The Last Pier (14 page)

Aunt Kitty had so many admirers it was difficult to keep track of who sent what. How many had she invited to the dance? Agnes’ laugh was like a bite into an unripe apple.

While Selwyn, of course, was marked like an absence chalked up on a blackboard.

‘Another important meeting,’ Agnes said, adding with a laugh, ‘I’m going to write my Mass Observation notes, now.’

Agnes didn’t sound as if she cared one way or the other about Selwyn’s absence any more. So that staring at her beautiful mother a little slyly, a little puzzled, Cecily remembered her secret nightlife and thought how happy she looked in the dim glow of the lamp.

‘Better get used to duller lights,’ Joe told them.

‘I can’t say I’m looking forward to blackouts,’ Aunt Kitty added, before letting herself out through the kitchen door.

Rose’s eyes had a gleam in them that no one would blackout. Later in their shared bedroom she began to darn her stocking.

‘It tore,’ she said even before Cecily could ask the question.

But she didn’t say how and Cecily couldn’t ask. Couldn’t-ask was like an itch on her arm. So Cecily asked another question instead. It was like scratching the wrong place, unsatisfactory but necessary in order to keep your mind off the Real Itch.

‘Have you seen Pinky?’ she asked, instead.

‘Why should I?’ Rose replied, head bent over her needle.

‘I saw him today.’

‘Good for you.’

‘He was having a cigarette,’ Cecily ventured, hoping to jog her sister’s memory in some way.

Her sister looked up then. And the secret, soft look on her face was replaced first by irritation and then by slight amusement.

‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ Rose said.

Which meant nothing at all.

But,

Belatedly, now, on
this
August afternoon, the newly returned Cecily realised she had spent far too much time wandering the town. What had she hoped to discover all these years later? Any moment now she was in danger of being recognised. Crossing the road as quickly as she could, she hurried back to the house. It was almost four o’clock. Time had flown backwards without a glance. The voices were quiet. Cecily could tell they liked this part of the story, having heard it once before.

On Monday morning Kitty announced she was going up to Exeter to visit an old friend. She would be back for the harvest in a few days and if Agnes wanted to go to a concert in London she could use Kitty’s flat.

‘Not much of a broken heart, then,’ Cecily overheard Cook tell The Help.

Agnes was bottling fruit.

The last time she had been to a concert in London had been before Rose was born. They had gone to a party afterwards and although Selwyn did not like that sort of thing he hadn’t minded showing off his young wife on that occasion. Arthur Balfour, the Foreign Secretary, had praised Agnes’ eyes.

‘You wear them like jewels, m’dear,’ he had said in his loud-enough-to-be-noticed boom.

A man at the piano began playing ‘When Irish Eyes Are Smiling’ and Selwyn had nodded, as though her eyes had been his doing. At the time Agnes had believed he loved her but that his feelings simply lagged a little behind hers. His emotions, she had believed, were merely folded like the wings of a nesting bird. He was simply a discreet man, she had thought.

Then.

These days she hardly went anywhere.

‘Is it true?’ asked Robert Wilson, popping his head in through the pantry door. ‘That Selwyn has been asked to join the Anti-Aircraft Division?’

Agnes nodded.

‘Yes,’ she said.

It had happened the previous week.

Robert Wilson handed her a small bunch of violets.

‘Kitty isn’t here,’ Agnes said.

‘No these are for
you
!’

She smiled, inviting him in for a cup of tea.

‘They’re all out playing in the fields,’ she said, meaning Cecily, believing it was so.

‘Bit of a handful, eh!’ Robert laughed and Agnes nodded ruefully.

There was an advertisement cut out from
Picture Post
on the table. ‘Hints for a Happy Marriage’, it said. Robert raised his eyebrows and Agnes laughed. She looked around for a small glass to put the violets in.

‘No, don’t do that, wear them!’

‘It’s an advertisement for ammonia,’ she said, still laughing.

She liked Robert Wilson.

‘
Do
you need ammonia for a happy marriage?’

Agnes looked for a pin to wear her violets but she was laughing so much that she almost pricked her finger.

‘Here, let me,’ Robert said.

