Signals of Distress

by Jim Crace

  The agent marked the coffin price on his pocket ledger against the Belle’s name, called George to mind the horses for a moment, and went in search of Captain Comstock. He didn’t have to hunt. The captain was exactly where he’d been the morning before; in low spirits, sitting with a bottle in the snug.

  ‘Now, sir, to horse,’ Howells said. ‘There’s work that must be done if you’re to see America again.’ He put the stopper in the bottle, and pulled the captain from his chair. ‘What did I say about we’re partners now? I never meant that you’d sit idle while I did all the work and worrying …’

  ‘I worry, Mr Howells, because I have one seaman dead and needing burial, and another man gone missing in this wretched land …’ He recounted, as he pulled his deck boots on and hurried down to the courtyard, how they had wrongly blamed ‘that Smith’. He’d not stolen Otto after all. ‘We could have blacked an innocent eye.’

  ‘Too late, too late,’ said Mr Howells. His letter to William Bagnall was signed and sealed. The sovereign was put aside. ‘So where’s your blackie, then, if not with Soapie Smith?’ Shipmaster Comstock shrugged. ‘He won’t have gone far, Captain. He’ll have found some little nest, and rats and grass to eat. Let’s bring the Belle around to Wherrytown today, and then I’ll organize a hunt to track the fellow down, or find his body at the very least.’ And then he said, ‘Let’s put a sovereign on his head. Whoever finds your blackie gets the prize! That’s an entertainment for your men.’

  George steadied their horses in the courtyard while Howells and Comstock mounted. He watched them go down to the quay, then turn westwards along the coast. A comic sight. The American did not sit squarely on his horse. He didn’t match his bottom to the rhythms of the horse’s back. The mare would do her best to kick him off.

  ‘There’s a man who’ll be bringing blisters home tonight,’ he said. ‘Prepare the poultices!’

  Now the only living men in Wherrytown, apart from George, were Aymer, Robert Norris, Mr Phipps, John Peacock, the undertaker-cum-sailmaker, and those few gouty veterans too stiff and ailing to step out of doors, except for funerals.

  It was a lucky day for everyone except Aymer. By the time the riders had arrived at Dry Manston beach, the landlubbers and gangs of boys had found and roped eighty of the cattle from Quebec. They’d made rough fencing out of gorse where they could keep the herd until they could be loaded on the Belle. ‘There’s plenty more,’ they reported to Walter Howells.

  ‘Keep thirty separate,’ he ordered them, and winked at Captain Comstock. ‘A little candle-end for us,’ he said.

  They rode down to the shore. The captain jumped onto the sand. His thighs and back were stiff and bruised. He’d never been so tossed about, not even by the ocean off the Cape. He stood amongst his men and watched the fishermen attach their lines to the Belle. The smaller boats came into the shallows. Palmer took the captain’s arm and helped him climb into the Dolly boat, and at last Captain Comstock and his crew took to the sea again. Quite soon, and hardly dampened by the spray, they were aboard the Belle. America!

  First they had to reduce the ship’s draught at the bow where it was held most firmly. The rigging and the masts were wrecked, the decks were broken through, but – thank the Lord and Neptune – the ship was savable. They cleared out the bilges, and examined the inside of the hull for signs of cracks and movement in the frames and planking. The larboard bow was holed. The outer planks on the orlop deck had sprung. The captain ordered that they should be patched and braced immediately. All the loose gear – lockers, broken timber, equipment and supplies, the mounted double-barrelled cannon – was taken on deck, and loaded on the smaller fishing boats, then put ashore above the high-tide line. Quite soon the beach at Dry Manston, despite the one or two remaining carcasses of cows, began to look like the landing point of some immigrant community in Canada or in Australia. How long before a settlement would spring up amongst the dunes? How long before the natives came with spears?

