Signals of Distress

by Jim Crace

  Perhaps he should have stopped to warm himself at the embers of the parlour fire, but he wanted to be seen as wet and cold and dutiful, a man who could be reckless if required. He found a candle on the mantel. He held it in the fire and blew into the ashes and the few remaining cherks of wood. His hand was shaking, and the candle wouldn’t make a flame. He had to hold it with both hands. His fingers were both numb and throbbing as the fire revived. The candle lit. What should he do? Where should he go? He shook the parlour handbell, but its ring was far too timid and discreet. He’d have to find the parlourman or, better, Alice Yapp to ask where Captain Comstock was. He knew her rooms. He’d been there once. She was the only entertainment in the town.

  Palmer hurried through the snug to Mrs Yapp’s door. He rapped on it and shook the latch. The door was locked. ‘Mrs Yapp. Wake up!’

  ‘And who the Devil’s that?’

  ‘It’s Palmer Dolly, Mrs Yapp. Where’s the captain of that ship … ?’

  ‘Why don’t you scram, Palmer? What time is it?’

  ‘We’ve got the body of the man who drowned!’

  ‘Why wake me up, besides?’

  ‘Tell me where the captain is. It’s his man that’s drowned …’

  He heard some movement in the room, some heavy steps, and then the door was opened. The American captain was standing there, and naked too, but for the blanket round his waist and pillow cotton in his hair.

  ‘Say all of that again,’ he said.

  Palmer Dolly stood to attention at the door, the candle held before him like a sword, a little shakily. The water ran off him and puddled at his feet. He couldn’t stop the clatter of his teeth. ‘We’ve netted the sailor, sir. The drownded one that’s lost …’

  ‘My man?’

  ‘He’s yours for sure.’ He held the dollar up. ‘I could’ve thieved it, sir. But that in’t right …’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘On our tuck boat. On a bit o’ canvas.’

  ‘What state’s he in?’

  ‘Dead as stone.’

  The captain turned, and spoke into the dark bedroom. ‘Alice, did you hear? They’ve Seaman Rankin’s body on their boat. Where do the bodies go in Wherrytown?’

  ‘You’d better lay him in the stable block. The tackle room. Let Mr Phipps take care of it.’

  ‘You hear that? What’s your name … ?’

  ‘It’s Palmer Dolly, Captain. And I’m a sailor too.’

  ‘So, Palmer Dolly. Put the body into Mrs Yapp’s tackle room. And keep that dollar for yourself …’

  ‘I’ll hope to spend it in America, then.’

  ‘You spend it how you want.’

  ‘I mean, I hoped to ask if you were looking for a sailor for the Belle … you being one hand down.’

  The captain closed the bedroom door. He should have dressed and gone down to the pilchard nets. He should have shown his captaincy. Instead he went to Mrs Yapp and took refuge in an hour more of sleep. His head ached badly when he woke. His shoulders were like wood. Hard winds, bad luck, a bar of sand had beached his ship. His masts were down, the cattle lost, the African set loose; the ground was deep in snow; and every half-wit in the land was either staying at the inn or banging at his door in the middle of the night with more bad news: damned Rankin had been found! What kind of day would Monday be? Oh praise the Lord if it could be a turning point! The Belle afloat. The cattle rounded up. The nightmare coming to an end.

  9. Star-gazy Pie

  WALTER HOWELLS had been sleeping unusually well, but he was woken abruptly before dawn. Someone with sopping feet was hurrying – too closely – past the window of his seafront home. Was home the word for where he lived? Or even house? Warehouse, perhaps. This was the man to see and bargain with if firearms were wanted. Or silk. Or books. Or laudanum. Or contraband. If anybody required horses, or had a letter to be sent, or needed to hire labour, acquire a wedding coat, buy shoes, a bed, a block of tea, some timber, a ticket for the Tar, then Walter was the man. He had the world beneath his bed in boxes, weighed and priced. ‘Everything supplied,’ he used to say, ‘excepting payment on the slate. Or loans.’

