The Sea and the Silence

by Peter Cunningham

  His engaging smile.

  I freed myself. ‘No, we didn’t, Mr Shaw, and we never shall.’

  I spent the rest of the party, or of much of it as I could, sitting by the range in the kitchen, as the staff hurried in and out with plates and trays and teapots. It was the one place I was sure that Norman Penrose would never enter, but each time I reappeared in the marquee, he immediately put down his glass or plate or indeed his current dancing partner and cornered me. The kitchen was my haven. At two in the morning, I went up the back stairs and into bed and slept deeply, dreaming of men in battle and enormous black rooks flocking into night roosts.

  ‘Iz! Iz! Wake up!

  Bella went to the heavy curtains and pulled them back. Light flooded in whitely.

  ‘Are you awake?’

  I had gone under the blankets.

  ‘Iz! This is important!’

  ‘What time is it?’

  Bella was dressed and she was smiling at her most engaging. ‘Nine o’clock. Listen, you and I are going to do something absolutely mad today.’

  ‘Go away. I want to sleep.’

  Bella sat down beside me. ‘You know Ronnie Shaw? He wants us to go down to Monument.’

  ‘He what..?’

  ‘He’s playing a rugby match and he wants us to go down and watch it. It’s only a few hours in his car. Come on!’

  I sat up. ‘He wants you, Bella, not me.’

  Bella’s eyes were intensely bright. ‘He suggested we both go! Come on! It’s something different!

  ‘I don’t want to go to Monument with him. He’s pompous,’ I said and went back under the bedclothes.

  I felt Bella kneel on the bed and catch the sheet where I was clutching it; she tugged until she fell out on the floor, all my bedclothes around her head. We were both laughing.

  ‘Ronnie’s not the worst when you get to know him,’ she said.

  ‘He thinks you’re gorgeous.’

  ‘They have no money, but he’s fun. I mean, this is just a fun idea.’

  ‘Then you go with him.’

  ‘You know I won’t go on my own. Please, Iz.’

  ‘I don’t want to go down the country as a sort of chaperone to you, Bella.’

  ‘Why not? I’d do it for you.’

  ‘No, you wouldn’t.’

  ‘It’s not as if your whole life will end because you spend a day in Monument.’

  ‘I don’t want to go.’

  Bella’s face darkened and I felt suddenly sorry for her that so much seemed to depend on so little.

  ‘You’re a spoilsport, you know that? she said. ‘You’re going to embarrass me.’

  ‘Why on earth should I embarrass you?’

  ‘Because I thought this was something you’d like to do. That’s what I told Ronnie.’

  ‘You’ve actually told him I’m coming, haven’t you?’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Iz! It’s not as if I’m asking you to elope! Look, please, as a treat for my birthday, please, say you’ll come. I’ve told him we must be back by evening.’

  In the end, it was not so much that it was easier to let Bella have her way than the fact that I saw her all at once as a woman who was essentially floundering in life, whose beauty and poise should have delivered her so much more than a fast and racy life in which the leaping into a car on a whim and dashing to the other end of Ireland was the pinnacle of achievement.

  ‘What about all the work here?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ve seen to everything!’ she cried. ‘Thank you, little sister!’ She ran to the door, then turned back. ‘Well, come on! He says he has to be down there by two!’

  As I got dressed, I felt excited, despite myself, that I was embarking on what was, in my life, an adventure. An hour later, having eaten breakfast and said goodbye to my parents, sitting sideways in the tiny rear seat of an MG Midget behind Ronnie Shaw and Bella, we drove down the avenue of Longstead.

  ‘You see?’ Ronnie said, turning around, a grin cracking his face. ‘You may get to see the sea much sooner than you imagined.’

  My chief memory of the journey was of the smoke from Ronnie Shaw’s cigarette. Although he pulled in near Carlow and folded down the roof, an ever-floating tail of smoke lay across my face and made me dizzy. Bella and Ronnie chatted the whole time, mostly about people we all knew, people like ourselves who lived in Down and Donegal and County Clare. The social lives of this extended group, their comings and goings to and from London, their war — their war! — their marriages and infidelities, their vanities, offspring, disloyalty and appearance were analysed without cease or remorse. Or so I assume, as I went to sleep and, when I came to, found that we were coming in along a busy quay. It was a wider river than I had seen before and its ships and sailing boats were moored right up to the town. Horse-drawn broughams and drays slowed our progress. I smelled ship-bound pens of waiting pigs and cattle before I saw them. Behind me, the brightly painted face of Monument appeared, shop fronts and hall doors, brass knobs and striped, protective door sheets.

