The Sea Gate Page 13

  What have I got myself into?

  11

  Olivia

  1943

  OLIVIA WALKED A PROTESTING MARY TO THE VILLAGE school with her drawing things in a satchel. She intended to sketch the crashed plane in the field with the standing stone. It would make a striking composition: the serene sea and wide horizon, and the great hulk of burned and twisted metal in harsh counterpoint in the foreground. The wreckage was being towed out the day after tomorrow to be melted down for the British war effort, and so that ploughing could begin in that field, so it was now or never.

  The raid on Penzance had done a lot of damage, but the death toll had been relatively low. More than seventy houses and businesses had been destroyed by incendiary bombs, and fires had raged all night and into the next day. It was hard to reconcile those dramatic scenes with these tranquil hedgerows, dotted with red campions and bindweed, agrimony and honeysuckle. The spikes of the foxgloves stood tall and emptied, the excited droning of the summer bees no more than a distant memory whispering among the husks left on the spent stalks. There was a dusty stillness in the earth, a long-hoarded build-up of heat, like a lull before the storm, as if Nature were waiting for some catastrophe to occur before making a final burst of effort ahead of the dying season.

  Up at Treharrow the ploughing was under way. The local farmers had grouped together and were going from homestead to homestead with machinery loaned from the Ministry of Agriculture. It was faster and more efficient to have the work done by experienced hands than to let youngsters and prisoners loose with the harrow, as Farmer Roberts – always one to pinch a penny – had found out the hard way the year before when a runaway team had crashed through the fence and run riot through the kitchen garden.

  Once the milking was done and the cows put out to grass much of the workforce was at more of a loose end than usual, except the girls, who had been put to work churning in the dairy. Olivia made her way through the farmyard, not taking much notice of her surroundings. She was clambering over the second gate beside the cowshed when she heard a small muffled cry, and then someone said, ‘Just hold still, you stupid cow.’

  Someone attending to a sick animal, was her first thought, but walking along the back of the cowshed, she could see in through the narrow opening that served as a window that it was empty – except for three figures in the furthest corner. She could easily have missed them, for shadow concealed their forms, except where a missing slate in the roof allowed the sun to penetrate like an accusatory finger, illuminating a startling glimpse of white flesh. Olivia knew with a flash of recognition that something very wrong was occurring down in that grubby corner of the shed, in a place none but cows should be.

  Two men stood on either side of a small figure draped over a stone trough like some sort of sacrifice. The one facing Olivia was holding down the figure’s arms and Olivia recognized him as Nipper Martin. The other man moved and obscured her view but as he shrugged his top half out of the prisoner overalls he wore and stepped into that finger of light, she saw that his hair was blond, and that the figure bent face-down over the trough, into whom the half-naked man was now pushing himself with grunting thrusts, was Mamie Roberts.

  Before she could think, she yelled out. ‘Mamie! Oh my God, Mamie!’

  Nipper’s head shot up and he said something. Mamie in that instant found the strength to squirm away from him and fell away into the straw. The blond man – the Austrian airman, Olivia realized in horror – turned around, not making any attempt to hide his erection. His gaze penetrated the space between them and Olivia felt suddenly both violated and complicit, a victim and an accomplice, afraid and guilty, a voyeur and an object of lust. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Mamie pull down her dress and run for the door at the other end of the shed. The two men exchanged words, and then Nipper followed Mamie, with a purposeful stride. The blond man stared at Olivia, and then he smiled and her stomach lurched.

  She looked around but there was no one she could call to for help. Dropping her satchel, Olivia turned and ran back down the alley, hurled herself over the first gate then pelted for the second. She could hear heavy footsteps behind her, but she dared not look back. As she threw a leg over the top bar of the second gate, a hand closed on her other ankle. She felt a scream rise, but her throat closed tight and dry and nothing more than a squeal came out. She clutched hard to the gate, but the Austrian pulled her backwards and she fell awkwardly, knocking her head against the wall.

  The man laughed and said something she could not understand as the blood beat in her ears. He bent and picked her up and crushed her against him, immobilizing her with one arm as his other hand tore at her shirt and brassiere, squeezing her breasts till tears of pain filled her eyes. His face, as he pushed it at her, was flushed, his narrowed eyes dark with lust. Olivia let his mouth come at her, then wrenched her head back and smashed her skull into it, connecting with a satisfying crunch. For a moment his grip slackened enough for her to wrench free and take off running.