  Who could that be at such an early hour walking by his house? Not excise men or smugglers. They couldn’t even sniff in Wherrytown without first informing Walter How-ells and agreeing on percentages. Some filchers, then? Some early rising thief? He took his ancient German flintlock off its bedboard hook. Its ram’s-horn butt was icy cold. As was the floor on his bare feet. As were the misted panes of window glass on his nose and forehead. He hadn’t known that so much snow had settled. He’d been asleep too soon. The seashore and the lane beyond the glass seemed inside out, the dark parts light, the ground much brighter than the sky. The sea was oddly matt. Its only scintillations came from the offshore lamps on the fishing boats, and the bobbing outlines of their masts and rigging, separated in the shallows by sparkling, turbulent circles of pilchards. No doubt the footsteps that he’d heard had been a fisherman’s. He left the flintlock on the windowsill, and wrapped himself in the Spanish rug which he used as his bed cover. The rug caught on the flintlock’s barrel and knocked it off the windowsill into the cushions of a chair, where it was lost. He wasn’t sorry to be woken early. This would be a busy day, for Walter Howells and Wherrytown. Everyone would earn a decent crust. High tide, high times!

  There was still a smoulder meditating in the bedroom grate. Walter Howells knelt down, his knees in ashes, and revived what heat there was with kindling and some pages from a used ledger. He lit a candle from the flame. He mixed and warmed a little ink and then stood at his high desk to write out his Monday tasks. Bring the catch ashore. Get the pilchards salted and barrelled up. Bring the cattle in. Refloat the Belle. He noted down how much salt he’d need, how many panniers and barrels, how many men and women, what weight of wood, what boats, what rope, what cattle feed. He wrote ‘High Water – 2 p.m.?’ and circled it.

  There was a letter to be sent, on behalf of Shipmaster Comstock, to William Bagnall, debtor, rascal, bludger, footpad, horse-thief, pugilist. Walter chuckled to himself. The very thought of William Bagnall’s many skills! He smoothed a piece of paper and wrote with hardly any hesitation and in high spirits:

  My good friend Will,

  You won’t & can’t deny you owe me favours. I wd. not have you in my debt for ever. So I urge you, pay me off thus, and easily, & let’s be done with it. There is a man who much deserves a beating & has quitt’d Wherrytown w’out settling his accounts or providing for his Reckoning. He is a fellow from yr. town. I cannot think it will be hardship for you to find him isolated in some place & break a bone or two, & well deserv’d. Some broken teeth wd. suit my purpose also, to stay his conversation for a period. Do this with trusted, vigorous friends to whom a sovereign might be pay’d, & say no more, & you must count y’self acquitt’d from my debt. His name is Aymer Smith, & you will know him from the soap works of that name & family. You shd. not stand in fear of him, but deal with him as you might deal with what he is, a thief & not a gentleman. Send proof of his misfortunes, & so we are confederates & league’d together in good friendship, xcept my name shd. not be known in this.

  I sign myself on Monday 21st of November,

  Walter Howells

  It was a fine start to his day.

  Walter Howells was mounted on his re-shod horse and organizing pilchards on the beach a little after eight. Most of Wherrytown was there. The women too. And many of the women from the coast had joined their husbands and their neighbours for the landing of the catch. How could they resist it? Good pennies could be made that Monday morning by nimble hands that didn’t mind the withering of salt or the rasp of fish-scales, that didn’t care if their nails, softened in the brine, were ripped, or if their arms were pickled to the elbows. Why should they mind? This wasn’t Paris, after all. This wasn’t Lah-di-dah-on-Sea. They wouldn’t need fine hands or perfect nails. They didn’t spend their day in salons, waving Chinese fans, or playing cards, or offering their fingers
for gentlemen to kiss. There weren’t any Chinese fans or salons in Wherrytown. Nor any gentlemen either. But there was snow, and that was rare so early in the winter. Coastal snow does not last long; the Wherrytowners hurried out of bed to be the first to walk in it, to break its crusts, to roll it into balls. They gathered on the beach, made almost eager for the pilcharding by the crispy coverlet of white which hid the sand. It made them feel rosy with well-being. It brought the colours out. The blue and buff of the women’s smocks and aprons seemed exotic, almost tropical, against the arctic white.

  What would the sea make of the snow? They watched the tide swell up, curl its lip and skim the beach of snow like children skim the cream off cakes. Soon some crewmen from the Belle, too bored and restless to stay in bed, joined the Wherrytowners on the beach. Snowballs began to fly. The snow was mixed with sand, and was dangerous. Walter Howells decided it was time for pilcharding.

  MIGGY BOWE had had her fill of fresh beef the night before. Her dreams were bilious. Her stomach wasn’t used to large amounts of meat. She’d had to get up in the dark to pass an aching stool into the flattened heather behind their cottage. The night was cold and white. She squatted, shivering, and watched the lanterns of the fishing boats beyond the broken Belle. Her gut ached. It took its time. She didn’t like the snow at night. It put her on display. She could be watched. She’d heard the movement in the undergrowth when she’d first hurried out of doors. She’d taken it to be the cattle or a fox. The dogs were barking and pulling on their ropes. They always barked when there were foxes near. But now that she was bent up double with her nightshift bunched onto her knees, scarcely balancing, and constipated too, the night sounds seemed more sinister. The undergrowth was not asleep. It fidgeted. It stirred. She heard the snap of wood, and then a chilling silence as if someone twenty yards behind her back were standing on one leg, mid-step, and watching her. She couldn’t think that anyone would be about at such a time, on such a night, excepting fishermen, of course. Or Devils.

