Signals of Distress (26 page)

They found a wooden box for her to rest on by the quay. They dusted it, and cushioned it with folded sack, and helped her sit. At first the sailors, stowing stores and luggage on the
Belle
, thought Lotty Kyte was pregnant. The only softness to her long and angular body was her stomach. It seemed distended. But she wasn’t fat from pregnancy. She wore an opium bag,
tied round her waist, to ward off seasickness. She had three travel chests and a carpet bag at her feet. Every few minutes she touched them with her toes to check they’d not been stolen. She
kept her head bowed and her hand across her blindfold for a while, keeping out the harsh sea light. Then she pulled a knitted scarf from her bag and tied it round her head. The extra darkness
seemed to comfort her. She was less frightened, and sat quietly, fingering her ticket and her letter. The Wherrytowners who came to stare at her could see a chin, some bonnet and an inch of hair.
They morning’d her. ‘Who’s that?’ she asked. They gave their names and wished her luck in Canada. ‘You don’t need luck in Canada,’ she answered. ‘My
brother says.’ They didn’t have to hide their smiles. Now here was something they could tell their grandchildren – the blindfolded emigrant!

Lotty Kyte, who lived only two parishes from Wherrytown, had never seen the sea, and never would. When she was born, some Madame Haruspex from a travelling fair had warned the family that if
Lotty ever saw the sea she’d die, ‘and not by drowning’. So that is how she’d lived her life. She’d stayed inland for thirty-seven years. It wasn’t hard –
until, that is, she received the ticket from her brother and she was taken to the quay. And then it wasn’t even hard, just dark and inconvenient and itchy. She’d take off the scarf and
her blindfold when she was in the
Belle
. She didn’t have to go on deck. She didn’t have to press her nose against a porthole. And even if the sea galed up and lashed the porthole
glass, she had simply to pull her bonnet down or hide under a blanket. She would sit as quietly as a mouse for six or seven weeks, hugging opium, and then go blindfolded into Canada.

Aymer Smith, with Whip on a length of rope, had walked down to the quay ahead of the Norrises. He got a short good morning and an even shorter, nervous smile from the preacher, and no reply at
all from Walter Howells, who was waiting on his horse at harbour end. Miggy and Rosie Bowe rewarded his greetings with red-eyed, ghostly smiles. He wouldn’t present them with their stipend
yet.

He’d not expected such a crowd, nor so much noise and jollity. He joined the queue of onlookers, and listened to a dozen versions of Lotty Kyte’s life story. Someone, he thought,
should tear her blindfold off and let her see salt water. There wouldn’t be a flash of lightning or a heart attack. She wouldn’t choke on it. At worst she’d die of fright.
‘Blind superstition,’ he muttered to himself, but loud enough for Mr Phipps to hear. When he saw Robert and Katie Norris arriving on the quay with George as porter, he walked over and
repeated it out loud, ‘Blind superstition, nothing more.’

‘What is?’ asked George. ‘What isn’t, too?’ He winked at the Norrises, took the pennies they offered him and said, ‘Here’s better recompense than
soap.’

‘No, Mr Smith’s soap is very fine,’ said Katie. ‘I still have a cake of it untouched. It will serve me well in Canada, though I suppose they must have soap in Canada as
well …’ She smiled at Aymer. ‘And when I use it I will think of you and these amusing days in Wherrytown.’

Aymer couldn’t find an amusing reply. He wasn’t looking forward to the loss of Katie and his soap to the colonies. At last, to break his silence, he pointed out Lotty Kyte for them,
and retold her story. ‘She is your fellow passenger,’ he said, ‘and she is, I might suggest, a parable of sorts, for emigrants. A poet could not better her. She goes blindfolded
into the future. She travels with her vision blocked, but her hopes intact. Are not your situations similar, except without the bindings on your eyes?’

‘Oh, Mr Smith, will you not simply wish us God’s speed?’ said Katie. She didn’t want to listen to his lecture. She wanted to sit quietly on the quay, with Robert’s
hand engaged in hers, and feel the solid stone beneath her feet.

‘Of course I wish you speed, dear Mrs Norris,’ Aymer said. Her hair was pinned and out of sight. She wore a warm grey cloak with long, loose sleeves. He noted all of it; the rising
colour of her face, the laces of her shoes, the ‘Oh’ before she said his name, her frown. ‘And furthermore I wish you every fortune on your arrival there. I would not want you,
though, to miss the aptness of the parable.’

‘We are not seeking parables in Canada, but three good meals a day, and work and advancement for ourselves,’ replied Robert Norris, diverting Aymer from his wife. ‘We want only
to live plainly and wholesomely, and to find a welcome there.’

