Billie's Kiss (31 page)

‘GEORDIE IS no longer in my confidence,' Murdo began. ‘He imagines that I mean to take you to task, James, for kissing Billie Paxton.'

James paled and began to bluster – a completely natural reaction – and Murdo managed to appear odd and inhuman
himself as he pushed on. ‘Clara, you're here as my witness.'

‘Murdo. Dear –' said Clara. ‘Please.'

Murdo moved from the window where he had blended, his body with a high-backed chair, his hair with the sun in colourless glass. He felt like a wolf, peeling off from the pack, beginning to trot nonchalantly around into a flanking position, brushing its sides on snowy tree trunks as it goes, coy, as if its only intention is to clean its coat. Murdo stopped in front of James and said, ‘Rory Skilling is a slovenly man of rather limited ability. That surprised me. Really, I was astonished to see someone clever fall back from a scheme of intricate design on something
crude
– for want of a better word. Besides, I'd have thought that, after Johan Gutthorm's mistake, you'd have preferred to see to things
yourself.
'

‘I think my wife should not be party to this discussion,' James said.

‘She's involved, James.'

‘But I'd never harm Clara!' James was aggrieved.

‘Why?'

‘Because she's my wife!' James was amazed.

‘Attached to you, so exempt.'

James looked blank, then he squinted, and his top lip lifted as if he was straining – to hear perhaps, or to follow what was being said, as if Murdo was speaking in a language foreign to him.

Clara said that they had quite lost her, and Murdo said that this was not a moment for courtesy. Then he told James that he still had no idea how James had done it – it was all too complex and specialised. ‘I'm betting, like a gambler. I'm
calling
you.
I'm paying to see your hand.'

James remained blank. After a moment he said, ‘Ah – a figure of speech.' Then he began to explain. He couldn't resist explaining.

He said that the device itself was simple but innovative. If he said so himself. The task was always to deliver a flame
safely to the priming charge, and degrees of flame to complement different rates of detonation. ‘But there's no point me explaining the theory of the problem to you. You – who can't guess
how.
Who can come up with clever figures of speech, but can't guess.' James was
boasting.
He said that his problem was how to work from a great distance, in space
and
time, and to act without touching. ‘To light no touch paper,' James said. ‘To touch off no fuse.' Then, ‘See, I can do it too – make matter out of words.' He went on eagerly to say that he'd hit on a notion – a notion so inevitable that he was sure it could stay his secret and still be copied, copied by human ingenuity itself. He called it his ‘timing bomb'. The batteries for the telephone exchange supplied the charge, they were attached by wires to an alarm clock, its hammer and its bell. When the alarm went off and the bell and striker came into contact the charge jumped through another wire, delivering fire – in the form of electricity – into a blasting cartridge. ‘One of Alfred Nobel's gelignite blasting cartridges. Manufactured in Glasgow.' This priming charge was, in turn, attached to a bundle of dynamite. ‘The batteries – three feet in height and twenty-five pounds apiece, plus the baled cables and the steel rails,
and
the seats from my beautiful Panhard et Levassor high-wheeler – all formed a buffer that
concentrated
the blast against the hull.'

Clara jumped up with a cry and covered her face. She said, ‘Please, God, no more.' She said it in Swedish.

‘The timing was intricately planned,' James said. ‘
Eleven
hours
and
fifty-nine
minutes.
Though I was haunted by an odd fear that the clock would go backward – as that case clock of your grandmother's once chose to, Clara.' James addressed his wife. ‘Do you recall – we came down to breakfast one morning and found the clock making a senile purr and telling time backward.' He nodded at Murdo. ‘Prefer to do things for myself. Right about that. Not always easy to find someone to follow the thinking.' James gave one of the small
grimaces that Murdo had long ago realised was his imitation of what he saw – all he
could
see 
–
when people bared their teeth to smile broadly. James said, ‘There's plenty of “confession” material here – eh, cousin – regarding aspirations to “testimony” and “truth”.'

