Peter Cunningham - The Sea and the Silence

‘It could not be lovelier,’ he said, looking at me. He sat, his hands about his knees. ‘May I say something?’

‘By all means.’

‘You are so beautiful it makes me want to weep.’

I sat back. ‘I’m sorry, but what an extraordinary thing to say.’

‘I want to weep because it’s a crime to leave you so unhappy.’

I stared at him, wondering if the heat had made me dizzy.

‘Unhappy?’

‘Yes.’ He took my hand and kissed it. ‘Very.’

I drew back to find my breath. ‘That’s enough, I think.’

‘I don’t.’

We were kissing. First we kissed as we knelt, then he pressed me gently back and we kissed as we lay on the rug. I could not hold him tight enough, nor taste deeply enough of his mouth. The smell of the sweat from his flannel shirt. The feel of his face to my hands, its warm coarseness, his weight, his recklessness. His hands were on my bare legs.

‘No!’

I sat up.

‘Iz…’

‘This is insanity! Anyone could walk out and find us. Ronnie is due here any moment.’

‘Iz, I want you to come back to England with me.’

I stared at him. ‘I’ve hardly met you.’

He took my hands in his. ‘Love takes no account of conventions. Do you love Ronnie?’

I was distracted and shook my head. ‘I’m married to Ronnie.’

‘Why did you marry him?’

I couldn’t breathe. ‘Because I… I wanted to.’

‘There! You didn’t say, “I married him because I love him”.’

I took away my hands.

He said, ‘And I’m married to a woman who’s agreed to divorce me. Look, Iz, although I’ve hardly met you, perhaps that is why I can see things as they are. You’re trapped in a marriage without love. I saw his eyes last night. Tell me I’m wrong!’

‘We’re just going through a difficult period. He nearly died not so long ago, as you well know.’

‘He doesn’t appreciate or deserve you. Tell me you’re happy with him and I won’t say another word.’

I found myself being swept away by a force that I knew I could njot resist.

‘I’m forty-two,’ Hedley said urgently. ‘I’ve got everything in life except love. I think I’ve found it here. Look at me, Iz.’ He caught my hand up and brought it to his cheek. ‘I’ll look after everything, employ the best solicitors, I’ll take six months off and we’ll sail around the world. Then, when we come back, we’ll live wherever you please.’

Despite myself, I began to believe that what he was proposing was actually possible. I asked, ‘What about Hector?’

‘He comes with us, of course.’

‘He loves his father.’

‘It’s not difficult any more to get from here to England. He can divide his time during the holidays. He can do whatever he wishes.’

He wiped my eyes. I turned away. ‘I can’t.’

‘Iz. Iz. I know nothing about your life, but I’m prepared to bet it hasn’t been easy, that you’ve had more than your share of disappointments. I want to dedicate myself to making that up to you, to making you happy, whatever it takes, because all it takes is love. This is not outrageous, it is not wrong to want to be happy, people do it the whole time.’

‘You’re mad,’ I said and blew my nose. ‘I think I am too.’

‘Was that madness when we kissed?’ he asked. ‘Or was that the sanest moment of our lives?’

I looked up. ‘Oh, God, here’s Rosa Santry.’

She was walking from the far end of the bank, her son at her side.

‘Iz.’ He gripped my arm. ‘Think about everything I’ve said. Please. I’ve never in my life been more sober or serious. I love you. I want you forever. I realise that you can’t drop everything tomorrow and jump on the train with me, but think about it. Please.’

Rosa was no more than 50 yards away.

I said, ‘Yes.’

I spent the next three weeks in turmoil. Often I saw myself in the bedroom mirror and wondered if I looked hard enough if I might see the demon that had entered me. For no matter how hard I tried, even to the extent of relieving my own want, I couldn’t erase my passion. I had heard it said that, in order for love to be lastingly successful, you have to again and again find a new person within yourself, but I could not reach anywhere within me without touching Hedley. He became fused in my mind with desire lost and squandered happiness. I had not even trusted myself to say goodbye to him, but had gone out and sat on the cliff, something Ronnie had found ill mannered and had been short with me about. But the previous night, Hedley had slipped me a note with the date when he was coming to Dublin for a medical conference and had begged me to meet him there.

I was swamped alternately by guilt and desire. I saw my lovely son and told myself how even happier he would be were his mother the new Mrs Hedley Raven. I saw Ronnie, limping, and the pain it was for him still to drive a car and go about his poky business, and I was swept by the meanness of what I intended. It was neither my fault nor Ronnie’s that the right chemistry had not fermented between us. I kept seeing the coldness in his look, something I would never have imagined possible. Although he would be distraught for a time when I left him, I at least would be happy, surely a better position for both of us than mutual indifference. But was I indifferent, or just drenched by lust? I decided firmly not to go to Dublin, changed my mind twenty times, laughed at my ability to destroy everything I so much cherished, made a dental appointment in Monument for the day in question so that I would not be able to travel; then, with three days to go, said to Ronnie, ‘I think I’d like to go to Dublin to check the house.’

He looked at me, but if he knew it was my first outright lie to him, then it was not apparent.

‘Good idea,’ he said. ‘Bring Hector.’

‘He gets too tired,’ I said. ‘Next time, when he’s a bit older.’

‘Stay the night,’ Ronnie said. ‘Up and down in one day takes too much out of you.’

I boarded the train at eight o’clock and as we reached the foothills and gathered speed, I saw my face reflected in the carriage window and thought of another journey in the opposite direction when I had set out with similar guilt at what I was leaving behind. And as before, as if I were too insubstantial to have abiding concerns, my guilt shrank with each mile and my point of longing grew. In the taxi on the way to the hotel on the Liffey beside the Four Courts, I slipped off my wedding band. Hedley was waiting. He looked anxious, as if he had not believed that I would come.

