Signals of Distress

14. The Last of Wherrytown

THE NORRISES weren’t the only ones to pack their bags that Tuesday morning and say farewell to Wherrytown. Lotty Kyte was emigrating, too. Her brother Chesney had paid the seventy shillings for her passage, second class, on the Belle. Chesney had been a cabinet-maker before he emigrated with his bag of tools. Now, ‘after just seven years in Canada’, as Lotty explained to everyone she met, he had a wife called Maisie and a factory in Montreal. ‘You can’t take beds and tables with you. Not all the way to Canada. Too far,’ she said as she was led, blindfolded, down to the quay a little after ten. ‘The land of freedom it is. Clear a bit of ground and put a cabin up. That’s all you have to do. But still, for all the freedom in the world, you haven’t got a stick of decent furniture. You can’t sit down, except on logs. You’re sleeping on the floor. What can you do? Speak to my Chesney, of course! He has the furnishings, and you don’t have to pay till harvest time. It’s made him rich in seven years. He sends for me. He tells me, Sister, put your blindfold on and come to Canada.’ She shook the letter and the ticket which she had received from him two months before. ‘He wants his sister by his side, no matter what. To help out with his books. To be a friend for Maisie. A sister can’t refuse. My Chesney’s odd, but he is family, when all is said and done. So I must make this little sacrifice, and blind myself with cloth.’ What, her challenge was, could be more logical, more natural than that?

They found a wooden box for her to rest on by the quay. They dusted it, and cushioned it with folded sack, and helped her sit. At first the sailors, stowing stores and luggage on the Belle, thought Lotty Kyte was pregnant. The only softness to her long and angular body was her stomach. It seemed distended. But she wasn’t fat from pregnancy. She wore an opium bag, tied round her waist, to ward off seasickness. She had three travel chests and a carpet bag at her feet. Every few minutes she touched them with her toes to check they’d not been stolen. She kept her head bowed and her hand across her blindfold for a while, keeping out the harsh sea light. Then she pulled a knitted scarf from her bag and tied it round her head. The extra darkness seemed to comfort her. She was less frightened, and sat quietly, fingering her ticket and her letter. The Wherrytowners who came to stare at her could see a chin, some bonnet and an inch of hair. They morning’d her. ‘Who’s that?’ she asked. They gave their names and wished her luck in Canada. ‘You don’t need luck in Canada,’ she answered. ‘My brother says.’ They didn’t have to hide their smiles. Now here was something they could tell their grandchildren — the blindfolded emigrant!

Lotty Kyte, who lived only two parishes from Wherrytown, had never seen the sea, and never would. When she was born, some Madame Haruspex from a travelling fair had warned the family that if Lotty ever saw the sea she’d die, ‘and not by drowning’. So that is how she’d lived her life. She’d stayed inland for thirty-seven years. It wasn’t hard — until, that is, she received the ticket from her brother and she was taken to the quay. And then it wasn’t even hard, just dark and inconvenient and itchy. She’d take off the scarf and her blindfold when she was in the Belle. She didn’t have to go on deck. She didn’t have to press her nose against a porthole. And even if the sea galed up and lashed the porthole glass, she had simply to pull her bonnet down or hide under a blanket. She would sit as quietly as a mouse for six or seven weeks, hugging opium, and then go blindfolded into Canada.

Aymer Smith, with Whip on a length of rope, had walked down to the quay ahead of the Norrises. He got a short good morning and an even shorter, nervous smile from the preacher, and no reply at all from Walter Howells, who was waiting on his horse at harbour end. Miggy and Rosie Bowe rewarded his greetings with red-eyed, ghostly smiles. He wouldn’t present them with their stipend yet.

