Peter Cunningham - The Sea and the Silence

On the evening of the party, I put on a dress that had been made for me in Dublin and would eventually be paid for out of Daddy’s meagre estate. It was silk crepe, the colour of sunset, and fell from beneath a bow at the waist in tiers. The neck was square cut and the top half broken only by a single row of buttons. Nick drew in his breath when I came downstairs.

‘You look absolutely ravishing,’ he said and kissed my cheek.

We left Mother playing whist with Mrs Rainbow and set out in John Rafter’s van for Grange. As gusts of wind struck the little vehicle and tried to fling it off the road, I made lists in my head of the things I would prefer to be doing rather than going to my engagement party. Halfway to Grange, I lost count and abandoned the exercise.

Mount Penrose was a square, severe house and had been built in the mid-nineteenth century when the fashion must have been for oak: staircases, doors, window reveals, floors, fireplaces and skirting boards all brooded the provenance of dark forests. I thought of our own home, ramshackle in comparison, yet in its own way comfortable. The Penroses had installed an orchestra and although the country was still on war rations, one hundred people would eat roast beef and drink champagne. Norman met me at the door and I took his arm and we went in. A man with a black moustache came towards us, limping.

‘I now know I was wrong,’ he said. ‘You are not just the most beautiful woman in Meath, but in Ireland.’

‘Ronnie!’ I laughed and he hugged me. ‘I thought you were somewhere in France!’

‘Got in the way of a Gerry bullet, I’m afraid,’ Ronnie said, ‘but they didn’t realise they were dealing with a Monumentals man.’

He grinned and the gap between his front teeth appeared and made me laugh out loud. Perhaps it was the moustache, but he seemed older and in the process more dignified. I wanted to ask what had become of Frank, but Bella and Nick were hovering. Then I saw Ronnie’s cufflinks in the shape of rugby balls and the thought of the evening on which he had been presented with them made me plunge.

Except for the beginning of war, nothing is headier than the prospect of its ending: people spoke of curtailments being suspended in a month, of travel restrictions being abolished and of sons coming home. As the band struck up, Stanley Penrose swung me around the floor of his hall, his white whiskers tickling my chin, and confidently predicted that I would give him at least four grandchildren. He pressed me on the date for the wedding, but when I was evasive showed a flash of the steel with which he had made his fortune.

‘You’re not going to go on playing the monkey with the poor lad, are ye now?’ he asked.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘You know what I mean, Miss.’

I excused myself and went and locked myself into the Penrose’s toilet. I saw myself in the gilt-framed mirror, my lovely dress and my anxious face. I will do this, I told myself, and went back out.

I danced with twenty men and each one vied with his predecessor to assure me of my destined happiness. I was terrified: of Stanley Penrose, of these people, this house. I looked around for Ronnie, but each time I saw him, I was grabbed anew and steered for the music.

Norman and I sat down with Bella and Nick for supper. My future husband, although he would never entirely shed his solemn demeanour, even on an evening such as this, nonetheless was lighter than I had ever seen him. I tried to let go and to imagine the fine life that awaited me here, the wealth and the certainty. Norman’s father called the party to order and proposed our toast, which involved him making a long and serious speech about land agitation, during which everyone shouted Hear! Hear! and nodded their heads grimly as their host spoke of the shortcomings of the government, the injustice of the law and the brink of anarchy on which he assured us we were all poised. Norman replied briefly and then everyone stood up and applauded me. Led by Norman to the centre of the floor, we danced for them in the house of which I would soon be mistress and all I could think of was the dance in the hotel in Monument.

‘I have had a room made up here for you tonight,’ Norman said with great weight.

‘Here?’

‘In your new home.’

‘Oh.’

‘It will be the first time a woman has slept here since my mother died. You will be taking her place,’ he said.

Hot and a little dizzy, I went outside and lit a cigarette. The storm had suddenly died and a moon had come out. I could see John Rafter, also smoking, standing in the field beside his van.

‘John?’

‘How’s it going, Iz?’

‘I’d like you to drive me home.’

Feral eyes floated from hedgerows as the van weaved the lanes between Grange and Tirmon. I was chilled although I had done little else but dance.

‘Are you all right?’ John asked.

