The Last Pier Part 29

Cecily shook her head, defeated. The threads refused to knit.

That September night the spectacle of fireworks rising in fountains of light marked the last of the Last Pier. Later Cecily would hear how all kinds of things were thrown up.

An arm, raised in surprise, fingers young and ringless.

A shoe. Flung towards a moored boat.

A sc.r.a.p of cloth that later would be identified as part of a summer dress.

Inappropriately worn, for the cold was already beginning to drift inland from the North Sea.

Cecily had run in. Dropping the jar of dying glow-worms, forgetting about Tom. Searching for Rose. Just in case, just in case. Coming to an abrupt halt when she saw Agnes, hands folded motionless in her lap like a dove's wings, waiting for news of the whereabouts of her eldest daughter. All around were reflections of Cecily's worst fears dancing to a macabre tune. As slowly, like a cast taking a bow, Selwyn and Kitty and Cook and Partridge and the Chief of Police and finally Robert Wilson himself, came in. To stand, heads bowed, silent amidst their horrific discovery.

'Get out of my life,' Agnes had screamed.

Crazed by grief. Demented by it.

And Selwyn?

'Fetch the child,' he had whispered, his bullying powers all gone, the enormity of his own terrible crime unfolding.

'What have I done?' cried Selwyn.

'Get out, get out, all of you!' Agnes screamed, unstoppable. 'I want my daughter back!'

And Robert Wilson, too, as if in a trance, walked over to the window to check the blackout blinds were secured. For there was, in spite of everything, a war going on outside.

Robert Wilson, unaware of the white and stricken face of the young girl they called C standing in the doorway listening to adult sobs.

Cecily.

Cecci.

Coming in, un-fetched, of her own accord. Handing herself over. Looking suddenly exactly like her dead sister.

Saying, 'It's All My Fault.'

Even though no one was blaming her, 'My Fault! My Fault!' she would go on saying, forever.

'How many were guilty that night?' cried the adult Cecily, now.

At last, arms wrapped around her own waist, rocking herself. But on that night, as the house emptied and Selwyn was led away by the police, in the shocked silence, Robert Wilson watched as Agnes held on to Cecily, trying and failing to stop herself from shaking. For most of all, the thing that made Agnes weep bewildered tears, and Cecily stare unblinkingly, was a small spotted purse. Escaping the explosion somehow. With fifty pounds and three photographs. Intact. Like Rose's teeth.

Cecily was not going anywhere.

Not yet. Not ever, not in her head.

And after that, as if it wasn't enough, the all-clear had sounded its flute-like note (no one had heard the siren in the first place but of course there was a war on), and Cook turned her back on everyone and went off to make a pot of tea.

'I will always love you,' Agnes had whispered. Cecily had wondered who she was talking to. Her? Or Rose?

For once Aunt Kitty had nothing to say. Numb. Oh yes, they were all numb.

Meet your new sister Numb, Cecily. She will empty you of life.

Looking back across the years Cecily saw how, at the time when it had happened there had been only disconnection. Incoherent things, too terrible to examine. Things that gave up their heartache only slowly and with time's magic.

Perfumes.

Body scents.

Room scents.

Love.

Invisible feelings that didn't mean anything after that moment.

You need a code-breaker to break the hidden patterns, the voices in her head told her quietly.

They sounded shocked.

But who had caused the fire? Tell us!

Nor was it possible to explain how, throughout the lonely years of the war, while Cecily fought her own war and Agnes discovered the Drink, and Kitty lost those things she had never truly had, still, certain fragments remained. Preserved in amber.

How, on that September night, Agnes had sat, refusing to move.

How nothing Robert Wilson said, on that night, or any other occasion, made the least bit of difference to anyone.

How, on that night, even when Robert Wilson took hold of Agnes' cold hand she did not look up, did not recognise him.

How her voice calling out for her newly discovered love would reverberate down the years. Echoing terribly in Cecily's mind.

And how Agnes, just one day after war had been declared, broken without any help from Mister Hitler, sitting in the very same room, being advised by experts, could only utter the words, 'Where's Lucio?'

Lucio?

And then came the chorus of voices Cecily remembered so well.

'Send her away!'

Who had they meant?

'Find Lucio!'

'She can't stay here, Agnes, are you mad?'

Why not? The whole world had gone mad, why couldn't she?

'Lucio,' cried Agnes in a waterfall of grief.

And thereafter began the rigmarole of lists of a different sort. Socks. Uniform shirts Shoes (One pair because you'll be home soon.) School bag. (This war won't go on for much longer.) Ration Book.

On and on.

Don't forget to clean your teeth every night. Don't forget to wash your hands before you eat. Don't forget to look before you cross the road. Don't forget that even though I forgot to say the words, they exist in the ether. I love you.

