The Last Pier Part 3

She never told Cecily to ask for forgiveness, she gave her a hug instead. Cecily loved her mother with a look.

They packed some envelopes and two ballpoint pens (one leaked), a rubber and a map of England. Cecily wondered if she should rub out Suffolk. If it would be better if it didn't exist any more?

'Promise me you will write?' Agnes asked, her green eyes like fields under water. 'You are going to be a writer, remember.'

But there were things you couldn't do, like write to parts of yourself. How do you write to your arm, or your leg, for instance? Or your heart? And what could you tell your heart that it didn't already know?

'Anything. Nothing. Just write. Tell me you are well.'

Cecily nodded. Might she be told when her father was coming home? Agnes shook her head, ready to cry again. She looked like a thundery cloud.

Better not ask, one of the voices in Cecily's head advised.

Cecily shook her head.

'Why are you shaking your head?' her mother asked. 'Does it hurt?'

And it was then, in that moment, that the miracle happened and her mother did the thing Cecily had been waiting for, for days and days.

She kissed her.

A small knot in Cecily's heart loosened. She tried to ignore the wanting-to-cry feeling.

'Can I take my tin?' she asked when she could breathe again. Really what she wanted was Rose's b.u.t.terfly brooch.

'Of course,' Agnes said too eagerly, and packed it.

Good, good, said the voices in unison.

Steal the brooch when she leaves the room, added one.

Wicked child, admonished the other.

It was to be this way for years. No one noticed that Cecily was never lonely. She was always juggling many conversations in her head. Her quietness was not because she was shy or frightened it was the only way to let the voices have their say.

A long time afterwards, years and years later, when she had hacked at her hair, cropping it in a way that inadvertently showed off her extraordinarily fine collarbones and her delicate lobed ears, she had tried, in a half-hearted way, to get rid of the voices. But they refused to go, saying this was no way to treat old friends. Fair enough, thought Cecily, giving up. And after that she left them to their own devices.

It was the way Greg, the man she was to marry, found her. Talking out loud to a night garden. He fell in love with her abstracted air. She was twenty-two by then. Older than Rose had been when she died.

The war being over, Greg had decided to become a pacifist. Remembering her Aunt Kitty (she no longer lived with her) Cecily thought: shutting the door after the horse had bolted.

Brava! cried the voices in her head, speaking Italian for the first time in years. Startling Cecily with the sound of it, for she had not yet made acquaintance with her addiction to Italian.

a.s.sociating the word with Greg (foolish girl) she married him but then grew restless when they made love. Grew impatient when he placed one hand on her breast and looked into her eyes. His own were a watery grey like the Suffolk sea. They didn't look a bit Italian. Why should they when he was English? Which was another disappointment. When he kissed her, it was a weak, socialist-without-pa.s.sion kiss.

Aspetta! said the twin voices, in a taunting kind of voice. Sei inglese! Sei un cretino!

They were right.

In that first autumn of their marriage, in that very first year itself, long before mad-about-her Greg could begin talking about babies, Cecily left. Silently. Packing the bag that Agnes had given her (she still had it) and buying a train ticket to the continent. Greg when he came home to the empty house was broken-hearted for only a moment before relief set in. He had always felt as though he was living with three women.

As she crossed over to Europe Cecily noticed the voices were silent with approval, smirking at the way they had tricked her into getting rid of Greg. Shocking!

But tonight, here in Palmyra House, staring at the twenty-nine-years-ago impossible-to-forget furniture, a little shabbier, a little darker, but mostly unchanged, memories spun like Catherine wheels around Cecily. Guilt played upon her like a pair of hands on a washboard. Shame was hiding in the cupboard under the stairs, listening out for her footsteps. The war had flowed past her like a strong dark river taking everyone she knew along with it. Outside the stranger who had followed her all the way to the front door stood silent as starlight, watching the lights go on. One by one.

While in the pub in Bly one man talked to another over a pint of Adnams.

'Did you see who's returned?'

'No. Who?'

'It's her, that one... Palmyra Farm. You remember what happened at the pier, don't you?'

One man in a pub talking to another could so easily be multiplied across the town in other places. The local chip shop for instance. Owned now by a locally born and bred family.

'Must be getting on... what's her name? I forget.'

Mrs Moore, wrapping fish in Union Jack paper (anything fresher was still swimming in the sea) thought she had seen her too.

'Cecily,' she said. 'That's who it is. I could tell her a mile away. Same walk!'

'Thin-muscled, like a bird!'

'Getting on a bit, I'd say.'

'Quite likely so. Spitting image of her sister Rose, she is, now.'

'Fuss, was there?'

'I'll say.'

'Perhaps that's why 'e's back too.'

'Robert Wilson?'

'No, not 'im. The other one!'

'Anything else I can get you?' Mrs Moore asked.

'I'll have another cod. Looks good.'

Mrs Moore nodded.

'Did you see what happened?'

'No. I were a child too. Not much older, you know. Than Cecily. We were at school together.'

'Friends was ye?'

'No, no. They were from the big house. Outside Bly. Different from us.'

'Ah!'

