The Last Pier Part 24

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 gooseb.u.mps 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.

...hospitals are being cleared, sandbags continue to be heaped up in front of buildings, all ARP people are being called up or told to be ready to go to their posts with forty-eight hours' supply of food.

'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 G.o.d'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.

'Rose!' Agnes cried aghast. 'You've no bra.s.siere on! What in the world are you thinking of?'

But Rose, morose for days, interested only in the tennis dance, laughed with sudden delight.

A discordant laugh that later, only two weeks later, Cecily would remember.

'You'll get a name as a floozy, Rose, if you go on this way. What will your father say?'

There was the smallest of pauses, barely discernable, but enough for Cecily to see the look of hatred in her sister's eyes at the mention of Selwyn. A look that even then was frightening to behold in so lovely a face. Agnes must have thought so too because she hurried over to Rose with her clothes.

'Put your dress back on, there's a good girl,' she said with unexpected gentleness, adding, 'and there's no need for such language, Kitty.'

By such straws as these was Cecily able to gauge the tide of Rose's feelings flowing towards their Aunt Kitty.

Remembering that moment on a darker day, Cecily had wondered what Rose actually wore in her coffin. Did she have her bra.s.siere on? She remembered her Aunt Kitty's sniff of disapproval. The slight sneer in her eyes. She remembered staring at Rose's blonde m.u.f.f.

By August the 31st the harvest was over and the two large fields facing south were cleared. The farmhands built a ma.s.sive stack that rose dishevelled and radiant above the glare of the field. In this last magnificent burst of heat came the voice on the wireless.

Herr Hitler has sent a reply to the Duke of Windsor. 'You may rest a.s.sured that my att.i.tude towards Britain and my desire to avoid another war between our two people remain unchanged.'

A little further back was another finished stack where the haymakers moved slowly; white dots amongst the stubble.

Cecily and Tom climbed it until they were high above the hedge-tops. There was absolutely nothing in the world up there, except the shallow ramparts of the stack, the blazing sky and the hot, sweet-scented hay, suffocating in the heat.

And then at last, the dance dress was ready. Agnes cut the last loose thread and ironed the hem so it looked shop bought.

'You look lovely, darling,' she said in the sweet voice she sometimes reserved for Rose alone.

Cecily noted Agnes' smile and in that fleeting moment, when her mother's features lost their habitual severity of cast, saw how they revealed one of the chief sources from which Rose got her great beauty.

Upstream and several miles away from the farm, as evening began to fall, silence swooped like a night-bird in the gloaming. A thread of wind ruffled the river. Lucio lay on its banks and watched Agnes. Tomorrow was the party and they would be in full view of everyone. These s.n.a.t.c.hed moments were the only privacy they would have for days. Blackberries smothered the hedges, and the empty wheat field was filled with dark birds.

'Your brother is bound to guess!' Agnes said.

Lucio looked at her gravely. There were flecks of light reflected in his eyes.

'My nephew already does,' he said solemnly.

Agnes blushed.

'No! Which one?'

'Carlo,' Lucio said.

'Oh G.o.d! Has he been playing with Cecily? Have they been spying on us?'

She was laughing.

'I am very close to Carlo,' he said finally. 'The boy is like me. He believes in social justice.'

She didn't speak and when he had waited a moment longer he turned and ran a finger across her lips. In the sparkle of light he thought she looked alert and a.s.sured, not nervous as he had first thought. The reflected ripple of the water made a bright mark on her throat. The Irish are wonderful, he decided, amazed. The image of her strengthened the resolve growing in him. The last of the sun's rays poured across it as his tenderness for her grew.

'Well?' she asked, a hint of laughter in her voice. 'So you told him?'

He shook his head bemused and began to touch her wide clear forehead under the thick black hair and then the smooth sun-sallow skin of her face and arms. He felt his heart rise at the sight of her and he felt, also, a sudden sick despair at the complications in their lives.

'There's probably a war coming,' he murmured, burying his face in her hair. 'I wanted... I wanted Carlo to know about us because...' he shrugged.

