The Last Pier Part 8

'She would have had to bear the brunt at school... can you imagine? The taunting... it wouldn't have been fair.'

'No.'

'I know I'm to blame too,' Kitty said.

She sounded kinder than Cecily ever remembered her being. And then a moment later, 'I'm sorry I let you carry the burden of it. You are a much better person than me.'

Then she said something else that Cecily, straining her ears to the point of bursting a blood vessel, could not make out. There was a silence.

What's that? the twin voices asked together.

'She's getting to look like her,' Kitty said.

'Yes.'

More silence followed. Pretending she had wings, Cecily glided towards the open door.

'Do you find that difficult?' Kitty was asking.

Her voice was silky but underneath, something nasty was feeling its way to the surface.

'Not surprising.'

'Don't!' Cecily's mother burst out.

She sounded like a tap being turned on with too much force. There would be water everywhere, now, Cecily thought.

'I shouldn't have let you take her away. But... I didn't know... I had no idea how much I would miss her. None of you saw. I lost two children.'

Agnes was weeping. Now the sound reminded Cecily of the hot-water pipes when air got into them. It sounded as if a small trickle of water had got much larger and was out of control, it sounded like the sea that Cecily could no longer live by and the Last Pier that was no longer part of her life. It sounded like her lost sister who would be twenty-two by now. It sounded as if the whole world was crying for something unspeakably sad. And the thought of the years ahead, of being the same age as Rose when she died, was intolerable and terrible.

THERE HAD BEEN no one to ask the McNulty sisters, about their past.

No one was interested in what went on in the lives of Agnes and Kitty in the old days. No one wanted to know about 'before'.

Before Rose was born.

Before they grew old.

Before they wrecked their lives.

Before history was made.

The past was always a thing of little consequence.

But the facts were that Kitty was only eighteen months older than Agnes. When they were children people would often mistake them for twins, one more delicate, taller, and gentler than the other.

Kitty, whose smallness had always been a source of annoyance to herself, made up for it with a laugh that could be heard from a distance and a way of tossing her sleek black hair that excited men (Agnes thought).

Agnes, who wore any old hand-me-down clothes with ease, as though they came from Paris, had a deep, annoying dimple (Kitty thought).

Agnes' eyes were large and softly green. Kitty's heron-grey and somewhat smaller.

They had been brought up in a small town in Ireland. Years later they would both say (jokingly) that eighteen had been the age when they had grown up. First Kitty left for England when the boy she loved was ordained and then, eighteen months later, Agnes left on a scholars.h.i.+p to study at the Royal College of Music. But by the time Agnes arrived in London Kitty had completely reinvented herself. Now her story was that she had run away to England because a distant cousin had abused her at home. She told this story with eerie glibness, in public, and to total strangers, thus shocking the more conservative Agnes. Kitty refused to retract a single word. (Cecily was said to have the same stubborn streak.) Eventually, having heard her sister's fabrications so often, Agnes began to wonder if it had been true.

In London they saw each other rarely, at first. Agnes was busy studying the piano, learning composition and working as a student repet.i.teur. When she graduated from the Royal College it was with a distinction, but at her graduation performance (she played Liszt and nearly destroyed the piano) her parents were noted for their absence. Only Kitty was present.

Kitty, living in digs, working as a secretary at the government Board of Trade.

Kitty, mixing now in grand city circles, talking about export and bonds and taking trips abroad with her boss with whom she was on first name terms. He was a wealthy, important man, able to converse in several languages and able to introduce Kitty to people in the diplomatic service. Kitty talked so often and so highly of him that Agnes wondered if her sister was not a little in love. But any questions on her part were sharply dismissed. Then, the week after her graduation Agnes finally met the man himself.

Selwyn Maudsley, enigmatic loner, silent listener, slow to smile, up for the weekend expecting to meet Kitty for lunch, was surprised to find her sister Agnes present. Startled too, by the colour of Agnes' eyes. Green was a colour Selwyn a.s.sociated with the land, not eyes, he told her, many weeks later. Over the course of these weeks he told Agnes other things.

That she reminded him of roses. (Later he would want to call his first daughter by this name).

That he would one day inherit his father's farm in Suffolk.

That he dreaded the very idea.

