Signals of Distress

by Jim Crace

  13. Cradle Rock

  THE AMERICANS had slept their last night at the inn. That was the end of mattresses for them. They’d spend the Monday night in hammocks on the Belle, roped to the quay at Wherrytown but ready for the Tuesday’s swelling tide and for the eight hard, pieless weeks at sea which separated them from home.

  Their ship had been refitted in a breathless seven days. It would have taken seventeen – or seventy? – if Walter Howells hadn’t been there, with his quick eye and his belief in shaving costs rather than shaving badly fitting wood. Was he their captain on the land? Their own Captain Comstock hardly bothered to speak. He still seemed beached. Dry-docked. An Admiral Driftwood who had turned green and queasy as soon as he’d come ashore. But Walter Howells was a Napoleon: shorter, fatter and more demanding by the day. He’d told ten of the younger, fitter sailors that they had to get out of their beds at dawn that Monday morning to fetch the cattle and the stores from Dry Manston beach. He should have sent ten older, calmer men. They would have done less harm. He woke the Americans himself; he never seemed to sleep. The sailors only had to pull their boots and surtouts on. They slept in shirts and breeches. They didn’t wash themselves. Tobacco took the smell away.

  Walter Howells provided two narrow, open wagons and a pair of nags. He told them not to touch the smaller herd of cattle, but to drive the larger group back to Wherrytown for re-loading on the Belle. He gave them two black bottles. ‘Keeps you warm,’ he said. ‘And quiet, I hope.’ He winked. He put his fingers to his lips. The sailors didn’t give a damn what Walter Howells was up to. Fewer cattle, less work, was all that bothered them. What mattered most, once they were up and out, was that they were freed from the dullness of the town and not yet prisoned by the sea. Two nags, two wagons, two bottles, and the whole day to themselves. They would have a high time on the coast. Still farting Sunday’s beef and beer and creased with sleep, they left the courtyard and made a noisy exit west.

  Ralph Parkiss was their guide. He knew the coastal path. He led them out of Wherrytown along a half-flagged lane. Some of the sailors sat on the wagon ends and smoked. Some walked ahead with Ralph. They only had to give the horses gentle tugs at first, but once the lane and flagstones ended and they had to climb on softer ground into the wind the horses became obstinate. They dropped their heads, and tried to back the wagons home.

  How should the sailors navigate a horse? They tugged the ropes as best they could, but made no better progress than an ostler would if he were put behind a ship’s wheel and told to sail it to America. It would have taken them all day to reach Dry Manston beach, if Palmer Dolly hadn’t come by on his way to the quay. They pressed him into helping them. He showed them how a wagon horse was like a fishing boat, steered by the rudder, from the back. He found two sticks, and beat the horses on the flanks. They soon put up their heads and rattled off along the paths. Once they’d reached the granite levels above the town, the walkers had to run to keep up with the wagons, and the riders had to put their pipes away and hold on with both hands.

  ‘In’t there no horses in America?’ Palmer Dolly wanted to know. And, ‘What will a dollar buy?’ And, ‘Has Captain Comstock got a man to take Nathaniel Rankin’s place?’ The sailors amused themselves with lies. No, they hadn’t any horses in America, not yet. The farmers there rode goats. One dollar bought one dozen goats, and there was money left for saddles. No one with any sense would want Nathaniel Rankin’s place. His place was up the topmast with a stick, night and day, knocking seagulls off the rigging, ‘for no one travels free on board the Belle, not even birds’. Palmer knew they were teasing him. He didn’t care. He was happy to belong, and to prove how useful he could be, even if there weren’t any horses in America, even if the captain had already said he couldn’t crew with them. He had a better plan. He’d stow away. He’d take his dollar on the Belle.

  The riders were numb to the bone with cold when they arrived on the bluffs above Dry Manston, late in the morning. The walkers were as warm as toast, except their faces and their hands. Ralph Parkiss went across to the bench where he’d carved his initials, nine days before. Had they survived the snow? Someone had ringed his carving with a heart and inexpertly added more initials: M.B. Miggy Bowe! Ralph blushed with pleasure. She must have come and seen his name carved in the wood. She’d found a stone and scratched her love for him. A heart, containing both of them. He ran his fingers around the heart. He kissed his fingers and he pressed them to the wood. He would have put his lips on to the wood if he had been alone, and tongued the letters of her name. If only he could slip away, and hold his Miggy in his arms.

