Billie's Kiss Read Online Free

‘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.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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 backto 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