The Last Pier Read online

  ‘Me too,’ agreed Cecily, ready to give the evacuee a terrible time when he arrived.

  Although she no longer played with her childish toys, their presence reminded her of her past. If someone else played with them her memories would be destroyed. Then she remembered something else.

  ‘I saw Pinky in the orchard, last night, again,’ Cecily said.

  ‘No you didn’t,’ Rose told her crossly, giving her a thump.

  ‘Rose!’ Agnes cried, aghast. ‘Don’t hit your little sister! And don’t tell fibs either, Cecily!’

  ‘But I did see him!’ said Cecily.

  ‘No you didn’t. It’s not true. It was Partridge, putting out the rat-traps,’ Rose said.

  Her sudden fierce anger pinned Cecily against the dining table. Confused, she stared at her sister. There must be a misunderstanding.

  ‘You remember. It was him. You saw him too.’

  ‘Shut up you stupid girl!’

  Cecily saw Rose blush. Her eyes had turned an unexpectedly sharp blue. They looked like two ice picks. When Agnes put out the supper on the table Rose cut into her boiled beef as though she were Bellamy cutting grass with a scythe. Then she sunk her teeth into it as though it were Cecily’s arm. Agnes didn’t seem to notice and Selwyn was too busy reading his paper.

  But when Cecily, leafing through her diary, recalled that particular evening two decades later, it was in a slightly different order. She realised it had been exactly like the first night of a play with everyone getting their lines muddled up. Rose, shifting in her chair, eating boiled beef, was smaller than she had seemed at the time. And were there really ice picks in her eyes? Selwyn’s expression as he looked over the top of his newspaper at Agnes was hostile.

  ‘You do know that chap Wilson used to work at the Ministry of Trade when I was there, don’t you?’ he had said and Aunt Kitty, sounding rather irritated, said, ‘Oh yes!’

  Cecily’s mother’s apparent indifference, in hindsight, had other emotions attached to it, but it was her father’s look that had cowed them all. When the memory of that supper returned to Cecily with the clarity of hindsight she had been on a plane, arriving in another part of the world. She could not have been further from Suffolk. But as she came into land she looked down, seeing the marshy lines of a foreign lagoon flattened out and reedy and that was when she remembered the evening. In that moment she saw too how the colour of the sky and water were perfectly matched. Just like home.

  In the old house, Maudsley’s old house, as the townsfolk referred to it (they had forgotten the fancy name Palmyra), on this August night, twenty-nine years later, the recently returned Cecily stood looking at the old photographs on the walls. Her parents’ wedding day, her fifth birthday, Joe in uniform (what had happened to his medals?). Sea sounds entered the rooms as she moved through them and pieces of the jigsaw floated like shipwrecked objects under the waves. Calling for help. The figure who had stood so patiently for hours hesitated and walked away. Like the words of a familiar song heard in a different context, Cecily felt as though another piece of the jigsaw joined up. Because of this she was glad to be back. Why then did she feel like crying?

  7.

  AS SHE GREW older Cecily had a recurring dream from which she would wake in a wave of sweat and terror. Bellamy was always in these nightmares. There were others there too but Bellamy’s expression of horror dawning (long before anyone else’s) was terrible to behold. It made Cecily feel like a war veteran, or a thief, or even, (a word she had been told by the therapist to wipe from her vocabulary), a murderess.

  When she was fifteen, still living with doing-her-duty-Aunt Kitty, she began to study Macbeth at school.

  ‘Why is Shakespeare still relevant to us today?’ the teacher asked.

  Everyone tried to find the answer. Cecily didn’t even try.

  ‘Oh Cecily,’ the teacher sighed. ‘Why don’t you make an effort?’

  There’s a smell of blood everywhere, thought Cecily, keeping her face blank, going on to win the class prize for her essay on Shakespeare.

  ‘With an imagination like yours,’ the headmistress said, ‘you should become a novelist.’

  But despite all the encouragement she wrote nothing. And the dreams refused to go away for beneath the threshold of her mind the war years persisted.

  The crying did not stop.

  In her sleep she thought the sound was that of a child.

