Peter Cunningham - The Sea and the Silence

‘How’s Dad?’

‘He’s at work.’

‘Is it going well?’

‘I’m not told.’

‘You said in your letter that there were some problems.’

‘There are always problems, Hector,’ I said as we breasted the last hill. We shouted together: ‘I see the sea!’

I liked to stand and watch him as he ate, in silence, a serious business.

‘So good! God I was starving.’ He leant back, hands clasped. ‘You’re looking well, Mum.’

‘You should go and see your grandfather.’

‘I’ll see him when we go to Mass tomorrow.’

‘He doesn’t go any more, Hector. The priest comes once a month with Communion.’

Hector made a surprised face. ‘How’s Stonely?’

‘I’ll tell you something funny, a man came to their door last week checking for dog licenses and Delaney answered it just as Stonely appeared around the side of the house. “What do you want?” Stonely asked him. “It’s all right, sir,” the man said, “your wife can look after me”.’

Hector chuckled and took from his pocket a box of cigarettes and offered me one.

‘No thanks.’

‘You don’t mind if I do?’

‘Not at all.’

‘All the emphasis in school is on what we do when we leave next year,’ said Hector, puffing. ‘I’ve been talking to the careers bloke. Got on well with him. He’s given me lots to think about.’

‘Oh?’

I had not prepared well for this moment, for although I could not bear to think of Hector coming back here and launching into a business career with Ronnie — something Ronnie had once or twice alluded to — neither could I bear the thought of him going away.

‘I think I’m going to join the army,’ Hector said.

‘Hector?’

‘Royal Green Jackets, Rifle Brigade, Granddad’s old regiment.’

My breath lost its rhythm.

‘Chap in school has all the details, first I go to an officer’s training college, which is a bit like a university, then the world’s my oyster. See places like Australia, Belize, Hong Kong. I’ll be an officer.’

I could not deal with all the cascading images.

‘That’s… wonderful. But you have another year before you make your mind up.’

‘I think I have made my mind up, Mum.’

We all walked out the causeway that evening, to the drowned soldiers’ plaque, and watched the boats coming in on the tide.

Ronnie said, ‘Beware the army. Pay you nothing, lure you in with cheap talk about faraway places, then throw you on the scrap heap when you’re thirty.’

‘Your father’s right, Hector,’ I said, swept by unexpected relief for Ronnie’s opinion.

‘Different in my day,’ Ronnie went on, ‘there was a war. And an empire. Stay at home, is my advice.’

‘With respect, there’s not an awful lot here… I mean, in Ireland,’ said Hector, suddenly pale.

‘They say this Common Market will lift all the boats,’ Ronnie said.

‘Do you think England will go in with a lot of Germans?’ Hector asked.

‘No, but Ireland can’t wait and if we do the money will all be for farmers. Think of what that will do to land. You could see farms going for five, six hundred pounds an acre.’

‘You’ll make a fortune, Dad.’

‘And you can be here helping me to make it. A lot better than getting your head blown off by some bloody fanatic.’

They fished almost every day of that holiday, on the Thom in Main, from a boat off Sibrille and from the rocks outside our back door. I saw the ease in Ronnie, the untroubled slope of his shoulders as he walked side by side with Hector, their waders clomping. For those parts of the day when Ronnie had to go into Monument and I had Hector to myself, we chatted of other times in Sibrille, of Peppy, whom Hector had never really known, and of life’s enduring imperfections.

‘Mum, were you ever in love before?’

‘Before?’

Hector was staring, as if my face had revealed something new of me.

‘Before Dad.’

‘Why do you ask?’

‘I bet you were, weren’t you?’

‘Oh, maybe I thought I was.’

‘Who was he?’

‘Just someone.’

‘We never talk about your family,’ Hector said. ‘I found an old photograph once, you when you were young with two women, one of them old and wearing a black straw hat.’

