Signals of Distress

9. Star-gazy Pie

WALTER HOWELLS had been sleeping unusually well, but he was woken abruptly before dawn. Someone with sopping feet was hurrying — too closely — past the window of his seafront home. Was home the word for where he lived? Or even house? Warehouse, perhaps. This was the man to see and bargain with if firearms were wanted. Or silk. Or books. Or laudanum. Or contraband. If anybody required horses, or had a letter to be sent, or needed to hire labour, acquire a wedding coat, buy shoes, a bed, a block of tea, some timber, a ticket for the Tar, then Walter was the man. He had the world beneath his bed in boxes, weighed and priced. ‘Everything supplied,’ he used to say, ‘excepting payment on the slate. Or loans.’

Who could that be at such an early hour walking by his house? Not excise men or smugglers. They couldn’t even sniff in Wherrytown without first informing Walter How-ells and agreeing on percentages. Some filchers, then? Some early rising thief? He took his ancient German flintlock off its bedboard hook. Its ram’s-horn butt was icy cold. As was the floor on his bare feet. As were the misted panes of window glass on his nose and forehead. He hadn’t known that so much snow had settled. He’d been asleep too soon. The seashore and the lane beyond the glass seemed inside out, the dark parts light, the ground much brighter than the sky. The sea was oddly matt. Its only scintillations came from the offshore lamps on the fishing boats, and the bobbing outlines of their masts and rigging, separated in the shallows by sparkling, turbulent circles of pilchards. No doubt the footsteps that he’d heard had been a fisherman’s. He left the flintlock on the windowsill, and wrapped himself in the Spanish rug which he used as his bed cover. The rug caught on the flintlock’s barrel and knocked it off the windowsill into the cushions of a chair, where it was lost. He wasn’t sorry to be woken early. This would be a busy day, for Walter Howells and Wherrytown. Everyone would earn a decent crust. High tide, high times!

There was still a smoulder meditating in the bedroom grate. Walter Howells knelt down, his knees in ashes, and revived what heat there was with kindling and some pages from a used ledger. He lit a candle from the flame. He mixed and warmed a little ink and then stood at his high desk to write out his Monday tasks. Bring the catch ashore. Get the pilchards salted and barrelled up. Bring the cattle in. Refloat the Belle. He noted down how much salt he’d need, how many panniers and barrels, how many men and women, what weight of wood, what boats, what rope, what cattle feed. He wrote ‘High Water — 2 p.m.?’ and circled it.

There was a letter to be sent, on behalf of Shipmaster Comstock, to William Bagnall, debtor, rascal, bludger, footpad, horse-thief, pugilist. Walter chuckled to himself. The very thought of William Bagnall’s many skills! He smoothed a piece of paper and wrote with hardly any hesitation and in high spirits:

My good friend Will,

You won’t & can’t deny you owe me favours. I wd. not have you in my debt for ever. So I urge you, pay me off thus, and easily, & let’s be done with it. There is a man who much deserves a beating & has quitt’d Wherrytown w’out settling his accounts or providing for his Reckoning. He is a fellow from yr. town. I cannot think it will be hardship for you to find him isolated in some place & break a bone or two, & well deserv’d. Some broken teeth wd. suit my purpose also, to stay his conversation for a period. Do this with trusted, vigorous friends to whom a sovereign might be pay’d, & say no more, & you must count y’self acquitt’d from my debt. His name is Aymer Smith, & you will know him from the soap works of that name & family. You shd. not stand in fear of him, but deal with him as you might deal with what he is, a thief & not a gentleman. Send proof of his misfortunes, & so we are confederates & league’d together in good friendship, xcept my name shd. not be known in this.

I sign myself on Monday 21st of November,

Walter Howells

It was a fine start to his day.

Walter Howells was mounted on his re-shod horse and organizing pilchards on the beach a little after eight. Most of Wherrytown was there. The women too. And many of the women from the coast had joined their husbands and their neighbours for the landing of the catch. How could they resist it? Good pennies could be made that Monday morning by nimble hands that didn’t mind the withering of salt or the rasp of fish-scales, that didn’t care if their nails, softened in the brine, were ripped, or if their arms were pickled to the elbows. Why should they mind? This wasn’t Paris, after all. This wasn’t Lah-di-dah-on-Sea. They wouldn’t need fine hands or perfect nails. They didn’t spend their day in salons, waving Chinese fans, or playing cards, or offering their fingers for gentlemen to kiss. There weren’t any Chinese fans or salons in Wherrytown. Nor any gentlemen either. But there was snow, and that was rare so early in the winter. Coastal snow does not last long; the Wherrytowners hurried out of bed to be the first to walk in it, to break its crusts, to roll it into balls. They gathered on the beach, made almost eager for the pilcharding by the crispy coverlet of white which hid the sand. It made them feel rosy with well-being. It brought the colours out. The blue and buff of the women’s smocks and aprons seemed exotic, almost tropical, against the arctic white.

What would the sea make of the snow? They watched the tide swell up, curl its lip and skim the beach of snow like children skim the cream off cakes. Soon some crewmen from the Belle, too bored and restless to stay in bed, joined the Wherrytowners on the beach. Snowballs began to fly. The snow was mixed with sand, and was dangerous. Walter Howells decided it was time for pilcharding.