  ‘I just ran away,’ she told the shadowy therapist asking the questions.

  Not ‘just’ Cecily. What made you?

  ‘I heard a sound.’

  What was it? asked the shadow.

  ‘I don’t know. I went to look… I suppose it was screaming, in a child’s voice.’

  So what happened next?

  ‘I went into the barn but I was scared to look inside. But I had to…’

  And? What did you see?

  ‘The lambs were screaming. They were killing the spring lambs.’

  ‘But it was September, Cecily,’ the shadow said. ‘Wasn’t it?’

  Cecily nodded.

  The dream always stopped at this point and the shadow could not help her any more. Everything but the feeling of terror vanished. That, like the taste of medicine staying too long on the tongue, remained, curing nothing. Like the dampness of decay, it would persist in every place she lived. Following her around and penetrating every word she said, destroying the spontaneity she should have had. She felt stuck in the mud of it. The woman she saw every day for nearly five years asked her once if she ever woke up screaming. She found it difficult to explain she woke up with a silence that told her it was all over for her.

  She forgot to mention the voices bickering in her head.

  By Thursday August 17th 1939 Britain had already been building its defences for many months. On the wireless they said that Hitler had set the date for the invasion of Poland.

  It will begin on Saturday, 26 August at 4.30 am.

  While in the birdless high noon, stabbed by the heat, although no one spoke of it, everyone knew Joe would be involved.

  And all the time, far away, in the dead of night, black cars glided to a standstill outside the houses of ordinary people, murdering their sleep.

  Rose swept up her hair, copying her mother. Then she painted her lips a deep carmine like Aunt Kitty.

  ‘All you need to do is eat some raspberries to make your lips red,’ the watching Cecily suggested.

  But Rose wanted more than that. That was the problem.

  She wanted all the boys.

  Rude Bellamy.

  Luigi, Beppe and look-alike Giorgio.

  And if that wasn’t enough she wanted Carlo too.

  Why did she want Carlo?

  Whenever Rose was present Carlo treated Cecily like a baby.

  Sometimes, Cecily wrote in her diary, RM makes me feel really quite sick. She can be a maddening show-off. I believe she treats me in this way in order to make herself feel more grown up. What rot! (underlined) She’s jolly lucky I don’t tell Mummy about her night trips. But instead of being grateful to me she’s just sarcastic. Example: When the clotted cream and scones arrived and we all laid into them, she said ‘Aren’t we being a bit greedy?’ Meaning me, of course. And she wants to make them all laugh, not just Bellamy. Mummy says it’s because of the political tension but what on earth does war have to do with RM showing off?

  The air was heavy with the buzzing of insects and the choking scent of cow parsley. Absolute stillness, absolute silence reigned.

  Joe too had become very quiet. The war was offering him certain options. Whatever he had hoped for in the past was now irrelevant. The War appeared hell-bent on getting its own way with his life. Being so much older than Cecily he told her nothing, taking her instead for rides in the pony-trap whenever he was around. Late that Thursday afternoon with most of the work on the tennis court finished, he took her to Bly and bought her ice cream from Mario. The younger Molinello boys grinned and Joe grinned back, buying three gelat
i instead of one.

  ‘Hello Cecci,’ Carlo said. ‘Would you like to go for a swim?’

  But Cecily didn’t have her bathing suit with her on this one occasion. She shook her head feeling a sudden strange shyness, a vice-like feeling, in her chest. Did she have consumption, she wondered, alarmed.

  ‘Never mind,’ said Carlo, as if he understood.

  But then he spoilt it by asking eagerly where Rose was.

  ‘Helping mother, for once,’ Joe said with a wry smile, his eyes searching for and not finding Franca.

  ‘You’re very quiet, Cecci,’ Carlo said, suddenly. ‘Are you looking forward to your party?’

  Cecily nodded. Belatedly and with a sinking feeling, she wished she wasn’t wearing Rose’s old cast-off dress that was really a little too short for her. She wished her knees weren’t scratched from having fallen off her bicycle, and she wished her mother had let her put her hair up instead of insisting she wore it in pigtails. Of late, every time she saw Carlo she felt very awkward and childish. She no longer had anything of interest to say to him and the odd, dull pain in her chest made it difficult to breathe.

