Robert had his hand on her bottom as they ran along the corridor. Already she had got her bonnet off and pulled the ribbon from her hair. He lifted up her skirts when they arrived outside the bedroom. She yelped and snapped his hand between her thighs. His fingers were icicles. His face was icy too.
‘Let’s get warm in bed,’ she said.
They’d hardly entered the room and dropped the door latch when Whip was barking at their knees and jumping up at Katie’s skirts. She tried to force the dog outside. The candle toppled from its holder, fell onto the bedroom boards and lost its light. She put her boot against Whip and pushed her into the corridor. ‘Where are you, Robert, my sweet love?’ she said. ‘Come here.’ And then again, more softly and more richly, ‘Come here. Come. Here.’
‘Hello. Is that you?’ said Aymer Smith. He sat up now in bed and could be seen in silhouette against the windows of the room. ‘Mr Norris, Mrs Norris? How very pleasant. And so you are returned?’
‘We are,’ said Katie, ‘yes.’ Her bones had liquefied. Her chest and throat were quivering like some trapped thrush. She found her husband’s hand, still icy cold.
‘Then, pray, will you address yourselves to this small mystery, which causes me, perhaps, some distress but which might afford a little entertainment for yourselves.’ He sniffed and coughed and chuckled. Good humour in adversity. He judged it struck the proper note with Katie Norris and her hair. He wished there was light enough to see her hair. ‘I have returned from my expedition along the coast to find my bedclothes taken off and my belongings stowed somewhere — perhaps elsewhere is better said — and no one in the inn to put the matter right. Do you suppose there are sheet-thieves about? Hot beef, stop thief. Is that our cry? Or should we look to that odd fellow George, or even Countess Yapp, to shed some candlelight upon their whereabouts?’ When there was no immediate answer from his fellow guests, he cut short their silence: ‘And you, dear friends? You passed a tolerable day, I trust? Myself, I have been lost in snow, and taken on the meanest touch of influenza, but not before I shook the Cradle Rock. That is an excursion you are advised to take before you leave these shores …’ Again he coughed and sniffed and chuckled. He couldn’t stop himself. He was so happy.
Katie Norris whispered something. And then she spoke a bit too audibly, ‘You tell him, Robert!’
‘Your clothes and bag, your cakes of soap, your books,’ said her husband, ‘are taken by our landlady …’
‘Indeed?’
‘Indeed, they are. I do believe she thought you were not here. That is to say, she feared you might have left. And that your few possessions might be payment for your bill …’
‘The Inn-that-has-no-name, has no rhyme nor reason to it, either. Excuse me while I solve this mystery …’ He blundered to the door. The Norrises were forced to stand apart and let him through. He smelt of fish and damp. ‘I will return with light,’ he said. He and the dog had gone before the Norrises could say another word. Perhaps the less they said the least harm done.
Robert put his arm round Katie’s waist.
‘Not now,’ she said. ‘He’ll be back too soon … I wonder if he’s got his trousers on?’
Aymer found the parlour occupied by an advance party of some of the younger fishermen. Their nets had been blessed by Mr Phipps. Now they were hoping to have their spirits fortified by Mrs Yapp’s hot wine and beer before the Sabbath ended and the moment came to set off for the pilchards. Aymer rang the parlour handbell, but no one came.
‘They’s steppin’ down from chapel,’ one man said. ‘There in’t no point in shaking that, not till they’s back inside.’
Aymer took his damp tarpaulin coat off its hook and went out of the inn’s front door. He put his coat on, underneath the granite lintel, and went down into the lane. He was impatient to be back amongst the Norrises in candlelight, with Katie Norris in her nightshift just three yards away. And Miggy Bowe to dream about. How fortunate, for him at least, that Duty had brought him west, the bearer of bad news. His life had blossomed since the Tar had docked in Wherrytown and he had come ashore! He’d moved the Cradle Rock. He’d freed an African. He’d bested Mr Walter Howells. He had new friends, the Norrises, Ralph Parkiss, some of the kelpers at Dry Manston. Even George the parlourman. The dog! The hairy little dog was his friend, too! And, best of all, he had the prospect of a wife — though, when he tried to summon Miggy Bowe in his mind’s eye, he couldn’t picture her. What colour were her eyes? How had she worn her hair? Instead, his mind was full of Katie Norris, her freckled calves upon the pot, her sandy hair a flapping flag of colour on the sea.
An older fisherman approached the inn, a length of newly blessed net on his shoulder. ‘Good evening, sir.’
‘Indeed it is.’
‘A bitter night, though.’
‘But a well-shaped Universe,’ Aymer said.
‘Amen to that. That’s worth a cup of anybody’s time.’
Aymer waited while Whip relieved herself against the stone and then went chasing smells. The snow had almost stopped, but what had already fallen was hard and biscuity underfoot. Aymer put his hands into his coat, whistled for the dog and set off up the lane.
The next men that he met were two sailors from the Belle: ‘Captain Keg’, the portly mate, and a taller, younger deckhand. ‘Good evening, gentlemen. Or should I say the contrary, that it is a dreadful evening and fearful cold?’
The Americans stared at Aymer with theatrical delight. ‘Well now!’ the mate said to his companion. ‘And lookee lookee here, see what the dog’s brought home!’ They stopped and grinned at him. Aymer was impatient with their ‘sauciness’. He walked on. They followed him until — to loud American guffaws — he collided with George the parlourman.
‘Ah, just the fellow. George? Let’s see if you are worth the shilling that you’ve had.’
George seemed at a loss for words for a moment, and then he said, ‘It’ll take more than a shilling to save your tail …’ and added, ‘… sir!’
Again the two Americans were laughing, inexplicably. Aymer felt excluded from some joke. It was a feeling he was accustomed to. He joined the laughter with a lifeless ‘Ah-ha’, and then took George by the elbow and spoke softly: ‘We must not fence, George. It is too cold and late to fence. Can you throw any light on this? My bed is stripped. My bag and my possessions are no longer in my room and Mrs Norris says that Mrs Yapp has taken them in lieu of payment …’
George was smiling now from ear to ear. ‘We thought you had eloped with the captain’s dog,’ he said, ‘and taken that Otto Africanus as your valet. But now you’re back, so that’s all right, so long as Otto’s nice and snug on this cold night inside the tackle room. I hope he is.’