When Aymer finally ran his fingers up her legs, her hands went dead on him. She fell over on her back, closed her eyes and simply held his body close. Again he didn’t seem to know the way. His fingernails were too long. His shirt sleeves tickled her. He didn’t know how delicate she was, or what to touch. She let him fumble for a while, and then she helped him, holding his fingers between hers until there was no dryness left. If he thought that he would be the centre of attention, he was wrong. She concentrated on herself — looking at him, talking to him only when his hands and fingers were too rough or slow. She didn’t try to touch him any more. He was not there — except to be her serving gentleman. But she was more there all the time — getting bigger, narrowing; becoming stretched, tense, bloated … tremulous. She climaxed on his fingertips.
Aymer looked both startled and afraid, she thought. ‘Are you quite well?’ he asked, evidently alarmed by all her noise and agitation. He must have imagined that she was feverish, or suffering from fits.
‘I’m well. I’m well,’ she said. ‘And what of you? Let’s see.’ She put her hand down on his cock. It wasn’t hard, but it was stiff enough to rub. He rolled on top of her and butted at her legs. She put his cock inside. He wasn’t slow. Ten thrusts and that was it. The bubble burst. Not sexually. His orgasm was nothing much. It had been better in the inn’s dank alleyway. No, the bubble was the trance that had bewitched him the moment he had touched her hair. It was the same trance that he had felt, less fleetingly, with Katie Norris. To be alive and in such half-a-dream was rhapsody. But this was odd and unexpected for Aymer Smith. The instant his virginity was lost with his ejaculation, there was no longer any rhapsody. There was no trance. This was sober. He’d never felt so wide awake, and stripped. There — and it was not a dream — was the straw-packed bed, the threadbare blanket and the woman’s flushed and bony face, eyes closed, her legs spreadeagled under him, and daylight making curving slats across her chest. What had he done? What would his brother say?
Aymer tried to be polite. He asked if he should bring a drink, or mend the fire, or throw the blanket over her. But all the time he spoke, he was gathering his clothes from off the earthy floor and dressing hastily. He muttered thanks. He almost put more money on the shelf, but had no coins left. He wished her all the good fortune in the world. ‘I promise you, dear Mrs Bowe, that I am in your debt …’ The truth is Aymer ran away from her, out of the door and past the dogs, along the six-mile coast to Wherrytown, where he would have plenty to repent, including Mrs Yapp’s bill and his farewells to George. Get out of town, he told himself, with every stride. Get on the Tar. Get home.
Rosie wasn’t sorry that he’d gone. Nor was her life enhanced by him. Though it was changed. Aymer had left her something more valuable than coins. She wasn’t quite pregnant yet. Her egg hadn’t voyaged down into her uterus and implanted. But the egg was fertilized and it was moving. By Sunday she would be with child. The guess in Wherrytown would be that Rosie’s new baby would be black. Everything unusual on the coast would, from that day, be put on Otto’s bill. When no one could remember Aymer Smith or put a name to any of the Americans, or their ship even, the African would still be talked about. In fact, he gave a lasting phrase to Wherrytown. If anything went wrong — the harvest failed, the yeast went flat, a coin or a button disappeared — they’d say ‘Blame it on the African!’ or ‘Otto’s been at work again.’ Otto fathered many babies on the coast, not only Rosie Bowe’s.
But for the moment Rosie was still alone with no one but herself to love. And she wasn’t the sort to love herself. She rested on her wooden bed and conjured up the Belle. She could think more calmly of her daughter now. She was an optimist again. She pictured Miggy on the ship. It was. her marriage day. The captain would anoint her with sea water beneath the canvas canopies, the rigging vaults and the mastwood spires. Blindfolded Lotty Kyte and the woman with the lovely, sandy hair would be the maids of honour. Miggy would lie down with Ralph that night, in their creaking cabin out at sea, a seashell ring on her finger, his arms about her waist, the blood-red ensign round her throat. And they would shortly be together in the Lands of Promise.
15. The Lands of Promise
THIS WAS Aymer’s final night in Wherrytown. He had the whole inn to himself. George neglected him. Even Mrs Yapp had disappeared — she’d gone to Walter Howells’s for some celebration of their own. There was no one for Aymer to talk to. When he heard Wherrytowners coming back from Evensong, he was almost tempted to stroll up to the chapel and the chapel house to see Mr Phipps. Just for the company. It might, he thought, be an amusement to conclude the conversation he had started that morning with the preacher on the quay — Blind Superstition, and the Bible as a Chart. But he guessed that Mr Phipps would hardly welcome a Sceptic interrupting his supper. So Aymer stayed at the inn and had to eat alone. Cold ham and pickles. Solitary pie.
Aymer, as the only guest, could choose to sleep in any of the inn’s twenty empty beds. He hardly dared to sleep at all, in fact, in case he missed the Wednesday’s dawn departure of the Tar and the liberating taste of salt-free city air which beckoned him. He’d already packed his bag and dressed for the voyage by ten that Tuesday night. He wouldn’t go to bed. He took a blanket to the parlour. He put his chair next to the grate, facing the window that opened on to the lane. The fire would keep him warm until the early hours. And, if he dozed, he would wake as soon as there was any daylight in the window. He tried to read at first, but he was tired of Mr Paine. He couldn’t concentrate. Rosie Bowe had disconcerted him. He tried to put her out of mind. He shouldn’t blame himself. The fault was hers. She’d misconstrued his charity.
Where was her daughter? How far out at sea? Aymer stared into the fire. Would she be happy in America? Too late to worry now. No need to worry now, in fact. Aymer could put right in his mind’s eye things that might go wrong in life. That was his major skill. He couldn’t quite remember Miggy’s face. No matter — he’d improve on her. He imagined her in Wilmington. She wasn’t gaping. She wasn’t fidgeting her feet. Nor wearing breeches. She was breathing through her nostrils, not her mouth. He gave her better skin and hair. He ribboned her. He put her in a simple cotton dress. He imagined her heavily pregnant, too. That, surely, was the spirit of the emigrant. And she was more lively in her speech, more generous, more womanly. America was suiting her.
He put her in a rocking chair, and spread one hem of her cotton dress across the arm. He served her a slice of honey cake, and a jug of some new drink. He couldn’t recognize its smell. He put her foot up on the balustrade of the veranda. Maize, tobacco, sweet potatoes, and snap beans were growing in the plot below. (Would there be snap beans in America? Aymer wasn’t sure.) There were chickens. There was sun. Whip was rolling in the grass.
Aymer shut his eyes and put himself into the scene. He was standing in the garden, looking up at Miggy. ‘In’t you too hot?’ she said. No, no, that wouldn’t do. She had to speak again, and this time with the slight brogue of the Carolinas. ‘Aren’t you too hot? Put on your sun hat, Mr Smith.’ Oh better, yes.