Billie's Kiss (24 page)

It wasn't until Geordie reached the letter written the day after the drowning that he felt – regarding Ingrid Hallow – he was back in the company of the brother he knew, the sympathetic, fully alert Ian. He read, he followed his brother's painstaking reasoning, as Ian tried to work out what had
happened. Why was Ingrid at Scouse Beach alone? How did she get into the water?

There was scarcely a mark on her body. She was found only a few hours after she drowned, rolled up onto the smooth beach and left by a retreating tide. The people who found her saw no bruises or abrasions. She hadn't slipped from a rock and knocked herself silly. She hadn't struggled; all her buttons were still fastened. They found her shoes above the high-tide mark. She'd been paddling, perhaps.

Lord Hallowhulme called in a coroner from Edinburgh. Clara's maid, Jenny, said to Ian, ‘He wants to know whether Miss Ingrid suffered.' But other servants were already talking about suicide. Ingrid had been on the beach earlier in the day – had accompanied her brother and her father, his cousin, and an engineer, to the spit at the end of Scouse Beach. She'd asked to come for the exercise. They let her help hammer in some boundary pegs – Lord Hallowhulme planned to build a factory at Scouse. He had some scheme, some process to extract a perfect food from seaweed. The men were there about men's business, and Rixon had taken to following Mr Hesketh. Ingrid's presence was odd, unlikely. The party returned to the castle for lunch. For some reason Ingrid went back. The cook told Ian that Miss Ingrid hadn't dined with the family – she'd not felt well, and Lady Hallow had a syllabub sent up to her. ‘My syllabub,' the cook said. ‘Lemon, cream, sugar, and Madeira whipped to a froth.'

‘The recipe is now enshrined in the cook's mind,' Ian wrote, ‘and is what she always tenders in talk about
poor
Miss
Ingrid
, like a newspaper account of a condemned man's last meal.' The syllabub was returned uneaten – the cook's previously infallible temptation to invalids. Ian wrote, ‘The cook implies that, after rejecting her syllabub, Ingrid's obvious next step was to renounce living.' Lady Hallowhulme was concerned about her daughter – Ian wrote – and had looked in on Ingrid after lunch. Nothing further was known, not when Ingrid left
the castle, nor how she reached the beach. ‘Mr Hesketh says she walked,' Ian wrote. ‘But I will not ask him what he and his cousin James and the boy Rixon have probably all been asked: “Did anything occur that morning to upset her?” We all assume someone hurt her, and Lord Hallowhulme then compounded the gossip by sending to Edinburgh for a coroner.'

The more audible talk was all of the perils of bathing on a full belly, or fatigue and an empty one. ‘Mr Hesketh doesn't say anything. I wasn't with him that day. I was plying my iron over his shirts, about which he's so particular, and for the sake of which I've incurred the hostility of the laundress.

‘Mr Hesketh doesn't say a thing,' Ian wrote. ‘He doesn't speculate. Everyone else does. I went into town the other day and talked to a man I know – Duncan Macleod – he told me that Ingrid Hallow's shoes were found just above the heap of charcoal where Mr Hesketh had made a fire for tea that morning. When I asked Mr Hesketh if this was true – that she'd left her shoes right where she'd had tea that same morning – he told me that Ingrid fetched driftwood for him when he built the fire.

‘I can almost see them, Geordie, Mr Hesketh putting up a fine fretwork of dried black seaweed over balled newspaper, taking wax matches out of the flat silver box in which he carries them. Ingrid is busy, her hands are full. Is she unhappy? If she's so very unhappy, why is she helping Mr Hesketh build a fire, why isn't she at home with her head rested on her mother's knee?'

Ian didn't see Ingrid's parents until the funeral. Clara was destroyed. ‘She'd been in full bloom, now she's a papery flower whose colour has bled into the pages between which it is pressed. But no – that's too poetic. It was the way she walked – abruptly old, unoiled, seized up. Whatever it is that has stiffened her, it's not temporary, not condensation, but like the deposit of lime on the sides of a drinking glass. Lord Hallowhulme's appearance was less shocking. He was drawn,
black about the eyes, but for once his eyes didn't shy about, as evasive as one of those shining afterimages of a poorly shaded lamp that always darts away when you look – away, away – always to one side of your gaze. All through the graveside service Lord Hallowhulme looked into faces, as attentive as a deaf mute.'