  By two o’clock the Belle was stripped, and it was sitting higher in the water. Some of the crew took to the beach. The stronger ones remained. No orders were required. They knew what they must do and they were happy doing it. They worked the pumps and put bilge-water back into the sea. At ten past two they laid out kedge anchors on the seaward side, attached by cables to the one working capstan and to windlasses. Some anchors didn’t bite, but those that did were firm enough to take the winch. The barrel of the capstan groaned. The captain too. He thought the wire would bite right through. But, to cheers from the beach, the stern was lifted and the bow was pulled around. The kedge anchors and the lines from fishing boats tied to the waistings of the masts were now enough to hold the Belle secure while the sea came upon its highest autumn tide. And how the sea came up! Not swelling, but flat and deep and strong, shouldering the beached ship’s keel and hefting it, unshakingly, free of the bar. The sand released its grip. The Belle was afloat. It lifted off the bar and slipped into the channel with the resignation of an old and wounded seal. Now it was ready for the towing back to dock at Wherrytown. The tide rose up against the stern. It gripped the ship in foaming chevrons of water. It pushed. It was as if the ocean had wearily reclaimed the Belle, had reconciled it to the water, as if the sea were saying to the ship – and what sailor does not think the sea can speak? – ‘Enough’s enough. You must go home.’

  WALTER HOWELLS put up some kegs of beer for everyone that night. There were too many people for the inn parlour, and so despite the cold they lit and warmed the courtyard with lanterns and braziers, and sat around on barrels and bales of straw with star-gazy pie and hot beer. The out-of-towny women hadn’t walked back to their cottages. They’d sleep in the agent’s salting hall. There’d be work for them until the pilchards were balked and packed, and all the unfit fish carted off by farmers as manure. They sat around selfconsciously. They’d had nowhere to wash. They had no change of clothes, and couldn’t match the fine, embroidered smocks that the townswomen had put on, or the dresses and the shawls that Katie Norris and Alice Yapp were wearing. They watched the men consuming too much drink too quickly. It wasn’t a comfortable mix – town and parish, off-comers, emigrants, the preacher. There was something deadening about the agent’s generosity. He gave them beer; he made them wait for cash.

  The American sailors were, of course, the first to break the ice. Outsiders are always reckless. No one’s watching over them. They were exuberant. The Belle was off the bar. They would be going home, huzzah – but not quite yet! There was a little time for fun. They drank the health of all the fishermen whose boats had towed their ‘darling Belle’ back into town. Again, they flirted with wives and daughters. No one was too old or plain for their attentions, and that was charming. When ‘Captain Keg’ attempted a silent plantation dance with the portly daughter of the Wherrytown shipwright, the cry went up for music. John Peacock brought a damp and battered fiddle from the Belle. Another sailor fetched his bellows box. And soon there was a lively jig to dance away the cold. The women danced amongst themselves at first. Even the married ones. They didn’t simply foot the measure in their seats. There wasn’t any city etiquette in Wherrytown. Then, when all the beer had gone and they’d started on the punch, they let the men lay hold of them and danced in drunken pairs. The captain partnered Alice Yapp until Walter Howells intervened, and then they shared her, jig by jig. Ralph Parkiss showed Miggy how to step, then held her waist and showed her how to kiss. Her mother Rosie even took the hand of, first, old Skimmer, and then her neighbour Henry Dolly. Henry, she thought, was either clumsy from the drink or getting too familiar.

  Katie Norris danced with all of the Americans. Her husband did not dance. He hadn’t got the frame for it, he said. He sat at the trestle table that had been carried from the inn and talked with Aymer Smith (with Mr Phipps the preacher eavesdropping) about the age and provenance of Earth, but kept an eye on his wife. He was happy to see her so admired and animated.

  ‘I can recommend a volume for your journey,
Mr Norris,’ Aymer said. He didn’t even want to catch a glimpse of Miggy or her mother. He turned his back on all the dancing and the music. ‘It is the work of Mr Lyell. The Principles of Geology.’ He stole a glance at Preacher Phipps. ‘He proposes a world with no vestige of a beginning and no prospect of an end. It is a scientific world. Not one that owes itself to some Creation. An interesting book.’

  ‘It sounds so, Mr Smith.’ Robert Norris watched his wife pass from the hands of one sailor to another. He waved at her.

  ‘You wish to ask, I know, what geology might tell us about our moral world. I have considered it. And that is why I am a convinced Amender. I will throw light on that. You know the term?’

  ‘An interesting book,’ repeated Robert Norris. His wife’s skirts were swinging in the dance, billowing with air then wrapping round her legs.

