Jim Crace - Signals of Distress

Rosie had never known a man as slow as Aymer. His lips and hands had hardly moved. They were standing like two dancers at a ball, waiting for the music to begin. She had to settle to her life. She pushed her hands beneath his parlour coat and pressed her head against his chest. She could feel his body tensing. Was he excited by her now, or was he repelled? She held him tightly, one hand spread out across his back, the other underneath his arm. She couldn’t kiss him though, not on the mouth. His cock was growing hard.

‘I only need someone,’ she said.

‘I can’t.’

‘You can.’ She dropped a hand on to his trouser front, and pressed him there. He doubled up. She thought his legs had given way, at first. His body sagged. He gasped so loudly that the dogs outside jumped up against the porch, and one began to bark. He reminded Rosie of the first boy that she’d ever touched, when she was seventeen. And Aymer, really, was just a boy, despite his age. He’d been slow with her, she realized, because he didn’t know the way. This was a voyage frightening and new for him. Rosie was his first. And she would have to take command or wait forever.

She took him through the sacking, pushed him on the bed, tugged his boots off, and unbuttoned him: the jacket, the shirt, the cuffs. She pulled his trousers down, and joined him on the bed. She didn’t take her own clothes off. She was embarrassed by her bones. She stroked him on his chest and legs, but wanted really to be stroked herself. At last he found the courage to explore her. His hands were shaking when he pushed her smock up to her throat and put his fingers, then his mouth, onto her tiny breasts. She had to take his other hand and press it in between her thighs. He pushed so hard she almost doubled up as well. It seemed so odd that she should be excited by this man and that he — hesitant and clumsy, at first — had become so urgent and engrossed.

When Aymer finally ran his fingers up her legs, her hands went dead on him. She fell over on her back, closed her eyes and simply held his body close. Again he didn’t seem to know the way. His fingernails were too long. His shirt sleeves tickled her. He didn’t know how delicate she was, or what to touch. She let him fumble for a while, and then she helped him, holding his fingers between hers until there was no dryness left. If he thought that he would be the centre of attention, he was wrong. She concentrated on herself — looking at him, talking to him only when his hands and fingers were too rough or slow. She didn’t try to touch him any more. He was not there — except to be her serving gentleman. But she was more there all the time — getting bigger, narrowing; becoming stretched, tense, bloated … tremulous. She climaxed on his fingertips.

Aymer looked both startled and afraid, she thought. ‘Are you quite well?’ he asked, evidently alarmed by all her noise and agitation. He must have imagined that she was feverish, or suffering from fits.

‘I’m well. I’m well,’ she said. ‘And what of you? Let’s see.’ She put her hand down on his cock. It wasn’t hard, but it was stiff enough to rub. He rolled on top of her and butted at her legs. She put his cock inside. He wasn’t slow. Ten thrusts and that was it. The bubble burst. Not sexually. His orgasm was nothing much. It had been better in the inn’s dank alleyway. No, the bubble was the trance that had bewitched him the moment he had touched her hair. It was the same trance that he had felt, less fleetingly, with Katie Norris. To be alive and in such half-a-dream was rhapsody. But this was odd and unexpected for Aymer Smith. The instant his virginity was lost with his ejaculation, there was no longer any rhapsody. There was no trance. This was sober. He’d never felt so wide awake, and stripped. There — and it was not a dream — was the straw-packed bed, the threadbare blanket and the woman’s flushed and bony face, eyes closed, her legs spreadeagled under him, and daylight making curving slats across her chest. What had he done? What would his brother say?

Aymer tried to be polite. He asked if he should bring a drink, or mend the fire, or throw the blanket over her. But all the time he spoke, he was gathering his clothes from off the earthy floor and dressing hastily. He muttered thanks. He almost put more money on the shelf, but had no coins left. He wished her all the good fortune in the world. ‘I promise you, dear Mrs Bowe, that I am in your debt …’ The truth is Aymer ran away from her, out of the door and past the dogs, along the six-mile coast to Wherrytown, where he would have plenty to repent, including Mrs Yapp’s bill and his farewells to George. Get out of town, he told himself, with every stride. Get on the Tar . Get home.

Rosie wasn’t sorry that he’d gone. Nor was her life enhanced by him. Though it was changed. Aymer had left her something more valuable than coins. She wasn’t quite pregnant yet. Her egg hadn’t voyaged down into her uterus and implanted. But the egg was fertilized and it was moving. By Sunday she would be with child. The guess in Wherrytown would be that Rosie’s new baby would be black. Everything unusual on the coast would, from that day, be put on Otto’s bill. When no one could remember Aymer Smith or put a name to any of the Americans, or their ship even, the African would still be talked about. In fact, he gave a lasting phrase to Wherrytown. If anything went wrong — the harvest failed, the yeast went flat, a coin or a button disappeared — they’d say ‘Blame it on the African!’ or ‘Otto’s been at work again.’ Otto fathered many babies on the coast, not only Rosie Bowe’s.

But for the moment Rosie was still alone with no one but herself to love. And she wasn’t the sort to love herself. She rested on her wooden bed and conjured up the Belle . She could think more calmly of her daughter now. She was an optimist again. She pictured Miggy on the ship. It was. her marriage day. The captain would anoint her with sea water beneath the canvas canopies, the rigging vaults and the mastwood spires. Blindfolded Lotty Kyte and the woman with the lovely, sandy hair would be the maids of honour. Miggy would lie down with Ralph that night, in their creaking cabin out at sea, a seashell ring on her finger, his arms about her waist, the blood-red ensign round her throat. And they would shortly be together in the Lands of Promise.

THIS WAS Aymer’s final night in Wherrytown. He had the whole inn to himself. George neglected him. Even Mrs Yapp had disappeared — she’d gone to Walter Howells’s for some celebration of their own. There was no one for Aymer to talk to. When he heard Wherrytowners coming back from Evensong, he was almost tempted to stroll up to the chapel and the chapel house to see Mr Phipps. Just for the company. It might, he thought, be an amusement to conclude the conversation he had started that morning with the preacher on the quay — Blind Superstition, and the Bible as a Chart. But he guessed that Mr Phipps would hardly welcome a Sceptic interrupting his supper. So Aymer stayed at the inn and had to eat alone. Cold ham and pickles. Solitary pie.

Aymer, as the only guest, could choose to sleep in any of the inn’s twenty empty beds. He hardly dared to sleep at all, in fact, in case he missed the Wednesday’s dawn departure of the Tar and the liberating taste of salt-free city air which beckoned him. He’d already packed his bag and dressed for the voyage by ten that Tuesday night. He wouldn’t go to bed. He took a blanket to the parlour. He put his chair next to the grate, facing the window that opened on to the lane. The fire would keep him warm until the early hours. And, if he dozed, he would wake as soon as there was any daylight in the window. He tried to read at first, but he was tired of Mr Paine. He couldn’t concentrate. Rosie Bowe had disconcerted him. He tried to put her out of mind. He shouldn’t blame himself. The fault was hers. She’d misconstrued his charity.