The Last Pier (27 page)

At Bly fire station, those waiting for any disturbance, air-raid warnings, enemy sightings, unexpected army convoys passing through the high street, were not prepared for home-grown arson attacks. The firemen (both volunteers and professionals alike) had been tense for weeks, anticipating a possible invasion from Europe. War had been declared after all and, gas masks at the ready, they scanned the skies. But when the first glow of firelight filled their horizon, they missed it. There hadn’t been any sounds of exploding bombs, any anti-aircraft fire, any aircraft for that matter. So when the alarm was finally raised the firemen were startled. Having discounted the possibility of home fires, some precious minutes were lost.

At first there were all sorts of theories. Some thought it was a glow from a passing ship that had forgotten to black out its lights. Others thought the lighthouse had accidentally started turning. The firemen switched on the radio in case an important bulletin was being issued. The ARPs always contacted them by telephone but the telephone remained silent. So even the sight of Mr Selwyn Maudsley hurrying down the high street didn’t alarm
them. Everyone knew Mr Selwyn Maudsley was involved in costal defence of some kind. It took an ARP from Snape to come on the line before the Bly firemen were galvanised into action.

‘Down by the pier, lads, no, no, the Last Pier, that place, you know. Let’s go! Some idiot with nothing better to do, I expect. Wasting our time.’

‘This will stop when they get the call-up, you’ll see!’

And with a monstrous snort the fleet of engines burst from their building and set off down the empty coastal road. Ringing their bells hysterically, hiding their fireman’s jolly laughter, joyous because they had never believed the inactivity would be over so soon.

Later, after the inquest, when responsibility had been established and blame apportioned, the Fire Chief visited Agnes to pay his respects and explain that they had done everything they could under the circumstances. But Agnes had been unavailable for comment. She had been lying down in her blacked-out room. Sedated. All the Chief had was Agnes’ sister, Whatshername, the older one. Understandably, the woman had been in shock too. And, no, he hadn’t liked her much. There was something cold and watchful about her. When the Chief had explained that they had done everything they could, she merely stood there eyeing him.

‘Yes, we know that. We were present at the inquest, if you remember.’

The chief, feeling like a small boy caught out, explained that he had merely wanted to convey a word or two of sympathy to the mother.

‘You feel guilty, I expect,’ the woman had said.

The chief had said that no, this wasn’t why he had come. The inquest had exonerated his men. They had set off as soon as the call came through.

Kitty Maudsley had lowered her eyes demurely but not before the Chief had seen the look in them. It was clear he wasn’t
welcome in the house. He left then. But as he reached the door he heard a small movement and, glancing back, he saw the younger sister. He stared at her for a moment, trying to remember her name. She stared back palely. He remembered noticing she had extraordinarily large eyes. Of a colour he had never seen before. Hesitating, wanting to say something, unable to think what comfort he might offer her, he smiled. But a voice called her and she vanished.

‘My niece,’ the woman Kitty Maudsley said in response to his enquiring glance.

He left then, but the story and the girl’s expression would haunt the Chief for the rest of his life.

However, all of this was still in abeyance when Cecily and Tom (cycling, each with their jar of glow-worms on the handlebars) turned onto the coast road. Agnes’ shock, the Fire Chief’s guilt, the fire itself and what came in its wake, were still to come. The airborne Confetti War was still at the planning stage, Selwyn was still a free man. That night the children rode the dark road of innocence-about-to-be-lost. Innocence played a tune that night. It was a waltz they were all dancing but nobody realised it was the last waltz.

In the bedroom that Cecily had shared with her sister for the last time, a note lay under a pillow.

A note that was never delivered.

Darling Robert can we meet at the Last Pier instead of the Tower? (The bit that’s boarded up.) I fear we have been overheard and I might be followed.

A billet-doux that he never got.

Robert Wilson, aka Captain Pinky, engaged in a clandestine arrangement with Rose, was in blissful ignorance of the change of the venue. He would stay where he was for almost an hour when the sudden sight of Selwyn seen through binoculars, followed by the flare of light in the sky, would worry him and send him hurrying towards the old, dangerous part of the pier.
A queer, shivery feeling in the pit of his stomach made him wish he had dealt with that loose cannon Maudsley sooner, caught him before he could do more damage.

