by Roma Tearne
In the church the light stained by glass fell on the high altar, while fresh flowers left traces from another, more recent summer funeral. A box for offerings stood empty beside a few flickering candles. A font devoid of water waited to be blessed. There was no one sitting on the polished pews but Christ was ever present. In wood and gold if not in flesh. His mother, her blue sash represented by a flick of paint, carried an image of her son. Both mother and child stared at Cecily with mild curiosity in their eyes.
‘At the heart of my life,’ the Mother of God told Cecily, speaking directly to her ‘is a murder. There’s no getting away from it.’
Cecily noticed the statue spoke with an Italian accent.
‘They tell the story, everywhere,’ the voice confided. ‘All over the world. Though not always from my perspective.’
She laughed. Cecily had never heard a statue laugh before. It was, in a sense, a cynical laugh. There was a pause during which the tide rolled away. Cecily saw there were painted pearls in the statue’s eyes.
The candle flickered. Cecily sat on the second pew. Just as she once had. Other ghosts came and joined her, sitting quietly in twos and threes.
They were wearing old-fashioned clothes, smelling of camphor, their faces bathed in sepia light.
‘We don’t belong in this place any more,’ they whispered. ‘The lifespan of our story is over. Forget us!’
Cecily looked up at the wooden rafters where twenty-nine years ago voices had been raised in song.
‘The first sorrow that has come to our land,’ the vicar had said.
In spite of himself he had given Cecily a look. Pure evil, he had admitted to Aunt Kitty later. Cecily knew, she had overheard.
The rafters looked down at her, now. They reported that a shell fired immediately before the Blitz had just missed striking the spire. Something good happened, then.
The Mother of God, ignoring all the ghosts, told Cecily that repetition was the essence of storytelling. No matter how many retellings, it would never lose its power.
‘Love,’ she said, with certainty, ‘has an eternal flame.’
Holding her son, watching him, powerless to change the narratives other people attributed to him, he remained, nevertheless, her story, she continued. Growing, leaving, going his own way, like an adolescent, misinterpreted, given speech bubbles to suit the whims of other men, still he had remained her son until the end. Entranced, Cecily listened.
From somewhere the scent of frankincense interrupted the smell of the sea.
Then, unexpectedly, sitting in the church now filled with light, Cecily became acutely aware of another presence behind her. Human, not celestial; flesh not spirit. She heard footsteps on tiles and the creaking of the pew behind her. She had a sudden clear insight but dared not turn round. Her face flushed delicately. My God, she thought, swallowing her fear, not knowing what she should do. She was frightened in case she had got it wrong. So she stared unblinkingly at the candle flame, its centre as blue as a pair of eyes from long ago.
Can love mutate, she asked herself? Was it wrong if it did? Was it wrong to look for love amongst the ashes? She was that dreadful thing, a rich woman unable to gather moss.
Sitting in the second pew in the church beside the sea these twenty-nine long years later, she remembered all of this as though it were unsteady footage shot with a hand-held camera.
A moving picture on old 35mm film. In vivid colour. Accidentally tinted in a piercing, acid blue.
Blue.
Blue like her sister’s eyes.
Blue like the room in which her father had bedded her mother.
Blue like all the bluebirds Cecily had never seen.
The Mother of God watched Cecily as she sat on the second pew. She could not offer any comfort because she was stuck on her pedestal and could not move. She was a handicapped Mother, flawed like all mothers, everywhere.
Behind her, Cecily felt rather than saw the stranger move slightly. Her heart missed a beat and her hands began to shake. She was certain she knew who it was. But why was he here? Had he followed her across the beach? The heat that had started up on her face now increased. She was too petrified to move in case the sea had finally arrived to drown her.
There was nothing else for it.
Plucking up courage, Cecily turned and saw who it was that waited so patiently for her.
It was Carlo!
As still as a waterbird at rest.
Something caught in Cecily’s throat, something else stole her voice.
She felt faint.
Why was he here? How had he found her?
And the sky outside turned a delicate blue like a curlew’s egg in spring.
There were now two candles in the rack.
Dripping wax, like tears.
Cecily and Carlo stood staring at them. Anything was better than looking at each other.
The Curate walked in smiling bland words of welcome.
‘Are you from this parish?’ he asked and when they didn’t answer, added, ‘Welcome, anyway. The church is always open.’
The Curate knew the telltale signs of pain even when it was well hidden. He kept a slight smile on his face. Business as usual, it seemed to say.
Cecily and Carlo were silent. Then, without a word they turned as one and walked down the aisle. Towards the open door and the sea where a squadron of seagulls, white against the tender summer air, docked, all together, near a fishing boat. And where the remains of a tattered pier could still be seen faintly in the distance, still standing, though only just, on jauntily corroded legs.
26.
HISTORY HAD RETURNED when it was least expected, showing a gentler side. Mellowed over time, it was preparing to tell its tale. Cecily looked at Carlo and looked away, again. What she saw had the force to drown her.
