Then Robert Norris sang: ‘Old Faisie-do’, ‘The Ballad of the Greenwood King’, and ‘The traveller is far from home, and lost, and lost, and lost’. His voice was thinner than in chapel. The cold night air reduced it. There was no roof to give it resonance. But still it reached the darkest corners of the courtyard, where Whip had taken stolen fish, where Ralph and Miggy were embracing, where some young men who’d drunk too much were being sick or sleeping, and filled them with that mesmerizing, odd conjunction, both sad and hopeful, which is the human voice in song. Everyone was hot from dancing, and everyone was full of beer and pie. His songs were sobering.
It was too late and cold to linger in the courtyard. To bed. There was a lot of work to be done the next day: a funeral, some carpentry and sail repairs, the further balking of the fish, amends to make, harmonies to restore. But, at least, the Belle was docked, the cattle fenced, the pilchards in, the seaman Rankin cleaned and in his box, the world in order for a change. When the candles were snuffed out at the Inn-that-had-no-name, the travellers there could dream of home, in Quebec, in Wilmington, at sea, and know that home was within reach at last. America and Canadee. Nobody thought of Africa that night, except for Aymer Smith. His head was aching from the dancing and the beer. He lay awake and tried to picture Otto going home, the stone and sand of Africa, the moon and sun, the trees perspiring in the night.
10. The Faintest Voice
IT WOULD HAVE been wise for Aymer Smith to have listened to the message swelling from the sea, ‘Enough’s enough. You must go home.’ Unlike the Belle he didn’t need his rigging fixed. He could go now. He only had to have a word with George and pay two sovereigns for the day hire of a horse. He could reach the Seven Springs by evening, spend the night in civilized company at the Cross and Crown Hotel, and then secure a place, first class, inside the mail coach going east. Three days and he’d be back where he belonged, amongst his books, with good acquaintances, fellow Sceptics and Amenders to converse with, and his work at Hector Smith & Sons to take his mind off Wherrytown.
So what if he didn’t know the way to the Seven Springs? Or if he was too timid for the horse? Or if he was nervous of travelling on his own across moors where there were highwaymen and bridgeless rivers? Then he could go home in company. There were a dozen wagonloads of salted pilchards leaving on the Wednesday morning. If he could only tolerate an exposed place amongst the hogsheads and put his shoulder to the wheel when there was mud, or a heavy hill, then he’d be back with the Sceptics by the Sunday night. His duty would be done. More to the point, he would be free of Wherrytown and all of its embarrassments. Nobody at home would know what a mighty fool he had made of himself.
He’d had a dream that Monday night, made turbulent by pilchard oil and too much beer, in which he danced a jig with Miggy, Katie and Alice Yapp as his three partners. He had no trousers on. The captain punched him on the chin, but no one tried to intervene. Otto shouted at him, pointing at the door, ‘Go! Go! Go!’ The sailors pelted him with kelp.
Aymer woke to daylight and an empty room. The Norrises were out of bed. Either they had gone to breakfast or they were on their morning walk. His throat was dry and sore. His head ached. Whip was stirring in her sleep at his side. He stretched his hand and stroked her ear. Was she the only friend in Wherrytown, this scraggy, undiscriminating dog? He feared, he knew, she was. And that was why he wouldn’t take the wagon or the horse. He had to put the world to rights. His world, that is. He wanted to be liked. He wanted to regain his dignity before he left. He couldn’t fool himself that he still had any tasks in Wherrytown. He’d paid his shillings to the kelpers. He’d spoken to the agent Howells. His work was done. And any foolish hopes that he might find a country wife had — just in time — been dashed. Otto haunted him, it’s true. But surely Otto would be far from Wherrytown by now. And surely in good hands. Aymer wouldn’t allow himself to consider the bleak alternatives. His conscience was too bruised already. Still, he was persuaded he must stay in Wherrytown, but not for Otto’s sake. Good sense dictated it. He couldn’t go back home just yet. After all, he had a chesty cold. He couldn’t travel in this weather until the infection had eased at least. It would be suicide.
Instead? Instead he’d stay on till the Wednesday week and take a passage on the Tar on its next return along the coast. That was a symmetry worth waiting for. And in the meantime he’d have seven days to know the countryside. He’d always been an admirer of the Picturesque. He could take George as his guide, perhaps. And Whip, of course. There might be antiquities to see. He’d botanize. He’d read. He’d try a little poetry, and begin a diary of his observations. He might attempt some sketches, too: the Cradle Rock, the harbour boats, the charming, unconceited cottages above Dry Manston beach. His health would benefit from rambles and diversions such as that. At night he wouldn’t be able to avoid the company in the parlour, of course. But he would be a mended man, keeping his own counsel and maintaining an educated distance from the conversations of his fellow guests. He knew that he had volunteered himself too much. Had been too generous and too exotic. Had interfered. He had seven days to be more reticent, more taciturn, more worthy of respect. He would be reckless with his reticence, a pleasing paradox.
There was no one in the parlour. Nor was there any fire. He didn’t ring the handbell. He helped himself to a cold breakfast from what had been left on the side table: potted hare, a dish of plain pilchards, oat bread, some cheese, some lukewarm grog. He didn’t touch the pilchards or the grog. He put his nose into a book — Emile dell’Ova’s Truismes, in French — and ate just bread and cheese. Surely it wouldn’t be long before someone came, and could encounter him sitting quietly at the table, preoccupied, contained. But no one came for half an hour, and Aymer soon grew bored of dell’Ova’s company. He hand-fed the dog on potted hare and pilchards and then, when she wouldn’t stop wimping at the outer door, he took his coat and went into the lane.
Here was a town more preoccupied than Aymer could ever hope to be. He walked up towards the chapel first. He nodded gravely at a balding, elderly woman spinning in her outhouse. Hanks of flax hung from a beam between the hams and herbs. A pig, tied by the leg, sent Whip away. The woman didn’t look up from her wheel. One nod and she might snap her yarn. There wasn’t anybody else to be grave with, or to show the new, forbidding brevity of his conversation. The lanes and yards were quiet and empty, and all the windows shut. The chapel door was open, though, and there were two old men digging in the chapel green, with Mr Phipps the preacher looking on. Aymer might have found some company there — another man who loved debate, who took his pleasures from a book — for Mr Phipps was Aymer’s twin in many ways. Both were prisoners of priggishness, and dogma, and vocabulary. Both had Latin. Both were smitten by Katie Norris. They were two peas, except they disagreed on everything they had in common. So Aymer didn’t catch the preacher’s eye but persevered with his walk, following the path round to some rough-cut steps in rock behind the chapel. They led up to a muddy overhang which opened out to flat, high ground and a patchwork of stone-walled fields. Aymer turned towards the sea. There was a perfect panorama of chapel, town and harbour, with thinning wraiths of smoke haunting the sky in silent, crooked unison and the last remaining smudges of the snow slipping down those roofs that had no warming chimneys.