Signals of Distress (7 page)

‘That is exactly what we seek in Canada,’ said Robert Norris, seeking something else as well, to keep the evening civil.

‘You’ll find it, sir, so long as you’re not frightened of hard work, plain food … and ice! They’ve winters there that make the weather here seem tropical.’
The captain called along the table to a stringy, grey-haired sailor, the one whom Walter Howells had hauled out of the sea that day. ‘John Peacock, tell these good people that tale we had the
other night, about the frozen boat.’ Anything to keep Smith quiet!

John Peacock put his pipe down on his plate and, winking at his comrades, commenced with ‘It was last October and …’ He told – in fixed and tested sentences which seemed
as mannered as a psalm – how two brothers from below Quebec agreed to row a gentleman from Boston across the St Lawrence to the southern bank: ‘They should’ve known better. At
that time of year! But they couldn’t refuse the fare he’d promised them. They’d end up rich, and wouldn’t have to row a boat again, except to get back home. And why go home
when you are rich? They got midstream. And then they felt the tugging on the oars and something banging up against the boat. They thought it must be beavers, snapping at the wood. A beaver’s
got more tooth than brain. But it was ice. And ice with teeth that’s worse than beavers’ teeth. It lay hold of the keel. And all their rowing, all their prayers, all their cursing
language, couldn’t get them to the bank.’

The Norrises were grimacing, not sure how seriously to take the sailor’s tale. The talk of storms and ice was not encouraging.

‘Perhaps we’d better take a passage to Australia,’ said Katie. ‘They’ve no ice there.’

‘There’s ice-mountains floating in the Tasman Sea,’ said Aymer. ‘You should read the journals of Captain James Cook or Sir Joseph Banks. They had their share of bergs off
Botany Bay …’

Comstock hushed Aymer with the flat of his hand (the selfsame hushing gesture that Matthias, his brother, used) and said, impatiently, ‘Listen, sir, if you will. He’s not done yet.
Come on now, John. Let’s hear the end of it.’

‘The end of it is that the brothers’ boat was frosted into solid water, so suddenly they hadn’t any chance of being saved,’ continued John Peacock, looking Katie Norris
in the face.

‘Why did they not simply walk ashore on solid ice?’ asked Aymer. He would not be an uninquiring listener.

‘Like penguins, sir?’

‘Why not, indeed?’

‘Because their hands were frozen to the oars and – excusing me my language, Captain, and the lady – their backsides had iced on to the boat …’

‘Then why not shout for help?’

‘Ah, when they opened up their mouths, to cry for help, as you advise them, Mr Smith, their tongues and lips were welded by the cold.’ He pointed at the Norrises. ‘You’ll
need to watch for that when we set sail for Canada. Best not to talk on deck.’ For once the laughter from the parlour matched the drunken din in the Commercial. ‘Their families drove a
cart and horses out on the ice to rescue them. They lit a fire – midstream – to thaw them out. But that hard river ice did not give way. Nor did the boatmen or their passenger begin to
melt. It wasn’t till mid-March that the ice released the boat. And then it went downstream towards the sea before it could be saved.’ He held a finger to his lips. ‘It isn’t
over yet.’ He picked his pipe up, drew on it to keep the tobacco burning. He made the silence at the table last. He took his time. He much preferred to smoke than talk.

Now – his voice macadamized by nicotine – he told the diners at the inn how the brothers and their passenger floated down the St Lawrence ‘sitting as straight as three proud
men in church’, with backbones of ice and oars frozen to their hands. ‘You’d think they were alive,’ he said. ‘Or ghosts.’

‘They were picked up within a day by a sailing ship. She was the
Lizzie Wilce
, and she was heading out off Anticosti Island in the Gulf for Liverpool. The boatmen and the Bostonian
had been dead five months. But they looked as fresh as eels. The captain tried to bring them round with slaps across their backs. And brandy. He thawed them out in front of the little grate in his
cabin. Two of them had to be buried at sea. They stank like mackerel. The third, though, looked more like salmon. He had a touch of pink around the gills. So they put him in a hip-bath and covered
him in steaming towels and let him soak. By the time the
Lizzie Wilce
had crossed the mid-Atlantic ridge the man was calling out for grog. And by the time they’d reached the Irish Sea
he was full enough of life to win ten dollars off the captain in a game of five’n’one. You’d never know he’d been iced up all winter. Except the ship’s surgeon had to
cut away two toes. And half his nose. He could neither walk nor talk without a limp. He drank and gambled his way to Liverpool. He liked it there; the mildness of the winters, the thinness of the
ice. He stayed. Now he’s got a chandler’s business, on the dock. He vows he’ll never step aboard a boat again, nor risk another nostril in the ice. I’ve seen the man myself.
I bought this pipe off him. We shared a drink together. He told me how he’d lost his nose. I didn’t see his feet, or count his toes. Nor can I tell you who he was. One of the brothers?
Or the Bostonian? He wouldn’t say, for fear of it getting back to his family. And every word is true. What say you, Mr Smith?’

