‘I’ve never seen so much food,’ I said.
Bella, in a long dress of cool, baggy sleeves, dragged on her cigarette. She said, ‘It will all go to the pigs tomorrow, like the last time.’
‘Better than being stuck for enough.’
‘Miss Practical. Perhaps you might be practical enough to pour the tea.’
We sat in what was called the sunroom, a lean-to at the gable of the house, whose sun was about to be blotted out by the rising tent.
‘By the way…’
Bella drew her legs in beneath her and reached for her cup.
‘I met Norman last night and he was very keen to know that you would be here tonight.’
‘Really.’
‘Miss Ice. Really. Well yes, he was, really. You’re such a little fool.’
Norman Penrose lived with his father on a thriving estate outside the village of Grange, seven miles distant. In his early thirties, charming and unfailingly courteous in his offers in the problems of Longstead, he had always been generous and helpful. And yet, for all his excellent points, Norman made my flesh crawl.
‘I’m very sorry, Bella,’ I said thinly. ‘I didn’t realise that you were so touchy about Norman. Maybe it’s you he’s really after.’
Bella’s face assumed a slow, insouciant smile. ‘I don’t think so, darling. My taste in men is somewhat different.’
‘You mean married.’
Bella ran out her tongue and played it on the crown of her upper lip. ‘Why not?’
I felt myself foundering. ‘What happens if you get caught?’
Bella looked at me from drowsy eyes. ‘London is full of wealthy men with wives in the country. They look after you.’
‘Please don’t get hurt!’ I blurted, unable to stop myself.
‘Don’t worry about me,’ Bella said and stretched like a beautiful, pampered cat. She put her cup and saucer down and looked at me with dreamy curiosity. ‘May I say something about Norman without having my head bitten off?’
‘Say it.’
‘Norman is a catch. There is a war. You are a young girl without experience and, if I may say so, few prospects. Forget your childish feelings for Norman. When you’re twenty-five and he’s thirty-five, or whatever, it will be very different. Listen to the voice of experience. He admires you greatly.’
‘And I find him lacking in everything I admire.’
‘The reality, of course, is that he lacks nothing. He farms nearly two thousand acres. They own half of Belfast.’
‘Does love mean nothing to you?’
Bella’s face became spiny. ‘What do you know about love? Do you think that’s all there is in life? Do you think you can eat love and it can keep you warm? Look at this place! When will you grow up?’
Outside, Mr Rafter had materialised and was straining on a rope with Harry.
‘I wonder is this the last time?’ I said.
‘Why?’ asked Bella sharply.
‘Mother says we are like a ship without a captain, that Longstead is drifting.’
‘“Mother says’”. What nonsense! Allan will be Longstead’s captain.’
‘If he comes home.’
‘How do you mean, “if”’? Of course he’ll come home — he has to.’
‘He’s fighting a war, Bella.’
‘You make life so complicated!’ she cried. ‘Certain things are understood. Allan will come home, Longstead will still be here and you will come to realise that the sun rises every morning, with or without love.’
I walked through fields that afternoon, down by the lake and over meadows where lambs leapt and tumbled, into woods where our hives were found, through natural pergolas of wild roses and woodbine, and sat on a boulder by a copse from which Longstead could be picked out in the distance. The copse was surrounded by a waist-high wall of large, uneven stones that incorporated a fairy mound where oak trees grew at eccentric angles. The dead had been laid here over millennia, the bodies of warriors brought on handcarts from battle, great chieftains in their cloaks and breastplates and whole clans that had perished in epidemics. No one disturbed a fairy mound lest they troubled the dead, not even my brothers, who used to shoot pigeons here at dusk; they never stood on the mound itself but took up their positions on the perimeter.
