Jim Crace - Signals of Distress

A narrow side path led down from Aymer’s bench, through boulders, to a grassy bowl, and then rose steeply to a tonsured promontory where the granite was too exposed for ferns or lichen or algae. It was a perfect paradise of rocks, much loved, in summer, by watercolourists and lizards. But in the winter, with so much grey about and so little light, the dull pinks of the exposed stone were warm and beckoning. No child could pass it by without first attempting to climb the tumbled pyramid to reach the square mass at its summit. If it was natural masonry, then it had been weathered by a geometric wind and shaped by architectural frosts. This topmost block — the shape and size of a small stone cottage — rested with solid poise on the nipple of a flat but slightly rounded rock. If anyone sat, like Aymer, on the bench and stared for long enough it could seem the block was hovering an inch above the world. It had a tarred cross on its side.

‘So that’s the Cradle Rock,’ Aymer said, pointing.

‘What is the Cradle Rock?’

‘A rock that moves when it is pushed. Let’s go and see. I think we can afford the time.’ Even Aymer couldn’t pass it by.

They found a way between granite slabs marked by tarred arrows and climbed to the rounded platform where the Cradle Rock rested on its pivot. Reaching it wasn’t as easy as it looked. Aymer couldn’t find footholds. He had to accept the sailor’s hand around his wrist, and then his palm against his bottom. The Rock, they saw, was not a square on every side. Its hidden part was thinner and irregular. Ralph clambered up twelve feet or so and soon was standing on its summit, testing where the balance was. But Cradle Rock was so exactly poised that Ralph’s weight only deadened it. He couldn’t make it move. Both men searched the two sides where they could find safe footholds. At one point, on the southern face, the stone was worn away. The feet and shoulders of a thousand visitors had rubbed it bare.

‘Try here,’ Ralph said.

‘I’ll need both arms.’ Aymer shook off his sling and threw it to the ground. His shoulder didn’t hurt at all although his arm was a little stiff from its confinement in his coat. The wind picked up the sling and turned it once or twice, then took it on a seagull flight inland.

They put their backs against the naked stone, wedged their feet and pushed. At first their task seemed hopeless. But on their third and fourth attempts they sensed the softness of the mass. They moved across a foot or two and tried once more. Again the Rock seemed to give a quarter-inch against their backs. They found a rhythm to their exertions, with Ralph, experienced at team-work on the Belle , calling out, ‘And push! Let-her-go. And push! Let-her-go.’ The quarter-inch expanded on each push, and soon the Cradle Rock made grinding sounds as it ascended and declined at its own pace. Ralph and Aymer were redundant now. They stepped back to a safer spot and watched as eighty tons dipped and rose like a child’s cradle, with a displacement at its outer edges of nine or ten inches. Ralph was laughing at the joy of it. And Aymer, too, had seldom felt such unselfish pleasure. With just their backs, and half a dozen curses from the American, and some barks from Whip, they had rocked the grandest boulder on the coast. And left it rocking.

They were too pleased, at first, to feel the snow. But soon the Cradle Rock, its motion halting imperceptibly, was capped in white. They wanted to stay where they were until the Cradle was at peace. But the snow came driving in too thickly; soft snow, not wet. It fell inertly for a few minutes and then was taken up by a gusty wind. Both men were badly provided against such weather. They had no hats or gloves. Only Aymer’s tarpaulin coat was waterproof.

They climbed down to the path and left the Cradle Rock to tremble in the snow, unwitnessed. Ralph was too cold to talk. Aymer was too nervous and elated to stay quiet. He asked about the seaman’s family, but couldn’t tell if Ralph had heard. He gave his solo verdict on the Bowes, on ‘rocks that rock’, on emigration, the American ‘language’, slavery, the beneficial properties of sea air, everything except the aching wetness of his knees and calves and boots. He pointed at and named the trees, the rocks, the fleeing birds, until there was nothing left to see or name excepting snow. Their path had disappeared. Their legs and faces nagged with cold. Their clothes and hair turned white. They couldn’t see the sea. It boiled with pilchards which would, at least, be safe until the Sabbath ended. On this God-flinching coast it was bad luck to catch or eat a Sunday fish. But then — at midnight — all the boats would put to sea for this godsend of oily flesh. It wouldn’t matter that it snowed. Snow can’t settle on the sea. They’d shoot their nets into the lanes of pilchards and pack their stomachs, lamps and purses with the catch. ‘Meat, money and light, All in one night.’ And what a night, for fishermen! Snow. Pilchards. Floating cows. The flotsam of the Belle . And twenty yards below the Cradle Rock the sea-logged, bloated body of a man. Not the African. He has his first experience of snow. But Nathaniel Rankin, the Bostonian, drowned for almost two days now, and ready for the nets.

THE SAILORS from the Belle were bored. The Sabbath was a torment. What could they do all day, except sit round an idling fire and regret their ship had not been grounded off some other town, where there were breweries and brothels, or, at least, the liberty to work on Sundays? After breakfast they’d watched the Tar dimming out at sea. With the backing of a westerly it chased its own steam trail and then it was evaporated by the light. That was the entertainment for the day. They should have volunteered to walk with Ralph Parkiss to check the fortunes of the Belle at Dry Manston. At least there would’ve been flirting on the coast, and some amusement to be had with rocks and cattle. At least there’d have been some noise, if only gulls and wind.

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.’