Carlo was wearing dark glasses even though there was hardly any sun. Together they walked without a word towards Palmyra House. Cecily tall and willowy, wearing a violet cardigan that unintentionally matched the colour of her almond-shaped eyes, and a primrose yellow dress, a shade she had always loved. Her face was pale, her dimple deep even in repose, her mouth soft and vulnerable. Carlo saw all of this only dimly. She saw he carried the white stick of the partially sighted. But, perhaps because of the faintness of his vision, what little he did see struck him even more forcefully. Cecily had grown up.
It was soft weather with the quality of a hallucination. Cecily brought herself back across decades. When she smiled at him he was dazzled. Light and shadow raced across the land. Neither spoke but they walked side by side along the footpath towards the house. Cecily did not help him. Carlo seemed to know by touch every bump in the rough ground. Questions he had asked himself for years were surfacing and clamouring to be asked while conversely, she had become tongue-tied.
They were back, both of them; and the year was 1939, again.
All across Europe uniformed soldiers marched to the rhythm of an old terror. The dead piled high, naked, shoeless, armless. And one wantonly bombarded town was no different from another unless their individual stories were told.
What Lucio had wanted more than anything else was to take Agnes away with him to Bratto, to his old home, to the woods and valleys of his childhood. To show her his wife’s grave in the little churchyard behind the church, the same one where Lucio had been christened. To show her his mother’s testaroli oven and the fire made of chestnut wood. But history would decide what could and could not be done. History was the pulse that beat on the earth’s surface. This is what he had told Carlo.
They had heard the rumours of what was being done to foreign nationals. Germans, Austrians, Jews, even. It was said that a camp was being set up to house them. In a few weeks, Lucio’s contacts had warned, an exodus would begin. The men in the War Cabinet were panicking. Not knowing what to make of these rumours, Lucio trusted no one.
‘You must be very careful,’ he told Carlo. ‘You are the one who will have to look after the others if anything were to ha
ppen to me.’
War had only just been declared, his uncle was a reckless man. Carlo feared he was walking into danger. And the look on Lucio’s face as he hurried out was worrying.
Which was why Carlo had followed him that night.
Something moved in the trees. One small animal stalking another.
Lucio hadn’t gone to Palmyra House. He changed his mind, decided to let Agnes sleep. It was late and the younger children were in the house with her. Tonight was her first night without her son. Only sleep would help. So Lucio decided to swim in the river instead. He had no idea that Carlo was following him.
There was an icy current in the river. All other sounds were obliterated beneath the water.
The sound of explosives.
The sound of police cars screeching.
And ambulances bringing stretchers for the dead.
Lucio swam, leaving no ripples. He felt as though a thousand ancient eyes watched him as he went across to the other bank. He held his clothes above his head to keep them dry, the coolness of the water and the river tiredness in his muscles made him unaccountably happy. In the darkness a smile drenched his face. It will be all right, he told himself. The war will pass, all that is needed is patience.
Breaking off his story, Carlo began to sing the words of an old song they used to sing as children. Listening, Cecily felt nailed to the spot.
Try to remember the kind of September
When grass was green and corn was yellow
Try to remember when life was so tender that
Love was an ember about to billow.
It was chance that made Carlo see Selwyn cycling towards the Ness but it was curiosity that made him leave his uncle swimming happily in the river and follow Selwyn instead. To Carlo, Selwyn had always been a slight enigma. Even when they had played against each other at the tennis match, Carlo had no sense of the man. In this time of danger, Carlo felt he should heed his uncle’s words more urgently.
Investigate everything, trust no one.
There was something strange in the way Selwyn, throwing his bicycle in the grass, broke into a run.
‘I was a little like you, in those days, Cecci,’ Carlo said.
The old familiar name rocked gently between them.
The tide was going out. Neither Selwyn, nor Carlo following behind, needed a boat to cross to the Ness. There was a small underground alcove at the jetty used once as a storage place by local fisherman to keep their tackle. The council had had plans to clear it out but the war had made them forget. Selwyn waded to the island. From the sea end of the Ness it was possible to see the faint outline of the Martello tower in the distance and also the town’s car park. But for that and the white foam of the sea, empty now of ships, there was nothing.
Carlo heard the piercing whistle of a curlew across the marshes.
It was the way, crouching in the shadows, he saw what happened next. He saw Selwyn open the door of the storage space as if there were no time to lose. He saw him search frantically until he had found what he wanted. Carlo was puzzled.
Selwyn turned his torch off and hurried out in the direction of the old wooden pier. Carlo waited. In the barely discernable gloom the structure was a sad sight. A dark, broken place next to a dark, abandoned place full of wind, bones and sighs. Selwyn crossed to the furthest end of what was grandly called the promenade. There was an old boat with oars beached behind the barbed wire. There were notices everywhere full of warnings.
Beware Of Rotting Boards,
Keep Out,
Exposed Wires.
Selwyn walked under the wire and stood looking at the boarded-up building.
Walking back towards Palmyra House, twenty-nine years later, this is what Carlo told Cecily.
‘It’s where Daddy kept his radio equipment,’ Cecily said, interrupting. ‘I know now. All his documents were inside. It came out in the papers at the time but I’ve only just read about it.’
