Signals of Distress (25 page)

‘She’ll think the mare was Mrs Yapp. She’s got the teeth!’

They poured a drop of spirit from one of Walter How-ells’s black bottles onto the wound. Ralph could hardly breathe again. The pain came back. ‘That’s firing stuff,’ he
said.

‘Let’s taste it, then!’ They passed both bottles round.

‘It’s bottled tar,’ one man suggested.

‘It’s pilchard gin!’

‘It’s Devil’s piss and vinegar.’

Palmer Dolly told them it was treacle rum. He’d never liked the taste of it, but still he drank and passed the bottle on.

‘Dear Lord, it’s firing stuff,’ Ralph said again. ‘I need a bit of air.’

‘There’s air enough out here to last a lifetime.’

‘It’s not this air I want,’ Ralph said. ‘I want some air down there.’ He pointed along the coast towards the cottages at Dry Manston. It was half a mile to
Miggy’s home. He could run along the beach and be with her, and then be back within the hour. ‘I’ll not be missed, I hope.’ His shipmates jeered when he walked off –
‘Go on then, boy. Don’t let her get inside your shirt’ – but it was only jealousy. If each of them were young and had a girl a half a mile away, they wouldn’t feel so
wild and mischievous. Perhaps if Ralph hadn’t been the greenhorn of the crew they would have mocked him more cruelly. Seasoned sailors didn’t lose their hearts to girls like Miggy. They
couldn’t marry every girl they kissed. But Ralph was still a novice. That was his charm. He gave his heart quite readily.

The sailors didn’t wait for Ralph. Their muscles itched. With treacle rum inside of them, the job of loading the wagons with the loose gear from the
Belle
seemed almost enjoyable.
They packed the gear as tightly as they could, but there was hardly space for all of it. The wagon wheels sank into the ground a further inch or two. Water puddled at their rims. They should have
brought three wagons and six horses. They’d never get this load up onto the headland without an act of God. They had to half unload again and waste the best part of an hour carrying the
smaller and the lighter stores up to the headland by hand. They let Palmer take charge of the cattle. He was less nervous of cows than the sailors were. He went into their makeshift pen and roped
the biggest with a length of bowline. He tempted it with grass. And when it came, the others followed, single file, as orderly as ants. They had eaten all the hay that Howells had left and then had
cropped their pen back to the sand. They’d put up with anything so long as they could reach the untouched grass. When they had grazed for a while, Palmer held the lead cow by the bowline and
led it up the path to the headland by the Cradle Rock and tied it to a boulder. The others followed, encouraged at first by Palmer’s sticks. Then the hullabaloo of the Americans behind them
was so alarming that they clambered up between the rocks like goats.

The sailors had to make a noise. They put their shoulders to the half-loaded wagons and pushed, and when they pushed they had to shout the effort out. Even then they only managed to move the
wagons one yard at a time. It had been easier to shift the
Belle
. They missed their capstans and their windlasses. They couldn’t rest between each push. The wagons and the horses would
roll back, down hill, to join the debris in the dunes. They wedged large rocks behind the wheels of the second wagon, and concentrated on the first. They anchored it with ropes to boulders at the
top of the path. Two men stayed with the ropes and took up the slack; the other eight stayed with the horses and forced the wagon forward. The earth was loose. Cascades of rocks dislodged and
bounced downhill. The Americans muttered every foul word that they knew. They put their shoulders to the wagon back and screamed it to the top. Then they cursed and screamed the second wagon too.
Palmer Dolly made the loudest noises of all. ‘Tuck ’em in!’ he shouted, every time the wheels began to move. ‘And tuck ’em in!’

The sailors spread a canvas on the grass and lay down on the headland. Their backs and shoulders ached. Their hands were trembling. They shared tobacco and what pipes there were, while Palmer
Dolly pointed out the Dolly home, the cottage where the Bowes lived, the Cradle Rock, the moors and, finally, a tiny figure on the beach – Ralph Parkiss – running along the
water’s edge, to catch them up. The cattle spread out along the path. The two horses steamed. Palmer Dolly searched the wagons for food. Perhaps there’d be a side of bacon or some sacks
of ship’s biscuit amongst the gear. ‘I can’t find anything,’ he said. ‘There’s only brandy.’

