Peter Cunningham - The Sea and the Silence

Mr Rafter came up after supper and spent a long time in discussion with Allan.

‘What did he have to say?’ I enquired later.

‘Is he owed money?’ Bella asked.

‘Mr Rafter is our friend,’ Allan said. ‘He’s on our side’.

‘So he should be, all the money he’s made from us over the years,’ Bella said.

Her clothes were newly bought and wildly sophisticated to our eyes. She had told Mother the night before that she had met someone in England who she hoped to bring home and introduce. Sounds like he’s got money, Mother had whispered to me.

‘Listen, I don’t want to hear you say that again,’ said Allan sternly. He had become used to command. ‘Mr Rafter is fighting a rearguard action on our behalf. We’ll be lucky to be left with this roof over our heads, the way things are going. All that’s been stopping them up to now has been the fact that Daddy was ill.’

‘They think they can just come in and take what they want’, Bella said, ‘but we’re going to stop them.’ She looked to Harry. ‘What are you smiling about? Why don’t you come home and get involved?’

‘I don’t even know how to drive a tractor,’ Harry said.

‘Isn’t there some legal way we can approach this problem? asked Bella.

‘I’m not sure there is,’ Allan said. ‘Thousands of landless men are banging on the doors of this new Land Commission, demanding acres. A place like ours where proper farming hasn’t taken place in twenty years is a ripe prospect.’

‘But we have to be given a chance!’ I cried. ‘You have to be given a chance!’

‘That’s exactly it, and Rafter agrees,’ Allan said. ‘Once this wretched war is over, I can come back and knuckle down — but that won’t happen tomorrow. However, Rafter thinks his son can persuade the Land Commission to hold off.’

‘I’m sure it suits him to do so,’ Bella said with scorn, ‘so that he can go on charging us the earth for everything.’

‘So bloody what if it does suit him?’ asked Allan darkly, and strode out.

We put Daddy’s lead-lined coffin into the vault at Longstead on a day that was warm and bright. When we all returned to the house, it was as if a huge burden had been lifted. In some ways, it was like Bella’s party of the summer before — the Misses Carr arrived with baking and went about together, their hands full of plates; Norman Penrose appeared, this time with his father, whose face sprouted curling whiskers and whose expression was ever midway between contemplation and regret.

Mother sat in a corner like a lost child, the Misses Carr either side of her, one of them stroking her hand. Most of the people who were drinking tea and chattering loudly were locals, men like Mr Rafter and farmers from round about and a few corn merchants from Dublin. I wondered was this what a long and once bright life had amounted to? Years of decline, and then the day you were coffined and shelved away, all but forgotten within a few of hours?

‘Iz, I need you to hear something.’ Bella had arrived inside the door of the drawing room, linking Allan in one arm and Norman Penrose in the other. ‘Norman has just made the most wonderful suggestion. Tell Iz, Norman.’

‘It’s very little,’ Norman said.

‘It certainly is not’, Bella said. She drew herself up. ‘Norman has come to the rescue. He’s going to send men over to plough and till and generally fix things up here, aren’t you, Norman?’

‘Only if you so wish’, Norman said and looked directly at me.

‘That’s… very kind,’ Norman, I said.

‘Activity will make it far more difficult for the agitators,’ Bella said. ‘Apparently, Norman has offered on umpteen occasions, but Daddy always refused.’

What to Bella seemed the ideal solution, to me seemed undue haste. She beamed as she said, ‘They’ll see that Mount Penrose is involved. ‘

‘Of course, we’ll pay you whatever it costs,’ Allan said.

Norman made brushing motions in the air. ‘Wouldn’t hear of it.’

‘We can’t allow you to do this for nothing,’ Allan said.

‘It’s not as if this is just an ordinary commercial transaction,’ Norman said and looked at me again.

Bella let go of Allan and linking me with her free arm, drew Norman and me tight to her. ‘Some things are just understood, isn’t that right, Norman?’

We were all three in this ridiculous little knot of Bella’s making. Then, as one, we all turned to the door. My mouth dropped open, I knew, but I could do nothing about it.

‘Hello,’ he said.

He said, ‘Sorry I’m late, but the hackney ran out of fuel five miles down the road and I had to walk.’

I had detached myself from Bella and Norman and we were standing in the hall. I could scarcely speak.

‘What… what are you doing here?’

‘Ronnie telegrammed when he heard the news and asked me to represent him. He wants you to know how very sorry he is. And I am too.’

I was dizzy. I knew that Bella and Norman were staring at us.

I said, ‘I need some air. Come on.’

We walked down the front avenue and came to the stile into the lake field, so called because in winter water took up most of it. All the feelings for him that I thought I had forgotten returned, not only as if they had never gone away, but with renewed force.

‘It’s very kind of you to have made such a long trip.’

‘Ronnie’s a good friend,’ Frank said.

‘He writes to me.’

‘I know. He writes to me too and tells me.’

‘Tells you what?’

‘Everything. He says he’s going to marry you.’

‘I don’t believe he told you that!’

‘Is it true?’

‘Of course it’s not true.’

Frank smiled. ‘Ronnie’s impulsive. He’s like his father, not really connected to the world. Maybe the army will sort him out.’

I looked back to the house and could see that the French windows had been opened and that people were drinking their cups of tea on the lawn. Frank took out cigarettes.

‘This is a tough day for you,’ he said quietly.

It was until you arrived, I wanted to say, but instead I blew smoke from the side of my mouth and asked him, ‘How is your wild friend who tore down the banner that night?’

