Billie's Kiss (12 page)

‘Look!' he said to Billie, and tramped in a circle, the water boiling about him.

‘All the pipefish will be up at the factory by the time you're through,' said Anne. She waved an arm at the far end of the beach and the construction of new, raw stone – buildings, and a breakwater. Lord Hallowhulme's alginate factory.

Billie sat down to take off her shoes and stockings. The bands of sunlight in the water were warm and rhythmical, a balm like a repeated caress, too subtle to be tactile, perhaps only a sound like a cat purring. Billie hitched up her skirt and waded in, away from Alan and his agitation.

Anne said, ‘Isn't it cold? My anklebones are aching.' She got out. Alan invited Billie to try the bubbles. She surged his way, wetting her hem and petticoat at once, and found her feet breaking a crust of sand that wheezed, then released air. The fizz brushed her skin. Tiny bubbles caught in the small transparent hairs of her legs, coated and fattened them like a silvery mould. Billie felt a laugh behind her teeth, in her sinuses, a chortle, a snort – she shut her teeth on it and stomped about, her lower half loose, but face set. Then she stopped, ambled away, trailing her skirt. Anne Tegner pursued her, waving a small net. Anne gave it to Billie, explaining that pipefish were a sort of streamlined seahorse, without flounces or armour or a coiled tail. ‘They're dark, brown or black, with delicate horse heads.'

Billie went on up the beach, wading, passed a beached blob of water, wholly transparent, a jellyfish, wobbling like a stone in someone's thirsty delirium dream. She saw a stripped fish skeleton, still cohering, bobbing about in the ripples of the crowning tide. Then she saw her first pipefish. It was drifting rather than swimming, the two rippling fans of its gills the only apparent voluntary motion. She tried to scoop it up, but it flicked away from her, pouring over the rim of the net.

Billie saw Alan's raggy shadow before she heard him. He
came up beside her, and they began together to herd the pipefish, with water, into Anne's big jar. Billie saw that her hands were red after only a moment immersed.

She asked Alan Skilling if people ever swam here.

No, they only paddled. But Mr Hesketh had been seen to swim last summer. And young Mr Rixon's friend, Elov Jansen, tried only yesterday. But
they
were Norsemen. It warmed up a little by July, and in the hot weather –
if
there was any hot weather – folk did go in the sea for a dip. No one
swam.
The island's fishermen made a point of never learning. It was considered bad luck, futile, for after all, if they fell in off their boats, or if a boat capsized, the water was so cold that they wouldn't stand a chance. ‘Better to go quickly, than to tread water and freeze,' said Alan Skilling. Then after a moment, he said, ‘I do know that your sister drowned. I don't mean to cause hurt, only I was so keen to tell you about us that it slipped my mind.'

Billie looked up at his young, tense face and said not to worry. He was clutching the jar where the pipefish flowed about then, confused by how its whole sea had become an all-round surface, impenetrable except to light, it stiffened and became a streak of black wax dropped into cold water.

‘Would you like me to teach you to swim?' Billie said – and then she straightened and shaded her eyes with her hands.

There were men at work on the site of the factory, several unloading lumber from a dray, others busy with trowel, mortar and brick.

‘If there's ever no one about,' she amended.

‘Everyone keeps the Sabbath,' Alan told her. ‘Even the Castle must because of its servants. Stolnsay's congregation is stricter than their minister – they always have been.' Then, in an outbreak of astonishment, ‘Can
you
swim?' He followed this with an apology, or an explanation. ‘I'm a Catholic, you see. We are of Skilling – my father and me.'

Billie looked at the water; at this temperature she'd likely be breathless after ten strokes. The bands of sunlight flowed, bright gold over green gold, the water an icy paradise, compressed, a dense medium, but it seemed more habitable than the air, the steep treeless hills behind her.

‘I mean,' said the boy, uncertain as to whether he'd made himself understood, ‘Stolnsay is strict about the Sabbath, but
I
'
m
not expected at church, and maybe you're not either. And I'd like you to teach me to swim.'

Billie stood peering at him, the net dripping on the dry upper part of her skirt. She didn't say yes or consent to arrangements. She didn't know if the boy was being kind, by giving her something to do, and she should resist his kindness, or if he was only hungry for advantage, the advantage any skill would earn him. She did ask if Anne Tegner would be content with only one pipefish.

‘One will do, though I think she means to paint it as two. Paint a picture of it. But anyway it'll be me down in the cove at all hours of the day and night fetching fresh seawater so that her fish won't stifle.'

Billie gave him the net to carry – and some advice: he should charge Miss Tegner for running around after her fish, surely Miss Minnie's money didn't cover that? Then she set off back up the beach to collect her boots.