‘I say, you’d think the way he spoke would give the man away,’ said Aymer, meaning to demonstrate his good humour. ‘What kind of accent did he have? I suppose a gentleman
from Boston can be distinguished from a Canadian boatman.’ John Peacock pinched his own nose between his fingers. ‘I gould nod dell,’ he said. ‘I gould nod unterdand a wort
he sait. He hagn’d gok no dose!’

‘Then, if you did not understand a word, how, how did this story … ?’ said Aymer, but his question was drowned in the applause which Aymer took to be at his expense. Even
Katie Norris had clapped her hands.

The captain slapped him on the back: ‘What would your chemists say to that?’

Aymer did his best to join the laughter. He clapped his hands too – a little late – and swung round on his seat to deflect their attention. He saw that Mrs Yapp, who’d been
listening at the parlour door, had a pair of arms around her waist and was holding a man’s finger in her hand. It was Walter Howells, less muddy than he’d been but still with traces of
the coast on the lappets of his jacket. He laughed longer than the rest, and then stepped forward to the table. ‘Captain Comstock. Good evening, sir.’ They shook hands. And then the
agent offered his hand to Aymer, without the least trace of discomfort or apology. ‘Mr Smith. I’m pleased to see you so established in Wherrytown. You should have sent me word of your
arrival.’ There was no choice for Aymer but to be civil.

‘Perhaps we should go to a quieter place so we can talk. I’ve bad news …’

‘There’s no news that’s so bad it won’t wait till tomorrow,’ Howells said. ‘Enjoy your supper and your beer. I’ve business with the captain for tonight.
And they are pressing matters.’ He gave a short and portly bow to Mrs Norris, nodded at her husband, banged John Peacock on the back with a ‘Bravo, sir!’ and went out of the
parlour with Captain Comstock at his heels.

Aymer did his best to recompose himself. He entertained the company with his opinions on Reform, Phrenology and Agriculture. He disclosed for them his whole budget of alerting anecdotes. When
the treacle pudding was dished he refused his portion, and was admired for it, he thought, especially by Mrs Norris, who was unable to clear her plate entirely.

‘I take no sugar,’ he explained. ‘I eat my supper bitterly, but with good conscience, sugar being the consequence of slavery. Slave dust, that’s my name for it. There is
no place for sweetness on my plate.’

‘This is the man that begs for sheets,’ said George, placing Aymer’s pudding in front of John Peacock. ‘Now there’s an oddity.’

‘I do not see it, George. What oddity?’

‘They’s cotton sheets. And cotton is the consequence of what? I’ll have your bed stripped back to the bolster, so you can sleep in peace. Just say the word.’

‘A nice distinction, George,’ said Aymer, and stopped the laughter with a yawn.

A
YMER SLEPT WELL
for the best part of the night, despite the concert of coughing sailors and, occasionally, a barking dog. He was asleep when Katie and
Robert Norris came to the room, a little before midnight, after their habitual walk down to the quay. He didn’t hear their whispering. Nor the rustle of their clothes. He’d drunk more
beer than he was used to. So, though his sleep was fast and deep, his dreams were urinous. He dreamed he’d wet himself, and then that he was passing water in the office at Hector Smith &
Sons and that Matthias caught him doing it. He dreamed that Mrs Yapp had slipped between his sheets. She took his penis in her hands and she relieved him – but of what? The urine and the
semen were confused.

He woke to whispering and low light, which lay in a broad band across his blankets where the curtains round his bed had parted. He’d slept till dawn. He’d have to rise and go down to
the alleyway to urinate. He couldn’t use the chamber pot, not with the Norrises so close. Their whispering began again. He didn’t move, but tried to catch the words. It was Katie
hushing Robert, giggling, saying what? Was it, ‘I can’t, I can’t’? Aymer turned onto his side. What was more natural for a man with one bruised shoulder than to seek to ease
the pain by lying on his uninjured side? He held the bed curtain back an inch or two so that he could see into the room, but not be seen himself. He couldn’t see the Norrises nor where they
slept. They’d taken care to seal themselves.

