... He won't ask 'why am I alive? why has God preserved me?' because he regards his life as a temporary difficulty. He’s alive because he wants to know who took you from him. But he won’t ask “Who meant to kill me?” in case the question makes him jealous of his life and desirous of living. [p. 148]
Billie Paxton has survived a rough sea voyage aboard the Gustav Edda, tending her heavily pregnant sister Edith: Edith's husband Henry is due to take up a post with Lord Hallowhulme on the remote Scottish island of Kissack and Skilling. As the ship nears the dock, Billie leaps ashore -- and behind her the ship explodes, with several lives lost and many injured. Billie, and her flight from the deck, catches the suspicious eye of Murdo Hesketh, a minor aristocrat and a cousin of Lord Hallowhulme: he's lost his friend and servant Ian Betler in the disaster, and he thinks Billie may be to blame.
I've attempted Billie's Kiss several times over the years and not engaged with it, but a recent trip north inspired me to try again. I think it may be that rare thing, an Elizabeth Knox novel that I don't (yet?) love: perhaps because of the lack of fantastical elements, perhaps because of the slowness of most of the narrative (though time speeds up in the last couple of chapters, taking us from 1903 to 1916 in a few pages), perhaps because Billie -- who is illiterate, and whose sensorium I found at once fascinating and frustrating -- didn't always seem aware of her own feelings, perhaps because Murdo was chilly and prickly. That said, the gradual revelation of the two protagonists' histories and characters is beautifully done. I found Billie's love of sea-swimming -- remarkable for the time, and splendidly evoked -- especially resonant: '...being borne up on the steep peak of an unbroken wave or rolled about in the chilly fizz of a smashed one'.
Billie's Kiss is partly a murder mystery, partly a Gothic romance, and partly a portrayal of an aristocratic family with a plethora of secrets. Lord Hallowhulme, amiable and philanthropic, is surely modelled on Lord Leverhulme. His half-Swedish wife Clara is also cousin to Murdo (there are a lot of doubled relationships in this novel) and grew up with him. Murdo's own past is fraught with loss and deceit, as well as with the exuberant exploits of his youth. Even the children -- Hallowhulme and Clara's offspring, and a boy from the town named Alan -- have distinct and complex personalities. (I became very fond of Alan, who knew what he wanted and was not afraid to ask for it.) And the Betler brothers, Ian drowned and Geordie come to assist Murdo Hesketh, felt like a strong and solid presence throughout the novel: their letters to one another are both lucid and profound.
Thinking again about this novel, I think it'll merit a slower reread some time soon. I feel there's much I'm missing -- not least the connections with Shakespeare's The Tempest that are mentioned, but not discussed, in a couple of reviews.
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