Billie's Kiss

by Elizabeth Knox

  After Tannoy died, his wife went to stay with friends in Ireland. Murdo and Geordie kept everything ticking over, business and households. Geordie knuckled down, busy in his grief again.

  Billie, sad herself, dug out her old song. She finished it. She took her song and played it to some musical friends. The friends were impressed. It was recorded – a tenor singing – and it made Billie a tidy sum. For a year it was heard everywhere, the sad song the soldiers were heard singing when walking up the line. They were singing sad songs by then, much of the drollery drained out of them by the summer of 1916. Geordie tried to explain to himself the success of Billie’s song. He considered its generalised sentiment. It was a song whose sorrowing heart was pure, a song that put out its suckers, its venous tendrils, into the paradisal peace of soldiers’ daydreams. A song like a lifeline.

  Late in the summer of 1916 Alan Skilling came to visit Geordie at the only address he had for him, the Tannoys’ Glasgow house. Geordie was there, his rooms the only ones still unshrouded. Geordie didn’t recognise Alan at first – a sergeant of the Seaforth Highlanders who stood on his back doorstep. Of course Alan was instantly recognisable when he spoke, his voice improbably soft for a sergeant, the lovely gargling accent of an islander.

  Over tea Alan said he had seen Miss Minnie on his last furlough. They had always stayed in touch, after all, he was Minnie’s odd boy for five more summers after the one Geordie spent on the island. There were no more plays, though. Both Tegner girls were long married, and with their own twins. Apparently they had signed up for some study, along the lines of Lord Hallowhulme’s – what was it? – eugenics. They had written to Minnie describing how they did different things with each twin, to determine how much was environment and how much inheritance. ‘Minnie said they were very blithe about it all – as though they’d completely forgotten her play.’

  Alan put four sugar lumps in his cup. He said he shouldn’t – he was having trouble with his teeth. ‘And, you know, I did sometimes write to Billie – I sent my letters care of Mrs Tannoy. At first I hated to think of Mr Hesketh having to read everything to her.’

  ‘They’ve been happy,’ Geordie said.

  Alan said that he was going back soon, to France, and the front. ‘I came about something,’ he said. ‘Things keep – till they won’t.’ He unbuttoned one of the many flaps inside his tunic and took out a handkerchief, unfolded it, and spilled something into Geordie’s hand, a slithering black glitter.

  It was Murdo Hesketh’s jet fob and chain.

  In December 1903, an English photographer, who had come to make some studies of Ormabeg, found human remains in the abbey’s tower. Rory Skilling hadn’t been seen for five months, and so his surviving brother went with Southport’s doctor to fetch the corpse and make an identification. Alan saw only his father’s closed coffin. The doctor recorded the cause of death as an accidental fall and, the following summer, Lord Hallowhulme had the tower door stopped up with cement and stones. A mason from Stolnsay had the task – and Alan went with him. Alan carried a torch up the tower’s shaft. He tried to imagine what had happened. It had been a dry summer and, for once, the interior of the tower hadn’t glistened with moisture. Alan was able to see the glitter in the dark – he crouched, and picked up Murdo’s fob.

  Geordie was conscious of Alan’s gaze. Alan wasn’t just waiting on a reaction, but weighing and measuring. ‘But, by then, they had their baby,’ Alan said. ‘Edie.’ Alan waited some more, then added, ‘So I left it for later. Billie kept in touch. He’d write down what she said. They were happy. So I just kept letting it lie.’

  IN THE spring of 1917 Alan was back with a shrapnel wound, nothing very bad, once the pus stopped coming and the wound closed. Geordie, in London with Meela, visited Alan at Brockenhurst. He passed on Meela’s invitation – would Alan like to spend his convalescence in Ayrshire? Alan would. But he asked if, on the way, they could stop at Port Clarity. He had regular letters from Minnie, who was still there. ‘Sequestered. Playing patience on a monument.’ Meela was happy to oblige him. She said she’d take a room in the hotel, though, because she no longer had the stamina for Lord Hallowhulme. ‘Andrew used to tell people – I think to elicit their opinions – that we once had dinner at Hallowhulme’s Port Clarity residence. But, to tell the truth, I always felt that I was had, at his table, that I was milked of my possibility, that while I had my head in the trough something was being done to my other end.’

