Billie's Kiss

  The letter was written to discourage Elov’s visit. It spoke of new responsibilities Rixon had, of projects in which he had a share, and that would occupy him all summer. It said that Rixon really shouldn’t have offered hospitality he wasn’t equal to ‘at this minute’. Rixon was only being a thoughtless lad – but that was the issue, and Rixon’s father hoped to bring a little more structure and instil a little more direction and discipline into Rixon’s life.

  ‘With the letter he enclosed Samuel Smiles’s book. By way of – oh, I don’t know – consolation.’ Elov turned the book faceup. It was Samuel Smiles’s Self-Help.

  Geordie could see that Elov was unhappy. ‘It is rather awkward, isn’t it?’ he said.

  ‘Elov feels unwelcome,’ Anne said. ‘And Ailsa just remembered that Clara said there was a letter following us, too. But she did say she was only asking our mother if she thought it might be better to stay away after the accident, and the deaths of all those poor people.’

  Minnie removed the page from Geordie’s hand. She seemed anxious about the document itself, as if it were evidence. She said that the point wasn’t who was welcome, but what plans their father had for Rixon that he’d now shelved, due either to Elov’s appearance, or to events having chased his plans right out of his mind. Geordie, who was nearest her, heard her add, sotto voce, ‘Except that only his brains leaving his head would put his plans out of his mind.’

  ‘What do I do?’ Elov was desperate. ‘I’ve had the hiccups all day.’

  ‘Father hasn’t even noticed you!’ Minnie said, to reassure Elov.

  ‘I sit at his table.’

  ‘He doesn’t see your mouth eating his food, only your ears apparently uncovered and listening to him no matter what expression the face between them wears. You’re not a burden to him. You’re a tiny pilot fish with its head buried in the blubber of a giant whale. He doesn’t even feel you.’

  ‘You’re Rixon’s guest, not Lord Hallowhulme’s,’ Billie said, which Geordie thought was practical and kind. He, Elov, Rixon and the Tegners all smiled at her. But Minnie was less interested in the relief of Elov’s anxiety. She said, ‘I want to know what his plans were.’

  ‘Son-and-heir plans.’ Rixon was gloomy. ‘He’s scarcely spoken to me all summer – and I prefer it that way. I don’t want to join him. I don’t want jobs to do.’

  ‘Don’t you want to know?’ Minnie wheedled.

  ‘Well, perhaps, if there was something between not knowing and being ravished by information. I’m not going to ask him, Min.’

  ‘No! Don’t!’ Elov said.

  10

  Milt and Roe

  MURDO TOOK a few good breaths of cold air and opened his eyes to the long view, where the road went on down to the sea, touched, and came away again, a slope sectioned by blackhouses, some whose thatch was dark with mildew, or fallen where the weighted ropes that held all in place had broken and unravelled. Murdo counted ten empty houses. The series of stone dykes defending fields from the sea had been chewed by several winters of wind and ice. Ernol stood in the wind of an open ocean, and, without its human numbers, hands whose habit it was to put stones back, it was slowly losing its human shape. Today the sea showed white only at its edge, and Murdo was able to make a quick count of the smoke streaming up from nearly forty houses. Farther off, and more solidly white, he spotted the smoky exhalations of three whales.

  ‘The house!’ Murdo hailed in Gaelic, stooped, touched the lintel, and led Geordie and Alan in.

  There was only one cow in the byre that formed half the house. A girl was milking it, her forehead against its flank and her feet clamped to the base of a solid wooden pail. She looked around, scarcely daring to move. Her face was white in the light reflected from the milk. Murdo heard Alan say, ‘That isn’t your cow, is it?’

  ‘No. It’s Mary’s. She’s sick in her bed,’ the girl answered.

  Murdo was pleased to have followed the exchange but knew he couldn’t have formulated Alan’s question.

  The curtain was opened from within. There were several people in the long room beyond. The only illumination came from rushlights – green rushes, their pithy middles impregnated with grease, hung in simple pottery cradles on the walls. Some further light came down through the smoke hole and up from the peats stacked on the stone floor beneath a suspended kettle. The peats glowed but scarcely smoked. The smell in the room was that of the whole island, sharp and savoury, and not unlike the pickled walnuts Murdo’s mother liked to spread on rye bread, a black grease, like the peat, a smell so robust it seemed to disinfect the island’s air.

  Murdo squinted and saw two men and an elderly woman, and he thought he saw a pale face peer through the curtains closed over one of the box beds.