He’d not expected such a crowd, nor so much noise and jollity. He joined the queue of onlookers, and listened to a dozen versions of Lotty Kyte’s life story. Someone, he thought, should tear her blindfold off and let her see salt water. There wouldn’t be a flash of lightning or a heart attack. She wouldn’t choke on it. At worst she’d die of fright. ‘Blind superstition,’ he muttered to himself, but loud enough for Mr Phipps to hear. When he saw Robert and Katie Norris arriving on the quay with George as porter, he walked over and repeated it out loud, ‘Blind superstition, nothing more.’

‘What is?’ asked George. ‘What isn’t, too?’ He winked at the Norrises, took the pennies they offered him and said, ‘Here’s better recompense than soap.’

‘No, Mr Smith’s soap is very fine,’ said Katie. ‘I still have a cake of it untouched. It will serve me well in Canada, though I suppose they must have soap in Canada as well …’ She smiled at Aymer. ‘And when I use it I will think of you and these amusing days in Wherrytown.’

Aymer couldn’t find an amusing reply. He wasn’t looking forward to the loss of Katie and his soap to the colonies. At last, to break his silence, he pointed out Lotty Kyte for them, and retold her story. ‘She is your fellow passenger,’ he said, ‘and she is, I might suggest, a parable of sorts, for emigrants. A poet could not better her. She goes blindfolded into the future. She travels with her vision blocked, but her hopes intact. Are not your situations similar, except without the bindings on your eyes?’

‘Oh, Mr Smith, will you not simply wish us God’s speed?’ said Katie. She didn’t want to listen to his lecture. She wanted to sit quietly on the quay, with Robert’s hand engaged in hers, and feel the solid stone beneath her feet.

‘Of course I wish you speed, dear Mrs Norris,’ Aymer said. Her hair was pinned and out of sight. She wore a warm grey cloak with long, loose sleeves. He noted all of it; the rising colour of her face, the laces of her shoes, the ‘Oh’ before she said his name, her frown. ‘And furthermore I wish you every fortune on your arrival there. I would not want you, though, to miss the aptness of the parable.’

‘We are not seeking parables in Canada, but three good meals a day, and work and advancement for ourselves,’ replied Robert Norris, diverting Aymer from his wife. ‘We want only to live plainly and wholesomely, and to find a welcome there.’

‘There can be no guarantees of those,’ said Aymer. ‘No one can guarantee the heavens in Canada will have more stars …’

‘Of course, but …’

‘… or that the skies will display a deeper blue, or that the soil of that uncharted wilderness will be as rich as cake, or that you and Mrs Norris will step ashore to a spontaneity of well-being and abundance …’

‘We hope, at least, for better than we have.’

‘Yes, Hope is guaranteed …’

‘Blind superstition, nothing more,’ said George. Katie couldn’t stop her laugh.

‘… No, Hope will flourish as you sail further from our shores. Hope is what will greet you when you land. And Hope is blindfolded; her eyes are bound. This is what I mean to say.’ The Norrises were hardly listening. Mr Phipps had joined them and had taken Katie’s hand. He smiled at Aymer once again. What could he mean by it? ‘Yes, this is what I meant to say,’ continued Aymer, hurriedly, attempting to insinuate his shoulder between Katie and the preacher. Whip, made nervous by the tightness of the rope, had the good judgement to growl at Mr Phipps’s shoes. Aymer lowered his voice for Katie Norris: ‘Forgive me for my parables,’ he almost whispered. ‘I wish to speak as plainly as I can. May all your Hopes come true.’

‘And yours, of course,’ said Katie Norris, though she couldn’t imagine that a man like him had Hopes of anything. ‘And we will pray for you.’ The preacher beamed at her.

‘And I will think of you. From time to time,’ said Aymer.

‘You will not pray for our brave pioneers, I hear,’ said Mr Phipps, doing his best to strike a note of irony and not of irritation. ‘But, then, you would not claim to understand how little Hope there is without Prayer.’

‘Blind superstition,’ Aymer said. He was surprised that Katie didn’t squander a laugh for him as readily as she had done for George.