He wanted to tell her that he was an Italian and that his country might call him back at any moment, that things could change in a day, that the war might go on for years. But he said none of these things, continuing instead to stroke her face, thinking how like a young girl she still was. Did she know? She could have been Rose's sister.

'Even if there is a war we will find a way.'

She lifted her face towards his and he turned to put his lips against her throat. When he kissed her he felt the summer turn slowly, mocking him. Wood pigeons were cooing huskily above their heads. And he was certain, more certain than ever, that he wanted to marry her.

Afterwards they swam in the river and he watched the rise and fall of her bare arms and listened to the calm confidence of her voice as the light played on her wet hair. Thinking of the ways in which, starved of affection for so long, believing herself to be unlovable, she now loved him so wholeheartedly. How, confident as an acrobat on a high wire, she had launched herself on him, again and again. It stunned him, this trust. He would never betray it.

She pulled her dress on and towelled her hair. The sunburn on her face was very warm, first against his face and then his hands. She let her face remain lightly against him and he put his hand on her neck and the whole day spun on its axis when he kissed her, again. Staring at the furthest reaches of the clean blue river, Lucio made his decision. Tonight he would talk to Mauro. Once made, the decision overwhelmed him. Agnes continued to rest her head against his.

'I can't believe it will actually happen,' she said.

He closed his eyes and the sun beat down on his lids. It burnt his face for a few moments longer.

'I fear so,' he said, at last.

He did not tell her he would almost certainly be called back to Italy. They had promised each other only honesty but how could he tell her this?

'We could... all move to Italy,' she said. 'I mean the girls and I.'

A heron, grave as an abbot, attended to his fishing amongst the drooping branches of the willow. Lucio stared at it without moving, marvelling at its quiet elegance. Lately they had discovered they could read each other's thoughts. Did love do that? Or war? All the dustiness of the afternoon was suspended in the air with the fineness of powdered sulphur. He shook his head and at last Agnes understood what he was trying so hard to hide from her.

'If there is a war,' he said, 'none of this will matter.'

He reached up and wordlessly gathered her to him before she could start crying. Theirs was a marriage already, he thought. In some sense he had known her all her life.

'But what if you get killed?' she asked suddenly, voicing what, he suspected, she had kept to herself for many weeks.

'I won't,' he promised.

Death, on this glittering, white-hot afternoon seemed impossible. They heard the kingfisher's bullet-like whistle as it came upstream. It repeated the same fluid, fine-drawn sound that faded instantly. Lying with his arms around her, Lucio thought the sound was like this moment itself. Gone in an instant. When he opened his eyes again he was struck by the brutal sharpness of black leaves against blue sky. His eyes felt shocked into fresh alertness. And as he began to brush his hand against her naked shoulder, carefully beginning to make love to her again, he was aware of the unbearably sweet scent of late summer in the limes.

Much later they heard children's voices and he pulled her gently to her feet and began removing the leaves from her crumpled dress. She looked at him with sleepy, trusting eyes, making the blood beat up into his throat.

'I don't want you to go,' he mumbled at last.

'I must,' she said. 'The children will be out looking for me and there is so much to do before tomorrow.'

He loved all three of her children, he told her. She pulled a face.

'They would spy on me, given a chance!'

They had been meeting when they could, remaining patient when it wasn't possible. But did Rose suspect?

'No,' Agnes said. She hesitated. 'But she isn't happy.'

He wondered how much Rose really knew but didn't like to ask.

'We are made for each other,' he said instead.

What was on the surface a quiet thing was deep and certain, now.

They went together along the footpath and parted at the stile and he watched as she hurried away from him, back towards the house, her blue dress swinging as she walked. Then, turning towards the town and the ice-cream parlour he met up with Robert Wilson who was on his way there too and they walked the half a mile back together.

Carlo watched his mother as she broke the last of the egg yolks into a mountain of white flour.

'Cecci was here earlier asking about the cakes I'm making for the tennis party,' she said.