‘I in’t.’
‘She in’t, she says.’ She spoke to Aymer Smith. ‘She don’t know what it means, America. She thinks it’s down the coast. She thinks they’ll walk back here on Sundays for a bite.’
‘I know better. Ralph has said.’
‘Has Ralph said how you’ll never see your ma again?’
‘I’ll send you word.’
‘How will you send me word? Who’s taught you how to write since yesterday?’
‘You can’t read in any case.’
‘So that’s it, then? I might as well be dead to you.’
‘Oh, Ma, don’t start.’
Rosie Bowe sighed loudly, shook her shoulders and her head, stood up, sat down, sighed deeply once again. ‘Well, then …’ she said. She’d have to settle for it, she supposed. She’d never known her daughter so implacable.
Aymer hadn’t said a word. Had Rosie Bowe expected him to repeat his offer of yesterday, his promise to ‘enhance’ their lives by taking Miggy as his wife, in lieu of kelp? She’d said, ‘My Miggy in’t for you. She’s only but a girl.’ But had she staged this public argument with her daughter so that Aymer could intervene, and count off the seven certain benefits of being Mrs Margaret Smith? He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t try to take this girl from Ralph. She would flourish in America. He had no doubt of it. At last he could admit it to himself — her country face would not transport so well to Aymer’s home. She’d never be a Margaret. Look at the way she sat, her manly breeches and her busy legs. Listen to her breathing through her mouth, and speaking in an accent full of wind and salt. See, in that half light, the narrow tightness of her face, the unsophisticated hair. She wasn’t Katie Norris. He wouldn’t wish to travel to the end of tired with her. She didn’t even have her mother’s virtues, a kind and ready smile, good, open, unembarrassed eyes, a spirit made from weathered oak.
‘If she must go,’ he said at last, ‘then, I hope, you will allow me to … to make your new lives less uncertain. I can provide a little money for you both …’
Miggy came down off the bed, and stood beside her mother.
‘… Before I leave, or Miggy leaves, I will arrange a … small payment.’ He was embarrassed by their stillness and their silence. ‘I must leave now …’ He stood up hastily. He was so clumsy in their house, both in his body and his speech. ‘I mean, I must go back.’ He shook both women’s hands and fled into the cottage yard. He almost ran away. Whip barked and followed him. The two roped mongrels growled as he passed. The sea air slapped his blushing, sweating face. Betrayed, betrayed, betrayed. He didn’t stop until he reached the path above the Cradle Rock.
There wasn’t any sign of Otto’s food or the napkin on the seat. They’d disappeared. One of the stones Aymer had used to weigh the napkin down had rolled, almost, onto the heart scratched in the wood, obscuring Ralph’s and Miggy’s initials. A heart of stone, Aymer thought. He looked beneath the seat. He pushed the grass aside with his boot. No crusts or fishbones there. No snubs of cheese. There were seagulls about, one-legged on rocks, their necks tucked in. Had they the strength to pull the napkin free of stones? He called out Otto’s name again. Then Miggy’s name. Then Katie’s name. Then all the swear words he knew. He was uncontrolled, despairing, angry, faint, ashamed. He’d missed Otto by a half hour at the most. He kicked the seat. He threw the napkin’s stone onto the ground. He banged his forehead with his fist. He cursed himself, out loud. Whip and seagulls echoed him.
If he hadn’t been shouting, perhaps he would have heard more clearly what he took to be a distant voice, coming off the land. He called again, ‘Otto! Otto!’ and yes, there was the faintest voice. It was the echo of his own, rebounding off the rocks. He climbed up off the path onto the headland until he had a decent view inland. The coastal granite bluffs; the bracken and the gorse; a narrow wind-break of stooping skew and thorns; the first low wall; the salty grazing land; the miles of distant fields; the moors. He ranged from left to right, searching for some sign of human life, some moving shadow. He only spotted birds and something that might have been a bending man but turned sideways to prove itself a tethered goat.
At first he thought there was a single, cussed wedge of snow, surviving in the shadows of a thorn which grew behind the nearest drystone wall, a hundred yards away. But when he saw it for the second time, it appeared to lift and change its shape, then drop and hang like washing on a line. Was that the missing napkin from Otto’s meal? It seemed to be. Its weight looked right for cloth in that low wind, and it was white and square. Its corners showed against the darker branches of the tree. Surely, Aymer thought, it didn’t walk there on its own. And it couldn’t be carried by the flimsy wind that had been blowing all that day. He wet his index finger in his mouth and held it up. What little wind there was was heading east. The napkin had gone north. ‘We have him, Whip,’ he said. ‘He’s there.’
The going wasn’t hard at first. The land was wild and wet, but Aymer made stepping-stones of granite, and even though he slipped from time to time, and had to slither once on his haunches down a mossy outcrop, he found a route towards the cloth, that white and flapping signal of distress. When he reached the dip beyond the headland though and the sea was out of sight, the soil was deeper. There were no granite stepping-stones. The ground refused to take his weight. His boots sank in. The earth expired its brackish coffin smells. His ankle turned. He fell again onto his outstretched hand. He sank up to his cuff. Aymer headed for the bracken to his right, and found firmer footing there, though the gorse that grew beyond was thicker than it looked. He had to force his way through. His trousers and his legs were spiked. The gorse snapped. The air about him smelled of coconut. Whip wasn’t happy on this walk. She barked that they should go back to the path. She ran away. She waited. Barked again. But finally she followed Aymer through the bracken and the gorse to the dry, slight rise beyond, to the thorn tree and the wall.
Aymer wedged his foot into the wall, pushed himself up on a low branch, and pulled the white cloth free. His hopes were dashed. It was too big and flimsy for a napkin. He recognized it, though. It was the sling he’d had for his bad arm. He’d flung it to the ground when he had needed both his hands to help Ralph move the Cradle Rock. He remembered how the heavy wind that Sunday had picked up the sling, turned it once or twice, then took it on a seagull flight inland.
He called for Whip. But Whip had gone. She’d scaled the wall and run across the pasture in its lee. When Aymer called she barked for him to follow her. He climbed up on the wall, and clapped his hands. Whip had her chin pressed to the grass. Her tail was wagging heavily. She rolled on her back. What had she found? Rabbit droppings, probably. A rotting crow. Manure. Something irresistible and smelly to mark her coat with. Aymer followed her. At least the pastureland was firm. He held Whip by her collar. She had rolled in something dead. The smell was unbearable. He flipped her over by her legs and wiped her back on the grass. And then he wiped his own hands on the grass. They were as smelly as the dog.
They walked up to a second, higher wall, climbed over it and then headed eastwards towards Wherrytown. To the north there was a lonely curl of smoke, a second lonely curl of hope that Otto might be found. There was a rough gate in the corner of the pasture. It led into a rutted wagon way, the quicker, more direct back path from Dry Manston which the Bowes had used the day before. Their footprints could be followed in the mud. Aymer would be happy to get back. He’d had a disappointing, empty day. Nothing he had done would change the world. The hunting party would go out the next day, and Otto would be carried back, at best half dead. Aymer Smith of Hector Smith & Sons, the meddler, the emancipationist, would be to blame. They’d shared the moment when the bolt was pulled, and he was pointing at the open door and telling Otto, ‘Go! Go! Go!’ Now they’d share the moment when the bolt was shut again.