‘Indeed, indeed,’ the preacher said, and arched his eyes. Comically, he thought. ‘So Prayer is superstition? And Hope is blindfolded, is it, Mr Smith? And Canada, I heard you say, a wilderness without a chart? I have better news for our two voyagers by sea.’ Again, a disconcerting smile for Aymer Smith. Then he turned away and fixed his gaze on Katie’s face. When would these men leave her at peace? He said, ‘I have the chart to guide you through the wilderness. The Bible is your chart.’ He took a small Bible with a brass clasp and green leather covers from his coat and handed it to Katie Norris. ‘God’s speed,’ he said, and would have taken her hand again and forced a Christian parable on her. But Alice Yapp had joined them on the quay and Alice Yapp was the one person in the town who silenced him.

‘I have a useful gift,’ she said. More useful than a Bible or a bar of soap, she meant. She gave the Norrises a pot of arrowroot for the journey and a stoppered jar: ‘Six-Spoon Syrup. That’s against the seasickness, Mrs Norris.’ She turned and shook the jar to mix the brew. ‘Two teaspoons, essence of ginger. Two dessert spoons, brown brandy. Two tablespoons, strong tea. A pinch of cayenne pepper. Now let old Neptune do his worst. A sip of that and I defy you to be sick.’

In fact, old Neptune was in a placid mood that day. The sea was welcoming, with just sufficient wind to fatten up the sails. The sailors came ashore for their farewells. George seemed especially popular. He received a dozen slaps across his back, and twice as many ha’pennies for services and favours at the inn. The captain kissed Alice Yapp full on the mouth and bunched her skirts up in his hand. He waved at Walter Howells, who kept his distance from the crowd. He shook Mr Phipps’s hand. He even smiled at Aymer Smith. Then he put his hand out for the dog. Aymer pulled the rope away. ‘No, no.’ This was not expected.

‘She is the Belle’s, I think. We can’t abandon her.’

‘I cannot let her go.’ How many days had passed, he wondered, since he’d last squared up against the captain, in the snowy lane above the inn, and been accused of theft? (‘Not only do you steal my man, you steal my dog as well.’) This time he wouldn’t hide behind a lie. He’d take the beating if it would rescue Whip. ‘It is not possible,’ he said. ‘No, no.’

‘Must I ask half a dozen of my men to take her off you?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Then let me have my dog. What, would you have us settle here and not go home? We’ll not go home without our property.’

‘I’d pay ten shillings for her, happily, or twelve,’ Aymer said. Would Whip abandon him, if he let go of the rope? ‘I beg you, leave her in my hands. She has quite adopted me.’ His voice was calm; his thoughts were not. Would he go home without a single friend? ‘Twenty shillings, sir.’ He’d liberate the dog. He’d snap her chains of slavery. The thought was not preposterous.

The captain laughed at Aymer’s shillings (‘A ship without a dog?’) and shook his head. He took hold of the rope and snapped it out of Aymer’s hand. Whip didn’t seem to mind. She liked the smell of shoes and legs, it didn’t matter whose. The captain shook George’s hand. A sixpence passed between them. ‘Good man, George. And if you ever want a place at sea …’ The captain put his arm round Mrs Yapp again. ‘Next trip,’ he said. ‘We could be back within the year. Now, let’s aboard.’ He tugged at Whip. Aymer should have snatched the rope and run. At least he should have stooped and rubbed Whip’s head and wept into her hair. Instead he stayed as stiff as pine, between the preacher and the parlourman, and watched the ship’s dog disappear for good.

They rang one bell to call the crew aboard. Three men were sent to load the passengers’ bags and boxes. Palmer Dolly, ‘unremarked amongst the crowd’, ran forward to lend a hand. He lifted Lotty Kyte’s heaviest box onto his shoulders and carried it on to the Belle. No one challenged him. And no one missed him for a while. He hadn’t said goodbye to anyone. He simply disappeared into the shadows — and the bloodstains — of the orlop deck. He’d have the salvaged cattle for company at first. And then he’d have their straw bedding to himself, until America. Soon the sound of falling lightlines and hoisting canvas filled the air. ‘And pull! Let-her-go.’ The sailors were a team again. The captain was Napoleon. The mooring ropes were loosened, the fenders lifted and the jib sail set to take the port tack out of Wherrytown for the emigrant ports of Fowey and Cork before the weeks in open sea. They rang the final bell, this time for paying passengers to come aboard.

