Signals of Distress

by Jim Crace

  Aymer didn’t have a bag or easel. She presumed he was a man who’d missed the Cradle Rock. Except he didn’t seem lost, but purposeful. Perhaps he’d come about the Belle. An excise man? No, he was far too tall and clerky, and excise men didn’t work on the Sabbath. A shipping agent, then? Someone with proper title to the cows? Now Miggy was alarmed. He waved at them again, and whistled. A dog – the same small bitch that had gone off with the American sailors the day before – ran out of the furze, circled the stranger, and then ran barking towards Miggy, Ralph Parkiss and the heifer. The young cow broke away and ran. Miggy didn’t attempt to hold her. She let the rope fall. She waved back at the man, and when she lowered her arm tucked her neckchief, the red-and-white ensign from the Belle, under her smock. Perhaps he was a ship’s officer. He had the ship’s dog, after all. And one sleeve of his coat was armless. Perhaps he’d hurt it in the storm. Perhaps he’d lost it in a brawl with pirates, or a whale, or in the war with Bonaparte. Perhaps he’d seen they’d roped the cow. Ralph would be in trouble. Miggy Bowe rocked from foot to foot. She was set in motion by two men like the Cradle Rock, swaying, heavy, inconsolable. Her heart was beating fast.

  ‘Is he your captain, Ralph?’ she said.

  ‘I don’t know who the fellow is. I saw him at the inn last night.’

  The dog did not respond to Aymer’s ‘Down, Whip. Down.’ She’d found two friends, one who smelled of other dogs, and one who was a shipmate. She nuzzled Ralph. She jumped at Miggy’s legs and licked the stains of breakfast from her fingers.

  ‘Good morning, gentlemen.’ Aymer reached them on the path. He put his hand out, first to Ralph. ‘I know you, sir, I think. We dined together at the inn. Yes, yes. I know a face.’

  He turned to Miggy.

  ‘My little lady,’ Miggy said, using Whip to shield her from the handshake that Aymer was offering, ‘come to see us, have you, sweet? Is she yours, this little ’un?’ Aymer blushed. Not his first blush of the day. He hadn’t known she was a girl, a pert-faced, handsome girl at that. She was dressed like a farmboy.

  ‘I’m Aymer Smith of Hector Smith & Sons,’ he said. His face had quickly cooled and paled. ‘And you? What are your family; kelpers?’ Any hopes that Miggy had that this man had lost an arm to whales were shattered. His voice was not heroic, but clipped and fussy. You might imagine him to be distinguished, dashing at a distance, but now his face was close she saw he was quite old, older than her mother anyhow, and gaunt. He had a second arm, as well. It moved below his coat.

  ‘We kelp a bit,’ she said.

  ‘And do you supply Mr Howells with soda ash?’

  ‘Walter Howells? He has our kelp.’

  ‘So then, what is your name?’

  ‘I’m Miggy Bowe.’

  Again he offered her his hand. She hid her hands, and backed away. ‘I’m only seventeen,’ she said.

  ‘What does that mean? That you’re too young to shake my hand?’

  ‘I never had to shake a hand before.’

  ‘My dear Miss Bowe,’ he said, ‘it is not important that you shake my hand. I merely offered it to mark our meeting and to introduce myself. A dog that rushes to you with its tail in motion is a dog you need not fear. And so it is with strangers, except of course we shake our hands and not our tails. A footpad or a common thief does not hold out his hand to shake, but only to relieve you of your watch or silver. But still, I will not trouble you to shake my hand. You should not do what does not suit you, or else you will be unhappy all your life.’ He put his hand into his coat. ‘Here, take some soap,’ he said. ‘It is more useful, I agree, than handshaking.’ Miggy Bowe, who had no watch or silver and was unhappy all her life, could not see the relevance of soap. She turned her back and ran. She didn’t think that she’d be caught by Aymer Smith. He was too flimsy to give chase. But Ralph and Whip were fit. They soon were at her side.

  ROSIE BOWE released her mongrels and went out, stick in hand, to meet the man that Miggy and the sailor had described.

  ‘We’d roped a likely little cow, Ma, and got it halfway home and then he tries to fetch hold of my hand. I don’t know what he might’ve done if Ralph didn’t come by. I never seen a man so long and thin and strange. He’s talkin’ like you never heard before. He had his arm hid in his coat. He might’ve had a pistol there. He said I was to tell if we sell kelp to Walter Howells. And then he gave me soap.’