‘Oh. My mother and my sister,’ I said and the day of that photo pierced me. ‘We had fifteen hundred acres.’

‘Gosh. What happened to it?’

‘It went the same way as Gortbeg in the end. It was seized and redistributed.’

‘What a shame.’

‘Actually, I think it was a good thing.’

‘Imagine what Dad would do now if he could get his hands on fifteen hundred acres. By the way, I’ve asked Lucy Toms to come to supper tonight, is that all right?’

‘Lucy? How old is she?’

‘She’s sixteen,’ Hector said and laughed. ‘She’s fun. She’s already had half a dozen boyfriends, according to Dad.’

‘The last time I saw her she was in a pram,’ I said

‘I’m going to tell her that,’ Hector said.

Lucy Toms had dyed her hair bright red and she chain smoked. The afterthought of aged parents — her mother had been over fifty; Lucy’s birth had killed her, they said — she had, without discussion, left the girl’s school she had been sent to in Monument and lived, it seemed, beyond anyone’s control or censure. She was most attractive. I had cooked pork loin, Hector’s favourite meal, and had gone into town and bought a bottle of red wine for the occasion. After supper, the three of us went up and sat in the lantern bay. Ronnie had sent word that he would not be home until after ten: he was in Deilt closing a sale, a procedure that apparently involved drinking whiskey.

‘I’ve always wanted to live here,’ Lucy said drowsily. ‘My idea of heaven.’

Hector, somewhat glassy eyed from the wine, sat in awe of such sophistication.

‘You live in a lovely house, Lucy,’ I said, for she did, albeit one that was crumbling, one of the few Georgian houses on this side of Monument and still standing on more than four hundred acres.

‘I hate it,’ Lucy said.

Her legs were crossed and the shape of her thighs stood out through her thin cotton skirt.

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘I just do, I hate it.’

‘Your father was born there. He’s worked very hard all his to maintain it.’

‘That’s why I hate it. It’s made him half mad.’

‘How is your sister?’

‘Poor Bibs.’ The girl leant back, her eyes closed and blew perfect smoke rings from her perfect mouth. ‘She’s moved to Dublin, there’re more men there.’

‘I hadn’t realised she’d gone.’

‘Went the week after Christmas, she doesn’t even write any more.’ Lucy’s gaze lacked even a hint of warmth. She smiled. ‘I wanted her to stay at home and marry Beasley.’

‘Who’s Beasley?’

Lucy giggled. ‘Chap in the yard. Hair my colour, and a beard. Looks a bit like Jesus Christ. Strong as a cart horse.’ She bit her lip. ‘And twice as dense.’

Hector’s head went between his knees as he tried to control his laughter.

‘One of the women who comes in to wash reported that he has the most enormous… equipment,’ Lucy said and then, herself, fell silent as she shook with mirth.

I had wondered if I would feel jealous of another woman’s attentions for Hector, but all I felt was dismay.

‘And why didn’t Bibs stay at home and marry Mr Beasley?’ I enquired, my anger arisen from nowhere.

Lucy composed herself. ‘Bibs would have loved to marry him, but she couldn’t because she thought she’d be letting the side down.’

‘She can’t marry Beasley, Mum!’ Hector said, as if I had missed out on crucial principles.

‘I think if you love someone you should marry them,’ I said, aware that I was giving away too much of myself. ‘Your life will never be worth living if you don’t remember that.’

‘Then you should have married your mystery man,’ Hector said.

I felt myself tremble. Hector might have slapped me in the face as said what he had, such a precious thing between us revealed like that in front of a stranger.

‘Hector,’ I chided, making light of it. ‘That was our secret.’

‘Did you want to marry him?’

‘I married your father. Does that answer your question? Now, I think we should have some tea.’

‘But if you had,’ said Lucy, smiling, ‘then there’d be some other wifey here in the lighthouse, wouldn’t there?’

I stood up. ‘I’m not a wifey,’ I said and left the room.