Aymer must have slept again. When he next held the curtain back the morning light had filled the room. He heard the other bed give way, and then two bare legs appeared below the screening
curtain. It was Katie. When she stood and stepped into the light her nightdress fell to hide her legs down to the ankles. Her calves were stocky and lightly freckled. She was the colour of a
thrush. Robert’s hand came out and pinched the loosest flesh on her backside. She put a finger to her mouth and pouted ‘Ssshhh!’ She tiptoed to the bed end and half obscured from
Aymer by the curtains she stooped to find the chamber pot, to rid herself of last night’s beer. She had her back against the light. Her sandy hair was thick and carroty against the cheap
plantation cotton of her white nightdress. Aymer didn’t dare to breathe. He watched her shorten as she squatted on the pot. He couldn’t see her urinate. But there was sound and smell.
She stood and put the pot away and then, pulling the curtain aside, returned to bed. Her husband pushed her nightdress up, above her knees, beyond her thighs. He showed her buttocks to the room.
Aymer couldn’t see their heads, but he could watch their bodies in that early light embracing, wrapping, bending like a pair of fish: a stringy eel, a plump and mottled salmon.

Aymer hadn’t seen a naked woman before. Katie was his first. He was surprised how broad she was, and how thickly – and darkly – the hair grew between her legs. Robert had his
spectacles on and a hand on each cheek of her buttocks. He pulled on her as if her flesh was dough, except this dough was pink and glinting at its heart.

Aymer had held his breath so long he coughed. He couldn’t stop himself. He coughed repeatedly. He might only have breathed in loose lint from the sheets, but it felt as if he’d
swallowed his tongue. He heard the Norris curtains draw shut, and whispers, giggles once again. What should he do? He didn’t know the protocol. Should he pretend to sleep? He’d coughed
too much to sleep. Besides the coughing had made his bladder ache. He didn’t want to wet himself. He got out on the sea side of his bed, found his coat and boots and went out to the balcony
above the courtyard. He pulled his coat over his sling so that only his good arm was sleeved. He secured his boots. He crept downstairs, bare legs beneath his coat, no shirt. He looked like an
adulterer. An unsatisfied adulterer, because his penis was enlarged and pushed against his coat.

He found a dark part of the alleyway and urinated carelessly. A minor, unaccommodating stream hit his lower leg and ran into his boot. He tried to put a picture in his mind of Katie Norris, her
face, her buttocks and her hair. But he was now too breathless and too exercised to concentrate. His forehead almost rested on the brickwork of the alleyway. He didn’t feel the cold. He
didn’t feel any pain in the busy arm which he had freed from the sling. He ejaculated on the bricks. He swayed, for a few seconds at the most, and then the outside world blew in. Peace had
been restored. He felt entirely tranquil now. Katie Norris was a thousand miles away. She was in Montreal. He cleared his throat and spat on to the wall. The little ship’s dog, Whip, joined
him. She smelled his urine, licked it from his leg. She went up on her hind legs and pushed her nose inside his coat. Her tail was like a metronome.

Aymer didn’t want to go back to his room. He wasn’t welcome there. He didn’t want to sit inside the parlour, with flirting Mrs Yapp. His flirt had disappeared. It hung like
giblets in the alleyway. He walked down to the quay with Whip. The
Tar
was ready to depart. Its steam was up. The sailors waved at him. Their steam was up as well. They didn’t seem to
mind he had no trousers on. They wanted to set sail before the black clouds to the west came in and dropped their tons of snow.

The streets of Wherrytown were quiet. It was the Sabbath and the townspeople could indulge their sins until Evensong and then poultice them with hymns. Aymer knew what he would do. He’d
not bother with Mr Howells. The man had missed his opportunity. Two opportunities! ‘I have done my best to try and make acquaintance with him,’ Aymer told himself. ‘I met his
roughness with civility, to no avail.’ So now, he’d make a pedestrian tour along the coast that day – at once, at least as soon as he had put some trousers on. He’d tell the
kelpers face to face what Smith & Sons had decided. What Matthias had decided. The kelpers were the victims, not Walter Howells. Aymer could ease their suffering with bars of soap and, perhaps,
a shilling for each family. He’d make his mark.