Jim Crace - Signals of Distress

The congregation gathered at the grave and Mr Phipps began his sermon. He wasn’t happy — he was furious, in fact — to have lost the Norrises. Especially the wife. She wouldn’t let him comfort her now. What could they see in that fool Smith? He put on his Holy Face, his Holy Voice, his Holy Grief, and spoke about Nathaniel Rankin as if they had been friends. ‘We must not forget that Death is a visitation of God Almighty. To have the breath of life taken from you is to have your body touched by God. His is the Gift of Life. So when we think of that dark storm when our brother Nathaniel passed from us and his dear face was chilled with the salty dew of life’s last struggle, we should not grieve; we should rejoice, because the child of God is back with God, and all is well within His Universe.’ He nodded that the coffin should be lowered. Then he read a passage from The Navigations of the Saints , threw granite pebbles on the birchwood lid and asked them all to sing ‘For Death Is But the Shaded Sea’. Robert Norris’s voice was strong enough to cross the wall, and lead the hymn. The congregation parted for his voice. They let it in and did their best to match his perfect pitch. Aymer sang as well. He would have danced a jig.

‘For Death is but the shaded sea

Let every lost ship, in the deep,

Rejoice. Our Saviour’s at the helm.

And He, our pilot Lord,

Will keep

The midnight watch

On Death and Sleep.

And He, our captain Lord,

Will give

The tidings

That our souls will live,

And oceans, overwhelm.’

When the hymn was done and the shovels were at work, rattling earth and stones on Nathaniel Rankin’s coffin, Aymer could have volunteered a hug, at least, to these two allies at his side. He was the handshake not the hugging sort. He wasn’t used to taking people in his arms, not since he’d been small and in the care of Granny Todd, his parents’ housekeeper. He had, it’s true, hugged Ralph Parkiss. That was in an empty parlour, though, and comradely, a manly thing. Here, there was a congregation looking on. He should have lifted up his arms and put them round the Norrises, his hands upon their shoulders. He should have hugged them so tightly that they fell against the wall and toppled onto holy ground. He volunteered, instead, a tiny inclination of his head, and said, ‘I thank you for your kind interference.’ He added something, too soft and muttered to be understood. But he was hugging in his heart, and both the Norrises knew it. It hardly mattered that they didn’t touch. What mattered was that they had stood in line.

They had to touch the preacher, though. He made them shake his hand. He held Katie’s hands too long, and squeezed Aymer’s hand too tightly. He hoped they had not misunderstood the fierceness of his Faith. How ‘generous and Christian’ it had been for Mr and Mrs Norris to offer Mr Smith their company while Mr Phipps’s solemn duty was performed. Both he and Mr Smith were men of principle and Mr Smith, he was quite sure, could not respect a man who was not ‘a Moral rock’. The chapel was for Christians. He did not imagine Mr Smith would wish to make a pilgrimage to Mecca unless he were a Mussulman. Or hope to find a welcome in the sanctums of a synagogue. Though if he did, he would not chance upon such singing there as he had heard today. ‘Our Mr Norris has an angel’s voice,’ he said. ‘And Mrs Norris too, of course.’ He took their hands again, and clapped Aymer on the shoulder. ‘We’ll have you yet,’ he said. ‘I urge you, sir, to read the Scriptures, and you will, I think, find both Faith and Reason satisfied.’ By the time he had convinced himself that his reputation was not damaged but enhanced with the Norrises, the mourners from the funeral had dispersed, and Nathaniel Rankin’s grave was almost full with earth.

Aymer and the Norrises descended through Wherrytown by empty lanes, except that halfway back a reproachful-looking Whip accosted Aymer and wouldn’t settle for a tiny inclination of his head. She wanted him to scratch her ears and rub her chest.

Mrs Yapp gave them lunch, though Aymer had little appetite for fish. When they had eaten and — frankly — needed some respite from Mr Smith’s addresses on Mahometans, the ‘native’ ways of making fire and ‘the habit in the East’ of burning the dead, Katie and her husband walked down to the quay to see what progress had been made on the Belle . How long before they could set sail for Canada?

Aymer took a book into the parlour, persuaded Mrs Yapp to revive the fire and wet some tea, and settled to the Common Sense of Thomas Paine. When his tea was brought, he asked for ‘a less idle light’.

‘If you want better light for reading by, you’ll have to shift yourself to the window or go outdoors,’ Mrs Yapp said. She wasn’t servant to the man. Why couldn’t he take five paces to the side table and find a candle for himself? ‘I’m on my own, with George not here, and haven’t time to fetch and carry all day long. I saw you wasn’t welcome in the chapel, though.’ She hoped he’d say something indiscreet about Mr Phipps.

‘Where is George, Mrs Yapp? You have the oddest parlourman in the land.’

‘There’s odd, and there’s odd,’ she said. If George was odd, then what was Aymer Smith?

‘Where is he, though?’

‘He’s volunteered as guide.’

‘As guide to what?’

‘As guide to hunting down the captain’s African. There’s no one knows this corner of the world like George. He’s better than a hound. He’ll sniff him out. He’ll have that sovereign off Walter Howells.’ She watched as Aymer leaped up like a man who’d sat on pins. He ran out into the lane without a hat or coat. Then she sat down by the fire, tossed Common Sense aside, and drank his tea.

AYMER WAS too late to find the hunting party or its hound. They had assembled in the courtyard as soon as the funeral was over. Five sailors from the Belle with Captain Comstock. A dozen Wherrytowners armed with sticks and scythes and one old musket which the owner said had ‘seen the Frenchie off at Waterloo’. And Palmer Dolly, who had volunteered, and hoped not for the sovereign but for a hammock on the Belle as his reward. Walter Howells attended on his horse. He sent the Wherrytowners off to search every outhouse, coop and sty, to check behind wood piles, in net stores, underneath the upturned hulls of boats. He sent the sailors and Palmer, under George’s command, to search the local fields, ten deep, and anywhere ‘that’s big enough to hide a man’.

Howells went with the captain to search the salt-hall and the shore. The salt-hall only took five minutes, and Otto wasn’t there — unless he’d been balked and barrelled along with the pilchards. They spent a pleasant afternoon in Walter Howells’s room, with good Jamaicee rum. They could watch the shore from there.

‘They’re bound to bring your Otto back, don’t give it any thought,’ Howells said. ‘We have to think about ourselves a bit. There’s matters need discussing, if we’re to turn a little black luck into profit.’ He outlined for the captain how he would present a bill of repairs that ‘would not run amiss with those good gentlemen who’ll have to settle it. Let’s not pretend we’ve mended what was never broke. The greedy piglet soon gets pushed out of the trough. The cunning, patient one gets fed.’ They’d quickly re-equip the Belle , a patch-up job, he said: ‘I’ve put good timber in, of course. Watertight. But not the best. Masts and rigging ditto, Captain Comstock. No harm in saying that you had to lose a few possessions overboard. There’s all that stuff we stored down in the dunes. I’ll get a decent price for that. And we’ve some cattle set aside. It’s fifty-fifty all the way, if I’m a man to trust.’ He poured the captain a fourth tot of rum. He put a purse of sovereigns in Captain Comstock’s hand. ‘There now. We’ll have you back at sea within the week, and nothing to regret from your short stay in Wherrytown.’