Signals of Distress

8. Rankin’s Dollar

THE DOLLY BOATS had no regard for Sabbaths. They’d rather catch the Devil’s fish than none at all. They put to sea before midnight and took advantage of the snow-bounced moonlight and a little wind to shoot their unblessed net up-water from the Belle, two tons of it, a looping quarter-mile of rope and cork and lead, and every knot hand-tied. It curtained off the stem of sea beyond the Cradle Rock. Dollys had fished there for a hundred years at least. It was known to be an alleyway for shoals.

The larger boat, with Henry Dolly and his two younger sons aboard, rode on its anchor at the mouth of the net, with lanterns burning on both sides. They shared a pipe and, if they prayed, prayed only that the dawn or fish would come before they died of cold. They didn’t speak. What should they say? That they would rather be asleep, farting supper in their beds? That they would rather they’d been born miles from sea and never had to smell or touch a fish again? They watched their boots, their knees, the backs of their hands, the final lamplit flurries of the snow. They listened to the wind, the distant flap of tattered canvas on the Belle, the grieving timbers of their boat, the never-ending tug of war between the granite and the sea, and didn’t for a moment feel bored, excited or afraid. This was their life, and it was hard.

Their elder brother, Palmer Dolly — with only the old man Skimmer as a mate — was master of their smaller boat, fifty yards astern. He’d put it at the centre of the loop of net, halved its sail and now was waiting at the tiller for the call — Tuck ’em in! And tuck ’em-IN! — that fish were coming through and that the tuck net should be dropped. And then a night of labour, trawling pilchards from the curtained sea. If there was a call, if any pilchards came, that is. He’d fished this stem before, all night, all day, and netted nothing but some kelp. But on this night he was an optimist. He felt elated by the snow, the snubbing of the Sabbath and by the Belle’s enticing, twiggy silhouette. The stranded ship, he felt, had brought good luck. The Belle would bring the pilchards in. The Belle would change — would save? — his life.

Palmer Dolly was no gadabout. He’d hardly ever been inland. He’d never seen the sea beyond Wherrytown. He was a fisherman and not a mariner. But he was of an age — at nineteen — when he could see his life mapped out, dry ink on the page. He’d marry someone from the coast — ‘We weds wi’ Dry Manston folk,’ his mother said. ‘We don’t have owt to do with Wherrytown.’ He’d spend his life with some girl like Miggy Bowe. She’d have the kids. He’d have the boats. He would take his sons to tuck for fish and she would keep their girls to help out with the kelp. A waste of time, as kelp was worthless now. There’d be no strangers in their lives, just cousins, neighbours, Mr Howells. And they would sit, between their cottage and the sea, repairing nets for Ever and Ever, World Without End. There’d been no prospect of escape until the Belle had come. But now he mapped a life out of his own. He could be a sailor on the Belle, and sail back to America to speak their showy, manly English baritone, and make his fortune in the sun. There always was a blue sky and a sun in Palmer’s dreams. He only had to volunteer. Shipmaster Comstock, after all, already knew he was a willing and a useful hand. It had only been a couple of days since the captain had stood on deck and picked out Palmer Dolly to help with that ‘one injured party, on the orlop’ (remote, seductive, big-ship words). Palmer had been the first one pointed at, the first one chosen, the first one favoured by the captain.

Palmer hoped he’d proved himself a good man to employ. They’d gone below decks on the ship and seen the African. Nothing in the sea was quite as strange as that brown, bleeding man. But still Palmer had done as he was bid and put the fellow in a palliasse and hammocked him on deck and thence into the Dolly boat — the same boat, in fact, in which he and Skimmer were now waiting for the pilchards. The African had bled onto their boat. He’d marked their wood. Palmer couldn’t see the bloodstain in the dark. But it was there, and probably would still be there when Palmer Dolly was elsewhere, a mariner, the optimist at sea, the emigrant, the escapee, the freeman in the Yankee sun.

‘My money is we’ll land a decent catch,’ said Palmer. He stood and urinated off to leeward. He was in a rare and happy mood. ‘Now, there’s a bait’ll bring ’em in.’

‘My money is we’re only netting snow tonight,’ said Skimmer. He spat into the sea: the Devil’s brew of piss and phlegm and salt. He was not an optimist.

