The Last Pier (4 page)

Steal
the brooch when she leaves the room,
added one.

Wicked child,
admonished the other.

It was to be this way for years. No one noticed that Cecily was never lonely. She was always juggling many conversations in her head. Her quietness was not because she was shy or frightened – it was the only way to let the voices have their say.

A long time afterwards, years and years later, when she had hacked at her hair, cropping it in a way that inadvertently showed off her extraordinarily fine collarbones and her delicate lobed ears, she had tried, in a half-hearted way, to get rid of the voices. But they refused to go, saying this was no way to treat old friends. Fair enough, thought Cecily, giving up. And after that she left them to their own devices.

It was the way Greg, the man she was to marry, found her. Talking out loud to a night garden. He fell in love with her abstracted air. She was twenty-two by then. Older than Rose had been when she died.

The war being over, Greg had decided to become a pacifist. Remembering her Aunt Kitty (she no longer lived with her) Cecily thought: shutting the door after the horse had bolted.

Brava
! cried the voices in her head, speaking Italian for the first time in years. Startling Cecily with the sound of it, for she had not yet made acquaintance with her addiction to Italian.

Associating the word with Greg (foolish girl) she married him but then grew restless when they made love. Grew impatient when he placed one hand on her breast and looked into her eyes. His own were a watery grey like the Suffolk sea. They didn’t look a bit Italian. Why should they when he was English? Which was another disappointment. When he kissed her, it was a weak, socialist-without-passion kiss.

Aspetta
! said the twin voices, in a taunting kind of voice.
Sei inglese! Sei un cretino
!

They were right.

In that first autumn of their marriage, in that very first year itself, long before mad-about-her Greg could begin talking about babies, Cecily left. Silently. Packing the bag that Agnes had given her (she still had it) and buying a train ticket to the continent. Greg when he came home to the empty house was broken-hearted for only a moment before relief set in. He had always felt as though he was living with three women.

As she crossed over to Europe Cecily noticed the voices were silent with approval, smirking at the way they had tricked her into getting rid of Greg. Shocking!

But tonight, here in Palmyra House, staring at the twenty-nine-years-ago impossible-to-forget furniture, a little shabbier, a little darker, but mostly unchanged, memories spun like Catherine wheels around Cecily. Guilt played upon her like a pair of hands on a washboard. Shame was hiding in the cupboard under the stairs, listening out for her footsteps. The war had flowed past her like a strong dark river taking everyone she knew along with it. Outside the stranger who had followed her all the way to the front door stood silent as starlight, watching the lights go on. One by one.

While in the pub in Bly one man talked to another over a pint of Adnams.

‘Did you see who’s returned?’

‘No. Who?’

‘It’s her, that one… Palmyra Farm. You remember what happened at the pier, don’t you?’

One man in a pub talking to another could so easily be multiplied across the town in other places. The local chip shop for instance. Owned now by a locally born and bred family.

‘Must be getting on… what’s her name? I forget.’

Mrs Moore, wrapping fish in Union Jack paper (anything fresher was still swimming in the sea) thought she had seen her too.

‘Cecily,’ she said. ‘That’s who it is. I could tell her a mile away. Same walk!’

‘Thin-muscled, like a bird!’

‘Getting on a bit, I’d say.’

‘Quite likely so. Spitting image of her sister Rose, she is, now.’

‘Fuss, was there?’

‘I’ll say.’

‘Perhaps that’s why ’e’s back too.’

‘Robert Wilson?’

‘No, not ’im. The other one!’

‘Anything else I can get you?’ Mrs Moore asked.

‘I’ll have another cod. Looks good.’

Mrs Moore nodded.

‘Did you see what happened?’

‘No. I were a child too. Not much older, you know. Than Cecily. We were at school together.’

‘Friends was ye?’

‘No, no. They were from the big house. Outside Bly. Different from us.’

‘Ah!’

‘But I heard about it all right. There was more fuss made over it than the war itself. Blamed her, some kids did. Said she knew the truth of it. Which I swear she didn’t. Nice child, really. Dreamy, like. Head in a book. Too much imagination, some said. The other one, ’im’s the one that led her on. I’ll be blowed! Never liked ’im. Foreign ’e was.’

‘Left Suffolk, did she?’

‘Never came back to school. Sent away with you-know-who!’

‘And now she’s back. I wonder why?’

‘Who knows? People can’t keep running away forever. There comes a time when you have to face the past.’

‘Makes me shiver. How much is that?’

‘One pound twenty, thank you.’

‘Always eavesdropping wasn’t she?’

‘Seem to remember she was. One pound twenty, did you say?’