Anne Tegner plonked down beside Billie to put her own on, and Alan arrived on her other side, so that she was flanked, as Henry and Edith had always seemed to flank her. Billie had taken it as kindly shepherding, but now she wondered, did this boy and girl think she was in danger of breaking out, running mad?

THEY COLLECTED Minnie, who, Billie saw, had concealed her papers and was packed, ready and waiting for them. But once they were all aboard and the cart was hurrying the poor little pony down a dip – Alan's knuckles white on the brake
handle and the brake squealing – Anne asked Minnie, ‘How is the play?'

‘If you and Ailsa could make another two copies,' Minnie said, ‘we'll be closer.' Then to Billie, ‘We always put on a play. I mean, we have most summers we've been here. My brother makes a fuss as a point of honour, to save face with his friends, but really he likes it, too.' Minnie paused, then went on, her tone airy. ‘This year we'll put on a very
little-known
work by George Bernard Shaw, titled
Fortune
and
the
Four
Winds.
It's about a man's first meeting with his grownup children.'

‘Has he been in India?' Alan asked, facetious, and only to get attention. He was told to be quiet. Minnie asked Billie whether she'd like to help, maybe make a fair copy – six or seven were needed.

Billie paused, then explained that she couldn't write. She didn't blush – and it was the first time ever. Edith could no longer be shamed by their failure. It was only Billie's shame now, and as only hers it seemed a smaller thing, a lesser form of orphanhood than being without Edith.

But Minnie was blushing. She apologised, said that since Miss Paxton's sister was a
teacher
…

‘Yes. I know. Edith and Henry tried. But I can't see the words right.'

Alan was plainly intrigued. ‘How
do
you see them?' When Billie didn't answer he began to guess. Was it poor eyesight? Did she mistake her letters – like, at dusk, he might mistake a rafting flock of guillemots for a bed of bull kelp?

‘You know, Miss Paxton, I would have taken a simple “no” for an answer,' Minnie said, sulky.

‘I'm being honest, not rude,' Billie told her.

Minnie reddened more. Even Alan was quelled. They went along in silence.

Two horsemen appeared behind them. The rider on the taller animal was Murdo Hesketh, his bearing both natural
and martial. He looked like a hussar. The other man was well bundled, wore a bowler of not quite the right sort to be a riding hat, and rode with his elbows stuck out.

‘Well,' said Anne, ‘Hesketh hasn't any reservations about Scouse Beach.' She looked at Minnie, then burst out, ‘You
should
have come down. It was lovely. Sheltered and mild.'

Minnie turned to Billie and explained. Her own older sister Ingrid had drowned on Scouse Beach two years before. ‘
That
'
s
what we have in common.'

‘He has business there,' Alan Skilling put in, clearly defending Murdo Hesketh.

‘Father had already planned to build his alginate factory on the beach before Ingrid drowned – and Father is unswerving in his plans,' Minnie said.

Billie asked if Mr Hesketh only minded Lord
Hallowhulme's
business, or did he have an interest. ‘He is kin, isn't he?'

‘He's Father's cousin. And Mother's. On Mother's side I think he's my first cousin once removed twice.' Minnie pulled a face and laughed at what she'd said. Billie found she was laughing, too. She choked out, ‘Was he
very
persistent?'

When Minnie had stopped laughing she explained that her grandmother and his mother were sisters, her grandfather and his father brothers. Which made him, by her calculations, a first cousin once removed twice. He'd been part of the
Hallowhulme
household since that summer. The summer Ingrid drowned.

Anne told Billie that the accident was directly after the Tegners' last visit. ‘We all put on
Twelfth
Night
that year. Ingrid was Olivia.' Anne paused, then asked if Miss Paxton knew Shakespeare.

‘
He
who
has
but
a
tiny
little
wit
…' Billie sang, as Henry had taught her.

The horsemen were gaining on them. Minnie said to Billie, ‘The other man is Geordie Betler, Ian Betler's brother. Mr
Betler has rather made himself at home. He dines with the family sometimes, and sometimes in the kitchens. He's quite comfortable in either place – which Father has noticed and admired. My father is very egalitarian, he doesn't believe in “breeding” as in
background
,
though he does believe in blood, as in
inheritance
,
what one's parents bequeath one in terms of health, soundness, ability. But I'm sure he'll tell you himself.'

They all watched Murdo Hesketh's smooth rise and fall in his stirrups. Minnie fixed her eyes on him, frowning. ‘I believe he had something to do with Ingrid's death,' she told Billie.

And Billie: ‘What? He
killed
her?' Believing him capable of anything.

