‘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.
AYMER 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.
He walked back to the inn’s courtyard. He pressed his nose against the window of the tackle room and tapped on the boarding. Better than a writ of habeas corpus, Aymer thought. The world would change at once. The bolt was stiff and cold. Otto wasn’t sleeping. He was hoping for some food. Aymer didn’t smell of food. He smelled of animals. He smelled of damp. Otto let him take his hand and shake it. He let the man sit down beside him on his blankets. He listened to the sentences, the grinning storm of words. The man was pointing at the open door saying, ‘Go! Go! Go!’ Whip was barking, running in and out the tackle room. Otto couldn’t bear this loss of privacy, nor the commotion that the bare-legged man had caused. He stood and tested how his ankle would support his weight. He wrapped a blanket round his shoulders, put on his boots, said, ‘Uwip, Uwip,’ and walked out into Wherrytown.
5. Dry Manston
SABBATH SNOW was coming in from Canada, preceded by a morning of tepid and deceitful air. There was no frost and just an ounce of wind, but anyone could tell that cold was on its way. The sea was pearly with pilchard shoals; seals and porpoises were seeking shelter close to shore; cormorants meditated on the rocks and did not fish; and there were hardly any penitents in Wherrytown who’d left their beds for morning prayers with Mr Phipps.