Signals of Distress

by Jim Crace

What did she want? She didn’t know, except that she was in no hurry to begin the last part of her life alone, a piece of salted granite on the coast. She might as well … She might as well, she told herself, have someone hold her in his arms, even if that someone was this creaking, timid stick. When he had shouted, ‘Anybody! Anybody!’ he had expressed her feelings too. Will anybody ever hold me to their heart again? Will anybody try? He’d had his chance to take his hands away. But he’d left them in her hair. She put her own hands on his waist and then on to the lower part of his back. He could be anyone she chose. She only had to keep her eyes shut tight.

  She chose to look at him. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘You can.’ She pushed aside the sacking curtain that divided the room and tiptoed across the cold bare earth to the box-bed. He didn’t follow her. She had to go back to the fire and pull him by his wrist. She ought to feel ashamed, she thought, pressing him like this. Any man she’d known before had pulled her wrist. This one was reluctant even to be pulled. Did she disgust him? Was he just shy? Was he one of those men, like Skimmer or George at the inn, who only liked to be with other men? She put her arms around his waist again. ‘It in’t important, Mr Smith,’ she said. ‘Just put your hand back where it was, so that I can get the crying out of me.’ Aymer put one hand onto the nape of her neck and pushed her hair up on to her crown. He put the other hand behind her back and pulled her to him so that his lips were on her forehead. His lips were dry. She did cry for a minute or two, though Miggy was confused with Aymer in her mind. She couldn’t prise the two apart. Who was she hugging? Why? That dry-lipped kiss drew out her final sobs. She took deep breaths. She wouldn’t grieve any more for Miggy. She had to settle to her life.

  Rosie had never known a man as slow as Aymer. His lips and hands had hardly moved. They were standing like two dancers at a ball, waiting for the music to begin. She had to settle to her life. She pushed her hands beneath his parlour coat and pressed her head against his chest. She could feel his body tensing. Was he excited by her now, or was he repelled? She held him tightly, one hand spread out across his back, the other underneath his arm. She couldn’t kiss him though, not on the mouth. His cock was growing hard.

  ‘I only need someone,’ she said.

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘You can.’ She dropped a hand on to his trouser front, and pressed him there. He doubled up. She thought his legs had given way, at first. His body sagged. He gasped so loudly that the dogs outside jumped up against the porch, and one began to bark. He reminded Rosie of the first boy that she’d ever touched, when she was seventeen. And Aymer, really, was just a boy, despite his age. He’d been slow with her, she realized, because he didn’t know the way. This was a voyage frightening and new for him. Rosie was his first. And she would have to take command or wait forever.

  She took him through the sacking, pushed him on the bed, tugged his boots off, and unbuttoned him: the jacket, the shirt, the cuffs. She pulled his trousers down, and joined him on the bed. She didn’t take her own clothes off. She was embarrassed by her bones. She stroked him on his chest and legs, but wanted really to be stroked herself. At last he found the courage to explore her. His hands were shaking when he pushed her smock up to her throat and put his fingers, then his mouth, onto her tiny breasts. She had to take his other hand and press it in between her thighs. He pushed so hard she almost doubled up as well. It seemed so odd that she should be excited by this man and that he – hesitant and clumsy, at first – had become so urgent and engrossed.

  When Aymer finally ran his fingers up her legs, her hands went dead on him. She fell over on her back, closed her eyes and simply held his body close. Again he didn’t seem to know the way. His fingernails were too long. His shirt sleeves tickled her. He didn’t know how delicate she was, or what to touch. She let him fumble for a while, and then she helped him, holding his fingers between hers until there was no dryness left. If he thought that he would be the centre of attention, he was wrong. She concentrated on herself – looking at him, talking to him only when his hands and fingers were too rough or slow. She didn’t try to touch him any more. He was not there – except to be her serving gentleman. But she was more there all the time – getting bigger, narrowing; becoming stretched, tense, bloated … tremulous. She climaxed on his fingertips.

  Aymer looked both startled and afraid, she thought. ‘Are you quite well?’ he asked, evidently alarmed by all her noise and agitation. He must have imagined that she was feverish, or suffering from fits.