‘Stephen? What did you think of him?’

‘I was frightened. He was so… intense.’

Frank’s eyes sought out something in the distance. ‘Stephen believes that the Brits should be put out of the Six Counties. He thinks Ireland should take advantage of the war and strike hard whilst England’s attention is elsewhere.’

‘Isn’t that dangerous talk?’

‘It’s insane. But the funny thing is that just over twenty years ago, it was the talk of heroes.’

‘For some,’ I said, despite myself.

‘Always, for some,’ he said.

I thought of the land on which we were standing and the danger posed to it by people like Stephen and maybe even by Frank Waters. So much I didn’t know — of life, of my country, of love.

‘Why did you save him?’ I asked.

‘Because he’s my friend,’ Frank answered and looked at me. ‘Just as Ronnie is my friend. You do hard things for your friends.’

I realised with a jolt that he had travelled over a hundred miles and walked the last five to present Ronnie’s condolences to people who represented everything he despised. I said, ‘I’m sorry if coming here has been so hard for you.’

He shook his head. ‘There’s something about you’, he said.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘This is not you,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how I know this, but somehow I do. The girl I saw at the rugby match and the one I met at the dance were completely different. Which one is you?’

I wanted to explain so much to him, to tell him that he was right and that it was I who had allowed my own stupidity to sink us before we had ever set sail. But then I saw Bella.

‘I think we should go back in now,’ I said.

Bella stood just inside the hall door, peering out, trying to make out who I was with. Her face clouded as we approached.

‘This is my sister, Bella, this is Frank Waters, a friend of Ronnie’s,’ I said as breezily as I could. ‘He’s come up all the way from Monument to be here today.’

As they shook hands, I could see Bella’s eyes become enlarged with curiosity.

‘Ah, the Shaws,’ she said. ‘Do you see much of them?’

At that moment, Lolo appeared behind Bella and made frantic, jerking motions with her head. I went in.

‘The Penroses are leaving!’ Lolo whispered. ‘Mr Penrose asked to see you.’

I walked through the house and out to the stables, where Mr Penrose and Norman were standing by their chauffeur-driven car, the father looking impatiently at his watch, the son smiling as if the very sight of me always led to his enchantment.

‘My dear’, said Stanley Penrose, placing his hands on my shoulders and composing his face in an expression approaching happiness. ‘I have admired you since you were a baby. I know you as if you were my own. Before I leave now, I just want to say that from this sad day on, whatever we have is yours. All of it. Want for nothing. Your days of wanting are over.’

And so saying, as Norman fixed me with a look of utter knowing, they swept out.

I went upstairs and lay on my bed and shivered. Conversation bubbled from the rooms below. Everything and one seemed to be conspiring in my future, their own needs uppermost and mine of no consequence. I was being steered away from my own feelings, just as now, lying on my bed at a moment when the man I wanted most was downstairs, wondering if I might reappear.

I lay there for a good while, then I heard cars starting and footsteps on the gravel. I sat up and looked out the window. He was getting into someone’s car. My heart raced so much that I almost couldn’t hear. I had one chance and I was going to take it.

‘Iz?’ I had raced down the stairs and passed Bella in the hall. She caught me. ‘Where on earth did he come from?’ she hissed.

‘You were introduced to him.’

‘He’s a dock worker,’ she said incredulously.

‘Let go of me!’

I ran out. The car was nosing away. It belonged to some of Daddy’s corn merchant friends and they were giving him a lift.

‘Frank!’

The car stopped and he climbed out of the back.

‘I tried to find you to say goodbye,’ he said.

‘I wanted to write to you after the dance and apologise for my behaviour, but I didn’t know what to say,’ I blurted.

He stared at me. I said, ‘The real me was the me at the rugby match.’

‘I know.’

‘You do?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m sorry, I was unforgivably rude.’

‘You were so angry’, he said, ‘I just couldn’t make out why.’

I closed my eyes. ‘I thought you were married to Alice. It was myself I was angry at.’

I expected him to laugh, but he said nothing for a moment. ‘Ah.’

‘You must think I’m a fool’.

‘Do I look as if I think you’re a fool?’

My breath was coming fast. ‘The only reason I came down to the dance was to see you.’

His eyes searched my face. The driver of the car was honking on the horn.

‘Do you think it might work? Us?’ he said.

‘Yes, I think it might.’

‘I’m willing to try it if you are,’ he smiled.

‘Yes, I’m willing to try,’ I said.

He climbed back into the car and drove away.

I said, ‘I love you.’

1944

Except for Allan, everyone left the day after the funeral and the house found a new routine. Spring cleaning began. When Daddy had been alive, he had been the focus of everyone’s energy; now jobs that had been put off for years were suddenly commissioned. Mother, of course, took no part, for although being married for years to an invalid was a strain from which she was happy to be released, I knew that part of her had gone with him and that grief respects no logic nor is any less no matter how long awaited.

My joyful mood, inappropriate though it was in the circumstances, carried me like a cork on a flood. Every time I thought of Frank, which was all the time, I smiled, for I was revolving through a galaxy of delight. My happiness was infectious: the girls in the house who were dusting and sweeping were happy too, and sang, as I did, as they brought ancient rugs into the garden and beat out decades of dust. Even as I sang, I knew that nothing but obstacles lay ahead of us, for the obligations in which our family had been reared were clear and, guided above all by the need to retain property, made a grave crime of marrying outside.