‘We are not seeking parables in Canada, but three good meals a day, and work and advancement for ourselves,’ replied Robert Norris, diverting Aymer from his wife. ‘We want only to live plainly and wholesomely, and to find a welcome there.’
‘There can be no guarantees of those,’ said Aymer. ‘No one can guarantee the heavens in Canada will have more stars …’
‘Of course, but …’
‘… or that the skies will display a deeper blue, or that the soil of that uncharted wilderness will be as rich as cake, or that you and Mrs Norris will step ashore to a spontaneity of well-being and abundance …’
‘We hope, at least, for better than we have.’
‘Yes, Hope is guaranteed …’
‘Blind superstition, nothing more,’ said George. Katie couldn’t stop her laugh.
‘… No, Hope will flourish as you sail further from our shores. Hope is what will greet you when you land. And Hope is blindfolded; her eyes are bound. This is what I mean to say.’ The Norrises were hardly listening. Mr Phipps had joined them and had taken Katie’s hand. He smiled at Aymer once again. What could he mean by it? ‘Yes, this is what I meant to say,’ continued Aymer, hurriedly, attempting to insinuate his shoulder between Katie and the preacher. Whip, made nervous by the tightness of the rope, had the good judgement to growl at Mr Phipps’s shoes. Aymer lowered his voice for Katie Norris: ‘Forgive me for my parables,’ he almost whispered. ‘I wish to speak as plainly as I can. May all your Hopes come true.’
‘And yours, of course,’ said Katie Norris, though she couldn’t imagine that a man like him had Hopes of anything. ‘And we will pray for you.’ The preacher beamed at her.
‘And I will think of you. From time to time,’ said Aymer.
‘You will not pray for our brave pioneers, I hear,’ said Mr Phipps, doing his best to strike a note of irony and not of irritation. ‘But, then, you would not claim to understand how little Hope there is without Prayer.’
‘Blind superstition,’ Aymer said. He was surprised that Katie didn’t squander a laugh for him as readily as she had done for George.
‘Indeed, indeed,’ the preacher said, and arched his eyes. Comically, he thought. ‘So Prayer is superstition? And Hope is blindfolded, is it, Mr Smith? And Canada, I heard you say, a wilderness without a chart? I have better news for our two voyagers by sea.’ Again, a disconcerting smile for Aymer Smith. Then he turned away and fixed his gaze on Katie’s face. When would these men leave her at peace? He said, ‘I have the chart to guide you through the wilderness. The Bible is your chart.’ He took a small Bible with a brass clasp and green leather covers from his coat and handed it to Katie Norris. ‘God’s speed,’ he said, and would have taken her hand again and forced a Christian parable on her. But Alice Yapp had joined them on the quay and Alice Yapp was the one person in the town who silenced him.
‘I have a useful gift,’ she said. More useful than a Bible or a bar of soap, she meant. She gave the Norrises a pot of arrowroot for the journey and a stoppered jar: ‘Six-Spoon Syrup. That’s against the seasickness, Mrs Norris.’ She turned and shook the jar to mix the brew. ‘Two teaspoons, essence of ginger. Two dessert spoons, brown brandy. Two tablespoons, strong tea. A pinch of cayenne pepper. Now let old Neptune do his worst. A sip of that and I defy you to be sick.’
In fact, old Neptune was in a placid mood that day. The sea was welcoming, with just sufficient wind to fatten up the sails. The sailors came ashore for their farewells. George seemed especially popular. He received a dozen slaps across his back, and twice as many ha’pennies for services and favours at the inn. The captain kissed Alice Yapp full on the mouth and bunched her skirts up in his hand. He waved at Walter Howells, who kept his distance from the crowd. He shook Mr Phipps’s hand. He even smiled at Aymer Smith. Then he put his hand out for the dog. Aymer pulled the rope away. ‘No, no.’ This was not expected.
‘She is the Belle’s, I think. We can’t abandon her.’