  He rejoined the wagons and the sailors as they began their descent to the beach. The tide was high up on the shore. The strongest waves fell just short of the dunes. The horses were not happy going down. The rocks were steep and slippery, and all the sailors had to hold the wagons from behind or let them tumble with the horses onto the beach. It took them more than an hour to negotiate the rocks and reach a wider and less steep path. First came grassy heathland, then salty flats littered with the flotsam of the winter tides, and then the shifting dunes, so flimsy at the edges of the sea that even the roar of breakers, eighty yards away, and the rattle of the tide throwing pebble dice, were all it took to make the dune sand blink, and separate, and slip.

  The wagons sank into the sand. They’d have to leave them at the edges of the dunes and lug the ship’s stores over by hand. Unless the horses could be forced, of course. Palmer shook his head. ‘They in’t gonna shift,’ he said. ‘They’ve had enough for now. Leave ’em to their bit o’ grass.’ Ralph Parkiss thought he knew better. He tried to pull one of the nags by its head. He held it by the headstall. And tugged. Perhaps there really weren’t any horses in America, thought Palmer. Ralph didn’t seem to know that horses could nip. And hard. He watched the old horse nuzzle Ralph’s shirt. He saw it bite. Ralph could hardly breathe for pain. When he opened up his shirt, there was a bleeding four-inch bruise in the soft flesh of his stomach.

  His shipmates made the most of it. ‘Don’t let your Miggy see that, Ralph, not on your wedding night.’

  ‘A horse had its mouth inside your shirt? Oh, yes! She’ll think you’ve found another girl.’

  ‘She’ll think the mare was Mrs Yapp. She’s got the teeth!’

  They poured a drop of spirit from one of Walter How-ells’s black bottles onto the wound. Ralph could hardly breathe again. The pain came back. ‘That’s firing stuff,’ he said.

  ‘Let’s taste it, then!’ They passed both bottles round.

  ‘It’s bottled tar,’ one man suggested.

  ‘It’s pilchard gin!’

  ‘It’s Devil’s piss and vinegar.’

  Palmer Dolly told them it was treacle rum. He’d never liked the taste of it, but still he drank and passed the bottle on.

  ‘Dear Lord, it’s firing stuff,’ Ralph said again. ‘I need a bit of air.’

  ‘There’s air enough out here to last a lifetime.’

  ‘It’s not this air I want,’ Ralph said. ‘I want some air down there.’ He pointed along the coast towards the cottages at Dry Manston. It was half a mile to Miggy’s home. He could run along the beach and be with her, and then be back within the hour. ‘I’ll not be missed, I hope.’ His shipmates jeered when he walked off – ‘Go on then, boy. Don’t let her get inside your shirt’ – but it was only jealousy. If each of them were young and had a girl a half a mile away, they wouldn’t feel so wild and mischievous. Perhaps if Ralph hadn’t been the greenhorn of the crew they would have mocked him more cruelly. Seasoned sailors didn’t lose their hearts to girls like Miggy. They couldn’t marry every girl they kissed. But Ralph was still a novice. That was his charm. He gave his heart quite readily.

  The sailors didn’t wait for Ralph. Their muscles itched. With treacle rum inside of them, the job of loading the wagons with the loose gear from the Belle seemed almost enjoyable. They packed the gear as tightly as they could, but there was hardly space for all of it.
The wagon wheels sank into the ground a further inch or two. Water puddled at their rims. They should have brought three wagons and six horses. They’d never get this load up onto the headland without an act of God. They had to half unload again and waste the best part of an hour carrying the smaller and the lighter stores up to the headland by hand. They let Palmer take charge of the cattle. He was less nervous of cows than the sailors were. He went into their makeshift pen and roped the biggest with a length of bowline. He tempted it with grass. And when it came, the others followed, single file, as orderly as ants. They had eaten all the hay that Howells had left and then had cropped their pen back to the sand. They’d put up with anything so long as they could reach the untouched grass. When they had grazed for a while, Palmer held the lead cow by the bowline and led it up the path to the headland by the Cradle Rock and tied it to a boulder. The others followed, encouraged at first by Palmer’s sticks. Then the hullabaloo of the Americans behind them was so alarming that they clambered up between the rocks like goats.

