The Last Pier Part 14

Playing another sort of game.

What had Pinky Wilson been doing at the ballet?

He liked the ballet very much, Pinky said, taking a seat just behind Rose. Cecily read the programme.

Triple Bill. Margot Fonteyn, Robert Helpman, Fredrick Ashton.

Agnes' pearls glowing against her skin. And Pinky Wilson leaning forward, handing them another box of chocolates. But having left the opera gla.s.ses in the ladies' lavatory, Cecily arose with a long coltish movement, hair slipping out of its blue ribbon.

'Oh Cecily!' cried Agnes.

'Don't worry,' Robert Wilson said. 'I'll go with her.'

Cecily, taking no notice, rushed off.

'The child's a b.l.o.o.d.y nuisance,' Rose said, loudly.

She must have been bored.

'Really, Rose!' their mother said.

'There you are,' Robert Wilson cried, catching up.

He had smiled in his friendly way. So why hadn't she liked him one little bit?

Robert Wilson said something else as they returned to their seats. It sounded like, 'your secret's safe with me' but everyone was applauding the conductor.

Standing in Shingle Street, clutching her brown paper bag of shop-bought greengages, remembering how once their orchard had yielded heaps of them, Cecily worried over which moments had been significant and which not. She put her hand to her throat in a sweet, unconscious gesture that made the watcher watching, think first of her mother, and, when she bit her lip, of her sister Rose. As if it were too much for him, the watcher slunk deep into a doorway.

Cecily couldn't see she was the past.

Suddenly the light changed, draining to sepia.

Here we go, said one of the voices in her head.

She'll be like this for days, now, said the other.

Guarda l! Look over there!

But as usual Cecily was searching for what was no longer visible.

By the time the ballet was over Cecily wished she hadn't eaten so many chocolate violets. Or perhaps it was the fizzy ginger beer that was the problem. Clapping the loudest, she began to look for night-expedition-clues in Rose. Earlier her sister had folded a pair of stockings into her bag and she had stolen their mother's 'Evening in Paris' perfume. Why would you wear perfume when all you were going to do was sleep at Franca's house?

Robert Wilson planned to drive home in his motor car but first Agnes needed to hand the older girls over to Lucio.

'How long have you known the family?' Robert Wilson asked.

'Forever,' Agnes told him and old Pinky was taken aback by the radiance of her smile. But it was Lucio, waiting for them outside, who had been delighted by the sound of Agnes' laugh, travelling like a shooting star towards him. Cecily saw her mother bend her slender neck in greeting as she walked.

'Lucio!' Cecily cried, not to be outdone.

'Ci vediamo presto,' he said solemnly, talking to Cecily but looking at Agnes.

See you soon.

Agnes had been in danger from her own smile.

'See you girls tomorrow,' she called.

'Si, si. Don't worry, I'll deliver them to you in time!'

Franca stared pointedly at Cecily's pocket. Don't forget my letter the look said.

'I'll bring the boys, those that are free,' Lucio called. 'To help Joe.'

'Carlo, too?' asked Cecily.

'Yes, Carlo, too!'

'I had no idea,' Robert Wilson exclaimed, 'that you were on such good terms with the family.'

Agnes couldn't stop her unruly smile.

'Oh the children grew up together. They are a lovely family.'

She was silent.

'Bly wouldn't be what it is without the Molinellos.'

Pinky Wilson's hands on the steering wheel were lit by the light of the dashboard. Tomorrow, he told Agnes, he would help Joe and the Italians. Even though there was hardly anything left to do.

'The sooner you get the tennis court ploughed up and ready for planting, the better,' he said. 'World events are moving faster than you realise.'

He spoke so softly that Cecily, staring out of the window, barely heard him. She must have been dreaming of something altogether more interesting. Her sister Rose, perhaps, or what was more likely, Carlo. They would be certain to be at the fair by now and Carlo would be buying candyfloss. Cecily loved candyfloss. And Rose was bound to have her fortune told by the parrot who picked out the cards of destiny. But she didn't need to bother, thought Cecily, angrily. Her destiny was just marvellous.

'I wonder if the evacuee's arrived,' Agnes said, her voice happier than it had sounded all day.

Cecily, thinking of Rose in love with Carlo, spoke absent-mindedly.

'Aunty Kitty loves Daddy,' she said.

What followed had been a stunned silence, so powerful that its echo remained with her, still.

Travelling through eternity, its dark tones lived on in Shingle Street, and Palmyra House, and other places in other corners of the world.

Still piercing Cecily's heart. Still burning a hole in her.