  A SPRING night, the moonlight filtered by a low cloud cover. There was drizzle, drops that swarmed in the cow-catcher of light from Minnie’s car’s low-browed headlamps. From the air the headlamps would appear only as a dapple of moonlight through a threadless area of cloud.

  Minnie said that she’d have liked to show Geordie and Alan the plant by daylight – it was quite something, a great open-air boiler room, Hell’s steaming basement.

  They swept along a little faster, following the rails of the trams that took Lord Hallowhulme’s workers to his factory. It was formerly a soap factory, now its kitchens were wholly given over to the war effort, and the production of glycerine. At dinner Geordie had conveyed to Minnie Meela’s invitation. ‘Come on,’ Alan said. ‘How can you resist a couple of weeks of my conversation?’ Then, ‘I’ll teach you to drive.’ Only, there was a paper Minnie wanted signed, a permission to James’s banker in Edinburgh. ‘I want to get Mother’s diamonds,’ she said.

  ‘Do they need airing?’ asked Alan.

  Minnie’s father was in his office, at his plans, some private project of improvement. ‘A memorial gallery,’ Minnie said. ‘Lady Hallowhulme Gallery.’

  A watchman met them at the factory’s iron gates. They drove up onto a terrace paved with cobbles. Below them was the plant, a huddle of saw-toothed buildings, and chimneys, some smoking, others topped by melting, speedy emissions of steam. The sea was the same shade as the sky, only lower, the port’s cranes apparently perched at the edge of a chasm full of cloud.

  Minnie went up to the manager’s office and secured her father’s signature. She came back down the outside stair, and got in beside Alan. Alan was driving; Minnie’s chauffeur had the evening off.

  ‘He’s alone,’ she said. ‘He’s busy with a list of prices from some Dutch collector.’ Then she went on, musing. ‘It was quite surprising. He had me look at a catalogue. He said he wanted to know if I thought mother would have liked the paintings he plans to buy.’

  Somewhere down below, at the port, a siren sounded. Then another. Searchlights came on and swung up into the air and onto the woolly underbelly of the clouds.

  They all got out of the car.

  A silent, taut cylinder pushed down through the cloud, dragging cloud with it, vapour streaming up its black-painted sides. Now that Geordie could see it he realised he’d been hearing its engines for the better part of a minute. The engines of a ‘height-climbing’ Zeppelin dropping down from its operational altitude – above the reach of planes – right over its target.

  People began to spill out of the factory buildings. Most of them were women, Geordie saw, lasses with their hair wrapped up and out of the way.

  ‘I’ll get your father,’ Alan said to Minnie. He set off. Geordie pursued, hollering. Hampered by his stiff leg, Alan was quite easy to catch. Geordie stopped him. ‘Let me go,’ he said. ‘I can’t drive. But see’ – he pointed – ‘that beauty over there with all the white brass is Lord Hallowhulme’s car. I’ll get him, and he’ll drive us both. You go back and take Minnie in her car.’ Geordie gripped Alan’s shoulder and gave him one hard shake. ‘I doubt Hallowhulme would want you to wait for him with his only surviving child in the car.’

  Alan the soldier saw the sense of this, and Alan the odd boy obeyed the butler Betler. But there was a hawthorn tree that grew under the angle of the first flight of steps up to the factory offices, its roots making an eruption in the paving. The tree stopped Alan, it snatched his cap from his head – so that Geordie was able to see his face just once more as he turned
back to tear the cap out of the blossom hiding the light-fingered thorn.

  The Zeppelin was near. It wasn’t interested in the port, only the factory.

  Geordie went up the stairs, and into the offices. He followed a light, a small crack of light beneath the door of a room cantilevered out over the road up which they had come.

  The beam of a searchlight ran ahead of Geordie along the corridor, the light of its far-off, hugely magnified circle still strong, strong enough for Geordie to feel its warmth on his cheek as it swept across him. In its light Geordie saw a billboard, an advertisement depicting the two products on which the Hallowhulme fortune was founded; oblong and oval, a yellow opacity and a tan transparency – bars of soap.