  Miggy did her best to look around, to decipher all the darker shapes. But if she turned too much she’d topple. Was that somebody up against the rock, somebody large and shadowy? The shadow stayed as still and silent as a bush. But other shadows seemed to move and deepen. Again, the snap of wood, and silence.

  Miggy was as quick as she could be. She didn’t bury her waste. She had no light. The snowy earth was far too hard. She left it for the foxes and the crows. She shuffled back home. She didn’t wait to rearrange her clothes. She untied the two mongrels and let them go to chase the Devils away. The dogs went off, twisting like hunting eels into the snowy breakers of the hill, their barks abusive, their ears turned back like gills. She heard them growling in the dark, but soon they became quiet. There weren’t any cries of pain. There were no Devils, then. Or else there was a silent Devil there. He had no tongue. He was half dog.

  It was too cold inside the cottage to wash. But Miggy washed herself nevertheless in water from the pot next to the grate. It was a little shy of warm, but warm enough to take the gloss off one of the bars of Aymer’s soap. She ran her fingers across the hard escutcheon of Hector Smith & Sons. She held the wet soap to her nose. Would she smell kelp from her own pits? She didn’t recognize the smell. She’d not encountered almonds, oleander or eau de Sète before. But she was drugged on them at once. She would smell sweet for her sweet Ralph. She dressed in breeches and a wrap. She tied her hair back with a ribbon. She knotted the Belle’s red-patterned ensign at her throat – ‘I need help’ – and, as soon as there was any light, woke her mother. ‘Come on, girl. Up. This in’t the Sabbath. Let’s not be idle, eh?’ These were words her mother usually used.

  It took the Bowes less than two hours to walk from Dry Manston to the pilchard beach. There was a quicker, more direct route than the coastal path. It was a wagon way which, though rutted, was flat, partly hedged from wind and shielded from the deeper, drifting snow. Miggy – far from mithering at every step – set the pace. ‘Come on now, Ma. There’s gonna be no work for us unless we stretch ourselves a bit.’

  ‘What’s biting at you, Miggy?’

  ‘Nothin’s biting at me, Ma. The quicker out’s the quicker in.’

  ‘Is that the truth of it?’ said Rosie Bowe. She was no fool. She knew the signs. Her Miggy hadn’t washed herself that thoroughly to please the pilchards. She had her hair tied back for some young man. It wasn’t hard to guess which man that was, from amongst their new acquaintances. The windswept blond American? Or Mr Aymer Spindle-shanks, too nervous of a floating cow to get his ankles wet? To some extent she wished it was the spindleshanks. At least the man was educated, and wealthy. And soft, was that the word? She’d shouted at him at her cottage door (‘A shillin’ is a fine price to be paupered by!’) and he had blushed and stuttered and hoped that they’d be friends, when all the other men she’d shouted at (and there’d been a few) had wagged their fingers in her face or turned away or laughed at her or knocked her to the ground. Rosie Bowe thought she could cope with Aymer Smith. He wasn’t dangerous. But sailor Ralph? She saw the danger in that boy. At best he’d break her Miggy’s heart, and leave her beached. That’s what to expect from sailors. At worst, he’d win her heart and sail away with her on board the Belle. And that would be the last of Miggy Bowe.

  So only Miggy ran along the path to Wherrytown. How long before she’d hold his hands again? How long before he’d run his finger down her spine, a bone, a bone, a bone, the hollow of her waist, his breath upon her neck? Her mother was less speedy in the snow, and for once in lower spirits than her daughter. She wasn’t sorry for herself. She was too toughly made for that. But as she walked and watched her daughter hurrying ahead she had to face the truth of who she was: no one would hold her hand in Wherrytown, or try to count her vertebrae, no one would try to break her heart, or take her to America. She wasn’t young or beautiful, she thought, or plump, and men and ships were not for her. She would be thirty-five at Christmas time. A modest age. Too young to feel so old and weathered. She watched her daughter on the path ahead. Miggy swung her arms as if there were no troubles in the world. Well, perhaps there weren’t if you were seventeen, and there were lips to kiss.

