Jim Crace - Signals of Distress

Aymer Smith, with Whip on a length of rope, had walked down to the quay ahead of the Norrises. He got a short good morning and an even shorter, nervous smile from the preacher, and no reply at all from Walter Howells, who was waiting on his horse at harbour end. Miggy and Rosie Bowe rewarded his greetings with red-eyed, ghostly smiles. He wouldn’t present them with their stipend yet.

He’d not expected such a crowd, nor so much noise and jollity. He joined the queue of onlookers, and listened to a dozen versions of Lotty Kyte’s life story. Someone, he thought, should tear her blindfold off and let her see salt water. There wouldn’t be a flash of lightning or a heart attack. She wouldn’t choke on it. At worst she’d die of fright. ‘Blind superstition,’ he muttered to himself, but loud enough for Mr Phipps to hear. When he saw Robert and Katie Norris arriving on the quay with George as porter, he walked over and repeated it out loud, ‘Blind superstition, nothing more.’

‘What is?’ asked George. ‘What isn’t, too?’ He winked at the Norrises, took the pennies they offered him and said, ‘Here’s better recompense than soap.’

‘No, Mr Smith’s soap is very fine,’ said Katie. ‘I still have a cake of it untouched. It will serve me well in Canada, though I suppose they must have soap in Canada as well …’ She smiled at Aymer. ‘And when I use it I will think of you and these amusing days in Wherrytown.’

Aymer couldn’t find an amusing reply. He wasn’t looking forward to the loss of Katie and his soap to the colonies. At last, to break his silence, he pointed out Lotty Kyte for them, and retold her story. ‘She is your fellow passenger,’ he said, ‘and she is, I might suggest, a parable of sorts, for emigrants. A poet could not better her. She goes blindfolded into the future. She travels with her vision blocked, but her hopes intact. Are not your situations similar, except without the bindings on your eyes?’

‘Oh, Mr Smith, will you not simply wish us God’s speed?’ said Katie. She didn’t want to listen to his lecture. She wanted to sit quietly on the quay, with Robert’s hand engaged in hers, and feel the solid stone beneath her feet.

‘Of course I wish you speed, dear Mrs Norris,’ Aymer said. Her hair was pinned and out of sight. She wore a warm grey cloak with long, loose sleeves. He noted all of it; the rising colour of her face, the laces of her shoes, the ‘Oh’ before she said his name, her frown. ‘And furthermore I wish you every fortune on your arrival there. I would not want you, though, to miss the aptness of the parable.’

‘We are not seeking parables in Canada, but three good meals a day, and work and advancement for ourselves,’ replied Robert Norris, diverting Aymer from his wife. ‘We want only to live plainly and wholesomely, and to find a welcome there.’

‘There can be no guarantees of those,’ said Aymer. ‘No one can guarantee the heavens in Canada will have more stars …’

‘Of course, but …’

‘… or that the skies will display a deeper blue, or that the soil of that uncharted wilderness will be as rich as cake, or that you and Mrs Norris will step ashore to a spontaneity of well-being and abundance …’

‘We hope, at least, for better than we have.’

‘Yes, Hope is guaranteed …’

‘Blind superstition, nothing more,’ said George. Katie couldn’t stop her laugh.

‘… No, Hope will flourish as you sail further from our shores. Hope is what will greet you when you land. And Hope is blindfolded; her eyes are bound. This is what I mean to say.’ The Norrises were hardly listening. Mr Phipps had joined them and had taken Katie’s hand. He smiled at Aymer once again. What could he mean by it? ‘Yes, this is what I meant to say,’ continued Aymer, hurriedly, attempting to insinuate his shoulder between Katie and the preacher. Whip, made nervous by the tightness of the rope, had the good judgement to growl at Mr Phipps’s shoes. Aymer lowered his voice for Katie Norris: ‘Forgive me for my parables,’ he almost whispered. ‘I wish to speak as plainly as I can. May all your Hopes come true.’

