The Last Pier Part 43

She never visited her father, never saw him again after Rose's funeral when she had felt that small solidarity towards him as he tried not to cry. Now she told Carlo, 'My mother was obsessed with roses. Whenever she visited me she brought cus.h.i.+ons and sc.r.a.ps of cloth, or cups and saucers. All with prints of roses on them.'

It was the first complete piece of information Cecily had given anyone. She gave it unasked, freely, and Carlo, understanding the effort it took, let her speak.

'She was afraid... she thought I had forgotten Rose.'

Carlo waited.

'She didn't know... the awful place I was living in, like a dark well... It was impossible to think of anything but Rose. If it hadn't been for that stupid game... I went along with Tom. Don't you see?' she asked, when Carlo said nothing, 'I felt... responsible...'

Carlo nodded. Yes, he understood how she felt. He saw the well she had been down, he smelt the dark, dankness of it. He too had been close to the ground. Buried alive with Guilt.

'How many times,' whispered Cecily, 'how many times do you think I re-ran that night...and Tom...'

What had happened to Tom?

Cecily shrugged.

'He was sent home, afterwards.'

'Agnes told my mother that Selwyn had been watched for a long time,' Carlo said. 'Kitty was the one,' Cecily said suddenly. 'She watched your family. She worked for Robert Wilson.'

The clouds in her head parted with force. She heard Kitty's voice clearly. Kitty, her birth mother. Talking about her own sister.

'That Italian is having an affair with my sister,' she had told Robert Wilson.

It had been long ago but the words were clear.

'She told him,' Cecily told Carlo with the certainty of her library-listening years.

Looking back was dangerous. Hadn't ancient myths advised against it? They were both stunned. The shock rocked them on their feet and threw them towards each other.

'I thought I loved your sister,' Carlo said, slowly. Carefully.

Cecily nodded. Careful too.

'I saw you together,' she said. 'By the lilac bush. At the tennis match.'

Carlo smiled. The smile was as Cecily remembered it, only now there was infinite sadness in the mix.

'You don't know how I regretted you seeing us like that,' he said, adding as she said nothing, 'I thought that was why you vomited!' And then he said, 'It was Bellamy who loved her more. Mine was just a fantasy to compete with him.'

Cecily was remembering.

But whom had Rose loved? Was it Robert Wilson? Or Bellamy? No one really knew. Rose was Rose. She wanted everyone's love.

'My mother knew,' Carlo said. 'She knew how you felt. Wait until she grows up, was what she said.'

Cecily blushed.

'I was jealous,' she admitted.

'Don't be,' Carlo was smiling again. 'You can't be, not looking as you do.'

She had become so used to expecting nothing sincere that a simple compliment pierced her.

Outside, in the disappointing summer light, the day was ending. Tomorrow would be a different sort of day. The flippable coin of history had disappeared for the moment.

There would be photographs published of the people who, once upon a time, had been called aliens. Soon someone would decide to build a wing in a museum to commemorate what had happened. People would put history behind gla.s.s. Objects like hair, and shoes and spectacles that would end up in museums. Thousands and thousands of them. Millions. Six million, in actual fact.

In a few decades, their stories would be part of all the cla.s.sic stories about wicked witches and monsters. Stories for after dark. But what could be done about the aliens who had lost their suitcases out at sea? In the middle of the Atlantic?

'No one knows about that,' Carlo said.

Cecily looked at him. She felt she would never be able to stop looking at him.

She felt as if she had fallen through time and into the lives of others.

She felt as though she had been kept on ice and was only now being thawed.

Some things took years to understand. That was why childhood needed to be so long.

'Mine was cut short,' Cecily said.

Then slowly, while holding her breath, she took Carlo's dark gla.s.ses off. He didn't object. He had no need of them now that the light was dying. His good eye looked out at her brightly. His gla.s.s eye reflected the sunset.

'I never saw Daddy again,' Cecily whispered. 'There was no question of it while I was living with Kitty. And afterwards I couldn't face it. So I never understood what he was protecting me from.'

Carlo nodded.

It was a Suffolk day with only small particles of colour present.

A touch of blue.

A little rose-pink.

Watercolour skies that threatened rain.

A wind that swept the curlew's cry into the west.

Traces of sea-dissolved air.

The reproachful scent of honeysuckle.

A summer rose in a clear gla.s.s.

A day so lovely that it felt as though it could turn absence into something more solid.

What happened next had no connection with anything that had happened earlier or at any other time. It wasn't anything that could be easily explained. Words were useless under such circ.u.mstances. Carlo saw Cecily with his one good eye and she saw him with both of hers. Three eyes considered the situation and discovered that they wanted something that would have been impossible to have owners.h.i.+p of, before.

What happened then was neither expected nor un-expected, just completely right.

Like two spoons that fitted together.

Or a pod with two peas in it.

Or a ring slipped onto a slender finger.

The thing that happened next was not a fairy story. Neither Cecily nor Carlo believed in them any more.

And how could it be called love when they were both convinced there was no such thing?

But although there was no one in that sad old rose-strewn room in Palmyra House to disagree, to Carlo, Cecily had grown into a beautiful, tender woman, while to her, he was all those things she had once believed would last forever.

What happened did so only partly out of necessity.

And what they felt was not simply loss, unspeakable and terrible.

No.

So what harm was there in what happened next?

Twenty-nine years and some days after Cecily returned.

Acknowledgements.

I would like to thank Maria Serena Balestracci for her book Arandora Star, Dall'oblio alla memoria (From Oblivion to Memory) (2008), which I used extensively in my research into the tragedy of the Arandora Star. During the writing of the novel I also used material from Ma.s.s Observation collected during the run up to the war.

Thanks are also due to Caterina Rapetti for her help in introducing me to some of the relatives of the Italian victims of this wartime accident and I owe a considerable debt to Gillian Stern who was the first to read the text of The Last Pier and offer suggestions. Right from the start Gillian cared pa.s.sionately about the novel.

Support also came from other sources Professor Rosy Colombo, with her wit and insight and John Martin for his delightfully unexpected help. No one has been more behind this project, however, than my editor at Hesperus, Sorcha McDonagh, without whom publication would never have been possible.

ISBN 9781780944647.

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