The Last Pier

by Roma Tearne

  It was hot. The heat swept across the field carrying the faint sound of the tractor. In the shimmering waves of light Agnes saw her sister turn and look towards it. Presently the tractor drew towards the very edge of the field and Agnes saw that it wasn’t Bellamy but Selwyn who was driving. The reflection of the sun on Selwyn’s face was green and flame-like. There was a smear of oil where he had wiped his hand across his cheek.

  As Agnes walked slowly back to the house with her basket of eggs, Kitty appeared in a white dress, hair fastened, wearing white flat-heeled shoes. She was walking towards the half-harvested field. It occurred to Agnes that the field held the last of what she considered to belong to her. And Kitty was walking towards it.

  Later when she went out with the can of tea, the tractor had moved away on a half-circuit and Kitty was nowhere in sight. There wasn’t a sound except that of a yellow hammer bleating its song in a patch of burnt hedgerow. She walked past the burnt stubble where some corn had caught fire a few days before. Suddenly they emerged, Selwyn, head thrown back, laughing. To Agnes they were two parts of the same story and she was struck by how much was carelessly written across their faces.

  July 3rd 1926, Cecily read.

  I feel like a woman drowning, Agnes wrote.

  She had, Cecily read, been handed to Agnes by a nun. Asleep. While her mother Kitty stood in a loose white cotton dress, hair scrubbed back, frightened eyes saying no to everything. No, she didn’t want to see Selwyn, not now, not ever. What lies!

  And after that, night after night, alone with only the scent of tobacco flowers coming in through the window, Agnes had watched over her two little girls. Alone.

  June 28th 1927, read Cecily. She had only been a year old.

  Rose suffers most, Agnes had written.

  ‘She’s not my sister,’ Rose said.

  ‘You will grow to love her,’ Agnes told her.

  ‘Rubbish,’ Rose said.

  She shook her head so hard her teeth almost rattled. No one had taken account of Rose in the plans.

  ‘You spoilt little bitch!’ Kitty said.

  And she slapped Rose before Agnes could stop her. Rose raised her hand and then let it fall but they saw the look she gave her aunt. After that Kitty was careful to keep her distance.

  July 5th 1928, Cecily read.

  Still, Kitty is unable to keep her hands off Selwyn, Agnes had written.

  Blaming herself, for she had begged her sister to at least be an aunt to Cecily, Agnes understood that she had made her own bed. Her husband was disturbed to have them both under the same roof, occupying the bed with one sister while desiring the other.

  Time passed and Rose began taking life with a sprinkling of salt. Nothing was believable any more. Her father’s cool hand on her head made her shiver. She never called Aunt Kitty ‘Aunt’, any more. And it pleased her that Selwyn was hurt by such coldness. Joe of course was at boarding school. He didn’t care much.

  And in the fairy tales Rose now began telling Cecily, Joe was always a bystander. The pair of boots that Puss wore, the servant at the Beast’s palace, the footman who carried the glass slipper. That, Cecily remembered, was Joe’s role.

  A few pages were torn out here.

  January 21st 1936, Cecily read.

  The King died last night.

  January 22nd 1936, Agnes had written.

  The people in America are mourning, as if for their own King & the Japanese are in tears. We are only allowed official announcements on the BBC. If you turn the wireless on you only hear the ticking of a vast clock. The shops are all black.

  September 12th 1938.

  Ah! thought Cecily. Here it was.

  I think Rose told Bellamy today that C is Kitty’s daughter. He’s been scowling at me. Perhaps that’s why I dislike him so much. Poor, ugly Bellamy!

  And then…

  October 20th 1938.

  Rose asked me, ‘Is she my cousin?’

  Cecily swallowed. She could imagine Rose’s voice all right. Full of disdain.

  ‘She’s your half-sister.’

  ‘Half?’ Rose demanded, and she went out.

  Bellamy must have caught her crying. He was in the top field unblocking the dyke. A corncrake flew across the bleached sky. Bellamy must have been twelve but already he was more than a head taller than Rose. He watched over her daily after that, never prying, teaching her, after a fashion, the ways of the countryside. It was because of him that Rose still loved Palmyra Farm. Inseparable for that brief moment in time.