MIGGY BOWE had had her fill of fresh beef the night before. Her dreams were bilious. Her stomach wasn’t used to large amounts of meat. She’d had to get up in the dark to pass an aching stool into the flattened heather behind their cottage. The night was cold and white. She squatted, shivering, and watched the lanterns of the fishing boats beyond the broken Belle. Her gut ached. It took its time. She didn’t like the snow at night. It put her on display. She could be watched. She’d heard the movement in the undergrowth when she’d first hurried out of doors. She’d taken it to be the cattle or a fox. The dogs were barking and pulling on their ropes. They always barked when there were foxes near. But now that she was bent up double with her nightshift bunched onto her knees, scarcely balancing, and constipated too, the night sounds seemed more sinister. The undergrowth was not asleep. It fidgeted. It stirred. She heard the snap of wood, and then a chilling silence as if someone twenty yards behind her back were standing on one leg, mid-step, and watching her. She couldn’t think that anyone would be about at such a time, on such a night, excepting fishermen, of course. Or Devils.

Miggy did her best to look around, to decipher all the darker shapes. But if she turned too much she’d topple. Was that somebody up against the rock, somebody large and shadowy? The shadow stayed as still and silent as a bush. But other shadows seemed to move and deepen. Again, the snap of wood, and silence.

Miggy was as quick as she could be. She didn’t bury her waste. She had no light. The snowy earth was far too hard. She left it for the foxes and the crows. She shuffled back home. She didn’t wait to rearrange her clothes. She untied the two mongrels and let them go to chase the Devils away. The dogs went off, twisting like hunting eels into the snowy breakers of the hill, their barks abusive, their ears turned back like gills. She heard them growling in the dark, but soon they became quiet. There weren’t any cries of pain. There were no Devils, then. Or else there was a silent Devil there. He had no tongue. He was half dog.

It was too cold inside the cottage to wash. But Miggy washed herself nevertheless in water from the pot next to the grate. It was a little shy of warm, but warm enough to take the gloss off one of the bars of Aymer’s soap. She ran her fingers across the hard escutcheon of Hector Smith & Sons. She held the wet soap to her nose. Would she smell kelp from her own pits? She didn’t recognize the smell. She’d not encountered almonds, oleander or eau de Sète before. But she was drugged on them at once. She would smell sweet for her sweet Ralph. She dressed in breeches and a wrap. She tied her hair back with a ribbon. She knotted the Belle’s red-patterned ensign at her throat — ‘I need help’ — and, as soon as there was any light, woke her mother. ‘Come on, girl. Up. This in’t the Sabbath. Let’s not be idle, eh?’ These were words her mother usually used.

It took the Bowes less than two hours to walk from Dry Manston to the pilchard beach. There was a quicker, more direct route than the coastal path. It was a wagon way which, though rutted, was flat, partly hedged from wind and shielded from the deeper, drifting snow. Miggy — far from mithering at every step — set the pace. ‘Come on now, Ma. There’s gonna be no work for us unless we stretch ourselves a bit.’

‘What’s biting at you, Miggy?’

‘Nothin’s biting at me, Ma. The quicker out’s the quicker in.’

‘Is that the truth of it?’ said Rosie Bowe. She was no fool. She knew the signs. Her Miggy hadn’t washed herself that thoroughly to please the pilchards. She had her hair tied back for some young man. It wasn’t hard to guess which man that was, from amongst their new acquaintances. The windswept blond American? Or Mr Aymer Spindle-shanks, too nervous of a floating cow to get his ankles wet? To some extent she wished it was the spindleshanks. At least the man was educated, and wealthy. And soft, was that the word? She’d shouted at him at her cottage door (‘A shillin’ is a fine price to be paupered by!’) and he had blushed and stuttered and hoped that they’d be friends, when all the other men she’d shouted at (and there’d been a few) had wagged their fingers in her face or turned away or laughed at her or knocked her to the ground. Rosie Bowe thought she could cope with Aymer Smith. He wasn’t dangerous. But sailor Ralph? She saw the danger in that boy. At best he’d break her Miggy’s heart, and leave her beached. That’s what to expect from sailors. At worst, he’d win her heart and sail away with her on board the Belle. And that would be the last of Miggy Bowe.

So only Miggy ran along the path to Wherrytown. How long before she’d hold his hands again? How long before he’d run his finger down her spine, a bone, a bone, a bone, the hollow of her waist, his breath upon her neck? Her mother was less speedy in the snow, and for once in lower spirits than her daughter. She wasn’t sorry for herself. She was too toughly made for that. But as she walked and watched her daughter hurrying ahead she had to face the truth of who she was: no one would hold her hand in Wherrytown, or try to count her vertebrae, no one would try to break her heart, or take her to America. She wasn’t young or beautiful, she thought, or plump, and men and ships were not for her. She would be thirty-five at Christmas time. A modest age. Too young to feel so old and weathered. She watched her daughter on the path ahead. Miggy swung her arms as if there were no troubles in the world. Well, perhaps there weren’t if you were seventeen, and there were lips to kiss.

‘Go on, then,’ Rosie said, to Miggy’s back. ‘Be happy if you can. It don’t last for ever.’ Nothing does, she thought. You can’t rely on anything for long. Not even kelp. She smiled at that, and shook her head. But it wasn’t kelp that bothered Rosie Bowe as she walked on her own along the wagon way. She could learn to do without the kelp. She hated it. How would she manage, though, without her cussed daughter to adore? Would it be long before she lived alone?