Why, as the youngest, I should have to be the worrier, I did not understand. Bella — beautiful, worshipped — worried only for herself. Lolo, who had married a bishop’s son and lived in Fermanagh, would arrive later that day and the whole house would echo to her empty chatter. I was, it seemed, the only person competent to worry. For now, on a day of great peace and confident expectation, as swallows flew high, as men spoke happily about the hay that would be saved, as the whole bounty of the earth seemed to eddy deliciously in the warm air, I sat shivering, my back clammy from a fear I could not name.
Identical twin sisters, the unmarried Misses Carr, who lived a few miles from us and hunted their own pack of harriers, arrived with baskets of home baked biscuits. They always dressed the same, and wore the same shade of lipstick; even their hunters were picked so that no one could tell one from the other. The Misses Carr had a knack of always being in the thick of everything: funerals, christenings, parties. Although my father said they were the most irritating women he had ever met, they were among the few whom Mother counted as her friends.
Daddy’s appearance at seven that evening marked the formal opening of proceedings. His stiff, white shirt-front and collar seemed an ominous extension of his pallid face. He looked so old. Lifted into his armchair by Harry and placed by the drawing room fireplace with a glass of champagne, he presided over the embryonic gathering with a lopsided smile.
‘You look so dashing, Daddy!’
Bella, radiant in a dress of azure voile, her hair piled on her head, her shoulders bare and lovely, bent and kissed him.
‘You’re good enough to eat, my dear. You both are.’ My father’s strong voice still belied his appearance.
Bella’s eyes saw me with amusement. ‘Our Iz has turned into quite the young woman, hasn’t she, Daddy?’
‘Iz will be here when you’ll all have gone’, said my father.
‘Oh.’
‘Something wrong, Iz?’
‘Who’s that man?’ I asked to switch the conversation.
‘Him?’ Bella was unreliable when looking into the middle distance, for her weak eyesight made her peer, a process that robbed her of her beauty. ‘Oh, he’s Ronnie Shaw! He’s fun.’ She dropped her voice. ‘But they’re broke.’
The man’s profile was sharp and clean and his dark hair swept back from a wide forehead.
‘Langley Shaw’s son,’ said Daddy. ‘His mother is a wonderful woman to have put up with Langley.’
‘How “put up with”’? I asked.
‘Oh, generally,’ said my father, vague all at once. ‘He’s come up a long way tonight. From Monument.’
‘He’s got a sports car,’ Bella said. ‘I’ll go and get him.’
‘Mr Seston!’
Norman Penrose was being brought over by Harry. I always went through the same sequence of reactions with Norman: I was at first struck by how tall and handsome he was, immediately followed by a qualification about his eyes, something to do with their ability to be simultaneously intense and void, followed by an endless refining of my first impression until all I was left with was a shell of the original.
‘You look so well, sir,’ Norman said.
Daddy smiled sadly. ‘How’s your father, Norman? Has he got over your poor mother yet? God, but she was a lovely woman. That was a dreadful blow to him to have her taken like that. Would he not come tonight?’
‘He’s in Dublin. Business, I’m afraid.’
‘I used to like Dublin, you know. Liked lunch in my club. But liked coming home here better.’
‘A good judge as always,’ Norman said and then looked at me with a cautious smile. ‘Ismay?’
‘Norman.’
‘Am I allowed a dance toni
ght?’
‘By all means.’
‘Then that will be the highlight of my evening.’
‘I’ll be keeping a close eye on both of you,’ Harry said.
‘How is Mount Penrose?’ Daddy asked. ‘Are you having any trouble from these agitators?’
‘Well, after a fashion, although I’ve heard it said that the main thing that agitates them is the lack of porter.’
Bella laughed and fanned herself.
‘I daresay, but it has to be stopped before it grows out of control,’ Daddy said.
Norman’s lips became two grim lines.
‘There was a meeting near Grange last week, torches and banners. My father says it’s all Mr de Valera.’
Daddy shook his head in despair. ‘Mr de Valera, Mr de Valera. Is there any end to the trouble caused by Mr de Valera?’
‘At least he’s cracking down on the IRA,’ Norman said.