  Sometimes, when she thought no one was watching, Agnes wrote, she noticed Rose display a curious tenderness for this child with only half of everything and no knowledge of who her real mother was.

  ‘Are you going to tell her?’ she had asked once.

  ‘One day, perhaps,’ Agnes had replied. ‘When she’s your age.’

  And then she asked the question Agnes had been dreading.

  ‘Doesn’t Kitty care?’

  Reading, Cecily felt her eyes blur over the answer.

  April 20th 1939.

  Hitler’s birthday. I hope he enjoyed himself!

  May 5th 1939, Agnes had written.

  I overheard someone say at the butcher’s that Chamberlain looks like a turkey who’s missed Christmas!

  Cecily skipped a page.

  June 3rd 1939.

  In Picture Post they say we will be safe from war until perhaps after the harvest. This is what K believes too. I think K gets her information from elsewhere, though.

  Kitty! Had Agnes ever understood how her own sister had betrayed Selwyn?

  August 4th 1939.

  I no longer care about what Selwyn does or doesn’t do. The truth is he only loves C and K is jealous of this! News as bad as ever. I am sure there will be a war.

  Cecily turned a few more pages.

  August 27th 1939.

  Robert Wilson says the Cabinet met this evening and our ambassador flies back to report to Hitler. RW seems to always get the news before anyone else.

  Lucio says this war will be different and will change everything. England will change irreversibly. People will die in their thousands. L said of course people will die but he means something else, entirely. I asked him what he meant and he looked at me with those deep eyes of his. Then he made a gesture with his hands and I thought how foreign the movement was. No one else could have said so much in a gesture. Then instead of answering me directly he told me he had wanted to sleep with me from the very beginning. I was silenced by his love.

  Lucio saw the fruit hanging under the moon.

  This entry was undated.

  ‘A kind of innocence is about to vanish,’ Lucio said. ‘A sort of magic.’

  ‘But I thought magic was just for children,’ Agnes replied.

  ‘No, no, that isn’t what I mean,’ he insisted. ‘There’s a kind of pagan enchantment in existence, here in England; still. Something untamed, left over from another era.’

  It was going to be lost he had said, pointing upwards towards the sheltering sky. Fish-shaped spots of moonlight had swum in the darkness; a bat moved its cloak, about to perform a burlesque, making them both laugh.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Lucio had told Agnes, holding her close. ‘I’m simply in love and talking nonsense!’

  Further on, Agnes had written,

  August 30th 1939.

  I am frightened for Cecily. And in an odd way, for the house, too. What the war might do to it. Palmyra House is grand in a way that is unusual for Suffolk. The architect who built it believed houses were created with their own personalities and took very little from those who owned them. Nature rather than nurture was the architect’s theory. We could offer the house very little by way of addition to its character. Three generations have lived here already and barely skimmed the surface of its aloofness.

  I brought Bach to its rooms but it was already too late to disprove the architect’s views. There was moss on its roof, wisteria growing across its brow and honeysuckle climbing on its back
. And I noticed the front door opened into the hallway so that if you stood by the door you could see from front to back. My mother told me that was bad luck, room for an ill wind to blow straight through.

  The diary stopped. There were pages missing but a photograph was stuck to a page, it showed Cecily in Agnes’ arms, waving her blurry hands. She had a baby expression on her face.

  24.

  DRUNK NOW, CECILY closed Agnes’ notebook knowing that while some things were a little clearer, others were still obscured. Shock had slowed her down but finding another piece of paper she wrote:

  Matters Outstanding.

  Visit the grave. If I must.

  Whose fault was it? Mine.

  Would it have changed anything if we hadn’t met Daddy that night?

  She shook her head.

  The pyrotechnics of that night, the high-wire acts of heartbreaking daring were far worse than any detonated bomb. Worse than a war brought on by an enemy.