‘I cannot let her go.’ How many days had passed, he wondered, since he’d last squared up against the captain, in the snowy lane above the inn, and been accused of theft? (‘Not only do you steal my man, you steal my dog as well.’) This time he wouldn’t hide behind a lie. He’d take the beating if it would rescue Whip. ‘It is not possible,’ he said. ‘No, no.’
‘Must I ask half a dozen of my men to take her off you?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Then let me have my dog. What, would you have us settle here and not go home? We’ll not go home without our property.’
‘I’d pay ten shillings for her, happily, or twelve,’ Aymer said. Would Whip abandon him, if he let go of the rope? ‘I beg you, leave her in my hands. She has quite adopted me.’ His voice was calm; his thoughts were not. Would he go home without a single friend? ‘Twenty shillings, sir.’ He’d liberate the dog. He’d snap her chains of slavery. The thought was not preposterous.
The captain laughed at Aymer’s shillings (‘A ship without a dog?’) and shook his head. He took hold of the rope and snapped it out of Aymer’s hand. Whip didn’t seem to mind. She liked the smell of shoes and legs, it didn’t matter whose. The captain shook George’s hand. A sixpence passed between them. ‘Good man, George. And if you ever want a place at sea …’ The captain put his arm round Mrs Yapp again. ‘Next trip,’ he said. ‘We could be back within the year. Now, let’s aboard.’ He tugged at Whip. Aymer should have snatched the rope and run. At least he should have stooped and rubbed Whip’s head and wept into her hair. Instead he stayed as stiff as pine, between the preacher and the parlourman, and watched the ship’s dog disappear for good.
They rang one bell to call the crew aboard. Three men were sent to load the passengers’ bags and boxes. Palmer Dolly, ‘unremarked amongst the crowd’, ran forward to lend a hand. He lifted Lotty Kyte’s heaviest box onto his shoulders and carried it on to the Belle. No one challenged him. And no one missed him for a while. He hadn’t said goodbye to anyone. He simply disappeared into the shadows — and the bloodstains — of the orlop deck. He’d have the salvaged cattle for company at first. And then he’d have their straw bedding to himself, until America. Soon the sound of falling lightlines and hoisting canvas filled the air. ‘And pull! Let-her-go.’ The sailors were a team again. The captain was Napoleon. The mooring ropes were loosened, the fenders lifted and the jib sail set to take the port tack out of Wherrytown for the emigrant ports of Fowey and Cork before the weeks in open sea. They rang the final bell, this time for paying passengers to come aboard.
Aymer would have liked to hug the Norrises, but he could only shake their hands. They walked away towards the Belle, and joined their two fellow voyagers, Lotty Kyte and Miggy, at the bottom of the ship’s gangway where Ralph Parkiss was waiting for his bride. Katie Norris went ahead, keen to get away. Robert Norris took Lotty’s arm and guided her onto the Belle. Her hands were shaking from the dread of it. Her eyes were hot and watering. ‘My brother can supply your furnishings when we arrive,’ she said, just to hear a voice.
Rosie Bowe had Miggy in her arms. She planted kisses on her neck and face. Her sobs were animal, a seal. She didn’t have the breath to speak. Her throat was aching from the tears and cries she had suppressed all morning, all week. Her eyes were raw. Ralph put his arms around them both and made promises: he and Miggy would find someone to write a letter if Rosie would find someone to read; they would send for her when they were rich; they would name their first daughter Rosie Parkiss; and, come what may, they would return one day before she died. But Rosie Bowe did not believe in that. She only knew that all the bone and sinew of her life was leaving on the Belle. ‘Be good to her,’ she said to Ralph. She gave her gifts to Miggy in a straw bag: some salted beef, the petticoat her sister had made, a baby shawl, one of the bars of soap that Aymer Smith had left, and the embroidered passage from the cottage wall, ‘Weep sore for him that goeth away …’