Read Online The Last Pier by Roma Tearne - Free Book Online Page A

Mass Observation. She liked the idea that one day all the things she wrote down about her life would be part of the social history of the time. She had become a volunteer for the MO research organisation after lovely King Edward VIII had abdicated.
    On the Home Service the news was that the German ambassador was willing to fly to Moscow in order to make a German-Russian settlement. But Cecily coming in was more interested in giving her mother a slow goodnight kiss, squeezing the delicate, chiselled face in her hands, trying and failing to make the deep dimple in her cheek appear. Her mother looked lonely. Why didn’t their father stay at home more often?
    Rose, like Selwyn, couldn’t stay in for long, either.
    ‘Are you going out again ?’ Cecily asked when they were alone.
    ‘Shhh!’ Rose said. ‘Go to sleep.’
    Instantly Cecily was more awake than she had ever been in her life. The disappointing day looked set to develop into an interesting night.
    ‘Are you going into Bly?’
    Rose didn’t answer.
    ‘Mummy’s still awake,’ Cecily said.
    There was a pause.
    ‘You’re not… going to the Ness, by any chance?’
    And when there was still no reply, ‘It’s very, very dangerous there when the tide’s coming in.’
    The Ness was a narrow sea-thistle spit of land bordered by a bend in the River Ore on one side, and the sea on the other. When the tide was out it was possible to reach it by a short causeway. But both river and sea tides came in so fast that in the past several people had drowned crossing it. Although the Ness lay close to the boundary of Palmyra Farm, half a mile between the fields and the town of Bly, it did not, strictly speaking, belong to the Maudsleys. No one knew who owned it and no one cared much for its dank salty marshiness. Because of the silt it was impossible to cultivate and the tides made it a dangerous place to visit. During the Great War there had been a few coastguard huts put up. There was also an old landing structure the locals called the Last Pier, because the original pier on the seafront at Bly had been destroyed. Twice each day the river and sea tides collided to turn the Ness into an island. When that happened the Ness was entirely cut off.
    Nobody went there except Selwyn when, many years before, he needed a quiet place to grieve over his brother’s death.
    And more recently, Cecily was certain, her sister Rose.
    Cecily hated the place.
    ‘Oh do shut up,’ Rose said crossly. ‘And learn to mind your own business!’
    She rummaged in her special box of clothes handed down to her from Agnes, and brought out one wispy Liberty print after another. Soon her bed was a heap of summer-faded scraps. Watching her with sudden, sharp insight Cecily saw that really, whatever her sister wore made no difference. In the end, she would always look beautiful. Don’t-care Rose was humming to herself.
    ‘Physically, you have reached your peak,’ Cecily observed.
    ‘What?’ Rose asked, startled.
    Then she laughed.
    ‘Who told you that?’
    ‘No one,’ Cecily said.
    She herself had outgrown her pyjamas so that the legs came halfway up to her calves. Rose, dabbing on the last of some stolen perfume, seemed not to hear.
    ‘Where did you get it?’ Cecily asked without hope of an answer.
    Her sister slipped on a satin skirt. Then she spent ages buttoning up her pink and white flowered blouse. The buttons were made of mother-of-pearl. Through the window a fresh green-scented night breeze blew in and stroked Cecily’s neck. It stirred Rose’s hair, making her frown. On the seafront the breeze would be much stronger.
    ‘Why are you wearing that?’
    ‘Sshh!’
    ‘What if Daddy sees you coming back from the ARP?’
    ‘He won’t.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘Because!’
    ‘Why, because?’
    ‘Shut up , C!’
    The clouds parted and in the moonlight the cast-up shimmer of the satin softened Rose’s customary expression of irritation until it too vanished as suddenly as it had appeared.