  When the news of a fire on the pier and the discovery of the charred remains of a female who could well be her daughter reached her, Agnes’ first confused thought was that Cecily had gone to the seafront in the middle of the night. But then she saw, on her mad dash up to the girls’ bedroom (which someone had locked from the inside) that neither of them were there. It was at this point she broke down. It was how Robert Wilson found her. Robert Wilson on his way back to Palmyra House, following a police car that carried Selwyn Maudsley. Robert Wilson grim-faced, but still not in full possession of all the terrible facts, colliding with a soaking wet and white-faced Cecily. Other feet would soon follow, traipsing over the house, turning on lights, forgetting about the blackouts in their eagerness to be distracted by something more immediate than this wretched war with its darkness and its unknown dangers.

  While over by the pier the fire was lighting up the sky. It didn’t seem to care about Mr Hitler, the Prime Minister or the rules of the Home Office. The fire had its own rules.

  Imagine the scene.

  September 3rd. At midnight (or thereabouts) Rose left. Tom, waving a jar of glow-worms, and Cecily hell-bent on saving her sister from Captain Pinky the traitor, had followed soon after.

  Children copying adult games.

  Tom had caught twenty-seven glow-worms, he would tell Agnes afterwards.

  Outside a star crossed the sky like a useless wish. Cecily caught its flight with the corner of her eye but failed to make one. A shock like cold electricity darted up her arm and into her heart for Selwyn was standing on the spot where the star had fallen. He had just lit a cigar.

  ‘Well, well,’ he said, but he didn’t sound all that angry. ‘So what are you two up to?’

  In the town a little earlier, the Molinellos had eaten their evening meal in silence. All day the ice-cream parlour had filled up with worried Italians desperate to listen to talk about news bulletins so that Mario decided to close the shop. He did not wish to be seen as being frivolous and besides, his daughter Franca was inconsolable at Joe’s departure.

  There was also another issue on Mario’s mind, one a little difficult to discuss with Anna. He ate his excellent risotto ai funghi in silent abstraction, slurping a little for the food was hot and he was hungry. Anna watched him. It was in this unusually subdued atmosphere that, in the end, Lucio raised the subject.

  ‘Mussolini is going to cause trouble for us,’ he said.

  ‘Rubbish!’ Mario said quickly, his mouth full of food.

  He wished Anna would stop staring at him.

  ‘It’s true,’ Lucio said.

  Mario looked hard at his brother who pushed his plate of almost untouched risotto away.

  ‘I’ve already told you,’ Lucio told him.

  ‘What’s wrong with the risotto?’ Anna asked. ‘Why is no one eating?’

  No one answered.

  ‘Just because war’s been announced,’ Anna said with exceptional forcefulness, ‘it doesn’t mean we don’t need to eat.’

  She was looking at Franca’s bent head.

  ‘I’m not hungry,’ Lucio said. ‘And I’ve got to go out soon.’

  ‘I am!’ Carlo said, helping himself.

  ‘Perhaps we should leave the social club,’ Giorgio suggested.

  ‘Good idea,’ Carlo said.

  ‘Don’t talk with your mouth full,’ Anna told him, switching to Italian.

  ‘That’s a ridiculous idea. Why should we leave the club? It’s for Italians. We are Italians.’

  ‘It’s a good idea,’ Lucio said. ‘I mean, because of the rumours.’

  Instantly everyone jumped on him.

  ‘What rumours?’

  ‘Is there something you know that we don’t, Lucio?’

  ‘You’d better tell us.’

  Lucio looked at his brother. Tell them, his look said.

  ‘It’s all nonsense,’ Mario cried. ‘It’s only that old fear about the Fascists.’

  ‘Ah!’ Anna said, triumph in her eyes. ‘I knew it!’

  She looked like someone who had been digging for a splinter in a piece of flesh and had finally found it. Mario tried another tactic.

  ‘It’s a stupid rumour. And it doesn’t affect us.’

  ‘So why are you worried?’ Anna asked.

  In answer her husband reached for the carafe and poured himself more wine.

  ‘I’m not. I’m just concerned about supplies now that the war is definite. You know our stock of wine will diminish.’