  Murdo asked after Macleod. He got his words right. He indicated that they had asked at the outermost house and been directed here. ‘You are Macleod’s people?’ Murdo could see they didn’t want to speak to him. They were closed and angry, but he wasn’t reading hostility as such. He had not faced open hostility from the islanders – they stole from factory sites; or signed on, then shirked; they showed no enthusiasm at offers of work or at the prospect of lives led in rooms without these low ceilings, these caves of two stacked stone walls with turf packed between them. They turned their backs, or shrugged, whispered, or laughed outright at Lord Hallowhulme’s offers of a prosperous, progressive future here – not on the mainland, or Canada, or Australia – but here, on the island. Murdo looked into the eyes of the man opposite him and saw anger, impatience, and a righteousness almost religious – this islander’s sense of privacy.

  ‘I work for Lord Hallowhulme. I am Murdo Hesketh.’

  The islander said he knew who Murdo was.

  ‘Tell them you’re sorry to intrude when there’s illness in the house,’ said Geordie.

  Murdo looked at Alan, who translated, beginning, ‘Mr Hesketh says …’

  The islander spoke to Alan. The old woman interrupted, said something additional, and Alan translated. ‘They say Macleod’s gone to the mainland, and they wouldn’t have any answers to questions you want to put to him. They say that, if we find him, we should ask him did he think of Mary? Did he ever think of Mary? She said that,’ Alan added, and tilted his chin at the old woman, who at this sign of insolence made a move toward him, her hand raised. It was a feint, but Alan pressed himself in under Murdo’s arm.

  Murdo asked for himself whether they knew where on the mainland Macleod had gone. Their answers were brief, but all three answered, furious, and all three turned away as they spoke, not to dismiss their visitors, but to hide something in their faces.

  ‘Wait,’ said Alan when Murdo looked at him, one brow raised. Alan was trying to work it out – not what they’d said – for they said it in his mother tongue, but the sense of it. Alan wanted to know before Murdo and Geordie. Murdo put a hand on the boy’s head – not affectionate, nor bullying, but the same way he’d gentle a nervous horse. He said, ‘I heard them say “Gutthorm”.’

  ‘Yes.’ Alan pointed, a little discreet jab in the direction of the woman – he wasn’t about to risk anything more than a feinted slap. ‘She said, “You can ask his wicked friends.” And he said, “You can ask the other Norse, that Gutthorm.” And he – indicating the other man – said that your servant might have told you, were he still able to speak.’ Alan looked defiance at all the householders and crossed himself, kissed his knuckle as though he held a rosary.

  ALAN KISSED his knuckle. It was a rebuke. Alan gestured, ‘God forgive you.’ He told the family off. For Geordie this was a distraction. Even in his shock – what had that man meant, mentioning Ian? – Geordie was struck by Alan’s behaviour. The boy had a very strong sense of how people should act. It wasn’t manners or propriety. Alan Skilling wasn’t gentle, in either sense, kind or well-bred, but he was morally literate, and he wasn’t afraid of anyone.

  Murdo said something further in his halting Gaelic. It sounded formal, and like thanks. Then he pulled
Alan against his side, put one hand over the boy’s mouth, and led him out of the blackhouse.

  Geordie turned back to the family, and for a long while they all stood, staring at each other. Being in the blackhouse was like being inside a hill, in hot, hazy darkness. Geordie thought of the stories he knew, about Flora MacDonald and Bonnie Prince Charlie, a man with French accent and manners. Charles came ashore in Britain very near here, arrived by the back door, and spent his first night in the kingdom he hoped to gain as a guest in a blackhouse, cold, stooped, and coughing at the smoke. James Hallow might have the appearance of a boyish hobbyist as he held the floor and discoursed about houses of white brick, timber flooring, and south-facing windows – but he was seeking to improve where there was plenty of room for improvement.

  The family looked at Geordie, silent and stubborn, till he became aware of himself making no lasting impression, like a raindrop on a sheep’s back, a neat, domed drop on lanolin-rich wool, shaken free by the first strong movement the animal made.

  Geordie found Murdo inclined against a mound of stacked peats, careless of his coat – the coat that by judicious repeated sponging the maids at Kiss had restored to its original black purity. Murdo dropped his hat and ran his hands through his hair. He hadn’t oiled it that morning, it was as flyaway as the silver northstars in bloom on the bog they’d passed through. Geordie looked away. The northstars were visible still, above the village, and the bracken covering abandoned fields. The low sun – always there, always low – shone through their white tufts.