The shore at Wherrytown when they arrived was like a winter carnival, a hundred people at the very least with Walter Howells on his big horse as showmaster, and a leaping fire close to the water’s edge to hold bad weather off. The townsmen and the fishermen and some Americans were already in the water, basketing the pilchards from the keepnets nearest shore with as much concern for their living catch as they would show for vegetables.

There were too many fish for sentiment. As each net was emptied and dragged up on the shore for gulls and boys to glean, so the outer nets were edged in by their boats until these pilchards were a gasping, thrashing multitude as well, maddened by the dipping baskets of the men and by the turmoil of air and sea and sand and snow. The tide was on the turn and so the water wasn’t deep. But still the work was wet and cold. Men hurried to the fire, between each basketful of fish, to steam their knees and coax some blood back to their faces, hands and feet. Each filled basket was tallied by the agent Howells against the family who owned the net. He had a simple principle — he made no mark for every thirteenth load of fish. It wasn’t superstition, but a sort of tithe, a fee for sitting on his horse. Less than eight per cent for him against their ninety-two. A fair division of the spoils, he thought. Walter Howells would make a lot of tithes that day, from pilchards and from ships. Who needed kelp? Who needed Hector Smith & Sons?

No one there resented Walter Howells. They cursed him, maybe. Wished he’d topple from his horse and break a leg. Wished — just for once — he’d get his trousers wet and find out how heavy a basketful of pilchards could be. But no one wished him dead. How could they manage without their agent with his peppery face and temper, and his good contacts to the east, his wagons and his warehouse home? He was worth his eight per cent. They didn’t have to like the man. They didn’t have to speak to him. They only had to concentrate on the strenuous joy of dipping baskets into, fish and swinging them onto the shore until the sea drained out, and know that Walter Howells would turn their efforts into cash.

The Americans would not get any cash from Walter Howells. He regarded them as volunteers, free labour, and not worth a fourpenny fig between the lot of them, despite their noise and swaggering. They were too clumsy with the fish and were a hindrance rather than a help. They teased each other and flirted with the working women. They splashed their skirts, or dropped a pilchard down their apron fronts, or touched the younger and prettier women unnecessarily while they helped to put the baskets on their backs. The women, happy to be flirted with, on such a high and zesty day, carried the pilchards through the snow and sand up to the salting hall, next to Walter Howells’s house. Their baskets filled the lane, the yard, the courtway to the hall. Any living fish that jumped free of the baskets didn’t stand a chance. They suffocated in the icy air. Or they were scavenged by cats and gulls and by the little girls whose job it was to grill them for breakfast on the beach fire. There wasn’t any idleness. This was a working hive.

Up at the salting hall some of the older women were as panicky and breathless as the fish. They tipped each basket-load of pilchards onto the sloping flagstones and sorted them with brooms and wooden spades. Most were sent slithering down lead-lined chutes onto the cellar floor for balking with layers of rough salt. There’d be no waste. Farmers boasted, when pigs were slaughtered, that they had a use for everything except the squeal. The pilchards though were better than pigs: even the smell of fish was put to use — it kept the Devil out of town. Their fins, the flesh, the scales, the eyes, they all had purposes. Their blood and oil would drain into the cellar tanks for sale as cheap lamp fuel. Their flesh would end up, thanks to Walter Howells’s hogsheads and his wagons, on tables in London, Bristol, Liverpool and even in the sugar plantations of America, on nigger bread. The badly damaged pilchards — torn scales, ripped fins, their bellies gaping — were flipped aside. They were fit only for manure on a farmer’s field. The second best were packed on woodweave trays. They would be hawked and jousted inland while they were fresh. The remainder would be potted with vinegar, bay leaves, spices or pickled in jars with brine, for the spring. But the largest and the very best of the fish were put in panniers and covered by damp cloths. These were the ones that would be cooked to celebrate the catch. No table in Wherrytown would be without star-gazy pie that night, with pilchard heads protruding from the brown sea of a pastry crust, and pilchard eyes recriminating in the candlelight. A comic meal, and one that recognized how farcical it was to have a town so occupied by fish.

The Bowes were given jobs as basket carriers. Walter Howells was glad to see them there. They were strong and used to lifting heavy loads of seaweed and so could be expected to shift a decent share of fish. He noted down their names. He’d pay them later on — in pilchards and with a promissory note. There’d be no pennies till the fish were sold, and he could calculate his own cut of the profits.

Rosie Bowe was frozen from her walk. She warmed herself at the fire. She greeted her neighbours from Dry Manston and tasted her first roast pilchard of the season — not a touch on beef. But still she savoured it. It would be a long and arduous day, an aching day. She meant to pace herself. But Miggy didn’t wait to warm herself or taste the fish. She was already hot. She had seen Ralph Parkiss, thigh deep in the sea, basketing the pilchards with Palmer Dolly and his brothers. He would hand his next full load to her, and no one else. She’d see to it. Palmer Dolly — that idiot! — tried to put his basket on her back. ‘Come on, Miggy Bowe. Let’s see you give the pilchards legs.’ And then, ‘I got myself a dollar here …’ But she was deaf and blind to him. When Ralph stepped across the net, a wriggling basket on his shoulders, she paddled in to meet him. ‘That’s one for me,’ she said.

‘It’s heavy, though.’

‘So what of that?’ She took the weight of it. Her hand held his. Her lower lip turned in to check her smile. ‘Ma says I’m stronger than a horse …’

‘Giddup,’ Ralph said.

They worked in concert then. He kept the baskets light for her, and every time they met at the water’s edge, they touched each other’s hands. Their fingertips were lips.