‘Hah! Only after they were allowed to steal the Irish Army’s entire stock of ammunition!’ Daddy cried. ‘Law and order went out the window in this country in 1922. I could have lived anywhere in the world, Australia, the American Midwest, but I came back here. Now I think I made the wrong decision.’
‘Of course you didn’t, Daddy!’ Bella said.
Daddy leaned forward in his chair. ‘You know Rafter, our local merchant?’
‘Little fat chap?’ Norman said.
‘He’s not a bad man, all things considered,’ Daddy said, bound up in his own world. ‘His son’s had himself elected to the local council and Rafter tells me he thinks he can get them to hold the line as far as Longstead is concerned. Ah, the belle of the ball!’
Mother looked young in a startling way, just as my father looked old. I recognised the dress as the one last brought out for Lolo’s party — emerald silk, its hem to the floor. She gave her cheek to Norman. The twin Misses Carr hovered behind her, but when Daddy glared at them, they took off.
‘Norman, you made it,’ Mother said. ‘Have you seen Iz?’
‘How could I have missed her?’
‘Isn’t she lovely?’
‘Mother!’
‘Absolutely lovely’, Norman said with huge seriousness and Mother went blind with happiness.
Daddy reached to Mother. ‘Norman’s been telling us that these bloody land agitators were over at Grange last week.’
‘Oh, we mustn’t begin the evening with a recitation of our problems,’ Mother said.
‘Ha! I’ll be a month dead and you’ll wish I was there to recite them for you!’
‘Let Daddy speak, Mother,’ said Bella, who always became assertive when Mother appeared.
‘All I was attempting to say,’ said Daddy grimly, ‘was that Rafter has a feel for what’s going on at a local level. They could be out there at this moment planning to march on Longstead tonight and we wouldn’t know.’
‘I hope they don’t come tonight, we’d scarcely have enough food,’ said Mother blithely.
Daddy was angry. ‘It’s not a laughing matter! We’re not going to give in without a fight!’
‘One of us should get elected on the council.’
A silence gripped the group.
‘For God’s sake, Iz,’ Daddy growled, ‘you’re not going to end up like that dreadful Gore-Booth woman, are you?’
Bella was looking at her hands, shaking her head, as if to say that I could always be relied on to put my foot in it.
Lolo had just come downstairs and heard the conversation.
‘You’d have us end up with our throats cut,’ she said tightly.
‘That’s Iz, all right,’ said Bella.
‘Iz has a point.’
My father closed his eyes in resignation, a reflexive gesture to Mother’s voice whenever it entered an argument.
‘How are we ever going to have a say in our own country if we don’t become involved?’ Mother asked.
I could see that Norman was amused.
‘You have to go out and work to get elected, Mother,’ said Bella with great patience.
Mother frowned. ‘What’s wrong with that?’
I said, ‘Exactly! There’s nothing to stop one of us from being elected. Then we wouldn’t have to rely completely on the likes of Mr Rafter to save our skins.’
‘Rafter’s all right,’ my father growled.
‘I’ll vote for you, Iz,’ said Harry.
‘These people are no different to the IRA.!’ Lolo cried. ‘They’ll stop at nothing until England is driven from Ulster!’
‘Well, I must say, I can’t blame them,’ Mother said. ‘It’s high time Ireland was left to govern itself.’
‘You’ll end up behind bars if you don’t come to your senses!’ Daddy shouted.
Bella drew herself up and raised her chin. ‘Land agitation is a fad. What fools we would look if we jumped onto councils and things and then the fad ended. We would be far worse off than we are now.’
‘Hear, hear,’ said my father and he and Norman raised their glasses.
‘What a load of bloody nonsense,’ Harry said so only I could catch his words.
I wanted to say so much all at once, but Bella’s aura and beauty seemed impregnable. I went though the hall and out to the lawn and crossed it to a wall in which a seat was set. The sound of stringed instruments being tuned crept from the dining room. On the gravelled sweep that circled Longstead, cars were parked, their angled hoods and big headlamps silhouetted against the deepening sky.