What on earth had made her say such a thing?

The car moved forward as though it was trying to escape the words.

'Cecily!' Agnes said, managing to say everything she wanted with that one, single word.

Cecily froze. Her words, arriving from nowhere, were now mixed with the stale taste of ginger beer, chocolate violets and undigested thoughts. Tangling with the evening, ruining it. Sorryness sticking to the roof of her mouth was what she tasted then, while desperation poked its vomity finger down her throat. Nothing came out.

Pinky Wilson laughed easily.

'Perhaps she'll be a comedian,' he said into the darkness, helping out, shifting gear so the car continued smoothly inland into the depths of the countryside and towards Palmyra House. But Agnes, looking over her shoulder at Cecily, spoke to her with Another Look that stated clearly, 'You're Old Enough To Know Better' and 'We'll Talk About This Later'.

Cecily, her voice torn into tissue-paper shreds, was silenced.

'I'm sorry, mummy,' she managed at last.

The back of her mother's head looked stiff and angry.

In the darkened countryside the headlights picked out certain things and missed others.

It shone its beam on a fox's green eye. Very soon a chicken would die.

The headlights moved on missing Bellamy, hands stained with blood, shirt torn from a back-room brawl in Bly from which Selwyn had rescued him.

Cecily swallowed. She longed to be elsewhere, walking the dunes in bare feet. Most of all she wanted to throw her indiscretion far into the wide night sky.

'You must be tired, Cecily,' Pinky Wilson said, keeping his voice friendly, making Cecily hate him all the more. 'It's been a long evening for you.'

'Yes, she is,' Agnes agreed, mouth snapping like a crocodile.

Some things come with their own punishment.

Cecily, leaning out of the car window, tried and failed to get the vomit to dislodge.

At the back of her mind was an image she half-remembered but couldn't get hold of.

Half-remembering was still the thing she was best at.

How hot it had been in the car. She clamped her teeth together and closed her eyes while a sc.r.a.p of moon, no bigger than a cut fingernail, floated past. The direction of the wind had brought a faint sound of fairground music and seawave sickness danced before her eyes. She felt cold and clammy.

In the dimness of the car, Robert Wilson covered Cecily's mother's clenched fist.

'Don't altogether trust them, Agnes,' he said.

What had he meant?

It was how they arrived home. Aunt Kitty sitting at the kitchen table drinking a cup of tea, looked up with interest.

She was always the first to smell a rat, Rose used to say.

'Tea, anyone?' Kitty said, her voice golden as syrup.

'No thanks,' said Robert Wilson. 'I have an early start tomorrow.'

'Are you going back up to London?' Agnes asked, the shine all gone from her face.

''fraid so.'

'Did you have a nice time?' Aunt Kitty asked, still digging for information with her invisible spade.

'It was a nice evening,' Robert Wilson said.

'Very nice,' agreed Agnes.

Niceness spread itself across the kitchen table.

'I feel sick,' Cecily had said.

Agnes wasn't interested. She simply wanted Cecily out of the way so she could prepare for the arguments yet to come.

'When's Daddy back?'

But Selwyn was with the ARP.

As usual.

'There are some jokes that are too rude to be made,' Agnes continued gravely after Pinky Wilson had gone.

Cecily opened her mouth to say she hadn't been joking but then closed it shut. For what was the point?

Surprisingly, her mother showed no signs of putting any restrictions on the next day. So why did Cecily feel so desolate?

'There's quite enough to think of with the war looming without having to deal with you as well,' said Agnes, clearly waiting for Cecily to go upstairs.

And then she turned her back and closed the kitchen door, her footsteps receding, tap, tap.

But, it was still a night of great beauty. That hadn't changed.

Tawny as the wings of a hunting owl in a forsaken corner of an English field.

With a trough of water from a tiny spring filled up with moonlight.

Meadowsweet clots of mist making the air ache with scent.

And Lucio, kneeling on a slab of stone, bathing hands and arms and then face in the delicious cool water.

All around lay the moon's l.u.s.trous sheen. It haunted Lucio terribly. Things had never looked so full of wonder. He watched the figure hurrying towards him, her breath against his skin even before she reached him. Threads of music from earlier that day followed behind. Scarves of phosph.o.r.escent light touched her hair. Lucio covered the distance between them but then stopped. They both hesitated for a moment longer before the last inevitable leap towards each other.

Neither heard the squeak of a bicycle for the night was full of many small noises, too numerous to bother with.

He saw her framed against the meadowsweet and she saw the distant lights of the town behind him. He was afraid to kiss her, so Agnes touched him first.