For five letters Kiss was called ‘the sad house'. There was no more
matter
about Ingrid Hallow – until this: ‘She was like
him
– only quieter, unworldly, content to listen to a family who planned and bossed, or rollicked (Rixon), or tended ordinary motherly advice: “Perhaps a hat with a closer weave, dear, the sun has real heat today.” But still, Geordie, she was more
like
him
than the rest of them, like the Murdo Hesketh I knew before his ruin. There was her openness, easily mistaken for simplicity; and her animal confidence, easily
mistaken
for vanity; and an enjoyment of luxury easily mistaken for inertia or superficiality. I thought Ingrid was a nice, beautiful, slightly banal young woman. Perhaps I thought that because she couldn't act – neither can her sister, but Minnie is pungent with life force. I thought that – and now I think that she
did
walk into the water at Scouse Beach, meaning to die, and resolute in her death.'

Then, a further three letters on, this: ‘Before Ingrid Hallow died there had been signs of a thaw, a shine of ice grown slick in the sun, but he's now taken himself further north, and wrapped himself up in coldness.'

ON THE steamer on his return, Murdo encountered the
Gustav
Edda
's
surviving steward. The man delivered tea to Murdo's cabin. He recognised Murdo and asked, ‘How do you do now, Mr Hesketh?'

‘Very well,' Murdo said. ‘And you?'

The steward said he was quite over his bout of pleurisy. The company kept him when he was ill. ‘The insurers paid
our
compensation in any case.'

However, he said, he had parted ways with his former employers. He planned, by changing ships, to work his way further south before the winter. He reckoned it was see some sun, or be done for.

As Murdo listened, and the steward made passes with the hem of his apron around the edges of the tray, Murdo
remembered
the fellow doing this, going around the edge of a table in the little salon where the seamen had been fed, scrubbing away, squinting at his handiwork, folding the cloth to find a cleaner patch and rubbing some more. Murdo wanted to work the talk around to a lost set of cabin keys and a basin full of beard hair, so said, ‘Tell me, did you service the cabins on the
Gustav
Edda
?
I seem to recall seeing you serving in the seamen's mess.'

‘We both did everything, mess and cabins. Me and Alfred, God rest him. I was on at eight bells. Came on at five. I was still washing up in the galley when the ship reached port. That's why I'm alive and Alfred isn't. I was slow that day because the purser complained about the tables. It was because of the black gang. They always came to the table without doing much more than making a pass of a dirty cloth over their dirty hands – God rest them, too. By the time they finished their meal the table would be as edged with black as a widow's letter.'

Murdo had idly watched the steward, his furious, finicky scrubbing. Murdo should have been on the windward side, where Miss Paxton was, to see Macleod and the pilot emerge from the hold. He was sure he'd have been a better judge of what there was to be seen. He asked, ‘Was it you the Swede came to tell he'd lost his cabin keys?'

‘Yes. And I told the insurance fellow that I thought the Swede only did that in order to convince me he was on board when it sailed. In fact, he left the ship at Luag. He shaved off his beard, you see.'

‘Would you know him if you saw him again?'

The man nodded, said that
that
was why the company wanted him to keep them posted as to his whereabouts. ‘They're not bothering with the police, Mr Hesketh, they've just kept the disability going although I'm on my feet again. They know I'll keep collecting as long as they don't stop the payments. I warned them that the money might – what's the word –
scotch
their case.'

‘Compromise,' said Murdo.

‘Aye. That's the word. I'm a bit of a sea lawyer, and that's what I told them.'

ON THE last day of July, when Minnie's play was due to be performed, Murdo arrived at Luag. He spoke to the foreman of the warehouse that briefly stored James's factory and exchange equipment. He spoke to the stevedores who had loaded that cargo. He learned nothing new.

Several hours before his sailing Murdo delivered the package of tweed to Gutthorm's aunt. He found the old lady weeding her window boxes. She asked him to please carry the packet indoors for her. ‘I wouldn't want to sully it,' she said, looking with cupidity at the brown paper as much as its contents. She asked, ‘You will take tea, Mr Hesketh?' then went away to wash her hands and rouse her girl.