  ‘Let’s see the soap.’

  ‘I wouldn’t take no soap.’

  ‘Miggy Bowe, if this is lies …’

  ‘It in’t no lie. I wouldn’t tell no lie on Sabbathday.’

  ‘She’s right,’ Ralph said. ‘The fellow’s got a pocketful of soap. And when he talks it’s like a sermon.’

  The man, when he arrived, it’s true, was tall – but Rosie felt no fear of him. He was a spindleshanks. He wouldn’t have the strength or pluck to trouble them. She calmed the dogs and put her stick away. She even shook his hand. She didn’t want him in her home – where Miggy and the sailor stood behind the door – and so she made him state his business in the cold and open air. She listened as he gave his name and that of Walter Howells. She’d heard of Smith & Sons, of course. She knew her soda ash was sold to finish up in soap. She guessed as soon as Aymer mentioned Duty and Conscience that there would be bad news.

  ‘Alas,’ he said, after what seemed an endless doorstep homily on everything from soap to sin, ‘my brother has no further need of kelp. His business with Dry Manston and with you and Walter Howells cannot survive the summonses of science or of progress. I come to thank you for your efforts in the past and to present you with a shilling for your troubles, and some soap.’ He put five bars of soap down on the yard bench. Whip sniffed at them, but wasn’t interested. Rosie felt the same. Already, she was angry with the man. How would they live without their thirty shillings for a ton? And then he held the shilling up. ‘For you,’ he said. ‘By way of thanks. And may it bring you better fortune.’

  Rosie couldn’t stop herself: ‘That in’t no use. You think we’re going to bake our bread from soap? How will we live? A shillin’ is a fine price to be paupered by. It’s a bad-luck shilling and we’ll have none of it.’

  ‘I intended it to be …’

  ‘Intended in’t enough!’

  Miggy put her head around the door. She thought she’d turn a shilling to a crown: ‘I had a cow roped, Ma. He chased it off. And now we’re gonna starve.’

  Aymer blushed again. He’d already spotted Miggy with the young American, peeking from behind the door, and though she was no Katie Norris, she was alluring in a colourless and undramatic way. He liked her peevish, boyish inhibition, and didn’t want to seem a fool in front of her. He didn’t know what he had done to cause such anger, except be honest and considerate. ‘You should not blame me, Mrs Bowe,’ he said. That would have been enough, but he was ill at ease – as ever – and couldn’t stop the puffing elongation of this simple self-defence. ‘I have been the kelper’s friend.’ A pause to find another reason to demand their sympathy and thwart their anger. ‘I have braved a storm at sea in order to be here. Indeed, I’ve sustained an injury. My arm and shoulder bone are cracked.’ (Now his sentences were under canvas. Their sails were full of wind.) ‘But pain has not deterred me from my duty. I have walked a fair few miles from Wherrytown, and it is cold, and there are many kelpers to be spoken to. Your neighbours took my shilling and my soap. I’ve been this morning to the homes of Mr Fowler, Mr Dolly, Mr Hicks … All kelping families, but they were civil.’

  ‘They’ve got the reason to be civil, in’t they? Kelping’s not their meat and drink. They’ve sons, and boats. Fish is their livin’. Kelping’s for their daughters and their wives to earn a bit of extra for the pot. But we’ve no men or boats.’ ‘I beg you, Mrs Bowe. Do not upset yourself.’ ‘I’ve got a right to speak my mind. You’re standing on my step, and I will speak my mind. What’ll we do without our kelp? Who’ll take my Miggy off my hands, if we’ve no work to keep us proud?’ Aymer waited
for Rosie Bowe to sing her daughter’s praises, how she could cook and sew and be a lady’s maid if only Mr Smith would write her name down in his book and find employment for her. But she said nothing more. She simply shook her head and looked at Aymer’s boots.

  ‘I’m sure your daughter has more worth than what you earn from kelping …’

  ‘There in’t no worth to being poor, not when it comes to marrying.’

  ‘Oh, Ma!’

  ‘ “Oh, Ma,” she says! She’s no idea, that girl. She’s living in her dreams. No man will take a pauper for his bride.’ Behind the door, Ralph Parkiss had his hand on her daughter’s back. She let his fingers tell a rosary of vertebrae down to her waist. She stopped his hand with hers and held his fingers tight. A thought occurred to Miggy Bowe that she would never let his fingers go. She’d hold them here, and on the sea, and in America. She rubbed the rope burns on Ralph’s palm. She faced the stranger in the doorway and she smiled.