‘There can be no guarantees of those,’ said Aymer. ‘No one can guarantee the heavens in Canada will have more stars …’

‘Of course, but …’

‘… or that the skies will display a deeper blue, or that the soil of that uncharted wilderness will be as rich as cake, or that you and Mrs Norris will step ashore to a spontaneity
of well-being and abundance …’

‘We hope, at least, for better than we have.’

‘Yes, Hope is guaranteed …’

‘Blind superstition, nothing more,’ said George. Katie couldn’t stop her laugh.

‘… No, Hope will flourish as you sail further from our shores. Hope is what will greet you when you land. And Hope is blindfolded; her eyes are bound. This is what I mean to
say.’ The Norrises were hardly listening. Mr Phipps had joined them and had taken Katie’s hand. He smiled at Aymer once again. What could he mean by it? ‘Yes, this is what I meant
to say,’ continued Aymer, hurriedly, attempting to insinuate his shoulder between Katie and the preacher. Whip, made nervous by the tightness of the rope, had the good judgement to growl at
Mr Phipps’s shoes. Aymer lowered his voice for Katie Norris: ‘Forgive me for my parables,’ he almost whispered. ‘I wish to speak as plainly as I can. May all your Hopes come
true.’

‘And yours, of course,’ said Katie Norris, though she couldn’t imagine that a man like him had Hopes of anything. ‘And we will pray for you.’ The preacher beamed at
her.

‘And I will think of you. From time to time,’ said Aymer.

‘You will not
pray
for our brave pioneers, I hear,’ said Mr Phipps, doing his best to strike a note of irony and not of irritation. ‘But, then, you would not claim to
understand how little Hope there is without Prayer.’

‘Blind superstition,’ Aymer said. He was surprised that Katie didn’t squander a laugh for him as readily as she had done for George.

‘Indeed, indeed,’ the preacher said, and arched his eyes. Comically, he thought. ‘So Prayer is superstition? And Hope is blindfolded, is it, Mr Smith? And Canada, I heard you
say, a wilderness without a chart? I have better news for our two voyagers by sea.’ Again, a disconcerting smile for Aymer Smith. Then he turned away and fixed his gaze on Katie’s face.
When would these men leave her at peace? He said, ‘I have the chart to guide you through the wilderness. The Bible is your chart.’ He took a small Bible with a brass clasp and green
leather covers from his coat and handed it to Katie Norris. ‘God’s speed,’ he said, and would have taken her hand again and forced a Christian parable on her. But Alice Yapp had
joined them on the quay and Alice Yapp was the one person in the town who silenced him.

‘I have a useful gift,’ she said. More useful than a Bible or a bar of soap, she meant. She gave the Norrises a pot of arrowroot for the journey and a stoppered jar: ‘Six-Spoon
Syrup. That’s against the seasickness, Mrs Norris.’ She turned and shook the jar to mix the brew. ‘Two teaspoons, essence of ginger. Two dessert spoons, brown brandy. Two
tablespoons, strong tea. A pinch of cayenne pepper. Now let old Neptune do his worst. A sip of that and I defy you to be sick.’

In fact, old Neptune was in a placid mood that day. The sea was welcoming, with just sufficient wind to fatten up the sails. The sailors came ashore for their farewells. George seemed especially
popular. He received a dozen slaps across his back, and twice as many ha’pennies for services and favours at the inn. The captain kissed Alice Yapp full on the mouth and bunched her skirts up
in his hand. He waved at Walter Howells, who kept his distance from the crowd. He shook Mr Phipps’s hand. He even smiled at Aymer Smith. Then he put his hand out for the dog. Aymer pulled the
rope away. ‘No, no.’ This was not expected.

‘She is the
Belle
’s, I think. We can’t abandon her.’

‘I cannot let her go.’ How many days had passed, he wondered, since he’d last squared up against the captain, in the snowy lane above the inn, and been accused of theft?
(‘Not only do you steal my man, you steal my dog as well.’) This time he wouldn’t hide behind a lie. He’d take the beating if it would rescue Whip. ‘It is not
possible,’ he said. ‘No, no.’

‘Must I ask half a dozen of my men to take her off you?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Then let me have my dog. What, would you have us settle here and not go home? We’ll not go home without our property.’

‘I’d pay ten shillings for her, happily, or twelve,’ Aymer said. Would Whip abandon him, if he let go of the rope? ‘I beg you, leave her in my hands. She has quite
adopted me.’ His voice was calm; his thoughts were not. Would he go home without a single friend? ‘
Twenty
shillings, sir.’ He’d liberate the dog. He’d snap her
chains of slavery. The thought was not preposterous.

