The Last Pier by Roma Tearne Page B

Murder in the Cathedral, thought she might write a story about a murder in the theatre.
    ‘Daddy says Murder in the Cathedral is really about the rise of fascism in central Europe,’ she said out loud to no one in particular.
     
    Robert Wilson, thin as a stick that could unblock a drain, had a face made for playing poker. Already it appeared as it would one day look, staring out from a hardback edition of history.
    In a crowd he would be invisible.
    In a crowd no one would notice the tortoiseshell spectacles he didn’t need, but which made him look dependable.
    And every single time Rose saw him dislike spread across her face like jam oozing from a scone.
    ‘I wish you children would stop calling him Pinky,’ complained Agnes again and again. ‘It’s very rude and ignorant especially now that he’s going to be our long-term guest.’
    ‘Why on earth does he have to stay in our cottage?’ Cecily objected.
    She liked going to Eel cottage, to tuck herself in its depths, out of sight and reading. Now she would have to move her den back to the hornbeam.
    ‘We have to do the best we can in the current situation,’ Agnes told her family.
    She was using her I’m-not-having-an-argument-with-you voice.
    ‘He’s a nice man.’
    ‘Who says?’ asked Rose, returning through the back door grinning, unrepentant, Bellamy the tinker’s lad hovering in her shadow.
    There was menace in his raised fist. Now what’s he angry about? wondered Cecily.
    ‘Ah!’ said Selwyn, amused by his elder daughter’s flushed cheeks. ‘Hello Bellamy. Come to give me a hand? Or to talk to Rose?’
    He spoke with a kind of empty gentleness as if he were thinking of other things. Bellamy looked dumbly at Rose and Cecily couldn’t help feeling sorry for him.
    ‘Right, I’m off,’ Selwyn said at last, bored, taking his hat down from the peg. Through the open kitchen door the fields were gold.
    ‘Isn’t that boy you told us about arriving soon? The evacuee ,’ Rose asked, looking at Cecily.
    ‘Oh no! Not an evacuee, mummy?’
    ‘Rose, stop teasing your sister,’ snapped Agnes. ‘He isn’t an evacuee, Cecily. And I believe he’s a nice boy.’
    ‘Dear, dear,’ said Kitty under her breath. ‘What a lot of bother.’
    And that was when Cecily saw her aunt pick up the jug full of sweet williams.
    ‘I’ll just put them in the cottage, for Pinky Wilson,’ she said, smiling at Agnes. ‘They will look nice there. And then I’m going into Ipswich.’
    ‘For goodness’ sake, don’t you start,’ cried Agnes. ‘It’s bad enough with the children. And anyway I’m sure he’s not interested in flowers. Why don’t you put them in the parlour instead?’
    ‘I don’t want any boys coming here,’ muttered Cecily. ‘I don’t want to share my things with them. I’ll kill them if they come.’
     
    Years later on a crisply starched morning, when the Beatles were singing ‘Yesterday’, in quite a different place altogether, Cecily was reminded of the scent of flowers. It was different from any other scent. It was the scent of dew on sweet williams. A very slight fragrance that she had not realised she had caught and contained in her nose. Perhaps the dew had been different before the war? Purer, more innocent.
    By the time she came to think this, the war had been long over, leaving only a few traces in their hastily rebuilt lives. One of them had been the scent that made her decide to return to her old home twenty-nine years, three days and twelve hours later.
     
    However on that August day, now only three days before the evacuee arrived and sixteen before the tennis party, the war could not make up its mind whether to happen or not. The weather of course remained exceptional. For days now, the mornings had started in exactly the same way. There were deep white clouds on the horizon and the sun beat up against them, battling its way across the sky. Sometimes the clouds darkened and rolled slowly over the fields.
    But there was no