The Last Night

by Cesca Major

  But Mary, her friend, watching her now with large brown eyes, always ready to smile sweetly from one side of her mouth, a blush creeping over her milky cheeks when she laughed. She had felt more like a sister to her these last few years. During the war; they’d spent their days dipping in and out of each other’s houses, Mary quick to appear of a morning, escaping her dad’s bleak moods. Mary’s mum had walked out on it all, but Mary had had nowhere to go. Abigail and her mum had become Mary’s family and the girls had shared everything with each other. They had so many plans for the future, for the adventures they would go on, their travels taking them across the Atlantic. And now she was leaving her. For a moment Abigail could feel the guilt stealing into her veins, pumping round her body, straining to be felt.

  She had dreamt about Mary last night, standing in the middle of the Downs, turning slowly in a circle. Not a soul around. And Abigail had watched her lost in this sea of grass, unable to call to her. Mary circling, the long grass tickling her ankles as she turned, her eyes scanning the edges of the Downs, moving along the lines of bushes, past the tower, searching for someone, hoping for someone. And Abigail stuck to her spot, looking on, helpless.

  Abigail stood up suddenly and Mary jolted upright as Abigail brushed her thighs with the palm of her hands. She was brusque, ducking out of Mary’s proffered arm, wrapping her coat around her like a shield, tucking her hands under her armpits, still feeling cold.

  ‘I need to get back, I’ve got so much to pack up, to do.’

  Mary stood opposite her, placing her hat on her head, smoothing the strands of hair that had broken free. ‘I can help.’

  ‘No, I… You have work and I need to…’ She wasn’t sure what she needed, but her tone was enough to ensure Mary didn’t argue. Her friend’s mouth closed, her expression hurt. It made Abigail turn on her heel.

  She left her standing by the tower looking after her. She left her abruptly, as if she were leaving for Devon that day, as if she had already left.

  IRINA

  Irina wrapped the cardigan around herself and stepped outside. Although the days were getting longer there was still a chill in the air, as if winter wanted to cling on, wasn’t yet ready to say goodbye. She opened the back gate of the garden, reaching to unlatch it, the flimsy planks of wood worn over the years, bending to the weather. The sound of it clicking back into place made Irina feel lighter. The narrow alleyway behind the gardens smelt of damp and weeds. Ivy spilled over the back walls, out of control, twisting into the thin branches that invaded the space overhead and hid the sun from view; the slits of light never reached far and the ground was soft and pockmarked with puddles, leaving mud on the soles of her boots.

  Emerging onto the high street always came as a shock, the sky opening up in front of her, the high stone wall to her side snaking around the backs of the houses and out of view. The high street was picture-postcard pretty with its chocolate-box cottages, thatched roofs, single chimneys, roses clambering up trellises and window boxes crammed with different-coloured flowers. Shops had tables under awnings in front of them and people stepped out into the narrow street to manoeuvre round shoppers gossiping on the pavement.

  Today clouds hung plump and still above the scene, the bright patchwork greens of the fields rolling away behind the town. Irina moved down the road, past bookshops and other antique stores, their windows loaded up with treasures: lace, wood, mirrors, miniature oil paintings in oval gold frames. Irina’s attention was always half-caught by them – a hunting scene, a silver-backed hairbrush, porcelain figurines – the sight of them a comfort as she headed towards the corner of a side street and a small café with its striped awning rolled up and one or two customers sitting inside.

  Pushing into the café, automatically ducking her head despite being a good foot shorter than the door, she said a quiet hello to the man behind the counter. His features, weathered and wild, seemed at odds with the tiny shop, his frame too large to be contained by such a feminine environment of chintz and china. He gave her a warm smile of recognition, a gold filling glinting from a back tooth, and pointed to a table in the centre of the room. ‘I’ll be over in a second.’

