The Last Pier (6 page)

‘Well?’ Mario asked his wife when he heard of the dream the next morning. ‘Why don’t you sound happy, then?’

Anna didn’t know. She could not understand why it was, when she woke with the scent of lilies pressed against her skin, she had felt so unutterably desolate.

The Virgin had asked one thing, only. The Molinellos must build a shrine facing the sea. Then, telling Anna to prepare herself for her new life, the apparition had faded away, leaving behind a sense of warning in the air, a sadness that did not shift for some time. It lay like wet sand, heavy against Anna’s heart. As an untouchable, unreachable feeling of loss. In a country that had not been Catholic for so many centuries there was no one except Mario to tell.

They built the shrine in time for Assumption Day of the following year and a statue of the Lady Of The Sea arrived from Bratto. Anna collected scallop shells on Bly’s white beach and with her two-year-old son Beppe began a lifelong hobby of decorating her sea-temple.

In later years this night-blue grotto would become something of a local attraction that had an undeniable fey charm. Seen from the water and helped by the rumour that it had saved two fishermen from drowning, it extended a calming effect on boats coming in out of a storm. Local men, buying a cone of ice cream at the parlour would often leave a lighted candle by the feet of the statue.

By the time the older Molinello boys were teenagers, the Hokey-Pokey Parlour had become an affectionate symbol in the area, its openness and friendly foreignness a talking point. The ice cream itself was of the best quality and the fruit used came from the oldest fruit farm in the area.

Palmyra Farm, famous for its strawberries, damsons and raspberries and its orchard of old-fashioned apples, was where the raw ingredients came from. Because of this, over time, both
families, the Maudsleys and the Molinellos, became firm friends and very soon there emerged the Palmyra Water Ice, the Palmyra ice-cream cake and the Palmyra County Sorbet made from sun-ripened, locally grown quinces.

Four more years passed and the Molinello family was complete at last with the longed for daughter Franca followed by a youngest son Carlo. Then quite by chance Mario was offered some empty premises.

‘No more ice cream!’ he declared.

And he opened a fish and chip shop instead. He had noticed other Italians in London and Edinburgh were beginning to do so and didn’t want to miss a chance. Anna, her hands full with their growing family, didn’t argue with him as, in a triumphant moment, he acquired the ultimate symbol of prosperity. A telephone. Now orders began flooding in, deliveries stepped up and the Molinellos were rushed off their feet. The time had come for Mario to invite his younger brother Lucio to take over the management of the shop.

Some years before, Lucio Molinello’s wife had died in a boating accident. Afterwards Lucio had changed, becoming silent and uncommunicative. Their mother, desperate to help him, consulted the tarot-card reader but the news wasn’t encouraging.

‘He must stay away from water,’ the tarot reader had said. ‘And not be so interested in politics, either.’

Lucio when he heard this laughed, carelessly. Water did not worry him and now that his life was finished, politics was all that interested him. At that their mother wrote to Mario.

‘Can’t you find him
something
to do?’ she asked.

‘He won’t listen to me,’ Mario replied. ‘He’s always been stubborn.’

In the end it was Anna who went back to Italy to convince him of his duty to his brother and his nephews. So that, reluctantly, towards the end of 1937, Lucio packed his bags and joined the lengthy chain of migrating Italians arriving at Liverpool docks.

He had two conditions.

One that he would stay only three years, until the business was established.

And secondly, on no account would he mix with the customers.

For a while the two brothers seemed to get along peacefully. Lucio worked hard, kept himself to himself, going up to London often to meet with other like-minded Italians and eventually editing a small underground publication that fought against the rise of Fascism in Italy. The Molinellos left him to his own devices, hoping this passion was just a passing phase. What harm could it do in any case now that Lucio had left Italy? Unobserved, Lucio continued to go to Communist party meetings where, in the smoke-filled and excitable atmosphere of the back rooms of pubs, he and his compatriots worried about the rumours coming from Europe.

Then, at the beginning of 1939, Mario came home one evening having made an important decision.

‘I am joining the Association of Cafe Proprietors,’ he told Anna.

And he paused, waiting for the reaction.

‘Why?’ she asked, puzzled. ‘Isn’t there a rumour that all Italian social clubs in England have come under Fascist control?’

‘It’s not a good idea,’ Lucio told him.

‘Nonsense! We are not Fascists.’

‘So why join, then?’

Mario groaned. His brother was full of his usual conspiracy theories which only upset Anna. He had known all along it would not be a good thing to bring Lucio into the bosom of the family.

‘Oh don’t listen to him,’ he said. ‘You know he’s a Communist.’

‘
Senti
,
Mario, don’t be a fool,’ Lucio said. ‘One day your foolishness will get you into trouble. Let’s hope it doesn’t drag your family with you.’