‘And yours, of course,’ said Katie Norris, though she couldn’t imagine that a man like him had Hopes of anything. ‘And we will pray for you.’ The preacher beamed at her.

‘And I will think of you. From time to time,’ said Aymer.

‘You will not pray for our brave pioneers, I hear,’ said Mr Phipps, doing his best to strike a note of irony and not of irritation. ‘But, then, you would not claim to understand how little Hope there is without Prayer.’

‘Blind superstition,’ Aymer said. He was surprised that Katie didn’t squander a laugh for him as readily as she had done for George.

‘Indeed, indeed,’ the preacher said, and arched his eyes. Comically, he thought. ‘So Prayer is superstition? And Hope is blindfolded, is it, Mr Smith? And Canada, I heard you say, a wilderness without a chart? I have better news for our two voyagers by sea.’ Again, a disconcerting smile for Aymer Smith. Then he turned away and fixed his gaze on Katie’s face. When would these men leave her at peace? He said, ‘I have the chart to guide you through the wilderness. The Bible is your chart.’ He took a small Bible with a brass clasp and green leather covers from his coat and handed it to Katie Norris. ‘God’s speed,’ he said, and would have taken her hand again and forced a Christian parable on her. But Alice Yapp had joined them on the quay and Alice Yapp was the one person in the town who silenced him.

‘I have a useful gift,’ she said. More useful than a Bible or a bar of soap, she meant. She gave the Norrises a pot of arrowroot for the journey and a stoppered jar: ‘Six-Spoon Syrup. That’s against the seasickness, Mrs Norris.’ She turned and shook the jar to mix the brew. ‘Two teaspoons, essence of ginger. Two dessert spoons, brown brandy. Two tablespoons, strong tea. A pinch of cayenne pepper. Now let old Neptune do his worst. A sip of that and I defy you to be sick.’

In fact, old Neptune was in a placid mood that day. The sea was welcoming, with just sufficient wind to fatten up the sails. The sailors came ashore for their farewells. George seemed especially popular. He received a dozen slaps across his back, and twice as many ha’pennies for services and favours at the inn. The captain kissed Alice Yapp full on the mouth and bunched her skirts up in his hand. He waved at Walter Howells, who kept his distance from the crowd. He shook Mr Phipps’s hand. He even smiled at Aymer Smith. Then he put his hand out for the dog. Aymer pulled the rope away. ‘No, no.’ This was not expected.

‘She is the Belle ’s, I think. We can’t abandon her.’

‘I cannot let her go.’ How many days had passed, he wondered, since he’d last squared up against the captain, in the snowy lane above the inn, and been accused of theft? (‘Not only do you steal my man, you steal my dog as well.’) This time he wouldn’t hide behind a lie. He’d take the beating if it would rescue Whip. ‘It is not possible,’ he said. ‘No, no.’

‘Must I ask half a dozen of my men to take her off you?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Then let me have my dog. What, would you have us settle here and not go home? We’ll not go home without our property.’

‘I’d pay ten shillings for her, happily, or twelve,’ Aymer said. Would Whip abandon him, if he let go of the rope? ‘I beg you, leave her in my hands. She has quite adopted me.’ His voice was calm; his thoughts were not. Would he go home without a single friend? ‘ Twenty shillings, sir.’ He’d liberate the dog. He’d snap her chains of slavery. The thought was not preposterous.

The captain laughed at Aymer’s shillings (‘A ship without a dog?’) and shook his head. He took hold of the rope and snapped it out of Aymer’s hand. Whip didn’t seem to mind. She liked the smell of shoes and legs, it didn’t matter whose. The captain shook George’s hand. A sixpence passed between them. ‘Good man, George. And if you ever want a place at sea …’ The captain put his arm round Mrs Yapp again. ‘Next trip,’ he said. ‘We could be back within the year. Now, let’s aboard.’ He tugged at Whip. Aymer should have snatched the rope and run. At least he should have stooped and rubbed Whip’s head and wept into her hair. Instead he stayed as stiff as pine, between the preacher and the parlourman, and watched the ship’s dog disappear for good.