Signals of Distress

by Jim Crace

  Mr Phipps was glad when the Americans arrived. He was in a hurry to begin. The sailors were happy to have a break from the tedious and unexciting work of ship repair. Their lungs were trained for salt, not sawdust. They were even more content to have the offer of some beer so early in the day. They drank too much of it, too quickly, and when the time came for the four bearers to lift their shipmate to their shoulders in his box, they mismanaged it. The body in its canvas shroud could be heard buffeting the wood. He’d been dead since Saturday, but still the bruises came.

  The pebbled passageway which led up through the inn was too slippery with mud, too narrow for the bearers and the coffin, and too steep. They had to put the coffin on the ground and drag it up the steps.

  ‘Shake out his bones, Onto the stones, He’s only a sailor, Who nobody owns!’ the mate sang, and didn’t care who overheard.

  When they’d finally got the coffin into the lane, kicked off the mud and hoisted it once more onto the shoulders of men of roughly equal height, they set off to the chapel at such a pace and in such high spirits that many of the older mourners were left behind. The bearers waited at the chapel gates for the preacher and their captain to arrive, and then put the coffin in the graveyard shelter on a slate table. They only quietened down when Captain Comstock threatened them. They plunged their hands into their pockets and smirked into their chests.

  Mr Phipps stood at the gate and greeted all his congregation as they arrived. The fittest sailors first, including Ralph Parkiss. Then John Peacock, the sailmaker, and the older crew. Then the Dollys, with their boy Palmer executing an untidy and unnecessary salute at Captain Comstock like some raw volunteer, and offering an awkward ‘G’day, Captain’ in what was not a local accent. Alice Yapp came next, alone and out of breath. (A wink for Captain Comstock.) The Norrises then. Katie – in her blackest bonnet – was quite beautiful, Mr Phipps thought. He’d make a point of comforting her when the burial was over. Her husband had a halfways decent voice and could be asked to lead the hymn. Aymer Smith was with the Norrises. He even gave his hand to Mr Phipps. The preacher pressed his fingers on to Aymer’s chest: ‘And have you come to be baptized at last?’

  ‘No, sir. I come …’ Aymer was alarmed. The preacher’s fingers had been hard and hostile.

  ‘No, sir, indeed! Will you then tread on blessed ground?’ ‘I come only for the burial, to pay respects.’ ‘Then pay respects to God and stay beyond His wall. You can attend our holy interment, Mr Smith, but from a distance.’

  ‘Come, Mr Phipps …’ said Robert Norris, taking Aymer by the arm to demonstrate their friendship. ‘I see no harm in it …’ He looked to Katie for some help.

  ‘We would not like to leave dear Mr Smith outside.’ ‘No, Mrs Norris. Do not speak for me. I am content to be a distant witness.’ Aymer wished the ground would open up and swallow him. Already he was close to tears. Why was he always close to tears?

  ‘But, Mr Phipps …’ she said.

  ‘You see, he does not want to trespass here. He has no interest in Morals, and boasts of it. He told me only yesterday that he nurtured not a single aspiration to stand amongst my congregation. He paraded himself above the chapel …’ (Mr Phipps pointed at the muddy overhang, fifteen feet above) ‘… and he holloa’d it, as my gravediggers are my witnesses. Now, Mr Smith, do me the courtesy of stepping back. There are chapelgoers at your shoulder who would appreciate an easy entrance to the chapel green.’

  ‘Allow me this indulgence, Mr Phipps, that our good friend should be allowed to stand with us,’ Katie said.

  ‘I cannot, madam, no. I am the instrument of God, and have no freedom to indulge, but …’ But could he reject so pretty, so black-bonneted a request? He turned to Captain Comstock, who was standing just beyond, with Alice Yapp at his side, and Palmer Dolly, hovering. ‘What do you say, Captain? It is for your man that we’re gathered here. Do you request that Mr Smith should join you?’

  Alice squeezed his hand. ‘I see no call for it,’ he said.

  Aymer had already turned his back, and would have hurried out of sight. He would have sought the refuge of an empty room or the company of gulls. But Robert Norris caught his sleeve. ‘We’ll stand with you,’ he said. They led him down a path along the chapel wall, and found a place where they could overlook the grave. They stood on either side of him, white-faced and angry. Aymer’s face was red, red not only from embarrassment but from a hardly comprehended joy. What was the song? For once. For once. For once, at last, he did not stand alone.

