At Dry Manston the cattle from Quebec stood in squads or lay under the few low thorns between the high ground and the beach, their backs against the wrecking sea. Miggy and her mother hoped it would be easy to trap one of these mournful, docile cows. They’d have fresh meat, and what they couldn’t eat within the week, they’d salt. They were up and out soon after dawn and planned to have one killed, butchered and concealed in an hour. They each had rigging ropes, flotsam from the Belle: one rope round the neck would hold the cow, one round its hind shins would bring it down. It should only take a single blow with a rock between the eyes to make the beast insensible. Then perforate the spinal column with a knife and cow was beef. That was the principle at least. They’d never had to kill a cow before. They hadn’t had the chance. The most they’d done was club a seal to death and skin it on the beach.
The cows were wary and unpredictable. They wouldn’t let the Bowes get close. They put their haunches in the air, hauled their bodies from the ground, and stood, face on, whenever Rosie or Miggy approached. They lowed in protest at the cold. They weren’t fooled by gifts of grass. They backed away. They ran.
It was amusing for a while. Rosie tried all kinds of tricks to trap a cow, and entertain herself. She crept up on the cattle from behind, but got no closer than before. She tried to hypnotize a cow with weaving hands. She’d seen a donkey hypnotized that way at the farthing fair in Wherrytown. She made a sudden dash — with no success — and then fell down into the spongy bracken, laughing unselfconsciously. Miggy was embarrassed by her ma. She wanted beef. She was too old to be amused.
‘We’ll never get one if you fool around,’ she said.
‘Don’t be so frownin’, Miggy. We’ll never get one anyway. Those cows in’t wanting to be caught. I’m getting back indoors. My feet and back are soaking through. You coming with me, or will you stop and sulk?’ Rosie was annoyed. Her daughter wasn’t much of a companion. She was as clawed and joyless as a cat.
Miggy let her mother go. She liked to be out on the coast alone, the windswept heroine. Besides, she’d seen a distant figure on the path. It wasn’t usual to see strangers — or officials — walking on the Sabbath. That’s why Miggy and her mother had chosen Sunday to help themselves to beef. There was a chance, then, that it was Palmer Dolly. Might he come by? And let his black hair mix with hers? Miggy wanted to be kissed. What must it be like to be kissed by someone other than your ma? More nourishing than beef! Sometimes at night she practised kissing her own mouth. She wet the insides of her lips and let them slide. She teased her palate with her tongue. She skimmed her chin and cheeks with her fingers. She licked the tissue on her palms. She found that, by touching the folds between her legs, she could reproduce the breathless tremble that she felt when she encountered men of her own age. A better place than home was just a touch away.
She’d not been alone for long when she discovered one of the shipwrecked heifers, grazing in an impasse of rocks and furze above the coastal track. She only had to stand resolutely at the open end and make a noise to trap the cow. It backed in more deeply. It dropped its head, either in resignation or to butt its captor. Miggy looped a rope round its neck and kept it back by slapping its nostrils. What should she do, with Rosie gone? Slaughter it alone? There wasn’t any way that she could drag it home herself, or whistle it. The cow was not a dog. She’d have to brain it with a rock and butcher it before the crows and gulls found out. Would she have the strength and resolution? Could she relieve her boredom on the cow? Would Palmer Dolly come in time to help? The walking figure she had spotted earlier was getting closer.
There was a sharp, pointed stone almost within reach that would do for butchering. Miggy turned to pick it up, and stole a glance along the coast. It wasn’t Palmer Dolly on the path. This man was blond. It was the sailor from the Belle, the one who’d held her waist. Ralph Parkiss was honouring his sailor’s boast, to see what she’d got hidden in her breeches. He’d volunteered to walk the six miles to the ship to discover how it had fared since it had beached, but he was looking for the girl. He couldn’t fail to see her. She made a din — in case he passed her by.
‘Is that you, Miggy?’ He climbed up from the path across the winter bracken. ‘Well now, that’s fortunate. I never thought I’d see a friendly face.’ Miggy’s face was hardly friendly, though. She judged a smile to be unladylike, particularly as she had lost a bottom tooth and her lips were cracked and dry. She knew she had good eyes. Her mother told her so. She did her best to widen them, and not to blink. Ralph spoke the line that he had practised for six miles: ‘I came to see the Belle of Wilmington and found myself the belle of Wherrytown instead …’
‘It hasn’t shifted much last night,’ Miggy said. She wished she’d put a ribbon in her hair. They both looked down across the beach towards the Belle. It wasn’t showing any sail. Its masts and rigging looked as bare and clean-picked as finished fish-bones. The carcasses of three drowned cows were floating in the shallows.
‘I see you’ve roped yourself a cow. Is this one off the Belle?’ Miggy let the rigging drop. She’d not be caught red-handed, poaching cattle. She was ambitious, but not for travel in a prison ship and not for Botany Bay.
‘I wasn’t stealin’ it,’ she said. ‘Don’t say I was.’
‘I’ll not say anything. Steal ten, and still I’ll not say anything.’ He picked the rigging up and handed it to Miggy. ‘Go on. The captain won’t miss one. He doesn’t even know how many got ashore. Don’t sell the steaks in Wherrytown, that’s all.’ He was unnerved by her round eyes. ‘Is that our ensign round your throat?’ he said. ‘It suits you better than the Belle.’ And when she didn’t reply, ‘I thought you were a boy. Those breeches aren’t for girls. You’re not a boy, I hope. How can a sailor tell?’
‘I got a dress at home.’
‘What colour, then?’
‘White. Blue ribbons. I got long hair, ’cept it’s up.’
‘You can let it down so I can see.’
‘I can’t.’
‘What will you do?’
‘I’ll not do anything. Why should I, anyway?’
‘I walked six miles for nothing, then? Must I go back without a kiss? Miggy? Miggy? It’s twelve miles, not six, by the time I’m back in Wherrytown. I tell you what. You kiss me once and then I’ll dream of you.’
‘I’ve got no time for kissin’. Kiss the cow if you’re so keen on it.’
‘I will, if you say no. And then I’ll dream of cows, and you won’t be my sweetheart any more.’
‘Am I your sweetheart, then?’
‘You are if you will kiss.’
What was Ralph Parkiss hoping for? The only girls he’d kissed before had been his sisters or, most recently, the cheap lorettes and dollar doxies in harbour inns in Montreal and Charleston. With prostitutes he’d put his lips and hands exactly where he’d wanted to, exactly when he’d wanted to. The women didn’t care if they were in his dreams or not, so long as he could pay and finish what he’d come to do in less than half an hour. There wasn’t any need for strategy or sweetness. They hadn’t touched or kissed him in return. He’d had to serve himself. There was no happiness in that. Yet Miggy — who, so far, refused to kiss — made Ralph Parkiss feel as fragile as a blown egg. And happy too. He didn’t mind her boyish clothes, her chilled, unsmiling face, her lack of decoration, her stillness and her secrecy. Such rapt, unconscious gravity was irresistible. Thank God the Belle had beached him here. Thank God for storms.