Aymer would have liked to hug the Norrises, but he could only shake their hands. They walked away towards the Belle, and joined their two fellow voyagers, Lotty Kyte and Miggy, at the bottom of the ship’s gangway where Ralph Parkiss was waiting for his bride. Katie Norris went ahead, keen to get away. Robert Norris took Lotty’s arm and guided her onto the Belle. Her hands were shaking from the dread of it. Her eyes were hot and watering. ‘My brother can supply your furnishings when we arrive,’ she said, just to hear a voice.

Rosie Bowe had Miggy in her arms. She planted kisses on her neck and face. Her sobs were animal, a seal. She didn’t have the breath to speak. Her throat was aching from the tears and cries she had suppressed all morning, all week. Her eyes were raw. Ralph put his arms around them both and made promises: he and Miggy would find someone to write a letter if Rosie would find someone to read; they would send for her when they were rich; they would name their first daughter Rosie Parkiss; and, come what may, they would return one day before she died. But Rosie Bowe did not believe in that. She only knew that all the bone and sinew of her life was leaving on the Belle. ‘Be good to her,’ she said to Ralph. She gave her gifts to Miggy in a straw bag: some salted beef, the petticoat her sister had made, a baby shawl, one of the bars of soap that Aymer Smith had left, and the embroidered passage from the cottage wall, ‘Weep sore for him that goeth away …’

‘Oh, Ma, don’t fret,’ said Miggy. ‘I’ll end up crying too. And that’s bad luck. That in’t the way to go.’ She put her arm through Ralph’s and took her first step on the Belle. She didn’t look at Rosie Bowe. Her eye was caught by Aymer Smith approaching from the crowd. At last. She’d almost given up on him.

Aymer ran up to the gangway. He stood between Rosie and her daughter. He took his purse out of his coat. And handed three bright sovereigns to the girl. (‘What’s going on?’ said Alice Yapp out loud. ‘What has old spindleshanks been doing with the girl that’s worth that weight of tin? Now there’s a tale. I’ll find the bottom of it, don’t you worry.’) There wasn’t any time for Aymer to make a speech. Miggy took his money without a word of thanks, though Ralph shook his hand. The captain rang the final bell, to pull the gangway up. And that was that, and nothing much to celebrate.

The Belle had soon left the perils of the shore. It slowly dropped down-channel against the tide and waited on capricious winds to take it out beyond the harbour boom and between the channel buoys. It idled there, in the offing, for half an hour. The quayside crowd could pick out Lotty Kyte on deck, still blindfolded, and the Norrises. Then the light picked up, and with the light the sea, for light can energize the sea and make the waves more spirited. The wind did not diminish as they feared. It held — and more than held. The ship turned stern to Wherrytown and beat a passage through the bay up to the Finters, those final, storm-racked morsels of the land where there were only cormorants and kelp. Within the hour the Belle of Wilmington had dissolved into the fog-veiled precipices of cloud, and Rosie Bowe, heartbroken on the quay, had nothing left to do but set her face against the wind and walk the six miles home.

