Signals of Distress (22 page)

When they’d finally got the coffin into the lane, kicked off the mud and hoisted it once more onto the shoulders of men of roughly equal height, they set off to the chapel at such a pace
and in such high spirits that many of the older mourners were left behind. The bearers waited at the chapel gates for the preacher and their captain to arrive, and then put the coffin in the
graveyard shelter on a slate table. They only quietened down when Captain Comstock threatened them. They plunged their hands into their pockets and smirked into their chests.

Mr Phipps stood at the gate and greeted all his congregation as they arrived. The fittest sailors first, including Ralph Parkiss. Then John Peacock, the sailmaker, and the older crew. Then the
Dollys, with their boy Palmer executing an untidy and unnecessary salute at Captain Comstock like some raw volunteer, and offering an awkward ‘G’day, Captain’ in what was not a
local accent. Alice Yapp came next, alone and out of breath. (A wink for Captain Comstock.) The Norrises then. Katie – in her blackest bonnet – was quite beautiful, Mr Phipps thought.
He’d make a point of comforting her when the burial was over. Her husband had a halfways decent voice and could be asked to lead the hymn. Aymer Smith was with the Norrises. He even gave his
hand to Mr Phipps. The preacher pressed his fingers on to Aymer’s chest: ‘And have you come to be baptized at last?’

‘No, sir. I come …’ Aymer was alarmed. The preacher’s fingers had been hard and hostile.

‘No, sir, indeed! Will you then tread on blessed ground?’ ‘I come only for the burial, to pay respects.’ ‘Then pay respects to God and stay beyond His wall. You can
attend our holy interment, Mr Smith, but from a distance.’

‘Come, Mr Phipps …’ said Robert Norris, taking Aymer by the arm to demonstrate their friendship. ‘I see no harm in it …’ He looked to Katie for some
help.

‘We would not like to leave dear Mr Smith outside.’ ‘No, Mrs Norris. Do not speak for me. I am content to be a distant witness.’ Aymer wished the ground would open up and
swallow him. Already he was close to tears. Why was he always close to tears?

‘But, Mr Phipps …’ she said.

‘You see, he does not want to trespass here. He has no interest in Morals, and boasts of it. He told me only yesterday that he nurtured not a single aspiration to stand amongst my
congregation. He paraded himself above the chapel …’ (Mr Phipps pointed at the muddy overhang, fifteen feet above) ‘… and he holloa’d it, as my gravediggers are my
witnesses. Now, Mr Smith, do me the courtesy of stepping back. There are chapelgoers at your shoulder who would appreciate an easy entrance to the chapel green.’

‘Allow me this indulgence, Mr Phipps, that our good friend should be allowed to stand with us,’ Katie said.

‘I cannot, madam, no. I am the instrument of God, and have no freedom to indulge, but …’ But could he reject so pretty, so black-bonneted a request? He turned to Captain
Comstock, who was standing just beyond, with Alice Yapp at his side, and Palmer Dolly, hovering. ‘What do you say, Captain? It is for your man that we’re gathered here. Do you request
that Mr Smith should join you?’

Alice squeezed his hand. ‘I see no call for it,’ he said.

Aymer had already turned his back, and would have hurried out of sight. He would have sought the refuge of an empty room or the company of gulls. But Robert Norris caught his sleeve.
‘We’ll stand with you,’ he said. They led him down a path along the chapel wall, and found a place where they could overlook the grave. They stood on either side of him,
white-faced and angry. Aymer’s face was red, red not only from embarrassment but from a hardly comprehended joy. What was the song?
For once. For once. For once, at last, he did not stand
alone.

The congregation gathered at the grave and Mr Phipps began his sermon. He wasn’t happy – he was furious, in fact – to have lost the Norrises. Especially the wife. She
wouldn’t let him comfort her now. What could they see in that fool Smith? He put on his Holy Face, his Holy Voice, his Holy Grief, and spoke about Nathaniel Rankin as if they had been
friends. ‘We must not forget that Death is a visitation of God Almighty. To have the breath of life taken from you is to have your body touched by God. His is the Gift of Life. So when we
think of that dark storm when our brother Nathaniel passed from us and his dear face was chilled with the salty dew of life’s last struggle, we should not grieve; we should rejoice, because
the child of God is back with God, and all is well within His Universe.’ He nodded that the coffin should be lowered. Then he read a passage from
The Navigations of the Saints
, threw
granite pebbles on the birchwood lid and asked them all to sing ‘For Death Is But the Shaded Sea’. Robert Norris’s voice was strong enough to cross the wall, and lead the hymn.
The congregation parted for his voice. They let it in and did their best to match his perfect pitch. Aymer sang as well. He would have danced a jig.