  Through the copper-framed panes of the long window, Geordie watched Minnie’s car go quickly down the hill, bouncing in potholes, its headlamps now wide-open in alarm and casting wildly about. The car slowed at the gate, seemed to gather and herd the turbaned workers. Geordie saw that Alan actually pulled up and idled a moment at the gate – collecting the watchmen, who thrust their arms through the car’s open windows, gripped its door handles, and clung, balanced on its running board as its sped away.

  Geordie opened the door to Lord Hallowhulme’s office.

  Hallowhulme stood in the centre of the room, a bundle of plans gathered to his chest. James Hallow – millionaire philanthropist and murderer.

  Geordie stopped, still in the doorway.

  James Hallow dropped his plans and retreated around his desk. ‘Who are you?’ he said. ‘What do you want?’

  Come away quickly, Geordie thought, but didn’t say it aloud. There was something else he meant to say first, only he couldn’t think how best to put it. He glanced past Lord Hallowhulme out the tall, broad window. He could see the Zeppelin’s control car now, bristling with machine guns. He could see where they pointed, firing back at the source of a line of phosphorescent bullets, a dotted line that cracked like a whip.

  Lord Hallowhulme picked up the receiver of his phone. He threatened to summon help. He wound its handle.

  A great bright wave got up beyond the window. Geordie saw it pass through the glass without breaking it. Swift, it engulfed the thick figure of Lord Hallowhulme, who stood at his desk with his phone to his ear. Then the window shattered, and the wave took Geordie too.

  BILLIE WATCHED her youngest climb out of the sea. The stones rolled from under Soren’s feet, and his hips swayed, gimpy, till he’d stepped up on the shelf the tide had built. He came up the beach on his toes. She handed him his towel, and slipped her hand under the back strap of his wet bathing costume. Soren leaned on her, dripping. He said that the people talking to Edie had tossed him off the raft. ‘They said I was a cheeky kid.’

  Meela Tannoy passed him some grapes, in consolation or reward.

  Soren’s father arrived, came down the wooden steps from the promenade, in his white suit, but without his hat. The sun had nearly gone. Murdo asked what Edie was doing out there with those people, and how long she’d been there.

  ‘They’re Americans,’ Soren said – as if that answered his father’s question.

  ‘This boy is very refreshing,’ Billie said, meaning his skin, not his manner.

  Murdo told Meela and Billie that he’d been to the English library at St. John’s to look at the latest papers. But there was nothing further about the sinking.

  The young men of Kissack and Skilling hadn’t all signed up together, unlike those from the sad shires to the south – a platoon in Kitchener’s army might contain the very same individuals as the cricket team of some village in Dorset. The islanders were never so keen, they waited for conscription, and went in dribs and drabs. But the survivors of Kissack were repatriated together – at once and in haste in the early months of 1919. They were dispatched from Inverness to Stolnsay, and a few Skilling men, who wanted to be home quickly, went with them – meaning to walk or beg rides back down to ‘their island’. A hundred and four soldiers sailed in an overloaded and unseaworthy ship, the Iona, which foundered in heavy seas off Alesund Head. One powerful young islander, Sergeant Alan Skilling, carried a line from the ship to the shore. He went back through the surf himself and got six other men off before the line snapped and the ship was smashed on the rocks around the headland.

  ‘Billie has had a letter from Minnie,’ Meela said. She waved it at Murdo, drew him closer and, as he took the pages, she picked his pocket, lifted his cigarettes and said ‘hmmm’ to herself, in satisfaction. She removed one from his case and pushed it, creaking, into her cigarette holder. Murdo sat beside her sunbed and lit it for her. She said she had to use the contraption to preserve what little moisture she had left in her lips. She puffed, slitting her eyes against the smoke, and remarked that it was so hot she might as well have stayed in India. (Meela had gone back to Bombay as soon she was able, at the very end of the war. She lasted only a month, dismayed to find herself a foreigner and homesick for Scotland. Now she was on an extended stay on the shore of the Mediterranean, where it seemed that every fifth person was orphaned of country.)