  The polished pine table rocked on the uneven floor as she leant on it, and the centrepiece, the head of a single flower sitting in a delicate vintage tea cup of water, wobbled. Around her the bumpy stone of the whitewashed walls was broken up by black and white photographs of seaside scenes from the turn of the last century: men with their trousers rolled to the ankle and flat caps on their heads, woman wearing large hats draped in ribbons tiptoeing gingerly over the sands. On the counter was a side plate filled with coins and an ageing till with an RNLI donation box in the shape of a plastic boat.

  In the back she could make out the sound of water running, pans clashing and the gentle buzz of a kitchen. A blend of different aromas billowed softly around the café – coffee, basil, cheeses – as she waited for the menu. She knew what she was ordering but she liked the calming atmosphere, the measured process; she felt her back relaxing, the knots loosening in her shoulders. Blurred shapes of people moved past a thin curtain of gauze, an inch-wide crack in the middle showing every detail as they passed, but only for a second.

  She ate in silence, chewing carefully on the food and reading her book, turning the pages slowly. She was lost in the story, running through a house in Norfolk, deep inside the heroine’s head. She asked for the bill by making a neat sign in the air and, as ever, it was carried over to her on a small silver tray. She left money on top of the receipt and smiled a thank you, closing her book in the process and making to put it back in her bag. It was in that moment, as she turned her head, that she saw him. A brief second, so clear, in the crack where the curtains didn’t quite meet.

  His floppy blond hair pushed off his forehead with a huff; his favourite jumper, the blue knitted one he never took off. Her hand reached out for the table, which tipped up towards her as she held the edge and followed the boy with her eyes. He had moved behind the gauze now, was another indistinct blur behind netting, anonymous. She uncrossed her legs quickly, her book still in one hand, her bag in the other, forgetting everything else as she made it to the door of the café.

  She stepped out onto the street and looked left, her lips pursed tightly, breath suspended as she wondered what she would see. The street ahead was empty: no boy, no anybody. It curved away downhill; on the other side a couple hovered outside a row of small shops. A man at the post box with a walking stick was looking over at her. She blinked once, then a puff of frustration behind her from a woman with a pram jolted her out of her reverie.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she mumbled, feeling goosebumps break out on her skin. She stepped back inside the café and the woman pushed on with a brief glare of annoyance.

  The man behind the counter glanced up briefly, giving her a quizzical look as she returned to her table to collect her cardigan from the back of her chair. Leaving without a word to him, she walked quickly back along the road in the direction of the shop and the shady quiet of her workspace. Before stepping into the cool of the alleyway she couldn’t help looking behind her once more, hoping for another glimpse of that blue jumper, of that fair hair. He was nowhere to be seen.

  ABIGAIL

  It was strange seeing her sister, dressed in a fitted pattern dress with a full skirt, her waist nipped in, a cardigan thrown over her shoulders, dark brown hair pinned in curls, patent heels clip-clopping towards her. She seemed to be of another time, to have stepped straight out of the pre-war years, the sun bright behind her, haloing her in light.

  Abigail had never felt drearier. She glanced down at her own dress, the hem decidedly uneven after a last-minute effort to fix it before she left Bristol, her brown suede heels scuffed at the toe, a grease stain on the arm of her jumper, which was faded and worn. She looked as if she had travelled, all stale smells and hair loose and mussed up after she’d fallen asleep waiting for the
connection in Minehead.

  Abigail wanted to duck out of the greeting as she stepped off the coach, embraced in a cloud of Miss Dior which overpowered the rest: the smells of the sea, the seaweed lining the banks of the harbour. Her sister stayed there, her hug tight, sharp, definite. Abigail was frozen, both hands clutching her luggage. Then she allowed herself a moment of relief. This was someone who was certain, sure-footed. She let herself be hugged and pressed; she would be told what to do, she could relax as, for the first time in weeks, someone took away the need to make a decision.

  She had stumbled off the coach, relieved to be on solid ground after the rattling descent into the village down Countisbury Hill. The screech of the brakes and the momentary alarm that they would end up in a scrunched heap of metal at the bottom had made her squeak with nervousness. The bang and clatter of everyone piling out, pushing down the aisle with children dressed in long socks and shorts, carpet bags clutched to chests, a hatbox bumping past the seats, an elderly woman oblivious to the commotion, a Yorkshire terrier asleep on her lap.