  ‘Amendism is the scientific view that every offence – Mr Phipps might call it sin – should be settled only by reparations of an equal force.’

  ‘An eye for an eye,’ said Preacher Phipps absently. ‘The Bible precedes you.’

  ‘Not that. No eyes and teeth. I am talking of self-discipline. Those sailors who are drunk tonight on Mr Howells’s beer, for instance, would need to make amends tomorrow by fasting, say, or imbibing some unpleasing liquid, or buying but not drinking beers of equal value to those that have intoxicated them. There is a calm to be maintained between oneself and one’s behaviour …’

  ‘Indeed there is,’ said Robert Norris. Where was Katie?

  ‘Mr Phipps might recommend a different course – that it is enough to confess one’s sins and seek forgiveness. Amenders do not hold to that. It is our understanding, should we transgress, that there is, implicit in the sinful act, a second act of amends to balance out the first and re-establish calm. And so we labour to avoid the making of amends by controlling our offences.’ He looked Mr Phipps directly in the eye. ‘Amends are better than Amens, I think.’ But Mr Phipps would not be drawn. He was watching Katie Norris too. He was debating sin, but silently.

  ‘I see that I have silenced you,’ said Aymer. He’d had a beer too many. His tongue was hurtling. He tipped a chair up. It toppled to the ground. He’d make them concentrate. ‘Take this example, then. Should I, in a temper, upset a chair, I upright it to make amends. Like so. I put it in its proper place and restore the harmony I squandered …’ The music stopped, and so did Aymer Smith. It had occurred to him that George would have found a shorter way of explaining Amendism: ‘You stick your bum in fire, and you must sit on blisters.’ What would the preacher make of that?

  By now John Peacock had run out of jigs. He played the bass stringed introduction to a round dance. ‘Form two circles; the gentleman should take the outer ring.’ Reluctant dancers were pulled up and dragged into the ring. Katie Norris ran up to the table. She knew her husband wouldn’t dance. She couldn’t ask a preacher – though this preacher stood and showed his readiness. She put her hand out for her roommate, Aymer Smith. ‘Step up,’ she said, flushed, irrefusable. She held his wrist and pulled. He stood opposing her until the music began. She spun twice beneath his arm. They back-to-backed. They swung. But then the partners changed and Aymer had to hold the hand of Amy Farrow from the town; then Nan Dolly (whose hands were briny from the fish), then Alice Yapp, then Miggy Bowe (she blushed, he blushed), then on through grandmamas, and fishing wives, and ten-year-olds, and Rosie Bowe. They didn’t have the breath or chance to talk; they had to spin and whirl and stamp, and then move on. At last he faced Katie Norris for the second time. The music stopped. They bowed. Her hair touched his.

  Then Robert Norris sang: ‘Old Faisie-do’, ‘The Ballad of the Greenwood King’, and ‘The traveller is far from home, and lost, and lost, and lost’. His voice was thinner than in chapel. The cold night air reduced it. There was no roof to give it resonance. But still it reached the darkest corners of the courtyard, where Whip had taken stolen fish, where Ralph and Miggy were embracing, where some young men who’d drunk too much were being sick or sleeping, and filled them with that mesmerizing, odd conjunction, both sad and hopeful, which is the human voice in song. Everyone was hot from dancing, and everyone was full of beer and pie. His songs were sobering.

  It was too late and cold to linger in the courtyard. To bed. There was a lot of work to be done the next day: a funeral, some carpentry and sail repairs, the further balking of the fish, amends to make, harmonies to restore. But, at least, the Belle was docked, the cattle fenced, the pilchards in, the seaman Rankin cleaned and in his box, the world in order for a change. When the candles were snuffed out at the Inn-that-had-no-name, the travellers there could dream of home, in Quebec, in Wilmington, at sea, and know that home was within reach at last. America and Canadee. Nobody thought of Africa that night, except for Aymer Smith. His head was aching from the dancing and the beer. He lay awake and tried to picture Otto going home, the stone and sand of Africa, the moon and sun, the trees perspiring in the night.

