Signals of Distress (19 page)

So what if he didn’t know the way to the Seven Springs? Or if he was too timid for the horse? Or if he was nervous of travelling on his own across moors where there were highwaymen and
bridgeless rivers? Then he could go home in company. There were a dozen wagonloads of salted pilchards leaving on the Wednesday morning. If he could only tolerate an exposed place amongst the
hogsheads and put his shoulder to the wheel when there was mud, or a heavy hill, then he’d be back with the Sceptics by the Sunday night. His duty would be done. More to the point, he would
be free of Wherrytown and all of its embarrassments. Nobody at home would know what a mighty fool he had made of himself.

He’d had a dream that Monday night, made turbulent by pilchard oil and too much beer, in which he danced a jig with Miggy, Katie and Alice Yapp as his three partners. He had no trousers
on. The captain punched him on the chin, but no one tried to intervene. Otto shouted at him, pointing at the door, ‘Go! Go! Go!’ The sailors pelted him with kelp.

Aymer woke to daylight and an empty room. The Norrises were out of bed. Either they had gone to breakfast or they were on their morning walk. His throat was dry and sore. His head ached. Whip
was stirring in her sleep at his side. He stretched his hand and stroked her ear. Was she the only friend in Wherrytown, this scraggy, undiscriminating dog? He feared, he
knew
, she was. And
that was why he wouldn’t take the wagon or the horse. He had to put the world to rights.
His
world, that is. He wanted to be liked. He wanted to regain his dignity before he left. He
couldn’t fool himself that he still had any tasks in Wherrytown. He’d paid his shillings to the kelpers. He’d spoken to the agent Howells. His work was done. And any foolish hopes
that he might find a country wife had – just in time – been dashed. Otto haunted him, it’s true. But surely Otto would be far from Wherrytown by now. And surely in good hands.
Aymer wouldn’t allow himself to consider the bleak alternatives. His conscience was too bruised already. Still, he was persuaded he must stay in Wherrytown, but not for Otto’s sake.
Good sense dictated it. He couldn’t go back home just yet. After all, he had a chesty cold. He couldn’t travel in this weather until the infection had eased at least. It would be
suicide.

Instead? Instead he’d stay on till the Wednesday week and take a passage on the
Tar
on its next return along the coast. That was a symmetry worth waiting for. And in the meantime
he’d have seven days to know the countryside. He’d always been an admirer of the Picturesque. He could take George as his guide, perhaps. And Whip, of course. There might be antiquities
to see. He’d botanize. He’d read. He’d try a little poetry, and begin a diary of his observations. He might attempt some sketches, too: the Cradle Rock, the harbour boats, the
charming, unconceited cottages above Dry Manston beach. His health would benefit from rambles and diversions such as that. At night he wouldn’t be able to avoid the company in the parlour, of
course. But he would be a
mended
man, keeping his own counsel and maintaining an educated distance from the conversations of his fellow guests. He knew that he had
volunteered
himself
too much. Had been too generous and too exotic. Had interfered. He had seven days to be more reticent, more taciturn, more worthy of respect. He would be reckless with his reticence, a pleasing
paradox.

There was no one in the parlour. Nor was there any fire. He didn’t ring the handbell. He helped himself to a cold breakfast from what had been left on the side table: potted hare, a dish
of plain pilchards, oat bread, some cheese, some lukewarm grog. He didn’t touch the pilchards or the grog. He put his nose into a book – Emile dell’Ova’s
Truismes
, in
French – and ate just bread and cheese. Surely it wouldn’t be long before someone came, and could encounter him sitting quietly at the table, preoccupied, contained. But no one came for
half an hour, and Aymer soon grew bored of dell’Ova’s company. He hand-fed the dog on potted hare and pilchards and then, when she wouldn’t stop wimping at the outer door, he took
his coat and went into the lane.