  Olivia ran wildly, desperately, her feet slapping the ground, her brassiere displaced, her breasts loose and uncomfortable. She pelted into the farmyard, shrieking, ‘Help! Help!’

  There was no one around.

  She ran till her lungs were raw, and then threw up into a drain, with her legs trembling like jelly, the hot sun on the back of her head and black stars dancing in her vision. ‘Buck up, Livy,’ she told herself. Dragging in deep breaths, she readjusted her bra and tucked her torn shirt in. Staggering across the yard, she hammered on the door of the farmhouse and waited, but there was no answer. She peered in through the windows at the familiarly shabby interior, but could see nothing. ‘Mamie!’ she called through the letter box. ‘Mamie, are you in there? It’s me, Olivia, are you all right?’ No sound.

  Sitting back on her haunches, she watched the open ground between her and the distant cowsheds, but there was no sign of either Nipper or the blond man. She needed help, needed to tell someone what she had witnessed, but first she had to find Mamie.

  Mamie was thirteen years old. She had been simple from birth but was sweet and good-natured, never any trouble. If you told Mamie to do something, she would do it without question: and that was clearly a problem now that she looked like a grown woman. Olivia’s hands balled into fists. Fear for herself turned to cold anger. The child’s mother had succumbed to an infection two years ago and there being no penicillin available to civilians had failed to fight it off, leaving Mamie’s father, Farmer Roberts, a widower with a farm to run and a family to raise – their eldest son, Albert, who was now off fighting somewhere in the Western Desert; Leo, who had been granted an exemption from active service to work on the farm; and Mamie. To be honest, Olivia hadn’t thought much about what it must be like to be Mamie, raised among unthinking men too busy with the farm and their own concerns to be thinking of her protection, let alone her difficult transition into womanhood. It had probably never even occurred to Farmer Roberts that she could ever be in danger, because he simply saw her as a child. As for Nipper Martin… Olivia could hardly breathe for her fury at his betrayal. How could he ally himself with an enemy, a Nazi, against a little girl, and one who was as near to his sister as made no difference? Nipper was practically one of the family, living at the farm, away from his mother in Newlyn who had taken to drink when her Frank went down on his trawler in a storm before the war.

  Olivia stomped around the yard till she found a pitchfork, and headed for the barn. Inside, nothing stirred except a few swifts up in the eaves. They would be off soon, cutting through the cooling air on their way back to Africa. How she wished she could go with them.

  Up in the hayloft she found Mamie, weeping silent tears into the fur of a compliant tabby cat. ‘Oh, sweetheart.’ Olivia scaled the remaining rungs of the ladder, flung the pitchfork down and enfolded both child and cat in her arms. The tabby, deciding this was too much to bear, disengaged itself and fled, renewing Mamie’s tears.

  Olivia’s heart clenched.
How could they have done this to a child? She could hardly bring herself even to consider the word ‘rape’. It was taboo, extreme. Rape was the act of fiends and monsters. She’d known Nipper Martin since they were infants at school together: he’d always been annoying and rude, but was he a monster? Could she have misinterpreted what she had seen in the gloom? She summoned back the smell of the cowshed and the soft, scared mews of the girl; the grunts of the man. No, she was not mistaken: it was rape. Certainty turned to determination.

  ‘Come with me, Mamie. Let’s go and find your da.’

  Taking Mamie by the hand, Olivia led her up to the top fields, holding the pitchfork like a standard bearer marching into battle. If she saw the blond man, she would ram the tines right into his guts. The image was so clear, so visceral, that she rather terrified herself.

  A knot of men were gathered at some distance from the abandoned Fordson tractor, which sat in the middle of an unploughed row. Nothing but fire, plague or flood would stop Farmer Roberts in the middle of a row. She began to walk faster, hauling Mamie so fast that the child stumbled on the rough ground.