They drank their tea sitting outside in the kitchen garden, out of Cook’s way.

‘You never stop working, do you?’ Robert said.

‘There’s a lot to do on a farm this size.’

‘What do you do for relaxation? Apart from the ballet?’

‘I used to play the piano.’

‘And…’ he shook his head.

‘Inquisitive fellow,’ The Help, overhearing, remarked. ‘What’s he doing asking her all them questions?’

Cook sniffed but would not comment.

‘What’s Selwyn up to with the Anti-Aircraft Unit?’

Cecily, about to sneeze, stopped herself in the nick of time. Was Pinky Wilson trying to steal secrets from her father, now?

‘I’m not really sure. It’s all top secret, of course.’

‘Of course.’

They both ignored the bitterness in Agnes’ voice. Only Cecily, listening for all she was worth, heard it quite clearly.

‘I wish it would come if it’s going to.’

‘The war?’

‘Yes. I can’t stand the tension. I wake up tense. I go to sleep tense. It’s impossible to settle.’

There was a pause. In the background they could hear kitchen clatter; water being poured down the sink, bottles being sealed, footsteps. The war was a snake. Waiting, was what it was about. And air raids, of course.

‘The British people don’t want to be moles,’ Agnes sighed. ‘They don’t want to go to ground.’

‘You shouldn’t worry. The air raids, if they happen, will only happen at night,’ Robert said easily.

He hesitated.

‘Oh by the way, I’ve got you that ticket I promised for the Wigmore Hall.’

Agnes smiled. Her hair had begun to curl slightly in the humidity. It framed her face, softening it, making her look younger than she was. In the bleached light, her eyes were startling. Their expression exactly like that of her younger daughter.

‘What a kind man you are,’ she said, solemnly.

Robert lit his cigarette. Agnes was a beautiful woman, he thought.

‘So you’ll go?’

Agnes laughed.

‘There’s a lot to be done to get this place ready for the dance.’

She didn’t say she would get no help from Selwyn who was busy with more and more defence work of late.

‘Might as well take advantage and go up when you can,’ Robert said, encouragingly.

His eyes were very blue. She wondered if he were married.

‘Once the blackouts start… well, it’ll be hopeless.’

He smiled. There was something about him that reminded her of a coiled spring that seemed at odds with his deep blue eyes.

‘Are you trying to get rid of me?’ she laughed. ‘As soon as I turn my back on them God knows what those girls will get up to!’

‘They’ll be fine,’ Robert said easily. ‘Go. Do you good to get away for a bit. Stay in your sister’s flat. Come back in the morning.’

Inside the kitchen, looking out of the window, Cook sniffed and behind the scullery door, Cecily was still trying not to sneeze.

‘Thank you,’ said Agnes, faintly.

‘How does he know about the flat?’ Cook asked, puzzled, frowning, standing still for a brief moment.

‘Maybe she told him?’ The Help said.

Cook sniffed. Poking his nose about. Even the children disliked him.

‘It’ll end in tears, I’ll be bound,’ she said.

‘What will?’ asked The Help.

‘Oh get on with it,’ said Cook, cross about something invisible.

Having reached the safety of the house, Cecily poured herself a glass of water with shaking hands and swallowed her pill.

For it was Rose darning her stocking that she saw.

Now.

Clearly, as though it were yesterday.

‘Why do you want to wear stockings in this heat?’ Cecily asked.

‘It isn’t about the wearing,’ Rose replied. ‘It’s about the taking off, as you will find out one day.’

‘I’m having a discussion with Tom about Einstein,’ Cecily said.

Rose raised one eyebrow.

‘You two are mighty thick,’ was all she said.

‘
Amami
di Più,
’ sang Cecily and Rose laughed.

‘Who taught you that? Carlo?’

Cecily had felt it was time to take stock of all her sister’s unanswered questions.

‘They embarked on a euthanasia programme in Germany and Austria,’ she told her. ‘That’s why Tom’s family left.’

‘I shouldn’t take too much notice of that one,’ Rose said. ‘He’s trying too hard to impress.’

‘Why?’