Here was a town more preoccupied than Aymer could ever hope to be. He walked up towards the chapel first. He nodded gravely at a balding, elderly woman spinning in her outhouse. Hanks of flax
hung from a beam between the hams and herbs. A pig, tied by the leg, sent Whip away. The woman didn’t look up from her wheel. One nod and she might snap her yarn. There wasn’t anybody
else to be
grave
with, or to show the new, forbidding brevity of his conversation. The lanes and yards were quiet and empty, and all the windows shut. The chapel door was open, though, and
there were two old men digging in the chapel green, with Mr Phipps the preacher looking on. Aymer might have found some company there – another man who loved debate, who took his pleasures
from a book – for Mr Phipps was Aymer’s twin in many ways. Both were prisoners of priggishness, and dogma, and vocabulary. Both had Latin. Both were smitten by Katie Norris. They were
two peas, except they disagreed on everything they had in common. So Aymer didn’t catch the preacher’s eye but persevered with his walk, following the path round to some rough-cut steps
in rock behind the chapel. They led up to a muddy overhang which opened out to flat, high ground and a patchwork of stone-walled fields. Aymer turned towards the sea. There was a perfect panorama
of chapel, town and harbour, with thinning wraiths of smoke haunting the sky in silent, crooked unison and the last remaining smudges of the snow slipping down those roofs that had no warming
chimneys.

Was this worthy of a sketch, a verse, an observation in his diary, Aymer wondered. What was that phrase he’d read that morning in dell’Ova? He took the book from his pocket and found
the passage: ‘The solitary Traveller has better company than those that voyage in the multitude, for he has Nature as his best Companion and no man can be lonely in its Assemblies of sky and
earth and water, nor want of Friends.’ Aymer read this passage several times. It ought to comfort him, he thought. He was one of life’s ‘solitary travellers’ after all, a
Radical, an aesthete and a bachelor. He didn’t voyage in the multitude. He knew that he was destined to a life alone. He looked for solace in the Assembly of sky and earth and water that was
spread out before him. But there wasn’t any solace. He couldn’t fool himself. He’d rather be some cheerful low-jack, welcome at an inn, than the emperor of all this landscape.

Thankfully the sound of Wherrytown at work disturbed his
Melancholia
. The two men on the chapel green were striking granite with their shovels. Nathaniel Rankin’s grave already had
collapsing sides. Down on the shore and all around the salting hall, the local women shouted to each other and clattered barrels. And from the harbour there were the sounds of distant carpentry, of
mallets hitting nails, and saws in wood. Aymer could see that there were men hauling recut spars and repaired masts into place on the
Belle
and much industry on deck and on the quay. But he
would need an eyeglass to decipher who was who. Was that a couple arm in arm, standing partly hidden by the ship? Was that the Norrises? The only figure he could name for sure was sitting on a
horse and waving his arms like a general.

Whip didn’t seem to like the height. She snapped at Aymer’s shoes and barked.

‘Good morning, Mr Smith.’ Preacher Phipps was standing fifteen feet below the overhang and looking up. ‘What brings you to my chapel? You come to be baptized, I hope? What
Scriptures are you holding in your hand?’

Aymer resisted the temptation to summarize his views on God and churches. ‘I came only to admire the outlook,’ he said.

‘What do you see then? A man of God engaged in God’s good work.’

Aymer couldn’t stop himself. ‘I do not see you working, Mr Phipps. You do not seem to have a shovel in your hands. I did not spot you yesterday amongst the pilchards. Nor do I expect
to see you tomorrow labouring with wood and rope.’

‘I was not sent here to labour with my hands, but to grace the pulpit. The Good Lord chose me for my Morals not my Muscles. And which of those do you excel in, Mr Smith?’

‘I do not aspire to either.’

‘Then I will pray for you.’

‘What will you pray? That I should be more muscular?’

‘More muscular indeed. But hot in body, sir. More muscular in Spirit. More muscular in Faith.’

‘I thank you for your kind concern. But I have walked here simply for the view and not to join your congregation.’ Aymer looked out once again towards the quay. Why hadn’t he
been ‘more reticent, more taciturn’? It wasn’t dignified to be caught in debate above an open grave. ‘I thank you, Mr Phipps,’ he said again. ‘I only wish to see
what progress they are making on the ship and then I will vacate this lookout and leave you to your holy duties.’

‘See if you can spy your African from there and earn yourself a sovereign.’

‘What do you say?’

The preacher explained how Walter Howells had put a sovereign up for anyone who brought the slave back to the ship. ‘Warm or frozen. The reward is just the same. There is to be a party
organized to search for him tomorrow morning after we have put the sailor to rest in this grave. We’ll sniff the fellow out.’

‘Why don’t you leave the man at liberty?’

‘Come, come. We cannot let the man roam free. He is a savage. Dangerous. Unbaptized!’

‘You are a Christian, Mr Phipps. You should concern yourself with his emancipation, not his capture.’