'Don't forget, C.'

'I won't,' Cecily had said, even though she had no idea what it was she shouldn't forget.

Her new school uniform had added to her confusion, although it would not be long before she found other distractions to help her pa.s.s the time from waking to sleeping. From one year to the next. Then as now, she saw the diminutive pile of clothes that had been laid out, waiting to be packed into a suitcase with Rose's name on it. A suitcase lying in state, in this very house to which Cecily had now returned in order to understand the true heritage of her violet eyes.

Violet, like the violets Agnes had once worn.

Violets like those Selwyn had sent Cecily on her twenty-first birthday.

From prison.

We'll gather violets in the spring again, he had written on the card.

'I still have it,' she told the voices in her head, scribbling across the columns on her piece of paper. 'It's here with me, with all his letters.'

BELLAMY'S FATHER HAD been only the first to die that summer, Cecily thought. Taking down another photograph from the wall, wiping the dust off, the adult Cecily gazed intently at it.

'How odd,' she murmured. 'It's Robert Wilson standing on the steps of Broadcasting House.'

She remembered something her father had said in one of his scantily read letters.

Sat.u.r.day September 2nd 1939 and the bar of history had finally been reached.

Some felt the violent storm that burst over England was Nature's way of putting the finishing touches to the whole affair.

'G.o.d reminding us that our little wars are nothing in the scheme of things!' the Prime Minister said.

They had been drinking cold beer; the humidity had demanded it. The final decision, the agreement to go to war, had required some sort of closure, some ceremony, after all these months of waiting.

Walking back to his car, rain pelted down on Robert, soaking him.

'Can I give you a lift anywhere?' he asked, seeing Lord Halifax behind him.

'Thank you, no. I think I'll walk.'

Robert nodded.

'Let's hope I live to see the end of it. Good luck, by the way.'

'Thank you, sir,' Robert said, raising his hand.

The city was in darkness. He turned his car around and headed back to Suffolk. Fragments of conversation floated across his tired mind.

'It must be war, "Chips" old boy.'

'There's no other way out.'

'Nerves are getting frayed.'

The violence of the storm meant he had to drive more slowly. The tempest appeared to seal the whole ghastly situation, while all over England, in market towns and quiet country lanes, people slept the last sleep of innocence. As he turned towards the east he wondered what would now happen to the beautiful Maudsley women. Agnes, Rose, the child. What future was there for them in this sorry mess? He shook his head. Something was rotten at the very core of the apple, he thought. A melancholy darkness seemed to cloak the fields speeding past. No one talked of the beauty of darkness, Robert thought as with a heavy heart he drove towards the old Ipswich Road. Lightning tore at the sky. Sleep was what he craved most of all. Sleep and a forgetting of all that lay ahead. A line of poetry, learnt long ago, in his university days, came back to him.

Many deaths lay ahead. How sleep the brave, he thought. Suddenly he wanted to weep.

'The real work is about to begin,' the Prime Minister had told them. And as the meeting ended every man around the table had been left wondering if they would be alive at the end of it. Will I, wondered Robert? He was not afraid. Fear was too definite, too dramatic. No, it was sadness he felt. Unaccountable, helpless, elusive, sadness at what he had done. At what he had yet to do.

The rain hadn't quite reached Palmyra House and a watery moon still shone.

Tomorrow I shall leave for Salisbury, thought Joe, turning in his last peacetime bed. His bags were packed. Tomorrow he would listen to Chamberlain's speech at Franca's house. They were going to spend the day together.

A nightingale was singing somewhere in the woods.

Agnes heard it and was filled with sadness. My only son will fight in this war, she thought. And Lucio, too. There is only pain ahead.

Cecily heard it and, forgetting about her foiled adventure, thought of something Carlo had said to her, instead.

Joe heard it and hoped Franca heard it too. From now on everything he did would be with Franca in mind.

By some fluke Franca heard the bird singing too. She was a little psychic, everyone said. She heard things others could not.

Rose heard nothing. She lay deep in a leaden sleep that helped her keep a secret disappointment at bay.

Selwyn may have heard it but if he did, he didn't care. It was just a nightingale, for G.o.d's sake. There were bigger things at stake!

And strangely it was Kitty who heard the nightingale and decided, if there were no war, she would turn over a new leaf. It was a promise made only to herself and if broken, n.o.body would be any the wiser.

While all the time the pale moon kept steady watch over Palmyra House.

In Germany, Lucio told Carlo, there were terrible atrocities being done to the Jews. Unheard of things, unspeakable acts.

'The anti-Fascist movement is our only hope,' Lucio said.

Carlo shivered. Like his uncle, Carlo had no doubt that war would come. Lucio had told him that war, like death, was nature's way of pruning. Thousands were being killed in Poland already, millions more would go.