When the hymn was done and the shovels were at work, rattling earth and stones on Nathaniel Rankin’s coffin, Aymer could have volunteered a hug, at least, to these two allies at his side.
He was the handshake not the hugging sort. He wasn’t used to taking people in his arms, not since he’d been small and in the care of Granny Todd, his parents’ housekeeper. He had,
it’s true, hugged Ralph Parkiss. That was in an empty parlour, though, and comradely, a manly thing. Here, there was a congregation looking on. He should have lifted up his arms and put them
round the Norrises, his hands upon their shoulders. He should have hugged them so tightly that they fell against the wall and toppled onto holy ground. He volunteered, instead, a tiny inclination
of his head, and said, ‘I thank you for your kind interference.’ He added something, too soft and muttered to be understood. But he was hugging in his heart, and both the Norrises knew
it. It hardly mattered that they didn’t touch. What mattered was that they had stood in line.

They had to touch the preacher, though. He made them shake his hand. He held Katie’s hands too long, and squeezed Aymer’s hand too tightly. He hoped they had not misunderstood the
fierceness of his Faith. How ‘generous and Christian’ it had been for Mr and Mrs Norris to offer Mr Smith their company while Mr Phipps’s solemn duty was performed. Both he and Mr
Smith were men of principle and Mr Smith, he was quite sure, could not respect a man who was not ‘a Moral rock’. The chapel was for Christians. He did not imagine Mr Smith would wish to
make a pilgrimage to Mecca unless he were a Mussulman. Or hope to find a welcome in the sanctums of a synagogue. Though if he did, he would not chance upon such singing there as he had heard today.
‘Our Mr Norris has an angel’s voice,’ he said. ‘And Mrs Norris too, of course.’ He took their hands again, and clapped Aymer on the shoulder. ‘We’ll have
you yet,’ he said. ‘I urge you, sir, to read the Scriptures, and you will, I think, find both Faith and Reason satisfied.’ By the time he had convinced himself that his reputation
was not damaged but enhanced with the Norrises, the mourners from the funeral had dispersed, and Nathaniel Rankin’s grave was almost full with earth.

Aymer and the Norrises descended through Wherrytown by empty lanes, except that halfway back a reproachful-looking Whip accosted Aymer and wouldn’t settle for a tiny inclination of his
head. She wanted him to scratch her ears and rub her chest.

Mrs Yapp gave them lunch, though Aymer had little appetite for fish. When they had eaten and – frankly – needed some respite from Mr Smith’s addresses on Mahometans, the
‘native’ ways of making fire and ‘the habit in the East’ of burning the dead, Katie and her husband walked down to the quay to see what progress had been made on the
Belle
. How long before they could set sail for Canada?

Aymer took a book into the parlour, persuaded Mrs Yapp to revive the fire and wet some tea, and settled to the
Common Sense
of Thomas Paine. When his tea was brought, he asked for
‘a less idle light’.

‘If you want better light for reading by, you’ll have to shift yourself to the window or go outdoors,’ Mrs Yapp said. She wasn’t servant to the man. Why couldn’t he
take five paces to the side table and find a candle for himself? ‘I’m on my own, with George not here, and haven’t time to fetch and carry all day long. I saw you wasn’t
welcome in the chapel, though.’ She hoped he’d say something indiscreet about Mr Phipps.

‘Where
is
George, Mrs Yapp? You have the oddest parlourman in the land.’

‘There’s odd, and there’s odd,’ she said. If George was odd, then what was Aymer Smith?

‘Where is he, though?’

‘He’s volunteered as guide.’

‘As guide to what?’

‘As guide to hunting down the captain’s African. There’s no one knows this corner of the world like George. He’s better than a hound. He’ll sniff him out.
He’ll have that sovereign off Walter Howells.’ She watched as Aymer leaped up like a man who’d sat on pins. He ran out into the lane without a hat or coat. Then she sat down by
the fire, tossed
Common Sense
aside, and drank his tea.

