Signals of Distress (28 page)

Again, Rosie Bowe was imitating seals. She tried to trap their calls inside her mouth. She tried to swallow them. Aymer thought, at first, that she was trying to suppress a sneeze. But he had
wept enough himself to recognize a stifled sob. What had he said? Why should she care that he would not make a son-in-law for anyone? Was that so sad for her?

He almost asked her not to waste a tear for him. He wasn’t worthy of her sympathy. But there was something in the way she cried that kept him quiet and gave him time to realize the shaming
truth, that no one cried for Aymer Smith. Her tears were for her daughter and herself. They were unstoppable. She’d drawn her legs up to her chest and had her hands laced round her wrists.
Her head was on her knees. She had halved in size. She was like a woman out of Bedlam, hot, white-knuckled, volatile. Why should she care if Aymer Smith was there and watching her? She didn’t
know the protocol of grief. Her cheeks were wet, and then her lips. Her chin was leaking on her dress. Her nose began to run, and she was sniffing back the tears and swallowing them. Her breathing
next: her lungs were working overtime. Her throat was wet and windy, and the noises that she made now belonged to gulls, not seals. Her shoulders shook. Her body lost its bones. Her hands were
knotted wood. Her hair was weed. She said, ‘This is bitter …’

Aymer Smith was too ashamed to move at first. ‘Can I do anything?’ he said. She didn’t hear. She banged her fists against her head. She threw her head back on the wall. His
three sovereigns rattled on the shelf.

‘I beg you, Mrs Bowe …’ He took one step across the room and put his right hand on her shoulder. ‘Come, come, you will upset yourself …’

Her head came up from off the wall; her forehead rested for a second on his hip, and then her head went back again and bounced against the wall.

‘I beg you, Mrs Bowe,’ he said again. ‘You are damaging yourself.’ Perhaps he ought to throw some water over her. He couldn’t see a bucket or a bowl. There was only
beef stew in a pot. That wouldn’t help. He put both hands behind her head and tried to steady it. She was surprisingly strong, and Aymer was too gentle. He should have held her by the ears or
hair. Instead he clasped her head tightly to his body, and called for help. He didn’t have a name to call. The nearest neighbour was a quarter-mile away. His sister-in-law, Fidia, would have
quietened Rosie straight away, with a glass of water and a slap, both in the face. He’d seen her do it with their kitchen girl. But calling ‘Fidia!’ would be no use. And simply
calling ‘Help’ seemed too theatrical. So he called out, ‘Anybody! Anybody!’ And it worked. Nobody came. But it had startled Rosie. She stopped trying to break away from
Aymer. Had that been his intention? He wasn’t sure of anything, except that dreams and nightmares were the same.

So the oddest thing had come about. Steam and Wind were reconciled. This pair of awkward, independent Contraries were pressed together like two pigeons in a storm – though they
weren’t as plump as pigeons. Rosie could feel his rib cage on her face and, now that she was quiet, she heard his stomach dealing comically with stew to the quickening percussion of his
heart. She’d always liked a man’s hands on her head, his fingers hard on her skull and hidden in her hair. Her tears had made Aymer’s shirt-front damp. He smelled of good soap,
and dog. She didn’t want to pull her head away and face him. What could they say to save their blushes? Besides, his hands around her head were calming her. Miggy had not hugged her Ma for
years. So any hugging at that time would help.

What did she want? She didn’t know, except that she was in no hurry to begin the last part of her life alone, a piece of salted granite on the coast. She might as well … She might
as well, she told herself, have someone hold her in his arms, even if that someone was this creaking, timid stick. When he had shouted, ‘Anybody! Anybody!’ he had expressed her feelings
too. Will anybody ever hold me to their heart again? Will anybody try? He’d had his chance to take his hands away. But he’d left them in her hair. She put her own hands on his waist and
then on to the lower part of his back. He could be anyone she chose. She only had to keep her eyes shut tight.