They didn’t have to take a Devil’s fish. It was gone midnight when the pilchards came. The snow had stopped, but there was now a storm of fish. The sea was drenched in fish. It was as if the water had lost its liquidness and was turning into solder. The pilchards winked and weaved their blue-green backs, their silver undersides, in teeming, wet stampedes. They trenched and ridged themselves between the deep-shore rollers. The solder boiled and swelled. Dozens of hake and some tunny fish, the smallest more than ten feet long, were at the pilchards’ tails, herding them, and gorging on the ones they broke loose from the shoals. The pilchards bunched and fled into the in-shore pools. They stripped their rhombic scales and ripped their soft bellies on granite scree below the Cradle Rock. They banked up amongst the cattle carcasses in the shallows off Dry Manston beach, where tunny could not reach. They butted at the shoreline with their sulking lower lips. They threw themselves onto the beach. There was no need for boats or fishermen or nets. The Dollys could have saved themselves the trip, and come down to the beach with lanterns. They could have bucketed the fish by hand and carted them away by donkey-load and only got their ankles wet.

The pilchards seethed and tumbled round the Dolly boat, attracted by the light, and panicked by the dolphinlike clicks and whistles that the Dollys made.

‘Tuck ’em in! Tuck ’em in! Tuck ’em in!’

They passed through the gateway of the net like one great metal eel, a half a mile in length, and twenty yards across. A giant could put a saddle on its back, and flank the shoal, and ride those pilchards like a horse. He’d not get wet. He’d not be ducked in Palmer’s piss or Skimmer’s phlegm. The shoal was solid tin.

The Dollys didn’t close their net for fifteen, twenty minutes. Each wrap and fold of sea turned pilchards on their sides in heavy, silvered arcs. It was a blessing pilchards make no sound. If they could voice their bafflement at nets, then theirs would be the saddest lament in the world. The Dollys were no longer cold, and missing bed. They were too busy to be cold. If they worked hard and luck was on their side, they’d make enough on this one night to see them through to spring. So long as there was not a glut.

But there was a glut, of course. Too many pilchards. And far too many boats. Everybody had full nets. The thirty families or so who’d put to sea that night and worked their stem down-coast from Wherrytown were overwhelmed with fish. They’d brought as many pilchards as they could on board in baskets. Now the gunnels of their boats were so low that one good wave would flood their decks. They had to let their nets fill up, then herd the nets along the coast into the shallows beyond the channel buoys and harbour lights at Wherrytown and wait for day.

By four thirty in the morning there were forty-three nets bunched up like massive lily pads. The untucked pilchards tumbled in the water, struggling for their passage east, doing what they could to escape the hake which had been netted too. Those few that had the strength to leap over the nets only fell amongst the captive pilchards of a neighbour’s net. The fishermen watched and waited in the melting darkness. A bumper catch. Not that that would do them any good. Mr Howells would shake his head and say, ‘The fatter the shoal, the thinner the shilling. We’ll not get rich from these.’ Not rich, perhaps. But it was satisfying to have netted such a tumult. When dawn came, then the fun would start. They’d need a hundred volunteers to bring the fish ashore.

‘We’ll put those Americans to work,’ said Henry Dolly. ‘We’ll break those jiggers’ backs with lifting fish.’ Again he shared a pipe with his two sons. It was all they had to keep them warm till daybreak. Monday would be fine and clear. There was no wind, and there were stars across the western, clearing sky. The paling and descending moon was touched with green. Good luck. Good weather. The seagulls didn’t mind the dark. They shrieked like Saracens at such an easy feast of fish.

Skimmer in the smaller boat had made a canvas bed and — God knows how he managed it — was fast asleep, despite the cold and gulls. Palmer Dolly sank his head into his coat and pushed his hands into his sleeves, like a teacup Mandarin. He was Midshipman Dolly on the midnight watch. Crewman Dolly. Palmer Dolly, captain of the Belle. Mr Dolly and his dollars! He was dreaming distantly, though he hadn’t got a landscape for America, or any idea how cruel the voyage there would be. He couldn’t guess the span of the Atlantic, nor how the ocean, far from land, would scarp and dip like wolds, the Belle a wind-tossed wooden hut amongst the water hills. He had no proper sense of anything excepting Home, and three boys to the bed, and nets and nets and nets.

‘Is that you, Palmer?’ someone called.

