Peter Cunningham - The Sea and the Silence

I was irking him, yet he struggled to keep composure.

‘You’re angry. Why?’

‘I’m not angry,’ I replied, furious with myself. ‘I just hate the politics of people who ignore the feelings and circumstances of others. What about law? What about fairness?’

‘Where’s the fairness in the fact that ninety-five percent of the wealth of this country is owned by three percent of the people?’ he asked and his cheeks all of a sudden blazed.

‘If I may say so’, I said, ‘that’s a half-baked philosophy that allows people who own nothing to take what isn’t theirs.’

I was blazing too, but I didn’t care. I wanted to burn any question or hint of affection that might have existed, however ephemerally, between us. I wanted never to be in this place again. I wanted to go home.

‘I’m sorry if I’ve upset you,’ he said, getting up. ‘I hope you enjoy your time here.’

I went out to the ladies room and stayed there for twenty minutes. I had been prepared to come and risk Ronnie’s advances in the hope of meeting the man I had dreamed of; and now I had met him, Frank Waters, and Alice, his wife, all I could wish for was that the time until the train left the next morning might somehow dissolve and that I could leave Monument. I was trembling with frustration. If I had taken the merest precaution of asking a simple question during the five hours it had taken Tom to drive us home the last time, I could have prevented this disaster. I think I had been afraid of Bella, who had commandeered the front of the car, afraid of her picking up my interest and her subsequent reaction, which would have been one of scorn. But it was no use blaming Bella. The thought that Frank might have sensed my interest and was amused by it added farther vinegar to the wound. I put my head into my hands and shrieked into my lap for my embarrassment.

I emerged some time later, resolved: I would tell Ronnie I was ill and that I would have to retire early. As I made my way towards the dining room, I heard shouts. The band had stopped. A commotion was ensuing near the door and I realised that the rugby club’s banner had been torn down. A woman screamed. I heard a shout of Up the Republic! Half a dozen men or more were struggling to regain possession of their banner from a diminutive, bearded figure who had been wrestled to the floor. A man to the left of the ruck led with his foot. The circle around the fallen man closed.

‘Kill the little fucker!’

‘Dirty Shinner!’

The sight was appalling, a man on the ground being kicked.

‘Get away from him!’ Alice Waters flew at the kicking men like an enraged hawk. ‘Stop it!’ she screamed.

She clawed at them, trying to drag them off, but they scarcely noticed her. Blood appeared on the fallen man’s face, or what I could see of it. Some of his attackers fell over in their eagerness. Then, in a movement so fast that it was hard to follow, Frank Waters was in the thick of it, diving to the floor. It might have been a rugby match. Seconds later, he was in the centre of the crowd, a space cleared around him, panting, standing over the fallen man.

‘That’s enough!’

‘Fucking little republican bastard!’ swore one man. He drew back his foot again. Frank punched him square between the eyes and he went down.

‘I said, that’s enough!’ Frank shouted and faced them. ‘No one’s getting killed here unless I do it! Now get back! And you, get up, Stephen Duggan, and hand over our flag!’

Slowly, the man got up, blood on his mouth and in his beard. His eyes were crazy.

‘God help you all that you have to play a British game in Monument,’ he said thickly, still clutching the banner.

There was a threatening, collective roar. Frank snatched the flag from the man’s hands and threw it into the centre of the room. He put his arm around the man’s shoulders.

‘Let’s go home,’ he said.

Although Tom King made a presentation of cufflinks in the shape of rugby balls to Ronnie, and Ronnie spoke of his chances of coming home from war in one piece being much greater than surviving a training session with Monumentals, a remark which everyone cheered, the mood was sombre, as if a basic fissure had opened and ugliness had been revealed. I saw Tom come in with Alice’s coat and then go out with her. Ronnie was being brought drinks at the bar, but I had declined all offers of alcohol and said that I was going to bed.

‘We’re not like you think we are.’

Tom had come back in and was sitting beside me.

‘I’m not shocked, really. These things happen’, I said.

‘It was bad form’, he said. ‘It ruined the evening.’

‘Who was he?’ I asked.

‘Stephen Duggan. His father’s a blacksmith, they live in Balaklava. They’re decent people.’

‘And is Stephen decent?’

‘He’s too hot, but at least he’s got courage.’

‘To pull down a banner at a dance?’

‘He’s got opinions,’ Tom said quietly. ‘It’s dangerous at the moment to have opinions in Ireland. There’s emergency legislation, I’m sure you’re aware of it. The Special Branch shoot people like Stephen with republican sympathies. Men are dying in jail on hunger strike. Men are hanging for their beliefs.’

‘He seemed to go home when Mr Frank Waters told him to,’ I observed dryly. ‘I expect he’s a republican too’.

‘Frank and his sister grew up beside the Duggans,’ Tom said. ‘They’re childhood friends.’

I felt my mouth go dry.

‘Frank and his sister?’

‘Frank and Alice, yes.’ Tom looked at me. ‘Are you all right?’

I sat at the window of my bedroom, looking out over the night wharves, all but invisible because no lights were permitted due to the war, and at the occasional vessel slinking into port or downstream through the black folds of the river.

I had never felt so miserable. The thought of what I had done, of how deliberately rude I had been to him, of how successfully I had ruined what I had set out to accomplish, drove me so deep that I was ill. The day that had begun with such brightness and hope now lay irretrievably broken. I imagined him lying on a bed in his house somewhere in the town above me, his fair hair on the pillows, and the thought made my blood plunge. A knock came to the door.

‘Who is it?’

‘May I come in?’ asked Ronnie.

