Billie's Kiss by Elizabeth Knox

Andrew Tannoy. ‘Parky.’ He didn’t say, ‘ You need not go yet , Geordie . We ’ ll wait here till you embark .’
    Geordie felt comfortable with this restraint, for Geordie Betler was a butler, and a model of propriety. Well – it was axiomatic, all butlers were proper, but Geordie had been seven years with Tannoy and the rules of Tannoy’s house were relaxed and informal. Informal, not unnatural; relaxed, but not lax. Andrew Tannoy put no stock in the niceties that had often worked to exclude him even as he made his fortune. He didn’t oppose, but ignored them. Tannoy was an educated man. The son of a poor parish minister, he had starved his way through a degree in mathematics and a pinchpenny post in a Glasgow firm of engineers. Then he went to India and built bridges on a Himalayan railway. Tannoy had retired at thirty-eight, his health imperilled by a fever. He came home to Scotland with a yellow complexion and an Indian wife. ‘I was on the bones of my bottom,’ he’d once told Geordie. ‘But we rented rooms, and I used my little bit of money to build my first steam shovel, then I put in for the patent.’
    Andrew Tannoy now had a factory in Glasgow, and a big house in Ayrshire, a tender liver, and his white-haired, soft-spoken Meela. He had friendly tenants and a few good friends – enough for a busy shooting season. He had a well-paid, comfortably housed butler whom he was loath to lose. And he knew enough to be worried.
    Geordie could see that his employer was trying to think how he could coax his butler to talk. Andrew Tannoy was concerned – and in need of reassurance. Geordie was fond ofhis employer, but he was also curious about him. Tannoy was an original, and Geordie wanted to see what he’d do, how he’d manage both his anxiety and the impropriety of fussing over a servant.
    Andrew Tannoy rubbed his forehead. Then he blurted, ‘He’s no idler.’
    This was a novel approach. Geordie turned in his seat, and looked attentive.
    â€˜Well, of course, I am. Played out. Or, I play as men do when they’ve made a fortune and want a quiet life.’
    Andrew Tannoy was talking about Lord Hallowhulme. He was making his foray into Geordie’s near future – but on his side, as a segregated stallion, who must watch his mares and keep pace with them along his side of the fence. Geordie and Andrew Tannoy were servant and master, but for Mr Tannoy the barrier was more of a ha-ha than a fence – a recessed, stone-lined ditch that stops sheep and cattle from wandering into the garden and eating up tulips and grape hyacinths, hellebores and honesty, a barrier invisible from the parlour, a barrier that presents no impediment to the view.
    Tannoy went on. ‘Of course, some of what Hallowhulme does is a kind of play. But it takes a great deal of wealth. He’s no Mellon or Carnegie, but –’ Andrew Tannoy blushed. He fiddled with the fringed pull on the leather blind. It swung back and forth before the view, a hypnotist’s fob watch. Geordie focused on it and was again able to lose sight of the stacked coffins.
    â€˜Meela and I were invited to Port Clarity once,’ Andrew Tannoy volunteered. ‘You know, Port Clarity, Lord Hallowhulme’s model town? The town he built near his soap factory in Hull. It has workers’ cottages, all plumbed, two up, two down; it has a library, museum, observatory, swimming baths; it has parks, schools; a hospital, and an employees’ health plan. A marvellously progressive project.’ Mr Tannoy mused. ‘He’s an enlightened man.’
    â€˜So you’ve met him?’ Geordie said.
    â€˜Yes.’
    The undertakers were waggling the end of the first coffin to ease it out of the hearse. Andrew Tannoy watched them, then said that they could do with some recessed rollers along the bottom of that vehicle. ‘But they’ll think of it themselves,’