Where did Aymer Smith fit in? He was, of course, the Smith & Son whom Walter Howells no longer needed. Whom Rosie Bowe would learn to do without. Whom Shipmaster Comstock took to be a kidnapper. Who was a coward and a weeper. Who was (his own assessment now) an apostate not only to God but to himself. Who had abandoned Otto to the snow.

He hadn’t slept too well, and little wonder, given how his ear and self-esteem had taken such a bruising. His nose was blocked. His throat was sore. The muscles in his legs were torn. He should have stayed in bed. But he didn’t want to wake the Norrises with his offensive cough, or with his sniffing. Sea air, he thought, might clear his passages and lift his spirits, a little exercise might be his remedy. So he’d followed everybody else down to the shore and stood, his back against the fire, observing ‘all the colour of the scene’, the spectacle of one small, single-minded, unremitting town at its busiest. This, certainly, must be the point of travel, he was sure, to see the different tribes of humankind, at ease with themselves. Perhaps he ought to travel more, to Edinburgh, say, or Paris or Florence, to see the greater works of man, the castles and the statues and the churches. Though what greater work of art than this live pageant might he see abroad? He rehearsed (not quite aloud) his ‘philosophic certitude’ that a traveller should leave himself exposed to humankind, not art or landscape. Just for the moment, though, he preferred not to expose himself too deeply. He wasn’t tempted to wade in amongst the pilchards. He wasn’t well enough. He must stay warm.

He nursed his sore chest at the fire. He waved at his good friend, Ralph Parkiss, and nodded dutifully, but nothing more, to agent Howells (who seemed both startled and amused to see him). Aymer couldn’t like the man, his red shock hair, his redder face, his unbecoming leather hat, his gracelessness, his ostentatious horse. But even greeting enemies was better than the desolation of being the only person on the beach without a job.

‘Good morning,’ and, ‘A wonderful sight!’ he said to any of the shivering fishermen that he recognized from his Sunday walk to Dry Manston as they came up to thaw out at the fire. ‘An exemplary spectacle … A feast for the eyes … What better work has man than this?’ Some Wherrytowners and some of the Americans who had witnessed his public dispute with Captain Comstock came to warm themselves as well. Aymer treated them with equal cheerfulness. He made them look him in the eye. He made them reply to his ‘Good morning’ and his comments on the weather. He wouldn’t be discomfited. He would put last night behind him. The morning was too fine for melancholia and self-consciousness. He belonged, he told himself; he was entitled to be there. Hector Smith & Sons had had dealings with Wherrytown for forty years. Who could say the same for Captain Comstock? Or his crew? They’d be come-and-gone in two weeks at the most, and couldn’t count on much respect for that.

No, Aymer need not defer to the Americans. He had his tasks — to make sure that all the kelping families were properly informed of their new circumstance, and to carry out his promise to take care of the Bowes. He had been wrong to think there was no job for him in Wherrytown. He owed a duty to the Bowes. He might that day walk out to Dry Manston with some provisions for their home. They would appreciate candied oranges, perhaps, a yard or two of twill, some sweeter-burning candles. There would be the opportunity to enquire of Rosie Bowe if Miggy, Margaret, her daughter, might benefit from marriage to an older, wealthy, educated man. He hadn’t yet spotted the Bowes at work among the pilcharders. Nor had he noticed George.

The parlourman approached him from behind: ‘Have you had breakfast yet, sir? Try one of these.’ He offered Aymer a grilled pilchard on a stick. Beneath the charcoal skin the flesh was white and succulent. Aymer burnt his lips on it. He was more hungry than he’d thought; the fresh air and the smell, perhaps. He pulled the burnt skin off with his free hand, and picked off fingerfuls of flesh. The fish juices ran onto his chin.

‘An oily fish,’ warned George. ‘Take heed you don’t grease up the lappets on that coat.’

‘The pilchard is a surface fish,’ replied Aymer, picking knowledge from his memory as clumsily as he now was picking bones from between his teeth. He was delighted to see George. ‘Pelagic is the term. You know the word?’

‘Don’t know the word. I know the fish well enough. There’s nothing else this time of year, exceptin’ pilchers.’

‘Demersic is the other word, I think. The twin of pelagic. It speaks of fish that live upon the ocean floor. I see a parallel with people here. Those shoals of common men who live near the surface, and those solitary, more silent ones that inhabit deeper water. I count myself to be demersic, then. You, George, can I describe you as pelagic, a pilchard as it were? You would not take offence at that?’

‘You’re talking to a pilchard, then?’

‘Well, yes, I am, within my metaphor …’

‘Mistaking a man for a fish is madness, I should say. It in’t what I’d call deep and solitary. What was that word you used?’

‘Demersic, George.’

‘Now, there’s a word! What do you say I’ll never have to use that word again?’

‘Do not hold words in low regard. Words have power, George. Words are deeds …’

‘Oh, yes?’ said George. ‘And the wind is a potato, I suppose. If words are deeds, then I’m the meanest man in Wherrytown. There in’t a sin I won’t have done.’

‘No, what I meant to say is this, that words and deeds should be the same. You make a promise, you should keep it. You hold a view, then you should stand by it. You should say what you do: you should do what you say.’

‘Well, there’s the difference,’ said George, evidently losing interest. ‘People in these parts in’t impressed by words. They don’t mean what they say. They only mean what they do. And that, I think, makes better sense.’