  ‘How you’ve grown this summer, Cecci,’ Lucio said, coming in and noticing her, his voice very gentle. ‘Soon you will be taller than your older sister.’

  But it wasn’t that sort of growing that she wanted.

  On the way home Joe was especially nice to a silent Cecily. He was, thought Cecily, the best brother in the world.

  For Franca Molinello there were some things the war could never take from her. Joe was one of those things. For weeks she had been over at Palmyra Farm helping with any jobs Agnes could find her. Sometimes she collected eggs, sometimes she helped milk the cow and in the last few days she had been pulling up the weeds around the tennis court. Her other job was observing Joe as he walked towards the house across the field. His bare arms, summer-brown, tanned a paler shade under his bleached hair.

  No, the war shall not have him, Franca promised herself. She would not allow it.

  The sun was white beyond the blackberry hedges and the two main fields facing south were being burnished daily by this blinding light. In the distance a high hedge flung its blue-black shadow with careless abandon across the molten glow. All week Partridge had been waiting for the dew to leave the wheat so the harvest could start.

  ‘We have not had a summer like this in many a long year,’ he told them.

  Unknown to Franca, Joe had been watching her too. He thought her smile entrancing. Standing in the field he was fascinated by the way her body moved, by the colour of her hair, shining like rook’s feathers in the hot, bright sun. He desperately wanted to walk along the creek with her but didn’t know how to ask. So he gave Cecily a note to deliver instead. Did she mind going back into Bly?

  Cecily got her bicycle out again. Then she looked at the white envelope solemnly. It was a long, tempting moment. She held it up to the light and turned it over, slowly. Inside was a white slip like a pair of knickers showing through a transparent dress. She hesitated but because she loved him she didn’t open Joe’s letter. Then, before her mother could call out to her she rode off towards the bridle path, head bent in concentration, into the town.

  Mario was nailing a new sign over the door of the Hokey-Pokey Parlour. It was a candy pink and white.

  I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream! it declared, luring more customers in. The only ban, he told Cecily, by way of welcome, was war-talk. After all, the war was a joke, wasn’t it?

  An Italian from the social club was talking in a loud voice praising Mussolini.

  ‘You see what I mean,’ Mario told Cecily, rolling his eyes.

  The man’s friend started shouting about the Jews.

  ‘All our problems in Italy are because of them,’ he shouted but Mario would not be drawn.

  Instead he gave the man an extra, especially big helping of ice cream.

  ‘Try this,’ he said. ‘It’s my latest invention.’

  Cecily left them alone and went off in search of Franca.

  ‘Will you take one back for me?’ whispered Franca.

  Cecily nodded. She didn’t altogether like being a postman, it did that dreadful thing of turning her into a small child again, she knew. But because of Joe she was prepared to make an exception.

  Thankfully there was no sign of Carlo but as she was leaving she noticed that Mario and Lucio were having another quarrel.

  ‘Mussolini is the problem, not the Jews,’ Lucio was saying.

  He sounded bitter.

  ‘Of course, of course,’ Mario agreed. ‘But who cares about the Fascists, anyway?’

  Lucio gave his brother a withering look and walked out. Cecily hesitated. Then she went over to say goodbye to Mario who gave her a hug and a scoop of ice cream as she had hoped. The door to the shop opened and a girl Cecily had never seen before walked in. From the way her feet were turned out Cecily knew she was something to do with the ballet.

  ‘I’m looking for a room for two of our dancers,’ the girl said.

  ‘Then you must talk to this young lady,’ Mario beamed, pointing at Cecily. ‘Her mother is Agnes Maudsley and she has a wonderful farmhouse. I’m sure she can be persuaded to find you a room there. What do you say, Cecci?’

  Cecily wasn’t sure. Their house was getting awfully crowded but perhaps if this girl came to stay in the annexe there would be no room for the evacuee. The thought was cheering.

  ‘And her breakfast is wonderful, too,’ continued Mario closing his eyes and licking his lips. ‘English, very English!’

