Billie's Kiss (20 page)

Geordie walked briskly, and the sleeves of Murdo's jacket sailed behind him. Murdo went along in Geordie's steps, not looking where he was going but at the paper they had found, an envelope, empty, but addressed to one of the sportsmen at that gentlemen's club. On the other side there was a tally, in three columns, a running record of wins and losses in a card game. The amounts were in pounds, not kronor. Large amounts.

Geordie argued that of course the Swedes had pounds. They were coming to fish on Kissack, where the currency was as
sterling
as the rest of Britain.

‘But this much?' Murdo insisted. ‘They couldn't possibly require this much money for a month's fishing.' Everything about these people made him suspicious. Especially since he'd seen none of them alive –
or
dead.
There were no corpses, nor claimants come to complain to the authorities about defaulting corpses.

Rory Skilling intercepted Murdo at the gatehouse. He flushed red, with embarrassment or with drink. Fiona was behind him on the threshold, her hand draped over his shoulder and pinching his lapel.

‘A new coat, Rory?' Murdo said. ‘It looks well on you.'

Rory's flush faded, but only in patches, a lattice of pale skin appearing, so that the drink showed only in bloody cobbles. Rory said he'd found Macleod. Macleod's boat had come in the night before but the man had gone to his people down at Ernol on the Atlantic coast. ‘Macleod told a friend he has here that he expected to be at Ernol for a week or two. His cousin is poorly, the one he means to marry.'

Murdo thanked Rory and told him to go on in. But before Rory went, Murdo asked if Alan was with them. He thought he saw the makings of a family in the gatehouse doorway – a father, a stepmother, but no son. Rory said he'd seen Alan in the cove below the castle – nasty place – with that young lady. She was teaching Alan to swim.

AT THE dinner table it was obvious to anyone that Billie Paxton's hair was still damp at her nape. It was piled, pinned, and drooping over one ear, and with one lock escaping at the back like a serpent making a quick exit from a beehive. Murdo, who was opposite her, could even see the dull patches on her skin where salt water had dried in the air, leaving its residue.

James was talking. He was very pleased with Henry Maslen – an inquiring mind, an intellectual, a man who could talk in ways that were apparently congruent with James's own thinking. At least that's how it seemed to Murdo.
What
a
pair
,
Murdo thought, sullen. Henry Maslen reminded him of a man whose job it was to go about a rubber plantation refreshing the wounds on trees. Henry tapped James, and James oozed talk all evening.

THE BALLROOM: around ten in the evening. Geordie apologised – he'd had to talk to Alan Skilling. He and Mr Hesketh hadn't been able to beg off the planned picnic, and the visit to Lord Hallowhulme's salmon hatcheries. Instead they would set out very early for Ernol on the west coast, and would rendezvous with the picnic party later, inland. That
was the plan. Geordie said to Minnie that he was sorry they hadn't asked first whether they could borrow her odd boy. ‘We need him for his Gaelic. I'm as late as I am because I walked the lad back to the gatehouse.'

‘He's not in any danger, you know,' Minnie said. ‘He's a wee lad, but he goes about like the spirit of the place.'

‘Of course,' Geordie said. ‘Again I apologise. I'm all yours for the next hour. But I must go at eleven – with our early start.'

‘We hadn't begun yet, Mr Betler,' said Anne Tegner. ‘We've been puzzling over Elov's letter.' She nodded at Elov, who got up off the floor and gave his letter to Geordie. Elov explained that it had been sent on first from his school, and then again from the house of his friend at Invershin where he and Rixon had stayed before meeting Mr Hesketh at Thurso. ‘My friend sent it on. I got it Tuesday, but I sat on it. I didn't want to cause any trouble.'

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

M
URDO 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.'