Signals of Distress Read Online Free

at the inn. Here was a moper. Here was a book snuffler. Here was a man who couldn’t sing.
    Perhaps he couldn’t sing, but God the man could talk!
    ‘What kind of lodging are you taking me to?’ he asked George, in a voice that attempted informality but managed to be both teasing and condescending. ‘Tolerable, I
hope.’
    ‘Ours is the only inn,’ George said. He could think of no better commendation. ‘It’s us or nowhere in this town.’
    ‘What is the name of this grand inn?’
    ‘It has no name – nor any need of one. It is the only inn.’
    ‘Indeed, but then this is the only ship in dock, and I its only passenger, and yet we both have names. It would not do, I think, to call me simply “Passenger” or this vessel
“Ship” because we are, for the moment, unique.’ He allowed George a moment to keep pace with this Comedy of Wisdoms. ‘Names, it is true, are mostly useful should one need to distinguish one man, one ship, one inn from another. But they are helpful, too, for signifying character. So, were your inn known as the Temperance, then I could well imagine its mood
and its sobriety. The Commercial has a more convivial ring, I think. And the Siren or the Venus? Well, I should not wish to take a room in such a place, unless that room had thorough locks on every
door. What do you say?’
    ‘What should I say, except what I have said three times, and that is that there is no choice?’
    ‘Say it three hundred times and still you fail to reassure me. What phrase is there to best describe your inn?’
    ‘The only inn in town.’
    ‘Ah, yes. You are right to stand firm against my questioning. Refuse to yield to me!’
    ‘I don’t know enough to yield or not – but I’m the only one in Wherrytown’ll lead you to an empty bed. Except there’s plenty barnyards in the neighbourhood,
so long as you like rats.’
    ‘The rat is much maligned …’ But Aymer Smith’s discourse on rats would have to wait another opportunity. The two men reached the lower entrance to the inn.
    The inn was ideal for hide-and-seek. It was a warren, untouched by architects. The town rose steeply from the harbour front and the building had perplexing levels that placed the stable lofts
scarcely higher than the scullery basement and meant that the attic box room looking south and the ground-floor parlour facing north were connected by a level corridor. An outside wooden staircase
led from the seafront courtyard to a balcony and bedrooms, but there was no direct seafront entrance to the public rooms. There wasn’t any logic to the place nor, even, any regimental
regularity to the shapes and sizes of the building’s bricks and stones.
    ‘Accommodation for man and beast. Victuals, Viands and Potations,’ said George. ‘It’s hay or cheese for supper.’
    Aymer followed him up a narrow passageway of steep, pebbled steps that climbed through the heart of the inn. He didn’t like the smell of fish and urine, nor the meanness of the alley, nor
the pinched and sea-damp wind which rifted at his back. They came out in a lane, and for a moment Aymer was relieved to think their destination was some other, better place. But George directed him
towards a raised front door with a flat granite lintel, just to the right of the alleyway. It opened directly into a low-ceilinged parlour, empty except for a solid, black-haired woman on her
knees, removing ashes from the grate. She was, she said, Mrs Yapp, the landlady, the innkeeper. She didn’t rise to greet her guest.
    ‘Give the gentleman a bed,’ she instructed George.
    ‘Assure me that you have sheets,’ demanded Aymer, gripping his carriage bag and coat.
    ‘There’s sheets for those that ask,’ said Mrs Yapp.
    ‘And good, hot food that’s fit for eating?’
    ‘There’s nowhere else,’ she said. ‘Unless you want to stop with Mr Phipps, the preacher, who has a room for Christian travellers. Sinners and repentants catered for. The
bill will be repented,