Billie's Kiss

by Elizabeth Knox

  Aunt Blazey died that spring, before the end of Henry’s first term. She never did look him over. Henry stayed in Crickhowell and found lodgings, a cottage with a small back bedroom off the kitchen for Billie. He wrote describing the place and his plans for it. He and Edith published their banns. Edith made arrangements with the vicar who had buried Aunt.

  That summer Henry came south for his wedding, and to take possession of both sisters. He found Edith alone, on a hot day, settling saucers among the sheets and pillowcases in a trunk in the rooms above the chandlery. She made him tea and had him promise he’d stay put – wasn’t he tired? – while she fetched Billie, who, since she was gone so long, must have climbed around to the cove beyond the arm of the harbour. Edith kissed him, put on her hat, and went out.

  Billie always imagined it this way, imagined the scene, the steaming kettle, Henry settled before the pewter pot and one of the two cups still unpacked, with the cracked jug they weren’t going to take before him also, filled with milk and under its beaded cover – her handiwork, both the crack and the beading. Edith kissed Henry, put on her hat and closed the door, and Billie imagined that Henry got up to follow Edith’s progress along the road from the parlour’s bow window. Billie’s elaborations on these events were her picture storybook, the story being how Henry and she first met. Billie liked to imagine it from his point of view.

  This is what happened to her. Aunt Blazey was six weeks in the ground. Bilious, crotchety Aunt Blazey, whom her nieces had always rather enjoyed, for whom they felt liking rather than tenderness or dependence. Now that the weather had become close and hot, Billie was really regretting having dyed her second-best dress black. The dress had come out a rusty uneven black, yet it still sucked up the sun’s warmth and conveyed it into the redundant crush of corset – Billie wasn’t fleshy, she had nothing to hold in or to hold in place. Billie wore her dress, a corset, petticoat, chemise, drawers, stockings, and boots, and was sweltering under all of it. The day Henry came she had walked around the harbour by the donkey track, and had left the track to climb the zigzag path the whelk gatherers used to get down the crumbling cliff face. She left her boots at the top, and her clothes at the bottom, and went into the surf in her chemise and drawers.

  Billie could swim. Her father had taught her how when she was five, in the south of France, where he took his daughters on his flight from his debts. They had lived in one room of a hotel in Beaulieu-sur-Mer, where Billie’s father taught her to swim on a bet. The men he bet against, fishermen and fishmongers, let Mr Paxton borrow a boat, and they all followed him out a little from shore, where the water turned from aqua, over gold sand, to deep blue over red seaweed anchored on darker rocks. Edith sat on the shore, her shawl held up to shade her fair skin, and the shade turning her dark red curls black. Mr Paxton took off his youngest’s shoes, stockings, frock, and lowered her over the side into buoyant, salt-saturated water. She held on to the stern board while he rowed, her flimsy underclothes transparent over her thin, freckled body, her hair drawn out straight in the sea and darkening from strawberry to a kind of translucent pink. Mr Paxton rowed, Billie laughed and kicked the sea and let go to dangle one hand, then let go altogether while the boat bobbed near her and she tilted her head back and dog-paddled, the wavelets breaking against her sealed lips. Billie’s father shouted, ‘Oh dear! I’ve lost a barnacle!’ Billie smiled at him, and wriggled in the water, while the two boats of onlookers applauded and called out in French, words of praise and admiration.