Rose put down her stocking and looked solemnly at Cecily.

‘There are some things we don’t ask Out Of Politeness To Others,’ she said.

Then she began examining her long, sunburnt legs.

Tom had a cough and Out Of Politeness Cecily didn’t like to ask if euthanasia was a cough medicine. There were several things she felt she couldn’t ask. But she had been making a list of things both polite and impolite.

Why did their mother look suddenly happy?

Why was Captain Pinky buying her a ticket to a concert? (‘Is he?’ asked Rose, her expression thunderous. ‘Where did you hear that, you pesky eavesdropper? I hope she’s not following in the footsteps of that floozy, Kitty.’)

How had Rose torn her dress?

Had she been with Carlo when it happened?

What had Captain Pinky been doing at the pier that night when he had told them he was having An Early Night?

Did Daddy
really
love Aunt Kitty?

There were many more questions but she couldn’t remember them all.

The tennis racquets had been found and repaired. In her narrow bed that night, waiting for the party, Cecily thought
that Rose was no fun any more. And the summer, she saw with a painful awareness never present before, was slipping away. She had spent it eavesdropping while all the while her sister Rose was becoming another person altogether. I’ll never change, Cecily vowed. Never. It is part of the constitution of my character.

Afterwards she would remember that night as though it had been a dog-eared corner in a diary. The full moon pouring softly down somewhere above the roof of the house, washing away all the confusion of the day, leaving only a perfect stillness. Her mother’s voice floating up from the garden through the open window, and Rose fast asleep for once, in a too-many-late-nights, exhausted sleep. Cecily had stretched under her thin covers thinking all these things. (She had heard somewhere that if you stretched a little bit every day you would grow taller). Thinking of Tom in his room over the stables, sleeping. And Joe across the landing, sleeping also. Soon he would be leaving them. Cecily had seen him standing in front of the mirror gazing at himself in the greatcoat his uncle had worn during the First World War. Cecily had watched through a crack in the door and seen that Joe’s face was full of concentration as he did his buttons up and then blank again as he gazed at himself. Was he thinking of Franca? Cecily hoped so. She badly wanted him to marry Franca.

Selwyn was still at some meeting looking after National Security. He could not sleep very much because of this. As for Aunt Kitty, Cecily forgot to mention Kitty in her prayers that moonless summer night before finally dropping off to sleep.

No one heard the owl hoot.

No one heard the sea washing the pebbles.

No one heard the clock strike the hour or the squeak of a bicycle brake or the small breeze stirring a curtain.

From this distance no one could hear the music on the pier or the sound of tables being folded and put away at Molinellos’.

No one saw Lucio walk swiftly towards the river.

Not even me, thought Cecily, now, looking at her cold ringless hands in the light of a sixties day.

Nor had Cecily known that, after her mother had finished playing the ‘Moonlight Sonata’, with the soft pedal down so as not to wake the children, Agnes had closed the lid of the piano and sighed. She was sorry if she had been a little harsh with Cecily after the ballet. She was sorry about so many things that she had lost count of them. Creeping upstairs, she had looked in on them. Her girls.

Cecily and Rose.

Rose and Cecily.

She kissed them both. Equally, for they were equal in her mind.

She went into her room and turned down the covers of the large double bed. She would be sleeping in it alone later on for Selwyn was somewhere in London, she knew. She stood surveying the room for a moment longer. Then, taking a thin shawl out of a drawer, she slipped out of the sleeping house. Making for the river.

And when the owl that lived closest to the house had waited longer than usual he saw a small movement in the grass below. It wasn’t an apple falling. So in one swift, graceful movement the bird spread his wings and swooped down. There was no sound. The animal was captured and airborne. Death came under the cover of a great wing.

White,

silent,

and instant.

TO WAKE IN
her old bed after so long was bad enough, but what was worse were the old scents that lay in wait in the hidden corners of the house. Cecily splashed the remnants of the awful night out of her eyes with cold water and went out again. Walking across to the Ness at low tide it shocked her to see the skeletal appearance of the burnt pier.

