Billie's Kiss (8 page)

Murdo and Karl lost their money. Had it lost for them. Ingrid was with child, so Karl resolved to protect her from knowledge, to hide his distress. Murdo let Ian go, and moved to small rooms, while Karl kept up a silly pretence of solvency for a few more weeks. Ian wrote, ‘Borg seemed more afraid of being shamed in his wife's eyes than of sin or bodily danger.' Then, on the morning men came to remove the Borgs' furniture to pay their creditors, Karl walked out. He walked past the carriers, the bailiffs, Ingrid and her grey silk gown, stippled lines showing all along its seams where she'd had it let out. Karl went to the place his friend had gone when he fled arrest – Karl knew where to find him. They met, there was an argument, and Karl drew a gun from his coat pocket and shot his friend. Shot and killed.

Ian read about the murder while sitting in the tearooms of a station in Copenhagen, waiting for train to Brussels – and, eventually, a boat to Dover. Ian did what a friend should, folded his paper, paid for his tea, cashed in his ticket, and went to find his former master.

Murdo Hesketh was living in two dim rooms up three flights of stairs in a street within the invisible noisome capsule of a new tannery, where a block of fine old residences had become one of neglected boarding establishments. Ian walked up to the house through the unmown grass and sat on the steps to bash the paste of mashed browned birch leaves from the soles of his shoes, then knocked. He was shown up, hat in hand, by the landlady. Murdo was waiting on the landing.
He said, ‘Oh – Ian. I thought it was the post.' His voice was dull.

Murdo's sister had shrunk around the determined swelling of the child. She asked Ian to sit, but didn't say anything further.

Murdo talked. He'd been writing letters to anyone who might help. He glanced at his sister. ‘We've had advice,' he said. ‘About the whole matter of the money – any number of people could come forward to shed light on all that. And, of course, we have testimonies as to Karl's character.' He jumped up, fetched a stack of letters and winnowed them – let them flutter down into Ian's lap.

Murdo looked again at his sister, who only gazed at the uneven mended edge of the hearth rug, the floor there glossy with wear and ingrained soot.

‘My cousin Clara's godfather, Peter Tegner, the judge, is coming from Malmo to attend the trial,' Murdo added. ‘We expect him shortly.'

Ian's paper had said that the trial was set for the beginning of the following month. Ian looked at Murdo's sister in her corner, against a stack of shelves, almost empty, but still bowed down by the memory of books. The corner looked blurred and distorted – Ingrid, too, like an oil painting prematurely faded, one that has lost the red pigment which lends life to painted flesh.

Ian suggested that Mr Hesketh might like to consider taking his sister somewhere quieter, more salubrious, with fewer flights of steps. Murdo stared. He said they must remain in town for the trial. Murdo said he had thought Ian
gone
already, then, ‘When do you travel?'

Ian said he had a few things to do before he left. He asked could he call again? Then he saw himself out.

Over the next few weeks Ian would go to that street and watch the boardinghouse door till Murdo departed, then he'd visit Ingrid, let her make him tea, and share the bread, or
bacon, or cheese or apples he'd brought. He played the part of a good guest, someone who wouldn't arrive empty-handed. He didn't insult Mr Hesketh and his sister, never came carrying ingredients – eggs, or a joint of meat, or vegetables – nothing that needed preparation. He'd eat some of what he bought, would come with his appetite as well as his donation, and play at conviviality. Then the trial commenced, and Murdo and his sister were at the courthouse every day.

Once during the trial Ian saw Murdo meet with the young lady of whom he'd had some hopes. She was waiting outside the courtroom, her brother in escort. She stepped up to Murdo and unveiled her face, her brother tipped his hat, then turned his gaze. She and Murdo spoke briefly – he once raising his voice so Ian overheard, ‘… in that case, I'd like my letters back.' She began to weep, replaced the veil, and stood for a time, handkerchief inserted between veil and face, dabbing, dabbing. Her shoulders shook. Then she let her brother lead her away.