  ‘How was the journey? You poor thing, it’s a long way. Is that all you’ve brought? I’d have bags and bags.’ Her sister’s voice rose, unfamiliar and confident. Abigail watched her mouth moving as if from a distance, slow to respond.

  ‘It was fine. I had an Eccles cake.’

  ‘… I’ve got Edith to put out some lunch, I hope you’re hungry, you must be, and we have so much to do…’

  The voice faded in and out. The climb and subsequent drop down the hill had made Abigail’s ears pop; now sounds were louder than before, her head fuzzy. She turned to wave at the coach driver, who raised a hand in return.

  Her sister was already walking away in the direction from which she’d arrived as Abigail rushed to keep up, her suitcase and hatbox banging against her legs. Her head was snapping left and right as she took in the village. It was as if she’d been dropped into a world entirely different from the one she’d left: the place was surrounded by banks of green rising sharply at every turn, and churning water below them. Along one riverbank was a line of cottages, people walking arm in arm, neat flowered borders, smoke rising from chimneys. In the harbour boats idled, two men called to each other, hands shielding their eyes. And then her sister: years older, a completely different person from the teenage girl she remembered. Her lips were plumper, outlined in a deep pink, and she had winged brown lines on her eyelids, thin but noticeable, rouge on her cheeks and nylon stockings on her legs. As she marched a little way ahead, back straight, chin tilted up, she looked like a model in a picture magazine, spectacular in this tiny corner of north Devon. It gave Abigail hope that all was not lost.

  Connie turned in profile, her snub nose perfect. ‘It isn’t far; it is a little steep towards the end. I did tell Larry it might have been nice to use the car, but he…’ She trailed off, head twisting back around.

  ‘That’s fine, I don’t mind walking.’ Abigail puffed, keen to please, feeling twelve again, traipsing around the streets of Bristol after her.

  ‘We’ll go up behind the Pavilion, there are steps there. Do you dance? There are sometimes dances.’ She threw the question behind her.

  Abigail nodded, her breaths coming out in short gasps. ‘Yes… dance.’

  ‘Good. We will, we will,’ Connie muttered, seemingly to herself. ‘Come on.’ She paused at the bottom of a set of stairs. ‘Halfway there now.’

  Abigail looked at the small café built into one of the sea walls, the steamed-up windows, the cake stands on display through the glass, and felt her stomach rumble, the Eccles cake a rather long time ago. Connie wasn’t pausing, marching them across a bridge where two rivers met, Abigail peeking over the side to see the water hurtling past.

  She was sweating by the time they reached the house, the narrow path, very steep in places, making her thighs burn with the effort. The leather handles of the suitcase were slippery and unpleasant in her hand and the hatbox string bit into her palm. She could feel her hair sticking to her neck and forehead as she followed her sister onto a gated driveway, two stone-ball finials marking the entrance.

  The house was perched on the side of the cliff, a line of trees obscuring the sea behind it. Abigail stared up at the vast redbrick building, its dormer windows seeming miles away, the tall, double chimney stacks silhouetted against the sky. They moved through the porch, past a cast-iron boot scraper and a pair of boots abandoned next to the mat. Her sister fiddled in her bag for a key to the front door, which had a polished brass ring in the centre of the glossy paint.

  They entered a wide hallway bordered with an elaborate cornice. There was a hat stand and hooks for their coats and a gleaming oak table with a mirror suspended above it. The door to her right opened onto an enormous living room that looked out over the sea. French doors led out onto a large semi-circular stone terrace that provided the best views from its white wrought-iron table and two chairs surrounded by pots full of lavender. The house was decorated like the centre spread in My Home magazine. Elegant sculptures of sinewy women, bare-breasted and lounging on plinths, were scattered about the room; there was a peppermint chaise longue; a book lay abandoned on a mahogany table with spindly legs that sat beneath an enormous gilt-framed mirror. Abigail couldn’t help compare the Bristol house with this grandeur, worrying already that she should have wiped her shoes at the door.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind stairs,’ Connie said with a tinkling laugh.

