Free Billie's Kiss by Elizabeth Knox Page A

window, the shape of a boat.
    Thinking of this, Billie said to Lady Clara and to Mrs Mulberry, ‘Even if there was any air, it would be wholly dark in there. In the ship.’
    Lady Clara put a hand on Billie’s arm.
    Billie considered the dark, the cold water – how cold? – Edith’s impediment of belly. ‘Edith’s dead, isn’t she?’ Billie said to Lady Hallowhulme.
    â€˜Almost certainly, I’m afraid, my dear,’ the woman replied.
    Billie looked about for Murdo Hesketh and his men, and realised she’d come over to the doctor’s house with only the minister’s wife.
    â€˜These aren’t my shoes,’ Billie said to Lady Hallowhulme, who frowned at what seemed an odd, additional remark, and at the possibly familiar footwear. ‘You look ill. You must rest.’ Lady Hallowhulme looked to Mrs Mulberry for help. ‘Hannah?’
    â€˜I think it may be difficult to persuade Miss Paxton to leave Mr Maslen. What we must establish is how soon Mr Maslen can be moved to the castle.’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜It’s a case of wait and see,’ the doctor told the women.
    â€˜Would you like to wash your face and hands, dear?’ Mrs Mulberry asked. She got Billie up and showed her to a basinin the corner of the crowded room. Billie washed. They gave her something to eat.
    Fed, Billie went back and settled by Henry. Her hand lay next to his, but she didn’t touch him. She watched his face, at last at leisure to do so. There was no pleasure in her watching, nor patience, she merely waited, waited to be the one who had to answer what Henry’s face, even asleep, was asking – ‘ Edith ?’ – because he was Henry, so where was Edith?
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    MURDO STOOD on the pier, above the wreck, and watched the local men diving with their rope and makeshift air hose. He recognised the Gustav Edda ’scaptain in the bow of the boat that floated above the place where air occasionally came up in small batches of bubbles.
    He saw that a salvaged mailbag lay beside the captain in the bottom of the boat. The fisherman holding the end of the hose said to Murdo, ‘It’s not so good with no pump.’ He made a pumping sign, not entirely certain he had the right word.
    â€˜Is it danger?’ Murdo asked, in his apt but ungrammatical Gaelic.
    The man nodded.
    â€˜But divers are coming from the mainland.’ Murdo went back to English. He supposed that the locals would continue to dive themselves till the divers came. Perhaps they couldn’t be satisfied there was no one trapped and alive until they saw all the bodies.
    A young man surfaced, first appeared as a watery mirage, man-shaped, against the ship’s black side, then turned his wide face up to the light, and broke through. He was pink-skinned, chubby, wheezing with cold. He was hauled into the boat, and immediately wrapped. The rowers set out for the pier, and the young man was helped into a topless tent where women with steaming kettles were filling a small zinc bath. The man stripped, his friends closing the tent with a blanket, which, once he’d dipped and washed himself in the warmwater, they folded around him. Since he had emerged he’d been shaking his head. The rope he’d carried into the wreck was still taut between the pier and the depths. When the man got his breath he said he’d managed to open the engine room door. He had a body on the rope but couldn’t shift it back through the hatch. He’d not had enough breath.
    â€˜Can you see the boiler? Does the rent let in light enough?’ the captain asked.
    The man nodded. Coal and coal dust had settled on the bottom of the engine room, he said. ‘On one wall, really, like treacle in water. I could see everything. The boiler is whole. There are three bodies in the engine room. And I saw a woman wedged behind the ladder –’ He shook his head again, perhaps trying to dislodge