The Last Pier (17 page)

Bellamy hesitated. He seemed uncertain as to what to do next. As he dropped his beer bottle into his jacket, a young rabbit started out of the shadow of a stock and came towards him, running in blind terror. He had stopped poaching for some time, being afraid of getting caught by Pinky Wilson, but seeing the rabbit so close was clearly more than he could resist.
Oh no!
thought Cecily, knowing what he was about to do. She saw him drop flat onto his stomach and in one swift movement pin the rabbit to the earth, cracking its neck with his hands in a sound that echoed through the air. Then, getting up, he swung the soft body over his shoulders. There was a look of strange elation on his face until something made him look belatedly across the field where Cecily stood. She froze, but with an indifferent shake of his head, Bellamy picked up his scythe and spat on it. Then with slow deliberation he disappeared in the opposite direction.

Tom was waiting in the den. The den was really the hollow of the old hornbeam. Since Cecily had decided to share the place with him, he had turned it into a boy’s hideout of his own. It no longer felt like Cecily’s secret place where she came to escape from Rose or their mother, to read or dream of things beyond her reach. The den had turned into the sort of play area she might have liked a year ago but in truth had now outgrown. There was an overturned crate doubling as a table and two broken footstools Tom had found in the barn. He had discarded the rag rug Cook had given Cecily, saying it was just for sissies. Tom was beginning to bore Cecily. But in the absence of any other company what else was she to do?

‘Who’s there?’ Tom asked as she approached.

Cecily sighed. She had forgotten his password and she knew this would prolong the agony.

‘Woodstock,’ she said.

‘Wrong,’ Tom cried.

‘Harris?’

‘No!’

‘Hannibal?’

‘Nope!’

‘Well what is it?’

‘You tell me,’ Tom said.

‘Well I’ll go home then,’ Cecily said crossly.

‘Rabbits,’ he allowed, reluctantly. ‘But we’ll have to change it now.’

On one of the footstools was the book he was reading.
Uncommon Danger,
a crackerjack of a spy story. Tom was going to be a spy himself one day.

‘Were you talking to Bellamy?’

Cecily shook her head. When she sat down on the floor of the den she was now so tall that she had to fold her knees right up to her chin. Tom frowned. He was considerably smaller than she was.

‘Have you been growing since Sunday?’ he asked.

Cecily didn’t answer. Her height embarrassed her.

‘Bellamy’s had a fight with Rose,’ she said at last.

She was still upset and couldn’t simply put it down to the rabbit that had been killed.

‘It isn’t Bellamy you should be worrying about,’ Tom told her.

He spoke with portentous deliberation.

‘I think,’ Cecily said, slowly, half to herself, ‘Rose doesn’t like Bellamy any more. I think she prefers Carlo.’

There! She had said it. But the lump in her chest seemed to have grown heavier. Tom was busy whittling his pencil to a sharp point. Then he held out his hand.

‘Give me your finger,’ he said sternly.

‘What for?’

‘We have to swear a solemn oath. That’s what spies do.’

‘I’m not a spy,’ Cecily said.

She felt suddenly utterly weary of this game. Tom reminded her of a small bluebottle, impossible to swat and constantly
buzzing in her ear. Perhaps, she thought, there was going to be a thunderstorm, after all.

‘Because,’ Tom was saying, ‘I have something important to tell you about
your
sister.’

He took her hand in his and with a sudden, quick movement ran the blade of the knife across first her little finger and then his. Cecily gasped but Tom put a finger to his lips. Then he touched the bead of blood that was on Cecily’s finger with the one on his own.

‘Right,’ he said, triumphantly, ‘now we are blood brothers. And what I have to tell you, as a result of my research, is that Pinky Wilson is trying to turn your sister into a traitor!’

It was perfectly clear, wasn’t it, from all the evidence he had gathered?

Pinky Wilson was following Rose.

Everywhere!

Tailing her,

stalking her

talking to her,

biding his time as though she was prey.

Momentarily startled out of her own preoccupations, Cecily stared at Tom who nodded triumphantly.

Could he be right?

‘Of course I am,’ Tom said, his triumph maturing into a quiet, magnificent thing.