  ‘There she is!’ someone called, and the knot broke apart. Olivia was alarmed to see both Nipper and the blond man in the group, along with Farmer Roberts, Leo and four or five men from the farms at Kemyel and Kerris, who had brought the teams of horses. Eyes turned on them. Hostility burned in the air. Mamie started to cry.

  Olivia took a deep breath and planted the stave of the pitchfork in the ground. ‘Farmer Roberts, can I talk to you for a minute?’

  The farmer pushed back the cap he habitually wore, revealing a stripe of pale skin. ‘What about?’

  ‘I meant, in private. It concerns…’ She gave a small nod towards his daughter.

  ‘I’ve heard all about un,’ Farmer Roberts said, glowering.

  Behind the farmer, Nipper Martin was watching her with an unreadable expression.

  ‘Get over here right now, Mamie!’ the farmer shouted.

  Compliant as ever, Mamie let go of Olivia’s hand and walked towards her father. Olivia followed, but the farmer jutted his chin at her.

  ‘Get thee gone! Kittos were always witches’ spawn. What your mam thought she was doing leaving you here to run wild I can’t imagine. Don’t you ever come near my girl or my land again.’

  Outrage swelled in Olivia’s chest. ‘It was Nipper and him!’ She pointed to the Austrian. ‘I saw them, raping your daughter!’ The forbidden word filled the space between them.

  ‘Have you no shame, you harlot?’ His face, always florid, went purple. ‘Telling such ungodly lies!’

  Leo took a step forward. ‘You got a bleddy nerve, Olivia Kitto. Everyone knows you’re a liar and a whore, taking your pa’s car out like some like some fancy madam, flaunting your cash around the village, buying fancy food and exotic birds and the like. Where’d you get the money for that then? Offering handjobs for a shilling a go, that’s what I heard, and God knows what else. I was there myself when you suggested taking Nipper down Love Lane, and now you’re corrupting my little sister who don’t know no better. You’re filth, you are.’

  Something wet hit Olivia’s cheek and she realized he had spat at her.

  ‘How dare you, Leo Roberts! I know what I saw and you’re either in league with these bastards or you’re as thick as mud.’

  Leo raised an arm as if to strike her, but his father caught it, turned and frogmarched him and Mamie away.

  ‘She’s your sister, Leo, for God’s sake! Don’t you care?’ Olivia yelled after him.

  Nipper leered at her triumphantly, then went back to the group.

  Violence hung in the air, a tangible cloud of male hostility as if the real war had suddenly revealed itself as having nothing to do with geographical boundaries and international politics but was instead the age-old battle between men and women. Olivia wondered what might happen if she stayed. Almost the worst possibility was them seeing her cry. Turning on her heel, she dug the pitchfork furiously into the ground with each step, feeling their eyes on her back. Catcalls followed her all the way back down the field.

  Damn them. Damn them all. She would run away, pack a bag and take the train to London. But then she remembered Mary, and the parrot, one responsibility that she had not chosen, another that was self-inflicted, and that made her curse again.

  She retraced her steps to the cowsheds with the intention of retrieving her satchel, but it was gone, its absence signalled by a single pencil lying in the grass by the side of the path where it had spilled from the bag as she fled. She scoured the area without luck. It seemed that her day was to be one of loss after loss after loss: loss of all her favourite haunts, of Mamie, of reputation and innocence, and now this. The angry tears became sobs of genuine hurt, sobs that doubled her up and stole her breath.

  When someone touched her elbow, she shrieked.

  It was the Dark Man. He took three or four steps back and put a hand up. In his other hand dangled her satchel.

  ‘Qu’est-ce qu’il se passe? Qu’est-ce qu’il y a? Vous êtes blessée?’

  She was so surprised – by his presence, by the French, by his obvious concern – that she stopped crying at once.

  ‘No, no I’m not hurt… je ne suis pas blessée.’

  His expression was that of someone who has been given an unexpected gift. ‘Mais vous parlez français!’

  ‘Not very well,’ Olivia sniffed.

  ‘C’est à vous?’ He held up the satchel, asking if it was hers.

  She nodded.

  ‘Vous êtes une grande artiste.’

  He must have looked in her sketchbook, and he liked her art. For a moment, she revelled in the compliment, then… That meant he had probably seen the romanticized portrait she had made of him just ten days ago. Something inside her shrivelled.