Karl Borg was found guilty and condemned. ‘The guillotine,' Ian wrote to Geordie. ‘They have it here, although one tends only to associate that contraption with the French.' It was only after the sentencing, when pity made him indelicate, that Ian asked his former employer
how
he
could
help
.
‘I almost begged him to be able to. And he only looked at me with that look he has, like blue light leaking out from under ice.' (Ian had once slipped through two cracked and tilting plates of pack ice and gone under in Kalmar Sound. Murdo saved him. As Ian told it he came back to
consciousness
, bundled up in a stranger's travel rug, still on the shore, being scorched in places by several hot bricks in leather-lined velvet bags. The rug and bricks had been donated by a matron and her five pink-nosed daughters, who stood lined up like fence palings along the road, beside their sleigh. Murdo was draped in a horse blanket. He had his shirt off and his skin was so rosy he looked boiled. ‘He was steaming, as if he'd
just stepped out of a sauna,' wrote Ian. He was looking, Geordie supposed, with eyes that didn't seem able to show concern or warmth – only alertness.)

Perhaps a week after his offer of help, Ian had what he referred to as ‘a moment of inattention'. He'd had certain things fixed in his sights: the day the sentence would be carried out, and after that, the week around which Ingrid Borg's child was due. Her time. Her husband's time. One afternoon Ian arrived at the boardinghouse with a packet of pears and cheese. The landlady bustled out of her room when he was halfway up the first flight and said that the young lady had been taken to hospital. She had begun to bleed.

Ian reached the ward only an hour after the end, when Ingrid Borg's face was covered, but before she was moved and the bloody sheets were stripped from the bed. Murdo was in the curtained cubicle, on a chair by her bed, his elbows on his knees and hands in his hair. His cuffs were
blood-soaked
, and his hands stained, and still tacky – so that, when he raised his face to stare at Ian his hair caught in the blood and came free in a fidgety, staggered fashion, some locks standing out from his head in clotted points.

Murdo said to Ian, hoarse and hesitant, ‘It won't sink in. She was unwell yesterday, and I fetched a doctor instantly. She gave me her ring to pawn. I sent the doctor up to her, and ran around the corner to pawn her ring. I paid him – but he didn't see far enough ahead to save her.'

Murdo lifted the covers to show Ian Ingrid's left hand, bloody and white, with a whiter circle of tender, shiny skin where the ring had been. Then, to Ian's horror and pity, his former master raised the covers further to share what was burning in him, burning like a new sun into the orbit of which everything former now had fallen. Murdo pried open a towelling parcel that lay in his sister's bloodied lap, and there was the baby, all mousy down and soft fat – dewy, pliable, motionless.

Ian wrote: ‘I couldn't do much more than shake my head. I wasn't uncomfortable, in that tent of sheets he'd made inside the tent of bed screen, it was peaceful in a way. And I was relieved to think that he would now let me offer some assistance, that I wouldn't have any more trouble for a time with his pride.'

Ian took over, tended to his master – redeemed Ingrid's wedding ring and Murdo's watch. He paid the landlady's bills, the week's rent Mr Hesketh owed, and for the replacement of a bloodied mattress. Ian rented another room, along the hall from his, and went with Murdo about his business. They buried Ingrid. They visited Karl and dissembled.

Ian was with Murdo on Karl Borg's last day. They were not permitted a visit on his final night – which he spent with two jailers and a minister in a small snug room right beside the courtyard and its contraption, under which the bare ground showed a light snowfall of quicklime. On that last day Karl seemed to have become hard of hearing. He shook constantly, and said his ears were ringing. Murdo stood at the bars and loudly recited Ingrid's latest message – all fabrication.

Later Ian went out for ‘more news' of Karl's wife. In fact, for an hour he walked up and down in the dusk before the prison gates. He was there when a guard emerged through the postern door, yawning, and tacked up the articles of execution. The man asked Ian for a match. They stood together for a time and sucked on their pipes, then the guard went back inside. The paper fluttered, Karl Borg's name blinking in and out of existence.

When enough time had passed – an interval sufficiently plausible for Ian to have learned something momentous – he knocked and was readmitted. As soon as he entered the room beside the condemned cell, where Karl rocked back and forth against the solid bars, Ian whispered in Murdo's ear.

The jailer got up from the table and announced that it was
time for all visitors to be gone. He puffed up and slapped the taut cloth of his uniform jacket. ‘Yes,' he said, ‘you gentlemen must leave now.'

