Signals of Distress (3 page)

The Americans, with Otto sleeping in the cart, and Whip in tow, embarked upon the six-mile walk to Wherrytown, where there was food and lodging and where, by now, Aymer Smith, that other
dreaming voyager by sea, had found the inn. Walter Howells rode ahead on his laming horse to spread the news. The air – scrubbed and quietened by the storm – was now so still that Miggy
and her mother could take a lighted piece of wood and carry it the half-mile to Dry Manston to start a celebration fire in their own home. And what was there to celebrate, besides the passage of a
storm? Much. Much. Much.

A
YMER
S
MITH
was taken to the inn in Wherrytown by George, the parlourman-cum-porter, whose job it was to bully custom from any
ship that docked. George didn’t take to the
Tar
’s single passenger, the unpromising and unattractive Mr Smith. The man’s breath was foul. And his bookish jollity, his
height, his thinness, his insistence that they shake hands like old acquaintances and then take turns to ‘bear the burden’ of his carriage bag on the short walk between the quay and the
inn, were misplaced, misjudged, unbecoming. If they had to share the burden, would they also share the tip?

The night gale, which had lifted tiles and flung back doors in Wherrytown, had left the quayside scrubbed and clean. Aymer Smith remarked it was ‘a fresh and handsome town’, but,
steady though he was in conversation, he had climbed awkwardly from the cabin to the deck. His shoulder was bruised, or worse, from the tumble from his bunk. His throat was sore and hot. His legs
were still at sea. He was shivering, from cold and apprehension and timidity. George could only guess what business such a man could have in Wherrytown at that time of year, but what he knew was
this, that Aymer Smith would not be an inspiring presence at the inn. Here was a moper. Here was a book snuffler. Here was a man who couldn’t sing.

Perhaps he couldn’t sing, but God the man could talk!

‘What kind of lodging are you taking me to?’ he asked George, in a voice that attempted informality but managed to be both teasing and condescending. ‘Tolerable, I
hope.’

‘Ours is the only inn,’ George said. He could think of no better commendation. ‘It’s us or nowhere in this town.’

‘What is the name of this grand inn?’

‘It has no name – nor any need of one. It is the only inn.’

‘Indeed, but then this is the only ship in dock, and I its only passenger, and yet we both have names. It would not do, I think, to call me simply “Passenger” or this vessel
“Ship” because we are, for the moment, unique.’ He allowed George a moment to keep pace with this Comedy of Wisdoms. ‘Names, it is true, are mostly useful should one need to
distinguish
one man, one ship, one inn from another. But they are helpful, too, for
signifying
character. So, were your inn known as the Temperance, then I could well imagine its mood
and its sobriety. The Commercial has a more convivial ring, I think. And the Siren or the Venus? Well, I should not wish to take a room in such a place, unless that room had thorough locks on every
door. What do you say?’

‘What should I say, except what I have said three times, and that is that there is no choice?’

‘Say it three hundred times and still you fail to reassure me. What phrase is there to best describe your inn?’

‘The only inn in town.’

‘Ah, yes. You are right to stand firm against my questioning. Refuse to yield to me!’

‘I don’t know enough to yield or not – but I’m the only one in Wherrytown’ll lead you to an empty bed. Except there’s plenty barnyards in the neighbourhood,
so long as you like rats.’

‘The rat is much maligned …’ But Aymer Smith’s discourse on rats would have to wait another opportunity. The two men reached the lower entrance to the inn.

The inn was ideal for hide-and-seek. It was a warren, untouched by architects. The town rose steeply from the harbour front and the building had perplexing levels that placed the stable lofts
scarcely higher than the scullery basement and meant that the attic box room looking south and the ground-floor parlour facing north were connected by a level corridor. An outside wooden staircase
led from the seafront courtyard to a balcony and bedrooms, but there was no direct seafront entrance to the public rooms. There wasn’t any logic to the place nor, even, any regimental
regularity to the shapes and sizes of the building’s bricks and stones.

‘Accommodation for man and beast. Victuals, Viands and Potations,’ said George. ‘It’s hay or cheese for supper.’

Aymer followed him up a narrow passageway of steep, pebbled steps that climbed through the heart of the inn. He didn’t like the smell of fish and urine, nor the meanness of the alley, nor
the pinched and sea-damp wind which rifted at his back. They came out in a lane, and for a moment Aymer was relieved to think their destination was some other, better place. But George directed him
towards a raised front door with a flat granite lintel, just to the right of the alleyway. It opened directly into a low-ceilinged parlour, empty except for a solid, black-haired woman on her
knees, removing ashes from the grate. She was, she said, Mrs Yapp, the landlady, the innkeeper. She didn’t rise to greet her guest.

‘Give the gentleman a bed,’ she instructed George.

‘Assure me that you have sheets,’ demanded Aymer, gripping his carriage bag and coat.

‘There’s sheets for those that ask,’ said Mrs Yapp.

‘And good, hot food that’s fit for eating?’

‘There’s nowhere else,’ she said. ‘Unless you want to stop with Mr Phipps, the preacher, who has a room for Christian travellers. Sinners and repentants catered for. The
bill will be repented, that’s for sure. It’s good, hot food he dishes up, and fit for eating, except it’s Buttered Tracts and Bible Soup and Psalm Tea.’

‘… and Hebrewed Ale,’ said George. He’d said the same a hundred times before.

‘… and the Word Made Flesh,’ added Aymer, after a short moment’s silence.