‘Do you smoke?’
I jumped. ‘Oh!’
‘I saw you come out.’
Ronnie Shaw snapped open a metal lighter and flame shot up between us. ‘We once lived in a place as nice as this.’
‘What happened?’
‘The Land Commission took it.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Gave my father worthless pieces of paper. In one way it’s all quite amusing. I mean, my father was hopeless at managing things, so you could say we’re better off. There’s no more of this wondering what’s going to happen. We sleep soundly. We live our lives.’
‘Where?’
‘In a place called Sibrille, it’s on the sea near Monument. Do you know Monument?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘But you’ve heard of it.’
‘Of course I’ve heard of it.’
‘Everyone has heard of Monument, the same way as they’ve heard of Venice.’
‘Come on!’
‘Monument’s built on the loveliest river in the world. It rises from its quays, a town of tiers and terraces. Mediterranean, they say. You can almost smell the olives. You’re Iz.’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re very pretty,’ he said, looking directly at me. A gap divided his two front teeth.
‘What did you call the place you live in?’
‘I’m serious. The prettiest girl here by a long shot.’
‘Mr Shaw, do you always go such a headlong gallop?’
‘It’s Ronnie. We live in the lighthouse in Sibrille. On really stormy days we can’t get out.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘You don’t believe anything I say.’ He crossed his legs and blew smoke into the air. ‘You must come and see it some day.’
‘We know very little about the sea here,’ I said.
‘It becomes part of you. Lives in your ears and your nose. Like a woman.’
‘Whatever that means.’
‘Means one comes to live for it. Or her. Sailors see the sea as a woman.’ He flicked his cigarette and it sailed away into the bushes in an arc of red sparks. ‘You’re not horsey.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Your sister Lolo told me. She said, “That’s Iz. She hates horses”.’
‘I don’t. She didn’t.’
‘There you go again. She even told me your age.’
‘My age is none of your business.’
‘Twenty.’
‘I’m twenty-one.’
‘Doesn’t
matter to me. In fact it’s a novelty to meet someone who’s not half horse. My father and mother do nothing else except hunt in the winter, four days a week, and trek around gymkhanas in summer, trying to flog horses to wealthy English people. You’d like the sea, though, I can tell.’
‘Of course you can’t tell, you’ve barely met me.’
‘It’s not difficult. A pretty girl who prefers the garden on her own to a crowded house. Odds on she’ll like the sea.’
‘I have been to the sea.’
‘Not one like ours, I bet. Different every day. We have waves as tall as your oak trees.’
‘You’re such a liar.’
‘Twice as tall sometimes. They break ships the size of your house to matchwood against the rocks. More than a hundred soldiers and seamen drowned off Sibrille after the Napoleonic wars. There’s a tablet to them. Yet for all that, we still call the sea a woman.’
‘No one owns the sea,’ I said.
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Here everything is about what you own. Which means land, I suppose. There are more problems owning than not owning, I think. You said as much yourself. You said you sleep soundly.’
‘Did I?’
‘“We live our lives”, you said.’
‘Not only is she pretty, but she forgets nothing.’
I ground my cigarette out. ‘Do you?’
Ronnie Shaw was looking directly in through the open windows of the drawing room. ‘Who’s that woman?’
I looked. Bella was standing at a window, talking to Norman.
‘That’s Bella, my sister.’
Ronnie’s fingers went to the slim case and he took out a fresh cigarette. ‘Good Lord, she’s gorgeous,’ he said, almost to himself, and tapped both ends of the cigarette against the polished silver.
I was suddenly weak. Bella’s beauty only emphasised how irrelevant I was to a man like this, and how much I still had to learn. Then I felt his hand on my bare arm.
‘But not half as gorgeous as you.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘We never discussed when I will have the pleasure of showing you the lighthouse which you don’t believe in, did we?’
The Sea and the Silence Page 11
