Signals of Distress

by Jim Crace

  The sailors from the Belle weren’t the prayerful kind, either. They weren’t used to worship, except at sea. Their God was weather. But, once the order had arrived from their captain that they must all attend chapel, the younger ones were glad to be at liberty in Wherrytown, sliding and snowballing on the way to evensong.

  The town, just like the inn, was made for ambushes and hide and seek. It was a warren, with perplexing levels in which steps up led only to steps down, and parlour windows, at ankle height from outside, were head high from indoors. There weren’t streets or civic places, just a lattice of steep intersecting alleyways and lanes, some no wider than a horse and none with any compass sense or geometric logic. The uneven coastal ridge where it was built determined Wherrytown, and determined, too, that when the sailors’ God – the sun, the snow, the wind – came in from the sea it beat on every door. There were a thousand places for the men to hide and throw their snowballs: behind the sheds and peat stacks in the public lanes, or amongst the hanging nets and timber piles that occupied every spare corner of the town.

  Is town the word for Wherrytown? Or village, even? To these Americans, most used to spacious, open, ordered cities, it seemed entirely indiscriminate, a reckless labyrinth of farm outbuildings but without the redeeming focus of a farmhouse. The only building of any imposition was the chapel and the only imposition that the chapel had was its situation on the highest ground. It had views across the sea, and sight of every bedroom in the town. It didn’t have a tower or a bell. That’s why, when it was time to come and pray, Preacher Phipps blew the brass foghorn which had been salvaged, God knows when, from a Dutch wreck. He blew it hard that Sunday night. He feared the snow would keep his congregation home. But overcoats cannot resist the snow, and even as the preacher blew his horn the whitening lanes of Wherrytown were busy with parishioners. Mr Phipps would seldom have again so large and boisterous a congregation. The pilcharders were there, with lengths of net for Preacher Phipps to bless before they put to sea at midnight. And all the Wherrytowners, too, except for Walter Howells. They were sufficiently alerted by the snow, the promised pilchards in the sea, the presence of Americans on land, the rumours of an African at large, to submit themselves to hymns, hard seats and draughts.

  The sailors – minus Ralph Parkiss, who hadn’t returned so far from his twin errands at Dry Manston – were undiscriminating with the snow. They pelted cats and confidants and strangers. Their play was cruel and jealous. The Norrises who were walking to evensong beneath a tempting umbrella were struck a dozen times until someone succeeded in separating Robert from his hat. They didn’t snowball Captain Comstock, though. Led by George, with a lantern on a pole, he walked a dozen yards behind the slowest of the crew, with Alice Yapp on his arm. The captain was too self-absorbed to pay attention to his men or make snowballs of his own. If he threw snowballs now, then someone’s head would break. He was unsettled by the mocking logic of the ship’s horn on the land and all the fish nets dragged through snow, uphill. He half expected to find the Belle perched on the summit of the ridge in a saltless sea of snow, with its flags invisible on such a starless night and its rigging trimmed in white and not a chance that they would reach America again unless their ship would fly.

  The preacher took his text from the Very Reverend Alfred Sleigh-Russell’s Ornithologia:

  All birds migrate, if it be only half a mile or so. For though the friendly sparrow does not range the oceans as does an albatross, he has good cause when it is cold or there is competition for one meal or there are cats, to move away from home, which is the wood or field where he was hatched. But when the cat has gone, or else the warmer weather manifests, he must go back to whence he came, just as the albatross, though he may fly ten thousand miles, must navigate each spring to his cold islands in Antarctica. For birds, like men, are allocated places on this earth to which they must return or perish, by the Almighty to Whom they will return for All Eternity or else will perish in the Fires of Hell.