‘Thank you.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Thank you.’

And all the thank yous over, it was time to talk about the street party, Cecily’s shadow receding a little.

Inside Palmyra House Cecily was busy making sense of a silver-backed hairbrush and a cracked mirror. She was looking at a pair of pyjamas that she had outgrown before that summer had ended. And she was opening a box that had been shut for years. The landscape of her childhood was back, crying out to her. The soft rustle of the sea entered the house unnoticed and filled her ears and this, too, reminded her of that time. It was as if she had been swimming for years. She felt exhausted. Everything would remain, she thought. And perhaps another two thousand years would pass swiftly.

You couldn’t see the Ness from the window anymore. Large chestnut trees that had once been only saplings blocked the view. Some of the stars had escaped from their bell jar and were now scattered across the sky. The night had become balmy, the wind had dropped its anchor as the man standing in the shadows lit another cigarette. Glancing out Cecily saw but didn’t recognise him. He was leaning on a stick and his hair was completely white. The voices living inside Cecily’s head stirred and yawned like sleepy birds. It had been a long journey.

Why are you bringing us back here?
they asked Cecily, sleepily.
Perché?

In answer to these insistent questions, which would be ceaseless now, Cecily knew she would have to go back to the beginning. To the summer when she was not yet fourteen, and Rose still sixteen. The summer when the last and only pier burnt down, and the sea was the colour of Agnes’ eyes, and Selwyn Maudsley wasn’t happy for reasons known only to him and Agnes, and Kitty.

That’s why I’m here, she informed the voices in her head. To remember. To set you free. To get that time out of my blood.

THIS WAS ALL
very well, but recalling that summer, Cecily had the impression that its beginning had been hidden in seven sweet williams. She had brought a bunch of roses back with her now, being unable to bear the sight of sweet williams. As a welcome gift to the house, a thank you for having survived the neglect of years. Seven old-fashioned flowers, two families; gone in a flash.

Finding a vase, she filled it with water and the scent from that long-ago-time returned, instantly.

Tuesday August 15th 1939, and in London the evacuation was already under way. In the orchard at Palmyra Farm Cecily, sitting under an apple tree, closed her book. It was hot and the afternoon was filled with a tender, straw-coloured light. Cook had sent her there to pick some fruit but instead Cecily had spent the afternoon reading
A Girl of the Limberlost.
The love story had left her feeling drowsy and she was reluctant to break its spell by returning to the house. Guiltily, picking up her empty basket, she became aware of a rustling in the hedge.

‘Cecci!’

‘Carlo! What are you doing here?’

‘Why do you look so glum? Have you been punished?’

Cecily blushed and tried to hide her book.

‘Let me guess. You were being a bookworm again? Am I right?’

‘Oh Carlo, you
are
!’

‘So now Cook will scold you. Shall I come and defend you?’

Cecily smiled, uncertain. Was he serious?

‘What are you doing here, Carlo?’

‘I was looking for Rose. She told me to meet her in the top field but I couldn’t find her.’

The book’s afterglow, the heroine’s triumphant love, faded slightly.

‘You are a dreamer, Cecci,’ Carlo was saying, smiling down at her.

The sun was full on Cecily’s face but still she could see the way Carlo’s eyes crinkled when he smiled.

‘Tell Rose I was looking for her,’ he said. ‘And that I’ll see you both tomorrow.’

And then he was gone, with a splash of cotton whites amongst the golden wheat and the trees. Glimpses of bare sunburnt arms, as he ran along the dusty dirt track, seen through the trees. Taking with him all the myriad, unresolved hues of the afternoon, shimmering into the distance.

Turning towards home, Cecily saw a beetle-black Bentley parked smartly in the lane. She walked on. Cornflowers dotted the ground. A heavy fragrance of vanilla from some hidden blossom filled the air. Her mother, in a jaunty polka dot dress covered by a blue apron, was talking to a man in a hat.

Agnes was holding a bunch of flowers and when she saw Cecily coming up she smiled.

It was not a true smile.

‘This is my younger daughter,’ Cecily heard her say.

The green of the flower stalks exactly matched Agnes’ eyes. Tendrils of unruly dark hair escaping from her French pleat. From the way she spoke Cecily suspected she was lying about something. The man lifted his trilby and put his hand out in a friendly way. Under the jacket of his suit he was wearing a pink shirt.

‘Hello Cecily,’ he said.

‘Hello.’

‘Good book?’

‘Yes, thank you.’

‘Robert Wilson is working on the agricultural survey for East Anglia,’ Agnes said. ‘He’s here to map all the farms across the county and to help plan farming efforts in case of a war.’