Death had left its footprints everywhere, corroding its posts and innards so that what remained was bent and buckled like rotten teeth in sea saliva. Neglect had grown its barnacles on the blackened planks while sightless carbuncles of mud from previous flooding had stuck to the rotten walls of its pavilion. There was nothing here for her except unresolved stories. What had made her love this place so much? What had drawn Rose to it? A curlew, wings outstretched, glided with strange slowness beyond all earthly anxieties. Once Cecily used to believe a water devil made its home in these marshy waters. The past was inscrutable and the story of the burnt-away pier remained an old, unsolvable story.

A white butterfly with black markings alighted on a stone at her feet, appearing to dry itself in the pale sunlight. When it didn’t move she touched it but it remained motionless and she realised it was dead. Its wings were covered in ethereal dust. It rested like a shrouded corpse. Sorrow at its passing overcame Cecily in such a wave that turning, she set off towards Bly’s seafront. Everything she had tried to love had gone.

But the seafront, when she reached it by the old route, the one taken long ago by Lucio and Agnes, had shifted and changed just as Shingle Street had altered. The wooden shacks were all gone. No Punch-and-Judy man, no helter-skelter and naturally, no ice-cream parlour awaited her. Instead there was the noise of
a fast food cafe and a few fruit machines over whose flickering coloured light the unemployed dreamt. A puddle had grown in the road from the previous night’s storm and a public toilet, abandoned years before, stood with a hole in its roof. Only the sea, impenetrable and unchanged, remained.

You see,
said the voices in Cecily’s head,
All Things Pass. No use crying. Okay?

Was she meant to take comfort in this?

Had she asked the fishermen gathering their empty nets, some would have told Cecily how, on stormy nights there arose the sound of wailing from the ship called
The Arandora Star.
They would have told her of the bodies that had washed up on these shores. The fishermen would have, with some hesitation, told her that after a particularly bad storm there was
still
the chance of another corpse being spotted. It was not beyond the realm of possibility, they would have said. And then, had she pressed further, they might have told her it was always the gulls who picked them out first, passing on the news, hovering over the water like a great choir singing the dead to rest. But Cecily didn’t ask and the fishermen were uncertain if it was really Cecily Maudsley, daughter of Selwyn Maudsley, younger sister of Rose Maudsley (and therefore tainted like all the Maudsleys in spite of their big house), who had finally returned.

On this warm day-after-the-street-party day, Bellamy Samuel Darby, seeing Cecily silhouetted against the light, paused in his work to take out his pipe. His hands were gnarled with over-knotting nylon netting. They were the same hands that once had twisted the necks of small rabbits. But Bellamy was a different sort of man.

Now.

‘Time for a break,’ he told his boatswain. ‘Swift half down the pub?’

‘Ever ready,’ laughed the boatswain, puzzled by the figure too.

Then he remembered. Of course!

‘I’m going to talk to her,’ Bellamy said, chin pushed forward, determined.

The sun was in everyone’s eyes and the pebbly beach wasn’t easy to walk up but he went.

‘Are you,’ he asked, ‘Cecily?’

Because there was water in the sky a rainbow formed. Somewhere over it was blueness but Cecily couldn’t see it. Bellamy began to whistle the tune he used to whistle to her and then she remembered.

‘I was thirteen, going on fourteen,’ she said, without a trace of a smile.

It was the first real acknowledgement of past times and it rang clear as a bell within her. The sea shifted slightly but the tide remained out.

‘You thought I had a prawn in my trouser pocket,’ Bellamy said and he bent double with an old man’s laughter.

Cecily stood very still; a butterfly, knowing the net will soon be pulled over its wings.

‘We all thought you had gone for good,’ Bellamy said, when he had done with laughing.

‘No,’ Cecily said. ‘I’m here.’

‘So I see.’

And he handed her a creased photo from inside his wallet.

‘My missus,’ he said. ‘We’ve been married these eighteen years.’

There was defiance in his voice. Of a kind that needed an audience.

Once long ago, his look said, I loved a summer rose with thorns.

The breeze coming in from the sea hushed the thought. Cecily saw how great his hurt had been merely from looking at the creases in the photograph.

‘You married, Cecily?’ he asked when she made no move.

