Peter Cunningham - The Sea and the Silence

‘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.

Ronnie came home early, declined food and went to bed. Late August. The summer had been short, all the talk was of ruined crops and the high price of hay.

‘There’s a letter from Hector,’ I said next morning, somewhat surprised to see that he had not already left for work.

‘He’s well?’

‘He’s being made a first lieutenant.

‘Really.’

‘Maybe he’ll be the first Shaw to become, I don’t know, what’s next — a general?’ I handed Ronnie the letter. ‘He’s full of questions about you, how your business is going. You should write to him.’

Ronnie picked up the letter. His hand was trembling.

‘Yes.’

‘What… is there something the matter?’

Ronnie gulped a breath. ‘I’ve left Gargan.’

‘You’ve… left?’

‘We have parted company.’

‘Is there a good reason?’

‘He’s not a nice man. Comes from nothing. Never paid me for all my mileage, the hours I spent finding farmers who’ll sell. You know how hard I tried. Don’t you?’

‘Of course.’

‘Some people have no idea how things work, how you have to forage for yourself in this business. Take your chances.’

‘What have you done, Ronnie?’

Ronnie was ashen. ‘There’s a problem with a client.’

‘How big a problem?’

‘They may bring charges.’

In the weeks that followed it was, I now accept, a reflection of the poverty of our relationship that Ronnie had never seemed more lovable. That he needed to be either invalided or broke or facing prosecution, as it turned out he was, in order for us to be close was the reality. Acting as advisor to an Englishman, he had gone out with this man’s trust and money and purchased him a farm of land. Six months later, when the new owner had moved in, the former farmer who still lived in the vicinity had called to wish him luck and, in the way of these things, when drink had been consumed, had alluded to the generous cash amount that the vendor had paid back to Captain Ronald Shaw, M.B.V.I., as part of the deal. The outraged Englishman had arrived one morning into Gargan’s office and standing in the front office with eleven others present, accused Ronnie of being a swindler. Ronnie, he alleged, had acted not in his best interests, but rather had used his trust to pay too much and, in the process, benefited himself. The transaction was fraudulent and the purchaser would now rescind it. The gardaí were informed. The file was sent to Dublin. Ronnie put the coastguard house on the market.

I understood his concern that Hector would not learn of the scandal. He was, in the end, the only one either of us would in our hearts be left with. All at once, Hector’s career seemed a blessing, his distance a mercy beyond words and his prospects, away from Sibrille, from us, the only hope for the future. Weeks went by, then, in November, Ronnie, with no action against him yet in view, resumed the work of his pre-Gargan days, that is, ferreting out land for sale and finding buyers, but he found it tougher going. No one changes slower than a farmer, but the change, when it comes, is complete. Ronnie’s problems were the talk of Monument and the coastguard house was sold for half its worth to people from Kilkenny as a holiday retreat. The money all went to pay debts. The remaining Shaw land outside Sibrille, still in Langley’s name and mortgaged to a bank, was disposed of quietly and Ronnie received nothing from the proceeds. When Hector wrote to say that he could not get home leave for Christmas, I felt relief in a way I would never have thought possible.