This was a conversation Aymer liked: witty, schematic, circular; thrust, riposte, touché. ‘Deep and solitary’, indeed! That had a chilling edge to it. He had to credit George with some intellectual energy, a rarity in Wherrytown where ideas were not valued, it would seem, an even greater rarity amongst parlourmen where brain was less admired than brawn and impudence. George was an equal in some ways. In wiliness at least. And oddly democratic for a serving man, not deferential. Aymer — quiet for once — threw his fish-bone to the gulls and rubbed the oil into his hands. ‘What better work has man than this?’ he said to George, and turned his attentions once again to the dealings on the shore. Miggy Bowe, a basket of pilchards on her back, was coming up the shore. He couldn’t miss seeing her. George was saying something, but Aymer waved him quiet and walked away from the fire in pursuit of Miggy, Mrs Margaret Smith. He wouldn’t speak to her. He only wanted to remind himself what she looked like, what kind of girl she was. He meant to rediscover that extravagant and rushing inspiration that, yesterday, had cast this young woman as his wife. He found her coming back down to the beach from the salt hall, empty-handed. She seemed immensely joyful. There was more expression in her face than he had noted on the previous day. She was more colourful, and smiling even. Her hair was tied back prettily and was flattered by the low and sunny winter light. The red kerchief around her neck was dramatic; alluring, even. Yes, she’d do well. Aymer was more certain now. She made good sense to him. He’d seek her mother out. He’d talk to Rosie Bowe at once.

‘GOOD MORNING, Mrs Bowe.’ She didn’t seem to want to stop and talk. Her smile was wintry, but she was cold and tired and shy, no doubt, and keen to get the pilchards off her back. ‘I trust you suppered well on that beef-fish you netted yesterday.’

‘A tasty fish,’ she said, and took a further step towards the salting hall. She hadn’t liked to smile too freely; he had an oily scab of burnt fish-skin on his nose. A comic beauty spot.

‘You might remember, Mrs Bowe, my parting words to you yesterday when you were kind enough to entertain me at your home. I promised to devise some ways in which I might alleviate your loss of kelping for a living …’ (she took another step, and moved the basket on her shoulder) ‘… for which, alas, my family firm owes some responsibility.’ He closed the gap between them, and whispered, ‘Your daughter, Mrs Bowe. Now I might help you both through her, though I would not wish to separate a mother and her daughter unless …’

She looked at him and nodded. She understood. ‘You mean to take my Miggy as a maid?’

‘No, no. I would not take her as a maid. Your daughter is too fine.’ He swallowed deeply, blushed, and spoke almost inaudibly, his lips six inches from her ear. ‘I hope to take her as a wife.’ Rosie Bowe was startled now. She couldn’t think of a reply. She nodded. Shook her head. Raised her eyebrows. Smiled. ‘My Miggy get wed to you?’

‘You might not know of it, but I am yet a bachelor …’ He blushed again. She didn’t notice it. She’d turned away from him. She pulled a face.

‘You must regard me as a friend who wishes simply to enhance your lives,’ he said. ‘Consider, if you will, the benefits …’ He counted seven on his hands, and ended with ‘the benefit of some prosperity, not only for Margaret, but for all those who love her … She will regard it as an opportunity, I am certain of it, Mrs Bowe.’

She shook her head. ‘I couldn’t say,’ she said.

‘You might like to join your daughter in my house.’

‘No, I in’t leaving here.’

‘There’s nothing here for you, not now.’

‘It’s home, is what it is. A bit o’ kelp don’t make the difference. At least my heart is fixed.’

‘Mrs Bowe, we need to talk of this at length. You might consider me an unexpected son-in-law. Indeed, you have a right. There is the matter of my age, my class, my sensibility. I am unlike your daughter, it is true. I might not make a pattern husband for her. I owe no debt to Beauty or to Youth. But I am earnest, Mrs Bowe, and trustworthy, and diligent. My motives are sincere and simple. You will not find me stained by that Humbug which is the besetting weakness of our age. I ask you and your daughter to consider me as if I am the continent of Canada, an unknown land, perhaps, but one of opportunity to which you might set sail with trepidation but an easy heart, and, on arriving there, discover unexpected rewards. And joys. Can I say more?’

‘I wouldn’t want my Miggy to go to Canada,’ she said. ‘America neither.’

‘She does not need to emigrate, Mrs Bowe. That was not my proposition.’

‘I hope you’re right.’

‘Well, then, what do you say?’

‘What do I say? I don’t say anything. It’s her you want to carry off, and so it’s her you’ll have to listen to. And she’ll not marry you. Now then, and that’s the truth of it …’

‘Listen to me,’ Aymer said. He needed Rosie on his side.

‘No more. Not now.’ She put her basket at her feet, and pointed down the beach. ‘Don’t talk,’ she said. ‘They’s bringing that poor sailor in.’

‘What sailor’s that?’

‘What’s drowned on Saturday. They’ve netted him.’

They watched in silence — embarrassed by each other’s company — as the Dolly net was tugged into the shallows and Nathaniel Rankin’s body was lifted off the deck of the tuck boat. All work stopped, to show respect. The men left the water. The women put their baskets down. The older ones came out of the salting house into the foreshore lane and muttered prayers. Walter Howells even dismounted from his horse. He could supply a decent coffin for the man.