‘Why don’t you go back home,’ bellowed Mario, suddenly angry. ‘Go and fight Mussolini, all by yourself! We can manage fine without you.’

‘Papi,’ Carlo cried, dismayed.

‘It’s true,’ Mario said. ‘Your uncle just wants to frighten everyone. There is nothing wrong with me joining the Association.’

He glared at Lucio. No one spoke. For all his good nature Mario had occasional bouts of rage and was best left alone when they occurred.

‘I can tell you one or two things,’ Lucio said at last. ‘About this country that you think is your home. About Mussolini’s party, too. If you’re interested…’

Anna looked from one to the other anxiously.

‘Don’t fight,’ she told her husband.

Mario shook his head. His brother’s obsessions, his wife’s fears, these were long-term issues. He, Mario, was interested in the here and now of life. Carlo and Franca were at the Italian school in Ipswich. By joining the Association they would be protected from any future discrimination by the Italian government.

‘It’s the long-term issues that we need to worry about,’ Lucio said.

But Mario would not budge.

‘If we join the Party it will simplify
everything
for us,’ he argued. ‘We can renew our passports without problems and our taxes will be easier to organise.’

‘Don’t,’ warned Lucio. ‘I’m telling you!’

‘Well, get used to it. I’ve already joined.’

‘You’ll regret it.’

‘Listen,’ Mario said, temper flaring again, ‘why don’t you give up that stupid newspaper of yours, huh? Then we’ll talk.’

Recently it had come to light that Lucio was himself the editor of a left-wing journal called
il Lotto.

Anna was looking anxiously at them both but Mario had made his decision. There was nothing more to say. And in this way, all unsuspecting, the last spring of the decade passed slowly into radiant summer.

THAT AUGUST PEACE
hung on a thread like an acrobat, about to perform its last spectacular act. The future stretched above the hush of sleeping babies, ready to uncoil into a handstand; boneless, nerveless, recklessly on the brink of a disaster of its own making. On the marshes waterbirds came and went regardless. The sun shone as if its life depended on it and the river snaked its thinner, leaner, meaner silvery length between the flat white dry meadows. Beyond it stretched a row of pin-thin black poplars. And down by the empty part of the shore small breezes continued to eat at the sea. No one could imagine the lights going out in England. Or blackout blinds or ration books, or bombs.

And a ban on ice cream was simply unthinkable.

It was easy for those in the know to keep quiet and carry on in last-minute hope.

Meanwhile at the Hokey-Pokey Ice-Cream Parlour on that August morning Anna Molinello waited for her boxes of strawberries. Hand delivered, handlebar-balanced and arriving with a dash of bare brown legs, summer frocks, and laughter.

‘Off to see those
Eytie
boys, I’ll be bound,’ said Partridge with a wink as he helped pack the boxes into the girls’ baskets.

Bellamy, loading up the milk cart, out of sight and out of mind for the moment, stopped what he was doing and clenched his fists. And unclenched them, before moving the horse on.

‘What’s an
Eytie
boy?’ Cecily asked.

Partridge chuckled.

‘Never you mind,’ Rose said, with a squeak of bicycle brakes. ‘Partridge don’t be so rude. They’re Italians!’

The sea when it came into view at the bottom of the bridle path had a hint of aquamarine in it.

‘
Ragazze
!’ cried Mario, hearing their voices from afar. ‘Girls, pretty girls!’

He called his daughter out from the back. Sea-light entered through the open door fluttering against Franca’s dress as she hugged Cecily with her big smile.

‘Is Carlo here?’ Cecily asked.

The Italian brothers (some of them) came out from behind the bead curtain.

‘Cecci!’ cried Carlo, joyously.

Then he saw Rose.

‘We are coming to your tennis party,’ he said, his grin changing to a grown-up smile. ‘And of course the dance. Will you dance with me,
la bella Rosa
? If I give a lot of money to the charity!’

Everyone wants to dance with Rose, thought Cecily.

‘Who invited you?’ Franca asked, rudely.

‘Rosa’s mama did,’ her brother smirked.

‘And I did, too,’ Cecily said, reading some signs but not the others.

She felt terribly sad. Just for a moment the sea-light became dull green and distorted while the day itself appeared covered by a film.

Rose was busy examining the iced flowers on a wedding cake, pretending not to hear. She was wearing the defiant look usually reserved for their father Selwyn.

‘
Ecco
! la bella Rosa
,’ cried Giorgio, entering. ‘We will make iced flowers for
your
wedding, too.’

Rose blushed. But remained silent.

When they got there the sea presented itself in a series of glittering white lines that seemed fixed against the strip of sand. The night breeze having done its homework had smoothed out the whole of the beach and the fair had begun to set up for the day. Lucio Molinello stood beside his stall watching the waves break against the old sea wall. Business was already brisk.