If she had waited for ten minutes more — as did Aymer Smith — she would have noticed the fog-cloud thicken where the Belle had disappeared and a yellow twist of smoke make smudges on the white. The coastal steampacket, Ha’porth of Tar, passed within fifty yards of the Belle. They rang their greetings across the water, and Lotty Kyte, reluctant to abandon the sea air and the deck, waved both hands into the darkness and had no fear. It seemed to Aymer that the tussling spirits of the age were passing on the sea; the old, the new, the wind, the steam, the modest and the brash. The future would be driven by steam, he was sure. It was a more compliant slave than wind. Already there were steam coaches, steam looms, steam threshers, and he had heard of a machine that could hatch eggs by steam. ‘There’ll be no need for men and chickens soon,’ he thought. ‘There’ll be no need for sails on boats either. A shame.’ And such a shame as well that there wasn’t anyone to share his observations with. The quay was empty now. Aymer went in search of educated company, George, perhaps, or even Mr Phipps.

The Tar, its progress simplified by steam, put into Wherrytown with no one there to watch — unless there was someone, lost behind the town, with nothing else to do but stare and wonder if the Belle’s departure was a liberation or a curse.

Aymer Smith didn’t find educated company. He went back to his room. His own bed smelled of Whip. He lay down on the Norrises’ double bed, his boots still on, his face pressed into the mattress. He smelled where Katie Norris had been, and would have masturbated there and then had not Mrs Yapp come in on some thin pretext and plagued him with her nosiness.

‘In bed? Are you not well, Mr Smith?’

‘I am entirely well, despite a malady of spirit.’

‘What’s that then? Fever? I’ll bring you a pennyworth of something for it, if you want.’

‘I suffer from a sentimental malady, Mrs Yapp. A pennyworth of peace and quiet is all I want.’

Mrs Yapp was not the sort to take offence. ‘Don’t suffer for that Miggy Bowe,’ she said. ‘She’s gone and in’t worth the fever.’

‘I have not got a fever, Mrs Yapp. Nor do I suffer anything for Miggy Bowe …’

‘I think you have been singed by her, though. You can say.’

‘Good heavens, she’s a country girl! What dealings could I have had with her?’

‘Now there’s a question to be asked, and asked by anyone who saw you handing money to the girl.’

‘Phaa, Mrs Yapp!’

‘I’m only mentioning …’

‘Then please to mention nothing more. I have no head for it.’ He stood up and looked out on to the courtyard, with his back to her. ‘I have business dealings with the Bowes, the younger and the elder both, regarding the manufacture of our family soap. As you well know. Those coins that I gave were kindly recompense for their loss of kelping. My pocket has been singed by her and nothing else. I aim to give some coins to the mother, too. And so you see there is no gossip to be brewed from it.’

‘That is uncommon kindly, sir. For Rosie Bowe will want a little helping, what with her Miggy gone, the kelping finished with and bad luck all along the coast. You heard the Cradle Rock’s pushed down?’

‘The Rock pushed down! And how is that?’

‘That blackie done it, Mr Smith. Pushed it halfway down the cliff.’

‘Then it’s the work of Nature. Otto would not have the strength for that.’

‘He must’ve done. It’s him, all right. He signed his work. They say he’s put his name to it, scratched in some piece of benchwood that they found …’

Aymer walked out of the room and pulled his coat on as he ran along the inn’s odd levels to the parlour and the lane. No Ralph. No George. No Whip. He had to walk along the coast alone. He hadn’t known he had such energy or speed. His coastal walks had made him healthy. Now he could almost run. Six miles was not a trial.

Mrs Yapp had not exaggerated. The Cradle Rock had fallen on its side, and where the rock had once pivoted was now a newly opened cave, musty, colourless and wet, with streaks of bird lime and the bones of rats amongst the debris of the stone. When Aymer came, a group of fishermen were standing where the rock had been, talking in low voices with their hands across their mouths, as if they feared the wind would take their words away. Walter Howells was standing on the pivot edge, looking down on to the toppled Rock. He had his pistol in his jacket belt. ‘That’s never coming up again,’ he said. ‘That’s going to end up in the sea. A thousand shillings wouldn’t put that back in place. Don’t even ask.’

Skimmer and two of the Dollys climbed up from the headland rocks and joined their neighbours.

‘There in’t no sign of him,’ said Palmer’s father, Henry.

‘How long’s it been?’