  For a whole summer Billie made a profession of swimming, or possibly of acting. Paxton would take his daughters by train to Nice, or Villefranche, or San Remo and, while strolling the stone jetty or promenades overhanging water, and on some signal from him, Billie would slip and fall and the water would close over her head. Mr Paxton would cry out her name, shed his coat, kick off his shoes, and plunge in after her. Billie would let him clasp her, and he would wade out, sobbing with anxiety. She’d let herself be passed from person to person, would feel strangers touch her face and loosen her soaked clothes. She’d revive and there’d be thankful tears. All Edith could ever manage was to hang back, pale with shame that passed quite well for shock. Billie submitted to blankets, more tears, watered brandy, warm chocolate – and at some point in the proceedings Edith would recover her father’s jacket and shoes and Mr Paxton would discover his pocketbook gone. Taken by some heartless opportunist in the confusion. The Paxtons never came away from one of Billie’s swims with anything less than dinner and several days’ living expenses. And, to Billie, swimming came to mean many things. It was a secret between her father and herself; she was thrilled by his pale, alert face, his sly, sidelong look, and the wink that was a signal for her self-abandon. She liked to fall, fast through the air and slowly and noisily through the water, liked to come up through deep-voiced and hissing bubbles and surface into the sound of screaming: ‘Au secours! La petite! Vite!’ She’d shriek and slap the water, and then roll facedown in time to see her father’s long, trouser-covered legs and stocking feet come toward her. Then he’d pick her up, drenched and dazzled. She’d flop and be cradled and stroked and breathed on, then could pretend to cry and be nursed for hours. It was wonderful.

  And Henry first saw her swimming.

  Billie was in the water twenty feet from shore, the steep shingle beach, and beyond the cold shadow of the cliff. She heard her name called and turned in the water to see Edith, on the clifftop, where the path began. Edith’s dress, over the mandatory two petticoats, stirred jerkily, like a dense bush in a gust of wind. And Billie saw Henry behind her sister – or she saw a man she guessed was Henry. He had come up on Edith, was for a moment undiscovered by her, his footfalls inaudible in the wash of waves on shingle. Billie knew he could see her, because he half turned away. She saw his head averted and body swing side-on to her. And then she saw his face turn back. Billie kicked out for the shore and came out of the waves with her arms wrapped around herself. She ran into the shadow, out of sight of the summit, and found her clothes. She climbed the path holding up skirts heavy with seawater, transferred from her wet drawers and camisole. Her bodice was still only half-fastened, her feet bare, and her hair in long, salty ropes. She scrambled up the cliff face. She wasn’t presentable, but was eager to meet Henry. Edith’s dear Henry. He was blushing, and shy, and eager too. ‘You’re much too old to be doing that now,’ Edith scolded her. ‘You might be seen. Or followed.’ Edith pushed her sister’s hair back and finished buttoning her bodice. ‘She’s such a creature,’ Edith said to Henry, a challenge and a complaint.

  Henry smiled and took their hands, one each in his, so that they stood there in the wind and noise of the surf, at the edge of something, a cliff, their new lives, in a moment of intimate solidarity, which told Billie that Henry had heard all about her already – her virtues and her failings – and that he meant to be her friend. And she was able to tell him why she’d been swimming, despite the risks and wrong involved. ‘It was the last time,’ she explained. ‘I wanted to say good-bye.’

  IT HAD been fully two years since Billie had been in over her head. She was now twenty. But she couldn’t read, and had trouble telling time, till Henry bought her the silver ring she wore on the little finger of her right hand so that she could tell by standing face-to-face with a clock whether its minute hand was descending to the half hour or ascending to the hour. She couldn’t read, and she was still clumsy doing some things – for instance, she could run and jump but not dance, she could bake bread and bind books, knit and embroider, but couldn’t be trusted with the pony and trap. Between them, encouraging each other, Edith and Henry had taught Billie to read music. She could already reproduce a tune by ear. Now, given time, she was able to puzzle out a song from a thruppence sheet. And, once she’d picked the tune out on her piano, she had it in her head for good. Her playing improved and, with Edith and Henry’s help, she even learned how to transcribe a few simple tunes of her own. Billie had grown and made progress, she was cheri
shed and necessary, but often it seemed to her that nothing had yet appeared to compensate her for no longer being borne up on the steep peak of an unbroken wave, or rolled about in the chilly fizz of a smashed one.

  BILLIE SET the bucket down at her feet and leaned on the rail beside Henry. He had one hand on top of his hat. Its knuckles were white, but only with cold. ‘That is Alesund Head,’ he said to her. ‘Do you see those rocks?’

  The headland was beside them, too close, an immense wall of brown turf, with a lighter living tan where the heather was coming into bloom. All of it seemed broken, scoured and stony, and empty.