A
YMER WAS
too late to find the hunting party or its hound. They had assembled in the courtyard as soon as the funeral was over. Five sailors from the
Belle
with Captain Comstock. A dozen Wherrytowners armed with sticks and scythes and one old musket which the owner said had ‘seen the Frenchie off at Waterloo’. And Palmer
Dolly, who had volunteered, and hoped not for the sovereign but for a hammock on the
Belle
as his reward. Walter Howells attended on his horse. He sent the Wherrytowners off to search every
outhouse, coop and sty, to check behind wood piles, in net stores, underneath the upturned hulls of boats. He sent the sailors and Palmer, under George’s command, to search the local fields,
ten deep, and anywhere ‘that’s big enough to hide a man’.

Howells went with the captain to search the salt-hall and the shore. The salt-hall only took five minutes, and Otto wasn’t there – unless he’d been balked and barrelled along
with the pilchards. They spent a pleasant afternoon in Walter Howells’s room, with good Jamaicee rum. They could watch the shore from there.

‘They’re bound to bring your Otto back, don’t give it any thought,’ Howells said. ‘We have to think about ourselves a bit. There’s matters need discussing, if
we’re to turn a little black luck into profit.’ He outlined for the captain how he would present a bill of repairs that ‘would not run amiss with those good gentlemen who’ll
have to settle it. Let’s not pretend we’ve mended what was never broke. The greedy piglet soon gets pushed out of the trough. The cunning, patient one gets fed.’ They’d
quickly re-equip the
Belle
, a patch-up job, he said: ‘I’ve put good timber in, of course. Watertight. But not the best. Masts and rigging ditto, Captain Comstock. No harm in
saying that you had to lose a few possessions overboard. There’s all that stuff we stored down in the dunes. I’ll get a decent price for that. And we’ve some cattle set aside.
It’s fifty-fifty all the way, if I’m a man to trust.’ He poured the captain a fourth tot of rum. He put a purse of sovereigns in Captain Comstock’s hand. ‘There now.
We’ll have you back at sea within the week, and nothing to regret from your short stay in Wherrytown.’

Captain Comstock settled back into the cushions of his chair. ‘It’s turned out well,’ he said. He put the purse out of sight, beneath his thigh. The sovereigns hit something
hard. He pulled a pistol out from underneath the cushions, a German flintlock with a ram’s-horn butt.

‘Well found, sir,’ said Walter Howells. ‘I’d marked it down as being lost or stolen.’ He hung the flintlock on its bedboard hook. The two men shook hands, but
didn’t meet each other’s eyes.

G
EORGE THE
parlourman, meanwhile, had got the five Americans and Palmer Dolly knee deep in mud in fields just to the east of Wherrytown. There’d
been reports, he said, of ‘trespasses’: an open gate, a disturbed turnip clamp, a light at night, goats with burgled udders. At first their search party had been high-spirited. This was
more fun than mending sails. They whistled as they walked. They called out Otto’s name, and some names that George and Palmer hadn’t heard before. The mate began a plantation song and
all his shipmates joined the chorus:

Once the song had ended, though, the wind began to bite, and legs that were at ease on tossing decks grew tired and heavy in the steadfast, frozen fields. By now the sailors didn’t give a
damn if Otto were caught or not. He wasn’t worth the mud. We’re going back, they said. This wasn’t mutiny. The captain wasn’t there. And George was not an officer, and this
was not the
Belle
. George teased them for their lack of fortitude until it was suggested, by the mate, old Captain Keg, that he’d be wise to give his mouth a rest unless he wanted mud
in it. He led them into Wherrytown, in an unusually silent and cheerful mood. They went back to the
Belle
.

George and Palmer found the Wherrytowners gathered at an empty cattle shed, on the leeward side of town. Someone, something, was in the loft, they said. No one – not even the veteran of
Waterloo – would volunteer to climb up the ladder and search the straw. They were convinced that Otto was hiding there, a pistol in his hand, a head full of mischief, black magic at his
fingertips. They’d either smoke him out or wait until he starved. It might be amusing, George thought, to let them try and starve him out. It could take a year or two, before the siege became
a bore. But he was more amused at the quicker prospect of being mistaken for a hero. ‘He’ll never starve,’ he said. ‘Those Africans can live on straw. Here, let me take a
look.’ He wouldn’t take the musket or a stick or let Palmer, keen to be a hero, too, accompany him. He climbed up into the straw, threw bunches of it through the loft trap, made a din,
made choking noises, went quiet, and finally came down with an injured pigeon folded in his hands.