Palmer looked out of his coat. He tried an American accent. ‘What is it, then?’

One of the Dollys’ neighbours was standing at the bulwarks of his boat twenty yards away and was pointing into the teeming semicircle of the Dolly net.

‘What’s that you’ve caught?’

‘Too many bloody pilchers!’ He couldn’t get the accent’s chesty resonance.

‘No, that!’ The neighbour pointed again. And then threw a broken end of rope to mark the spot. ‘It in’t no pilchard, that’s for sure.’

Palmer couldn’t make it out. There was a dark spot in the nets. A piece of wood, perhaps. Some matted kelp. The carcass of a porpoise. A tunny with a heart attack, from too much food. It certainly wasn’t alive. It didn’t move. It didn’t absorb any of the little light there was.

‘I don’t know. We’ll find out soon enough.’ He couldn’t give a stalk of parsley what it was. He put his head back in his coat, and crossed three thousand miles of sea, and was American again.

By six o’clock — with just a hint of Monday in the sky — they’d found out what was ‘not alive’. Nathaniel Rankin bobbed and eddied closer to the Dolly boat, propelled by grazing fish. He was face down and so waterlogged that pilchards swam across his body. His clothes were shredded by the sea. Palmer poked him with a rigging pole. The body sank. The water blackened where he’d been, filled up with fish, and then was cleared again as Seaman Rankin floated back in view. Palmer’s rigging pole had come out of the water with a gluey tip. The body was as soft and decomposed as Bordeaux cheese. Palmer had to look away and swallow hard on icy air. He called out to his father with the news. ‘Wake Skimmer,’ he was told, ‘and get it out of the water. We’ll not sell pilchards, else. Not with a taint like that!’ Together Palmer and Skimmer pulled Rankin’s body clear of the water by his open collar and his belt. They put him on a piece of sail on deck. His clothes were tight. A man who’s marinated in the sea for two days is bound to swell. His flesh becomes porous and water enters him. He begins to peel and split. He loses shape. His margins flake.

They squeezed the water out of him, and threw the tunnelling crabs and pilchards into the air, for gulls. At first they thought it was the African. His skin, in that no-light, was black. But once they’d got their lantern lit, they saw the colour was a plum, a damson blue. His veins and arteries had burst. His face and hands were bruised. His lips and tongue were fungi. His eyes were gone. And he was wounded on his forehead and his neck by gulls. He’d lost a good part of his waist and shirt to a fish. A single bite. There was — surprisingly — no smell, except the oily odour of the pilchards. Skimmer searched the outer pockets of the coat: more crabs, a blue neckerchief, a dollar and a swivel knife. He bit the dollar, put it in his shirt. ‘You’d better go for help,’ he said to Palmer. ‘Tell their captain. Get Preacher Phipps.’ He shook his head as if to say, ‘We’ve netted bad luck here. I knew we would.’

For Palmer, though, the netting of Nathaniel Rankin was not bad luck. It was just the opportunity he was hoping for. ‘Give me the dollar, Skimmer,’ he said.

‘Why’s that?’

‘Just fish it out. It in’t yours to have.’

‘Nor in’t it yours.’

‘You robbin’ dead men, is it then? It in’t no good to you, not hereabouts. Let’s have it now. It’s dead man’s money, ’n’ you in’t dead.’

‘Good as dead,’ said Skimmer. He pulled the dollar from his shirt and slapped it into Palmer’s hand. ‘Palmer is the proper name for you. Picking pockets … palming other people’s tin.’ Palmer didn’t wait to hear the rest. He had to make his way to shore, through seven nets of fish. He dropped into the water. It was too deep to find a footing, though the pilchards kept him up. He slid across their tumbling backs, and pulled himself towards the edges of the net. His heart was battering his chest. He could hardly find the air to breathe. The water was so heavy and so cold that Palmer scarcely had the strength to move his arms through it. He had ten minutes at the most. More time and he would freeze. Then there would be two corpses and a mystery to bring ashore, for Rankin’s dollar would be found in Palmer’s mouth.

