The Last Pier Part 28

'He was here a moment ago,' Agnes said. 'C, have you seen your father?'

'I have, Mrs Maudsley,' Tom said. 'He's in the car.'

'Can you children fetch him?' Mario said. 'Tell him it is important! Hurry, hurry!'

Beppe was still singing. Anna would remember the song for the rest of her life, remember the look on her second son's face, the sparkling lights, her husband standing with his arm around their daughter.

Anna would remember all of this in the years ahead. And she would remember Agnes in the emerald frock that matched her eyes dancing with her brother-in-law. But she would not recall where little Cecci was.

Selwyn was outside talking to Aunt Kitty.

'You know they have invaded Poland,' Kitty said in a peculiar voice.

They came in then, to hear the announcement of the engagement between English Joe and Italian Franca. Mario, grabbing the microphone, made it all official, after which everyone clapped and clapped and some, chiefly Anna, cried. And Lucio, switching the radio off, wiping tables, squeezed water savagely out of his dishcloth as if it were an unwanted thought, trying not to look at Agnes.

Tomorrow was Sunday. Tomorrow would bring news of the future.

The spotlight followed Franca and her fiance around the dance floor with everyone clapping in time to the music as madness escaped and attached itself to history in the making. Cecily was going to be the bridesmaid. And Rose too.

'Where's Rose?' Cecily asked.

'She's got a headache,' Agnes said.

'd.a.m.n,' whispered Tom. 'There go all our carefully laid plans!'

Fools, thought Lucio. And he poured himself a grappa with a savage movement.

The air cooled.

'Go and check,' Tom demanded, so Cecily went obediently back to the house.

'What are you up to, child?' Cook asked, catching her just as she was sneaking across the doorway. And she caught Cecily's skinny arm. Cook had a way of reading everyone's mind.

'Nothing,' Cecily said.

And she relaxed her hand, cunning as a cat, so that Cook immediately stopped being suspicious and let go of her. Cook was looking for lamps to take into the field.

'Can you look in the cupboard, there's a good girl,' she asked. 'I think there are at least three more there.'

Cecily heard her remove the gla.s.s from one of the lamps and a match was struck. Then she turned up the wick and put the gla.s.s back over the flame and turned round. In the orange glow of the light thrown across the kitchen Cook looked enormous, like a hobgoblin in a fairy tale.

'There's two more, somewhere,' she muttered. 'Ah yes, I've got 'em.'

'They're heavy and too unstable when lit.'

'Don't worry,' Cook said and she gave one of the lamps to Partridge.

Going upstairs Cecily paused by the landing window. She could see the woods ahead.

One grown-up voice was talking to another outside in soft mumbly murmurs.

'It's been a happy day.'

'But now it's all over.'

'We said it would never happen again but we were wrong!'

'There's still a slight chance.'

Cecily tip-toeing distracted, hearing other murmurs, soft rustlings inside the house itself, which, like an itch, needed investigating.

'Give me a little hope... don't you see?'

The voices were drifting away into the trees. In the distance a huge bird, an owl perhaps, hung suspended by an invisible thread. The moon was rising as the stars appeared one by one, like candles being lit.

Now, with the hindsight of twenty-three years, Cecily thought, but everything was different after that.

Now, her body was shaking.

'You've been a long time,' Tom told her when she got back.

But it was Bellamy, still standing stock-still, shocked, white-faced, staring at them all, that Cecily would remember in later years. His expression that night, reflecting so perfectly her own.

'We'll start making the blackout curtains tomorrow,' Agnes was saying.

Were German planes really going to bother with them? Here in Suffolk?

'Not Suffolk,' Joe said and Franca looked and looked at him as if she wanted to learn his face off by heart.

Like a song.

Or the words of a new language.

'Will you have to go back to Italy, Aunty Anna?' Cecily asked, at last.

'No, no of course not! We have been citizens here for too long. We work here. No one will send us back.'

'Now,' Tom hissed, pulling at Cecily's arm, dragging her out of earshot of the adults.

'So? Where is she?' he asked, 'In bed?'

But Cecily had forgotten to check.

'You nincomp.o.o.p,' Tom said. 'She could have been abducted by Pinky for all we know!'

'Don't be silly,' Cecily said.

But even to her own ears the words rang hollow. Tom was looking intently at her.

'Well, where is she, then?'

Cecily wasn't sure. Tom made an exasperated sound.

'He's following her. He's following all of you, even your mother. Even me. You have to see if she's gone out!' Tom said, angrily.

Cecily shook her head. She didn't want to go back to the house. Tom shrugged. Because of a stupid girl their plans for tonight were ruined.

'Would you like a smoke?' he asked, abruptly.