The stench of Premonition filled his nose.

The taste of Terror was in his mouth.

The stain of Guilt began to appear on his body.

There were two courses of action left to Cecily and Tom. Which one should they take? Neither had ever played roulette so it was hardly surprising they got the rules mixed up.

‘There he is!’ Tom said.

Pinky’s car was parked by the Martello tower, on the coast road, a little outside the town. And he was walking towards the Ness.

Perhaps he had a boat and he intended to sail to Germany like a pirate on the high seas?

Perhaps he wanted to capture Rose and take her hostage?

It was obvious to Cecily and Tom that they would have to rescue Rose. But where
was
Rose? And for that matter, Selwyn?

‘Let’s follow Pinky,’ Tom commanded. ‘He’ll lead us to your sister. But let’s stick to the road. He’ll see us if we go the beach way.’

Cecily, who had begun to take off her socks, stopped and put them on again.

History began to unfold.

What are they up to now? Bellamy wondered with interest, tailing them from a distance.

A tail following a tail.

All behind like a cow’s tail.

A cow, overreaching itself, in a universe where no jumpable moon would shine.

When the police, the
ordinary
beat-bobby, not someone from the army or the ARP or anyone connected with the War Effort, knocked on the front door of Palmyra House in the early hours
of Monday morning, Agnes awoke to find a car was parked at an angle outside the house. Stumbling to the front door, she saw in fact there was more than one car.

Selwyn was led out of one.
Led
out?

Then when Agnes Maudsley heard her husband’s voice uttering words no mother expects to hear, something of their meaning penetrated her sleep-destroyed brain. Understanding swelled in her throat and struggled to be let out. It overflowed in a stream of vomit through her mouth and nose. Its sound wasn’t all that loud but the snuffle and choke of it was one that Cecily would remember. In Cecily’s head (at least) the sound was more frightening
because
of its quietness. Standing beside Robert, never-again-to-be-Captain-Pinky-Wilson, Cecily remained silent, answering only those questions put to her.

Agnes did not remember the way Robert Wilson talked to her – softly and with something-more-than-concern in his voice. She did not remember how she had called him Captain Pinky in a voice that had Rose’s jauntiness within it. Nor did she respond to Cecily’s look of surprise as she tugged at her hand and tried to make her see that Pinky was a rude name. Agnes didn’t seem to notice any of this.

Much later, after the Wake was over and the mess was outwardly beginning to be cleared up, Agnes fell into a drug-induced sleep and would wake to what Cecily would later privately call her After-Rose dreams. Agnes never remembered how, when she woke from these dreams, she beat people up. People like Pinky Wilson when he visited. And her sister Kitty. The only surprising thing in all of this was that she never thought of beating up Cecily.

Never.

The image of her daughter/stepdaughter, Cecily, seemed to have dropped off the edge of her horizon.

When she woke up from these drug-soaked dreams Agnes always seemed to be living in another time, neither before nor
after the war, just another time entirely. The ARP wardens were constantly reminding Cook to pull down the blackout blinds that Agnes forgot. Mad Mrs Maudsley, was how the ARP referred to Agnes.

It would be possible to deduce from all of this that the war passed Agnes by and saved her from thinking of its horror by Rose’s death. One unspeakable thing cancelling another. A silver lining in the otherwise black cloud her life had become.

On one occasion, Cecily later heard, Agnes answered the door to the vicar and in a split second of hideous rage she had attacked him, too, scratching his face, drawing blood, until thankfully, Cook had dragged her away and called the doctor. The vicar had fled as though the devil was on his tail but when the doctor questioned Agnes she had shaken her head, puzzled. All she knew was that she remembered the vicar from some funeral she had once attended. The doctor had given her a shot of morphine to take away the muddle in her head and, looking at her with genuine sadness, he too had left. Instructing Cook to call him immediately if anything like this happened again.