Murdo might normally have said – in as dull and
discouraging
a way as possible – ‘I can't follow you.' But he knew that when James was under pressure his speech became very odd – for instance pronouns began to vanish from his sentences. Murdo had always thought this was James's way of asserting himself by abdicating into the impersonal – making his views sound universal and inevitable. But it was something else. A quirk. A characteristic. James was full of talk, but not full of himself, so that people who saw him only a little called him ‘good-natured'. For Murdo the ‘natured' part of the public praise was coming into focus. Was this a product of nature – an accident of birth rather than biography – this heartless, hobbyest attention to detail, this
disease
of visionary confidence?

‘I wrote to Elov Jansen,' said James. ‘In time, too – but foreign mails are very unreliable. I filled three cabins with men I paid to leave at Luag. At eight bells there was only one stoker on watch below. One attendant at the furnace.'

‘That still leaves five dead,' Murdo said. ‘By your intention.'

‘Four, cousin. The fellow pinned by Mr Maslen's trunk wouldn't have been moving luggage at eight bells.' James seemed to get pleasure from correcting Murdo.

‘The steward. I believe his name was Alfred,' said Murdo.

‘Please,' Clara said – in Swedish, perhaps to Murdo, or possibly to the God of her childhood.

‘Speak English!' Her husband shouted. He balled his fists and beat the air. ‘Don't be
secret
together
.'

Once he'd raised his voice, James was unable to wind it down. He went on, loud, toneless, declamatory. He explained and expounded. That steward would certainly not have been
crushed by Mr Maslen's trunk, since Mr Maslen had
under
taken
to ship with the Stolnsay pilot from Dorve the day before.

‘Your instructions – as conveyed to him by Gutthorm – were so particular that Mr Maslen took his cue from their tone rather than their substance,' Murdo said. ‘Maslen decided that you were
very
particular
about punctuality, and that he must, at all costs, arrive on the appointed day. Or as near to it as possible. And, James, what about the child, the
three-year-old
in the salon? What about her in the cold sea off Alesund Head?'

James went purple.

Murdo asked, ‘What was your margin for error?'

James thrust his own hand into his mouth and bit himself. He bore down, grunting with effort, and blood ran from his broken skin. His wife went to him and pulled the hand down, held it. She said, ‘Don't do that, James.' She was so
matter-of-fact
that Murdo knew she'd seen him do it before.

‘Clara,' James said to Murdo, through lips lacquered with wet blood, ‘was a breath of fresh air. My feelings were always too strong for the other ladies, who seemed to feel nothing for me. Clara was the crown of my life – perfect,
picture
perfect, until her visit home. You know what visit. I came to fetch her and my' – his voice strangled – ‘my little Ingrid – and I found the
hussar
at home and banging about with a cord through his jacket sleeves and jacket slung around his shoulders like a person from Pushkin –'

Murdo was able to make sense of this only because his own thoughts had often returned to that time – Clara's first visit to her mother after her marriage. He said, ‘I'd broken my collarbone.'

‘Showing off,' said Clara. Then, very low and tentative, ‘James – Murdo and I were never alone.'

‘Yes! I prefer to do things for myself!' James shouted. ‘Including fathering my own children!'

Murdo thought about the theatre, men wearing dummy horses they seemed to sit astride, a puppet cavalry wheeling onstage to the crash of tin cymbals. He thought of ice cream and ice-skating; of his eleven-year-old sister Ingrid carrying little Ingrid across the hall, little Ingrid's red boots banging against big Ingrid's shins.

‘The
hussar
put me in a difficult position,' James said. ‘Required me to exercise aggression. Masculine competition. Difficult for me.'

Clara said to her husband, ‘You've made a terrible mistake.'

‘In your terrible certainty,' said Murdo.

But James wasn't attending at all. He was talking. About the cuckoo in his nest. And about
character.
No matter what he was given, Rixon remained Rixon. There was nothing at which Rixon excelled. The only education that stuck was a conventional mimicry of conventional male behaviour. ‘Always catching him practising gestures with a cigar. A dandy, like his father,' James said. He asked when the world would understand that everything, that
character
,
in the modern and the old-fashioned senses – personality and force of will – were formed from one cell, one germplasm, at the moment of conception. It was a miracle. Too much of a miracle to go unmonitored, or unchecked.