  The book was closed. The Bible was not touched. The preacher prided himself on his earnest eccentricity and the directness of his homilies. ‘We have amongst us strangers, far from the woods and fields where they were hatched; exotics amongst indigenes,’ he said. Mr Phipps did not approve of pulpits. He walked through his congregation with his hands behind his back, like a factory overseer. ‘My brothers and my sisters, look around at unfamiliar faces.’ He waited while Americans and Wherrytowners inspected each other, while sailors tried to catch the eyes of fishermen’s daughters, while Captain Comstock and Alice Yapp touched hands beneath her shawl. ‘You might recall that there were egrets on the beach in June, brought in from Spain by hot winds. And now we have with us sailing brethren from America brought in by colder winds. And also two young people here …’ (he placed his hand on the bonnet of cream terry velvet that covered Katie Norris’s hair) ‘… who are embarked upon their own migration westwards to the shores of Canada. The seas tonight are full of fish whose journey takes them to the east. And there are nets to bless for our own fishermen who, when the Sabbath horn is blown, will take to boats. God’s creatures all are journeying, alone, in shoals, by sea, by foot, by air, and with God’s blessing. May all His children travel safely in the world, and may they all come home again to die in Christ where they were born in Christ. Amen.’

  He spoke a little of the Soul, and of the body too. But what he did not mention was the heart. And here in his congregation were a hundred hearts, in love, or grieving, or resentful, or simply fearful of the midnight fish, or palpitating with the guilt of failing to be saints. There were no paragons. Were Mr Phipps to go round as his congregation sang its final hymn (‘Our Home in Thee, Our Lord’) and place his hand upon the hair and hats of thieves and adulterers and bullies and those who failed to love their neighbours as themselves, then there wouldn’t be a head untouched. But what about those absentees, Aymer Smith and Otto? If they had been amongst the congregation, perhaps the preacher’s hand would hover at their heads and hesitate to touch. Otto was untouchable, as Preacher Phipps had found out in the tackle room the day before. Was he a bully? An adulterer? A thief? Was he a paragon? How could anybody tell? And Aymer Smith? It could not be said he was a thief. He didn’t covet anything enough. Nor an adulterer; he was a celibate. Nor much of a bully; he was too tall and flimsy both in manner and in build. He even loved his neighbours as himself, because he didn’t love himself at all. Nor was he loved by anyone. And he was hated by a few. The preacher wouldn’t touch that head.

  BY NOW, in the last hundred yards through Wherrytown, Aymer Smith and Ralph Parkiss were far too cold to speak. Their six-mile walk had been ten miles. They’d faltered in the snow and dark, misled by the preacher’s foghorn into believing that the sea had moved inland and they were lost. They’d had to trust Whip to set the path. At last they’d seen the harbour light and found the inn courtyard where the tackle room, its door left open all day, was piled with drifting snow. The covered alleyway offered their first shelter from the night. All they wanted now was a fire, some dry clothes and Mrs Yapp to fortify them with her tea against the influenza which Aymer promised would justly follow on from such ‘a foolish expedition’. The inn was empty, though. And cold. Just like a ghost ship. They rang the handbell in the parlour a dozen times, but no one came. They searched the rooms. Aymer would have changed into warmer clothes, except his bags and books and clothes were gone and his bed was stripped. He felt a little stripped himself, and liberated too, of home, possessions and proprieties. He even put his arm round Ralph’s big shoulders and called him ‘Friend’. They had been friends – if silent friends – as soon as they had swayed the Cradle Rock.

  Ralph managed to coax the parlour fire alight. He knelt in front of it and toasted herrings from the kitchen for their supper. Whip fell asleep at once across the hearth. Aymer did his best to dry himself in the low heat. He smelled of smoke and herrings, and the smell spread through the empty levels of the inn. It was Ralph who guessed that everyone had g
one to chapel. The pair of them chuckled like boys; to have escaped the hymns was almost worth the journey. They would be comrade-masters of the inn, until the captain and his men came back to find the meddler Smith and the dog returned and not fled on the Tar. But not a trace of Otto. Where is he now? Why did you let him go? would be the only questions to be asked. But there were deeper mysteries in Otto’s first night out. What comforts would he find in snow? What would he have for supper? How would he reach his allocated place on earth and die where he was born, Amen? How joyous was he to be free?

  7. Sitting on Blisters

  AYMER SMITH had fled the smoke and herrings of the parlour. (‘My chest and throat are raw, Ralph. My nose already is a tap. I shouldn’t be surprised if I were feverish by breakfast time.’) He was sleeping, fully clothed, on his sheetless bed. Whip, exhausted by the snow and cold, curled at his side, her nose tucked in between her legs. She didn’t know or care that Aymer was (brother Matthias’s judgement, endorsed by faithful Fidia) a blunderer, a bore, a hypochondriac, a meddling and self-serving man. She had adopted him.