‘Poor woman,’ he murmured, shaking his head, picking up his hat and leaving on his bicycle.

The world, meanwhile, was involved in unspeakable events. Poland had lost the fight, Warsaw had surrendered, while here on the doorstep there seemed to have been a fifth column in the hatching. It was hard for a simple country doctor to explain that while mayhem raged all over Europe he could still feel an unbearable sorrow at having to write the death certificate for a young girl who, sixteen years before, he had delivered with his own hands.

Maybe the time had come to drop a million propaganda leaflets to the German people in a confetti war.

Neither the doctor, nor Agnes, nor Cook, nor Kitty, nor even Selwyn in his unopened letters from jail mentioned Lucio Molinello.

This was because:

The doctor had not heard The Story.

Agnes was too far inside a different world.

Selwyn had no knowledge of anything outside the prison walls.

Cook had forgotten all about it.

And Cecily, the Champion of Overheard Things, was too far away and too removed to question this aberration.

Suggesting that the only kind of significant Bliss was the one called Ignorance.

I WAS A FOOL
to have come,
thought Cecily, grief exploding again and again. What good is there in remembering? Pouring herself a glass of water, her clothes now dry, she went outside again. The pale after-rain sun slipped behind a cloud as the watcher who had observed her so patiently walked up to the house. In the dampness of the late afternoon he had an air of mourning. The day, having stolen his shadow, was now shaking him with its avalanche of memories. He hesitated, his hand hovering on the lock. Then, making up his mind, the watcher turned from the house and followed Cecily, instead.

Having found the spot where history lay in rotting boxes, Cecily did not know what came next. She had brought no flowers. What use were flowers to the dead? She’d never given them flowers in life, why start now? Nor was she the sort to clear the ground of weeds and rubbish. All around she noticed newer graves crowned by newer, garish offerings, resting on the mounds of freshly turned earth. At least two centuries lay sleeping in the churchyard.

In Loving Memory. What did you write if your memory wasn’t loving? Or not even a proper memory?

In Confused Memory?

Or

In Small Fragments of Memory?

Perhaps.

Agnes had wanted her daughter buried in the grounds of St. Mary’s Church. She had married Selwyn there and now she wanted God to witness what happened to the union he had blessed. In the graveyard, two yew trees of enormous height bent towards each other sharing gossip. They were well fed from the
ground and watered by constant marshland rains. A few roses grew indifferently for the harsh winds had destroyed most of their flush.

Lying against the wall was a memorial plaque dedicated to all who had fallen in the war. Cecily saw Joe’s name in gold letters.

Joe.

Representing the Maudsleys.

Joe, husband of Franca for only three weeks. Arriving on leave, blown to smithereens in Dunkirk afterwards.

There was no one about. Neglect flourished around the yews. Rain was threatening once again and summer seemed to have fled. She went inside the church. The watching stranger followed slowly behind. Once, a century before, a similar church had stood further up the coast. But bit by bit the sea had claimed it for its own and now all that was left were fifty-two bells beneath the waves. St Mary’s of Bly had been built in a similar style, pebble by skilful pebble, in the hope that memory at least would not die. One day, many years hence, Britannia would again be forced to admit defeat and leave the sea to its own destructive devices. And this beautiful land, with its Martello towers and hidden underground bunkers built to look like pagodas, would lie in neglected sea-rot.

In the church the light stained by glass fell on the high altar, while fresh flowers left traces from another, more recent summer funeral. A box for offerings stood empty beside a few flickering candles. A font devoid of water waited to be blessed. There was no one sitting on the polished pews but Christ was ever present. In wood and gold if not in flesh. His mother, her blue sash represented by a flick of paint, carried an image of her son. Both mother and child stared at Cecily with mild curiosity in their eyes.

‘At the heart of my life,’ the Mother of God told Cecily, speaking directly to her ‘is a murder. There’s no getting away from it.’

Cecily noticed the statue spoke with an Italian accent.

‘They tell the story, everywhere,’ the voice confided. ‘All over the world. Though not always from my perspective.’

