‘Iz will be here when you’ll all have gone’, said my father.
‘Oh.’
‘Something wrong, Iz?’
‘Who’s that man?’ I asked to switch the conversation.
‘Him?’ Bella was unreliable when looking into the middle distance, for her weak eyesight made her peer, a process that robbed her of her beauty. ‘Oh, he’s Ronnie Shaw! He’s fun.’ She dropped her voice. ‘But they’re broke.’
The man’s profile was sharp and clean and his dark hair swept back from a wide forehead.
‘Langley Shaw’s son,’ said Daddy. ‘His mother is a wonderful woman to have put up with Langley.’
‘How “put up with”’? I asked.
‘Oh, generally,’ said my father, vague all at once. ‘He’s come up a long way tonight. From Monument.’
‘He’s got a sports car,’ Bella said. ‘I’ll go and get him.’
‘Mr Seston!’
Norman Penrose was being brought over by Harry. I always went through the same sequence of reactions with Norman: I was at first struck by how tall and handsome he was, immediately followed by a qualification about his eyes, something to do with their ability to be simultaneously intense and void, followed by an endless refining of my first impression until all I was left with was a shell of the original.
‘You look so well, sir,’ Norman said.
Daddy smiled sadly. ‘How’s your father, Norman? Has he got over your poor mother yet? God, but she was a lovely woman. That was a dreadful blow to him to have her taken like that. Would he not come tonight?’
‘He’s in Dublin. Business, I’m afraid.’
‘I used to like Dublin, you know. Liked lunch in my club. But liked coming home here better.’
‘A good judge as always,’ Norman said and then looked at me with a cautious smile. ‘Ismay?’
‘Norman.’
‘Am I allowed a dance tonight?’
‘By all means.’
‘Then that will be the highlight of my evening.’
‘I’ll be keeping a close eye on both of you,’ Harry said.
‘How is Mount Penrose?’ Daddy asked. ‘Are you having any trouble from these agitators?’
‘Well, after a fashion, although I’ve heard it said that the main thing that agitates them is the lack of porter.’
Bella laughed and fanned herself.
‘I daresay, but it has to be stopped before it grows out of control,’ Daddy said.
Norman’s lips became two grim lines.
‘There was a meeting near Grange last week, torches and banners. My father says it’s all Mr de Valera.’
Daddy shook his head in despair. ‘Mr de Valera, Mr de Valera. Is there any end to the trouble caused by Mr de Valera?’
‘At least he’s cracking down on the IRA,’ Norman said.
‘Hah! Only after they were allowed to steal the Irish Army’s entire stock of ammunition!’ Daddy cried. ‘Law and order went out the window in this country in 1922. I could have lived anywhere in the world, Australia, the American Midwest, but I came back here. Now I think I made the wrong decision.’
‘Of course you didn’t, Daddy!’ Bella said.
Daddy leaned forward in his chair. ‘You know Rafter, our local merchant?’
‘Little fat chap?’ Norman said.
‘He’s not a bad man, all things considered,’ Daddy said, bound up in his own world. ‘His son’s had himself elected to the local council and Rafter tells me he thinks he can get them to hold the line as far as Longstead is concerned. Ah, the belle of the ball!’
Mother looked young in a startling way, just as my father looked old. I recognised the dress as the one last brought out for Lolo’s party — emerald silk, its hem to the floor. She gave her cheek to Norman. The twin Misses Carr hovered behind her, but when Daddy glared at them, they took off.
‘Norman, you made it,’ Mother said. ‘Have you seen Iz?’
‘How could I have missed her?’
‘Isn’t she lovely?’
‘Mother!’
‘Absolutely lovely’, Norman said with huge seriousness and Mother went blind with happiness.
Daddy reached to Mother. ‘Norman’s been telling us that these bloody land agitators were over at Grange last week.’
‘Oh, we mustn’t begin the evening with a recitation of our problems,’ Mother said.
‘Ha! I’ll be a month dead and you’ll wish I was there to recite them for you!’
‘Let Daddy speak, Mother,’ said Bella, who always became assertive when Mother appeared.
‘All I was attempting to say,’ said Daddy grimly, ‘was that Rafter has a feel for what’s going on at a local level. They could be out there at this moment planning to march on Longstead tonight and we wouldn’t know.’
‘I hope they don’t come tonight, we’d scarcely have enough food,’ said Mother blithely.