  ‘I’m well. I’m well,’ she said. ‘And what of you? Let’s see.’ She put her hand down on his cock. It wasn’t hard, but it was stiff enough to rub. He rolled on top of her and butted at her legs. She put his cock inside. He wasn’t slow. Ten thrusts and that was it. The bubble burst. Not sexually. His orgasm was nothing much. It had been better in the inn’s dank alleyway. No, the bubble was the trance that had bewitched him the moment he had touched her hair. It was the same trance that he had felt, less fleetingly, with Katie Norris. To be alive and in such half-a-dream was rhapsody. But this was odd and unexpected for Aymer Smith. The instant his virginity was lost with his ejaculation, there was no longer any rhapsody. There was no trance. This was sober. He’d never felt so wide awake, and stripped. There – and it was not a dream – was the straw-packed bed, the threadbare blanket and the woman’s flushed and bony face, eyes closed, her legs spreadeagled under him, and daylight making curving slats across her chest. What had he done? What would his brother say?

  Aymer tried to be polite. He asked if he should bring a drink, or mend the fire, or throw the blanket over her. But all the time he spoke, he was gathering his clothes from off the earthy floor and dressing hastily. He muttered thanks. He almost put more money on the shelf, but had no coins left. He wished her all the good fortune in the world. ‘I promise you, dear Mrs Bowe, that I am in your debt …’ The truth is Aymer ran away from her, out of the door and past the dogs, along the six-mile coast to Wherrytown, where he would have plenty to repent, including Mrs Yapp’s bill and his farewells to George. Get out of town, he told himself, with every stride. Get on the Tar. Get home.

  Rosie wasn’t sorry that he’d gone. Nor was her life enhanced by him. Though it was changed. Aymer had left her something more valuable than coins. She wasn’t quite pregnant yet. Her egg hadn’t voyaged down into her uterus and implanted. But the egg was fertilized and it was moving. By Sunday she would be with child. The guess in Wherrytown would be that Rosie’s new baby would be black. Everything unusual on the coast would, from that day, be put on Otto’s bill. When no one could remember Aymer Smith or put a name to any of the Americans, or their ship even, the African would still be talked about. In fact, he gave a lasting phrase to Wherrytown. If anything went wrong – the harvest failed, the yeast went flat, a coin or a button disappeared – they’d say ‘Blame it on the African!’ or ‘Otto’s been at work again.’ Otto fathered many babies on the coast, not only Rosie Bowe’s.

  But for the moment Rosie was still alone with no one but herself to love. And she wasn’t the sort to love herself. She rested on her wooden bed and conjured up the Belle. She could think more calmly of her daughter now. She was an optimist again. She pictured Miggy on the ship. It was. her marriage day. The captain would anoint her with sea water beneath the canvas canopies, the rigging vaults and the mastwood spires. Blindfolded Lotty Kyte and the woman with the lovely, sandy hair would be the maids of honour. Miggy would lie down with Ralph that night, in their creaking cabin out at sea, a seashell ring on her finger, his arms about her waist, the blood-red ensign round her throat. And they would shortly be together in the Lands of Promise.

  15. The Lands of Promise

  THIS WAS Aymer’s final night in Wherrytown. He had the whole inn to himself. George neglected him. Even Mrs Yapp had disappeared – she’d gone to Walter Howells’s for some celebration of their own. There was no one for Aymer to talk to. When he heard Wherrytowners coming back from Evensong, he was almost tempted to stroll up t
o the chapel and the chapel house to see Mr Phipps. Just for the company. It might, he thought, be an amusement to conclude the conversation he had started that morning with the preacher on the quay – Blind Superstition, and the Bible as a Chart. But he guessed that Mr Phipps would hardly welcome a Sceptic interrupting his supper. So Aymer stayed at the inn and had to eat alone. Cold ham and pickles. Solitary pie.

  Aymer, as the only guest, could choose to sleep in any of the inn’s twenty empty beds. He hardly dared to sleep at all, in fact, in case he missed the Wednesday’s dawn departure of the Tar and the liberating taste of salt-free city air which beckoned him. He’d already packed his bag and dressed for the voyage by ten that Tuesday night. He wouldn’t go to bed. He took a blanket to the parlour. He put his chair next to the grate, facing the window that opened on to the lane. The fire would keep him warm until the early hours. And, if he dozed, he would wake as soon as there was any daylight in the window. He tried to read at first, but he was tired of Mr Paine. He couldn’t concentrate. Rosie Bowe had disconcerted him. He tried to put her out of mind. He shouldn’t blame himself. The fault was hers. She’d misconstrued his charity.