‘
Only
brandy? How much?’ One of the Americans stood up and walked across to Palmer.

Palmer pulled the cases out. ‘There’s four-and-twenty bottles, at least,’ he said.

‘And two of them is broken, ain’t that so?’ Palmer checked again. ‘No, there in’t one broken …’

‘And I say two of them has broken in the storm. Now that’s a shame! What a bugger storm that was. Brought our rigging down and smashed the captain’s brandy. Don’t tell me
life ain’t cruel.’ The sailor winked, took two bottles from the case and rejoined the other Americans on their canvas mat. He shook the bottles, pulled the corks. ‘Gentlemen, the
captain sends his compliments.’ They mixed the captain’s brandy with the treacle rum already in their stomachs. They were revived and warm and dangerous.

‘A
NOTHER
bottle, then?’

‘And how!’

‘The captain’ll be hogged.’

‘He’s always hogged.’

‘What’ll the captain know? If two’s got broken, why not three?’

‘Or four?’

‘We’ll drink the bloody lot of it, for all he knows.’

‘I couldn’t drink another drop, unless you offered it.’ This man had got an empty bottle balanced on his chest.

‘Don’t drink it, then. Just rub it in.’

‘No, throw it over me. I’ll smell it when I wakes.’

‘
If
you wakes.’

‘How many, then?’

‘Just one more for the journey back?’

‘And another for the voyage home.’

‘And a couple for the horses.’

‘Don’t bloody count. Just drink.’

‘We’re dead men if the captain knows. He’ll put the whip on us.’

‘Don’t breathe on him, he’ll never know.’

‘Don’t waste a fart on him.’

‘Another bottle or not?’

‘For God’s sake, pull the cork. I’m dying here!’

‘Spin a coin. Take a risk. Heads we drink. Tails we spin again.’

‘No, I’ll throw my hat. If it lands we’ll wet it home with two more bottles. If it don’t come down again, then what to do but go back sober?’

‘Now that’s the sort of risk I like.’

The hat came down two yards away. To cheers.

‘Go get ’em, boy! Two bottles of the best.’

‘Bring six, or I’ll crack your head!’

Palmer did as he was asked. He pulled the corks out with his teeth. ‘I’ll never breathe a word of this,’ he said. ‘Not to the captain.’ They looked at him with
narrowed eyes.

‘You do, and we’ll throw you off that cliff.’

‘Let’s throw him anyway.’

‘No, what I mean is … I’ll stay quiet … I’m … hoping you’ll stay quiet for me, an’ all. I mean to ask you, if someone in’t a proper
passenger and tried to hide away on the
Belle
, then would you breathe a word of it, if, say, you found him hiding?’

They laughed at this. ‘Now, that depends on who it is.’

‘If it was that Mrs Yapp … Well, she’d be welcome on my yardarm anytime.’

‘I’d come abeam for her, that I would.’

‘No, say it might be me aboard, suppose …’ said Palmer.

‘What, you the stowaway?’

‘I never said.’

‘Well, is it you, boy, or not?’

‘I want to leave this place, that’s all. I want to go to America. I’ve got a dollar, see.’ He held his dollar up.

‘Toss it over, then.’

‘It’s mine.’

‘You toss it over, Palmer boy.’

‘It’s mine to keep.’

‘It ain’t. Not unless you want to starve. A dollar pays for board and lodging on the
Belle
. It’s a fair shake. Ain’t that the case?’ The sailor’s
comrades nodded their agreement. ‘We’ll give you meat and drink all right.’

‘Raw rats, Adam’s ale …’

‘Except you’ll have to catch the rats yourself.’

They suggested twenty places he could hide: in the bilges (‘Plenty to drink down there’), on the anchor deck, between companion plankings, in the canvas store, in the jib-boom
housing, in the pilchard kegs, ‘up the mate’s backside’. It would be fun to have a stowaway, they decided. They were too full of brandy to be rational.

‘You’re in good hands,’ they said, when Palmer parted with the flowing hair of Liberty and threw Nat Rankin’s dollar to them.

‘I’ll drink to that!’

‘Let’s break another bottle for the stowaway!’

‘Let’s break it on his head!’

W
HEN
Ralph Parkiss reached his shipmates on the headland, there was not a cow in sight, except the bow-roped one. The sailors looked as if the plague
had come. Their faces were both red and pale. Their eyes were wild and dead. Their greetings didn’t make sense. Their gestures were obscene.