Palmer, Skimmer, Henry Dolly and his second son carried the body in its canvas sling. They ducked it once in sea water, to wash the briny residues away, and clean his clothes and skin of wet, dark blood and pus. A few stray pilchards slithered out of his shirt. They put the body on a cart, and let Nathaniel’s shipmates from the Belle say their prayers for him, or touch the canvas or the cartwood in farewell. Then everybody else jostled for a brief and queasy look — and Miggy, she couldn’t think why, was the only one to touch. Aymer was quite proud of her. She put her little finger on Nat Rankin’s leg. She’d never seen a corpse before. She then stepped back, put her head against Ralph’s chest, and let him put his arms around her waist. She let him kiss her hair. Where was Palmer Dolly? She looked for him. She wanted him to see her body wrapped in Ralph’s. She wanted everyone to see. Her mother, too. Here was a girl intended for America.

Aymer wasn’t watching Nat. If he was breathless it was not because the corpse had winded him. He watched his new friend Ralph clasp Mrs Margaret Smith around the waist and put his fine young nose into her hair. Aymer took his spectacles off and wiped his eyes. ‘Too late to talk, I think,’ he said to Rosie Bowe.

‘She’s only but a girl.’ Rosie put her hand out and touched him on the arm. ‘She in’t for you. You must know that.’

‘I in’t for no one, Mrs Bowe.’

He bowed. No one had ever bowed to her before. It wouldn’t do to laugh. Instead, while he was stooped in front of her, she brushed the fish skin from his nose. ‘Pilchard tears,’ she said. He turned and followed Nathaniel Rankin into Wherrytown, with the heavy head of a mourner.

So Nathaniel Rankin came ashore with ninety tons of pilchards. The Dollys put him in the tackle room where Otto had slept. The Americans came in ones and twos to peek at him, and count their blessings. The captain ordered John Peacock, the Belle’s sailmaker, to sew the drowned man up in the piece of canvas he’d been carried in. George hovered at the door and watched. John Peacock smoked his pipe, and hummed to himself. He didn’t seem to mind the work. ‘You lose a man, you lose a piece of sail,’ he said. ‘This ain’t the first I’ve stitched. Nor will it be the last.’

‘What was that tale you told in the parlour the other night?’ George said. ‘The iced-up man from Canadee that ended up in Liverpool, and never died at all? They thawed him out. You think I ought to fetch some towels and grog for this one?’

‘Nat Rankin won’t see Liverpool,’ John Peacock said. ‘He won’t be calling out for grog. I’ve stitched him in for good. There now.’ He’d wrapped his shipmate out of sight. ‘And that’s the end of it. Except for digging him a hole. And prayers.’

‘And worms,’ said George.

THE PILCHARDS had been brought ashore before midday, and though the townswomen still had several days’ more work to do in the salting hall, the men were free at last to take advantage of the heavy, flooding tide and get the Belle clear of the bar at Dry Manston. The fishermen took in their nets, and made the best of a modest breeze to get along the coast before high tide at a quarter after two. Their task: to put a dozen towlines on the Belle, and steady it from drifting further inshore once the keel was floating free of sand. The Americans and another fifteen willing hands from Wherrytown were hurrying along the coast by foot. The snow was slush by now. The day was mild. And they could make fast progress. Ralph Parkiss pointed out the Cradle Rock as they passed by. His comrades teased him endlessly about the girl he’d found. ‘Dump her, Ralph,’ they said. ‘We don’t want ballast on the Belle.’

Walter Howells had got the Monday organized with military precision. He loved to be the mounted major-general, deploying men with stabs and swipes from his riding crop. He would have had his flintlock in his belt if only he could have found it in his house. He would have fired it in the air to start the men off on their journey down the coast. ‘Not now. No time,’ he said, when anybody threatened to delay him with questions or pleasantries. He heeled his horse from shore to inn and back. He might seem bad-tempered to those he shouted at. But Walter Howells, in fact, was happy with himself, and red-faced only with high hopes and skin that didn’t like salt air. His day was going well. And it was fine, thank God; no awkward wind, no squally sea. He’d have no trouble with the Belle of Wilmington, so long as he made haste. There was no time to waste. He found a birchwood coffin and took it from his storeroom to the inn, balanced across the saddle of his second horse. He leant it up against the tackle-room door, and nodded at the corpse and at John Peacock, the sailmaker, within.

The agent marked the coffin price on his pocket ledger against the Belle’s name, called George to mind the horses for a moment, and went in search of Captain Comstock. He didn’t have to hunt. The captain was exactly where he’d been the morning before; in low spirits, sitting with a bottle in the snug.

‘Now, sir, to horse,’ Howells said. ‘There’s work that must be done if you’re to see America again.’ He put the stopper in the bottle, and pulled the captain from his chair. ‘What did I say about we’re partners now? I never meant that you’d sit idle while I did all the work and worrying …’

‘I worry, Mr Howells, because I have one seaman dead and needing burial, and another man gone missing in this wretched land …’ He recounted, as he pulled his deck boots on and hurried down to the courtyard, how they had wrongly blamed ‘that Smith’. He’d not stolen Otto after all. ‘We could have blacked an innocent eye.’

‘Too late, too late,’ said Mr Howells. His letter to William Bagnall was signed and sealed. The sovereign was put aside. ‘So where’s your blackie, then, if not with Soapie Smith?’ Shipmaster Comstock shrugged. ‘He won’t have gone far, Captain. He’ll have found some little nest, and rats and grass to eat. Let’s bring the Belle around to Wherrytown today, and then I’ll organize a hunt to track the fellow down, or find his body at the very least.’ And then he said, ‘Let’s put a sovereign on his head. Whoever finds your blackie gets the prize! That’s an entertainment for your men.’