  Murdo said, ‘She was right. Miss Paxton was right.’ He laughed.

  Geordie was angry, all at once, angrier than he could ever remember having been. It made him dizzy. A cloud covered the sun, the halo on the bog’s horizon – the northstars – went out, everything came clear, suspended in a cold spiritous bronze light.

  ‘Her naive observation – or her vulgar deduction,’ Murdo said.

  ‘I won’t hear you speak ill of her.’ Geordie glared at Murdo, who just watched him, his face pale against the dark nimbus of his sable collar. Geordie saw a man armoured in his perfection, like a landscape of perhaps indifferent or uncertain qualities beautified by snow, a cosmetic frost. Murdo said, ‘I don’t mean to speak ill of her. And perhaps knowledge is as natural as innocence.’ He shrugged. ‘Anyway, she was right about Macleod and the pilot. And, apparently, Macleod is an acquaintance of Johan Gutthorm, too.’

  ‘Who are you accusing now?’ Geordie was in a kind of fury of despair. He took in huge gulps of air yet still felt stifled. The next thing he knew he was caught, he felt a static of softness against his cheek and throat – the collar of Murdo’s coat. He was helped along a few paces and set down in the shelter of a stone wall, on a tumbled section of mortared stones. Geordie felt fingers at his nape, his collar stud pop, and the collar pulled away. Murdo undid a button too, then put his gloved hand on Geordie’s. ‘I’m not accusing anyone. Is that why you’re angry?’ He sounded concerned, but Geordie heard something beneath that – something like nervous delight. ‘I think that if we follow these clues, these suggestions, then Macleod is exonerated. He and the pilot were in the hold, trying out the readily warmed leather upholstery of the seats from James’s automobile. Look. Geordie. Yes – that man in there did mention Ian. But Ian had a – what I’d have to describe as a proprietorial dislike of Johan Gutthorm.’

  ‘Will you explain?’ Geordie said.

  ‘I don’t know that I can,’ Murdo said, but tried nevertheless. ‘Ian seemed to feel he knew Gutthorm better than we did. That he was better able to know and judge Gutthorm.’

  Geordie heard Alan ask was Mr Betler unwell? He looked at Alan’s cracked, dinted, dusty shoes, saw the rags with which Alan had stuffed the toes poking from their split stitches.

  ‘Can you ask at the house for some water,’ Murdo said. The shoes thumped away.

  ‘Listen,’ Murdo said, ‘Ian understood Gutthorm – and Macleod, and the pilot, too – but he wasn’t an associate of theirs. Ian kept to himself.’ Murdo clearly thought this was what Geordie wanted to hear, that Geordie was distressed by Macleod’s kinsman’s implication, whether slur or truth. But Geordie hadn’t known that Ian was –

  Was what? What did they call it now, now that law and medicine were having their say after all the Church’s longstanding sayings. Geordie hadn’t known – but what made him wild, what made him feel as violent as he’d ever felt before, was that he had understood for a very long time that Ian had been in love with Murdo Hesketh. He had to face it fully now – that what he had always chosen to think of as friendship, loyalty, fascination, hero worship even, was – of course – also carnal desire. Geordie had read his own letters to Ian – aware of his unease, his unexpressed hope that Ian would see his Mr Hesketh settled, back on his feet, and would move on himself to another employer. He’d written to Ian: ‘You are not following a story as it appears in its parts. You need to think of your future, not wonder what will next happen to your employer.’ Geordie had been able not to know before he came to Kissack to bury his brother and found himself in daily contact with Murdo Hesketh – the disappointed, angry, baffled, splendid Murdo Hesketh.

  Alan returned with the old woman. She was concerned. She knelt to examine Geordie’s face and felt his forehead. Then she spoke sharply to Murdo, who removed his astrakhan and wrapped it around Geordie. As Murdo drew the collar closed he put his face near Geordie’s, his eyes laughing, and said, ‘She’s ashamed of her own unkindness, so tells me off about things I’ve failed to think to do.’ He took an enamelled cup from Alan and wrapped Geordie’s hands around it. Tea, not water. The woman hovered – then bustled off for more tea once Geordie had emptied his cup.