  We made our way up through the town, Ronnie leaning on the horn to clear the street of children and cyclists. Women in black shawls, their skirt hems to the cobblestones, stood behind carts piled with apples. Most of the shops had awnings rolled out to protect their windows from the sunlight.

  ‘It’s hardly Bond Street, but you can buy most things here,’ Ronnie said and Bella smirked, since the remark had been for her.

  We drove up a steep hill and passed through what seemed like tenements; then we were out again in open country with hedgerows either side and fields of after-grass. The match, Ronnie explained, was a ‘little pipe-opener’ that always took place before the season proper got underway, between Monumentals, the local rugby club, and a team from Limerick. Several cars and a great many bicycles were parked in a field in which a tent had been pitched. Beyond the far ditch, I could see the crosses and headstones of a cemetery.

  ‘This is our rugby club,’ Ronnie said, getting out and reaching to help me.

  ‘It’s just a field!’ Bella cried, as if something far greater had been promised. ‘And it’s beside a graveyard!’

  ‘Which is very handy’, Ronnie said. ‘Someone gets done over during a match, we just heel them straight in.’

  Bella’s jaw dropped and Ronnie turned to me and smiled and I saw something deeper in his eyes than I had been expecting.

  ‘Back in a minute,’ he said and made his way to the tent.

  ‘I don’t know about you,’ Bella said, ‘but I’m starving.’

  A few other people were waiting around, chatting and giving us shy, sidelong glances. Ronnie emerged less his jacket and with the top of his shirt unbuttoned. He was followed by a big red-headed man in his mid-twenties. The man was limping.

  ‘This is Tom King,’ Ronnie said and introduced us. He turned to Tom. ‘The girls have come down from County Meath to see how rugby is really played.’

  ‘You must have very little else to do,’ Tom said, as Ronnie disappeared again.

  He had sprained his foot, he explained to us, otherwise he too would have been playing. His face was round and freckled and he spoke in an accent that was gently guttural.

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ Bella said, ‘but is there by any chance someplace we could find something to eat?’

  ‘Not unless you go back into town,’ Tom said. ‘Would you like me to see if there are sandwiches inside?’

  ‘Thank you so much,’ Bella said and lifted her chin.

  She had a way of being condescending to people who she considered of lesser social standing than us that was beyond her power to correct or alter, an imperious manner she believed was intrinsic to her position but which, when seen at times like this, was simply ridiculous. I could see that she was disappointed, that she had had in her mind a glittering occasion, an event such as polo or cricket that followed house parties in England, a social set piece played out in surroundings of wealth and privilege rather than a ramshackle game of rugby in the Irish coun
tryside.

  Tom came out carrying a plate of thickly cut sandwiches and a pot of tea. He put plate and pot down on the grass, then went back in for cups and milk.

  ‘I don’t believe it — white bread,’ Bella said, her teeth clenched.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ I muttered, ‘don’t you ever stop complaining?

  ‘This is turning into a disaster’, Bella said.

  The wind got up as big, creamy-legged men in shorts appeared. Ronnie emerged looking like an enormous schoolboy. He pranced around as they all warmed up, and threw the oval ball to his team-mates and occasionally leaped into the air. I looked at Bella, shivering and miserable, and it suddenly began to drizzle. Ronnie Shaw had been her whim this morning, and perhaps last night he had chatted her up the same way as he had me. Now, I saw bitterness in her face as she became aware of my amusement, and, for the first time, I realised that of the two of us, I was more beautiful.