Daddy was angry. ‘It’s not a laughing matter! We’re not going to give in without a fight!’
‘One of us should get elected on the council.’
A silence gripped the group.
‘For God’s sake, Iz,’ Daddy growled, ‘you’re not going to end up like that dreadful Gore-Booth woman, are you?’
Bella was looking at her hands, shaking her head, as if to say that I could always be relied on to put my foot in it.
Lolo had just come downstairs and heard the conversation.
‘You’d have us end up with our throats cut,’ she said tightly.
‘That’s Iz, all right,’ said Bella.
‘Iz has a point.’
My father closed his eyes in resignation, a reflexive gesture to Mother’s voice whenever it entered an argument.
‘How are we ever going to have a say in our own country if we don’t become involved?’ Mother asked.
I could see that Norman was amused.
‘You have to go out and work to get elected, Mother,’ said Bella with great patience.
Mother frowned. ‘What’s wrong with that?’
I said, ‘Exactly! There’s nothing to stop one of us from being elected. Then we wouldn’t have to rely completely on the likes of Mr Rafter to save our skins.’
‘Rafter’s all right,’ my father growled.
‘I’ll vote for you, Iz,’ said Harry.
‘These people are no different to the IRA.!’ Lolo cried. ‘They’ll stop at nothing until England is driven from Ulster!’
‘Well, I must say, I can’t blame them,’ Mother said. ‘It’s high time Ireland was left to govern itself.’
‘You’ll end up behind bars if you don’t come to your senses!’ Daddy shouted.
Bella drew herself up and raised her chin. ‘Land agitation is a fad. What fools we would look if we jumped onto councils and things and then the fad ended. We would be far worse off than we are now.’
‘Hear, hear,’ said my father and he and Norman raised their glasses.
‘What a load of bloody nonsense,’ Harry said so only I could catch his words.
I wanted to say so much all at once, but Bella’s aura and beauty seemed impregnable. I went though the hall and out to the lawn and crossed it to a wall in which a seat was set. The sound of stringed instruments being tuned crept from the dining room. On the gravelled sweep that circled Longstead, cars were parked, their angled hoods and big headlamps silhouetted against the deepening sky.
‘Do you smoke?’
I jumped. ‘Oh!’
‘I saw you come out.’
Ronnie Shaw snapped open a metal lighter and flame shot up between us. ‘We once lived in a place as nice as this.’
‘What happened?’
‘The Land Commission took it.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Gave my father worthless pieces of paper. In one way it’s all quite amusing. I mean, my father was hopeless at managing things, so you could say we’re better off. There’s no more of this wondering what’s going to happen. We sleep soundly. We live our lives.’
‘Where?’
‘In a place called Sibrille, it’s on the sea near Monument. Do you know Monument?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘But you’ve heard of it.’
‘Of course I’ve heard of it.’
‘Everyone has heard of Monument, the same way as they’ve heard of Venice.’
‘Come on!’
‘Monument’s built on the loveliest river in the world. It rises from its quays, a town of tiers and terraces. Mediterranean, they say. You can almost smell the olives. You’re Iz.’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re very pretty,’ he said, looking directly at me. A gap divided his two front teeth.
‘What did you call the place you live in?’
‘I’m serious. The prettiest girl here by a long shot.’
‘Mr Shaw, do you always go such a headlong gallop?’
‘It’s Ronnie. We live in the lighthouse in Sibrille. On really stormy days we can’t get out.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘You don’t believe anything I say.’ He crossed his legs and blew smoke into the air. ‘You must come and see it some day.’
‘We know very little about the sea here,’ I said.
‘It becomes part of you. Lives in your ears and your nose. Like a woman.’
‘Whatever that means.’
‘Means one comes to live for it. Or her. Sailors see the sea as a woman.’ He flicked his cigarette and it sailed away into the bushes in an arc of red sparks. ‘You’re not horsey.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Your sister Lolo told me. She said, “That’s Iz. She hates horses”.’
‘I don’t. She didn’t.’
‘There you go again. She even told me your age.’
‘My age is none of your business.’
‘Twenty.’
‘I’m twenty-one.’
‘Doesn’t matter to me. In fact it’s a novelty to meet someone who’s not half horse. My father and mother do nothing else except hunt in the winter, four days a week, and trek around gymkhanas in summer, trying to flog horses to wealthy English people. You’d like the sea, though, I can tell.’
‘Of course you can’t tell, you’ve barely met me.’
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