  Where was her daughter? How far out at sea? Aymer stared into the fire. Would she be happy in America? Too late to worry now. No need to worry now, in fact. Aymer could put right in his mind’s eye things that might go wrong in life. That was his major skill. He couldn’t quite remember Miggy’s face. No matter – he’d improve on her. He imagined her in Wilmington. She wasn’t gaping. She wasn’t fidgeting her feet. Nor wearing breeches. She was breathing through her nostrils, not her mouth. He gave her better skin and hair. He ribboned her. He put her in a simple cotton dress. He imagined her heavily pregnant, too. That, surely, was the spirit of the emigrant. And she was more lively in her speech, more generous, more womanly. America was suiting her.

  He put her in a rocking chair, and spread one hem of her cotton dress across the arm. He served her a slice of honey cake, and a jug of some new drink. He couldn’t recognize its smell. He put her foot up on the balustrade of the veranda. Maize, tobacco, sweet potatoes, and snap beans were growing in the plot below. (Would there be snap beans in America? Aymer wasn’t sure.) There were chickens. There was sun. Whip was rolling in the grass.

  Aymer shut his eyes and put himself into the scene. He was standing in the garden, looking up at Miggy. ‘In’t you too hot?’ she said. No, no, that wouldn’t do. She had to speak again, and this time with the slight brogue of the Carolinas. ‘Aren’t you too hot? Put on your sun hat, Mr Smith.’ Oh better, yes.

  ‘I can’t wear that foolish hat.’

  ‘Then you will bake.’

  Aymer baking in America! Just the thought of it made him smile. Again he imagined himself in Wilmington with Miggy, Margaret! This time he was sitting on a stool underneath a shag-bark tree. He put his back against the trunk and began a pencil sketch. The artist Aymer Smith! Another life, another dream. First he roughed in the framework of the rocking chair, and then he marked in Miggy’s black hair against the curving headrest. Then the outline of the jug. Then her ankles and her black boots, a happy balance with her hair. He left the paper blank for her white dress.

  ‘What will you do with it?’ she said.

  ‘The sketch?’ She nodded slightly, hardly moved her lips. She didn’t want to spoil the pose. ‘I’ll finish it and give it to Ralph. He can take it with him when he goes to sea. You’ll always be with him.’

  ‘What will you draw for Ralph and me, so that you’ll be remembered too, for your generosity?’ She forgot her pose, and waved her hands towards the house and garden. ‘Your sovereigns have paid the rent on this.’ Aymer shook his head, both in the parlour and in Wilmington. He didn’t want their gratitude. Why could no one understand that simple fact? ‘Perhaps you’ll do a portrait of yourself,’ she said.

  Now Aymer almost had her face: undramatic, self-possessed, determined. She had one hand cupped underneath her belly, supporting her first child – two weeks from being born. Its head was tucked in above her bladder; its bottom pressed against her dress, and its heartbeat was racing on her fingertips. She stretched her legs. She was content – she’d heard that Ralph would be back in a day or two from his voyage on the Belle to Norfolk in Virginia. Her face was flushed and full. She wasn’t the ouncy girl she’d been at Dry Manston, dressed in breeches, thin-lipped and mistrustful. Nor was she the shoreline pessimist, expecting nothing from her life but the repetitions of the seasons and the sea. Here was a woman pioneer, roots up, and free. Aymer looked at her, imagined her, and he was proud. He had been right to let her go.

  ‘Shall I fetch the map?’ he’d say, if he could only walk in on her now. He’d take it from the table drawer and hold it for her in the sunlight. ‘Find Wilmington first.’ That was easy for her. She had found it many times. She only had to spot the W, and Ws were easy. ‘Now Norfolk, Margaret. Your finger must go north.’ And there was Norfolk, spread across the coast. The N was on the reaches of the estuary; the f was on the beach; the k was knee-deep in the sea. ‘Now read for me the places Ralph will pass before he comes back home.’ She’d read: Cape Hatteras. Raleigh Bay (pronounced uncertainly, but Aymer smiled and didn’t shake his head). Cape Lookout. Onslow Bay. Cape Fear. ‘You see, it isn’t difficult. You’re reading well. Read for Ralph when he comes home. Read something for your baby when it’s born. We can resume our lessons later on. I will teach you script.’

  ‘I’ll never learn. I in’t … I’m not that clever.’

  ‘You will. I’ll not leave here till you do. Just think what they’ll say in Wherrytown, Margaret, when you write home in your own hand.’

