The Last Pier Part 42

Laughter had escaped from Lucio like poison gas.

'I told you,' he'd screamed again. 'We are all on a black list of some sort.'

In the camp there was a Jewish refugee. He had been working for the BBC World Service but somehow he too had been rounded up.

Franca and Carlo had sat open-mouthed, holding their mother's hands. None of the internees had heard from their families since the day they had been captured. They were crazy with worry.

'Lucio talked about a woman all the time,' the man told Anna. 'He was crying a lot. And your husband... he was in a very bad way, too.'

And then, summer came at last. There were all kinds of rumours. At the end of June 1940 they were told they were going via Liverpool to the Isle of Man. The government wanted most of them deported in twenty-four hours.

From Liverpool this random harvest of men was taken to the city dock escorted by armed soldiers. All the Molinellos were in this first batch. Since they thought they were going to the Isle of Man by boat they had become more cheerful.

After three hours they were finally lined up and taken outside. But in front of them, instead of a little boat, was a 16,000-ton grey pa.s.senger liner called the Arandora Star. It was obvious to the prisoners they were being shipped somewhere far away.

Ahead of them and beyond the breakwater lay the sea, the mines, the U-boats, the torpedoes and the planes dropping bombs. The men were panicking badly. Who would tell their wives, their daughters, their sweethearts? When would they see them again?

Shortly before the internees boarded, barbed wire barricades were placed on the promenade deck and around all the exits. The Captain began complaining that evacuation in the event of an emergency would be difficult. But the wire remained.

Lucio was going crazy. He wanted to get a message to a woman called Agnes. He was making so much noise that towards midnight he was moved to another part of the ship.

Finally on July 1st 1940, the Arandora Star set sail from Liverpool. It was heading for St John's, Newfoundland, Canada.

The day was calm, the sea grey and grim. Huge seagulls glided in the wind as they left, their hearts crying out.

Leaving, a word so like grieving to them.

On their left was the coast of Ireland. On the right was Scotland. Some of the lifeboats had holes in them and worst of all, what none of them had known, was that the ship had left Liverpool unescorted, with no Red Cross flag and with its antiaircraft guns visible from a distance. But all any of them could think of were their families left behind.

By now many of the men were crying uncontrollably as the ship zig-zagged its way across the water in an attempt to avoid enemy submarines. They did not know that the German officer who had sunk the Royal Oak in October was on his way back through these same waters to Germany. Or that his U-boat had one last torpedo left.

It was fired at 6.58 am and the ship was instantly plunged into darkness. Water poured into the gigantic hole in its side.

The ship was doomed, men were screaming and jumping overboard. The man recounting the story told the Molinellos that he saw Mario leap into the sea. He saw a large board being thrown immediately after him from above. It hit Mario on the head. It was the last the man saw of any of them before he too jumped ship.

'The sea was full of floating heads,' he said.

All waves behave like monsters, when they are out of sight of land. Forty minutes later the Arandora Star sank beneath the waters, forever.

'I will never forget how the sea looked immediately afterwards,' the man said. 'Deadly calm, silent; unreal.'

It was six hours before an RAF Sunderland flying boat picked up the SOS and rescued the few survivors.

In the silent room at Palmyra House so many decades later Carlo drained his tea.

'My father, my uncle and my brothers, enemies of the British people? Fascists, us?'

Twenty-eight years had pa.s.sed away without a burial.

'Their bodies were never found,' Carlo spoke so softly Cecily had to lean forward to hear him.

'My sister had a dream one night,' he said. 'I remember waking up and my mother making us some warm milk.'

They had gone to their little shrine facing the sea and prayed until the dawn.

'Guarda!' Anna had said. 'Look, your father is in the sea. I feel it.'

Two days later a small notice appeared in The Telegraph.

Arandora Star sunk by U-boat. 1,500 Italians and n.a.z.i internees in panic.

After that Home was the name of a place where he had not been born, Carlo told Cecily. It became a place of mountain streams and filial love.

It was a language learnt in his mother's arms.

A song sung in his father's voice.

A place where he might feel closer to his uncle and his brothers.

His brothers and Rose were all mixed up in his mind. Franca had been too traumatised to cope. She stopped speaking. Both Italian and English. Only their mother carried on, teaching her daughter how to have the will to live.

'My mother is incredible,' Carlo said. 'Her strength has carried us through these terrible years. She is the one who told me to look for you.'

'Why now?' Cecily found herself asking in almost a panic of tenderness.

