Signals of Distress

by Jim Crace

  Praise for SIGNALS OF DISTRESS

  ‘An authenticity of tone and time is one of the hallmarks of Jim Crace’s wonderful Signals of Distress … this is unmistakably a Crace novel, fresh, vibrant and unpredictable to the end’

  HUGH MACDONALD, Herald

  ‘Witty, descriptive, sharply observed, economic and, above all, authentic ... It is the characters who give this novel such life ... [a] marvellous demonstration of traditional story-telling at its finest’

  EILEEN BATTERSBY, Irish Times

  ‘The novel, restless as a rip-tide, carries its shoal of definitive characters in clear view; they are quite the most memorable, momentous, and affecting Crace has created’

  TOM ADAIR, Scotland on Sunday

  ‘Crace is a writer of remarkable descriptive powers … His characters spring to vivid life. The principal requisite of a first-rate novelist is the ability to create an imaginary microcosm as convincing in every particular as the real world. This is what Crace triumphantly does’

  FRANCIS KING, Daily Telegraph

  ‘Crace weaves a progressive magic into this mythic plot with masterful detail, luminous prose and haunting characterization’

  Boston Daily Globe

  ‘Crace is a genius at making round and really human characters, and his characters make his novel superb’

  Newsday

  ‘Grim and gripping …Jim Crace enters into his period with a depth of understanding that extends to his crude and motley gang of characters’

  DAVID HUGHES, Mail on Sunday

  ‘Visual plenitude and period precision are the hallmarks of this quietly brilliant writer’

  DAVID PROFUMO, Daily Telegraph Books of the Year

  Signals of Distress

  JIM CRACE is the author of Continent, The Gift of Stones, Arcadia, Signals of Distress, Quarantine (winner of the 1998 Whitbread Novel of the Year and shortlisted for the Booker Prize), Being Dead (winner of the 2001 National Book Critics’ Circle Award), The Devil’s Larder, Six, and The Pesthouse. His novels have been translated into twenty-six languages. In 1999 Jim Crace was elected to the Royal Society of Literature.

  ALSO BY JIM CRACE

  Continent

  The Gift of Stones

  Arcadia

  Quarantine

  Being Dead

  The Devil’s Larder

  Six

  The Pesthouse

  JIM CRACE

  SIGNALS OF

  DISTRESS

  PICADOR

  First published 1994 by Viking

  First published in paperback 1995 by Penguin Books

  This edition first published 2008 by Picador

  This electronic edition published 2008 by Picador

  an imprint of Pan Macmillan Ltd

  Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Rd, London N1 9RR

  Basingstoke and Oxford

  Associated companies throughout the world

  www.panmacmillan.com

  ISBN 978-0-330-47380-4 in Adobe Reader format

  ISBN 978-0-330-47379-8 in Adobe Digital Editions format

  ISBN 978-0-330-47381-1 in Mobipocket format

  Copyright © Jim Crace 1994

  The right of Jim Crace to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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  This stranger’s footprints are engrav’d in frost,

  But soon forgot.

  The sun bedazzles. They are lost.

  And he has not

  Impress’d his passage on this spot

  That rime’s emboss’d,

  Or left enduring signs

  That he has cross’d

  Our Parish lines.

  ABRAHAM HOWPER,

  Hoc Genus Omne, xvii

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  1. The Belle and the Tar

  BOTH MEN were en voyage and sleeping in their berths. Hard winds swept in and put their ships ashore.

  The coastal steampacket, Ha’porth of Tar, on which Aymer Smith had his cabin, had lifted before the wind that night as if it meant to leave the water and find a firmer passage in the clouds. It arrived at dawn off Wherrytown, hastened by the storm on its short journey along the Channel. Ten in the morning was its scheduled time of arrival. Dawn was too early for the harbour lightermen to be at work. No one with any sense was up and out in such a wind. The night was wild and cold. A few miles down the coast from Wherrytown, the Cradle Rock, which normally would take the efforts of two strong men before it began to seesaw on its pivot stone, teetered, fluctuated, rocked from just the muscle of the gale.