She laughed. Cecily had never heard a statue laugh before. It was, in a sense, a cynical laugh. There was a pause during which the tide rolled away. Cecily saw there were painted pearls in the statue’s eyes.

The candle flickered. Cecily sat on the second pew. Just as she once had. Other ghosts came and joined her, sitting quietly in twos and threes.

They were wearing old-fashioned clothes, smelling of camphor, their faces bathed in sepia light.

‘We don’t belong in this place any more,’ they whispered. ‘The lifespan of our story is over. Forget us!’

Cecily looked up at the wooden rafters where twenty-nine years ago voices had been raised in song.

‘The first sorrow that has come to our land,’ the vicar had said.

In spite of himself he had given Cecily a look. Pure evil, he had admitted to Aunt Kitty later. Cecily knew, she had overheard.

The rafters looked down at her, now. They reported that a shell fired immediately before the Blitz had just missed striking the spire. Something good happened, then.

The Mother of God, ignoring all the ghosts, told Cecily that repetition was the essence of storytelling. No matter how many retellings, it would never lose its power.

‘Love,’ she said, with certainty, ‘has an eternal flame.’

Holding her son, watching him, powerless to change the narratives other people attributed to him, he remained, nevertheless, her story, she continued. Growing, leaving, going his own way, like an adolescent, misinterpreted, given speech bubbles to suit the whims of other men, still he had remained her son until the end. Entranced, Cecily listened.

From somewhere the scent of frankincense interrupted the smell of the sea.

Then, unexpectedly, sitting in the church now filled with light, Cecily became acutely aware of another presence behind her. Human, not celestial; flesh not spirit. She heard footsteps on tiles and the creaking of the pew behind her. She had a sudden clear insight but dared not turn round. Her face flushed delicately. My God, she thought, swallowing her fear, not knowing what she should do. She was frightened in case she had got it wrong. So she stared unblinkingly at the candle flame, its centre as blue as a pair of eyes from long ago.

Can love mutate, she asked herself? Was it wrong if it did? Was it wrong to look for love amongst the ashes? She was that dreadful thing, a rich woman unable to gather moss.

Sitting in the second pew in the church beside the sea these twenty-nine long years later, she remembered all of this as though it were unsteady footage shot with a hand-held camera.

A moving picture on old 35mm film. In vivid colour. Accidentally tinted in a piercing, acid blue.

Blue.

Blue like her sister’s eyes.

Blue like the room in which her father had bedded her mother.

Blue like all the bluebirds Cecily had never seen.

The Mother of God watched Cecily as she sat on the second pew. She could not offer any comfort because she was stuck on her pedestal and could not move. She was a handicapped Mother, flawed like all mothers, everywhere.

Behind her, Cecily felt rather than saw the stranger move slightly. Her heart missed a beat and her hands began to shake. She was
certain
she knew who it was. But why was he here? Had he followed her across the beach? The heat that had started up on her face now increased. She was too petrified to move in case the sea had finally arrived to drown her.

There was nothing else for it.

Plucking up courage, Cecily turned and saw who it was that waited so patiently for her.

It was
Carlo!

As still as a waterbird at rest.

Something caught in Cecily’s throat, something else stole her voice.

She felt faint.

Why was he here? How had he found her?

And the sky outside turned a delicate blue like a curlew’s egg in spring.

There were now two candles in the rack.

Dripping wax, like tears.

Cecily and Carlo stood staring at them. Anything was better than looking at each other.

The Curate walked in smiling bland words of welcome.

‘Are you from this parish?’ he asked and when they didn’t answer, added, ‘Welcome, anyway. The church is always open.’

The Curate knew the telltale signs of pain even when it was well hidden. He kept a slight smile on his face. Business as usual, it seemed to say.

Cecily and Carlo were silent. Then, without a word they turned as one and walked down the aisle. Towards the open door and the sea where a squadron of seagulls, white against the tender summer air, docked, all together, near a fishing boat. And where the remains of a tattered pier could still be seen faintly in the distance, still standing, though only just, on jauntily corroded legs.