Rose and Franca walked together, secrets and arms linked. Excluding Cecily.

‘Come on!’ called Carlo, grinning at Cecily. ‘Catch me if you can!’

And at that, as if by magic, the day became a carpet, with all summer rolled up inside it. Cecily didn’t want to unroll it; she didn’t want to see what patterns it would make just in case they’d fade too quickly.

The Punch and Judy man, full of punch-drunk smiles, was waving his arms at them. His red-and-white booth looked as though it might collapse in the wind. Cecily wanted to stop but Rose wasn’t interested.

‘I got told off,’ Franca was saying. ‘For accepting the chocolates from that man.’

‘Which man?’ asked Cecily, her eye on the ball, ears flapping in the high sea breeze.

‘Pinky!’ Rose cried, carelessly, tossing her laugh in the air, watching it bounce around the peacetime sky. ‘Who cares about Pinky!’

And she did a little dance.

‘Are we or are we not going for a swim?’ shouted Carlo.

So that Cecily, bathing costume at the ready, young girl’s slim hips emerging unnoticed, chased after him.

‘Got you, you wriggly worm,’ cried a triumphant Carlo, wind-whipped arms around her.

Lifting her off the ground, threatening to throw her into the sea, while the war, playing its own game of hide-and-seek, kept conveniently out of sight.

‘Look, there’s Daddy,’ Cecily cried, pointing further up the beach, in the direction of the Ness.

But it couldn’t be because Selwyn was at the farm digging up a piece of unused land.

‘Will there be lots of people at the dance?’ Franca asked.

Rose whispering secrets, for Franca’s ears alone, laughed again and again.

‘Joe will be there, certainly!’ she said.

‘Catch me if you can!’ shouted Carlo, letting go of Cecily and plunging into the warm-at-last North Sea.

And Cecily, getting it wrong as usual, chased after him laughing, laughing, singing, ‘Breath of Heaven’.

She would sing it again at the end of summer but on that occasion the sun would have a different bite to it.

When they got home the black cat had been killed by the milk truck and Agnes their mother was crying, again. When questioned she told Cecily she’d burnt her hand taking the bread out of the oven but there were no signs of a burn. No one was saying anything, not even Selwyn who told them he’d been mending the digger all day. Which was how Cecily knew he had had a row with their mother.

‘Nonsense,’ Rose said, darkly. ‘There are other things besides a row that puts
that man
in a mood.’

‘I’m going to an ARP meeting tonight, don’t forget,’ Selwyn announced. ‘Don’t wait up for me. I’ll have a snack while I’m out.’

‘In the pub he means,’ muttered Rose.

Aunt Kitty, whose long-weekend-visit had turned into a longer holiday, was nowhere in sight and Joe came home looking serious but then went out again almost immediately.

There were many unanswered questions in Cecily’s head. So, in order to sort them out she made a Things-About-The-War list in her head.

Will they drop bombs on us, if there is a war?

How many people will be killed?

Will the schools still remain closed after the summer is over?

Will all the boys go to war?

If so, from which railway station?

Why do the grown-ups ask you questions but never answer yours?

‘There is a boy coming to stay with us in a few days,’ Agnes said.

No one commented.

‘His name is Tom,’ Agnes added, speaking to the silence. ‘He’ll be here on Saturday and he’s the son of an old friend of your father.’

Rose yawned rudely but it was Cecily who had the most to lose.

‘I’m not sharing anything,’ she muttered under her breath.

Rose laughed and Agnes sighed.

‘Please don’t be difficult Cecily.’

Their mother’s voice sounded weak.

‘I’m so tired,’ Rose told the room with another fake yawn that didn’t fool Cecily.

That night after supper Agnes got out the special notebook she kept for Mass Observation. She liked the idea that one day all the things she wrote down about her life would be part of the social history of the time. She had become a volunteer for the MO research organisation after lovely King Edward VIII had abdicated.

On the Home Service the news was that the German ambassador was willing to fly to Moscow in order to make a German-Russian settlement. But Cecily coming in was more interested in giving her mother a slow goodnight kiss, squeezing the delicate, chiselled face in her hands, trying and failing to make the deep dimple in her cheek appear. Her mother looked lonely. Why didn’t their father stay at home more often?

Rose, like Selwyn, couldn’t stay in for long, either.

‘Are you going out
again
?’ Cecily asked when they were alone.

‘Shhh!’ Rose said. ‘Go to sleep.’

Instantly Cecily was more awake than she had ever been in her life. The disappointing day looked set to develop into an interesting night.

‘Are you going into Bly?’

Rose didn’t answer.

‘Mummy’s still awake,’ Cecily said.

There was a pause.

‘You’re not… going to the Ness, by any chance?’

And when there was still no reply, ‘It’s very, very dangerous there when the tide’s coming in.’