The man looked at Cecily and nodded solemnly.

‘The ploughing-up campaign,’ he said. ‘Did you hear about it at school, Cecily? The government will give your parents £2 for every acre of unused land that’s put to good use. Should there be a war, I mean.’

And then he handed her an enormous box of chocolates tied with a pink ribbon.

‘For both you girls,’ he said.

‘Pinky,’ Rose remarked later, when they were in their shared bedroom. ‘Everything about him is Pink!’

Cecily giggled and Rose wrinkled her nose. Helping herself to two chocolates, she bit into one without smudging her lipstick.

‘He’s renting Eel cottage,’ Cecily said.

Originally Eel cottage had been built for an eel-catcher who used to set traps in the river. These days there weren’t many eels. Now the cottage was mostly empty, rented occasionally to travelling salesmen. It sat on the edge of the Maudsleys’ land, behind the orchard, out of sight of the house and hidden behind some trees. It was possible to walk from here along a bridle path into the town of Bly, about two miles away, without being seen by anyone.

‘But he has to go all the way into the town to park his big car near the Martello,’ Cecily added.

Rose yawned.

‘I wouldn’t say no to a ride in his car,’ she said.

‘He’s already taken Mummy,’ Cecily informed her, liking the idea of calling the man Pinky.

Rose bit into another chocolate. The centre oozed, dark, bitter, and thick as the marshland mud in the creek.

‘How d’you know?’ she asked lazily. ‘I shall have to have a closer look at this Captain Pinky!’

She was shaking with silent laughter and would not share the joke. Cecily stared at her. There was something exceptionally wild about Rose today, she felt. Their mother’s hope, that sharing a bedroom together would draw her girls closer together,
hadn’t worked. Rose’s life, like her side of the room, remained a mystery, with its posters of John Gielgud playing Hamlet, and its starlet mirror decorated with lights which Cecily was forbidden to use.
She
had to brush her hair in the bathroom mirror, instead.

Rose ate another chocolate. Afterwards her curiosity about Captain Pinky moved like a moth in search of a different flame and she forgot this conversation.

The following day was Wednesday and Cecily woke to find time stretched like an old sock. She wondered why she felt so happy. The sun fell on her eyelids making them almost transparent as, with a hasty coltish movement, she leapt out of bed. Her long dark hair was all over her face and she pushed it back impatiently. The room was empty. Fearing she might be missing something interesting, she crashed downstairs where an argument was in full swing.

‘Plenty to do,’ Cook was saying in a loud belligerent voice.

‘Plenty to do!’ Rose was replying, throwing Cook’s annoyance back at her as though it were a dirty old dishcloth, laughter like liquid bursting out of her.

‘What?’ asked Cecily, rushing in, arms flailing.

‘You girls can help,’ Agnes told them both, firmly.

She was recounting the strawberry punnets.

‘Rose can take twelve punnets to Molinello’s.’ Cook said.

‘Can she?’ asked Rose, looking around for herself.

The Molinello ice-cream parlour was in the centre of Bly.

‘Rose,’ Agnes said in warning.

She looked hot. Small beads of perspiration strung abacus-like across her forehead. There was so much to do before the dance. Traditionally this annual charity dance to help orphaned children in Suffolk was always held at Palmyra Farm. But although Agnes had inherited the event many years before when she had married into the Maudsley family, its occurrence still flustered her.

‘Cecily can help, can’t you darling?’

‘Can we go to the beach afterwards?’ Cecily asked, pushing her luck around the uneven kitchen floor.

‘
If
you deliver the strawberries, first,’ Agnes said.

From Palmyra Farm it was two miles as the crow flies to the town of Bly, slightly longer by bicycle on the unmetalled road that cut across the fields.

‘There are just seventeen days left before the tennis party,’ Agnes said, ‘and the Molinellos are very busy. If you don’t take the fruit over today there won’t be time for them to make the ice cream.’

‘Are they making water ices, too?’ asked Cecily.

Aunt Kitty, down for one of her long weekends, filling a glass jug with clear water from the old brass tap, looked up and narrowed her eyes. Reflections from the sky crept into them. The walnut tree outside in the yard had hard, green nuts hanging off it. Kitty plunged the seven flowers lying on the kitchen table into the jug.

Cecily frowned. Hadn’t she seen those flowers before?

Kitty wiped her hands on her apron and a shutter clicked in Cecily’s head.

Click-click.

Slow speed,

hand-held,

depth of field, very deep.

Seven for a secret never to be told.

Cecily blinked, amassing memories. Why this moment and not another? Who could tell?

‘Let’s finish breakfast,’ their mother said peering down into the moment with her. ‘And then you girls can go.’