  He held the bag out and she took it from him gratefully, though he kept his hand on the strap as if to detain her. ‘Thank you,’ she said stiffly, unable to meet his eyes.

  ‘Pourquoi vous pleuriez?’ Why were you crying?

  Olivia shook her head. ‘Je ne peux pas… I can’t talk about it.’

  He said something in fast French that she couldn’t quite catch. ‘I don’t understand. I’m sorry, I must go.’

  Still he did not let go of the satchel. ‘Bad men here,’ he said at last. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said simply. ‘C’était Mamie, la petite fille du… fermier.’

  ‘Qui l’a fait?’ His face had gone very still.

  ‘Nipper Martin, et le Nazi…’

  He burst into words that were neither French nor English. They sounded angry. Then he turned – in the distance voices could just be heard.

  ‘Go,’ he said. ‘Yallah!’

  He let go of the satchel strap and she took off running. Taking the tracks made by foxes and badgers she made her way down through bracken, thorn and gorse towards the coast and came out close to where she had seen the plane fly overhead on that fateful day, and from there headed east to the lookout post. By the time she reached Chynalls, the sun was starting to dip, sending long fingers of red light out across the bay. Mary sat in the porch, looking forlorn.

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ Olivia said, all enmity towards the child forgotten. ‘Have you been here long?’

  ‘Ages. Ages and ages and ages,’ Mary said, sounding more exhausted than belligerent.

  Before the war, everyone would leave their doors unlocked, but with every year that passed paranoia had grown. Olivia dug in the satchel for the key and they went in together.

  12

  Becky

  THEY SAY IT NEVER RAINS BUT IT POURS, AND THAT NIGHT it pours. Lying wakeful, thoughts churning, I am suddenly shocked by something wet hitting me in the face. It takes me a while to realize that it’s raining, and that the bloody roof is leaking.

  I switch on the light and watch mesmerized as the next raindrop bulges out of the ceiling, gains heft and with infinitesimal slowness releases its hold and falls. I grab the pillow
before the raindrop hits, then haul at the bed. Its big brass feet drag across the bare wooden boards, making an unholy noise. When I have managed to shift it by a couple of feet, I squeeze in behind the bedhead and shove it until it’s out of the way of the leak, kicking aside the detritus that has been lurking beneath – a rolled-up eiderdown, a heavy cardboard box, a small suitcase, a roll of cartridge paper (Ooh, cartridge paper! my artist brain cries in glee, undeterred by the unfolding disaster). I place the ewer from the dressing table underneath the leak and the drops plink noisily against the china.

  Light is greying the edges of the curtains but I feel wide awake thanks to my impromptu shower. I examine the box of books. Old paperbacks on the top – thrillers by Wilbur Smith and Alistair MacLean, their covers faded, their edges foxed. Underneath these a photo album and a shallow-lidded box covered in gilded paper worn away at the edges by years of repeated handling, tied closed with a ribbon.

  I am not by nature a snoop. I respect other people’s privacy. Going through Mum’s things felt like an invasion, but Cousin Olivia is, like Chynalls, stuffed with secrets, and I feel compelled to find out what I can. I open the first album.

  Black-and-white photos on textured paper with deckled edges. Most are stuck down on the soft black card with little transparent hinges – the sort used by stamp collectors – some spill out as I open the pages. I can recall their slippery feel before I even touch them, and their gummy taste. James and I had a childhood passion for stamp collecting, fed by a sudden spate of postcards and letters Mum received from travelling relatives. I think I learned more geography from looking in an atlas to see where the stamps came from than I ever did at school.

  If I was hoping for candid shots of family life, maybe even some of Olivia with my mother, I am to be disappointed. Most are artistic shots of landscape, recognizably local. Atmospheric, sometimes dramatic, the contrast bumped up by whoever developed them: silver light on the sea, storm clouds over headlands, ever-receding hills, endless horizons. The sort of photos you take in preparation for paintings, I think with a jolt of recognition. There is the cove below the house, and a small boat rowing in. There is the sea gate, clean and bright and oiled and unencumbered by vegetation. Briar rose has colonised its curved top bar. In colour this would make a beautiful greetings card; in black and white it looks austere and rather mournful.