Clara groped about for something with which to wipe her face. She fumbled with the scarf knotted at her waist. Murdo passed her his handkerchief. ‘You've made a terrible mistake,' she sobbed at her husband.

‘And – where was your margin for error?' Murdo asked again, cold.

James peered at him, cockeyed. It was that odd look he had, his eyes wide only because his brows were hitched high. It was as if his eyelids couldn't open fully of their own accord, but required his whole upper face to move, too.

‘Rixon is
yours
,'
Clara told her husband. ‘I've been true to the vows I made when I married you.'

‘I see.'

‘Don't hurt our son,' Clara begged.

James peered at her, mouth open, breathing noisily. Then his mouth snapped shut and he said, ‘These are
reasons
I'm giving. You wanted me to be magnanimous to Murdo. Our cousin, you reminded me. I was magnanimous. Never
suspected
. But you bloomed and blushed and flourished. And he debauched our daughter. Tried to, or wanted to. I sent for the coroner from Edinburgh not to see whether Ingrid had taken her own life – I knew she had – but to see whether she was still
intact
.'

Clara made a low, pained sound. She began to walk – tottered slowly to the door. Murdo intercepted her. He held her. He watched her hands, picking and picking at his jacket as his mother's had plucked repeatedly at the coverlet of her deathbed.

‘As it turned out she was,' James said. ‘It wasn't
that
then. Of course, that would have been a far simpler matter. I racked my brains. I realised that, on Ingrid's part, it was a chaste affection. A noble affection. But while he dallied with her, she guessed, you see. She watched you together. You. You, Clara. Always asking him, “Will you take Rixon?” She was a loyal daughter, and
ashamed
of her mother.'

‘No,' said Clara.

And Murdo, ‘Ingrid told me she loved me, and I said, “Don't love me.” I said I was fond of her, glad of her company, counted her as a friend. And she gave me a big shove, and ran away weeping. I thought she'd be all right. That we'd be awkward. She'd treat me coldly, perhaps, and everyone would wonder what had happened. I anticipated embarrassment. And I thought perhaps she'd renew her attack. Something, anyway, just
something
more
.'
Then, in despair, ‘Not more nothing!'

Clara touched his back.

‘Look at you!' James yelled at them.

Clara drew herself up; she seemed to collect herself. ‘Well, James, you're not a man who made much of' – she sighed, as if the air were thin and insufficient nourishment – ‘of my hand on your shoulder. Sometimes you would flinch. Even at first. Affection must have its rewards.' She said, ‘I've been a good wife to you. In fact, I've followed my principles. But I must tell you that I now think my principles are only prison bars. I've incarcerated myself and excluded others.'

Murdo tried to take Clara's hand, but she shook it free.

‘However,' Clara said to James, ‘I will continue to follow my principles. I'll provide an
example
for you. You won't harm Murdo. He'll go away, and you can stop thinking about him. You won't hurt Rixon – your son, however
unsatisfactory
you find him. There will be no divorce, no court case, no untoward exclusions from any will you make. You will make no more murderous budgets where a manservant and a stoker are merely “necessary expenditure”. You will obey me in all this, and I will save you – your life, fortune, and reputation.'

James grunted.

‘Let yourself be guided,' Clara said, measured and firm. ‘You
don't
know
,
James. You were wrong about Rixon. And Murdo didn't touch Ingrid.
You don't
know
.'

‘You had no margin for error. And Johan Gutthorm didn't have the correct time,' Murdo said.

Clara was looking at her husband with an expression of compassion. ‘James. The death of a child
is
terrible. All of life is its anniversary. Each week I say, “At this time last week, month, year, I was potting parsley, and Ingrid was walking back to Scouse Beach.” I say, “A week ago, a month, a year, two years ago at this time my daughter stopped breathing.” I'm living in her time, not my own. At intervals I'm living in her last day, as if that's the only thing left for me to do. James, I know you've felt it, too – felt your life taken. It's what we
must
feel. It doesn't mean that someone – anyone – has stolen
from you, or behaved treacherously. You imagine someone must have meant to hurt you – hurt
only
you, since you feel only
your
injuries – but death is terrible.'