‘Oh, Ma, don’t fret,’ said Miggy. ‘I’ll end up crying too. And that’s bad luck. That in’t the way to go.’ She put her arm through Ralph’s and took her first step on the Belle. She didn’t look at Rosie Bowe. Her eye was caught by Aymer Smith approaching from the crowd. At last. She’d almost given up on him.
Aymer ran up to the gangway. He stood between Rosie and her daughter. He took his purse out of his coat. And handed three bright sovereigns to the girl. (‘What’s going on?’ said Alice Yapp out loud. ‘What has old spindleshanks been doing with the girl that’s worth that weight of tin? Now there’s a tale. I’ll find the bottom of it, don’t you worry.’) There wasn’t any time for Aymer to make a speech. Miggy took his money without a word of thanks, though Ralph shook his hand. The captain rang the final bell, to pull the gangway up. And that was that, and nothing much to celebrate.
The Belle had soon left the perils of the shore. It slowly dropped down-channel against the tide and waited on capricious winds to take it out beyond the harbour boom and between the channel buoys. It idled there, in the offing, for half an hour. The quayside crowd could pick out Lotty Kyte on deck, still blindfolded, and the Norrises. Then the light picked up, and with the light the sea, for light can energize the sea and make the waves more spirited. The wind did not diminish as they feared. It held — and more than held. The ship turned stern to Wherrytown and beat a passage through the bay up to the Finters, those final, storm-racked morsels of the land where there were only cormorants and kelp. Within the hour the Belle of Wilmington had dissolved into the fog-veiled precipices of cloud, and Rosie Bowe, heartbroken on the quay, had nothing left to do but set her face against the wind and walk the six miles home.
If she had waited for ten minutes more — as did Aymer Smith — she would have noticed the fog-cloud thicken where the Belle had disappeared and a yellow twist of smoke make smudges on the white. The coastal steampacket, Ha’porth of Tar, passed within fifty yards of the Belle. They rang their greetings across the water, and Lotty Kyte, reluctant to abandon the sea air and the deck, waved both hands into the darkness and had no fear. It seemed to Aymer that the tussling spirits of the age were passing on the sea; the old, the new, the wind, the steam, the modest and the brash. The future would be driven by steam, he was sure. It was a more compliant slave than wind. Already there were steam coaches, steam looms, steam threshers, and he had heard of a machine that could hatch eggs by steam. ‘There’ll be no need for men and chickens soon,’ he thought. ‘There’ll be no need for sails on boats either. A shame.’ And such a shame as well that there wasn’t anyone to share his observations with. The quay was empty now. Aymer went in search of educated company, George, perhaps, or even Mr Phipps.
The Tar, its progress simplified by steam, put into Wherrytown with no one there to watch — unless there was someone, lost behind the town, with nothing else to do but stare and wonder if the Belle’s departure was a liberation or a curse.
Aymer Smith didn’t find educated company. He went back to his room. His own bed smelled of Whip. He lay down on the Norrises’ double bed, his boots still on, his face pressed into the mattress. He smelled where Katie Norris had been, and would have masturbated there and then had not Mrs Yapp come in on some thin pretext and plagued him with her nosiness.
‘In bed? Are you not well, Mr Smith?’
‘I am entirely well, despite a malady of spirit.’
‘What’s that then? Fever? I’ll bring you a pennyworth of something for it, if you want.’
‘I suffer from a sentimental malady, Mrs Yapp. A pennyworth of peace and quiet is all I want.’
Mrs Yapp was not the sort to take offence. ‘Don’t suffer for that Miggy Bowe,’ she said. ‘She’s gone and in’t worth the fever.’
‘I have not got a fever, Mrs Yapp. Nor do I suffer anything for Miggy Bowe …’
‘I think you have been singed by her, though. You can say.’
‘Good heavens, she’s a country girl! What dealings could I have had with her?’
‘Now there’s a question to be asked, and asked by anyone who saw you handing money to the girl.’
‘Phaa, Mrs Yapp!’
‘I’m only mentioning …’
‘Then please to mention nothing more. I have no head for it.’ He stood up and looked out on to the courtyard, with his back to her. ‘I have business dealings with the Bowes, the younger and the elder both, regarding the manufacture of our family soap. As you well know. Those coins that I gave were kindly recompense for their loss of kelping. My pocket has been singed by her and nothing else. I aim to give some coins to the mother, too. And so you see there is no gossip to be brewed from it.’
‘That is uncommon kindly, sir. For Rosie Bowe will want a little helping, what with her Miggy gone, the kelping finished with and bad luck all along the coast. You heard the Cradle Rock’s pushed down?’
‘The Rock pushed down! And how is that?’
‘That blackie done it, Mr Smith. Pushed it halfway down the cliff.’
‘Then it’s the work of Nature. Otto would not have the strength for that.’
‘He must’ve done. It’s him, all right. He signed his work. They say he’s put his name to it, scratched in some piece of benchwood that they found …’
Aymer walked out of the room and pulled his coat on as he ran along the inn’s odd levels to the parlour and the lane. No Ralph. No George. No Whip. He had to walk along the coast alone. He hadn’t known he had such energy or speed. His coastal walks had made him healthy. Now he could almost run. Six miles was not a trial.
Mrs Yapp had not exaggerated. The Cradle Rock had fallen on its side, and where the rock had once pivoted was now a newly opened cave, musty, colourless and wet, with streaks of bird lime and the bones of rats amongst the debris of the stone. When Aymer came, a group of fishermen were standing where the rock had been, talking in low voices with their hands across their mouths, as if they feared the wind would take their words away. Walter Howells was standing on the pivot edge, looking down on to the toppled Rock. He had his pistol in his jacket belt. ‘That’s never coming up again,’ he said. ‘That’s going to end up in the sea. A thousand shillings wouldn’t put that back in place. Don’t even ask.’
Skimmer and two of the Dollys climbed up from the headland rocks and joined their neighbours.
‘There in’t no sign of him,’ said Palmer’s father, Henry.
‘How long’s it been?’
‘Most half a day. He wasn’t there when we put up the nets. We sent the dogs out looking for the boy. And we’ve been hollering his name all morning.’
‘He’ll show up,’ said Skimmer.
‘Bound to.’
No one dared say ‘cannibal’. Palmer would show up all right, his bones picked clean, his blood drunk dry, his sable hair as lifeless as a mat. They blamed themselves. They’d had Otto almost in their hands. They should’ve tossed him in the sea. They should’ve kept him chained and gagged.