  They climbed to a first-floor landing, the carpet springy beneath their feet, and turned up another flight: oil paintings hanging in spaces, polished furniture, freshly plucked flowers in cut-crystal vases. The air was sweet with perfume and Abigail felt her head spinning with everything she was taking in. She could feel the sweat collecting in her hairline and under her arms, the suitcase heavy in her hand as she puffed up the last set of stairs.

  Connie stood, impeccable, at the doorway, a smile on her painted lips as she prepared to push open the door. With a flourish she showed Abigail inside. The single bed was covered in a baby-pink rug and an ancient teddy bear was propped up against the pillow, perhaps a sign that her sister also imagined she was still the young girl she had left in Bristol all those years ago. A posy of daisies sat in fresh water alongside a small lamp and a Bible squeezed onto the bedside table. An oak dressing table in the bay window looked out over the sea.

  ‘It’s beautiful, it’s all lovely, thank you,’ Abigail said, looking around at the space, the sun warming the room, the glass polished. She swallowed as a flash of her mum’s face in the dull quiet of their Bristol house appeared in her mind. It was really over, she was here now, in this place with a sister she hadn’t seen in over a decade.

  There was a noise downstairs and Connie patted her hair, checking her appearance in the dressing-table mirror.

  ‘That’s Larry,’ she said quickly, pursing her lips and then releasing them.

  Abigail could hear the sound of keys being thrown down onto a metal surface, a pause followed by footsteps, then a quick call to his wife.

  ‘We’re up here,’ Connie trilled in a new voice, two tones higher.

  The footsteps were on the stairs now, then came the top of a man’s head, a thick neck on too-narrow shoulders and finally, crowding into the corridor, turning the corner and blocking the view behind him, a man who seemed all limbs. Thick eyebrows that almost met in the middle, fair hair receding at the crown. His gangly frame filled the doorway as he stood on the threshold, staring at them both.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ he said, turning to Abigail, starting at her shoes, pausing over the scuff marks, rising slowly to her knees, making her suddenly want to cross her legs or curl herself into a ball before this scrutiny, over her dress, waist, breasts, a flicker in his expression and then her face. Not a word.

  Her sister’s high laugh filled the silence. ‘Larry, meet Abigail.’

  ‘M
y little sister-in-law,’ he said, taking a step towards her, tipping an imaginary hat. A slow smile crept over his face. ‘Welcome.’

  IRINA

  Irina had finished for the day; the walnut lamp base was now packaged in brown paper and ready for pick-up the next day. She had worked late, switching on the overhead strip light as the sun seeped away from the window. Outside, the garden was a patch of greyish shadow and the few stars were muffled by cloud. She washed out her coffee mug in the stained butler’s sink in the corner and placed it upturned on the side, the wood marked with wet rings from earlier that day.

  She checked the doors of the shop, the furniture forming unfamiliar shapes in the darkness as she pressed past. With everything quiet she climbed the stairs at the back of the workshop, her hand reaching up automatically for the light switch. A flicker and the landing was illuminated: the pot plant that had seen better days, and her flat door with the brush mat outside. She turned the key in the lock, heard the latch give, stepped inside and threw her keys onto a plate on the sideboard.

  Moving though to her living room, feeling the night weigh down on her, she turned on lamps and filled the space with noise. The flat had been hers now for four years; her mother had helped her with the deposit, had said she’d been saving it, that Dad would have wanted it. All the furniture in it was reclaimed and restored: the sofa was made of soft brown leather, the Persian rug a pattern of fine thread, its colours deeper in the lamplight, the swept empty fireplace was surrounded by ceramic tiles, its mantelpiece bare apart from two candlesticks and a photograph of back then. In the corner a wooden trunk contained letters and diaries from a half-forgotten time.