  Robert and Katie Norris hadn’t waited at the chapel door to shake the preacher’s hand. They had returned from evensong ahead of Mrs Yapp and all her other guests. They hurried through the parlour, nodding briefly at Ralph Par-kiss by the fire, took a lighted candle from the mantel, and almost ran along the corridor and down the flights of steps to what they thought would be an empty room. They hadn’t come out of the chapel edified by hymns or by Mr Phipps’s passages from Ornithologia, but impassioned rather by the holy, warming congruence of worshippers at church, their thighs in contact on the pew, their two thumbs touching on the shared hymnal, their voices mating when they sang.

  Katie Norris had forgotten how beautiful her husband’s voice could be. His voice, her hair. She didn’t mind that he was not a handsome man, that he was thin-haired, shortsighted, bony, clerkish in his manner and his speech. What mattered was his kindness to her, his steadfastness. Who’d emigrate to Canada for the sake of curls, blue eyes, a lordly nose, fine skin? Good looks do not the lover make. No, what a woman needs is not a beau but someone – Katie Norris loved the word – resolute.

  Katie had a resolution of her own, that she would be with child before she put to sea. A pregnant woman, she’d been told, would get a bunk on board a migrant ship, a decent place at table, and generally would be coddled by the sailors. But, more than that, she wanted to take away a child from home, a child not made in Canada, a blessed, honeymooning child. She’d only hoped that Robert would indulge this wish without inflicting too much hurt on her. In those days before the wedding to Mr Norris, the local notary-cum-ledgerworm, and their departure from the village forty miles inland from Wherrytown, her elder married sister and her ma, not pleased to lose their Katie to the colonies, had warned of ‘duty’ and ‘indignities’ and ‘getting used to manly ardours’. They had not mentioned that manly ardours might be shared by wives. Perhaps they didn’t know. So no one had prepared Katie for how satisfying baby-making would prove to be. Their wedding night, just a fortnight and one day ago, had been a shock, a revelation. To think that mellow-singing, thin-haired Robert could be so resolute in bed! Where had he learned such sorcery?

  Her husband had, on that first night of ‘duty and indignities’, proved to be a virtuoso. The man could sing and touch! He’d caressed her beneath her wedding shift until her breathing had seemed so frail and heavenly, her mouth so dry, her thighs so open and invaded by his hand that she had cried out in the night too loudly. And Ma, a wattled wall away, had cursed ‘that Robert Norris’ for his cruelty and called to the newly weds, ‘Enough’s enough!’ For Katie Norris, babymaking was no indignity. So when – in Wherrytown chapel – her husband sang, ‘Our Home in Thee, Our Lord, Thy Life and Light Afford, A Pathway to Thy Side, and Let Our Love Abide’, and every syllable of his stood out so that the other women turned around to see whose voice it was, Katie let her thumb cross over his. She stroked his fingernail. She couldn’t wait to get him home in bed, alone. They wouldn’t have to suffer Mr Smith’s foul coughing nor the fear that he might hear them making love, or see her passing water in the pot. Thank heavens that the tiresome man was gone! They’d have the bedroom to themselves. She’d wrap her hair around his head. She’d count his ribs and nipples with her tongue. She’d sit on him by candlelight while he sang hymns to her.

  Robert had his hand on her bottom as they ran along the corridor. Already she had got her bonnet off and pulled the ribbon from her hair. He lifted up her skirts when they arrived outside the bedroom. She yelped and snapped his hand between her thighs. His fingers were icicles. His face was icy too.

  ‘Let’s get warm in bed,’ she said.

  They’d hardly entered the room and dropped the door latch when Whip was barking at their knees and jumping up at Katie’s skirts. She tried to force the dog outside. The candle toppled from its holder, fell onto the bedroom boards and lost its light. She put her boot against Whip and pushed her into the corridor. ‘Where are you, Robert, my sweet love?’ she said. ‘Come here.’ And then again, more softly and more richly, ‘Come here. Come. Here.’

  ‘Hello. Is that you?’ said Aymer Smith. He sat up now in bed and could be seen in silhouette against the windows of the room. ‘Mr Norris, Mrs Norris? How very pleasant. And so you are returned?’