George steadied their horses in the courtyard while Howells and Comstock mounted. He watched them go down to the quay, then turn westwards along the coast. A comic sight. The American did not sit squarely on his horse. He didn’t match his bottom to the rhythms of the horse’s back. The mare would do her best to kick him off.

‘There’s a man who’ll be bringing blisters home tonight,’ he said. ‘Prepare the poultices!’

Now the only living men in Wherrytown, apart from George, were Aymer, Robert Norris, Mr Phipps, John Peacock, the undertaker-cum-sailmaker, and those few gouty veterans too stiff and ailing to step out of doors, except for funerals.

It was a lucky day for everyone except Aymer. By the time the riders had arrived at Dry Manston beach, the landlubbers and gangs of boys had found and roped eighty of the cattle from Quebec. They’d made rough fencing out of gorse where they could keep the herd until they could be loaded on the Belle. ‘There’s plenty more,’ they reported to Walter Howells.

‘Keep thirty separate,’ he ordered them, and winked at Captain Comstock. ‘A little candle-end for us,’ he said.

They rode down to the shore. The captain jumped onto the sand. His thighs and back were stiff and bruised. He’d never been so tossed about, not even by the ocean off the Cape. He stood amongst his men and watched the fishermen attach their lines to the Belle. The smaller boats came into the shallows. Palmer took the captain’s arm and helped him climb into the Dolly boat, and at last Captain Comstock and his crew took to the sea again. Quite soon, and hardly dampened by the spray, they were aboard the Belle. America!

First they had to reduce the ship’s draught at the bow where it was held most firmly. The rigging and the masts were wrecked, the decks were broken through, but — thank the Lord and Neptune — the ship was savable. They cleared out the bilges, and examined the inside of the hull for signs of cracks and movement in the frames and planking. The larboard bow was holed. The outer planks on the orlop deck had sprung. The captain ordered that they should be patched and braced immediately. All the loose gear — lockers, broken timber, equipment and supplies, the mounted double-barrelled cannon — was taken on deck, and loaded on the smaller fishing boats, then put ashore above the high-tide line. Quite soon the beach at Dry Manston, despite the one or two remaining carcasses of cows, began to look like the landing point of some immigrant community in Canada or in Australia. How long before a settlement would spring up amongst the dunes? How long before the natives came with spears?

By two o’clock the Belle was stripped, and it was sitting higher in the water. Some of the crew took to the beach. The stronger ones remained. No orders were required. They knew what they must do and they were happy doing it. They worked the pumps and put bilge-water back into the sea. At ten past two they laid out kedge anchors on the seaward side, attached by cables to the one working capstan and to windlasses. Some anchors didn’t bite, but those that did were firm enough to take the winch. The barrel of the capstan groaned. The captain too. He thought the wire would bite right through. But, to cheers from the beach, the stern was lifted and the bow was pulled around. The kedge anchors and the lines from fishing boats tied to the waistings of the masts were now enough to hold the Belle secure while the sea came upon its highest autumn tide. And how the sea came up! Not swelling, but flat and deep and strong, shouldering the beached ship’s keel and hefting it, unshakingly, free of the bar. The sand released its grip. The Belle was afloat. It lifted off the bar and slipped into the channel with the resignation of an old and wounded seal. Now it was ready for the towing back to dock at Wherrytown. The tide rose up against the stern. It gripped the ship in foaming chevrons of water. It pushed. It was as if the ocean had wearily reclaimed the Belle, had reconciled it to the water, as if the sea were saying to the ship — and what sailor does not think the sea can speak? — ‘Enough’s enough. You must go home.’

WALTER HOWELLS put up some kegs of beer for everyone that night. There were too many people for the inn parlour, and so despite the cold they lit and warmed the courtyard with lanterns and braziers, and sat around on barrels and bales of straw with star-gazy pie and hot beer. The out-of-towny women hadn’t walked back to their cottages. They’d sleep in the agent’s salting hall. There’d be work for them until the pilchards were balked and packed, and all the unfit fish carted off by farmers as manure. They sat around selfconsciously. They’d had nowhere to wash. They had no change of clothes, and couldn’t match the fine, embroidered smocks that the townswomen had put on, or the dresses and the shawls that Katie Norris and Alice Yapp were wearing. They watched the men consuming too much drink too quickly. It wasn’t a comfortable mix — town and parish, off-comers, emigrants, the preacher. There was something deadening about the agent’s generosity. He gave them beer; he made them wait for cash.

The American sailors were, of course, the first to break the ice. Outsiders are always reckless. No one’s watching over them. They were exuberant. The Belle was off the bar. They would be going home, huzzah — but not quite yet! There was a little time for fun. They drank the health of all the fishermen whose boats had towed their ‘darling Belle’ back into town. Again, they flirted with wives and daughters. No one was too old or plain for their attentions, and that was charming. When ‘Captain Keg’ attempted a silent plantation dance with the portly daughter of the Wherrytown shipwright, the cry went up for music. John Peacock brought a damp and battered fiddle from the Belle. Another sailor fetched his bellows box. And soon there was a lively jig to dance away the cold. The women danced amongst themselves at first. Even the married ones. They didn’t simply foot the measure in their seats. There wasn’t any city etiquette in Wherrytown. Then, when all the beer had gone and they’d started on the punch, they let the men lay hold of them and danced in drunken pairs. The captain partnered Alice Yapp until Walter Howells intervened, and then they shared her, jig by jig. Ralph Parkiss showed Miggy how to step, then held her waist and showed her how to kiss. Her mother Rosie even took the hand of, first, old Skimmer, and then her neighbour Henry Dolly. Henry, she thought, was either clumsy from the drink or getting too familiar.