  The Tar shipped heavy seas as it came into harbour. There was no choice but for the five-man crew to still its paddles and shut its fires. Its passage in the wind was more temperamental – and less pontificating – than its progress under steam. The Tar was thrown against the harbour boom, and then against the channel buoys which marked the vessel’s road. The wind pushed north. The tide tugged south. The Tar was only fifty yards from shore. Two sailors had to land a line by rowboat and secure the ship to capstans on the quay. And then they had to coax the Tar to dock. Aymer lay awake. He wasn’t any use on deck. His shoulder hurt from where he’d fallen from his bunk. The muscles in his throat and stomach ached from vomiting. His breath was foul. His temper, too. He should have travelled overland with the company carts, he decided. He should have stayed at home instead of meddling abroad. Yet now his ship had found a haven, he sought a haven, too, in sleep, roped to the granite of the quay. His dream was kelp and some young country wife, ensnared and going down, with Aymer drowning in the girl, the girl sucked under by the weed, the weed pitchforked like hay on tines of sea and wind.

  OTTO, TOO, was not much use on deck. His berth, at orlop level on the Belle of Wilmington, was not secured. But Otto was. He was the ship’s goat by night, its galley donkey during day. His ankle was held by a light chain, six feet in length and fastened to a timber rib. Shipmaster Comstock considered it a safety chain. Men far from home are boldened by the dark, he said. His African might settle scores at night, if he were left untethered. He might do damage to himself or to the Belle or to the crew or to the galley rations and the grog. He might cause mischief amongst the cargo of four hundred cattle which Shipmaster Comstock had taken aboard in Montreal and whose quarters he meant to fill on the return with emigrants to Canada, if he survived the storm. Wherrytown, the first port of call, could only be a few miles down the coast.

  Without a porthole or any light, Otto experienced a partial storm. It wasn’t wet for him. He couldn’t see the waves slap up against the timber. Or feel the wind. His cabin was a
tombola. What wasn’t fixed – the stool, the water jug, the palliasse, the black man’s boots, the bed – fell across the cabin. Otto fell as well. The chain cut into his ankle. But then he caught hold of the chain and pulled himself tight up against the timbers of the Belle so that, indeed, the chain did become a safety chain. He made a buffer from the palliasse so that the cabin’s sliding furniture, the unsecured wooden pallet where he slept, would not cause too much bruising to his legs. The cattle – on the orlop level, too – were not so fortunate. They tumbled without benefit of chains. Some were concussed. Some broke their legs. They were too blind and winded to make much noise, except a tuneless carpentry as hoof and horn hit wood. Three cows at least had heart attacks. Another choked on its swallowed tongue. The bulkhead separating Otto from twenty of the cows could not withstand the buffeting of so much beef. It splintered. Then it fell apart. Two animals broke through the boards into Otto’s berth and slid across the planking on their sides. They had no time to find their feet. The Belle made reckless angles in the gale. One cow fell against the palliasse and kicked to right itself. A hoof struck Otto on the ear. His head bounced off the wood. He fell six feet and swung like a carcass on a butcher’s chain. The sea returned him to his berth, then dropped him on the chain with every ridge and trough of water. His swollen face and ear took splinters from the deck. The anklet etched new wounds. He was unconscious. He didn’t feel the pain.

  THE CAPTAIN did his best, according to the book. The foresail on the Belle was lowered, the mainsail double reefed. But still the wind at its stern hurried the boat bitingly forward towards the darkness of the shore. The fore and mizzen topmasts, with spars and rigging too, fell away into the sea. Part of the bulwarks went. And then the mainsail, taking off into the night like some great canvas albatross. Everything was swept off deck by long black hills of water, thirty, forty feet in height. The hands on board – at least those six of seventeen who weren’t sick, and who had managed to hold on by their eyelids to the masts and rigging of the Belle – now waited for the lull following every set of seven waves and sent the anchors down. But the anchors slipped. The Belle heeled landwards. It went in two hundred yards, found some upright purchase on a sandy bar, and stuck. The crew, excepting Otto, took to what rigging had survived. They flew their signals of distress, though it would not take a flag when it was light to signify to those on land that the Belle was almost lost. Comstock fired the ship’s double-barrelled cannon. He prayed the wind would take the sound into the bedrooms on the coast and that the people thereabouts had sympathy – and rescue boats.