  The referee blew his whistle and the teams ran at each other. I felt the sudden need to be held by a man, to know more of love than the dear love of my parents. To be possessed. There was a scrum and all that was visible of Ronnie was his backside. Nor was it the coquettish love that Bella spoke of that I yearned for, but love that was deep and lasting. The ball appeared between Ronnie’s legs and he heeled it on backwards. The scrum-half seized the ball and, in a graceful movement that made me draw in my breath, became airborne. His fair hair, as he sailed, fluffed out around his head. I smiled for the elegance of him, whoever he was, for the lovely shape of his body in midair, for his extended limbs. Out flew the ball from his hands and he came down softly. Then, there was another scrum and his opposite number put the ball in, but it suddenly shot back out through Ronnie’s legs as it had before. I watched again as the scrum-half left the ground in one fluid movement, creating a span of time made entirely of sinew and muscle and spirit, except that, this time, he was facing me. As the ball left his hands and he prepared to meet the ground, he looked directly at me. He smiled.

  ‘Good, isn’t he?’

  Tom was standing beside me. Beyond the ditch at the other side of the pitch, I could see Bella walking among the headstones. It was as if two parts of my brain, hitherto unconnected, had fused, lighting up areas within me that had up to then known only darkness.

  ‘I’ve never seen someone fly so easily,’ I said, feeling myself go on fire.

  ‘He’s a natural’, Tom said. ‘Goes in under a mountain of men and somehow comes out with the ball.’

  The scrum-half must have heard him, for there was a ferocious tussle in the mid-field as enormous men came and threw themselves onto the pile of bodies; and, sure enough, after prolonged cries and screams, a lithe, mud-stained figure with blond hair appeared suddenly from the base of the mêlée and, once again, pitched himself into space. And again, I was sure that our eyes met. This time, I smiled.

  ‘Ronnie told me you live on this enormous estate,’ Tom was saying. ‘What’s it like?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  My skin was expanding deliciously, as if it was being coaxed out gently in all directions. I wanted to laugh.

  ‘Where you live. What’s it like to be brought up somewhere like that?’ Tom was asking.

  ‘Oh — it’s… fine,’ I stammered. ‘It’s a lovely place.’

  My happy feeling made my own words seem far off, for I could see only the game being played by one man and heard little. Tom was standing there, as if my reply had somehow disappointed him. I had to make an effort. I said,

  ‘None of us has any control over the circumstances into which we’re born.’

  ‘But we all have a duty to change those circumstances if they are unjust’, he said.

  I saw the scrum-half again and took a deep, steadying breath. This was fate, I had read. You got up one day and there it was.

  ‘I completely agree,’ I said.

  ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ said Tom King.

  Out on the pitch, the local team were being pinned back near their own line. I saw Ronnie charging headlong with the ball in his grasp. A huge man flung himself at Ronnie. The impact of their colliding heads sounded like two mallets being struck together. They both went down and the game stopped. I saw a girl run on to the pitch carrying a first-aid kit.

  ‘Jesus,’ Tom said.

  We made our way along the touchline. The man from the visiting team was getting up, but Ronnie was out cold. The girl, her glossy black hair gathered up under a man’s peaked cap, knelt beside him. Blood ran from Ronnie’s nose. I felt a surge of dismay, for I had begun to realise that there was more to Ronnie Shaw than I had first imagined.

  ‘Ronnie? Ronnie?’ the girl called.

  ‘Come on now, give him a bit of air everyone,’ said the fair-haired scrum-half. Then he saw me.

  ‘Hello,’ I said.

  ‘Hello.’

  I don’t even remember noticing what colour his eyes were, although later I would recall that they were nearer green than blue. Then he turned and went to Ronnie, beneath whose nose the girl was passing a phial. He put his arm around Ronnie’s shoulders and sat him up. After a bit, Ronnie’s chin came up and then he got to his feet and a blanket was put over him and he was helped away to loud applause. The crowd dispersed and the game resumed, but I just stood there in the rain, feeling each drop as if they were all made of gold.

  ‘What on earth is going on here?’ asked Bella.

  ‘We thought Ronnie was going into the cemetery,’ I said, resisting the urge again to shout for my strange happiness.

  ‘I’ll be in there shortly if I don’t get out of this place,’ Bella said. ‘I feel ill.’

  Over by the ditch, Ronnie sat slumped.