Again Cecily sighed. He was really irritating her. What was worse, Tom’s research tied in with her own earlier suspicions. Hadn’t Captain Pinky been watching Rose when she climbed down from the window at night?

‘There, you see? I’m right! He’s following her. He’s simply up to no good.’

Cecily felt the lump in her chest shift and disperse. So Rose didn’t prefer Carlo to Bellamy, after all?

‘She’s being groomed to become a spy!’

Tom’s triumph was now threatening to rise into the hot air like a balloon.

It hardly seemed possible. Her sister? Rose? But spying on
whom?
Tom shrugged impatiently. It hardly mattered, what was important was the fact of it. Pinky Wilson, the traitor!

‘Stranger things have happened,’ Tom told her with studied casualness, eyes shining like marbles.

And he pointed to Chapter Seven in his well-thumbed book.

‘You should read this chapter,’ he said.

Then he stood up and turned west so he could see across the field and towards the house.

‘Look!’ he said. ‘There he is.’

Walking slowly across the field, head bent, was the familiar stick-thin figure of a man. Shadowed face, preoccupied, all unawares. Both children shrank into the hollow of the tree.

‘It’s him,’ Tom hissed.

‘I haven’t seen him for days,’ Cecily said, sitting up with reluctant interest. ‘I wonder if he still goes to the beach to meet Aunt Kitty.’

‘
What
? How do you know? Why haven’t you mentioned this before?’

Cecily chewed the inside of her cheek. There was only so much that she was prepared to reveal. Tom was writing furiously in his notebook.

‘Right,’ he said, when he had finished. ‘Now for The Plan.’

He sucked the end of his pencil, frowning.

‘Just to recap. You say you overheard your sister say she’s going to the beach after the dance? Correct?’

Cecily nodded half-heartedly. The heat was rising something awful. She was unaware that Tom’s stern look was meant to emulate an officer talking to the troops. He picked up a stick and pointed it at her.

‘I don’t know if it’s Captain Pinky or Carlo she’s meeting,’ Cecily said forlornly.

She blinked. She felt as though she might cry.

‘Forget about the Eytie. We’re not interested in him.’

Cecily said nothing.

‘Action stations,’ Tom added encouragingly. ‘Buck up, do!’

Cecily nodded.

The plan, it seemed, was to follow Rose, and therefore Captain Pinky, to the beach. They would do this under cover of the dance. Cecily, who was thinking of something else, agreed.

‘Should we take our gas masks?’ she asked. ‘I mean we’re supposed to carry them everywhere.’

Tom ignored her. There followed a short silence. Would children have to fight too? Cecily wondered.

‘We are going to unearth all the Evidence and find out if Captain Pinky is a spy and a murderer,’ Tom said.

Cecily looked confused. Her finger and her head were hurting and she had momentarily forgotten what the Evidence actually was. But then she remembered her sister’s life was in danger. Was Pinky really planning to murder her?

‘He is a spy, I’m telling you,’ Tom insisted. ‘He can speak German, you know.’

Doubt entered the courtroom.

‘Well,’ Cecily said, ‘so can Daddy. And your family.’

‘But that was because we’ve lived there, silly!’

Still Cecily hesitated.

‘I only
thought
I saw him spying on Rose,’ she said, wishing she hadn’t mentioned anything.

Actually she was feeling a little sick.

‘Don’t worry,’ Tom reassured her, ‘we’ll denounce him soon enough. All we need is the vital piece of evidence…’ He waited for her reaction and when none came, added, ‘…that he’s following your sister. I say, you are looking a little green.’

For a moment Cecily wondered if it might not be simpler to tell her parents what she herself had seen. Rose was going to be furious with her when she saw them tailing her. And what if it was Carlo she was meeting? Cecily wasn’t at all sure she wanted to see them together.

‘Perhaps we shouldn’t do anything just yet,’ she said uneasily.

‘Nonsense! All we’re doing is fact-finding.’

He pointed his stick at her accusingly.

‘Are you getting cold feet, old bean?’

Cecily shook her head until her hair was in her eyes. The ache in her heart continued, regardless of Tom.

‘Capital!’ Tom said, satisfied.

He continued to glare at her in the way he had seen his father once outstare a worker in his factory. Then suddenly he grinned. In just a few days it was the tennis party.

By now they had found a bike for Tom and all that was needed was:

It was all decided, then.