  Murdo waited to catch Geordie’s eye. Then he said, ‘I knew, Geordie, but I never thought about it. Do you understand?’ Then he sat back on his heels and dusted his hands. He was putting the subject aside. He said something about the task in hand. ‘The pilot was evasive about Macleod because they’d been together, unbuckled, in the hold. Macleod didn’t intercept the sensitive letter, which was in the salvaged mailbag – it was delivered and he fell out with his family, and Mary, indoors, whom he meant to wed. And since Macleod was otherwise occupied, we’re left with our three Stockholm sportsmen.’ Murdo stopped speaking. He seemed abruptly tired, and Geordie imagined he saw a light go out in the younger man’s eyes – the light of that coiled safety fuse.

  ‘But why would a man – the Swede – set a fuse, then drown?’ Geordie said. Then, ‘But of course he left the ship before it sailed.’

  ‘At ten the night before,’ Murdo said. Then, frowning, ‘But there are no eleven-hour fuses.’

  BY NOON the picnic party was closing on the Broch, which stood on a hill above the loch where Lord Hallowhulme had his salmon hatcheries. The Broch was a great tower, its roof long gone and half its side scooped away. As the picnic party turned off the road and onto the steep track up to the Broch, Billie watched the tower grow. It was an old thing, and she could see its stones were knit without mortar. Billie had an ear idly turned to Lord Hallowhulme, who was giving the Broch’s history. How it was built to keep watch on that stretch of Atlantic coast, a fortress against Roman slave traders. How it had a double wall, the two inclined together for strength. ‘It was impenetrable to the armaments of its time,’ Hallowhulme said. ‘But of course time took it down, stone by stone – with a little assistance from crofters looking for nicely chiselled doorsteps.’

  The track was too steep for the horses, so Hallowhulme and his wife, Minnie, Elov, Billie, Jane Tegner, and her girls all got down from their respective traps, leaving only Henry, cocooned in his travel rug. Most of the young people bounded ahead. Lord Hallowhulme offered his arm to Billie, who said she’d see to Henry, caught up with him, walked by his side, her hand on his wrapped leg. She looked back at Hallowhulme, alone, Clara and Jane arm in arm behind him, their heads turned down and faces hidden by their hat brims. Minnie came last of all, weaving up the track in
their wake. She had a book before her face, had been stupefied by it throughout the ride, and now, staggering, seemed drunk of it.

  Henry was watching Lord Hallowhulme, peering with the same expression – puzzled, patient – he’d worn when he first came to understand that Edith was neither mistaken nor exaggerating when she said that Billie wasn’t able to learn to read.

  ‘What is it?’ Billie said.

  Henry thought she was asking after his health. He reassured her. The sun was out, and he was enjoying every minute, the views revealed at every bend in the road. He smiled at her, and covered her hand with his own. Billie tried to remember what Henry and Lord Hallowhulme had talked about during the ride. Billie had been relegated to what she found herself thinking of as ‘the elder persons’ carriage’ with Henry, James, Clara, and Jane Tegner. She’d spent much of the ride looking back at the others: Rixon bringing his horse at a gambol toward the carriage and trying to snatch the twins’ hats, Elov, in the carriage, tussling with Rixon, the Tegners giggling, and Minnie leaning out over the padded sill of the door and turning the pages of her book. Billie listened for a time, with curiosity, to Lord Hallowhulme’s analysis of the island’s problems and prospects. Hallowhulme thought that crofting was a fine old way of life – but that it would only thrive if supplemented by new industries. It wasn’t that he believed in progress per se, but that he thought, since humans were capable of making rational forecasts about the future, they had choices. They could retain what worked in tradition but modify their lives by adopting new methods and inventions. He wanted to see stable seasonal employment, better housing, and children under twelve in schools. He talked about how herrings were salted and how alginate was extracted from seaweed. He and Henry discussed a book he’d given Henry to read, Science and Penology. Hallowhulme was animated; he said, ‘After all, we all agree that you can’t breed a gun dog from a shambles cur.’ He insisted on ‘proofs beyond cavil’ of the power of inheritance. Billie had kept half an ear on their talk, recognising Lord Hallowhulme’s argument as an opposite to those of Minnie’s Mr Goodwin in the play. She finally understood what made Elov Jansen so uneasy in rehearsals. As she listened, Billie watched the island open up around them as they crossed beneath its two-and-a-half-thousand-foot divide. She could hear that Henry and Lord Hallowhulme were talking without rancour, Hallowhulme enthusiastic, Henry fully engaged and in good voice. Billie didn’t feel she needed to keep an eye on Henry.