  Murdo had the letter in his hand, but Billie was telling him what it said. Minnie had heard from Alan. He’d been walking down the island, from village to village, all empty of men of a certain age. Everywhere he went he was looked at with longing. Minnie transcribed what he’d written. ‘Mothers and fathers, wives and sweethearts, siblings and children, all stare at me,’ he wrote. Minnie said she could feel it – that firmament of eyes. ‘All of them blame the Imperial Power that has been such a hard master and poor mother,’ Alan wrote. ‘Even after another century of discouragements – and they will come, I look at the fallen roofs and I know – the grievance will still be alive. Only the grievance is living.’

  Murdo read Minnie’s letter himself, looked up only once to watch his daughter make her dive, and surface followed by all the air she’d pulled down with her. She kicked out for the shore, changing gear as she came, fast and straight. She, too, hobbled out of the sea.

  Soren had spotted a boy on the promenade selling apple pastries. He shuffled across the stones and slipped a wet hand into one of his father’s jacket pockets. Before Murdo was able to clap his hand to his side Soren was out again. He spread his fingers and showed his father the coins. Murdo took some back. He’d like a pastry, too, he said.

  ‘Not for me,’ Billie said. She was going back in. She waited for Murdo to pin up her plait, then went down to the water. She left her robe and rope sandals on the last shelf of stones and stepped down, her heels skidding across pebbles loose and lubricated by waves. When she was in over her hips Billie took her feet off the bottom and eased out past the Americans, who were lurking in a line, at eye level with Edie’s bare knees. Edie was wringing out her plait. Billie saw that her daughter’s hair was bleached and brassy in the sun – saw why, whenever they went out, Murdo would drop back a pace to adjust the veil of her own hat down to where her bunched hair lay against her neck.

  Billie swam out, far from shore, then lay on her back and floated. From here she had her favourite view of the old town and the slopes behind it. Now, at evening, the terraces were thick, dark bands rimmed with shining green. Below them were the pale walls of stacked houses, their open shutters rigged with square sails of shadow, warm roofs with round tiles, and the tower of St. Michael’s, polished, elegant, not quite upright.

  Billie saw that the composition of the population on the promenade had changed in the eight weeks they’d been there. There were now fewer convalescent soldiers and more tanned, bare-armed men and women.

  Billie watched Edie straighten, fling back her plait, and face the Americans, her shoulders back and head at a combative, quizzical tilt – she looked like her father issuing one of his now-playful challenges. Murdo was watching Edie too, still reclined, but up on an elbow and aimed her way.

  Billie lay back in the water, forgetful of her carefully fastened hair. She let the water into her ears. The town’s sharp sounds became blurry, voices
unidentifiable and unintelligible. She looked up at the sky. At last, enough blue, she thought – as she’d been thinking for weeks. It was like that blessing: ‘God before me, God behind me …’ but blue instead, above and below. Then, because she was thinking how easy everything was now, Billie lifted her head again and looked to the shore, for the two of her children on the beach. She found them, further from her these days, and bigger, which was a paradox of perspective.

  This reminded Billie of Minnie – and of Alan. What should she do about them? It was clear to Billie that Minnie was as afraid of Alan’s suffering as he was of hers – both of them without family, Minnie rattling about one of several huge houses and Alan on a pilgrimage from Kissack to Skilling in the company of phantoms. Alan wrote to Minnie, and Minnie wrote to her. All this writing for advice – this delayed, translated concern.

  Billie swam into shore, retrieved her robe and sandals, and picked her way up the beach. Murdo took her towel and began to pat her hair dry.

  The sun had gone. The mountains had leapt forward and lifted their backs.

  ‘I was wondering if we can do something for Alan,’ Billie said.

  ‘Or about Minnie,’ said Murdo. He’d finally managed to catch his daughter’s eye. Billie saw him touch the sparkling black beads looped on his waistcoat – Karl Borg’s mourning fob. (It had been found among Geordie’s things, in a package addressed to Murdo.) Edie’s father didn’t go so far as to signal his daughter by consulting his watch.