little grate in his cabin. Two of them had to be buried at sea. They stank like mackerel. The third, though, looked more like salmon. He had a touch of pink around the gills. So they put him in a hip-bath and covered him in steaming towels and let him soak. By the time the Lizzie Wilce had crossed the mid-Atlantic ridge the man was calling out for grog. And by the time they’d reached the Irish Sea he was full enough of life to win ten dollars off the captain in a game of five’n’one. You’d never know he’d been iced up all winter. Except the ship’s surgeon had to cut away two toes. And half his nose. He could neither walk nor talk without a limp. He drank and gambled his way to Liverpool. He liked it there; the mildness of the winters, the thinness of the ice. He stayed. Now he’s got a chandler’s business, on the dock. He vows he’ll never step aboard a boat again, nor risk another nostril in the ice. I’ve seen the man myself. I bought this pipe off him. We shared a drink together. He told me how he’d lost his nose. I didn’t see his feet, or count his toes. Nor can I tell you who he was. One of the brothers? Or the Bostonian? He wouldn’t say, for fear of it getting back to his family. And every word is true. What say you, Mr Smith?’

  ‘I say, you’d think the way he spoke would give the man away,’ said Aymer, meaning to demonstrate his good humour. ‘What kind of accent did he have? I suppose a gentleman from Boston can be distinguished from a Canadian boatman.’ John Peacock pinched his own nose between his fingers. ‘I gould nod dell,’ he said. ‘I gould nod unterdand a wort he sait. He hagn’d gok no dose!’

  ‘Then, if you did not understand a word, how, how did this story … ?’ said Aymer, but his question was drowned in the applause which Aymer took to be at his expense. Even Katie Norris had clapped her hands.

  The captain slapped him on the back: ‘What would your chemists say to that?’

  Aymer did his best to join the laughter. He clapped his hands too – a little late – and swung round on his seat to deflect their attention. He saw that Mrs Yapp, who’d been listening at the parlour door, had a pair of arms around her waist and was holding a man’s finger in her hand. It was Walter Howells, less muddy than he’d been but still with traces of the coast on the lappets of his jacket. He laughed longer than the rest, and then stepped forward to the table. ‘Captain Comstock. Good evening, sir.’ They shook hands. And then the agent offered his hand to Aymer, without the least trace of discomfort or apology. ‘Mr Smith. I’m pleased to see you so established in Wherrytown. You should have sent me word of your arrival.’ There was no choice for Aymer but to be civil.

  ‘Perhaps we should go to a quieter place so we can talk. I’ve bad news …’

  ‘There’s no news that’s so bad it won’t wait till tomorrow,’ Howells said. ‘Enjoy your supper and your beer. I’ve business with the captain for tonight. And they are pressing matters.’ He gave a short and portly bow to Mrs Norris, nodded at her husband, banged John Peacock on the back with a ‘Bravo, sir!’ and went out of the parlour with Captain Comstock at his heels.

  Aymer did his best to recompose himself. He entertained the company with his opinions on Reform, Phrenology and Agriculture. He disclosed for them his whole budget of alerting anecdotes. When the treacle pudding was dished he refused his portion, and was admired for it, he thought, especially by Mrs Norris, who was unable to clear her plate entirely.

  ‘I take no sugar,’ he explained. ‘I eat my supper bitterly, but with good conscience, sugar being the consequence of slavery. Slave dust, that’s my name for it. There is no place for sweetness on my plate.’

  ‘This is the man that begs for sheets,’ said George, placing Aymer’s pudding in front of John Peacock. ‘Now there’s an oddity.’

  ‘I do not see it, George. What oddity?’

  ‘They’s cotton sheets. And cotton is the consequence of what? I’ll have your bed stripped back to the bolster, so you can sleep in peace. Just say the word.’

  ‘A nice distinction, George,’ said Aymer, and stopped the laughter with a yawn.

  AYMER SLEPT WELL for the best part of the night, despite the concert of coughing sailors and, occasionally, a barking dog. He was asleep when Katie and Robert Norris came to the room, a little before midnight, after their habitual walk down to the quay. He didn’t hear their whispering. Nor the rustle of their clothes. He’d drunk more beer than he was used to. So, though his sleep was fast and deep, his dreams were urinous. He dreamed he’d wet himself, and then that he was passing water in the office at Hector Smith & Sons and that Matthias caught him doing it. He dreamed that Mrs Yapp had slipped between his sheets. She took his penis in her hands and she relieved him – but of what? The urine and the semen were confused.

  He woke to whispering and low light, which lay in a broad band across his blankets where the curtains round his bed had p
arted. He’d slept till dawn. He’d have to rise and go down to the alleyway to urinate. He couldn’t use the chamber pot, not with the Norrises so close. Their whispering began again. He didn’t move, but tried to catch the words. It was Katie hushing Robert, giggling, saying what? Was it, ‘I can’t, I can’t’? Aymer turned onto his side. What was more natural for a man with one bruised shoulder than to seek to ease the pain by lying on his uninjured side? He held the bed curtain back an inch or two so that he could see into the room, but not be seen himself. He couldn’t see the Norrises nor where they slept. They’d taken care to seal themselves.

  Aymer must have slept again. When he next held the curtain back the morning light had filled the room. He heard the other bed give way, and then two bare legs appeared below the screening curtain. It was Katie. When she stood and stepped into the light her nightdress fell to hide her legs down to the ankles. Her calves were stocky and lightly freckled. She was the colour of a thrush. Robert’s hand came out and pinched the loosest flesh on her backside. She put a finger to her mouth and pouted ‘Ssshhh!’ She tiptoed to the bed end and half obscured from Aymer by the curtains she stooped to find the chamber pot, to rid herself of last night’s beer. She had her back against the light. Her sandy hair was thick and carroty against the cheap plantation cotton of her white nightdress. Aymer didn’t dare to breathe. He watched her shorten as she squatted on the pot. He couldn’t see her urinate. But there was sound and smell. She stood and put the pot away and then, pulling the curtain aside, returned to bed. Her husband pushed her nightdress up, above her knees, beyond her thighs. He showed her buttocks to the room. Aymer couldn’t see their heads, but he could watch their bodies in that early light embracing, wrapping, bending like a pair of fish: a stringy eel, a plump and mottled salmon.