Free Signals of Distress by Jim Crace Page A

Slaughter it alone? There wasn’t any way that she could drag it home herself, or whistle it. The cow was not a dog. She’d
have to brain it with a rock and butcher it before the crows and gulls found out. Would she have the strength and resolution? Could she relieve her boredom on the cow? Would Palmer Dolly come in
time to help? The walking figure she had spotted earlier was getting closer.
    There was a sharp, pointed stone almost within reach that would do for butchering. Miggy turned to pick it up, and stole a glance along the coast. It wasn’t Palmer Dolly on the path. This
man was blond. It was the sailor from the Belle , the one who’d held her waist. Ralph Parkiss was honouring his sailor’s boast, to see what she’d got hidden in her breeches.
He’d volunteered to walk the six miles to the ship to discover how it had fared since it had beached, but he was looking for the girl. He couldn’t fail to see her. She made a din
– in case he passed her by.
    ‘Is that you, Miggy?’ He climbed up from the path across the winter bracken. ‘Well now, that’s fortunate. I never thought I’d see a friendly face.’
Miggy’s face was hardly friendly, though. She judged a smile to be unladylike, particularly as she had lost a bottom tooth and her lips were cracked and dry. She knew she had good eyes. Her
mother told her so. She did her best to widen them, and not to blink. Ralph spoke the line that he had practised for six miles: ‘I came to see the Belle of Wilmington and found myself
the belle of Wherrytown instead …’
    ‘It hasn’t shifted much last night,’ Miggy said. She wished she’d put a ribbon in her hair. They both looked down across the beach towards the Belle . It
wasn’t showing any sail. Its masts and rigging looked as bare and clean-picked as finished fish-bones. The carcasses of three drowned cows were floating in the shallows.
    ‘I see you’ve roped yourself a cow. Is this one off the Belle ?’ Miggy let the rigging drop. She’d not be caught red-handed, poaching cattle. She was ambitious, but
not for travel in a prison ship and not for Botany Bay.
    ‘I wasn’t stealin’ it,’ she said. ‘Don’t say I was.’
    ‘I’ll not say anything. Steal ten, and still I’ll not say anything.’ He picked the rigging up and handed it to Miggy. ‘Go on. The captain won’t miss one. He
doesn’t even know how many got ashore. Don’t sell the steaks in Wherrytown, that’s all.’ He was unnerved by her round eyes. ‘Is that our ensign round your
throat?’ he said. ‘It suits you better than the Belle .’ And when she didn’t reply, ‘I thought you were a boy. Those breeches aren’t for girls.
You’re not a boy, I hope. How can a sailor tell?’
    ‘I got a dress at home.’
    ‘What colour, then?’
    ‘White. Blue ribbons. I got long hair, ’cept it’s up.’
    ‘You can let it down so I can see.’
    ‘I can’t.’
    ‘What will you do?’
    ‘I’ll not do anything. Why should I, anyway?’
    ‘I walked six miles for nothing, then? Must I go back without a kiss? Miggy? Miggy? It’s twelve miles, not six, by the time I’m back in Wherrytown. I tell you what. You
kiss me once and then I’ll dream of you.’
    ‘I’ve got no time for kissin’. Kiss the cow if you’re so keen on it.’
    ‘I will, if you say no. And then I’ll dream of cows, and you won’t be my sweetheart any more.’
    ‘Am I your sweetheart, then?’
    ‘You are if you will kiss.’
    What was Ralph Parkiss hoping for? The only girls he’d kissed before had been his sisters or, most recently, the cheap lorettes and dollar doxies in harbour inns in Montreal and
Charleston. With prostitutes he’d put his lips and hands exactly where he’d wanted to, exactly when he’d wanted to. The women didn’t care if they were in his dreams or not,
so long as he could pay and finish what he’d come to do in less than half an hour. There wasn’t any need for strategy or sweetness. They hadn’t