  The congregation gathered at the grave and Mr Phipps began his sermon. He wasn’t happy – he was furious, in fact – to have lost the Norrises. Especially the wife. She wouldn’t let him comfort her now. What could they see in that fool Smith? He put on his Holy Face, his Holy Voice, his Holy Grief, and spoke about Nathaniel Rankin as if they had been friends. ‘We must not forget that Death is a visitation of God Almighty. To have the breath of life taken from you is to have your body touched by God. His is the Gift of Life. So when we think of that dark storm when our brother Nathaniel passed from us and his dear face was chilled with the salty dew of life’s last struggle, we should not grieve; we should rejoice, because the child of God is back with God, and all is well within His Universe.’ He nodded that the coffin should be lowered. Then he read a passage from The Navigations of the Saints, threw granite pebbles on the birchwood lid and asked them all to sing ‘For Death Is But the Shaded Sea’. Robert Norris’s voice was strong enough to cross the wall, and lead the hymn. The congregation parted for his voice. They let it in and did their best to match his perfect pitch. Aymer sang as well. He would have danced a jig.

  ‘For Death is but the shaded sea

  Let every lost ship, in the deep,

  Rejoice. Our Saviour’s at the helm.

  And He, our pilot Lord,

  Will keep

  The midnight watch

  On Death and Sleep.

  And He, our captain Lord,

  Will give

  The tidings

  That our souls will live,

  And oceans, overwhelm.’

  When the hymn was done and the shovels were at work, rattling earth and stones on Nathaniel Rankin’s coffin, Aymer could have volunteered a hug, at least, to these two allies at his side. He was the handshake not the hugging sort. He wasn’t used to taking people in his arms, not since he’d been small and in the care of Granny Todd, his parents’ housekeeper. He had, it’s true, hugged Ralph Parkiss. That was in an empty parlour, though, and comradely, a manly thing. Here, there was a congregation looking on. He should have lifted up his arms and put them round the Norrises, his hands upon their shoulders. He should have hugged them so tightly that they fell against the wall and toppled onto holy ground. He volunteered, instead, a tiny inclination of his head, and said, ‘I thank you for your kind interference.’ He added something, too soft and muttered to be understood. But he was hugging in his heart, and both the Norrises knew it. It hardly mattered that they didn’t touch. What mattered was that they had stood in line.

  They had to touch the preacher, though. He made them shake his hand. He held Katie’s hands too long, and squeezed Aymer’s hand too tightly. He hoped they had not misunderstood the fierceness of his Faith. How ‘generous and Christian’ it had been for Mr and Mrs Norris to offer Mr Smith their company while Mr Phipps’s solemn duty was performed. Both he and Mr Smith were men of principle and Mr Smith, he was quite sure, could not respect a man who was not ‘a Moral rock’. The chapel was for Christians. He did not imagine Mr Smith would wish to make a pilgrimage to Mecca unless he were a Mussulman. Or hope to find a welcome in the sanctums of a synagogue. Though if he did, he would not chance upon such singing there as he had heard today. ‘Our Mr Norris has an angel’s voice,’ he said. ‘And Mrs Norris too, of course.’ He took their hands again, and clapped Aymer on the shoulder. ‘We’ll have you yet,’ he said. ‘I urge you, sir, to read the Scriptures, and you will, I think, find both Faith and Reason satisfied.�
�� By the time he had convinced himself that his reputation was not damaged but enhanced with the Norrises, the mourners from the funeral had dispersed, and Nathaniel Rankin’s grave was almost full with earth.

  Aymer and the Norrises descended through Wherrytown by empty lanes, except that halfway back a reproachful-looking Whip accosted Aymer and wouldn’t settle for a tiny inclination of his head. She wanted him to scratch her ears and rub her chest.

  Mrs Yapp gave them lunch, though Aymer had little appetite for fish. When they had eaten and – frankly – needed some respite from Mr Smith’s addresses on Mahometans, the ‘native’ ways of making fire and ‘the habit in the East’ of burning the dead, Katie and her husband walked down to the quay to see what progress had been made on the Belle. How long before they could set sail for Canada?

  Aymer took a book into the parlour, persuaded Mrs Yapp to revive the fire and wet some tea, and settled to the Common Sense of Thomas Paine. When his tea was brought, he asked for ‘a less idle light’.

