Up at the salting hall some of the older women were as panicky and breathless as the fish. They tipped each basket-load of pilchards onto the sloping flagstones and sorted them with brooms and wooden spades. Most were sent slithering down lead-lined chutes onto the cellar floor for balking with layers of rough salt. There’d be no waste. Farmers boasted, when pigs were slaughtered, that they had a use for everything except the squeal. The pilchards though were better than pigs: even the smell of fish was put to use — it kept the Devil out of town. Their fins, the flesh, the scales, the eyes, they all had purposes. Their blood and oil would drain into the cellar tanks for sale as cheap lamp fuel. Their flesh would end up, thanks to Walter Howells’s hogsheads and his wagons, on tables in London, Bristol, Liverpool and even in the sugar plantations of America, on nigger bread. The badly damaged pilchards — torn scales, ripped fins, their bellies gaping — were flipped aside. They were fit only for manure on a farmer’s field. The second best were packed on woodweave trays. They would be hawked and jousted inland while they were fresh. The remainder would be potted with vinegar, bay leaves, spices or pickled in jars with brine, for the spring. But the largest and the very best of the fish were put in panniers and covered by damp cloths. These were the ones that would be cooked to celebrate the catch. No table in Wherrytown would be without star-gazy pie that night, with pilchard heads protruding from the brown sea of a pastry crust, and pilchard eyes recriminating in the candlelight. A comic meal, and one that recognized how farcical it was to have a town so occupied by fish.
The Bowes were given jobs as basket carriers. Walter Howells was glad to see them there. They were strong and used to lifting heavy loads of seaweed and so could be expected to shift a decent share of fish. He noted down their names. He’d pay them later on — in pilchards and with a promissory note. There’d be no pennies till the fish were sold, and he could calculate his own cut of the profits.
Rosie Bowe was frozen from her walk. She warmed herself at the fire. She greeted her neighbours from Dry Manston and tasted her first roast pilchard of the season — not a touch on beef. But still she savoured it. It would be a long and arduous day, an aching day. She meant to pace herself. But Miggy didn’t wait to warm herself or taste the fish. She was already hot. She had seen Ralph Parkiss, thigh deep in the sea, basketing the pilchards with Palmer Dolly and his brothers. He would hand his next full load to her, and no one else. She’d see to it. Palmer Dolly — that idiot! — tried to put his basket on her back. ‘Come on, Miggy Bowe. Let’s see you give the pilchards legs.’ And then, ‘I got myself a dollar here …’ But she was deaf and blind to him. When Ralph stepped across the net, a wriggling basket on his shoulders, she paddled in to meet him. ‘That’s one for me,’ she said.
‘It’s heavy, though.’
‘So what of that?’ She took the weight of it. Her hand held his. Her lower lip turned in to check her smile. ‘Ma says I’m stronger than a horse …’
‘Giddup,’ Ralph said.
They worked in concert then. He kept the baskets light for her, and every time they met at the water’s edge, they touched each other’s hands. Their fingertips were lips.
Where did Aymer Smith fit in? He was, of course, the Smith & Son whom Walter Howells no longer needed. Whom Rosie Bowe would learn to do without. Whom Shipmaster Comstock took to be a kidnapper. Who was a coward and a weeper. Who was (his own assessment now) an apostate not only to God but to himself. Who had abandoned Otto to the snow.
He hadn’t slept too well, and little wonder, given how his ear and self-esteem had taken such a bruising. His nose was blocked. His throat was sore. The muscles in his legs were torn. He should have stayed in bed. But he didn’t want to wake the Norrises with his offensive cough, or with his sniffing. Sea air, he thought, might clear his passages and lift his spirits, a little exercise might be his remedy. So he’d followed everybody else down to the shore and stood, his back against the fire, observing ‘all the colour of the scene’, the spectacle of one small, single-minded, unremitting town at its busiest. This, certainly, must be the point of travel, he was sure, to see the different tribes of humankind, at ease with themselves. Perhaps he ought to travel more, to Edinburgh, say, or Paris or Florence, to see the greater works of man, the castles and the statues and the churches. Though what greater work of art than this live pageant might he see abroad? He rehearsed (not quite aloud) his ‘philosophic certitude’ that a traveller should leave himself exposed to humankind, not art or landscape. Just for the moment, though, he preferred not to expose himself too deeply. He wasn’t tempted to wade in amongst the pilchards. He wasn’t well enough. He must stay warm.
He nursed his sore chest at the fire. He waved at his good friend, Ralph Parkiss, and nodded dutifully, but nothing more, to agent Howells (who seemed both startled and amused to see him). Aymer couldn’t like the man, his red shock hair, his redder face, his unbecoming leather hat, his gracelessness, his ostentatious horse. But even greeting enemies was better than the desolation of being the only person on the beach without a job.
‘Good morning,’ and, ‘A wonderful sight!’ he said to any of the shivering fishermen that he recognized from his Sunday walk to Dry Manston as they came up to thaw out at the fire. ‘An exemplary spectacle … A feast for the eyes … What better work has man than this?’ Some Wherrytowners and some of the Americans who had witnessed his public dispute with Captain Comstock came to warm themselves as well. Aymer treated them with equal cheerfulness. He made them look him in the eye. He made them reply to his ‘Good morning’ and his comments on the weather. He wouldn’t be discomfited. He would put last night behind him. The morning was too fine for melancholia and self-consciousness. He belonged, he told himself; he was entitled to be there. Hector Smith & Sons had had dealings with Wherrytown for forty years. Who could say the same for Captain Comstock? Or his crew? They’d be come-and-gone in two weeks at the most, and couldn’t count on much respect for that.
No, Aymer need not defer to the Americans. He had his tasks — to make sure that all the kelping families were properly informed of their new circumstance, and to carry out his promise to take care of the Bowes. He had been wrong to think there was no job for him in Wherrytown. He owed a duty to the Bowes. He might that day walk out to Dry Manston with some provisions for their home. They would appreciate candied oranges, perhaps, a yard or two of twill, some sweeter-burning candles. There would be the opportunity to enquire of Rosie Bowe if Miggy, Margaret, her daughter, might benefit from marriage to an older, wealthy, educated man. He hadn’t yet spotted the Bowes at work among the pilcharders. Nor had he noticed George.
The parlourman approached him from behind: ‘Have you had breakfast yet, sir? Try one of these.’ He offered Aymer a grilled pilchard on a stick. Beneath the charcoal skin the flesh was white and succulent. Aymer burnt his lips on it. He was more hungry than he’d thought; the fresh air and the smell, perhaps. He pulled the burnt skin off with his free hand, and picked off fingerfuls of flesh. The fish juices ran onto his chin.
‘An oily fish,’ warned George. ‘Take heed you don’t grease up the lappets on that coat.’
‘The pilchard is a surface fish,’ replied Aymer, picking knowledge from his memory as clumsily as he now was picking bones from between his teeth. He was delighted to see George. ‘Pelagic is the term. You know the word?’
‘Don’t know the word. I know the fish well enough. There’s nothing else this time of year, exceptin’ pilchers.’
‘Demersic is the other word, I think. The twin of pelagic. It speaks of fish that live upon the ocean floor. I see a parallel with people here. Those shoals of common men who live near the surface, and those solitary, more silent ones that inhabit deeper water. I count myself to be demersic, then. You, George, can I describe you as pelagic, a pilchard as it were? You would not take offence at that?’