Karl lunged at the bars and clasped Murdo's wrists. He was quaking as if convulsed. He sobbed – Murdo must
do
something
. ‘Don't leave me!' he begged. ‘It's inhuman!' He hauled his brother-in-law against the bars and smeared Murdo's hand with tears and phlegm and kisses. Then, when Murdo tried to withdraw his hand, Karl abruptly bit him at the base of one thumb. Murdo snatched back his bleeding hand. Ian came to his rescue, caught hold of and controlled Karl's clutching hands, and drew him near enough so that Murdo could whisper the news Ian had stepped out to ‘learn'. ‘Ingrid has delivered,' Murdo said. ‘She's tired, but well. You have a son, Karl. You're a father.' Then the jailer came forward, swollen with significance, and bustled Murdo and Ian out of the room.

Ian wrote to Geordie, ‘The dead child was a girl. It was as if Mr Hesketh couldn't bear to tell anything but an ideal lie.'

Murdo asked for Karl's remains and had the three buried together: his sister, her husband, and their daughter. He hadn't money for a headstone – but it was too soon anyway, the ground had to settle. Ian told Geordie how it was he who wrote to Lady Hallowhulme, who had been Clara Hesketh, the older cousin with whose family Murdo had spent every childhood summer. The answer came, with its prospects: an offer of work, a banknote to cover certain necessities of travel, and a pledge by Lord Hallowhulme to buy his cousin's debts. ‘And he did write
buy
,'
Ian told his brother, ‘not
clear
,
or
cover
.
When I read the letter out to Mr Hesketh I read
clear
– to be kind. And why wasn't he reading it himself you ask? Because he wouldn't let me make a light in the corner where he sat.'

(The room was a mess of dropped clothes and dirty crockery. The fireplace was cold, full of silky, shrunken coals. Ian
recited Lord Hallowhulme's letter, then put the pages down from his face and peered at the figure in the corner. Murdo's hair was dirt-darkened, his cheeks frosted by blond stubble. On the cabinet beside Murdo there glittered the black reptilian coil of Karl Borg's jet-encrusted mourning watch and fob – and something else, another gleam, of oiled steel. Ian crossed the room, picked up Murdo's revolver, and pocketed it.)

AT 11 p.m., twelve hours into Geordie's journey, it was as dark as it got in early summer at that latitude, 55 north. Geordie was still at the rail, eyes wide, looking at a long island, hills against a sky not quite dark. Some radiance below the horizon made the sky seem semitransparent, several layers of black silk with a light behind them. The landmass was the southeastern coast of Skilling – a Chang to Kissack's Eng. Though the ship was now in the lee of the land and sheltered, Geordie knew that only these two entities joined at a hip of high mountains, this island of hills, bog, and bared rock, stood between him and a great stretch of inhospitable sea: the North Atlantic, across which every other Betler had gone, the Betlers of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, whence no letters now came. Geordie Betler stared and shivered, and thought that he was the last Betler left to go west – frozen at the rail of a ship going westward.

Geordie inverted the bowl of his pipe and knocked it against the rail, to dislodge the clot of cold ash. Then he went in out of the air.

The steamer's salon was full of solid warmth, a smell of the coal in its stove, and of tea, scalded milk, damp wool. There were only four other passengers – a mother, two daughters, and a maid, who was asleep, her back braced against a large wicker hamper. Someone had covered her legs with a travel rug. The sisters were twins, young ladies in their minority, but exactly where in that minority Geordie was unable to map, since they were stout, round-faced, swathed
in shawls and perched on by fur muffs as sturdy as tomcats. These two watched him, blearily, as he took the top off the hatbox into which Meela Tannoy had insisted Cook put three brown-sugar pinwheels, two pork pies, four boiled eggs with a saltcellar, a now-fused stack of chocolate fudge, a hard cheese, several ripe pears, a knife, fork, spoon, and napkin, and, finally, a bottle of damson sherry. The box was packed like a puzzle, but Geordie had been at it, and had eaten a hearty lunch already, only because of his inability to repack it so that all fitted and the lid could close. His lunch had been at three, nearly eight hours earlier, and he was hungry again. The twins watched him eat. Their mother, a fragile, papery woman with very fine black eyes, caught them staring and spoke to them. She didn't tell them off; she only made
conversation
, retrieved their attention. Her voice was low, scarcely audible to Geordie, except that he stopped chewing and found himself listening. She was speaking another language, but Geordie was sure her sentence ended ‘… poor Ingrid'.