  ‘Oh Papi, this war isn’t going to last that long!’ Beppe told him. ‘We couldn’t possibly drink our cellar dry before it finishes!’

  Carlo laughed, uneasily.

  ‘What is it, Papi?’ Franca asked.

  Mario drained his glass and turned to his daughter.

  ‘Cara, you must not worry about Joe,’ he told her, softly. ‘He will be safe. But… Lucio is right, this rumour is a different matter.’

  They heard a seagull’s plaintive cry. Mario looked around the table. Everyone he loved was in this room.

  ‘It is about the arrest of some Jewish people I know,’ he said, heavily and at last.

  The silence lengthened.

  ‘In Germany?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Where then?’

  ‘In London,’ Mario said, reluctantly.

  ‘One of the tribunals that decide the fate of aliens,’ Lucio told them, taking up the story, ‘has interned a group of Jews. Guido Murucchi is one of them. He’s one of our suppliers.’

  ‘How d’you mean, interned? Where?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Lucio said.

  Without looking at his wife, Mario lit a cigarette. Normally Anna did not allow smoking at the dinner table but now she said nothing. If they could intern Jews…

  ‘Exactly,’ Lucio told her.

  ‘Does it mean they’re prisoners, Papi?’ Franca asked.

  ‘Yes. It’s a prison camp.’

  ‘It can’t be true,’ Beppe said.

  Disbelief spread on the tablecloth, staining it with fear. The smoke from Mario’s cigarette rose above their heads like incense. Anna wouldn’t look at him. She desperately wanted to go to her grotto and light a candle. The last of the sugo lay congealed in its dish.

  ‘Oh my God,’ Franca murmured.

  Her eyes were magnified by unshed tears. She stared at her uncle. He had not talked to her but Anna had told her that Lucio loved Joe’s mother. Their families were intertwined like trees in an orchard. Suddenly Franca was desperately afraid.

  ‘We have to be careful,’ Lucio told them. ‘We must get out of the social club, immediately.’

  ‘But Zio, we are not Jews.’

  ‘We are Italian,’ Lucio told his nephews sternly. ‘We are not English. I told your father this a year ago. The social club is not a good thing.’

  A chill went around the warm, homely room.

  ‘Rubbish,’ Mario bellowed, galvanised, outraged, ready for a fight.

  He began speaking in dialect.

  ‘That would amoun
t to closing the door to our home. What about our relatives in Bratto? What about our passports? What if we can’t get our passports renewed? What then?’

  ‘Papi, I don’t want to go back to Italy,’ Franca cried.

  Lucio drained his wine.

  ‘Mussolini is Mr Hitler’s friend.’

  ‘Italy is neutral.’

  Anna rose from the table. There was no use in any further speculation. She indicated to Franca to help clear the table. Her daughter needed to keep busy. Joe would be back in a fortnight. As if on cue the telephone rang and everyone looked weakly at it. It was Joe.

  But later, after the rosary, after her prayers, when they were alone in bed, Anna asked Mario what was really going on.

  ‘Nothing’s going on. Britain is at war, that’s all.’

  ‘So what has the social club got to do with that?’

  ‘We’re Italian.’

  ‘So you keep saying.’

  He was in two minds, uncertain how to go on.

  ‘But we might not always be neutral. Have you heard people talk of the fifth column, at the club?’

  Of course she had heard the expression. But why would it affect them?

  ‘Fascists. The British are worried about enemy aliens.’

  Anna was puzzled. Mario was talking in a strange way as though he was repeating something he had heard.

  ‘Who is saying this?’

  Again he hesitated.

  ‘Lucio found out. But you must not repeat a word of this. Understand?’

  She nodded in the darkness. But how did Lucio know?

  ‘Senti, Anna, listen to me. Lucio is involved in certain dangerous things, things he can’t talk about. He knows that sooner or later all foreigners in England will be in danger. That includes Italians.’

  Still she didn’t understand.

  ‘There is a feeling amongst some people in the British government, that the fifth column is growing. That Mussolini has Italian spies here. We are Italian. Now do you understand?’