‘We kelp a bit,’ she said.
‘And do you supply Mr Howells with soda ash?’
‘Walter Howells? He has our kelp.’
‘So then, what is your name?’
‘I’m Miggy Bowe.’
Again he offered her his hand. She hid her hands, and backed away. ‘I’m only seventeen,’ she said.
‘What does that mean? That you’re too young to shake my hand?’
‘I never had to shake a hand before.’
‘My dear Miss Bowe,’ he said, ‘it is not important that you shake my hand. I merely offered it to mark our meeting and to introduce myself. A dog that rushes to you with its tail in motion is a dog you need not fear. And so it is with strangers, except of course we shake our hands and not our tails. A footpad or a common thief does not hold out his hand to shake, but only to relieve you of your watch or silver. But still, I will not trouble you to shake my hand. You should not do what does not suit you, or else you will be unhappy all your life.’ He put his hand into his coat. ‘Here, take some soap,’ he said. ‘It is more useful, I agree, than handshaking.’ Miggy Bowe, who had no watch or silver and was unhappy all her life, could not see the relevance of soap. She turned her back and ran. She didn’t think that she’d be caught by Aymer Smith. He was too flimsy to give chase. But Ralph and Whip were fit. They soon were at her side.
ROSIE BOWE released her mongrels and went out, stick in hand, to meet the man that Miggy and the sailor had described.
‘We’d roped a likely little cow, Ma, and got it halfway home and then he tries to fetch hold of my hand. I don’t know what he might’ve done if Ralph didn’t come by. I never seen a man so long and thin and strange. He’s talkin’ like you never heard before. He had his arm hid in his coat. He might’ve had a pistol there. He said I was to tell if we sell kelp to Walter Howells. And then he gave me soap.’
‘Let’s see the soap.’
‘I wouldn’t take no soap.’
‘Miggy Bowe, if this is lies …’
‘It in’t no lie. I wouldn’t tell no lie on Sabbathday.’
‘She’s right,’ Ralph said. ‘The fellow’s got a pocketful of soap. And when he talks it’s like a sermon.’
The man, when he arrived, it’s true, was tall — but Rosie felt no fear of him. He was a spindleshanks. He wouldn’t have the strength or pluck to trouble them. She calmed the dogs and put her stick away. She even shook his hand. She didn’t want him in her home — where Miggy and the sailor stood behind the door — and so she made him state his business in the cold and open air. She listened as he gave his name and that of Walter Howells. She’d heard of Smith & Sons, of course. She knew her soda ash was sold to finish up in soap. She guessed as soon as Aymer mentioned Duty and Conscience that there would be bad news.
‘Alas,’ he said, after what seemed an endless doorstep homily on everything from soap to sin, ‘my brother has no further need of kelp. His business with Dry Manston and with you and Walter Howells cannot survive the summonses of science or of progress. I come to thank you for your efforts in the past and to present you with a shilling for your troubles, and some soap.’ He put five bars of soap down on the yard bench. Whip sniffed at them, but wasn’t interested. Rosie felt the same. Already, she was angry with the man. How would they live without their thirty shillings for a ton? And then he held the shilling up. ‘For you,’ he said. ‘By way of thanks. And may it bring you better fortune.’
Rosie couldn’t stop herself: ‘That in’t no use. You think we’re going to bake our bread from soap? How will we live? A shillin’ is a fine price to be paupered by. It’s a bad-luck shilling and we’ll have none of it.’
‘I intended it to be …’
‘Intended in’t enough!’
Miggy put her head around the door. She thought she’d turn a shilling to a crown: ‘I had a cow roped, Ma. He chased it off. And now we’re gonna starve.’
Aymer blushed again. He’d already spotted Miggy with the young American, peeking from behind the door, and though she was no Katie Norris, she was alluring in a colourless and undramatic way. He liked her peevish, boyish inhibition, and didn’t want to seem a fool in front of her. He didn’t know what he had done to cause such anger, except be honest and considerate. ‘You should not blame me, Mrs Bowe,’ he said. That would have been enough, but he was ill at ease — as ever — and couldn’t stop the puffing elongation of this simple self-defence. ‘I have been the kelper’s friend.’ A pause to find another reason to demand their sympathy and thwart their anger. ‘I have braved a storm at sea in order to be here. Indeed, I’ve sustained an injury. My arm and shoulder bone are cracked.’ (Now his sentences were under canvas. Their sails were full of wind.) ‘But pain has not deterred me from my duty. I have walked a fair few miles from Wherrytown, and it is cold, and there are many kelpers to be spoken to. Your neighbours took my shilling and my soap. I’ve been this morning to the homes of Mr Fowler, Mr Dolly, Mr Hicks … All kelping families, but they were civil.’
‘They’ve got the reason to be civil, in’t they? Kelping’s not their meat and drink. They’ve sons, and boats. Fish is their livin’. Kelping’s for their daughters and their wives to earn a bit of extra for the pot. But we’ve no men or boats.’ ‘I beg you, Mrs Bowe. Do not upset yourself.’ ‘I’ve got a right to speak my mind. You’re standing on my step, and I will speak my mind. What’ll we do without our kelp? Who’ll take my Miggy off my hands, if we’ve no work to keep us proud?’ Aymer waited for Rosie Bowe to sing her daughter’s praises, how she could cook and sew and be a lady’s maid if only Mr Smith would write her name down in his book and find employment for her. But she said nothing more. She simply shook her head and looked at Aymer’s boots.
‘I’m sure your daughter has more worth than what you earn from kelping …’
‘There in’t no worth to being poor, not when it comes to marrying.’
‘Oh, Ma!’
‘ “Oh, Ma,” she says! She’s no idea, that girl. She’s living in her dreams. No man will take a pauper for his bride.’ Behind the door, Ralph Parkiss had his hand on her daughter’s back. She let his fingers tell a rosary of vertebrae down to her waist. She stopped his hand with hers and held his fingers tight. A thought occurred to Miggy Bowe that she would never let his fingers go. She’d hold them here, and on the sea, and in America. She rubbed the rope burns on Ralph’s palm. She faced the stranger in the doorway and she smiled.
A thought occurred to Aymer Smith as well, an extravagant, rushing inspiration which, had he been at home, amongst the comforts of his sitting room, or in the prudent offices of Hector Smith & Sons, might not have found the thinnest purchase on his imagination. But here, emancipated by the open air, by the distance he had come, and by the dislocating alchemy of sea and loneliness and strangers, and by the smiles that he had got from Katie Norris, his head was free for reckless possibilities. There was no one to rein him back. No one to stop him thinking that, perhaps, he’d found a wife at last. What better man than he to take a pauper for his bride? The thought was not preposterous. He’d dress her well. He’d mould her into shape. She’d learn to read and write and cypher. She’d pick up the proprieties of city life and adopt a more womanly demeanour, not gaping or being quite so busy with her legs. She could be taught to breathe through her nostrils and not her mouth. He’d turn her into Katie Norris. She was too gauche and innocent herself to mind that he was inexperienced and old and would not make a pattern husband. He’d offer her the wealth, the education, the status, the emancipation that otherwise could only flourish in her dreams and prayers. She’d bear him children: Aymer Smith & Sons. What would Matthias make of it? He’d be appalled. And jealous, too. Fidia Smith, Matthias’s wife, was thirty-six and pinched in everything but shape. But Mrs Miggy Smith was like a chrysalis. Her best days were ahead. And so were his. So long as he could mend the damage done and earn the sanction of the Bowes.