  Nobody came that night. But it wasn’t long before the waves and wind abated, and a teasing, ruddy dawn thinned and thickened through the mist. The Belle was eighty yards offshore. The sea was still ill-tempered. Between the sandbar and a beach, however, the water was calmer. They checked the Belle’s four longboats. Two were lost and two were smashed. Would someone swim ashore? There were no volunteers. They were too tired, and fearful. The tide had turned and out-haul waves were rocking the Belle from the landward side. No human swimmer could achieve the shore in seas like that. But Captain Comstock put the ship’s bitch, Whip, in the water with an ensign tied on to her collar, the red on white of I Need Help. They wouldn’t let her climb back on board. At last, with the good sense and resignation of a dog, Whip headed for the beach. The cattle that had survived the night were not far behind. Comstock opened up the orlop hatches and drove them into the sea. He feared their frenzied restlessness would further destabilize the Belle. Many didn’t make the shore. The ones with broken limbs or those too deeply shocked did not survive the swim. Others had no compass sense and headed off for Quebec. But three hundred cattle – maybe more – got to land that day and set to work on sampling the salty foliage of the backshore as if there’d never been a storm.

  IT WAS SEVEN on a Saturday, November 1836, on that far angle of the English coast. Only strangers were awake. The Americans clung to rigging out at sea, impatient for a sign of life. Aymer Smith, ready to encounter Wherrytown, packed his careful travel stores by candlelight below decks on the Tar: his tarpaulin coat and leggings, his books and writing implements, some anchovy paste, a Bologna sausage, some chocolate, a great bar of black bread, three dozen cakes of soap, a jackknife and a leather flask. He wrapped them in a carriage rug which doubled as a bag. Otto bled into his palliasse. The cattle from Quebec moved on from backshore weeds and tested the corky grass of dunes which separated the hamlet of Dry Manston from the sea. The final strings and shreds of cloud stretched and disappeared. The water was as clear as gin. Whip ran along the shore, snapping at the waves and cows. And then she went in search of other dogs. She’d heard them barking, and soon had found the cottage where two large mongrels were secured by ropes to the porch. Whip found discarded bones which she could gnaw, and turnips. At first the mongrels went for her, but couldn’t reach. They were too bored to persevere. Whip found a corner of a shed where she could sleep, her chin between her feet. The red on white of I Need Help had loosened at her collar. And help was not at hand.

  It had gone nine before the mongrels were released. They ran at once towards the hut where Whip was sleeping. There were no men about. Whatever had been making her dogs uneasy, she’d have to handle it on her own. Rosie Bowe took a heavy piece of firewood as a cudgel and followed them. At best she’d find a hedgehog for the pot. At worst? Some thief who’d stolen lodging for the night would still be sleeping there.

  She was perplexed when she found Whip, her back bowed and her tail between her legs, sheltering in the hut. Rosie knew the dogs for miles around, and this one wasn’t familiar. She pulled the ensign from the collar and put it in her apron front. It was a tough and decent bit of cloth. She let her mongrels stay. Let dog police dog, she thought. It was too cold to kick the bitch herself. But the three dogs were in a playful mood, happy to chase tails. Rosie left them to it. She had work to do. There’d be storm kelp on the beach, easy to collect after such a tide and such a wind. Her cart would soon be full. With her daughter Margaret’s help they’d have a dozen loads before the tide was in and (with the agent Howells paying thirty shillings a ton for prepared kelp ash) would earn a welcome three or four shillings for their efforts.