  The sailors had to make a noise. They put their shoulders to the half-loaded wagons and pushed, and when they pushed they had to shout the effort out. Even then they only managed to move the wagons one yard at a time. It had been easier to shift the Belle. They missed their capstans and their windlasses. They couldn’t rest between each push. The wagons and the horses would roll back, down hill, to join the debris in the dunes. They wedged large rocks behind the wheels of the second wagon, and concentrated on the first. They anchored it with ropes to boulders at the top of the path. Two men stayed with the ropes and took up the slack; the other eight stayed with the horses and forced the wagon forward. The earth was loose. Cascades of rocks dislodged and bounced downhill. The Americans muttered every foul word that they knew. They put their shoulders to the wagon back and screamed it to the top. Then they cursed and screamed the second wagon too. Palmer Dolly made the loudest noises of all. ‘Tuck ’em in!’ he shouted, every time the wheels began to move. ‘And tuck ’em in!’

  The sailors spread a canvas on the grass and lay down on the headland. Their backs and shoulders ached. Their hands were trembling. They shared tobacco and what pipes there were, while Palmer Dolly pointed out the Dolly home, the cottage where the Bowes lived, the Cradle Rock, the moors and, finally, a tiny figure on the beach – Ralph Parkiss – running along the water’s edge, to catch them up. The cattle spread out along the path. The two horses steamed. Palmer Dolly searched the wagons for food. Perhaps there’d be a side of bacon or some sacks of ship’s biscuit amongst the gear. ‘I can’t find anything,’ he said. ‘There’s only brandy.’

  ‘Only brandy? How much?’ One of the Americans stood up and walked across to Palmer.

  Palmer pulled the cases out. ‘There’s four-and-twenty bottles, at least,’ he said.

  ‘And two of them is broken, ain’t that so?’ Palmer checked again. ‘No, there in’t one broken …’

  ‘And I say two of them has broken in the storm. Now that’s a shame! What a bugger storm that was. Brought our rigging down and smashed the captain’s brandy. Don’t tell me life ain’t cruel.’ The sailor winked, took two bottles from the case and rejoined the other Americans on their canvas mat. He shook the bottles, pulled the corks. ‘Gentlemen, the captain sends his compliments.’ They mixed the captain’s brandy with the treacle rum already in their stomachs. They were revived and warm and dangerous.

  ‘ANOTHER bottle, then?’

  ‘And how!’

  ‘The captain’ll be hogged.’

  ‘He’s always hogged.’

  ‘What’ll the captain know? If two’s got broken, why not three?’

  ‘Or four?’

  ‘We’ll drink the bloody lot of it, for all he knows.’

  ‘I couldn’t drink another drop, unless you offered it.’ This man had got an empty bottle balanced on his chest.

  ‘Don’t drink it, then. Just rub it in.’

  ‘No, throw it over me. I’ll smell it when I wakes.’

  ‘If you wakes.’

  ‘How many, then?’

  ‘Just one more for the journey back?’

  ‘And another for the voyage home.’

  ‘And a couple for the horses.’

  ‘Don’t bloody count. Just drink.’

  ‘We’re dead men if the captain knows. He’ll put the whip on us.’

  ‘Don’t breathe on him, he’ll never know.’

  ‘Don’t waste a fart on him.’

  ‘Another bottle or not?’

  ‘For God’s sake, pull the cork. I’m dying here!’

  ‘Spin a coin. Take a risk. Heads we drink. Tails we spin again.’

  ‘No, I’ll throw my hat. If it lands we’ll wet it home with two more bottles. If it don’t come down again, then what to do but go back sober?’

  ‘Now that’s the sort of risk I like.’

  The hat came down two yards away. To cheers.

  ‘Go get ’em, boy! Two bottles of the best.’

  ‘Bring six, or I’ll crack your head!’