  The girl, who had been looking solemn, smiled at Cecily.

  ‘We don’t want breakfast, just a room,’ the girl said so Cecily gave her directions to get to the farm.

  ‘See,’ Mario said, ‘even the ballet is more important than this silly war.’

  That night after the ice-cream parlour was closed, Mario got down his accordion from the shelf and began to sing, ‘Com’è bello fa’ l’amore quanno è sera!’ It was clear to the listening children, in spite of his brave denial, their father was missing his home. He had not sung this song for months. Because of the threat of war none of them would go to Italy this year.

  Elsewhere, beyond the horizon, glass was being broken in large quantities. The sounds echoed faintly before being drowned by a distant sea. No one in the town of Bly recognised it as the starter gun it was. No one except Lucio.

  Could an echo come before an event, he asked himself, feeling unutterably sad.

  What has to be will be, thought Selwyn, walking home past the river after a day in the fields listening to the curlews call.

  Cecily, turning over in her sleep, loved her father like a tight hug that had all the happy feelings of a goodnight kiss. And in the dream that followed, Carlo’s face was close to her own.

  ‘You have beautiful eyes,’ the dream-Carlo said. ‘Not a bit like Rose’s.’

  Outside the pale fluff of meadowsweet and the tarnished buttercups shimmered in the still-hot air and fireflies came out to dance the night away.

  8.

  SELWYN HAD NEVER wanted to own Palmyra Fruit Farm. Although there had been apple trees in these orchards since 1890, wonderful trees still producing twenty bushels of apples a year, there were other never-ending problems with pests.

  While his father had been alive he had successfully and single-handedly managed the land. In those days it had simply been assumed Selwyn’s older brother would take over the running of it. Then his brother had died during the First World War, killed, as it turned out, not by any German, but in an accidental shooting by someone from his own side.

  Men mistaking friends for enemies.

  It happened all the time but Selwyn had never got over it.

  It served only to intensify his conviction that life was something that would always pass him by. A conviction born from an earlier event also impossible to forget.

  He had been fifteen at the time and his parents had sent their two sons to
stay with old friends in Germany. It had been as glorious a summer as this one of 1939 and Selwyn had fallen in love with a German girl living close by. She had been older than him and at first he had thought she was interested in the company of his elder, more dashing brother. But it was not so and soon they were spending most of their time together, laughing, teasing each other, swapping books, comparing the authors they both loved. They went boating on the lake and as the days turned warmer took to riding their bicycles along the linden avenues to other villages and other towns.

  All through those long, delicious weeks the younger, shyer Selwyn blossomed. Never had he felt so alive. And then their parents, finding someone to mind Palmyra Farm for a short while, came to join their sons.

  Within a few hours of arriving, Selwyn’s father had beaten him to the point almost of unconsciousness. For his friendship with a German girl. He had beaten his older brother too, for allowing Selwyn to behave in this indecent way, although when questioned he would not say what was indecent about this innocent friendship. Throughout these beatings their mother had neither said nor done anything. The next day both boys were sent home, back to Palmyra Farm. Selwyn was not even allowed to say goodbye to the girl. He had little recollection of the journey back but he would never forget the incident and afterwards he hated his parents with a vengeance. Then the war came and his brother enlisted. When he died Selwyn left for Oxford.

  At Oxford he read English and German, vaguely recalling the Wilson man there. After Oxford, he seemed to remember they had both begun working for the government. But they had gone their separate ways and he had never seen Wilson again. Until now.

  A loner and a bachelor for many years, when Selwyn’s boss sent him Kitty McNulty as his personal assistant he tried at first to have as little as possible to do with her. Grief over his brother’s death had silenced him and conversation with Kitty was limited to matters of work. Eye contact was painfully uncomfortable.

  Kitty, speaking French and German, efficient and vivacious, was not about to let this get in the way of a friendship. She liked Selwyn, finding him uncommonly handsome. Very soon she was managing his personal affairs as well as the office business. She would pay money into the bank for him, ghost letters to his mother and keep at bay all those people he did not want to meet. He began taking her on trips abroad, unaware of the gossip that followed them. Kitty was surprisingly good company.