Once he’d reached the edges of the Dolly net, Palmer could use the surface rope and corks to pull himself more swiftly through the water. He could then transfer to the outer edges of a neighbour’s net, and — half-circling that — bring himself into the shallow waters of the shore. He could hear his father and Skimmer calling to the nearest boats, explaining what they’d caught and why it was that Palmer was taking such a risk. It was a risk. But Palmer Dolly was a pioneer. He’d be the one to bring the news to Captain Comstock. He’d die for it. His neighbours held their lanterns up and shouted their encouragement. They couldn’t help in any other way. They watched him pull himself over the outer rim of the last net, into even colder water, where there were no fish — and fish, compared to this, were warm. Now he could find his feet. His upper body was clear of the water and he was wading, burdened with the weight of sodden clothes. What breeze there was was raw and aching on his skin. He gripped the dollar between his teeth and came up on the snow and sand. His boots were full of sea.

He walked — he couldn’t run — along the backshore to the quayside where the Tar had docked. Thank God the lower entrance to the inn was open. It was quiet in the snow-packed courtyard, no wind, no gulls. Somewhere inside the inn a dog began to bark. There was no light. He had to find the narrow passageway by hand and by nose: the fish-head, urine, earthy smell of somewhere always damp and dark. The passageway was steep. Palmer was winded by the time he’d reached the raised front door. It wasn’t locked against the night, or Africans. The handle turned. He knew it would. He didn’t feel unlucky.

Perhaps he should have stopped to warm himself at the embers of the parlour fire, but he wanted to be seen as wet and cold and dutiful, a man who could be reckless if required. He found a candle on the mantel. He held it in the fire and blew into the ashes and the few remaining cherks of wood. His hand was shaking, and the candle wouldn’t make a flame. He had to hold it with both hands. His fingers were both numb and throbbing as the fire revived. The candle lit. What should he do? Where should he go? He shook the parlour handbell, but its ring was far too timid and discreet. He’d have to find the parlourman or, better, Alice Yapp to ask where Captain Comstock was. He knew her rooms. He’d been there once. She was the only entertainment in the town.

Palmer hurried through the snug to Mrs Yapp’s door. He rapped on it and shook the latch. The door was locked. ‘Mrs Yapp. Wake up!’

‘And who the Devil’s that?’

‘It’s Palmer Dolly, Mrs Yapp. Where’s the captain of that ship …?’

‘Why don’t you scram, Palmer? What time is it?’

‘We’ve got the body of the man who drowned!’

‘Why wake me up, besides?’

‘Tell me where the captain is. It’s his man that’s drowned …’

He heard some movement in the room, some heavy steps, and then the door was opened. The American captain was standing there, and naked too, but for the blanket round his waist and pillow cotton in his hair.

‘Say all of that again,’ he said.

Palmer Dolly stood to attention at the door, the candle held before him like a sword, a little shakily. The water ran off him and puddled at his feet. He couldn’t stop the clatter of his teeth. ‘We’ve netted the sailor, sir. The drownded one that’s lost …’

‘My man?’

‘He’s yours for sure.’ He held the dollar up. ‘I could’ve thieved it, sir. But that in’t right …’

‘Where is he?’

‘On our tuck boat. On a bit o’ canvas.’

‘What state’s he in?’

‘Dead as stone.’

The captain turned, and spoke into the dark bedroom. ‘Alice, did you hear? They’ve Seaman Rankin’s body on their boat. Where do the bodies go in Wherrytown?’

‘You’d better lay him in the stable block. The tackle room. Let Mr Phipps take care of it.’

‘You hear that? What’s your name …?’

‘It’s Palmer Dolly, Captain. And I’m a sailor too.’

‘So, Palmer Dolly. Put the body into Mrs Yapp’s tackle room. And keep that dollar for yourself …’

‘I’ll hope to spend it in America, then.’

‘You spend it how you want.’

‘I mean, I hoped to ask if you were looking for a sailor for the Belle … you being one hand down.’

The captain closed the bedroom door. He should have dressed and gone down to the pilchard nets. He should have shown his captaincy. Instead he went to Mrs Yapp and took refuge in an hour more of sleep. His head ached badly when he woke. His shoulders were like wood. Hard winds, bad luck, a bar of sand had beached his ship. His masts were down, the cattle lost, the African set loose; the ground was deep in snow; and every half-wit in the land was either staying at the inn or banging at his door in the middle of the night with more bad news: damned Rankin had been found! What kind of day would Monday be? Oh praise the Lord if it could be a turning point! The Belle afloat. The cattle rounded up. The nightmare coming to an end.