1966

One morning, Stonely collapsed on the causeway. Removed to Monument by ambulance, he died that night. In no worthwhile sense had I ever known him enough to feel grief, but felt instead a sense of loss for the last of Peppy’s memories. Photographs had survived of blonde-headed children in a garden. Peppy had been about twelve and the brooding child whom she held about the waist must have been Stonely. I wrote to an address in England where, possibly through the female line, lived relatives, grandnephews of Stonely’s, or perhaps cousins; I had no idea. No letter came back. It seemed impossible, I wrote to Hector in his officers’ training college, that only this photograph remained as evidence that these fair-haired children had ever existed,

Stonely’s death had unforeseen consequences for the status quo at the coastguard station. Delaney left. Inconsolable, she took to her bed and refused to cater. One day men came from Baiscne, kinsmen on whom she had not set eyes for forty-five years, and took her away. She had nothing to say after all that time — whatever ties she’d ever had to the Shaws were frayed beyond repair. She did not even look in on Langley before she left or await Ronnie’s return. Langley’s nurse refused to cook. Ronnie suggested I fill the gap, but it was more a void than a gap. Seeing myself landed with the role of cook to a paid servant, I too refused. Threatened with starvation, the nurse packed her bags and Langley went into the County Home in Monument.

We were all at once a garrison of two, as Ronnie put it. Or as was more often the case, of one, for he was an early riser and liked the coffee that was to be had in Monument, and on most weekday nights found his meal somewhere along the way. And yet, over time, the sharp edges of conflict seemed to have become somewhat rounded between us, for we behaved as I imagined civilised people did and every Sunday morning, without fail, went up the causeway together and, as custom had evolved, sat in the second pew on the right-hand side of the nave for eleven o’clock Mass. Courteous and charming as a rule, Ronnie was easy to live with. He was forty-eight and I would soon be forty-four. When we spoke, it was mostly about Hector, transferring soon to the British Army on the Rhine, and his future in the army, and Ronnie’s unaltered view of the opportunities awaiting young men in Ireland’s under-worked, undervalued acres. His eyes had become softer with age and, I believed, more seeing of me. I no longer smelt other women on his clothes.

I look back with little regret on that part of my life, without any measurable yearning that, for example, I should have put time to better use. Every other week I did my shopping in Monument and every other week something changed: the Shortcourse who owned the butchers in Balaklava died; his descendant, a young, local politician, took over and transformed the shop into a place of gleaming steel counters staffed by butchers who wore pork-pie hats; Ronnie attended the huge funeral of a Mrs Bensey, formerly Church, a family that owned more land in Monument than the Harbour Commissioners.

I was a creature of Sibrille’s seasons. On summer’s days, I lay on cliffs trimmed with wildflowers, reading a book and marvelling at the vastness of the sea. I watched the same sea rise in autumn and its colour flee, the cliffs becoming distant, inaccessible places while seabirds spent the shortening days in the lee of jagged outcrops. Sibrille’s sixteen hours of winter darkness seemed to cut it off from the outer world and made the people warmer and more caring of one another. Although the night skies were sumptuous, neither the sea nor the land had much to offer during this season, so the farmers and fishermen drew their days in around them by taking a morning to come in and post a letter, or an afternoon to top up their provisions. Even though I now had Langley’s old car, I seldom went to Monument outside my fortnightly trips. Instead, I liked to spend an afternoon sitting under a light at the back of the pub in Sibrille, reading for an hour, the sense of closeness, the soft chat about games and fishing boats riding just at the edge of my hearing. From the lantern bay at night, I would catch the homegoings, the engines of cars and tractors. March brought storms. It was then that I missed Hector most, for we had, when he was a child, sat together behind the thick glass and watched the sea try to devour us, had clung together at each new, engulfing eruption and when the froth had run whitely down the windows and we could see far out the approach of the next gigantic onslaught, we had, in one delicious voice, screamed.