Jim Crace - Signals of Distress

Aymer had held his breath so long he coughed. He couldn’t stop himself. He coughed repeatedly. He might only have breathed in loose lint from the sheets, but it felt as if he’d swallowed his tongue. He heard the Norris curtains draw shut, and whispers, giggles once again. What should he do? He didn’t know the protocol. Should he pretend to sleep? He’d coughed too much to sleep. Besides the coughing had made his bladder ache. He didn’t want to wet himself. He got out on the sea side of his bed, found his coat and boots and went out to the balcony above the courtyard. He pulled his coat over his sling so that only his good arm was sleeved. He secured his boots. He crept downstairs, bare legs beneath his coat, no shirt. He looked like an adulterer. An unsatisfied adulterer, because his penis was enlarged and pushed against his coat.

He found a dark part of the alleyway and urinated carelessly. A minor, unaccommodating stream hit his lower leg and ran into his boot. He tried to put a picture in his mind of Katie Norris, her face, her buttocks and her hair. But he was now too breathless and too exercised to concentrate. His forehead almost rested on the brickwork of the alleyway. He didn’t feel the cold. He didn’t feel any pain in the busy arm which he had freed from the sling. He ejaculated on the bricks. He swayed, for a few seconds at the most, and then the outside world blew in. Peace had been restored. He felt entirely tranquil now. Katie Norris was a thousand miles away. She was in Montreal. He cleared his throat and spat on to the wall. The little ship’s dog, Whip, joined him. She smelled his urine, licked it from his leg. She went up on her hind legs and pushed her nose inside his coat. Her tail was like a metronome.

Aymer didn’t want to go back to his room. He wasn’t welcome there. He didn’t want to sit inside the parlour, with flirting Mrs Yapp. His flirt had disappeared. It hung like giblets in the alleyway. He walked down to the quay with Whip. The Tar was ready to depart. Its steam was up. The sailors waved at him. Their steam was up as well. They didn’t seem to mind he had no trousers on. They wanted to set sail before the black clouds to the west came in and dropped their tons of snow.

The streets of Wherrytown were quiet. It was the Sabbath and the townspeople could indulge their sins until Evensong and then poultice them with hymns. Aymer knew what he would do. He’d not bother with Mr Howells. The man had missed his opportunity. Two opportunities! ‘I have done my best to try and make acquaintance with him,’ Aymer told himself. ‘I met his roughness with civility, to no avail.’ So now, he’d make a pedestrian tour along the coast that day — at once, at least as soon as he had put some trousers on. He’d tell the kelpers face to face what Smith & Sons had decided. What Matthias had decided. The kelpers were the victims, not Walter Howells. Aymer could ease their suffering with bars of soap and, perhaps, a shilling for each family. He’d make his mark.

He walked back to the inn’s courtyard. He pressed his nose against the window of the tackle room and tapped on the boarding. Better than a writ of habeas corpus, Aymer thought. The world would change at once. The bolt was stiff and cold. Otto wasn’t sleeping. He was hoping for some food. Aymer didn’t smell of food. He smelled of animals. He smelled of damp. Otto let him take his hand and shake it. He let the man sit down beside him on his blankets. He listened to the sentences, the grinning storm of words. The man was pointing at the open door saying, ‘Go! Go! Go!’ Whip was barking, running in and out the tackle room. Otto couldn’t bear this loss of privacy, nor the commotion that the bare-legged man had caused. He stood and tested how his ankle would support his weight. He wrapped a blanket round his shoulders, put on his boots, said, ‘Uwip, Uwip,’ and walked out into Wherrytown.

SABBATH SNOW was coming in from Canada, preceded by a morning of tepid and deceitful air. There was no frost and just an ounce of wind, but anyone could tell that cold was on its way. The sea was pearly with pilchard shoals; seals and porpoises were seeking shelter close to shore; cormorants meditated on the rocks and did not fish; and there were hardly any penitents in Wherrytown who’d left their beds for morning prayers with Mr Phipps.

At Dry Manston the cattle from Quebec stood in squads or lay under the few low thorns between the high ground and the beach, their backs against the wrecking sea. Miggy and her mother hoped it would be easy to trap one of these mournful, docile cows. They’d have fresh meat, and what they couldn’t eat within the week, they’d salt. They were up and out soon after dawn and planned to have one killed, butchered and concealed in an hour. They each had rigging ropes, flotsam from the Belle : one rope round the neck would hold the cow, one round its hind shins would bring it down. It should only take a single blow with a rock between the eyes to make the beast insensible. Then perforate the spinal column with a knife and cow was beef. That was the principle at least. They’d never had to kill a cow before. They hadn’t had the chance. The most they’d done was club a seal to death and skin it on the beach.

The cows were wary and unpredictable. They wouldn’t let the Bowes get close. They put their haunches in the air, hauled their bodies from the ground, and stood, face on, whenever Rosie or Miggy approached. They lowed in protest at the cold. They weren’t fooled by gifts of grass. They backed away. They ran.

It was amusing for a while. Rosie tried all kinds of tricks to trap a cow, and entertain herself. She crept up on the cattle from behind, but got no closer than before. She tried to hypnotize a cow with weaving hands. She’d seen a donkey hypnotized that way at the farthing fair in Wherrytown. She made a sudden dash — with no success — and then fell down into the spongy bracken, laughing unselfconsciously. Miggy was embarrassed by her ma. She wanted beef. She was too old to be amused.

‘We’ll never get one if you fool around,’ she said.

‘Don’t be so frownin’, Miggy. We’ll never get one anyway. Those cows in’t wanting to be caught. I’m getting back indoors. My feet and back are soaking through. You coming with me, or will you stop and sulk?’ Rosie was annoyed. Her daughter wasn’t much of a companion. She was as clawed and joyless as a cat.

Miggy let her mother go. She liked to be out on the coast alone, the windswept heroine. Besides, she’d seen a distant figure on the path. It wasn’t usual to see strangers — or officials — walking on the Sabbath. That’s why Miggy and her mother had chosen Sunday to help themselves to beef. There was a chance, then, that it was Palmer Dolly. Might he come by? And let his black hair mix with hers? Miggy wanted to be kissed. What must it be like to be kissed by someone other than your ma? More nourishing than beef! Sometimes at night she practised kissing her own mouth. She wet the insides of her lips and let them slide. She teased her palate with her tongue. She skimmed her chin and cheeks with her fingers. She licked the tissue on her palms. She found that, by touching the folds between her legs, she could reproduce the breathless tremble that she felt when she encountered men of her own age. A better place than home was just a touch away.

She’d not been alone for long when she discovered one of the shipwrecked heifers, grazing in an impasse of rocks and furze above the coastal track. She only had to stand resolutely at the open end and make a noise to trap the cow. It backed in more deeply. It dropped its head, either in resignation or to butt its captor. Miggy looped a rope round its neck and kept it back by slapping its nostrils. What should she do, with Rosie gone? Slaughter it alone? There wasn’t any way that she could drag it home herself, or whistle it. The cow was not a dog. She’d have to brain it with a rock and butcher it before the crows and gulls found out. Would she have the strength and resolution? Could she relieve her boredom on the cow? Would Palmer Dolly come in time to help? The walking figure she had spotted earlier was getting closer.