  ‘We are,’ said Katie, ‘yes.’ Her bones had liquefied. Her chest and throat were quivering like some trapped thrush. She found her husband’s hand, still icy cold.

  ‘Then, pray, will you address yourselves to this small mystery, which causes me, perhaps, some distress but which might afford a little entertainment for yourselves.’ He sniffed and coughed and chuckled. Good humour in adversity. He judged it struck the proper note with Katie Norris and her hair. He wished there was light enough to see her hair. ‘I have returned from my expedition along the coast to find my bedclothes taken off and my belongings stowed somewhere – perhaps elsewhere is better said – and no one in the inn to put the matter right. Do you suppose there are sheet-thieves about? Hot beef, stop thief. Is that our cry? Or should we look to that odd fellow George, or even Countess Yapp, to shed some candlelight upon their whereabouts?’ When there was no immediate answer from his fellow guests, he cut short their silence: ‘And you, dear friends? You passed a tolerable day, I trust? Myself, I have been lost in snow, and taken on the meanest touch of influenza, but not before I shook the Cradle Rock. That is an excursion you are advised to take before you leave these shores …’ Again he coughed and sniffed and chuckled. He couldn’t stop himself. He was so happy.

  Katie Norris whispered something. And then she spoke a bit too audibly, ‘You tell him, Robert!’

  ‘Your clothes and bag, your cakes of soap, your books,’ said her husband, ‘are taken by our landlady …’

  ‘Indeed?’

  ‘Indeed, they are. I do believe she thought you were not here. That is to say, she feared you might have left. And that your few possessions might be payment for your bill …’

  ‘The Inn-that-has-no-name, has no rhyme nor reason to it, either. Excuse me while I solve this mystery …’ He blundered to the door. The Norrises were forced to stand apart and let him through. He smelt of fish and damp. ‘I will return with light,’ he said. He and the dog had gone before the Norrises could say another word. Perhaps the less they said the least harm done.

  Robert put his arm round Katie’s waist.

  ‘Not now,’ she said. ‘He’ll be back too soon … I wonder if he’s got his trousers on?’

  Aymer found the parlour occupied by an advance party of some of the younger fishermen. Their nets had been blessed by Mr Phipps. Now they were hoping to have their spirits fortified by Mrs Yapp’s hot wine and beer before the Sabbath ended and the moment came to set off for the pilchards. Aymer rang the parlour handbell, but no one came.

  ‘They’s steppin’ down from chapel,’ one man said. ‘There in’t no point in shaking that, not till they’s back inside.�
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  Aymer took his damp tarpaulin coat off its hook and went out of the inn’s front door. He put his coat on, underneath the granite lintel, and went down into the lane. He was impatient to be back amongst the Norrises in candlelight, with Katie Norris in her nightshift just three yards away. And Miggy Bowe to dream about. How fortunate, for him at least, that Duty had brought him west, the bearer of bad news. His life had blossomed since the Tar had docked in Wherrytown and he had come ashore! He’d moved the Cradle Rock. He’d freed an African. He’d bested Mr Walter Howells. He had new friends, the Norrises, Ralph Parkiss, some of the kelpers at Dry Manston. Even George the parlourman. The dog! The hairy little dog was his friend, too! And, best of all, he had the prospect of a wife – though, when he tried to summon Miggy Bowe in his mind’s eye, he couldn’t picture her. What colour were her eyes? How had she worn her hair? Instead, his mind was full of Katie Norris, her freckled calves upon the pot, her sandy hair a flapping flag of colour on the sea.

  An older fisherman approached the inn, a length of newly blessed net on his shoulder. ‘Good evening, sir.’

  ‘Indeed it is.’

  ‘A bitter night, though.’

  ‘But a well-shaped Universe,’ Aymer said.

  ‘Amen to that. That’s worth a cup of anybody’s time.’

  Aymer waited while Whip relieved herself against the stone and then went chasing smells. The snow had almost stopped, but what had already fallen was hard and biscuity underfoot. Aymer put his hands into his coat, whistled for the dog and set off up the lane.

  The next men that he met were two sailors from the Belle: ‘Captain Keg’, the portly mate, and a taller, younger deckhand. ‘Good evening, gentlemen. Or should I say the contrary, that it is a dreadful evening and fearful cold?’