That the place reminded him of a childhood devoid of love with a father who had beaten both Selwyn and his older brother.

That although their father hated all Germans he still sent his oldest son, Selwyn's brother, to be killed by one.

That Selwyn had loved only that older brother.

That, were Agnes to marry him, he would buy her a grand piano.

That every little thing in life she might ever want was hers for the asking.

(How unrealistic, Kitty said, when she heard.) That he would love her forever.

(Kitty had laughed until she almost cried when she heard this.) The news that Kitty had decided to marry a diplomat was lost in what followed. What had also been lost on Agnes was Selwyn's momentary shocked silence after Kitty's announcement. Selwyn was twenty-one years older than Agnes and two days later he proposed to her. For a man so slow the speed with which he did this was astonis.h.i.+ng. The die was cast. And, even though farms and rural life were what she, like Selwyn, was escaping from, Agnes developed certainty. Feeling fatally sorry for him, mistaking it for love, she agreed to marry him.

Selwyn Maudsley's family had lived at Palmyra House for three generations. The farm consisted of a twelve-acre orchard, a field of strawberries and three others of wheat. It was situated on a bend in the River Ore halfway between the town of Bly and that of Eelburton. Beyond the orchards and the fields belonging to the farm were the salt marshes. From the windows on the east side of the house it was possible to see the sea and on the west side there were the woods. In winter the Martello tower just outside Bly was clearly visible but in summer it was always screened by the trees. There hadn't been a wedding there for many years. The Maudsleys were a wealthy family known both for their charitable work and their aloofness so when Selwyn brought his new bride home the little town of Bly was suddenly abuzz with curiosity. Who would be invited?

In the event the church was packed and at the reception in Palmyra House the bride played Schubert on the piano her new husband had bought for her. Then she played a version of 'Honeysuckle Rose', setting the tone for the next decade.

But it was the even more brilliant and newly married Kitty who stole the show that day. Perhaps also, it was the presence of the girls' parents that gave Kitty her sense of triumph. Or it might have been the presence of Kitty's bored husband, adding a world-weary touch of glamour to a country event. Or it might have been the confusion in Selwyn's eyes, of course. Whatever the reason, it was Kitty the locals remembered.

After the wedding not a day pa.s.sed without Selwyn seeing that he did not love his new wife. But the marriage set its own standards, unaided by anybody. They were neither happy nor sad together. Agnes quickly fell pregnant, and settled back into her old rural habits. The piano was still played but morning sickness moved uneasily into evening sickness and apathy took centre stage, supplanting Liszt. It was the best that could be expected although occasionally, when she heard a piece of piano music on the wireless, something a little dangerous would stir inside Agnes. Selwyn, about to be a father at forty-one, hardly noticed. It was left to Cecily to detect this unsafe edge in her mother in later years. Cecily wisely learnt to keep away from Agnes at such moments.

When the elderly Mr Maudsley died soon after his first grandchild, Joe Maudsley, was born it was obvious to Selwyn and Agnes, living temporarily in Eel cottage, that they would take over the running of the farm. They moved into Palmyra House. The year was 1920. Two years later Rosemary Maudsley was born and by the time Cecily appeared the strains of 'Honeysuckle Rose' were rarely heard in Palmyra House while the piano had fallen badly out of tune. But such was the business of the era that no one complained.

Staring at her wedding photograph, enveloped in yards of white tulle and Chantilly lace, Agnes would write in her notebook, I am not unlike a pupa!

When one looked back several things happened in those last two weeks of August 1939 into which all time would be forever condensed. The first was that Cecily noticed her sister changing in an indefinable way. She had been listening to Partridge talking to Cook.

'That one is going to be a beauty,' he said.

Cook sniffed.

'D'you mean Rose?' Cecily asked coming out from behind the door.

'Curiosity killed the cat,' Cook said tartly.

'But do you mean Rose?'

'Ay,' Partridge said relighting his pipe.

'She doesn't think so,' Cecily told him.

Cook sniffed again and Partridge laughed.

'She will soon enough,' he said. 'I'll be bound!'