‘No. Not any more.’

She felt someone breathing down her neck.

Shock
him, shock him,
the voices pleaded.

But Cecily was tired out. She was beginning to remember certain things about Bellamy.

‘Ah!’ Bellamy was saying, mockingly. ‘Divorced, are you?’

She could not deny it, hoping her silence would do the trick. He took a step backwards. Awkwardness had got stuck to his foot. It clung like the damp sand and made his shoes heavy. The only way was to shake it off. Still, he thought, she’s a stunner. Wonder if she knows? Different though. Quiet now. Never used to be quiet. My word, what a chatterbox she was.

Then.

‘We’ve two kids,’ he said. ‘Two boys. Grand lads. Look.’

He held out another photograph, less creased, this one.

Small children,

young woman,

Bellamy.

Smiling up at the sunlight. Pride in his voice, brimming over like a net full of catch.

Things fell easily into place after that and Cecily remembered him with sharp clarity. Back-door begging, Cook had called it. She hadn’t wanted him there. She didn’t want caravan people working in Palmyra Farm, let alone coming up to the house.

‘Gipsies!’ she had said. ‘Tinkers! They’re all trouble, aren’t they, Mrs Maudsley?’

Bellamy’s face had darkened.

‘I was her real love,’ he said now, regret tucked discreetly out of sight.

‘Touch of the tar brush there,’ Cecily had heard Partridge say. ‘Your sister’s friend!’

Cecily hadn’t known what he meant.

Then.

‘Nonsense,’ Selwyn had said coming in, holding his hand up against Cook’s tirade.

Selwyn had been Bellamy’s champion in those days. No one knew why and behind Selwyn’s back Bellamy used to make rude
gestures at Cook. He’d wink at Cecily before going in search of Rose.

‘Ah Rose! Rose!’ he said now.

Leaving what was best left unsaid.

‘His mother’s a good woman,’ Selwyn used to say, ‘She has a very hard time of it. And please stop calling them gipsies. They’re nothing of the sort.’

Liberal, upright Selwyn. Always for the underdog.

What changed you,
wondered the adult Cecily.

What confusion led you astray?

Was it anger over the way your brother died?

Was it Kitty?

Was it in the end just the old story of a misguided man led astray by a woman?

Was there nothing more to it than that?

Weak, desperate Selwyn,
she thought.

Now.

‘There’s enough prejudice in the world, already,’ she remembered her father had said. ‘Besides which, we’ll all be pulling against each other soon enough.’

‘Your father is a socialist,’ Agnes had told Cecily, after she had grown up. After it was all too late.

‘He’s before his time.’

Social List, thought Cecily, out of habit.

On August the 23rd the pact between Germany and Russia was agreed.

From Berlin,
The Times
correspondent noted that ordinary Germans felt that now at last they could do as they pleased and nobody would dare fight them.

‘The war will make equals of us all,’ Selwyn announced.

‘Not during it,’ Agnes said. ‘
After,
maybe.’

‘Oh after,’ Selwyn said carelessly, as though ‘after’ hadn’t mattered.

‘But there isn’t going to be one,’ Cecily reminded them.

‘With any luck,’ Selwyn agreed.

And then he had hired Bellamy, as he always did, to help with the harvest.

We all paid a price,
Cecily thought, staring up at this thick set, middle-aged man. Bellamy had hated Tom from the very beginning.

‘You’re not his friend,’ he had told her that day long ago. ‘He’s soft in the head.’

‘He’s not,’ Cecily said and Bellamy had scowled.

‘Know something I don’t?’

There had been a fight in the orchard, she remembered. Captain Pinky had been present. What had he been talking about? It had been hot, of course. They had been watching a field mouse sitting on the stone wall, eating a grain of corn. It washed its face, and vanished and only the bees in clover remained.

That Monday they had planned to visit the ice-cream parlour again, not caring about Berlin. Apart from spying, Tom’s other obsession was ice cream. On the way whom should they meet but Captain Pinky? Up to no good, they had felt. Wearing a straw boater and looking as though he was going to the beach.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘Have one on me.’

And he had handed Tom that sixpence.