  ‘I’m extremely sorry’, he said, looking at me from bulging eyes, ‘but I don’t think I’m going to be up to showing you the sea today.’

  ‘I’ll have to rely on your description,’ I said. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I’ve never felt better,’ Ronnie said, and his eyes went glassy and he fell back, his mouth open and the gap between his front teeth pointing for the sky.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  1943

  Bella went back to England and Lolo to Fermanagh; Harry had left Longstead when we had been in Monument. With the first day of September came east winds and everyone accepted that the summer was over.

  That I had not learned his name made me angry, for I had not had the nerve to ask Tom King when he drove us home in his car, an old bull-nose Morris. And yet, I reasoned as the weeks went by and I heard nothing, had he wanted to know who I was, all he had to do was ask Ronnie. I thought of him most nights and also first thing every morning when I woke to howling winds and the sound of rain dripping from our gutters. I wondered if he ever thought of me. I tried to imagine living in Monument and being able to walk out on Saturdays to the rugby match. I could see him sailing through the air and his green blue eyes searching the touchline to see if I was there.

  Daddy’s health took a turn for the worst. He must have once been a strong man, for everyone said that his ongoing survival was unprecedented. It was appalling to watch. He went yellow. Light as a child, occasionally he asked for Allan, or made references to jobs to be done about the place, or asked questions about the price of cattle. As the doctor’s visits became part of our days, Mr Rafter also began to appear, usually in the late afternoon. A bond had formed between Daddy and Rafter, and now, as the breaking of that bond approached, the grocer came up and calmly dealt with Daddy’s ever more rambling questions.

  At some stage in this inexorable decline, I became aware that outside the walls of Longstead, local politics were moving steadily against us. ‘Agitation’ was the recurring word. It floated out from the meetings between Daddy and Mr Rafter. The people outside who were agitating for land they had always been denied were looking in over our crumbling walls and seeing our untilled and untended acres. Daddy’s ill health alone was preventing what only a short time before would have been unthinkable: the surrender of Longstea
d. And then, one night, when the house was locked and asleep, there came a mighty explosion. I felt terror, as if something that had always lain hidden was now enlarged. The absence of a man was piercing as I made my way downstairs. Wind blew through the shattered window of the drawing room, making the curtains billow. I felt as if we had all been violated. And next morning, one of the farm hands came in and fearfully reported that someone had painted a message on the wall by our gates. I went down with him to see. The bold letters seemed to have been scrawled with venom: LANDLORDS OUT!

  It seemed futile to say that we were not landlords, that we rented land to no one.

  An envelope came addressed to Bella and me: The Misses Bella and Ismay Seston. In it was a postcard from Ronnie Shaw, or, to be precise, a note scrawled by him on a postcard of his father’s: LANGLEY SHAW MFH, SIBRILLE. Ronnie had managed to enlist in a regiment of the British Army in Northern Ireland, it seemed, and was throwing a party in Monument before he left. A hotel had been booked and bedrooms reserved for us. Ronnie seemed to have recovered.

  I sat down and wrote a polite refusal, explaining that Bella was in London and that owing to family commitments, I could not accept. Leaving home, even for a night, when my father lay dying and when rocks were being hurled through our windows was out of the question. I sealed the envelope and put it on the hall table for posting in the village later that day. But then an hour went by and I was helping to prepare my father’s lunch when a sudden image transfixed me. It was that of a lithe body suspended in the air. I went out to the hall and sat, trying to come to terms with what I felt. A weakness, even a helplessness. I could not bring myself to call it a craving, but I had to see him again, even if it meant abrogating all the many responsibilities that I had taken on. Feeling reckless and dizzy, I tore up the first letter and wrote another, explaining that Bella was in London, but saying that I would love to come.

  Mr Rafter’s son, the one on the council, had a van with an anthracite roof burner: he drove me across the border of Meath into County Kildare on a Friday morning. I had left written instructions as to Daddy’s regime and had made everyone recite back to me what was to happen at the key times: when he needed changing and turning and how his ho water bottle was to be kept hot and wrapped in a towel and what pills he had to take and when. Mother kissed me goodbye without a care in the world, which almost made me change my mind; but by then John Rafter’s van was waiting at the hall door.