Carlo nodded.
‘He thought he was finished if Robert Wilson went there.’
Again Carlo nodded, letting her speak, knowing intuitively it was the first time she had voiced these things.
‘And he panicked, I suppose,’ Cecily said.
She sounded infinitely sad.
That night the roar of the North Sea had been deafening, Carlo told her, now. Then something had caught his attention, some slight movement.
‘I hid in the shadows and watched. It was quite hard to see but I was sure that near the Martello tower, on the road across the marshes, was a tiny light.’
The hated Robert Wilson was looking through a pair of binoculars.
‘He had gone there to meet Rose,’ Cecily said.
Carlo hesitated.
‘Rose was in love with him, you know,’ Cecily continued.
She wanted to say more but the constriction in her throat stopped her.
‘We thought Robert Wilson was a spy,’ she said instead. ‘We thought he might kidnap her and take her to Germany!’
‘Oh Cecci,’ Carlo said. ‘You were such a little girl.’
They were both silent.
‘Some years later,’ Carlo continued, ‘long after the war was over, my mother told me she had seen Rose that night.’
Rose on her bike, riding past her old school, passing the florist and the little café with its blacked out windows where the photograph of the King was displayed on the blind. Past the timbered meeting house, the bookshop, the butcher, the baker. Riding fast, past the ice-cream parlour.
‘She must have been making for the pier,’ Carlo said.
That final landmark of the town of Bly.
An object more absent than present.
And it was to this wretched place that beautiful, reckless Rose went. Determined to make her own future, change it from that of her mother’s, but unaware that the future had plans of its own for her.
Fragile clouds had scudded across the inky sky. Assassins lurked in the shadows. Half an hour earlier Rose had set her shoulder to the job in hand and rowed steadily across to the Ness. The tide was in. When she’d reached the old pavilion with its witch’s hat for a roof, she scrambled onto dry land, dragging the boat up to be hidden behind the shed. The door opened with a push.
Inside the pavilion a chill crept up through the floorboards. Selwyn thinking nothing of it, thinking his daughter was at the Martello tower, poured his kerosene around the base of the building.
Fear kept father and daughter silent.
Guilt flared its match.
Rose had stolen all the money in her father’s study cupboard. It had been the last thing she had done.
At his trial (so Carlo heard years later) Selwyn Maudsley admitted to starting the fire. At his trial he took responsibility for her death.
The Molinellos were not present at his trial. Before it took place they had had trials of their own to deal with.
It was not the funeral, Carlo told Cecily, that he remembered, but the station platform. Men in uniform, knapsacks on the ground, women weeping through their goodbyes. Embroidered handkerchiefs fluttering in the fresh sea breeze.
Goodbye.
God bless.
Write when you can.
So long, cheerio.
All promises are made in order to be broken, he had thought, his mind numbed by lack of sleep.
Cecily hadn’t seen him. Agnes, steering her by her elbow with one hand, a bag that looked as though it might break in the other, had been too busy crying to notice him. But Carlo had observed both her and an Agnes changed beyond all recognition. Was it possible she might have gone grey overnight?
And Cecily, Carlo had thought, bewildered by it all, where were they sending her? He remembered shock. Cecily was innocent.
Now as they reached Palmyra House, Cecily opened the door and memories rushed out with outstretched arms. The past exploding like firecrackers in their faces. Carlo saw peeling wall-paper. The patches of plaster showing underneath had combined with damp and rot to give
the appearance of a gigantic bruise. Cook, long dead, waved at him from behind the old range.
Would you children like some apple turnover?
Carlo had loved her cooking. Rose used to laugh at the way he wolfed down everything Cook gave him.
‘She loves you!’ Rose used to say.
Cook had died many years before Agnes. Had she lived she would not have let the house get into the state it did. The walnut tree, struck by lightning four years before, still had a branch that gave a harvest large enough to fill a sack. The original one that Agnes had dragged towards the door before she died had rotted away and been eaten by mice but even now, each summer, walnuts fell to the ground. A smaller leaf shoot was growing up from one of the cracks in the earth. Carlo stared.
Inside the pantry he saw dimly a stack of empty ice-cream boxes with blurry labels. They had been brought over for the tennis match and never taken back. Moving closer, seeing his father’s handwriting faintly on the box was very nearly Carlo’s undoing. He placed his white stick against the door and sat on the chair Cecily found for him. Sea damp had laid siege to the house. The questions clamouring in his head were stilled by the things he darkly saw. Time travelled past him swiftly. Rose, was what he saw. All complete. Much quieter. A little older. But Rose, nevertheless.
She handed him a mug of tea. He accepted, confused. The last time he had seen Cecily she hadn’t been able to make tea. Then Cecily brought her face closer to his and he saw his mistake.
She was lovely to him. Her slender neck. Her hair. Her small-boned face. Her long fingers, the sadness of her smile.
It was Cecci, not Rose!
We had the experience, Cecily was thinking, wondering where she had read these words, but we misunderstood the meaning.