Aymer had meant to make a good impression in Wherrytown. He knew that he would never have a reputation for vivacity, and that he was more comfortable with documents than company, but still
he’d meant to be amusing and relaxed, putting George at ease, demonstrating to Mrs Yapp that he, though firm and businesslike, was happy to be informal. But once he had been taken down two
short flights of steps and left alone inside one of the balconied rooms above the courtyard he almost wept. He had, he felt, been treated with hostility. The woman hadn’t even stood to greet
him. That was not behaviour to admire. And George the parlourman had seemed to find his conversation comic, except when he attempted jokes. He hadn’t even shown gratitude when Aymer had
presented him with a bar of white soap by way of thanks.

His room was on two levels and had four curtained beds, none of which was welcoming, and none of which had sheets. There was no other furniture nor any draping on the windows. There was a
chamber pot, a water jug and two small tin basins. The walls and floorboards smelled of fresh lime wash. At least the bedbugs had been treated. Aymer couldn’t imagine spending a single night
in any comfort there. Perhaps he could conclude his business in one day and take the Sunday return passage on the
Tar
, home again. He went out on to the balcony and looked across the
courtyard and the harbourfront to where the
Tar
was docked amongst some smaller fishing boats that had been damaged by the gale. The cold, the breeze, the brightness of the sky, his shoulder
pain, the dislocation that he felt from being far from home, brought water to his eyes. It didn’t help that he had travelled all this way with nothing but bad news.

He chose a bed close to the windows, where there was light enough to read and write. He took a quill, some paper and a pinch of ink from his bag. He mixed sufficient ink with spittle and began
to write, unsteadily, using his knees as a desk. He put the title of the family firm in capitals at the top of the page:

Now he wrote a second letter, to his younger brother:

Aymer, at forty-two, was senior to Matthias by nineteen months – yet he was the younger, lesser man in everything but age. Matthias had a city and a country house, a wife, two daughters
and a son, a carriage and six servants. Matthias was a Justice of the Peace. He was obese. He sang, a decent baritone. And since his father died he’d been the acknowledged master of Hector
Smith & Sons. He had transformed the business. The city works employed ninety adult hands, as well as twenty children, and produced forty thousand bars of soap a week. Smith’s Finest
Soaps were used by royalty, but there were cheap, good-looking soaps for working people too. Soon the company would be renamed: M
ATTHIAS
S
MITH &
S
ON
.

Aymer had little interest in soap. He was a Sceptic, a Radical and an active Amender. But, still, he was the junior partner in Hector Smith & Sons. It provided him with income, and
notionally it was his task to help his brother at the works. Matthias, though, had no faith in Aymer. He thought he was a waster and a fool, best left alone to read his riotous pamphlets and his
volumes of verse than let loose amongst the company’s order books and ledgers. Yet Aymer went to work each day. He had a sense of duty. There was dignity in labour. The task he took upon
himself was not to help his brother but to check him. If Aymer could rename the company it would not be M
ATTHIAS
S
MITH
& S
ON
or S
MITH
B
ROTHERS
, but S
MITH
B
ROTHERHOOD
or E
MANCIPATION
S
OAPS
. He didn’t have an easy manner with the factory hands. He wasn’t even liked. But he could fight on their behalf. To no avail he pressed his brother to
provide gloves and leather aprons to protect the soapmakers from the boiling fat. He bullied for a shorter working day. He argued that the works should not employ children under twelve. He
recommended profit-sharing schemes, and factory schools, and rights of Combination. He was, as Matthias said to Fidia, his wife, ‘half-boiled, half-baked and half a man’.

‘He’s hell set on damaging his one true brother in the selfish interests of fraternity,’ was Fidia’s practised opinion.

At Aymer’s instigation, three factory hands had formed a Works Committee and should be (Fidia again) ‘sacked before they do some harm’. Matthias wished his brother were
elsewhere, so that the sackings could take place without commotion. As in everything, his wishes would come true.

It was the plight of kelpers such as Rosie and Miggy Bowe in their rough cottages at Dry Manston that would provide Matthias with some respite from his brother’s quarrelsome philanthropy,
and bring Aymer on the journey west. For forty years Hector Smith & Sons had bought supplies of soda ash for soapmaking from the kelpers on the coast beyond Wherrytown. Walter Howells and
Walter Howells’s father before him had been Smith agents there, purchasing the kelp ash from the Dry Manston families and arranging wagons to deliver it to the manufactory, five days’
journey overland to the east. Now thanks to Nicolas Leblanc, a French surgeon with a taste for chemistry, a simple process was established to extract sodium carbonate from common salt. It was pure;
it was cheap; and when the railway was complete it could be delivered within a day. ‘What is the point,’ Matthias asked Aymer, ‘in using Mr Howells when we have
Leblanc?’

‘The point,’ said Aymer, ‘is our Duty. The Smiths and Howells have been partners since we were young. Our fortunes have been interlocked. And Mr Howells has contracts –
moral ones at least, if not legally established – with families who rely on stooping in the sea for kelp for their small incomes.’

‘Well, let them give their backs a rest and let them dry their feet. We have no further need of kelp. I cannot argue further.’

‘I will not let this rest.’

‘Aymer. The choice is mine, not yours. You well know the stipulations in Father’s will. Besides, my letter to Mr Howells is already written and ready for dispatch. I will not go back
on my word.’

‘You cannot break their trust by letter! What friends are we to hide behind the mail?’

‘You would prefer, perhaps, to write a sonnet?’

‘I would prefer that you and Mr Howells would sit down face to face …’