Murdo was tired, and happy to be fed. He polished off three scones and three boiled eggs and let the old lady work her way around to the subject of the relative worth of Murdo Hesketh and Johan Gutthorm. She was proud of her nephew – Lord Hallowhulme's man of business, at work, or play. Obviously Gutthorm had managed to communicate to his aunt his opinion – that Kissack and Skilling was
play
,
whereas London, Edinburgh, and Port Clarity were
business.
She clearly thought of Murdo as the manager of Hallowhulme's island estate, but not a manager who had to do with practical matters like land in pasture and tonnages of wool. Her nephew Gutthorm, on the other hand, closely involved in the affairs
of a great man, was himself great by proxy. He must be, since only greatness could compensate his aunt for his increasing neglect of her, his only relative.

Murdo, tranquillised by tiredness, by tea, flour, and butter, was still able to detect this complaint in the old woman's boasting. Now and again, to console herself, she patted the rolled bolt of tweed. Her nephew had
remembered
her. She told Murdo that she'd had a supper to celebrate her seventieth birthday. She hadn't meant to put Johan out – after all he had been in Luag on business. The plan was that he'd come to supper – stay the night – and set out in the morning overland to Dorve, to meet Lord Hallowhulme's English cataloguer and that cataloguer's wife, and see them safely from Dorve to Southport, then overland to Stolnsay. ‘You see, Johan expected them to wait out the rough weather. The man's wife was in an interesting condition,' the aunt added. ‘Her comfort was an important consideration.' Johan had been, from boyhood, quite unusually precise in his habits, punctual and reliable. But on her birthday he had arrived late. A whole forty minutes late. The old lady gestured at the clock on her mantelpiece, a clock from a previous century, with a crazed porcelain face, once yellow perhaps, now browned like mustard left out too long in the air. The face was hand-painted, with hunters and harvesters, with girls a-maying and a snowy village street – the four seasons, in fact. Murdo contemplated this clock and remembered Minnie's play, which she said she'd chosen with him in mind – with him,
too.
What could the girl be meaning to try to tell him? Or did Minnie only want to cheer him up – in her father's way – with something uplifting and
inspirational
. Then Murdo thought of Billie Paxton – how deliberate she'd been, how dignified, determined only to get him to do what she wanted, to run her message.

Alan's
shoes!
Murdo started from his chair. ‘Is that the time? Are all the shops closed?'

Gutthorm's aunt gasped and reeled back, her corset
crackling in counterpoint to her breath. She got up. ‘Yes, as I said, that clock always keeps
correct
time.
'

‘There's something I must do,' Murdo said. He hurried to the door. Gutthorm's aunt followed him. She snapped her fingers at the maid who dived for his hat.

‘I was sure you must have
finished
your business before coming to me,' said Gutthorm's aunt, as if she stood accused of wasting Murdo's time.

‘I had another favour not connected to my business. It slipped my mind. Please excuse me.' Murdo took his hat, coat, and gloves from the maid, a mousy girl whose bobbing curtsy was more like a flinch. Murdo thanked Gutthorm's aunt and hurried out.

The shops were all shut.

IN PREPARATION for the performance Billie had only to put on her best clothes and dress her hair. An hour before curtain she came downstairs carrying the six boards, stiff with glue, on which she had mapped out, in her personal code, her cues – thumbnail sketches of scenes, or sometimes of only a gesture, all underlined in coloured inks.

In the ballroom Billie found Minnie, Rixon, the Tegners, and Elov. Minnie and Rixon were in costume, the Tegners were greasy with unblended paint. Elov was dressed, and drunk. He was sitting on the floor, his boots unlaced. The others were trying to get him up and out into the garden, where they hoped the cold air would revive him. Billie thought ‘revive' was the wrong word – Elov wasn't inert, but resistant. And he was loud. He shouted that he would not,
could
not, say that line. ‘How can you expect me to just stand up and throw it in his teeth?' He flung out an arm, striking Ailsa Tegner in the chest. ‘Minnie thinks she can do any mortal thing she chooses,' he said. He turned to Minnie,
overbalanced
, and came down on his elbow. He complained, ‘You're just like him.' Then, in a false, declamatory tone, not
at all like his delivery in the rehearsals, but perhaps as he thought Minnie really intended it, he said the line, scornful, self-righteous, and amplified: ‘
Goodwin's
hospitality
is
only
a
pretext
for
propaganda.
'