  Palmer did as he was asked. He pulled the corks out with his teeth. ‘I’ll never breathe a word of this,’ he said. ‘Not to the captain.’ They looked at him with narrowed eyes.

  ‘You do, and we’ll throw you off that cliff.’

  ‘Let’s throw him anyway.’

  ‘No, what I mean is … I’ll stay quiet … I’m … hoping you’ll stay quiet for me, an’ all. I mean to ask you, if someone in’t a proper passenger and tried to hide away on the Belle, then would you breathe a word of it, if, say, you found him hiding?’

  They laughed at this. ‘Now, that depends on who it is.’

  ‘If it was that Mrs Yapp … Well, she’d be welcome on my yardarm anytime.’

  ‘I’d come abeam for her, that I would.’

  ‘No, say it might be me aboard, suppose …’ said Palmer.

  ‘What, you the stowaway?’

  ‘I never said.’

  ‘Well, is it you, boy, or not?’

  ‘I want to leave this place, that’s all. I want to go to America. I’ve got a dollar, see.’ He held his dollar up.

  ‘Toss it over, then.’

  ‘It’s mine.’

  ‘You toss it over, Palmer boy.’

  ‘It’s mine to keep.’

  ‘It ain’t. Not unless you want to starve. A dollar pays for board and lodging on the Belle. It’s a fair shake. Ain’t that the case?’ The sailor’s comrades nodded their agreement. ‘We’ll give you meat and drink all right.’

  ‘Raw rats, Adam’s ale …’

  ‘Except you’ll have to catch the rats yourself.’

  They suggested twenty places he could hide: in the bilges (‘Plenty to drink down there’), on the anchor deck, between companion plankings, in the canvas store, in the jib-boom housing, in the pilchard kegs, ‘up the mate’s backside’. It would be fun to have a stowaway, they decided. They were too full of brandy to be rational.

  ‘You’re in good hands,’ they said, when Palmer parted with the flowing hair of Liberty and threw Nat Rankin’s dollar to them.

  ‘I’ll drink to that!’

  ‘Let’s break another bottle for the stowaway!’

  ‘Let’s break it on his head!’

  WHEN Ralph Parkiss reached his shipmates on the headland, there was not a cow in sight, except the bow-roped one. The sailors looked as if the plague had come. Their faces were both red and pale. Their eyes were wild and dead. Their greetings didn’t make sense. Their gestures were obscene.

  ‘Hoy, Ralph. Have you come back without your stick?’

  ‘Any more mare bites to show us, sailor?’

  ‘Meet the stowaway.’

  Ralph saw the empty bottles on the grass. So what? He was drunk himself. A heart was scratched around him. Miggy had been in the cottage with her mother when he arrived. He’d had to play the model son-in-law and talk about his family and his prospects in America. But then they’d walked behind, into the fields, while Rosie baked the br
ead. And there he’d kissed his Miggy on the mouth.

  ‘I saw your bit of carving on the bench,’ he said. She didn’t understand. She blushed, and shook her head. But Ralph adored her shyness. He kissed her mouth again. He kissed her tunic, over her breast.

  ‘Tell me how it’ll be when we get to America. Tell me, Ralph.’ She let him guide her hand onto his trousers. She frowned, more baffled than afraid. She knew it wasn’t right. They held their breath. She rubbed. Was this lovemaking, then? Was this as soft as thistledown?

  ‘America …’ he said. ‘It’s hard to think of anything to say …’

  He didn’t tell the sailors what she’d done. He didn’t need to. They could tell. He was in a restless mood. ‘Come on. Who’ll help me swing the Cradle Rock?’

  He got four volunteers. But when the others saw the massive rock in motion, they all got up and ran, as best they could, along the grassy path up to the hollow bowl below the tonsured granite of the Rock. They climbed between the arrowed slabs onto the platform where their comrades stood, watching the Cradle Rock dipping on its pivot stone. They whooped like Indians. It was a giddy sight; the drink, the rapid clouds, the undulating rock. They couldn’t tell what moved and what was still. One sailor wedged an empty brandy bottle underneath. The Rock descended on the glass, and powdered it.