Jim Crace - Signals of Distress

Katie Norris had forgotten how beautiful her husband’s voice could be. His voice, her hair. She didn’t mind that he was not a handsome man, that he was thin-haired, shortsighted, bony, clerkish in his manner and his speech. What mattered was his kindness to her, his steadfastness. Who’d emigrate to Canada for the sake of curls, blue eyes, a lordly nose, fine skin? Good looks do not the lover make. No, what a woman needs is not a beau but someone — Katie Norris loved the word — resolute .

Katie had a resolution of her own, that she would be with child before she put to sea. A pregnant woman, she’d been told, would get a bunk on board a migrant ship, a decent place at table, and generally would be coddled by the sailors. But, more than that, she wanted to take away a child from home, a child not made in Canada, a blessed, honeymooning child. She’d only hoped that Robert would indulge this wish without inflicting too much hurt on her. In those days before the wedding to Mr Norris, the local notary-cum-ledgerworm, and their departure from the village forty miles inland from Wherrytown, her elder married sister and her ma, not pleased to lose their Katie to the colonies, had warned of ‘duty’ and ‘indignities’ and ‘getting used to manly ardours’. They had not mentioned that manly ardours might be shared by wives. Perhaps they didn’t know. So no one had prepared Katie for how satisfying baby-making would prove to be. Their wedding night, just a fortnight and one day ago, had been a shock, a revelation. To think that mellow-singing, thin-haired Robert could be so resolute in bed! Where had he learned such sorcery?

Her husband had, on that first night of ‘duty and indignities’, proved to be a virtuoso. The man could sing and touch! He’d caressed her beneath her wedding shift until her breathing had seemed so frail and heavenly, her mouth so dry, her thighs so open and invaded by his hand that she had cried out in the night too loudly. And Ma, a wattled wall away, had cursed ‘that Robert Norris’ for his cruelty and called to the newly weds, ‘Enough’s enough!’ For Katie Norris, babymaking was no indignity. So when — in Wherrytown chapel — her husband sang, ‘Our Home in Thee, Our Lord, Thy Life and Light Afford, A Pathway to Thy Side, and Let Our Love Abide’, and every syllable of his stood out so that the other women turned around to see whose voice it was, Katie let her thumb cross over his. She stroked his fingernail. She couldn’t wait to get him home in bed, alone. They wouldn’t have to suffer Mr Smith’s foul coughing nor the fear that he might hear them making love, or see her passing water in the pot. Thank heavens that the tiresome man was gone! They’d have the bedroom to themselves. She’d wrap her hair around his head. She’d count his ribs and nipples with her tongue. She’d sit on him by candlelight while he sang hymns to her.

Robert had his hand on her bottom as they ran along the corridor. Already she had got her bonnet off and pulled the ribbon from her hair. He lifted up her skirts when they arrived outside the bedroom. She yelped and snapped his hand between her thighs. His fingers were icicles. His face was icy too.

‘Let’s get warm in bed,’ she said.

They’d hardly entered the room and dropped the door latch when Whip was barking at their knees and jumping up at Katie’s skirts. She tried to force the dog outside. The candle toppled from its holder, fell onto the bedroom boards and lost its light. She put her boot against Whip and pushed her into the corridor. ‘Where are you, Robert, my sweet love?’ she said. ‘Come here.’ And then again, more softly and more richly, ‘Come here. Come. Here.’

‘Hello. Is that you?’ said Aymer Smith. He sat up now in bed and could be seen in silhouette against the windows of the room. ‘Mr Norris, Mrs Norris? How very pleasant. And so you are returned?’

‘We are,’ said Katie, ‘yes.’ Her bones had liquefied. Her chest and throat were quivering like some trapped thrush. She found her husband’s hand, still icy cold.

‘Then, pray, will you address yourselves to this small mystery, which causes me, perhaps, some distress but which might afford a little entertainment for yourselves.’ He sniffed and coughed and chuckled. Good humour in adversity. He judged it struck the proper note with Katie Norris and her hair. He wished there was light enough to see her hair. ‘I have returned from my expedition along the coast to find my bedclothes taken off and my belongings stowed somewhere — perhaps else where is better said — and no one in the inn to put the matter right. Do you suppose there are sheet-thieves about? Hot beef, stop thief. Is that our cry? Or should we look to that odd fellow George, or even Countess Yapp, to shed some candlelight upon their whereabouts?’ When there was no immediate answer from his fellow guests, he cut short their silence: ‘And you, dear friends? You passed a tolerable day, I trust? Myself, I have been lost in snow, and taken on the meanest touch of influenza, but not before I shook the Cradle Rock. That is an excursion you are advised to take before you leave these shores …’ Again he coughed and sniffed and chuckled. He couldn’t stop himself. He was so happy.

Katie Norris whispered something. And then she spoke a bit too audibly, ‘You tell him, Robert!’

‘Your clothes and bag, your cakes of soap, your books,’ said her husband, ‘are taken by our landlady …’

‘Indeed?’

‘Indeed, they are. I do believe she thought you were not here. That is to say, she feared you might have left. And that your few possessions might be payment for your bill …’

‘The Inn-that-has-no-name, has no rhyme nor reason to it, either. Excuse me while I solve this mystery …’ He blundered to the door. The Norrises were forced to stand apart and let him through. He smelt of fish and damp. ‘I will return with light,’ he said. He and the dog had gone before the Norrises could say another word. Perhaps the less they said the least harm done.

Robert put his arm round Katie’s waist.

‘Not now,’ she said. ‘He’ll be back too soon … I wonder if he’s got his trousers on?’

Aymer found the parlour occupied by an advance party of some of the younger fishermen. Their nets had been blessed by Mr Phipps. Now they were hoping to have their spirits fortified by Mrs Yapp’s hot wine and beer before the Sabbath ended and the moment came to set off for the pilchards. Aymer rang the parlour handbell, but no one came.

‘They’s steppin’ down from chapel,’ one man said. ‘There in’t no point in shaking that, not till they’s back inside.’

Aymer took his damp tarpaulin coat off its hook and went out of the inn’s front door. He put his coat on, underneath the granite lintel, and went down into the lane. He was impatient to be back amongst the Norrises in candlelight, with Katie Norris in her nightshift just three yards away. And Miggy Bowe to dream about. How fortunate, for him at least, that Duty had brought him west, the bearer of bad news. His life had blossomed since the Tar had docked in Wherrytown and he had come ashore! He’d moved the Cradle Rock. He’d freed an African. He’d bested Mr Walter Howells. He had new friends, the Norrises, Ralph Parkiss, some of the kelpers at Dry Manston. Even George the parlourman. The dog! The hairy little dog was his friend, too! And, best of all, he had the prospect of a wife — though, when he tried to summon Miggy Bowe in his mind’s eye, he couldn’t picture her. What colour were her eyes? How had she worn her hair? Instead, his mind was full of Katie Norris, her freckled calves upon the pot, her sandy hair a flapping flag of colour on the sea.

An older fisherman approached the inn, a length of newly blessed net on his shoulder. ‘Good evening, sir.’