  ‘Miggy! Miggy Bowe!’ she shouted at the window of their cottage. ‘Get yourself up and out of there. This in’t the Sabbath yet.’ She put her head round the door and spoke more gently. ‘Come on, we’ll get ourselves a good penny if we’re keen.’

  ‘No, Ma, it’s hurtin’ damp out there.’

  ‘Warm yourself with work. Let’s not be idle. I’ll let the dogs inside to get you up. We’ve three dogs now. Our two have found a bitch to chase around.’

  ‘Whose bitch is that?’

  ‘She’s ours, to keep or sell. She’s sleeping in our hut, and that’s the law. Or ought to be. Get out of there. Miggy! I’m warning you. It won’t be dogs’ll get you up, but me.’

  Rosie stepped inside and showed her daughter the firewood cudgel. ‘I can give a decent bruise to idle girls.’

  ‘Oh, Ma! You gonna lay a fire, or what?’

  ‘No fire on Saturdays. Not till it’s dark at least. This in’t the inn. We’ll have a fire down on the beach if you move fast. I’ll bet there’ll be the wood washed up. Did that wind wake you in the night? Does mutton dance quadrilles?’

  ‘I’d like a bit of mutton though.’

  ‘You’d better press your finery then and find yourself a farmer’s son. There’ll be no mutton till you do. Here, make yourself a gown from that!’ She threw the red-and-white cloth on to her daughter’s blanket. ‘That should turn some farmboy’s head. He’d turn away if he had sense.’

  Miggy Bowe didn’t mind. She knew enough to guess she was good-looking. ‘It’s off a ship,’ she said. ‘A signal flag.’

  ‘The little dog was wearing it for a kerchief,’ her mother said.

  ‘What kind of dog is she?’

  ‘A hairy little sharp-toothed bitch. Much like you. Only she’s
up and dressed for work and running in the yard, while you’re still on your back. Come on now, Miggy girl. There’s been enough of this. I’ll get the cart and you can earn your supper.’

  Miggy Bowe tied her hair back in a knot, put on men’s working breeches and her thickest smock, and wrapped the Belle’s cloth call for help round her throat as a scarf. It gave a reckless dash of colour to a face that had no warmth. Her mother was the cheerful kind. Rosie Bowe would sing in rain and mud. But Miggy was young enough at seventeen to be a pessimist. Where would she be at thirty-four, her mother’s age? Still carting kelp. At fifty-one? Cold as stone, with any luck, and nothing to her name except a wooden cross. She petted her two dogs and then inspected Whip, her teeth, her paws, her collar, her little beard. With luck they’d get some puppies out of her in spring.

  ‘Come on, you little lady,’ she said. ‘Let’s have a look down on the shore.’ Miggy and the dogs ran to catch up with Rosie, who was wheeling the handcart towards the dunes.

  THEY SAW the cows from Quebec before they saw the sea. They’d never seen so many cows at once.

  ‘You called for mutton, Miggy. The good Lord sends us beef.’

  ‘Whose cows are they, Ma?’

  ‘That little dog has come with them, that’s all I’m certain of.’

  ‘What’s stopping us from salting one?’

  Her mother didn’t answer. She half guessed that there’d be some wreckage and some carnage on the shore – and, if there was, then who could stop them slaughtering one cow before the excise men got wind of it? There’d be better pickings than the kelp. Bullion, jewels and plate had been beached the other side of Wherrytown a dozen years before. Tobacco, tea and lace would suit them well. There would be sailcloth and timber for the house, at least. Winter beef. Wrecks were a godsend. Rosie almost ran.

  Rosie Bowe was the first woman that the sailors had seen since they left Montreal. They watched her, strong and buoyant, pick her way between the cows and descend with her handcart down the backshore to the beach. They saw another figure, too – a smallish boy in breeches and a smock. He had three dogs. The Americans had spent six hours in the rigging but had been warmed and dried a little by the breeze and sun, so managed quite a spirited cheer when the seaman, Parkiss, who had the ship’s glass, reported that the smallest dog was their own Whip. The dog, perhaps, had saved their lives.