Real time returned to the room.

‘Ginny said the fair’s here,’ Cecily told them, toying with the morning, dunking her voice in it. ‘Ginny’s going, can I?’

‘No you can’t,’ Agnes declared, unaware of stoking the desire burning in her younger daughter. ‘There’ll be gipsies there.’

She carried a rack of toast into the dining room where Selwyn sat reading the paper and listening to the wireless. Cecily, following behind, digested her mother’s words in silence. Her desperation to visit the fair, taking wings, flapped dangerously around the room. She knew Rose had been the night before, slipping out in the usual way, through the open window. But what had happened there, or even what time Rose returned home was knowledge to which Cecily had no access.

‘You’re not old enough,’ Rose had said when pressed. ‘They wouldn’t let
you
into the Freak House.’

‘But what’s there?’ she had begged.

‘Freakish things.’

‘Like
what
?’

Never had her sister’s cruel indifference pierced Cecily’s heart as it did just then and in the end she had been forced to get her information in the old-fashioned way. By listening to Rose talking to Bellamy.

It had been how she heard of the Headless Girl and the Torturer with the Hook. And the black roses that turned into a bird of prey.

Cecily, leaning as far as she dared out of the window, had heard of the bearded woman who used her toes to knit, and the dog with the bird’s face and the bird with a human one.

In this way fairy tales had crossed her path faster than gipsy silver. Magic spells now darted like swallows invading her mind. Rose’s laughter in the bushes, always a little strange, was lately so excited as to be only a shade removed from hysteria.

It was all too much.

Returning to the present she helped herself to another egg. Perhaps she would write a story about all of it, she thought.

Selwyn, buttering his toast, let honey drip off his spoon onto his plate. Watching the golden stream, half in a dream, Cecily smiled. Kitty too, seated opposite, smiled for no reason. Time stood still.

‘I heard there was a man with a lobster claw for a hand who had sex with a five-legged cow,’ Cecily said, forgetting where she was.

‘What?’

Both Agnes and Rose spoke sharply in unison. Too late Cecily wished she’d been more careful.

The wireless was droning on.

‘You talk like a baby,’ sneered Rose.

‘Where did you get your information from, C?’ Selwyn asked, turning the volume down.

The news had finished.

‘From one of the farmhands,’ Cecily lied.

‘Bellamy, of course!’ Agnes said. ‘Where else?’

Triumph was Aunt Kitty making a noise like a grasshopper. Selwyn just turned the wireless back up. The Home Service was now playing light music.

‘We should send her to Summerfield in the autumn,’ Agnes said. ‘Before things…’

‘Maybe,’ Selwyn spoke too quickly.

There was another silence into which the wireless played Music While You Work.

‘You shouldn’t listen to such nonsense, Cecily,’ Aunt Kitty said.

‘I’d like to go to the fair, anyway,’ Cecily told her, correctly interpreting her aunt was on her side.

Aunty Kitty didn’t look at Cecily’s mother but instead put her hand gently on Selwyn’s newspaper forcing him to look at her.

‘
We
should let her go,’ she said.

A piece of jigsaw floated in the air above their heads and did a jig. If she could just catch it, Cecily thought, she might complete the puzzle.

When after breakfast they went upstairs to clean their teeth she heard Agnes shouting at the other two.

‘See what you’ve done, you stupid child,’ Rose scolded, narrowing her eyes, as she painted her toenails. ‘You were eavesdropping
as usual
when I was talking to Bellamy. Go on. Admit it!’

Two can play at the same game, decided Cecily, watching her sister wrap herself in her red fox pelt. The fur smelled rank.

‘Will you wear it to the tennis party?’ she asked.

Rose ignored her. Hot air floated in through the window. One of the farmhands was whistling
Run Rabbit Run.
So, thought Cecily, going out again, tonight, are we?

She had seen the red asterisk in Rose’s diary.

‘If you say anything about me…’ Rose said.

Cecily stuck her tongue out. A spider’s web of threats hung between them. Then Rose snapped shut her jewellery box as if a snake lived in it. There was a pause. Both sisters glared at each other. Neither wanted to look away.

‘I’m coming with you, tonight,’ Cecily said.

‘No you’re not!’

‘I am! Carlo said I could!’

‘Carlo? What a joke, Carlo won’t want to play with a baby!’

Outside the orchard shivered with bloom and the doorbell rang but no one answered it. While all around, mockingly, was the sweet reek of something unknowable approaching. They heard their mother’s voice, very clearly.

‘She’s just like you,’ Agnes said bitterly.

‘There are more important things to worry about,’ said Selwyn.