She chose to look at him. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘You can.’ She pushed aside the sacking curtain that divided the room and tiptoed across the cold bare earth to the
box-bed. He didn’t follow her. She had to go back to the fire and pull him by his wrist. She ought to feel ashamed, she thought, pressing him like this. Any man she’d known before had
pulled
her
wrist. This one was reluctant even to be pulled. Did she disgust him? Was he just shy? Was he one of those men, like Skimmer or George at the inn, who only liked to be with other
men? She put her arms around his waist again. ‘It in’t important, Mr Smith,’ she said. ‘Just put your hand back where it was, so that I can get the crying out of me.’
Aymer put one hand onto the nape of her neck and pushed her hair up on to her crown. He put the other hand behind her back and pulled her to him so that his lips were on her forehead. His lips were
dry. She did cry for a minute or two, though Miggy was confused with Aymer in her mind. She couldn’t prise the two apart. Who was she hugging? Why? That dry-lipped kiss drew out her final
sobs. She took deep breaths. She wouldn’t grieve any more for Miggy. She had to settle to her life.

Rosie had never known a man as slow as Aymer. His lips and hands had hardly moved. They were standing like two dancers at a ball, waiting for the music to begin. She
had
to settle to her
life. She pushed her hands beneath his parlour coat and pressed her head against his chest. She could feel his body tensing. Was he excited by her now, or was he repelled? She held him tightly, one
hand spread out across his back, the other underneath his arm. She couldn’t kiss him though, not on the mouth. His cock was growing hard.

‘I only need someone,’ she said.

‘I can’t.’

‘You can.’ She dropped a hand on to his trouser front, and pressed him there. He doubled up. She thought his legs had given way, at first. His body sagged. He gasped so loudly that
the dogs outside jumped up against the porch, and one began to bark. He reminded Rosie of the first boy that she’d ever touched, when she was seventeen. And Aymer, really, was just a boy,
despite his age. He’d been slow with her, she realized, because he didn’t know the way. This was a voyage frightening and new for him. Rosie was his first. And she would have to take
command or wait forever.

She took him through the sacking, pushed him on the bed, tugged his boots off, and unbuttoned him: the jacket, the shirt, the cuffs. She pulled his trousers down, and joined him on the bed. She
didn’t take her own clothes off. She was embarrassed by her bones. She stroked him on his chest and legs, but wanted really to be stroked herself. At last he found the courage to explore her.
His hands were shaking when he pushed her smock up to her throat and put his fingers, then his mouth, onto her tiny breasts. She had to take his other hand and press it in between her thighs. He
pushed so hard she almost doubled up as well. It seemed so odd that she should be excited by this man and that he – hesitant and clumsy, at first – had become so urgent and
engrossed.

When Aymer finally ran his fingers up her legs, her hands went dead on him. She fell over on her back, closed her eyes and simply held his body close. Again he didn’t seem to know the way.
His fingernails were too long. His shirt sleeves tickled her. He didn’t know how delicate she was, or what to touch. She let him fumble for a while, and then she helped him, holding his
fingers between hers until there was no dryness left. If he thought that he would be the centre of attention, he was wrong. She concentrated on herself – looking at him, talking to him only
when his hands and fingers were too rough or slow. She didn’t try to touch him any more. He was not there – except to be her serving gentleman. But she was more there all the time
– getting bigger, narrowing; becoming stretched, tense, bloated … tremulous. She climaxed on his fingertips.

Aymer looked both startled and afraid, she thought. ‘Are you quite well?’ he asked, evidently alarmed by all her noise and agitation. He must have imagined that she was feverish, or
suffering from fits.

‘I’m well. I’m well,’ she said. ‘And what of you? Let’s see.’ She put her hand down on his cock. It wasn’t hard, but it was stiff enough to rub.
He rolled on top of her and butted at her legs. She put his cock inside. He wasn’t slow. Ten thrusts and that was it. The bubble burst. Not sexually. His orgasm was nothing much. It had been
better in the inn’s dank alleyway. No, the bubble was the trance that had bewitched him the moment he had touched her hair. It was the same trance that he had felt, less fleetingly, with
Katie Norris. To be alive and in such half-a-dream was rhapsody. But this was odd and unexpected for Aymer Smith. The instant his virginity was lost with his ejaculation, there was no longer any
rhapsody. There was no trance. This was sober. He’d never felt so wide awake, and stripped. There – and it was not a dream – was the straw-packed bed, the threadbare blanket and
the woman’s flushed and bony face, eyes closed, her legs spreadeagled under him, and daylight making curving slats across her chest. What had he done? What would his brother say?

Aymer tried to be polite. He asked if he should bring a drink, or mend the fire, or throw the blanket over her. But all the time he spoke, he was gathering his clothes from off the earthy floor
and dressing hastily. He muttered thanks. He almost put more money on the shelf, but had no coins left. He wished her all the good fortune in the world. ‘I promise you, dear Mrs Bowe, that I
am in your debt …’ The truth is Aymer ran away from her, out of the door and past the dogs, along the six-mile coast to Wherrytown, where he would have plenty to repent, including Mrs
Yapp’s bill and his farewells to George. Get out of town, he told himself, with every stride. Get on the
Tar
. Get home.