  A thought occurred to Aymer Smith as well, an extravagant, rushing inspiration which, had he been at home, amongst the comforts of his sitting room, or in the prudent offices of Hector Smith & Sons, might not have found the thinnest purchase on his imagination. But here, emancipated by the open air, by the distance he had come, and by the dislocating alchemy of sea and loneliness and strangers, and by the smiles that he had got from Katie Norris, his head was free for reckless possibilities. There was no one to rein him back. No one to stop him thinking that, perhaps, he’d found a wife at last. What better man than he to take a pauper for his bride? The thought was not preposterous. He’d dress her well. He’d mould her into shape. She’d learn to read and write and cypher. She’d pick up the proprieties of city life and adopt a more womanly demeanour, not gaping or being quite so busy with her legs. She could be taught to breathe through her nostrils and not her mouth. He’d turn her into Katie Norris. She was too gauche and innocent herself to mind that he was inexperienced and old and would not make a pattern husband. He’d offer her the wealth, the education, the status, the emancipation that otherwise could only flourish in her dreams and prayers. She’d bear him children: Aymer Smith & Sons. What would Matthias make of it? He’d be appalled. And jealous, too. Fidia Smith, Matthias’s wife, was thirty-six and pinched in everything but shape. But Mrs Miggy Smith was like a chrysalis. Her best days were ahead. And so were his. So long as he could mend the damage done and earn the sanction of the Bowes.

  ‘I did not mean … to …’ Aymer said. ‘I take the shilling back.’

  ‘You’d better grab it, Ma!’

  Rosie did what Miggy said. She wasn’t angry any more. Her passions were short-lived, and hardly worth a shilling. She put the coin in a jar.

  ‘You can come indoors,’ she said. Aymer was relieved and startled by her change of voice and countenance. ‘I’ll get you something warm to drink before you set off back.’

  The Bowes had lit a Sabbath fire of kelp, cow dung and timbers from the Belle. It burned in colours that Aymer thought he’d never seen before, colours that an artist could not mix. Miggy and her mother sat together on a bench, their faces halved and reddened by the floating firelight. Ralph Parkiss, petting Whip, squatted on the floor, which was simply earth, flattened once a week with a shovel. He didn’t speak. Aymer had the only chair. They’d made both men hot mahogany, with water, country gin and treacle. (Aymer did not require them to remove the sugar from his drink.) It smelled of fish. The whole place smelled of fish. Smoked herrings hung across the fire. Tubs of salted pilchards were stored beneath the bench and chair. A leather bucket held fish oil, for cooking and for light. Great white wings of fish stiffened on ropes around the cob-and-wattle walls like lines of underwear.

  The single room was divided by a sacking curtain, with a box-bed in the almost hidden part. It stood on bare earth which rain had softened to a paste. The only touch of colour to the room was a red petticoat, thrown over rising dough to keep it warm. There weren’t any curtains, cushions, rugs or tablecloths. There was no ceiling, but a raft of timbers made from wrecks. A little light and some dust from the thatch of turfs came through and peppered Aymer’s hair. There were no ornaments, except an embroidered passage from the Bible on the chimney breast:

  Weep sore for him that goeth away:

  for he shall return no more,

  nor see his native country.

  Jeremiah

  Aymer found the room a little disconcerting: the fish, the petticoat, the privacy, the lack of daintiness, the quiet. But soon the dancing semi-darkness shut out the universe and made their silence comfortable. The two men concentrated on their drinks. Miggy Bowe untied her hair. Rosie had her first chance now to wonder how they’d cope without the benefit of kelp. Some farmers to the east of Wherrytown used untreated seaweed to fertilize their fields, but they would only pay a shilling for a wagon-load. There would be work in summer on the farms across the moor – but what a walk for fourpence a day! Who could live on that? What could they do, then? Find some work in Wherrytown. Cut peat where they had rights of turbary. Joust fish for the boatmen on the coast. Scrump nuts and apples. Poach rabbits, heathcocks, lapwings’ eggs. Glean oats and nettles for bread and soup. Cadge clothes. Steal turnips. Emigrate? They’d find a way. Rosie Bowe was not a melancholic. She had no time for lasting sorrows. Like many people living by the sea she had the bedding of a beggar but the spirit of a bull. There was no denying that the man who sat in her one chair had beached the family just as firmly as the gale had beached the Belle. Their masts were down. Their sides were holed. And they were stuck. But not for long.