Katie Norris danced with all of the Americans. Her husband did not dance. He hadn’t got the frame for it, he said. He sat at the trestle table that had been carried from the inn and talked with Aymer Smith (with Mr Phipps the preacher eavesdropping) about the age and provenance of Earth, but kept an eye on his wife. He was happy to see her so admired and animated.

‘I can recommend a volume for your journey, Mr Norris,’ Aymer said. He didn’t even want to catch a glimpse of Miggy or her mother. He turned his back on all the dancing and the music. ‘It is the work of Mr Lyell. The Principles of Geology.’ He stole a glance at Preacher Phipps. ‘He proposes a world with no vestige of a beginning and no prospect of an end. It is a scientific world. Not one that owes itself to some Creation. An interesting book.’

‘It sounds so, Mr Smith.’ Robert Norris watched his wife pass from the hands of one sailor to another. He waved at her.

‘You wish to ask, I know, what geology might tell us about our moral world. I have considered it. And that is why I am a convinced Amender. I will throw light on that. You know the term?’

‘An interesting book,’ repeated Robert Norris. His wife’s skirts were swinging in the dance, billowing with air then wrapping round her legs.

‘Amendism is the scientific view that every offence — Mr Phipps might call it sin — should be settled only by reparations of an equal force.’

‘An eye for an eye,’ said Preacher Phipps absently. ‘The Bible precedes you.’

‘Not that. No eyes and teeth. I am talking of self-discipline. Those sailors who are drunk tonight on Mr Howells’s beer, for instance, would need to make amends tomorrow by fasting, say, or imbibing some unpleasing liquid, or buying but not drinking beers of equal value to those that have intoxicated them. There is a calm to be maintained between oneself and one’s behaviour …’

‘Indeed there is,’ said Robert Norris. Where was Katie?

‘Mr Phipps might recommend a different course — that it is enough to confess one’s sins and seek forgiveness. Amenders do not hold to that. It is our understanding, should we transgress, that there is, implicit in the sinful act, a second act of amends to balance out the first and re-establish calm. And so we labour to avoid the making of amends by controlling our offences.’ He looked Mr Phipps directly in the eye. ‘Amends are better than Amens, I think.’ But Mr Phipps would not be drawn. He was watching Katie Norris too. He was debating sin, but silently.

‘I see that I have silenced you,’ said Aymer. He’d had a beer too many. His tongue was hurtling. He tipped a chair up. It toppled to the ground. He’d make them concentrate. ‘Take this example, then. Should I, in a temper, upset a chair, I upright it to make amends. Like so. I put it in its proper place and restore the harmony I squandered …’ The music stopped, and so did Aymer Smith. It had occurred to him that George would have found a shorter way of explaining Amendism: ‘You stick your bum in fire, and you must sit on blisters.’ What would the preacher make of that?

By now John Peacock had run out of jigs. He played the bass stringed introduction to a round dance. ‘Form two circles; the gentleman should take the outer ring.’ Reluctant dancers were pulled up and dragged into the ring. Katie Norris ran up to the table. She knew her husband wouldn’t dance. She couldn’t ask a preacher — though this preacher stood and showed his readiness. She put her hand out for her roommate, Aymer Smith. ‘Step up,’ she said, flushed, irrefusable. She held his wrist and pulled. He stood opposing her until the music began. She spun twice beneath his arm. They back-to-backed. They swung. But then the partners changed and Aymer had to hold the hand of Amy Farrow from the town; then Nan Dolly (whose hands were briny from the fish), then Alice Yapp, then Miggy Bowe (she blushed, he blushed), then on through grandmamas, and fishing wives, and ten-year-olds, and Rosie Bowe. They didn’t have the breath or chance to talk; they had to spin and whirl and stamp, and then move on. At last he faced Katie Norris for the second time. The music stopped. They bowed. Her hair touched his.

Then Robert Norris sang: ‘Old Faisie-do’, ‘The Ballad of the Greenwood King’, and ‘The traveller is far from home, and lost, and lost, and lost’. His voice was thinner than in chapel. The cold night air reduced it. There was no roof to give it resonance. But still it reached the darkest corners of the courtyard, where Whip had taken stolen fish, where Ralph and Miggy were embracing, where some young men who’d drunk too much were being sick or sleeping, and filled them with that mesmerizing, odd conjunction, both sad and hopeful, which is the human voice in song. Everyone was hot from dancing, and everyone was full of beer and pie. His songs were sobering.

It was too late and cold to linger in the courtyard. To bed. There was a lot of work to be done the next day: a funeral, some carpentry and sail repairs, the further balking of the fish, amends to make, harmonies to restore. But, at least, the Belle was docked, the cattle fenced, the pilchards in, the seaman Rankin cleaned and in his box, the world in order for a change. When the candles were snuffed out at the Inn-that-had-no-name, the travellers there could dream of home, in Quebec, in Wilmington, at sea, and know that home was within reach at last. America and Canadee. Nobody thought of Africa that night, except for Aymer Smith. His head was aching from the dancing and the beer. He lay awake and tried to picture Otto going home, the stone and sand of Africa, the moon and sun, the trees perspiring in the night.