  ‘If you want better light for reading by, you’ll have to shift yourself to the window or go outdoors,’ Mrs Yapp said. She wasn’t servant to the man. Why couldn’t he take five paces to the side table and find a candle for himself? ‘I’m on my own, with George not here, and haven’t time to fetch and carry all day long. I saw you wasn’t welcome in the chapel, though.’ She hoped he’d say something indiscreet about Mr Phipps.

  ‘Where is George, Mrs Yapp? You have the oddest parlourman in the land.’

  ‘There’s odd, and there’s odd,’ she said. If George was odd, then what was Aymer Smith?

  ‘Where is he, though?’

  ‘He’s volunteered as guide.’

  ‘As guide to what?’

  ‘As guide to hunting down the captain’s African. There’s no one knows this corner of the world like George. He’s better than a hound. He’ll sniff him out. He’ll have that sovereign off Walter Howells.’ She watched as Aymer leaped up like a man who’d sat on pins. He ran out into the lane without a hat or coat. Then she sat down by the fire, tossed Common Sense aside, and drank his tea.

  AYMER WAS too late to find the hunting party or its hound. They had assembled in the courtyard as soon as the funeral was over. Five sailors from the Belle with Captain Comstock. A dozen Wherrytowners armed with sticks and scythes and one old musket which the owner said had ‘seen the Frenchie off at Waterloo’. And Palmer Dolly, who had volunteered, and hoped not for the sovereign but for a hammock on the Belle as his reward. Walter Howells attended on his horse. He sent the Wherrytowners off to search every outhouse, coop and sty, to check behind wood piles, in net stores, underneath the upturned hulls of boats. He sent the sailors and Palmer, under George’s command, to search the local fields, ten deep, and anywhere ‘that’s big enough to hide a man’.

  Howells went with the captain to search the salt-hall and the shore. The salt-hall only took five minutes, and Otto wasn’t there – unless he’d been balked and barrelled along with the pilchards. They spent a pleasant afternoon in Walter Howells’s room, with good Jamaicee rum. They could watch the shore from there.

  ‘They’re bound to bring your Otto back, don’t give it any thought,’ Howells said. ‘We have to think about ourselves a bit. There’s matters need discussing, if we’re to turn a little black luck into profit.’ He outlined for the captain how he would present a bill of repairs that ‘would not run amiss with those good gentlemen who’ll have to settle it. Let’s not pretend we’ve mended what was never broke. The greedy piglet soon gets pushed out of the trough. The cunning, patient one gets fed.’ They’d quickly re-equip the Belle, a patch-up job, he said: ‘I’ve put good timber in, of course. Watertight. But not the best. Masts and rigging ditto, Captain Comstock. No harm in saying that you had to lose a few possessions overboard. There’s all that stuff we stored down in the dunes. I’ll get a decent price for that. And we’ve some cattle set aside. It’s fifty-fifty all the way, if I’m a man to trust.’ He poured the captain a fourth tot of rum. He put a purse of sovereigns in Captain Comstock’s hand. ‘There now. We’ll have you back at sea within the week, and nothing to regret from your short stay in Wherrytown.’

  Captain Comstock settled back into the cushions of his chair. ‘It’s turned out well,’ he said. He put the purse out of sight, beneath his thigh. The sovereigns hit something hard. He pulled a pistol out from underneath the cushions, a German flintlock with a ram’s-horn butt.

  ‘Well found, sir,’ said Walter Howells. ‘I’d marked it down as being lost or stolen.’ He hung the flintlock on its bedboard hook. The two men shook hands, but didn’t meet each other’s eyes.

  GEORGE THE parlourman, meanwhile, had got the five Americans and Palmer Dolly knee deep in mud in fields just to the east of Wherrytown. There’d been reports, he said, of ‘trespasses’: an open gate, a disturbed turnip clamp, a light at night, goats with burgled udders. At first their search party had been high-spirited. This was more fun than mending sails. They whistled as they walked. They called out Otto’s name, and some names that George and Palmer hadn’t heard before. The mate began a plantation song and all his shipmates joined the chorus:

  ‘Run, nigger, run,

  The day is come,

  The wind gonna ketch you.

  Dat nigger run,

  Dat nigger flew,

  But still we comes to fetch you.’