After that Cecily noticed that Rose's sleepy, slanty eyes had taken on a new indolence. She noticed her sister's languorous air, the way her mouth twisted into an ironic half-smile whenever the Italian boys stared at her, the way she held herself, still and watchful when Bellamy appeared at the kitchen door. The way she would scratch her throat with her left hand, once even to the point of drawing blood. The boys must have been aware of this too for they never ruffled Rose's hair, or offered her a piggy-back. It made Cecily look at her own face with dislike, longing for something just out of reach.

The second thing that happened was the appearance of air-raid shelters in Suffolk. Not that anyone really believed they would be needed.

Extracts of George VI's speech about the True Greatness of the Empire was printed in the paper although in Germany, Jews were not allowed in public gardens and Picture Post published an article about Britain preparing for war.

But the third thing that happened had nothing to do with war. Several posters appeared on the new pier announcing the arrival of the Sadler's Wells dance company. This was the real news!

Rose wanted to go with Franca.

Cecily wanted to go too but Rose didn't want a baby tagging behind.

Cecily knew her sister had plans for later on that involved the fair.

Agnes, knowing nothing of any of this, wanted Rose to take Cecily.

All was, therefore, chaos and rage.

A war developing right there around the farmhouse kitchen table.

'Generosity is an old-fas.h.i.+oned virtue that's getting lost in this talk of war,' Agnes observed.

'Like the scent of old roses,' Aunt Kitty added.

Aunt Kitty, long divorced, was by now nursing a Broken Heart as though it were a wounded soldier.

'Wounded enemy soldier,' Selwyn joked.

His voice was gruff and indistinct because he spoke with his pipe in his mouth.

There was an awkwardness around him that gave Cecily a puzzling feeling. Her father had changed somewhat of late and no longer played the I-spy games with her as he used to. These days he seemed preoccupied with the war, but once long ago it had been Selwyn who told Cecily that looking and listening were the most important skills for a writer. Her father no longer read or praised her stories. The war, it seemed, was destroying everything interesting.

The clouds at the far end of the garden were as big as ice-cream cones and the air was hot as though it was a hydrogen balloon about to burst.

Outside, behind the fields, the lanes had narrowed into a tangle of blackberry briar and pale pink dog roses. The sky was a silken blue. The larks, invisibly high up, threw down their eerie threads of song. It was the unforgettable summer voice of England calling out, a great humming bowl of activity, present in the murmur and buzz of uncut fields and the deep peaceful voices of the farmhands talking to each other. There could not possibly be a war.

Could there?

'I hate this waiting feeling,' Aunt Kitty admitted.

She made it sound like a song, Cecily thought. Aunt Kitty was what Cecily's father called exotic. Like tinned pineapples.

It was August the 16th, only two weeks before September arrived but still the summer squawked and hissed in the long gra.s.s. There had been no rain for ages. Agnes, head bent, was making strawberry jam.

'You children are getting as brown as cobnuts,' a farmhand observed.

Everyone should have been helping with clearing the tennis court and the meadow next to it. But not everyone did what they should, observed Partridge, jovial in spite of Rose's huffy manner, as he adjusted her bicycle brakes. And off Rose went, along the bridle path, somewhere on her own, calling out, toodle-pip.

'Now where has she gone?' Agnes asked, sighing out of sheer weariness.

'She's gone Out Of Sheer Weariness,' Cecily said.

'I'd like to get out of Sheer Weariness, occasionally,' Kitty said, hugging her, smiling away her Broken Heart. 'I've lived there too long already!'

Selwyn, on his way out to milk the cow, glanced at Aunt Kitty but she was counting sweet williams.

Sent by her unknown admirer.

Seven.

There were always seven, Cecily noticed. And every time Aunt Kitty received a bouquet of flowers she went out. Agnes saw Selwyn standing against the light in the doorway, smiling the smile that once had been her undoing but now only seemed to make her unhappy.

Naughty Rose, sailing past the window on her bicycle, hair streaming behind her, thin beautiful legs showing through the delicate fabric of her dress.

'Pinky's just gone out in his car!'

'Rose!' Agnes cried, shrilly, horrified. 'Come back immediately!'

'What on earth is she up to?' muttered Aunt Kitty, the laugh still in her voice, the Wounded Heart, in the recovery room.

'Oh she's just trying it on,' Selwyn said.

'Come back,' Agnes cried, again. 'You've forgotten to collect the eggs for me.'

'Black Swan, White Swan,' chanted Cecily.