'No thank you.'

'Please yourself,' he said indifferently. 'I'm going to have one.'

In the distance the Italians were still singing o bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao.

In the field small lights flickered like fireflies. It was as if the whole of Italy stood united in that field. Waiting for tomorrow. Then the sky was filled with an explosion of fiery flowers and everyone looked heavenwards and gasped.

'We won't be able to light up the fields like this any more.'

We Won't Be Able To Any More surrounded them in an ever decreasing circle.

'Tomorrow,' Tom said, coming back, his good mood restored. 'We will follow him. You will do as I say.'

Cecily was beginning to hate all Germans.

When her mother came to kiss her goodnight (and yes Rose was in bed), Cecily remembered something she had overheard Lucio say. She asked Agnes what it meant.

'Cruelty is natural,' he had said.

But Agnes would not answer Cecily's question.

'Think of something nice,' she said, instead.

And then she blew out the lamp in order not to break the spell of the night.

Bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao.

The song was still playing in her head when Cecily woke a few hours later to see her sister's hands disappearing through the window. Instantly wide awake, she listened. Someone was talking in a fierce whisper. Cecily frowned, trying to place the voice.

'You don't understand,' Rose was saying, her voice agitated.

Bella ciao, ciao, ciao. The song went on and on in Cecily's head. If she moved Rose might hear her. The window was wide open. There was the squeak of a bicycle and then Rose's urgent voice.

'Oh look! There he goes again.'

Who? thought Cecily. And then Rose again, puzzled, upset.

'I don't know.'

There was another silence below the window that went on for so long that Cecily almost dropped off to sleep again. But then there was the sound of someone struggling up the honeysuckle and a pair of hands appeared again.

'Goodnight,' Rose whispered, hoa.r.s.ely, leaning back out.

She glanced quickly in the direction of Cecily and then, turning back to the window, blew a hasty kiss. Cecily lay rigid, thinking furiously. Something didn't add up. Rose was taking her clothes off as quickly as she could. When she was completely naked she slipped under the covers and sighed. In the faint light from outside Cecily saw her sister's face mysteriously watchful and filled with some secret, terrific pleasure. Was it possible, Cecily wondered, to be watchful and asleep?

The next morning they heard the news that Bellamy's father had killed himself. Bellamy had found him with his boots unlaced. The b.u.t.tons of his trousers were undone showing the thickness of congealed blood on his s.h.i.+rt where the shot had entered the groin. Bellamy's father's head hung stiffly on his chest. The note beside him stated he was the son of an Irish Republican and the thought of another war frightened him.

NOW WITH A new dawn rising over Palmyra House Cecily awoke from another dream. An old dream in an old location, with the same cast of actors playing the same unfinished roles. Rose's suitcase, lined with a honeysuckle print, had featured in it.

The roof of Cecily's mouth felt dry. The returning past, rising like floodwater, threatened to drown her. Terrified, she saw that what she had finally started could not be stopped. When she went downstairs to the kitchen she found the back door open, letting in the day. Perhaps she had forgotten to shut it the night before. She made herself a pot of tea. And finding a piece of paper, drew two columns on it. Just like long-ago Tom.

She would write down everything she could remember. Every little thing.

When the police found Rose's suitcase on the night of September the 4th the war was only one day old.

The case was singed but still intact.

Full of future memories.

Full of things a young girl might pack when planning an elopement.

Full of dreams, hopes and other nonsense.

For instance there were two pearly-b.u.t.toned cardigans, needed for a cold climate in a neutral country. Ice-cream colours, strawberry pink and minty green from a lazy, hazy summertime. Two dresses, one of soft autumn colours and another one for the winter ahead. Gloves, of course. Kid-soft and belonging to Agnes.

Stolen well in advance. (Now that the war was upon them gloves were bound to be hard to come by.) One small yellow suitcase; packed. Carried boldly out through the back door of Palmyra House.

One yellow suitcase leaving home with Rose. Under the circ.u.mstances she needed no suitcase where she was going.

There had been flames of happiness in her heart as she rode off down the country road towards freedom. Love being in the air meant she could have managed without a torch. There had been nothing tentative about her exit. Nothing she regretted leaving behind. But I did nothing, thought Cecily dully, her tea going cold in her hands. I knew and I didn't stop her.

'Oh Rose, don't rock the boat!' Agnes had said.

When had she said that?

'Don't hate your father. There's a war coming. Everything will change and what happened long ago will not matter as it once did.'

Why had she said that?

Rose shouting, 'I won't be like you! Your life is never going to be my future. I won't have a sham of a marriage. I must have love! I won't stay at home working on the farm when there is a war on. I won't, I won't!'