  ‘Those rocks are Kissack gneiss. Kissack gneiss is the oldest stone in the world,’ Henry informed Billie. ‘Some two thousand, eight hundred million years in age.’

  It looked as though nothing much had happened to the rock in the intervening time. Except the intervening time.

  ‘Once we’re clear of the headland we’ll be able to see Stolnsay,’ Henry said. His face was wind-reddened, his lips dry. He pointed to the headland’s end, around which a small steamer had appeared, its smoke a kinky plume as it lurched from side to side. ‘I think that’s the pilot’s boat. The one we were to catch Thursday morning, except it couldn’t come through the reef.’ Henry directed his sister-in-law’s gaze back to the shortish stretch of silver water between Kissack and the inner isle, whose mountains from here looked less like a geography than piled thunderheads. The reef was visible as a receding series of tucks and pulls in the sea, as though the water was a piece of weaving with uneven tension in warp or weft. ‘The pilot’s boat appears to be in the Wash now. The Wash is a famously unpredictable current that flows around Alesund Head.’ Henry supposed the pilot had come out because the sea was still bad. Or perhaps he always met the steamer at the harbour’s mouth. Billie said she hoped the Gustav Edda wouldn’t be told to stand off. ‘Edith isn’t well. She sent me to fetch you – if you’re not in need of air yourself.’

  Henry put his hand on her back. ‘I’ll go,’ he said, then, ‘Remember the pail, Billie.’

  Sometimes she did have to be reminded. She could remember faces and conversations from years before, faithfully, freshly, as though she’d only just turned away from a person, a scene – for instance, her father in a little room in a hotel, its ceiling covered in scaling plaster, and its wrought-iron balcony spotted with rust. But Billie often had trouble remembering just what she meant to do next – the order of daily tasks, what she’d come to market to buy, or whether nutmeg went in before sugar in frumenty pudding.

  Henry left her. She watched him, saw how small and neat he looked as he passed through the huddle of men between the galley and wheelhouse. Their coats were dark and thick and heavy – quality, Billie knew, but Henry looked quick and unencumbered moving between them, one hand still on the crown of his hat, the other raised to touch his hat brim. The men nodded, parted, let him by. They were all taller than Henry. She and Edith were slight, but both were nearly the same height as he was. He’d always laugh about his size, and congratulate himself and them on it whenever they had to pass each other on the steep narrow stairs of the cottage in Crickhowell.

  Billie found herself watched. That much she was able to see past several tentacles of her long, collapsed curls as they got out from under the shawl and whipped before her face. She saw a pale countenance turned her way, a kind of shapely lustre above the rich black of sable collar and the supple ridged pelt of astrakhan.

  Billie turned back to empty the bucket and, because she wasn’t thinking, she threw the pint or so of cloudy bile out into the wind. The wind caught the mess, stopped it in the air then flung it back toward Billie, who ducked. Nothing nasty hit her. She stood straight and cleared the few pinkish tendrils of her hair away from her eyes and found herself looking again at the beautiful sable collar and astrakhan coat splattered with ropes of grainy bile.

  Billie dropped the pail. It made a clang and rolled away from her feet. She stood with her mouth open, trying to hear. Her ears were ringing.

  He had spread his hands, his arms, too disgusted to touch, and was looking down at the front of his coat. Billie watched the wind part his pale hair, like water pouring into water. He looked up at her as she went to him. She lurched against him, unsettled by her numb clumsiness and the motion of the ship. Billie pulled her shawl from her head to mop at his coat. The ends of her hair rushed in front of her and got into the mess but she kept on mopping, folding, finding a clean spot on the shawl to soak up more filth. She could see how the fluid left smears, like the snail trails on the brick steps of the cottage at Crickhowell. She couldn’t speak, knew she’d only stammer if she tried.

  He stopped her, brought his arms up slowly between them, so that her hands were moved aside. But he wasn’t trying to master her hands; he put his own gloved ones together and used his clean sleeves to push her hair up and back, so that his arms were crossed behind her neck, and her hair was out of her face. He moved slowly, apparently concerned not to frighten or offend her, and with the effect of someone lifting something heavy, or capturing something lively – her hair.