The Ness was a narrow sea-thistle spit of land bordered by a bend in the River Ore on one side, and the sea on the other. When the tide was out it was possible to reach it by a short causeway. But both river and sea tides came in so fast that in the past several people had drowned crossing it. Although the Ness lay close to the boundary of Palmyra Farm, half a mile between the fields and the town of Bly, it did not, strictly speaking, belong to the Maudsleys. No one knew who owned it and no one cared much for its dank salty marshiness. Because of the silt it was impossible to cultivate and the tides made it a dangerous place to visit. During the Great War there had been a few coastguard huts put up. There was also an old landing structure the locals called the Last Pier, because the original pier on the seafront at Bly had been destroyed. Twice each day the river and sea tides collided to turn the Ness into an island. When that happened the Ness was entirely cut off.

Nobody went there except Selwyn when, many years before, he needed a quiet place to grieve over his brother’s death.

And more recently, Cecily was certain, her sister Rose.

Cecily hated the place.

‘Oh do shut up,’ Rose said crossly. ‘And learn to mind your own business!’

She rummaged in her special box of clothes handed down to her from Agnes, and brought out one wispy Liberty print after another. Soon her bed was a heap of summer-faded scraps. Watching her with sudden, sharp insight Cecily saw that really, whatever her sister wore made no difference. In the end, she would always look beautiful. Don’t-care Rose was humming to herself.

‘Physically, you have reached your peak,’ Cecily observed.

‘What?’ Rose asked, startled.

Then she laughed.

‘Who told you that?’

‘No one,’ Cecily said.

She herself had outgrown her pyjamas so that the legs came halfway up to her calves. Rose, dabbing on the last of some stolen perfume, seemed not to hear.

‘Where did you get it?’ Cecily asked without hope of an answer.

Her sister slipped on a satin skirt. Then she spent ages buttoning up her pink and white flowered blouse. The buttons were made of mother-of-pearl. Through the window a fresh green-scented night breeze blew in and stroked Cecily’s neck. It stirred Rose’s hair, making her frown. On the seafront the breeze would be much stronger.

‘Why are you wearing that?’

‘Sshh!’

‘What if Daddy sees you coming back from the ARP?’

‘He won’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because!’

‘Why, because?’

‘Shut
up
, C!’

The clouds parted and in the moonlight the cast-up shimmer of the satin softened Rose’s customary expression of irritation until it too vanished as suddenly as it had appeared. And Cecily was aware her sister’s excitement had become more acute. When she next spoke Rose sounded less cross.

‘When you’re older,’ she said, quite kindly, ‘you’ll go out too.’

It was the first time she had referred to Cecily ever doing similar things and Cecily felt an upsurge of warmth, an almost pyrotechnic explosion of love for Rose. They were both silent. And then it occurred to Cecily in another moment’s clarity that her sister’s interests would have moved on to something else entirely by the time she, Cecily, had reason to shimmy down the drainpipe.

‘But what if there’s a war, in the end?’ she asked, suddenly.

Until she said the words she had not realised that she feared a war. There was a clicking sound in her head. Now all her eavesdropping came together and added up to a total.

Like a grocery bill or the pocket money owed to her.

There
was
going to be a war.

Joe
was
going to be in it.

She saw that her sister was young and free and angry about many things and that the war, and the waiting for it to happen, frightened her as much as it did the grown-ups. She understood that no one could see how it was that she, Cecily, wanted to be young, not young in the way she was now, which was just an extension of being a baby, but older-young, like Rose. To be old enough for Carlo to smile the smile for her that he reserved just for Rose.

Time was passing as swiftly as a swallow and everyone kept talking about changes ahead. But no one had stopped to think about what it would be like for
her
to grow up in this war. All of this Cecily saw in a single, clear moment. And then, like the gleam of moonlight in her sister’s eyes, it was gone and she was just the youngest in the family again.

Rose pulled on some stockings.

‘Can I come with you?’

‘No, you fool.’

Cecily felt the urge to ask another question.

‘Are you meeting someone?’

Silence. An owl hooted.

‘When will you be back?’

Rose put on her shoes. Cecily caught another whiff of perfume. Or it might have been the honeysuckle growing under the window.

‘Why can’t I come?’

Again silence. Her sister’s shape moved swiftly across the room. Cecily sighed. And closed her eyes. Danger was perhaps Rose’s element. She thrived on it. Outside, the garden and the
woods and the marshes beyond, all of it, seemed to merge together under the almost full moon. Nothing stirred. But what if their mother had been right, thought Cecily, and curiosity
had
killed the cat that morning? What of Rose?

She must have dropped off to sleep for she remembered nothing more and when she did wake it wasn’t so much because she’d heard anything as such but rather it was the quality of the silence that woke her.