Signals of Distress Read Online Free PDF Page B

his boots and had his stockinged feet on a fireside settle, as if they could be warmed and dried by the memory of fire.
    ‘Mr Smith,’ said Mrs Yapp, as if it were the most aristocratic of names, ‘is it all pleasing to you?’ She made a genteel sweep of her hand.
    ‘We should like a fire.’
    ‘George! Lay a fire for Mr Smith. And sheets. I promised sheets.’
    ‘If that in’t hospitality,’ said George to no one in particular, ‘then what the Devil is?’
    Aymer was cheered by the change in Mrs Yapp. So were Robert and Katie Norris. They’d been at the inn for three nights and Mrs Yapp had not so far expressed any word of welcome or shown any
sign of hospitality. They had not lodged in inns before and took the Yapp indifference to be normal. But now with Mr Smith she displayed an accommodation to his comforts that was almost
worshipful.
    George put tinder in the grate and set off by the lane and alley to collect dry kelp and logs from the courtyard for the fire. He’d scarcely reached the courtyard when – happy chance
– Walter Howells rode in, his yellow leather breeches, worsted stockings and high-lows caked in mud, his horse a little lame from galloping with a lost shoe. George ran to take the reins and
pass on Smith’s letter.
    ‘Not now, not now!’ said Howells, brushing past George and stamping across the yard towards the alleyway of steps. ‘There’s been a wreck!’
    ‘What wreck?’
    But Walter Howells was out of sight and at the inn’s front door. He didn’t remove his leather hat which, low at the crown and turned up at its eaves, revealed red shock hair and a
redder face. Mrs Yapp and three guests whom he had not seen before were in the parlour – a fine-looking young woman and two clerkish men. He didn’t pause for pleasantries but broke into
their conversation. ‘Alice. Bake some bread and pull some corks. You’ve got a full house for a night or two. That Yankee ship we were expecting has beached at Dry Manston and all the
sailors on it are coming here and seeking beds.’
    ‘Dear Lord, how many beds?’
    ‘Oh, sixteen, seventeen. And a little dog! And they’ve got a Negro in a cart.’
    ‘You’re joking with me, Walter Howells.’
    ‘I am not.’
    ‘A Negro in a cart, you say? Well, we’ll see.’
    ‘You will indeed. You can expect them in the hour and, in that hour, I’ll have to find myself the smith. My horse has dropped a shoe.’
    Aymer Smith – somewhat startled that this muddy, florid man should be Howells the kelp agent – stepped forward and offered his hand: ‘Please allow me to introduce myself. You
say you need a smith. And I’m a Smith, but not much use with horses …’
    ‘Then, sir,’ said Walter Howells, ‘you’re not much use to me.’

3. Shared Beds
    F OR THAT ONE HOUR between Walter Howells’s ‘You’re not much use to me’ and the arrival of the sailors from the Belle ,
Aymer viewed his task in Wherrytown with less timidity. The obligations of Duty and Conscience were unchanged, of course. He could not take pleasure in the lecture-with-regrets that he would have
to deliver on ‘The Local Implications of Monsieur Leblanc’s Liberties with Salt’. But Walter Howells’s ill-manners in the parlour with Katie Norris there to witness had made
the prospect of the lecture sweeter.
    Aymer stood at the window of his room. In the courtyard Mr Howells was leading his unshoed horse to the smith that, for the moment, he might imagine more consequential than a Smith. Aymer could
be patient. He would let Mr Howells absorb the wincing implications of the letter to him and its signature. How could Aymer know that George still had the letter – both letters – in his
pocket and in the fever of ‘There’s been a wreck!’ had forgotten it? The letter was at that moment (he imagined) waiting on the agent’s parlour table. It would not be long,
a couple of hours at the most, before Aymer could expect the verbose opportunity to accept the