‘I have a room,’ he said.

I went deaf as we went up the stairs together, not just because of a sense of perfect re-enactment, but because I was terrified. On the landing, Hedley took my hand in his. I clung to him. The room was large with two long windows. A wide, brass double bed stood in the centre, as if on a stage. There was a strange bareness that took me some seconds to come to terms with.

‘Where are your things?’ I asked, for his medical conference was to run over three days.

‘I thought you might prefer it if I did not stay here,’ he said. ‘That it might look better.’

I had dreamed of this, of being alone with him in such a room. I sank into his arms and smelt him again, and then, as if haste were all, we were shedding clothes, mouths together, and I felt his flesh against me, his great need, which matched mine, but time was not there for such reflection since I lay back beneath him on the bed and felt myself move at such speed from his mere touch that I spilled over, as did he, his fingers across my mouth, and the backs of my eyes exploded.

Hedley poured tea, his hand steady. He carried over the cup and saucer to the bed. I could have lain there and watched him forever.

‘You’re spoiling me,’ I said.

He was beautiful, limb perfect, and his skin gleamed. He bent down and kissed me.

‘What about your conference?’ I asked.

‘Doesn’t start till six.’

‘Where is it?’

‘In the Gresham.’

Getting into bed, he worked himself behind me so that I sat in his lap. In the branches of a tree outside our window, a blackbird hopped.

‘I have lots of questions,’ I said.

‘You’re not to worry.’

‘I’m not. I’ve never been happier.’

‘You and I are one now. It’s good.’

I ached anew for him, but the rational part of me demanded that the disorder I was leaving in Sibrille be at least partially tidied.

‘I want to talk about Hector.’

‘We’ll discuss Hector this evening. This time is for you and me.’

He began to kiss my neck, to run his tongue into the little furrow at the base of my hairline. I bent forward and he kissed the knobs at my spine’s top, licking each round and making a slow descent until I had to arch my back to release the sudden, unexpected gush of pleasure. His deft hands moved to my belly and then, down, and he brought me up a notch with his quick but subtle fingers.

‘Kneel!’

I did and reached back for him and he was there in full again, thick to my hand. He cupped my thighs and pulled them wide. I knew suddenly what he was going to do, but craved it as if nothing was too debased or unworthy. He splayed me farther and I ached in my deepest pith to have him where no one had ever been, for this was the most I could give. I heard him spit into his hand, then he came up and began to enter, and pleasure and pain then were almost too much as he strained and I had to grip the bed end with both hands and his mouth was in my hair as he shouted out, ‘Oh, God!’

We must have slept, for I awoke with a start and saw him dressed at the bed end, staring at me.

‘You are beautiful,’ he said.

‘Where are you..?’

‘Sleep. Your doctor prescribes it.’

I reached out. I was sore, but it was a happy soreness, as if between us we had initiated something and my mark of it was my proof of love. He caught my wrist, kissed it.

‘What time..?’

‘Sssh! I’ll order a late supper to be brought up.’

He left noiselessly, and I went back to sleep. It was a sleep without dreams, a profound immersion in all the forces that had brought me to this point, as if I were being transported across dark waters, sailing between points only visible to sea things. Darkness was absolute. I awoke to it.

‘Hedley?’

He was in the bed beside me, had come in when I was asleep and had not wanted to awaken me; of this I was sure, because I could smell him. I put on the light. The vastness of the room and my solitary presence made my throat catch. I looked around, since maybe he was somewhere else in there, or hiding. Then I saw the time. Four in the morning. I got up and washed. I was much sorer, but now the prize seemed suddenly inexplicable. I thought of Hector and began to shake. Splashing water on my face, I tried to rinse Hector away and concentrate. Dressed, I went downstairs. The night porter, woken from sleep, leapt to his feet.

‘Ma’am?’

‘Has there been anyone here looking for me? Mrs Shaw.’

The man scratched his head and rubbed his sleepy eyes. ‘Divil a one since I came on, Ma’am.’

I tried to think. ‘I want to go to the Gresham Hotel. Please call me a taxi.’

‘God, Ma’am, it’s four in the morning…’

‘Call me a taxi!’

It was after five when the taxi left me off in O’Connell Street. The Gresham ran to two night porters, both of them in livery and more alert than the one I’d left. They needed to unbolt the hotel’s door.

‘I have an important message for a Mr Raven,’ I said. ‘Mr Hedley Raven. He’s staying here.’

They brought me in and one of them went behind a desk. ‘Mr..?’

‘Raven,’ I said, ‘Hedley Raven. He’s a doctor, he’s here for the medical conference.’

‘That conference finished yesterday at lunchtime,’ the porter said. He turned the page of his book. ‘Dr and Mrs Raven, here they are. Checked out at six yesterday evening. They went to the mail boat. Miss?’

The other one had caught me. It wasn’t my head, it was just my legs that would not work.

‘It’s all right, Miss.’

I saw his concerned face.

‘It’s Mrs,’ I said.

1958

Whenever I dwelt on what I had done in Dublin, it swept me with shame. Not alone the shame of having been used and the manner in which that had occurred, or the shame of my own gullibility, but shame on a deeper level. I had taken the awe-inspiring love I had once known and debased it. That I could have soiled something so precious and been so blind to its need for nurturing drove me to the very edge of reason. I had shamed myself and, in the process, had shamed the dead.