Signals of Distress (11 page)

The captain wouldn’t tolerate their singing or any horseplay in the inn. His mood was murderous. George, the parlourman, whose conversation at its best was cryptic, had brought the news,
‘Your blackie’s gone back home to Africa.’ Someone, he said, had released the bolt on the tackle-room door. All that remained of Otto now was dry blood on the straw. Who should
they blame but Aymer Smith, the meddler with the soap, the sugar abolitionist? George said he’d seen the man a little after dawn, down on the quay. He had Whip at his side and was talking to
the sailors on the
Tar
. He hadn’t any trousers on. What should the captain make of that? He whistled through a window for his dog. She didn’t come.

The captain went down to Aymer’s upstairs room with Mrs Yapp and George. The carriage bag, some clothes and books were on his bed. The man himself had disappeared in the middle of the
night, Robert Norris said, embarrassed, evidently, to have slept through breakfast and to be discovered in his barely curtained bed with half a pot of urine at its foot. He and his wife – who
looked a touch too flushed and ample for a Sunday – hadn’t seen or heard of Aymer Smith since then.

‘What does that mean, do you suppose?’ the captain asked George. ‘Not wearing any trousers? Is this a jest or your invention?’

‘It in’t any jest. I’d not invent such indecorum. As barelegged as a seagull, he was.’

‘He didn’t even settle his account,’ said Mrs Yapp. ‘Or pack his bags. Too rushed to put his trousers on! Well now …’ She laughed. She couldn’t help
it. She put her arm around the captain’s waist. The poor man needed cheering up. But when she saw the temper on his face, she let him go and busied herself with the empty bed. ‘He had
clean sheets and hardly dirtied them. Now, there’s a wicked waste … Who wants some soap?’ She took the few remaining bars from Aymer Smith’s belongings and offered them
first to Katie Norris (‘We have some, thank you, Mrs Yapp’) and, then, to George (‘Enough! Enough!’). Alice Yapp removed the sheet from the bed, bundled Aymer Smith’s
possessions – the soap included, and his books – in his bag and took them to the door. ‘We’ll see if we can fetch a shilling with these to pay his bill,’ she said, and
then, by way of explanation for the profit she could make, ‘The man has gone. So’s the dog. So’s the African. And so’s the
Tar
. We’ve seen the last of
them!’ She prodded the Norrises’ piss-pot with her toe. ‘Take care of that,’ she said to George. ‘Before there’s kick and spill.’

The captain spent the morning at a table in the snug, placated every half an hour or so by a shot of ‘Mrs Yapp’s Fortified Tea’. (It would make her rich when she was in her
sixties.) He needed fortifying, Mrs Yapp insisted. He’d been ‘stormed-up about the blackie and the
Belle
’. A little ‘lively tea’ would settle him and let the
anger out and only cost two pennies for a pint. ‘You’re sitting stiff,’ she said. ‘Don’t be so starchy down your back. Better bend than break. There, now.’ She
squeezed the tendons in his neck and shoulders until his back relaxed. ‘Anything you need from me, just ring the handbell in the parlour. Or else you’ll find me in my room.’ Was
that an invitation to her room? The captain couldn’t tell. She was so brisk and democratic. But her fingers and her tea had done their job. He felt more lively now, though, thanks to Mrs
Yapp’s plump generosities, he was stiff and starchy in places other than his neck. He was stormed-up in ways that no man, even agent Howells, could relieve.

The captain had arranged for Walter Howells to visit him that afternoon. That’s why – he needed no excuse – he hadn’t gone with seaman Parkiss to Dry Manston to check on
the
Belle
himself. For the first time in seven years of captaincy he would have to pass a full day without seeing the ship under his command. ‘No choice, no choice,’ he said
aloud to himself, and tried to concentrate on his letters and his log. He did his best to calculate the dollar-damage that the storm had done. How would he pay for the repairs? What would they
cost? He made a list of urgent tasks: the rounding up of cattle, the purchase of timber and rigging, the disciplining of his men who, given time and liberty, would turn feral. He wrote the names of
Whip and Otto at the bottom of his list. And then the name of Aymer Smith. The three of them would be, by now, miles down coast and nothing he could do would get them back. Otto would cost a
hundred dollars to replace at A. K. Ellis, the Negro Broker and Auctioneer in Wilmington. More trouble and expense! What kind of man would steal an African in such a blatant way? What kind of man
would steal a little bitch like Whip?

‘A bloody fool, that’s who!’ was Walter Howells’s opinion when he arrived for their meeting in the late afternoon. ‘I have the man’s address. You send a bill
for the slave and the dog to Hector Smith & Sons. And if he doesn’t pay, then send him something to remember you by.’

‘Like what, Mr Howells?’

‘Like someone to torch the factory. Why not?’ Why not, indeed? Now that the Smiths had no need of Walter Howells’s kelp, their place could burn for all the difference it would
make to him. ‘I’d gladly torch the place myself, and him inside of it. It’s little more than common theft, to take a man, no matter all this Wilberforcey bosh.’

‘To steal a
dog
is worse,’ said Comstock, ‘because a dog cannot express itself. I’d like to get my hands around the fellow’s throat.’

‘Don’t take no risks yourself that you can pay for and forget about.’ Walter Howells leaned forward in his seat, and topped the captain’s drink. He pointed at the list on
the table. ‘I’ll take care of all of that, if we can settle on a price and you can provide a promissory note,’ he said. ‘Let’s get the Sabbath on its way, and then
tomorrow morning I’ll have them cattle rounded up. The tide is on the up. We’ll see if we can tug your ship free of the bar and put her into Wherrytown. I’ll fix up all the timber
that you need, and I’ve the carpenters.’ He worked down the list with a stubby finger, until he reached the last name at the bottom. ‘And as for him. Well, now, you keep your own
hands clean. I’ll see he gets a beating. There’s fellows that I know will gladly break a bone or two and only charge a sovereign. I’ll write a letter to a man I have up east.
He’s in my debt and has a decent fist. He’ll sort out Aymer Smith. He’ll finish him! We’ll leave the fellow black and blue. He’ll wish he’d never come to
Wherrytown. I’ll write that letter straight away, and pay the sovereign out of my own pocket to show my good intentions. What do you say? Shall we play duets?’ He put his hand in
Captain Comstock’s. ‘We’re partners, then?’

‘Yes, sir, I think we are.’

‘And if there’s any, what should we call ’em … ? candle-ends … ? left over when the job is done, then share and share alike is what I say, and mum’s the
word.’

Captain Comstock was too far from home to understand the half of what he heard. But this he knew for certain. No trouble and expense would be too much to get the
Belle
afloat again and
sailing home, away from snow and joyless Wherrytown where bad luck seemed to be as common and as unrelenting as the gulls. It didn’t strike him as anything but fitting, as he now looked out
beyond his saviour Howells into the lane, that dusk and snow were coming down in a chilling, felting duet of their own, while a horn warned shipping of the fog.

‘There’s snow
and
fog in these parts, Mr Howells?’

‘Not fog. That’s Preacher Phipps’s chapel horn. It’s evensong, and time for me to get along.’

‘You’re going to evensong, then?’

‘No, Captain Comstock, I am not. I have no business with the chapel. I’m not the prayerful kind.’

‘My men might benefit from getting out of doors, and singing hymns. We’ll let the Wherrytowners see our faces.’ The captain hoped a hymn or two would calm him down before his
rage at Aymer Smith transferred to someone innocent. And, then, perhaps a Sabbath night with Mrs Yapp – plump and attentive in her bed – would draw the venom out of him if evensong did
not.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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