  ‘I’ll write down how it’s all thanks to you.’

  ‘You’ll tell them how you’re missing Wherrytown.’

  ‘I don’t miss anything.’

  ‘Nor anyone?’

  ‘Well, there’s my ma. I think of her. I do. But I’m to be a ma myself, so there’s the sense in it. I don’t expect my …’ (she’d drum her stomach with her fingers) ‘… to stick to me for ever more … I’ll love it though while it’s here. If it’s a girl we’ll give it mother’s name. That’s only right. We promised her. She’ll be American. Miss Rosie Parkiss.’

  ‘She’ll be the belle of Wilmington, Margaret. And what if you have a son? The beau of Wilmington, I suppose.’

  ‘We’ll name him after you, to mark your generosity to us. Master Aymer Parkiss. Don’t that sound high-falutin’? Oh, my! He’ll be the mayor!’

  ‘He’ll be the captain of a ship.’

  AYMER wasn’t quite awake, nor quite asleep, when he invented Captain Aymer Parkiss. The parlour was too dark and quiet for sleep. And far too cold. The fire had not survived. He wrapped the blanket round his legs. He was

  baby tempted to ring the parlour handbell for George or Mrs Yapp. Would either of them come? He’d like some fuel for the fire, another blanket and a warming drink. But it was far too late – or far too early – to summon them. He guessed the time was two or three o’clock. The window-panes were black. There would be at least three hours more of Solitary Pie before the glass thickened with any light. He’d have to ruminate the time away, grazing on the minutes of the night with only chimeras for company.

  He’d had enough of Miggy Bowe and her offspring in Wilmington. He’d settled them. They didn’t trouble him. Now his thoughts had turned to Katie Norris and how, in this very parlour, he’d first set eyes on her. It wasn’t hard to recall her face. She’d worn a shoulder cape. She’d had black ribbons in her hair. The parlour grate had been cold and empty then as well: ‘We were hoping for a bit of fire,’ they’d said. A bit of fire in life, Aymer thought to himself. What fire could he kindle in his own, cool life, in those dark hours in the parlour? What else but some device to bring him back to Katie Norris? They’d have to meet again. In Canada, of course. That was possible. If Aymer was to keep his resolution to travel more in future, to see the greater works of man in Florence, Paris and Edinburgh, then
why not travel to Canada as well to see dear friends?

  He could imagine her in Canada, and ready for his visit. Their landscape was quite clear to him. He’d seen the prints of immigrants by Mr Gay in his Illustrations from the Colonies: ‘Glorious morning! What a fine country. Here at last is Canada!’ He was acquainted with the trees, their Latin names, the timber huts, the never-ending lakes, the distant prospect from the migrant ships of Cap Tourmente and the Laurentians. What would he do if he arrived in Montreal, Aymer wondered. Canada was big. How would he find the Norrises? He saw himself on unpaved streets, with wooden boards for pavements, and buildings in grey limestone and timber. All the men were tall and bearded. All the women wore thick boots. He’d look at every face he passed. He’d check the colour of the women’s hair. One day, surely, he’d meet Katie on the streets. ‘Why, Mrs Norris,’ he would say, ‘the world is smaller than we think …’ But, no, that wasn’t right. He knew he wouldn’t meet her on the streets, or in the market places, or coming out of church. She wouldn’t be in Montreal. The Norrises hadn’t gone to Canada for streets and marketplaces. Their dream had been a piece of land, a cabin in a clearing, privacy. They could be anywhere, from Sturgeon Falls to Lake St John, from mountaintop to shore.

  But Aymer could meet Lotty Kyte instead. He’d see her by the river harbour, handing advertising bills out for her brother’s firm to new arrivals. She’d not remember him. How could she? She’d been blindfolded when they met in Wherrytown. Aymer hadn’t seen all of her face before. But no one could mistake the fleshless angles of her body, and that voice. ‘My brother can supply …’ He’d introduce himself, remind her about Wherrytown, and ask if she had any news of the Norrises. She had, she had! They’d cleared a piece of lakeside land a few miles north of St Jean-Luc. They’d built themselves a little hut. They’d even ordered furniture from Chesney Kyte, who else? Lotty, who helped her brother in the factory office, had sent a letter to the Norrises only last week informing them that Chesney would deliver their beds and sideboard and their chairs by wagon in a few days’ time. Could Aymer go with him? She’d ask.