‘Most half a day. He wasn’t there when we put up the nets. We sent the dogs out looking for the boy. And we’ve been hollering his name all morning.’

‘He’ll show up,’ said Skimmer.

‘Bound to.’

No one dared say ‘cannibal’. Palmer would show up all right, his bones picked clean, his blood drunk dry, his sable hair as lifeless as a mat. They blamed themselves. They’d had Otto almost in their hands. They should’ve tossed him in the sea. They should’ve kept him chained and gagged.

‘You’ll have to put a bullet through the bugger’s heart, Mr Howells,’ one fisherman said. ‘Or else what? If he can down a rock that size and on his own, then it’ll be our cottages next. He’ll snap our boats in two. He’ll rip the country up, so help me God.’

His neighbour stooped amongst the bones and lifted up a piece of broken glass. He put it to his nose. ‘That’s brandy I can smell,’ he said. ‘And fresh.’ The fishermen looked nervously inland. What now? They even turned to Aymer Smith for his advice, but he had none, or none at least that they would want to hear.

Aymer went down to the beach, past the thirty cattle from the Belle which were still fenced off by snaps of gorse amongst the dunes, awaiting agent Howells. The tide was high, almost on the turn, and heavy with weed. The kelp! He had forgotten it though it had brought him there. In that tumbling clarity of water, the weeds were as vibrant and seductive as a satin-merchant’s shop. The mustards and the crimsons he had seen when Ralph and the Bowes were fishing for their cow were no longer there. The seaweeds that he saw were darker, more mature, the sort of satins worn by spinsters, dowagers and chaperones, in mauves and browns and greys, the sort of satins favoured by the old.

IT WAS the third time that he’d knocked on Rosie Bowe’s front door. The dogs recognized him now. They didn’t bark. She let him in and put him in his usual place. There was an idling fire, and the smell of Sunday’s beef stew, saved for the dogs and greening in the pot. Aymer leant across and put three sovereigns on the shelf above the hearth. He didn’t want to justify the gift, or ornament it with a speech. He simply clicked each coin on the wood, so that she wouldn’t have to guess how much there was. He understood her independent mind, he thought. He was the independent sort himself. And he was keen to avoid her independent tongue, as well. He couldn’t forget her thrashing temper when he’d first offered her his help: the kelper’s shilling and the soap. ‘That in’t no use,’ she’d said, not guessing what a friend and benefactor he might be. ‘It’s a bad-luck shilling and we’ll have none of it.’ This time he wouldn’t preach at her, but carry out his duties without a word. His promise would be kept and his debt settled. She could pick the money up, or leave it there for ornament, or throw the bad-luck coins out. That responsibility was hers.

Rosie dished a plate of stew. The dogs could go without. No matter how upset she was and wanting privacy, she could hardly let her visitor shiver in his chair and not provide the victuals for his journey back. The beef did not taste good, but Aymer forced himself to chew on it, and eat the horn of home-bake and drink the lukewarm minted water that she gave him. It seemed important that he should finish everything. These were her modest thanks to him, he thought. He occupied himself with food. Where should he look, but at his spoon and plate?

She stared at him, expressionless. If he looked up from eating, her mouth and eyes grew narrow in the half darkness. Her face became invisible. Her teeth and eye-whites disappeared. She gave no sign of breathing. If she had lungs, they must have been in her legs. She was ill at ease with Aymer Smith, but not as ill at ease as he was, alone with her. Despite the comforts of the fire, the chair, the smell of food, he felt displaced, a vagrant, over-feathered bird on a starling’s nest. He was too big and cultured for that room. Nothing that he valued in himself had any value there. His modest wealth, his manners and his education — what did they count for? His charity? His Scepticism? His love of conversation and debate? His unexpected sympathy for dogs? His democratic spirit? His prodigious memory for Latin names? Which amongst these attributes should Rosie Bowe admire? Which of his parts and virtues could she burn for candle wax, and which would stew well with a turnip root? What use were manners for catching fish? Would Scepticism make a sauce? Would education batten down the roof against a lifting wind? Would love of dogs bring Miggy back? Aymer understood her narrowed eyes to mean, ‘You in’t no use to me!’