The words came as a croak from her lips. She was unused to speaking. Carlo hesitated.

'She heard Kitty is dead. She wanted to know how you were. She... we... love you.'

'And Franca?' whispered Cecily. 'How is she these days?'

Again Carlo hesitated. Then he took Cecily's cold hands in both his.

'She had a son,' he said. 'I am an uncle. You are an aunt.'

Cecily was speechless.

Certain things were beyond words.

When Cecily had recovered, she wanted to know about Carlo's eye.

'An accident,' he said, wiping the tears from his face, too.

He took off the gla.s.ses and she saw his gla.s.s eye next to his one good one.

'I was on the beach in La Spezia with some boys. We were aimless, all of us. An ended war takes all aims along with it.'

They had found two metal rods and some round stones and decided to play golf. Carlo had stood behind one of the boys who swung the club. It had swung into Carlo's face and shattered his sungla.s.ses. Some of the gla.s.s had embedded itself into his right eye.

Later, after he had been rushed screaming to the p.r.o.nto soccorso, they had told him he would have to lose the eye. He was just twenty-one.

HISTORY HAD ALWAYS behaved as though it were a flippable coin. You flicked one side over and you found Warfare. Then you flipped it again and you found Life. Neither side made any sense, although there had been plenty of questions asked on that terrible night. It was Cecily's turn to finish her own story.

'What were you doing out?' someone had asked Cecily, angrily.

'How did you know Rose had gone to the old pier?'

'What did you say to your father?'

'If you knew she was meeting someone, why didn't you tell me?' this last from Agnes.

There was no sign of Tom. He had vanished as soon as the police came.

'Daddy...' Cecily had whispered. 'I told him... she was being followed by...'

But then she had fallen silent for Robert Wilson was standing close by (before he drove off in his car to interview Cecily's father).

Two policemen were taking notes and the firemen were still at The Scene Of The Crime.

'You do realise what you've done, don't you?' someone, Cecily seemed to think it was Kitty, asked. 'You!'

Questions and opinions whizzed backwards and forwards like tennis b.a.l.l.s. One-love. Two-love. There weren't any words to describe what happened that night. Although there were those who tried to find some.

'A man constructs his own fate out of his sense of the world,' the philosopher amongst them said.

'What must it have been like for her?' those of little imagination said.

'Our hearts go out to the whole family,' those who prided themselves on fairness said.

'The fault lies with the wife and mother,' those who played the blame card said.

And, 'It could have been avoided,' those with hindsight said.

Agnes was crying. She had to go to the hospital. Something about dental records. Did she have toothache then?

No one told Cecily anything.

'My life is ruined,' Agnes again, finally, her voice bloated by tears.

Who had she been talking to?

'You've killed your sister. You're going to have to live with this forever. Forever.'

Cecily's thoughts had floated above the cacophony of sounds. It was just her feet that were rooted to the ground.

He did it.

You did it.

He did it.

But where had Tom got to? How could he have vanished, leaving C to face the music?

'Where's Tom?' she asked, in a whisper.

No one heard her.

'We were trying to save her from Captain Pinky,' she said.

No one heard her.

'I heard Aunt Kitty telling Daddy that Pinky Wilson was a bad man,' she said, her whisper getting smaller with each word.

'I was feeding your father lines,' Aunty Kitty snarled, her face close up and distorted, angry tongue trailing spit. 'Oh how I wish you hadn't been born!'

Spit from Aunt Kitty had collected on Cecily's cheek but she dared not wipe it away. She decided in that moment she deserved spit on her face. It was a decision she would never share with anyone.

Things had changed with the flick of a flippable coin.

Some time after, when she had written her own conclusions in stone, Agnes had tried to hug Cecily. Tried and failed. Cecily was no longer a huggable girl. She would grow into an unhuggable person.

Then, at the police station Selwyn would be exposed like a peeled banana before being informed of a few things.

What had happened to his daughter was murder.

The penalty for espionage was death.

He could be hanged.

Sixteen agents had just been hanged in Wandsworth Prison.

There would be a trial to determine Selwyn's fate.

Being in love with your wife's sister was bad enough. Believing what she told you was worse.

Even the German double agents could do better than that.

Thanks to Kitty, Robert Wilson had known about Selwyn for a very long time.

Like Selwyn, Robert Wilson had loved the wrong person. Although Selwyn was given most of the pieces of the puzzle, no one thought to give any to Cecily. Later on she worked out some things for herself. She didn't always reach the correct conclusion. She apportioned blame in strange ways, taking most of it for herself.