  Once the song had ended, though, the wind began to bite, and legs that were at ease on tossing decks grew tired and heavy in the steadfast, frozen fields. By now the sailors didn’t give a damn if Otto were caught or not. He wasn’t worth the mud. We’re going back, they said. This wasn’t mutiny. The captain wasn’t there. And George was not an officer, and this was not the Belle. George teased them for their lack of fortitude until it was suggested, by the mate, old Captain Keg, that he’d be wise to give his mouth a rest unless he wanted mud in it. He led them into Wherrytown, in an unusually silent and cheerful mood. They went back to the Belle.

  George and Palmer found the Wherrytowners gathered at an empty cattle shed, on the leeward side of town. Someone, something, was in the loft, they said. No one – not even the veteran of Waterloo – would volunteer to climb up the ladder and search the straw. They were convinced that Otto was hiding there, a pistol in his hand, a head full of mischief, black magic at his fingertips. They’d either smoke him out or wait until he starved. It might be amusing, George thought, to let them try and starve him out. It could take a year or two, before the siege became a bore. But he was more amused at the quicker prospect of being mistaken for a hero. ‘He’ll never starve,’ he said. ‘Those Africans can live on straw. Here, let me take a look.’ He wouldn’t take the musket or a stick or let Palmer, keen to be a hero, too, accompany him. He climbed up into the straw, threw bunches of it through the loft trap, made a din, made choking noises, went quiet, and finally came down with an injured pigeon folded in his hands.

  ‘There, Otto, there,’ he said. ‘We’re going to put you somewhere safe, where you can’t do these people any harm, nor steal their chickens, nor rip the meat off cows, nor go howling like a wolf all night. We’re going to put you in a pie.’

  12. Amor

  HOW DULL it was in Wherrytown. Even the weather was dull, a leaden sky, no wind worth spitting at. And mild! November must have lost its gloves and gone back to October to look for them. The townsfolk – gloveless, leaden too – went about their business making pennies, making pies, helping out with pilchards and the Belle. Otto only bothered them at night. Each banging gate, each barking dog, caused wives to wake their men, and men to take a nervous look outside, expecting worse than ghosts. Nathaniel Rankin settled in the chapel green. He was not the haunting kind. The weight of stone and earth splintered the cheap wood of the coffin lid. The mound that marked his grave collapsed and sank. As soon as there was any light two robins gleaned the open earth for worms; a dog hawk gleaned the sky for birds.

  Along the coast at Dry Manston there were nets to be mend
ed, sails to patch, peat to cut. No one bothered with the kelp. The high-tide mark was hemmed with it. It was as worthless now as sand. Miggy Bowe had too much time. She didn’t want to stay at home. She was uncomfortable there. She hated every stone of it. Her mother hardly had the heart to speak. She just watched Miggy, constantly, and took every chance to kiss her daughter, hug her, wish her well. Miggy fled each day to Wherrytown and idled around the quay, watching as the ship was mended, and provisioned for the voyage with salt meat, potted pilchards, orange preserve in stone jars, dried raisins, blocks of portable soup. She looked seasick already. The sailors nicknamed her the Ghost: the white, unsmiling face, the red kerchief, her haunted, lovelorn voice. Ralph Parkiss slipped away from work at every thin excuse. He gave her one of his best shirts, and promised her a silver wedding band as soon as he could find the money. He’d already signed away his next month’s wage to pay for Miggy’s passage to America. The captain said he’d marry them at sea and let them have a cabin for a night. He’d take down a side of bacon for the wedding feast. Everyone was fond of Ralph. He wasn’t calloused yet. Ralph walked to the shore with Miggy, and took her out of sight between beached fishing boats. He kissed her on the neck, the mouth, the ear. It was too cold and open for much more. But Miggy was prepared for more. What would it be like to be touched and kissed by Ralph when he was her husband, when they were bucking on the sea with bacon on their breath? Why wait? Why not go off and find some barn where she could throw away her clothes, undress herself from this dull place, and be a naked child again? She wouldn’t throw away her neckerchief, though. Ralph said he liked it at her throat. It made him passionate, and she should wear it on their wedding night, and nothing else. She thought that making love was lying still. They’d be like two caterpillars, softly wrapped, and hanging motionless from a fern on one thin, breathless thread. Or like two boats at anchor in the same light breeze, tethered on a single line, and calm. She’d have her body matched to his, his chest against her back, their flesh mollified not made hard by passion, their breathing slow and unified. The love she felt for Ralph would somehow – on their wedding night, or in some barn near Wherrytown – become as tangible and soft as thistledown. No matter what her mother said.