‘Hoy, Ralph. Have you come back without your stick?’

‘Any more mare bites to show us, sailor?’

‘Meet the stowaway.’

Ralph saw the empty bottles on the grass. So what? He was drunk himself. A heart was scratched around him. Miggy had been in the cottage with her mother when he arrived. He’d had to play
the model son-in-law and talk about his family and his prospects in America. But then they’d walked behind, into the fields, while Rosie baked the bread. And there he’d kissed his Miggy
on the mouth.

‘I saw your bit of carving on the bench,’ he said. She didn’t understand. She blushed, and shook her head. But Ralph adored her shyness. He kissed her mouth again. He kissed
her tunic, over her breast.

‘Tell me how it’ll be when we get to America. Tell me, Ralph.’ She let him guide her hand onto his trousers. She frowned, more baffled than afraid. She knew it wasn’t
right. They held their breath. She rubbed. Was this lovemaking, then? Was this as soft as thistledown?

‘America …’ he said. ‘It’s hard to think of anything to say …’

He didn’t tell the sailors what she’d done. He didn’t need to. They could tell. He was in a restless mood. ‘Come on. Who’ll help me swing the Cradle
Rock?’

He got four volunteers. But when the others saw the massive rock in motion, they all got up and ran, as best they could, along the grassy path up to the hollow bowl below the tonsured granite of
the Rock. They climbed between the arrowed slabs onto the platform where their comrades stood, watching the Cradle Rock dipping on its pivot stone. They whooped like Indians. It was a giddy sight;
the drink, the rapid clouds, the undulating rock. They couldn’t tell what moved and what was still. One sailor wedged an empty brandy bottle underneath. The Rock descended on the glass, and
powdered it.

Palmer Dolly hadn’t run along the path to help them with the Rock. He stayed with the wagons, and he watched. He was superstitious. Cradle Rock could bring good luck, and bad. He
wouldn’t risk the bad.

All ten Americans put their backs against the Rock. They’d see how far and quickly they could move it. ‘And push! Let-her-go. And push! Let-her-go.’ The eighty granite tons
were rocking at their own pace. But the sailors didn’t step away to watch. As each decline reversed into ascent they put their hands and shoulders underneath the rock and hastened it. Each
time the Rock lifted on its pivot, they looked into the damp and darkness underneath. No one said anything. But they felt stronger than the rock. They could bring it down.

Four men went back to the wagons and returned with iron bars, and lengths of hardwood. They knocked away the loose stones underneath the Rock on the seaward side. They undermined the earth, so
that the Rock could fall and rise a few more inches at its outer edge. They tested it again. It made more noise. Its rise and fall expanded on each push. Again they knocked away more stones and
earth. They levered with the iron bars.

Of course ten men, no matter what they’d drunk, could not send the Cradle Rock crashing into the sea. It was a hundred times their weight. All they could do was displace it from its pivot
stone, so that it slipped an inch or two and rested on its seaward base, to rock no more. They put their ten backs against it when it fell, but they might as well have tried to knock a mountain
down. ‘And push! And push! And push!’ There was no ‘Let-her-go’. It was a disappointment then. The Rock had beaten them. The Rock had sobered them as well. The sweat was
gelid on their foreheads. The air was icy. Their breaths were sugary and high. What could they chew to take the smell of drink away before they got the wagons – and the cattle – back to
Wherrytown?

It was early on the Tuesday morning and still dark, with the sailors nursing headaches and sore backs in their hammocks, when the earth below the repositioned Rock gave way. It could not support
the weight. There was an avalanche of stones and earth, which bounced into the sea. The Cradle Rock fell fifteen feet from its platform. It was too big to bounce. It dug into the ground and stopped
within two seconds of its fall. Its underside, revealed at last to moonlight, was black and glistening, and barnacled with snails. You couldn’t see it from the path. Its eminence was now
declivity. Palmer Dolly, on his last night at home, heard the distant impact of the Rock and trembled in his bed. The Rock was down. The coast would never be the same again. He didn’t
care.

Miggy would have trembled, too, if she had not been dreaming of the sea and how a girl with unkempt hair might flourish in America.

T
HE
N
ORRISES
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?