  ‘I’m so sorry!’ Billie said. She was more miserable than embarrassed. She was tired of her own stupidity, tired of being conscious enough to suffer shame for it but unable to correct herself. Then she dropped the shawl and ducked out of his arms. She scrambled away from him, got up, and struck her head on one of the short craning turrets that ventilated the engine room. Her eyes filled, and she glanced back at a blurred block of darkness that was all those coats. Those men. She fled to the far side of the steamer and pressed her back against the wheelhouse wall.

  From this retreat, as she collected herself, Billie watched the pilot come alongside, both ships backing their engines. A boat was put down from the pilot’s vessel, and a line thrown from the deck of the Gustav Edda. The Gustav Edda’s captain waited for the pilot, and another man, to climb the rope and wood ladder that two seamen had rolled over the side. They stood talking at the rail.

  Eight bells were sounded.

  The fair-haired man in the astrakhan appeared, followed by his servant. Billie flattened herself against a closed door. But he wasn’t interested in her. He wanted to know what the problem was. He was, apparently, one of those people who wouldn’t acknowledge any problem unforeseen by him as an actuality. ‘What seems to be the problem?’ he said. It was another expression whose usage Billie had always found intriguing – the possibilities of concession provided by ‘seems to be’, as opposed to the inconvenience of ‘is’.

  The pilot asked the captain for the cargo manifest. He glanced at the tarpaulin-shrouded shape firmly roped to the stern deck. The captain explained that it was Lord Hallowhulme’s new automobile. He’d find its seats and doors in the hold – where they had been put in order to preserve their leather from the elements. The pilot said he was more interested in how the coal was stowed. He told the captain that the Wash was particularly wicked today. The captain said all the cargo was fast, but let the pilot and his man go down to look for themselves.

  The person Billie had drenched in Edith’s bile lost interest in all this and went back into the sheltered place between the wheelhouse and galley. The pilot eventually reappeared. He was followed by his man, who was, Billie saw, oddly engaged – the man was tucking in the tail of his shirt, as if he’d had some cause to unbutton and unbelt his trousers while below. Billie was intrigued. The pilot seemed satisfied. Then he saw Billie, and she believed he asked the captain who she was.

  ‘Miss Wilhelmina Paxton,’ Billie heard the captain say, ‘who is travelling with her sister and her sister’s husband, Mr Henry Maslen.’

  The pilot said he had thought that Mr Maslen and his womenfolk would wait another few nights at Dorve. He had been supposed to ferry them over. Their haste was unnecessary. He said it loud enough for Billie to hear, seemed regretful, as if he was acquitting himself of some blame. Perhaps he’d mistaken the pallor of Billie’s mortified embarrassment for illness.

/>   The pilot and his man went back down the ladder to their boat, and rowed back to the small steamer which, after a minute, was under way again, on a shallow curving course, to the headland and the Wash. The Gustav Edda followed.

  Billie remained on deck, on the windward side, away from the other passengers. Without her shawl she was very cold. As the Gustav Edda came into the Wash and began to toss in a strange watch-winding motion, Billie gripped the thick guide ropes against the wall behind her. The steamer came around as if kicked into place by the current, then made its laborious way around the headland. The sea gradually became calmer.

  Fifteen minutes later Billie had her first sight of Stolnsay.

  The land around the town wasn’t in any way distinguished from the rest of the ‘countryside’ – if you could even use that word. It was virtually treeless, except for a quarter mile stretch along one arm of the harbour. Those trees were a witchy wood of lichen-blanched beech, birch, and hazel, framing a grey limestone castle. The castle was newish, a folly of ornamental battlements and towers, inlaid stonework shields, sphinxes, dragons, griffins, and lions. The castle had two wings, which lay somehow awkwardly, like a taxidermist’s guess at the anatomy and posture of a creature he’d never seen living. Except for the wooded point there were only a few trees by the town’s three visible churches. The remainder of the landscape was stone, shaped stone, houses organised out of hills where the green-and-bronze turf looked rubbed away from rock, as if each hill was solid, solid stone under a meatless, fatless pelt of turf.