I sat on the bed, my feet beneath me, and he sat in the only chair. He looked sterner and somewhat older, perhaps to do with the light, or as if the imminent prospect of enlisting had seasoned him all of a sudden.

‘I thought I’d say goodbye,’ he said.

‘We’ve said goodbye, Ronnie.’

‘We said goodnight,’ he said and lit a cigarette. ‘You don’t mind me being up here?’

‘Why should I mind?’

‘A girl on her own away from home and so on.’

‘I’m quite independent, don’t worry.’

‘That’s one of the many thing I like about you.’

‘And I’m very tired.’

‘May I say one thing?’ He had a way of smiling that was half way between roguish and the embodiment of integrity. ‘May I ask you a question that I sincerely hope you have not been asked before?’

‘Which question?’

‘Iz, will you marry me?’

I gaped at him. He had actually gone down on his knees. I began to laugh. ‘Is this some sort of prank?’

He looked up at me mournfully.

‘From the very moment I first saw you in the garden of your home, I wanted you. I cannot get you out of my mind. You have taken root in my imagination. I know this all sounds absurd, but I cannot go away tomorrow to join an army and fight a war without knowing that you will be here for me when I come back.’

‘Ronnie,’ I said, ‘I’ve met you twice before. I like you and think you are a fine, brave man, but that is all. Please get up’.

‘May I write to you then?’ he asked, remaining on his knees. ‘Please give me something. I’m dying for you. I’m sick of the thought of life without you.’

He looked so abject that I had to bite my lip to stop myself laughing outright.

‘Write by all means, but please don’t expect me to reply. I know you’re going off in the morning and I wish you the very best, but it would be foolish to think that something might await us when you return. We’ll always be friends, of course.’

‘Is there someone else?’

I felt my blood plunge again and suck with it my womanhood.

‘No. There is no one else.’

‘Excellent!’ Ronnie, beaming, was on his feet. ‘May I then ask one favour? That you write and tell me if there is someone else? That way, I’ll know not to go on hoping.’

‘Ronnie, I don’t see why I should agree to do that.’

‘At least give me the luxury of self-delusion.’

I stood up. ‘I will write to you, but like a sister. And now I think it’s time you went home. You’ve got an early start.’

He kissed my cheek. ‘Please remember, I do love you and always will,’ he said.

1943 – 44

It would be a sombre winter in Longstead. And, yet, when Daddy rallied and sat up in bed, asking for bean soup, Mrs Rainbow spoke of the power of prayer and doubled her rosaries.

I woke on the first morning of December to a white world. Although the house was piercingly cold, it was worth it just to be able to behold our trees etched in perfection, our normally lumpy paddocks made smooth.

I trudged out through our temporarily forgiven acres and walked until my legs ached. In the intense silence, looking back on the house, one could imagine that this was not home to a dying man and his penniless family, rather a magic kingdom full of life and plenty.

In the three months since the dance in Monument, I had received half a dozen letters from Ronnie Shaw: two posted from Belfast and the rest from somewhere in Scotland. I could not but smile as he described fox hunting in the border country, as if fox hunting was what war preparation was all about. I wrote back, for I admired his persistence and, to be honest, felt touched by the fact that he admired me. But that was all. My letters were brief and I took care over them so that Ronnie could not draw any inferences about my feelings. I liked him, I conceded; he was a likeable man. But liking him was an ocean away from what I sought.

During the weeks following the dance, I had cursed myself every day for my own stupidity. I could see no way back. Frank Waters would see me as an arrogant member of a class that he despised — and he would be entirely justified. I thought about writing to apologise, but it would have been fruitless, because there was no way I could explain how jealousy and disappointment had given rise to my behaviour. I had successfully accomplished what I had set out to do in the heat of my anger — I had demolished any possibility of a relationship between us.

And then, as winter wore on, I found the weight of my indiscretion lift from me, little by little. I thought of him less. It could not have worked anyway, I told myself; the gaps were too large. Bella was right after all — I was young and I had no experience. Or at least, I now had one experience, however unsatisfactory and incomplete, and I should learn from it.

Christmas came and went and we burned fires night and day to keep warm. A sense of suspension gripped Longstead, as if everything would remain as it were, however imperfect, for as long as snow lay on the ground. The thaw came with the new year. Leaks abounded. Then in the small hours of one January night, I woke with shouting in my ears. I had been dreaming of Bella and myself, walking together in a city. It was she, I first thought, who was shouting . ‘Iz! Iz! Oh, God, Iz, where are you? IZ!’

Then I realised it was Mother.

Daddy had been so long near death that we had all come to believe the situation could continue indefinitely. He had passed away during the night and by the time we drew back the drapes, he no longer looked like anyone I had ever known.

Lolo and her husband arrived from Fermanagh the next day and the morning after that, from London, Bella, and Harry who had just become engaged to be married to a woman he had met from Somerset. The great excitement was that Allan, on leave in England, was on the mail boat. The kitchen hummed. Rooms we seldom used were opened, fires set and great quantities of ash drawn in to feed them.

I had forgotten what an impression Allan made: he was big and broad, with blond hair and ink black eyebrows. His eyes were a deep brown. I knew him very little, I realised, since one or the other of us had mostly been away. Of course, I had grown up hearing of his horsemanship and the dedication he had applied to salmon rivers and how he had single-handedly managed Longstead; but now, in the flesh, he looked older than I had imagined. He immediately took on responsibility for all aspects of the funeral, which was just as well, since Mother was more anxious about the looming social obligations than about the event itself. She sat there in formal clothes, clasping and unclasping her hands, and I knew that but for propriety she would be down the fields, painting.