THE DOGCART was burdened and slow, and the mounted men soon came even with it. Geordie reined in. He walked his horse in order to ask Miss Paxton how she was, and Miss Anne and Miss Minnie if they'd enjoyed their outing. Perhaps he'd even ask to view the progress of Minnie's landscape. She might say something astonishing. She had when he'd last spoken to her.

The day before the funeral Geordie had pushed himself up the wet road to the brow of the hill above Stolnsay Harbour, in a still spell between two scudding fronts of cloud. He had found the dogcart, Alan Skilling roosting in its lee, his head wrapped in his jacket, and Minnie sketching at her easel. Geordie stopped to catch his breath and admire the view. Minnie said, ‘Good day, Mr Betler,' then put her diminishing glass up to her eyes and looked down at the town – removed the glass, added a few lines to her picture. Geordie asked if he could look at the instrument, and she passed it to him explaining – as he peered down its double barrel at the clouds coming in, a great flotilla at the height of the hill – that artists used diminishing glasses to ‘compose' a landscape. Did Mr Betler see the measuring marks to one side of his field of vision? That was the device's science – but mostly what the glass did
was make the landscape more manageable, make it more like its own portrait.

Geordie gave the instrument back to Minnie, and she made her astonishing remark. Her father could be said to view things through a diminishing glass. ‘His landscapes always look like his designs for them. Otherwise, he simply doesn't see them. Things are as they should be, and managed, or they are in need of management.' The girl looked at Geordie from under her brows, her chin down, as if she was accustomed to peering over the top of reading glasses. ‘You do know that Father owns this island, Mr Betler? Both entities – Kissack with Skilling. He's
given
the crofters their houses and land on the condition that they'll consent to benefit from his industries and other planned improving institutions – on the condition that they'll
play
with him. He's purchased a whole population as playmates.'

Today, as he approached the dogcart, Geordie was
expectant
. He drew rein and tipped his hat. But all the cart's occupants were looking at Mr Hesketh, passing on their other side, straight-backed on his big bay horse. All – but Billie Paxton. She glowered at the road between the pony's ears.

Murdo Hesketh checked his pace so that his mare paused in her flowing trot and capered a few steps to one side of her straight course, her glowing neck bowed. ‘Good day,' Murdo said, merely polite, ‘Alan, Minnie, Miss Anne, Miss Paxton.'

Miss Paxton hunched up. It wasn't a flinch, but a blunt thickening of her whole body. ‘Pig,' she said under her breath, without looking at him.

His horse surged forward, made a number of pretty
parade-ground
jumps, responding to her rider's clenched muscles, then set off again at an even trot.

Geordie was at a loss, so put his hat back on and followed.

MISS PAXTON obeyed Lord Hallowhulme's summons and appeared at dinner. Clara Hallow asked after Mr Maslen and
Miss Paxton said that she and the hired nurse thought that he was less feverish this evening.

Billie Paxton sat opposite Geordie and he saw that, although she felt awkward, and was there without any expectation of pleasure, he wouldn't have to give her secret signals about which utensil to use for which course. Geordie looked across the six-foot breadth of white linen, silverware, crystal, tureens topped by tumbling nasturtiums in bright glazed ceramic, and white soup bowls full of creamy
mulligatawny
. He saw that, despite her dull louring look, and her foul-mouthed frank opinion of Mr Hesketh, Billie Paxton was an unpolished but reasonably well brought-up young woman. He also saw that, between the road into Stolnsay, and the dinner hour, she'd had a bath and washed her hair. He'd seen her hair plaited, a pale red corona. It was now loose against her back and, when she moved, as alive and radiant as coral. Geordie considered – was Billie Paxton pretty, or a plain youthful girl with beautiful hair? Her jaw was set, and even her strong throat looked stubborn, blunt, above broad shoulders and a flat compact chest and waist.
Yes
–
a
plain
girl
with
stupendous
hair
,
Geordie thought till, seeing herself appraised, Miss Paxton's nostrils twitched and her light brown eyes caught a candle flare, hot rather than hard, and Geordie saw that she was an odd beauty, like the maned, staring women in the pictures Meela Tannoy admired and would buy. Pictures by Rossetti or
Burne-Jones
. Billie Paxton was odd, striking, but not enervated or drowsy, ill or bewitched, like a Burne-Jones or Rossetti model. Geordie saw also that Billie Paxton was
afraid
of Lord Hallowhulme's table – its beauty, bounty, its company – but that she was in vigorous rebellion against her fear. He watched her thrust her strong, tapering fingers into her bread roll and tear it open. He caught her eye and then passed her a plate heaped with dewy whelk shells of shaved butter.