  ‘Well, then … So that’s the way the bad luck settles in. It’s muck and nettles from now on,’ she said, and looked at Aymer in the bending flattery of light, defying him to say another word.

  Aymer kept the silence easily. He didn’t know what he could say. He knew, though, what to do. He’d take the Bowes beneath his wing. A shilling was a paltry sum, a blushing sum. It was what he’d paid to George for merely fetching Mr Phipps. Aymer would give the Bowes more than a shilling’s worth if he could find the means … to what? To be straightforward and suggest the benefits for everyone if Miggy … Margaret. He’d have to call her Margaret … would come back on the next Tar with him to be his wife. He wouldn’t mention love. He couldn’t love the girl, not like the love that danced till dawn in fairytales or books. He was too old for dances and for dawn. But he could liberate the girl. What better dowry could there be? He’d break her chains of poverty, just like he’d snapped the chains of slavery for Otto. He looked across the room at Miggy’s silhouette. Her face was fine enough. Her skin was pale and clear. Mrs Margaret Smith, a healthy country catch, a woman less than half his age. He wouldn’t want a wife too well experienced. He didn’t need to win her heart. But he could court and win her head. Her body, too. She’d use the bedside chamber pot. He’d run his hands across her thrushy thighs. Her hair would hang in one loose tress. It would be best, he thought, to talk first to her mother. She’d understand the common sense of his proposal. She wouldn’t have much choice.

  Aymer felt light-headed. Excitement? Fish fumes? Or the gin?

  ‘I’ll go,’ he said. ‘I cannot trust myself to find the way when it is dark.’ And then to Ralph, ‘Will you be walking with me, sir? A companion shrinks the miles.’

  ‘Gladly, Mr Smith,’ he said. He couldn’t tell the truth, that he would rather stay and spend the night exactly where he was. Both men stood up, pulled on their coats and jostled at the door. Whip ran through their legs into the open air.

  Aymer made a parting speech: ‘I promise you I will return within a day or two. I will consider some proposals that might ease your condition. You have accepted my shilling with reluctance, but you will, I hope, accept my friend ship and my help with …’ He could not find the proper words. With greater deference, perhaps? Or with docility? He left the farewell uncompleted. For the third time that day he offered his hand to Miggy Bowe. She stretched her arm and touched him on his finger ends, much
in the way that she had touched the African’s toes on the beach the day before, much in the way a child would dare to touch a jellyfish. His hand was damp and hot.

  ‘I would’ve had that cow if you in’t come,’ she said.

  Aymer Smith was not a Revolutionist. He could not abet the theft and slaughter of a cow, and square it with his conscience, or with the excise men, or – more to the point – with Walter Howells, who’d taken on the task of rounding up the cattle from the Belle. But what if the cow was not alive? ‘I saw three dead cows, ready salted, in the shallows of the wreck,’ he said. ‘That’s flotsam, isn’t it? I do not know the finer points of law. But isn’t wreckage floating in the sea the property of those who find it? And what is a lifeless cow but wreckage of a sort – just leather, horn and flesh? Who will oppose you taking meat out of the sea? It is fishing by another name. Besides, the flesh will putrefy unless you rescue it. It is almost a duty to oppose such waste.’

  And so they took a handcart, a wood axe and some heavy knives and went down to the sea. The Bowes and Ralph waded in, despite the cold. Whip ran barking at the waves. But Aymer didn’t want to chance his boots. He used his strapped arm as an excuse for staying idle. One cow was almost beached. Between them and the free help of the waves, the Bowes and Ralph managed to drag it into the shallows. Its orifices drained of water and lance eels squirted through a thousand punctures in the hide. Its eyes had gone, and crabs were feeding on the titbits of the skull. Its tongue was white and bloodless. There was some evidence already of putrefaction in the head. The women would not take the tongue or brains. But the clammy, musty, tainted meat from the neck and clod would still be edible if washed in ashy water and then roasted. They went to work without emotion, beginning at the leg and cutting meat from off the bone up through the topside, silverside and flank into the aitch bone. The salty water caused the fibres of the open flesh to contract and drew the juices from the cow so that the sea became a rosy brine. The women stood in water that was tumbling with tiny, feeding fish. By the time they’d reached the rump and sirloin the water and the sand were red. Gulls were circling so close that the mayhem of their wings was louder than the sea.