‘We need just one last meeting, if this is to go ahead tomorrow,’ Tom said. ‘And let’s hope for a night without a moon.’

Now he sounded like Selwyn organising the harvest, thought Cecily, struggling not to laugh.

‘Think how everyone will thank us when we uncover the truth about Captain P!’

Cecily stared out at the shimmering field. What if Agnes had made
her
a new dress for the dance.

Tom was having his own daydream.

‘Well done, Tom,’ Selwyn Maudsley was saying in his dream, driving him to meet Neville Chamberlain. ‘The Maudsleys of course are very grateful, for all you’ve done. Particularly Rose. She’s half in love with you already, you know, old chap.’

‘Goodness!’ a voice said. ‘A penny for them?’

Both children started.

‘You two are looking very pleased with yourselves!’

It was Captain Pinky Wilson. He had walked all the way round the field and they hadn’t heard him.

And he was laughing.

Cecily blinked, her smile fading into goosebumps on her arms and legs.

Tom stood woodenly.

‘You’re looking very serious,’ Captain P said, his face wobbling.

Then he too grew serious.

‘I say, you don’t happen to know where that Bellamy has gone?’ he asked.

They shook their heads truthfully. Pinky was frowning slightly. There were small beads of perspiration on his brow and his white shirt looked a little sticky. He held out his hand to help Cecily down. Jutting out of his coat pocket was a small handkerchief with a strawberry embroidered on it. Cecily frowned. Good gracious! she thought. What was he doing with Rose’s handkerchief? Suddenly she was fully alert.

‘Keep an eye on him, will you? For me?’

Cecily was speechless. But Tom, the first to recover, grinned at Captain Pinky Wilson.

‘Of course we will,’ he said in his friendliest manner.

‘Good!’ said Pinky. ‘Oh and Cecily, your Aunt Kitty was looking for you. Something about a dress for the party?’

Turning, he waved cheerily and carried on walking away from Palmyra House, saying something as he went. It sounded like ‘I’m looking forward to seeing Rose’s new dress.’

‘Murderer,’ muttered Cecily, both shocked and certain at last.

In Palmyra House, in their parents’ bedroom, the wireless droned boringly on.

‘Either you stand still,’ Agnes said in mock irritation, ‘or I’ll stick pins in you!’

Whenever Rose moved the almost-finished dress shimmered like the heat outside. Cecily stared open-mouthed at her sister.

Rose looked stunning.

The sunlight was full on her face and made her large eyes even larger. They were an intense, pure blue, wet and shining. Rose stared out of the window, casually. She seemed unaware of the impression she created and it occurred to Cecily that her sister was almost sick with some sort of secret unhappiness she was trying to hide. Which was puzzling as she had been longing for the dance to arrive.

‘Can’t you lower the neckline a little more?’ she asked.

Aunt Kitty, walking past, stopped and frowned. Envy swept in through the doorway with her.

‘You don’t want to look like a tart,’ was all Aunt Kitty said.

‘Tart, yourself,’ Rose said, tossing her head.

‘Rose!’ Agnes sighed. ‘And Kitty! For God’s sake, you’re the older one!’

Agnes had made a timeless dress for her impossibly rude and lovely daughter.

Cecily, momentarily filled with dissatisfaction, stared Envy in the face. Rose, a sly look over her smooth shoulder, laughed her daredevil laugh. Outside a kingfisher whistled shrilly.

‘Now look what you’ve done!’ Agnes said, exasperated.

Pins scattered like bad thoughts across the polished wooden floor.

‘You let her get away with murder, Agnes,’ Kitty said.

‘You and me, both,’ mocked Rose.

‘What d’you mean by that?’ Kitty asked threateningly.

‘Don’t you know?’ taunted Rose.

‘No, tell me!’ dared Kitty.

‘Oh for heaven’s sake!’ Agnes shouted.

Cecily sucked her breath like a boiled sweet. Their mother never shouted.

‘Well I’m sick of her veiled abuse,’ Kitty said, but she spoke uncertainly and Rose, standing poised against the light, had an unwipable smile of triumph on her face. Then as though unaware of the poetry of her appearance, she pulled off the dress with a small, elegant gesture and threw it on a chair. They all stared.