The captain laughed at Aymer’s shillings (‘A ship without a dog?’) and shook his head. He took hold of the rope and snapped it out of Aymer’s hand. Whip didn’t seem
to mind. She liked the smell of shoes and legs, it didn’t matter whose. The captain shook George’s hand. A sixpence passed between them. ‘Good man, George. And if you ever want a
place at sea …’ The captain put his arm round Mrs Yapp again. ‘Next trip,’ he said. ‘We could be back within the year. Now, let’s aboard.’ He tugged at
Whip. Aymer should have snatched the rope and run. At least he should have stooped and rubbed Whip’s head and wept into her hair. Instead he stayed as stiff as pine, between the preacher and
the parlourman, and watched the ship’s dog disappear for good.

They rang one bell to call the crew aboard. Three men were sent to load the passengers’ bags and boxes. Palmer Dolly, ‘unremarked amongst the crowd’, ran forward to lend a
hand. He lifted Lotty Kyte’s heaviest box onto his shoulders and carried it on to the
Belle
. No one challenged him. And no one missed him for a while. He hadn’t said goodbye to
anyone. He simply disappeared into the shadows – and the bloodstains – of the orlop deck. He’d have the salvaged cattle for company at first. And then he’d have their straw
bedding to himself, until America. Soon the sound of falling lightlines and hoisting canvas filled the air. ‘And pull! Let-her-go.’ The sailors were a team again. The captain was
Napoleon. The mooring ropes were loosened, the fenders lifted and the jib sail set to take the port tack out of Wherrytown for the emigrant ports of Fowey and Cork before the weeks in open sea.
They rang the final bell, this time for paying passengers to come aboard.

Aymer would have liked to hug the Norrises, but he could only shake their hands. They walked away towards the
Belle
, and joined their two fellow voyagers, Lotty Kyte and Miggy, at the
bottom of the ship’s gangway where Ralph Parkiss was waiting for his bride. Katie Norris went ahead, keen to get away. Robert Norris took Lotty’s arm and guided her onto the
Belle
. Her hands were shaking from the dread of it. Her eyes were hot and watering. ‘My brother can supply your furnishings when we arrive,’ she said, just to hear a voice.

Rosie Bowe had Miggy in her arms. She planted kisses on her neck and face. Her sobs were animal, a seal. She didn’t have the breath to speak. Her throat was aching from the tears and cries
she had suppressed all morning, all week. Her eyes were raw. Ralph put his arms around them both and made promises: he and Miggy would find someone to write a letter if Rosie would find someone to
read; they would send for her when they were rich; they would name their first daughter Rosie Parkiss; and, come what may, they would return one day before she died. But Rosie Bowe did not believe
in that. She only knew that all the bone and sinew of her life was leaving on the
Belle
. ‘Be good to her,’ she said to Ralph. She gave her gifts to Miggy in a straw bag: some
salted beef, the petticoat her sister had made, a baby shawl, one of the bars of soap that Aymer Smith had left, and the embroidered passage from the cottage wall, ‘Weep sore for him that
goeth away …’

‘Oh, Ma, don’t fret,’ said Miggy. ‘I’ll end up crying too. And that’s bad luck. That in’t the way to go.’ She put her arm through Ralph’s
and took her first step on the
Belle
. She didn’t look at Rosie Bowe. Her eye was caught by Aymer Smith approaching from the crowd. At last. She’d almost given up on him.

Aymer ran up to the gangway. He stood between Rosie and her daughter. He took his purse out of his coat. And handed three bright sovereigns to the girl. (‘What’s going on?’
said Alice Yapp out loud. ‘What has old spindleshanks been doing with the girl that’s worth that weight of tin? Now there’s a tale. I’ll find the bottom of it, don’t
you worry.’) There wasn’t any time for Aymer to make a speech. Miggy took his money without a word of thanks, though Ralph shook his hand. The captain rang the final bell, to pull the
gangway up. And that was that, and nothing much to celebrate.

The
Belle
had soon left the perils of the shore. It slowly dropped down-channel against the tide and waited on capricious winds to take it out beyond the harbour boom and between the
channel buoys. It idled there, in the offing, for half an hour. The quayside crowd could pick out Lotty Kyte on deck, still blindfolded, and the Norrises. Then the light picked up, and with the
light the sea, for light can energize the sea and make the waves more spirited. The wind did not diminish as they feared. It held – and more than held. The ship turned stern to Wherrytown and
beat a passage through the bay up to the Finters, those final, storm-racked morsels of the land where there were only cormorants and kelp. Within the hour the
Belle of Wilmington
had
dissolved into the fog-veiled precipices of cloud, and Rosie Bowe, heartbroken on the quay, had nothing left to do but set her face against the wind and walk the six miles home.