And he was right to some extent. For all his clumsy innocence, for all his clicking coins on the shelf, she didn’t value him. He was no use to her. He’d disappear like all the other passing gentlemen on their pedestrian expeditions through Dry Manston. Rosie had met a hundred men like Aymer Smith. They weren’t rare. Not in the summer anyway. They’d stop to sketch the cottage or ask the way. And then, what questions they would put! What was the folklore thereabouts? What were ‘conditions’ on the coast? What weather might be signified by easterlies? Which were the places where the seals came in? They’d make notes, persuade her to provide a plate of ‘whatever’s cooking on the fire’, look Miggy up and down as if she were a horse, donate a penny, then make their farewells — their plates not empty and their eyes not looking into hers, yet claiming that their lives had been enhanced by this encounter and exchange.

But Rosie’s life hadn’t been changed. She wasn’t enhanced by meeting gentlemen, and feeding them. No matter how they loved the ‘emancipations’ of sea and air, they didn’t stay for long enough to make their mark on her. They soon grew tired of pauper food, and Rosie’s conversation. They’d come for landscape, beauty, history. They didn’t want to taste her life. They disappeared without a trace. Like Aymer would. Except that he’d not grown tired as quickly as he might. He had at least stayed long enough to taste her life. And, by the looks of it, he would leave an empty plate.

Rosie watched him forcing down the stew, and tearing off small bites of home-bake as if he expected it to bite him back. He wasn’t used to wooden spoons, or eating off his lap, or chewing outskirt cuts of beef, or sitting on uncushioned wood with nothing overhead but a thatch of turf. She ought, she knew, to take the plate away. But let him eat like dogs before he goes, she thought. Let him get the tough and joyless taste of it. Let him gag.

She was fascinated by the man’s timidity. He was as nervous as a child. He didn’t even dare to push his plate aside. He’d rather make a penance of the beef. If she let him finish every scrap and then put a second helping on his plate, would he eat that as well? She’d rap his knuckles if he didn’t eat it up. She’d box his ears. She smiled her first smile of the day. At last she couldn’t watch him any more. ‘You’ve had enough,’ she said.

‘No, no.’

She took the plate away and put it outside for the dogs. ‘They’re glad of it.’

‘A dog that dines on beef is king,’ said Aymer.

Rosie laughed out loud at that. ‘And what’s a king that dines on beef?’ she asked. ‘Is he a dog?’

‘That is not logical,’ said Aymer, glad to have this gristle for his intellect, and be free of gristle in his mouth. ‘A king that dines on bones might well be called a dog, I think you will agree. But the vice versa is not true. A dog that dines on bones is still a dog. You would not say he was a king …’

‘If they was beef bones, though?’

‘Then what?’

‘Then dogs and kings might share a plate, and that would be a day worth living for, in’t that the truth?’ Aymer thought it was the wittiest of truths, and told her so. Again she narrowed her mouth and eyes, and seemed both unamused and unflattered by his laughter and approval.

He tried to find some common ground with her. He’d see how sharp and witty she could be on other topics. But she didn’t want to talk about the beauty of the kelp, or the bizarre case of blindfolded Lotty Kyte, or hear the great debate between Wind and Steam. She hadn’t any views to share on Blind Superstition. Nor did the tumbling of the Cradle Rock much interest her. The fishermen were idiots if they thought one man had pushed it down. ‘It must’ve been those Americans,’ she said eventually. ‘I saw them on the headland yesterday. There’s nothing to be feared of them. Not now. They’ve gone. And Miggy, too.’ At this her eyes were narrowed even more. She screwed them up. She hid them with her hand.