  ‘Go on, then,’ Rosie said, to Miggy’s back. ‘Be happy if you can. It don’t last for ever.’ Nothing does, she thought. You can’t rely on anything for long. Not even kelp. She smiled at that, and shook her head. But it wasn’t kelp that bothered Rosie Bowe as she walked on her own along the wagon way. She could learn to do without the kelp. She hated it. How would she manage, though, without her cussed daughter to adore? Would it be long before she lived alone?

  The shore at Wherrytown when they arrived was like a winter carnival, a hundred people at the very least with Walter Howells on his big horse as showmaster, and a leaping fire close to the water’s edge to hold bad weather off. The townsmen and the fishermen and some Americans were already in the water, basketing the pilchards from the keepnets nearest shore with as much concern for their living catch as they would show for vegetables.

  There were too many fish for sentiment. As each net was emptied and dragged up on the shore for gulls and boys to glean, so the outer nets were edged in by their boats until these pilchards were a gasping, thrashing multitude as well, maddened by the dipping baskets of the men and by the turmoil of air and sea and sand and snow. The tide was on the turn and so the water wasn’t deep. But still the work was wet and cold. Men hurried to the fire, between each basketful of fish, to steam their knees and coax some blood back to their faces, hands and feet. Each filled basket was tallied by the agent Howells against the family who owned the net. He had a simple principle – he made no mark for every thirteenth load of fish. It wasn’t superstition, but a sort of tithe, a fee for sitting on his horse. Less than eight per cent for him against their ninety-two. A fair division of the spoils, he thought. Walter Howells would make a lot of tithes that day, from pilchards and from ships. Who needed kelp? Who needed Hector Smith & Sons?

  No
one there resented Walter Howells. They cursed him, maybe. Wished he’d topple from his horse and break a leg. Wished – just for once – he’d get his trousers wet and find out how heavy a basketful of pilchards could be. But no one wished him dead. How could they manage without their agent with his peppery face and temper, and his good contacts to the east, his wagons and his warehouse home? He was worth his eight per cent. They didn’t have to like the man. They didn’t have to speak to him. They only had to concentrate on the strenuous joy of dipping baskets into, fish and swinging them onto the shore until the sea drained out, and know that Walter Howells would turn their efforts into cash.

  The Americans would not get any cash from Walter Howells. He regarded them as volunteers, free labour, and not worth a fourpenny fig between the lot of them, despite their noise and swaggering. They were too clumsy with the fish and were a hindrance rather than a help. They teased each other and flirted with the working women. They splashed their skirts, or dropped a pilchard down their apron fronts, or touched the younger and prettier women unnecessarily while they helped to put the baskets on their backs. The women, happy to be flirted with, on such a high and zesty day, carried the pilchards through the snow and sand up to the salting hall, next to Walter Howells’s house. Their baskets filled the lane, the yard, the courtway to the hall. Any living fish that jumped free of the baskets didn’t stand a chance. They suffocated in the icy air. Or they were scavenged by cats and gulls and by the little girls whose job it was to grill them for breakfast on the beach fire. There wasn’t any idleness. This was a working hive.

  Up at the salting hall some of the older women were as panicky and breathless as the fish. They tipped each basket-load of pilchards onto the sloping flagstones and sorted them with brooms and wooden spades. Most were sent slithering down lead-lined chutes onto the cellar floor for balking with layers of rough salt. There’d be no waste. Farmers boasted, when pigs were slaughtered, that they had a use for everything except the squeal. The pilchards though were better than pigs: even the smell of fish was put to use – it kept the Devil out of town. Their fins, the flesh, the scales, the eyes, they all had purposes. Their blood and oil would drain into the cellar tanks for sale as cheap lamp fuel. Their flesh would end up, thanks to Walter Howells’s hogsheads and his wagons, on tables in London, Bristol, Liverpool and even in the sugar plantations of America, on nigger bread. The badly damaged pilchards – torn scales, ripped fins, their bellies gaping – were flipped aside. They were fit only for manure on a farmer’s field. The second best were packed on woodweave trays. They would be hawked and jousted inland while they were fresh. The remainder would be potted with vinegar, bay leaves, spices or pickled in jars with brine, for the spring. But the largest and the very best of the fish were put in panniers and covered by damp cloths. These were the ones that would be cooked to celebrate the catch. No table in Wherrytown would be without star-gazy pie that night, with pilchard heads protruding from the brown sea of a pastry crust, and pilchard eyes recriminating in the candlelight. A comic meal, and one that recognized how farcical it was to have a town so occupied by fish.