  10. The Faintest Voice

  IT WOULD HAVE been wise for Aymer Smith to have listened to the message swelling from the sea, ‘Enough’s enough. You must go home.’ Unlike the Belle he didn’t need his rigging fixed. He could go now. He only had to have a word with George and pay two sovereigns for the day hire of a horse. He could reach the Seven Springs by evening, spend the night in civilized company at the Cross and Crown Hotel, and then secure a place, first class, inside the mail coach going east. Three days and he’d be back where he belonged, amongst his books, with good acquaintances, fellow Sceptics and Amenders to converse with, and his work at Hector Smith & Sons to take his mind off Wherrytown.

  So what if he didn’t know the way to the Seven Springs? Or if he was too timid for the horse? Or if he was nervous of travelling on his own across moors where there were highwaymen and bridgeless rivers? Then he could go home in company. There were a dozen wagonloads of salted pilchards leaving on the Wednesday morning. If he could only tolerate an exposed place amongst the hogsheads and put his shoulder to the wheel when there was mud, or a heavy hill, then he’d be back with the Sceptics by the Sunday night. His duty would be done. More to the point, he would be free of Wherrytown and all of its embarrassments. Nobody at home would know what a mighty fool he had made of himself.

  He’d had a dream that Monday night, made turbulent by pilchard oil and too much beer, in which he danced a jig with Miggy, Katie and Alice Yapp as his three partners. He had no trousers on. The captain punched him on the chin, but no one tried to intervene. Otto shouted at him, pointing at the door, ‘Go! Go! Go!’ The sailors pelted him with kelp.

  Aymer woke to daylight and an empty room. The Norrises were out of bed. Either they had gone to breakfast or they were on their morning walk. His throat was dry and sore. His head ached. Whip was stirring in her sleep at his side. He stretched his hand and stroked her ear. Was she the only friend in Wherrytown, this scraggy, undiscriminating dog? He feared, he knew, she was. And that was why he wouldn’t take the wagon or the horse. He had to put the world to rights. His world, that is. He wanted to be liked. He wanted to regain his dignity before he left. He couldn’t fool himself that he still had any tasks in Wherrytown. He’d paid his shillings to the kelpers. He’d spoken to the agent Howells. His work was done. And any foolish hopes that he might find a country wife had – just in time – been dashed. Otto haunted him, it’s true. But surely Otto would be far from Wherrytown by now. And surely in good hands. Aymer wouldn’t allow himself to consider the bleak alternatives. His conscience was too bruised already. Still, he was persuaded he must stay in Wherrytown, but not for Otto’s sake. Good sense dictated it. He couldn’t go back home just yet. After all, he had a chesty cold. He couldn’t travel in this weather until the infection had eased at least. It would be suicide.

  Instead? Instead he’d stay on till the Wednesday week and take a passage on the Tar on its next return along the coast. That was a symmetry worth waiting for. And in the meantime he’d have seven days to know the countr
yside. He’d always been an admirer of the Picturesque. He could take George as his guide, perhaps. And Whip, of course. There might be antiquities to see. He’d botanize. He’d read. He’d try a little poetry, and begin a diary of his observations. He might attempt some sketches, too: the Cradle Rock, the harbour boats, the charming, unconceited cottages above Dry Manston beach. His health would benefit from rambles and diversions such as that. At night he wouldn’t be able to avoid the company in the parlour, of course. But he would be a mended man, keeping his own counsel and maintaining an educated distance from the conversations of his fellow guests. He knew that he had volunteered himself too much. Had been too generous and too exotic. Had interfered. He had seven days to be more reticent, more taciturn, more worthy of respect. He would be reckless with his reticence, a pleasing paradox.

  There was no one in the parlour. Nor was there any fire. He didn’t ring the handbell. He helped himself to a cold breakfast from what had been left on the side table: potted hare, a dish of plain pilchards, oat bread, some cheese, some lukewarm grog. He didn’t touch the pilchards or the grog. He put his nose into a book – Emile dell’Ova’s Truismes, in French – and ate just bread and cheese. Surely it wouldn’t be long before someone came, and could encounter him sitting quietly at the table, preoccupied, contained. But no one came for half an hour, and Aymer soon grew bored of dell’Ova’s company. He hand-fed the dog on potted hare and pilchards and then, when she wouldn’t stop wimping at the outer door, he took his coat and went into the lane.