‘We must first capture the body, Mr Smith, and then we can make amends for that by attending to the emancipation of his soul. Is that not your philosophy? Or have I misapprehended
it?’

‘Amenders are opposed to slavery. But you are not, it seems.’

‘No, sir. Nor are the Scriptures or the saints. I might refer you, sir, to Moses. And to St Jerome, “Born of the Devil, we are black.”’

The preacher beamed at his two gravediggers. ‘We will dig a grave for him in holy ground if he is found and he is dead. You cannot say my heart is closed to him.’

‘Well, he in’t dead, and that’s for sure,’ one of the old men said.

The second one agreed. ‘He in’t. He’s up to mischief though.’

Between them they recounted all the evidence that they had heard that morning from their neighbours: the theft of clothes and bedding from the inn, the outsized footsteps in the snow, the
wind-like, wolf-like howling in the night, the dismembered cow that had been found by the Americans on the beach at Dry Manston. (‘Ripped apart it was. By human hands. And nothing left
excepting hoof and bone.’ ‘Not human hands. Not human, anyway, like us.’)

‘I can assure you, gentlemen, that Negroes do not howl at night, nor do they tear up cows like tigers, nor do they have the six-inch remnant of a tail,’ said Aymer, addressing the
two gravediggers with what he meant to be a kindly and a patient tone (and an example for the preacher). ‘If they are distinguished from the European then it is by their virtues, not their
savagery. It is true that the Negro has great strength and must have if he will toil beneath the blazing sun of Africa. But he also has these further strengths of character, that he is cheerful,
loyal and does not harbour grudges for the sorrows and the cruelties of life. I do not speak from theory only. I have met with the man. His name is Otto and I promise you, there is no cause to fear
the African …’

‘Not when the blackie’s got a pistol in his hand?’

‘He does not have a pistol in his hand.’

‘Well, that in’t so. He’s broke into Walter Howells’s house and made off with a pistol.’

‘I cannot think that that is true …’

‘And so it is. Mr Howells’s place is only two spits down the lane from me. I’m locking up my doors at night, until the man’s chained up again …’

‘
Save a stranger from the sea
,’ his friend recited, in his wisest voice. ‘
And he’ll prove your enemy.
They should’ve let the bugger drown. He
in’t worth the sovereign.’

A
YMER HURRIED BACK
with Whip to the inn. Again there were no signs of life. He put his warmest clothes on underneath his tarpaulin coat. He filled his
pockets with the half-stale breakfast bread that was still on the side table. He wrapped some pilchards and some cheese in a napkin. Where should he go? He headed out of Wherrytown on the path that
he knew best, the one that met the Cradle Rock. He had an image in his head of Otto sitting on the rock, becoming stone, his blackness camouflaged by sea salt and by lichens the colour of mustard.
Aymer’s legs already felt like pease pudding. His heart was beating like a wren’s. He knew his duty now. He knew why he had stayed.

When Aymer was out of earshot of the town, he started calling ‘Otto! Otto!’ and then ‘Uwip! Uwip!’ but only Whip responded. His trousers and the skirt of his coat were
soon muddy from her front paws and his patience with the dog was exhausted. After an energetic, breathtaking half hour of walking at a speed more suited to a horse, Aymer slowed. He stopped calling
out for Otto. He stopped expecting a reply. He didn’t even search the countryside for distant, single figures, or giant footprints, or wolf-like cries. He concentrated only on the path. Come
what may, he told himself, he’d reach the Rock. And if the African was there? His plan was this: he’d bribe the Bowes to take him in, hide him till the Wednesday dawn, and then bring
him – disguised in a dress and bonnet – to the quay at Wherrytown and the safety of the
Tar
. He’d give Otto a job at Hector Smith & Sons. The plan was not preposterous.
He’d dress him well. He’d mould him into shape. Otto would learn to read, write, cypher, be a gentleman, and enjoy the status and emancipation that otherwise could flourish only in his
dreams. If he was not at the Cradle Rock? What then? Aymer could do little more than leave the meal of bread and cheese, protected from the gulls by stones. That wasn’t much of a rescue. But
at least Aymer wouldn’t have abandoned his freed man for a third cold night entirely without provisions. He must make some amends for the haste and carelessness of
emancipating
Otto
without a scrap of food. Without a hat, a weathercoat or money. He wondered if there were a sign that he could leave, a simple warning that Otto would be hunted down and put back on the
Belle
unless he ran and ran and ran.