‘I’m just a little tired.’

‘You’re shivering’, he said and reached into the back and handed me over a jacket which I put around my shoulders. When he dropped me at Longstead, he said: ‘I’ll go back and wait for Bella and her old fella.’

The house was already asleep. How I relished its softness and disorder, its lack of purpose or ambition. I went in and put on the lights in the hall and found a pair of outdoor shoes and a coat, then went outside to the wall beyond the lawn and lit up a last cigarette. How many times I had observed Longstead from that spot, seeing but unseen. My smoke eddied in the night air and I batted it away. Bella and Nick would be home soon and if they found me up, Bella would be full of awkward questions about my leaving my own party so early. There was a noise. I turned. As I did, I was clamped at the mouth and around my waist.

We fell back and I saw the stars reeling. I tried to shout for help. I was pinned, and could feel the strength of my attacker and hear him grunting as he held me. I kicked and bit. I could think only of the land agitators, the dispossessed, now come to remove their last remaining obstacle to Longstead. My throat cut. I bit again. Hard.

‘Iz!’

He had released me.

‘Jesus, but you can put up a fight!’ Frank gasped.

His face flitted in and out of shadow as clouds ran across the moon. He was unshaven and his clothes were wet and bedraggled. My first thought was that Bella and Nick would return at any moment.

‘Quickly,’ I said and caught his arm.

I led him down the avenue, across the stile and into the lake field. I took off my shoes, hoisted my dress and ran, my legs drenched from the dew. The moonlight was eerie and erratic and each time it shone I kept thinking it was the lights of the van. Inside the old lambing shed, the floor was covered with the musty hay of former seasons.

‘Why..?’ I began, but I couldn’t finish the question, nor did I need to.

He shook his head and I could see in a beam of moonlight how thin he was.

‘It was Alice,’ he said softly. ‘Had to be.’

‘She told me… she told me that you’d said you didn’t want both our lives to be ruined,’ I said.

Frank’s eyes closed. ‘I sent her to Dublin to bring you back down with her. I thought it would be safer to cross to England from Monument. She came home and said that you had broken it off with me, that you’d decided it was for the best.’

My chest hurt where my breath was caught. ‘Why?’

‘Because she was crazy, which is a terrible thing to say about your own sister when she’s dead. Because she thought I was betraying what she stood for.’

His head was down and his hair fell forward.

‘Are you on the run from the guards?’ I asked.

He nodded.

‘And yet you came back for me,’ I said.

‘Tom sent me the notice of your engagement,’ he said. ‘I knew that wasn’t what you wanted, because you told me. I knew then that Alice had told me lies.’

We kissed in that damp little shed, although I didn’t care if the heavens opened.

‘I love you,’ he said. ‘I will die if I can’t be with you.’

He unbuttoned my dress, then kissed my shoulders and gently pulled down each strap of my white slip. Unclipping my hair, he smoothed it out with his fingers. I undid his shirt and saw bruising on his shoulder. His chest hairs were darker than those on his head, spreading out before diving in an ever darkening line. I could feel blood I had forgotten surging powerfully, my ears humming and my whole head resonating. Afterwards, I stroked his back and tasted his skin.

‘What will become of us?’ I asked.

‘We will become like the stars in the sky,’ he said.

‘The ancient Greeks used to think the stars were their gods.’

‘Then I want to be Hector, son of Apollo,’ he said.

‘Hector, the great warrior, the greatest in Troy,’ I said and hugged him close. ‘My Hector.’

Frank said, ‘I want to do this for the rest of our lives.’

I came down to breakfast, my feet barely touching the ground. All night in bed, or what part of it I spent there, I could inhale his skin from mine.

‘What on earth came over you last night?’ Bella asked. ‘Poor Norman was crestfallen. I had to make your excuses.’

‘I was feeling ill.’

‘Perhaps you should see a doctor,’ said Nick, and as always when he spoke, I felt a chill on my neck.

‘I’m perfectly well now, thank you,’ I said and cut myself a slice of soda bread.

‘Stanley Penrose took me aside last night,’ said Bella, eyeing me. ‘He thinks it’s only reasonable that you give Norman a firm date for your wedding.’