'But I heard about it all right. There was more fuss made over it than the war itself. Blamed her, some kids did. Said she knew the truth of it. Which I swear she didn't. Nice child, really. Dreamy, like. Head in a book. Too much imagination, some said. The other one, 'im's the one that led her on. I'll be blowed! Never liked 'im. Foreign 'e was.'

'Left Suffolk, did she?'

'Never came back to school. Sent away with you-know-who!'

'And now she's back. I wonder why?'

'Who knows? People can't keep running away forever. There comes a time when you have to face the past.'

'Makes me s.h.i.+ver. How much is that?'

'One pound twenty, thank you.'

'Always eavesdropping wasn't she?'

'Seem to remember she was. One pound twenty, did you say?'

'Thank you.'

'Thank you.'

'Thank you.'

And all the thank yous over, it was time to talk about the street party, Cecily's shadow receding a little.

Inside Palmyra House Cecily was busy making sense of a silver-backed hairbrush and a cracked mirror. She was looking at a pair of pyjamas that she had outgrown before that summer had ended. And she was opening a box that had been shut for years. The landscape of her childhood was back, crying out to her. The soft rustle of the sea entered the house unnoticed and filled her ears and this, too, reminded her of that time. It was as if she had been swimming for years. She felt exhausted. Everything would remain, she thought. And perhaps another two thousand years would pa.s.s swiftly.

You couldn't see the Ness from the window anymore. Large chestnut trees that had once been only saplings blocked the view. Some of the stars had escaped from their bell jar and were now scattered across the sky. The night had become balmy, the wind had dropped its anchor as the man standing in the shadows lit another cigarette. Glancing out Cecily saw but didn't recognise him. He was leaning on a stick and his hair was completely white. The voices living inside Cecily's head stirred and yawned like sleepy birds. It had been a long journey.

Why are you bringing us back here? they asked Cecily, sleepily. Perche?

In answer to these insistent questions, which would be ceaseless now, Cecily knew she would have to go back to the beginning. To the summer when she was not yet fourteen, and Rose still sixteen. The summer when the last and only pier burnt down, and the sea was the colour of Agnes' eyes, and Selwyn Maudsley wasn't happy for reasons known only to him and Agnes, and Kitty.

That's why I'm here, she informed the voices in her head. To remember. To set you free. To get that time out of my blood.

THIS WAS ALL very well, but recalling that summer, Cecily had the impression that its beginning had been hidden in seven sweet williams. She had brought a bunch of roses back with her now, being unable to bear the sight of sweet williams. As a welcome gift to the house, a thank you for having survived the neglect of years. Seven old-fas.h.i.+oned flowers, two families; gone in a flash.

Finding a vase, she filled it with water and the scent from that long-ago-time returned, instantly.

Tuesday August 15th 1939, and in London the evacuation was already under way. In the orchard at Palmyra Farm Cecily, sitting under an apple tree, closed her book. It was hot and the afternoon was filled with a tender, straw-coloured light. Cook had sent her there to pick some fruit but instead Cecily had spent the afternoon reading A Girl of the Limberlost. The love story had left her feeling drowsy and she was reluctant to break its spell by returning to the house. Guiltily, picking up her empty basket, she became aware of a rustling in the hedge.

'Cecci!'

'Carlo! What are you doing here?'

'Why do you look so glum? Have you been punished?'

Cecily blushed and tried to hide her book.

'Let me guess. You were being a bookworm again? Am I right?'

'Oh Carlo, you are!'

'So now Cook will scold you. Shall I come and defend you?'

Cecily smiled, uncertain. Was he serious?

'What are you doing here, Carlo?'

'I was looking for Rose. She told me to meet her in the top field but I couldn't find her.'

The book's afterglow, the heroine's triumphant love, faded slightly.

'You are a dreamer, Cecci,' Carlo was saying, smiling down at her.

The sun was full on Cecily's face but still she could see the way Carlo's eyes crinkled when he smiled.

'Tell Rose I was looking for her,' he said. 'And that I'll see you both tomorrow.'

And then he was gone, with a splash of cotton whites amongst the golden wheat and the trees. Glimpses of bare sunburnt arms, as he ran along the dusty dirt track, seen through the trees. Taking with him all the myriad, unresolved hues of the afternoon, s.h.i.+mmering into the distance.

Turning towards home, Cecily saw a beetle-black Bentley parked smartly in the lane. She walked on. Cornflowers dotted the ground. A heavy fragrance of vanilla from some hidden blossom filled the air. Her mother, in a jaunty polka dot dress covered by a blue ap.r.o.n, was talking to a man in a hat.

Agnes was holding a bunch of flowers and when she saw Cecily coming up she smiled.

It was not a true smile.

'This is my younger daughter,' Cecily heard her say.

The green of the flower stalks exactly matched Agnes' eyes. Tendrils of unruly dark hair escaping from her French pleat. From the way she spoke Cecily suspected she was lying about something. The man lifted his trilby and put his hand out in a friendly way. Under the jacket of his suit he was wearing a pink s.h.i.+rt.

'h.e.l.lo Cecily,' he said.

'h.e.l.lo.'

'Good book?'