‘Tell me how many Italians you see when you’re there. Remember I’m doing a survey for the town census.’

‘Thank you,’ Tom said.

‘Can I count the people too?’ Cecily asked.

‘Of course.’

But he hadn’t given her anything and she had been miffed. But before she could question the unfairness, there had been a rustling in the bushes and Bellamy appeared. Hot, bothered, ready for a fight.

‘Hello,’ Captain Pinky said. ‘Spying on us, are you?’

‘
You’re
the rotten spy,’ Bellamy had said, coolly. ‘As you well know.’

Had they been on different sides? Cecily wondered now, amazed.

Bit late to ask that!
said the voices.

‘Now look here, old chap,’ Captain Pinky said, still smiling.

The smile, Cecily saw, was a little overstretched.

‘
And
I saw you giving them money. Bribery, it is.’

For a moment Cecily felt a twinge of excitement.

‘You silly boy,’ Captain Pinky said, swinging his voice around. ‘I’m working for the British Government to protect the British people.’

It would have all been fine if Tom hadn’t laughed at Bellamy.

For a split second Bellamy looked confused. Then he turned slowly and with no warning, lunged out at Tom. Tom was caught off guard.

Legs flailing, moments later, both boys on the ground with Bellamy on top, and Cecily shouting at them to stop.

‘Keep out of this,’ Bellamy snarled and he punched Tom in the face.

Everyone was yelling.

Then Captain Pinky joined in the fray and tried to separate the villains but Cecily was in the way and a kick, aimed by Tom at the tinker’s son, landed on her head, sending her flying over the boys’ grunts into the dry abyss of thistles. And stones and cowpats. It was a rugger-mugger sort of scrum until Pinky Wilson saved the day with a swift, neat tackle, separating the boys while holding on to both.

Grimly.

Tom spat out blood.

Bellamy, saliva.

‘Look what you’ve done,’ he cried in fury. ‘Cecily’s bleeding.’

Captain Pinky grabbed hold of Bellamy, stopping him in mid-flight.

(Where d’you think you’re going young man?)

Tom stood limply beside Cecily who, even though her face was cut, was enjoying it all very much.

‘You’ve gashed your forehead,’ Tom said, peering at her with horrified fascination.

They all looked at her.

‘It’s colossally deep. It’s sort of white inside – I say! I think you’ve cut yourself to the bone!’

Cecily felt sick, but rather thrilled all the same. Who wouldn’t? It was pretty important to have cut yourself to the bone. She could not feel any acute pain as yet, only the bruised ache where her whole face had hit the ground. It was gratifying to have something to show for it. Instantly Tom rose sublimely to the occasion, tearing a strip off the bottom of his shirt.

‘No, no, wait,’ Pinky said. ‘I think we should take you back to the house, Cecily.’

But Tom was already binding the cloth untidily round her head.

‘The blood’s coming through…’

He sounded rather scared.

Captain P picked Cecily up easily and strode back to the house. Tom, a hero, trotting anxiously behind. They had forgotten about Bellamy, who disappeared as swiftly as one of his ferrets.

‘Cecily’s cut herself to the bone,’ Tom announced before Captain P could stop him.

Cook and Agnes stared and Carlo, sitting at the kitchen table, waiting for Rose, stood up in alarm. The sight of Carlo had turned on the tap of tears behind Cecily’s eyes. The cloth was blood-soaked and very gory. Everyone made a hell of a fuss. Carlo took her face in his hands and kissed it, gently. Sweetly. As if she were his little sister. And this made her cry more.

‘Poor little Cecci,’ Carlo said, wiping her eyes.

Cecily cried all the harder.

Bellamy’s part in the events was discussed. Tom took his share of the blame manfully but Captain Pinky would have none of
that. He explained everything first to Agnes and then to Cook and then later on once more to Kitty. He never once blamed either party more than the other, which was clever of him although Cook kept muttering about gipsies.

‘Where’s the wretched boy?’ Agnes asked.

She would have to tell Selwyn that this would not do. But where was Selwyn when he was needed?

‘I’ll find him,’ Tom said and ran out.