Rosie wasn’t sorry that he’d gone. Nor was her life enhanced by him. Though it was changed. Aymer had left her something more valuable than coins. She wasn’t quite pregnant
yet. Her egg hadn’t voyaged down into her uterus and implanted. But the egg was fertilized and it was moving. By Sunday she would be with child. The guess in Wherrytown would be that
Rosie’s new baby would be black. Everything unusual on the coast would, from that day, be put on Otto’s bill. When no one could remember Aymer Smith or put a name to any of the
Americans, or their ship even, the African would still be talked about. In fact, he gave a lasting phrase to Wherrytown. If anything went wrong – the harvest failed, the yeast went flat, a
coin or a button disappeared – they’d say ‘Blame it on the African!’ or ‘Otto’s been at work again.’ Otto fathered many babies on the coast, not only Rosie
Bowe’s.

But for the moment Rosie was still alone with no one but herself to love. And she wasn’t the sort to love herself. She rested on her wooden bed and conjured up the
Belle
. She could
think more calmly of her daughter now. She was an optimist again. She pictured Miggy on the ship. It was. her marriage day. The captain would anoint her with sea water beneath the canvas canopies,
the rigging vaults and the mastwood spires. Blindfolded Lotty Kyte and the woman with the lovely, sandy hair would be the maids of honour. Miggy would lie down with Ralph that night, in their
creaking cabin out at sea, a seashell ring on her finger, his arms about her waist, the blood-red ensign round her throat. And they would shortly be together in the Lands of Promise.

T
HIS WAS
Aymer’s final night in Wherrytown. He had the whole inn to himself. George neglected him. Even Mrs Yapp had disappeared –
she’d gone to Walter Howells’s for some celebration of their own. There was no one for Aymer to talk to. When he heard Wherrytowners coming back from Evensong, he was almost tempted to
stroll up to the chapel and the chapel house to see Mr Phipps. Just for the company. It might, he thought, be an amusement to conclude the conversation he had started that morning with the preacher
on the quay – Blind Superstition, and the Bible as a Chart. But he guessed that Mr Phipps would hardly welcome a Sceptic interrupting his supper. So Aymer stayed at the inn and had to eat
alone. Cold ham and pickles. Solitary pie.

Aymer, as the only guest, could choose to sleep in any of the inn’s twenty empty beds. He hardly dared to sleep at all, in fact, in case he missed the Wednesday’s dawn departure of
the
Tar
and the liberating taste of salt-free city air which beckoned him. He’d already packed his bag and dressed for the voyage by ten that Tuesday night. He wouldn’t go to
bed. He took a blanket to the parlour. He put his chair next to the grate, facing the window that opened on to the lane. The fire would keep him warm until the early hours. And, if he dozed, he
would wake as soon as there was any daylight in the window. He tried to read at first, but he was tired of Mr Paine. He couldn’t concentrate. Rosie Bowe had disconcerted him. He tried to put
her out of mind. He shouldn’t blame himself. The fault was hers. She’d misconstrued his charity.

Where was her daughter? How far out at sea? Aymer stared into the fire. Would she be happy in America? Too late to worry now. No
need
to worry now, in fact. Aymer could put right in his
mind’s eye things that might go wrong in life. That was his major skill. He couldn’t quite remember Miggy’s face. No matter – he’d improve on her. He imagined her in
Wilmington. She wasn’t gaping. She wasn’t fidgeting her feet. Nor wearing breeches. She was breathing through her nostrils, not her mouth. He gave her better skin and hair. He ribboned
her. He put her in a simple cotton dress. He imagined her heavily pregnant, too. That, surely, was the spirit of the emigrant. And she was more lively in her speech, more generous, more womanly.
America was suiting her.

He put her in a rocking chair, and spread one hem of her cotton dress across the arm. He served her a slice of honey cake, and a jug of some new drink. He couldn’t recognize its smell. He
put her foot up on the balustrade of the veranda. Maize, tobacco, sweet potatoes, and snap beans were growing in the plot below. (Would there be snap beans in America? Aymer wasn’t sure.)
There were chickens. There was sun. Whip was rolling in the grass.