‘Your daughter, Mrs Bowe, will be well under way by now. I am happy that the sea is placid for her,’ said Aymer. ‘She will be sorely missed, of course. But Ralph Parkiss is a decent young man. I had the pleasure to be acquainted with his character. And he with mine. He would regard me as a friend. And — you will believe me, I am sure — he will regard your daughter with affection. Do not alarm yourself on his account. There are few better sons-in-law, though he be only young and poor. It may be that there are men of better standing and more generously provisioned … ah, that is …’ Aymer, too, put his hand across his face, to hide his embarrassment. ‘I do not mean myself, of course. Though I am neither young nor poor. I would not make a son-in-law for anyone. I am not the husband kind. I was foolish to have ever entertained the thought of it …’

Again, Rosie Bowe was imitating seals. She tried to trap their calls inside her mouth. She tried to swallow them. Aymer thought, at first, that she was trying to suppress a sneeze. But he had wept enough himself to recognize a stifled sob. What had he said? Why should she care that he would not make a son-in-law for anyone? Was that so sad for her?

He almost asked her not to waste a tear for him. He wasn’t worthy of her sympathy. But there was something in the way she cried that kept him quiet and gave him time to realize the shaming truth, that no one cried for Aymer Smith. Her tears were for her daughter and herself. They were unstoppable. She’d drawn her legs up to her chest and had her hands laced round her wrists. Her head was on her knees. She had halved in size. She was like a woman out of Bedlam, hot, white-knuckled, volatile. Why should she care if Aymer Smith was there and watching her? She didn’t know the protocol of grief. Her cheeks were wet, and then her lips. Her chin was leaking on her dress. Her nose began to run, and she was sniffing back the tears and swallowing them. Her breathing next: her lungs were working overtime. Her throat was wet and windy, and the noises that she made now belonged to gulls, not seals. Her shoulders shook. Her body lost its bones. Her hands were knotted wood. Her hair was weed. She said, ‘This is bitter …’

Aymer Smith was too ashamed to move at first. ‘Can I do anything?’ he said. She didn’t hear. She banged her fists against her head. She threw her head back on the wall. His three sovereigns rattled on the shelf.

‘I beg you, Mrs Bowe …’ He took one step across the room and put his right hand on her shoulder. ‘Come, come, you will upset yourself …’

Her head came up from off the wall; her forehead rested for a second on his hip, and then her head went back again and bounced against the wall.

‘I beg you, Mrs Bowe,’ he said again. ‘You are damaging yourself.’ Perhaps he ought to throw some water over her. He couldn’t see a bucket or a bowl. There was only beef stew in a pot. That wouldn’t help. He put both hands behind her head and tried to steady it. She was surprisingly strong, and Aymer was too gentle. He should have held her by the ears or hair. Instead he clasped her head tightly to his body, and called for help. He didn’t have a name to call. The nearest neighbour was a quarter-mile away. His sister-in-law, Fidia, would have quietened Rosie straight away, with a glass of water and a slap, both in the face. He’d seen her do it with their kitchen girl. But calling ‘Fidia!’ would be no use. And simply calling ‘Help’ seemed too theatrical. So he called out, ‘Anybody! Anybody!’ And it worked. Nobody came. But it had startled Rosie. She stopped trying to break away from Aymer. Had that been his intention? He wasn’t sure of anything, except that dreams and nightmares were the same.

So the oddest thing had come about. Steam and Wind were reconciled. This pair of awkward, independent Contraries were pressed together like two pigeons in a storm — though they weren’t as plump as pigeons. Rosie could feel his rib cage on her face and, now that she was quiet, she heard his stomach dealing comically with stew to the quickening percussion of his heart. She’d always liked a man’s hands on her head, his fingers hard on her skull and hidden in her hair. Her tears had made Aymer’s shirt-front damp. He smelled of good soap, and dog. She didn’t want to pull her head away and face him. What could they say to save their blushes? Besides, his hands around her head were calming her. Miggy had not hugged her Ma for years. So any hugging at that time would help.

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.