Peter Cunningham - The Sea and the Silence

‘What did you say?’

‘You heard me.’

I caught up a cup and hurled it; it bounced from his shoulder and smashed on the floor.

‘Get out!’

Ronnie stopped, then, eyes wild, he went to the stove, snatched up the pot of soup, and hurled it out through the open window into the sea. I picked up a vase and launched it for his head; although he ducked, it caught him high on his temple before disintegrating against the wall. Ronnie, panting, began to throw the furniture the same way as he had the soup. Picking up a heavy chair, I flung it at him, my strength a wonder. The chair caught him full square and he went down, winded. I picked up the breadboard, a generous piece of polished walnut, and went to stave in his head, but he caught my ankles and dragged hard so that I fell back and the board merely hit him in the chest. As if he had been interrupted in some serious task, Ronnie scrambled up and began to pitch every item of cutlery, glassware and crockery out the other kitchen window, many of them landing on his car that was parked below. I was bleeding from my mouth, yet I felt strangely empowered and elated. I picked up a pot stand and made a run at him. Ronnie went down again. I kicked him hard in the jaw. He winced and I wondered if I’d undone all the work of the unspeakable Mr Hedley Raven. I drew back again to kick harder.

‘ Stop! ’

I froze.

Hector was standing there.

‘You’ve both gone mad!’

The boy’s eyes were huge. Each time I tried to take a breath, my chest screamed.

‘It’s all right, Hector,’ said Ronnie, getting up, wincing. ‘We were just airing our differences.’

Hector looked from one of us to the other.

‘And have you stopped, now?’

‘Have we stopped, now?’ Ronnie asked, his teeth bared in pain.

‘Yes, we have stopped now,’ I panted.

In the months that followed, when Hector had gone away to school in England and I was forced to confront my true feelings for my husband, I always came back to our fight that day and, when I did, I always smiled. Like a storm that clears the atmosphere, I had felt immeasurably the better of it. My head was clear and, for the first time in years, I was happy. Although the gaps between our lovemaking were irregular — in itself not unusual for a marriage of a dozen years, I had read — Ronnie’s stamina on these occasions was always short, something I could live with, but with which, I imagined, a succession of mistresses might be impatient. I tried to remember him as I had first met him, his nonchalance with the everyday things of life, his sense of humour and his easy charm. For despite everything, we still had times of sweetness together. They coincided in the main with Ronnie’s business catastrophes. Stripped of his tricks by worry and impending disaster, I saw another Ronnie, devoid of winning ways or the need to dissemble. My wish in those times was perverse: that we could always be like this, an aspiration which involved never-ending misfortune; but at least then I would have him alone, which is to say, a man without pretensions, in need of love, who stayed at home and close to me, who came out the cliffs for walks and who listened as well as spoke.

‘Hector’s getting on well.’

We inched through a herd of port-bound cattle at the top of Captain Penny’s Road.

‘He likes his school.’

‘Not right for an only child to be at home on his own. Needs company.’

‘His every move is a mirror of you.’

‘Boys are like that. I remember how it was with my own father. Wanted to be him.’

We made our way forward as drovers beat and shouted.

‘May I say something?’ Ronnie asked. ‘I’d like to start again, you and me. From scratch. Go back to the very beginning. What do you say?’

I could not conceal my frustration. ‘I don’t know, Ronnie. Really, I don’t.’

‘Please.’

‘I’ll think about it,’ I said.

A few nights later I was reading in bed when a knock came to the door of the lantern bay.

‘May I come in?’

It was clear Ronnie had been drinking — not a common occurrence, but now manifested in a fixed, Langley-type grin. He sat on the side of my bed.

‘Big changes.’

‘Oh?’

‘You know. Me drawing a wage, Langley peeing himself, Hector gone. Big, big changes.’

‘Change can be good.’

Ronnie grinned. ‘You don’t change though. You just get more beautiful.’

I felt my eyes brim. Ronnie sat on the bedside, then bent down and we kissed.

‘That was good,’ he said.

‘Yes.’

‘D’you want to know something? D’you know when I wanted you the most?’

‘I can’t imagine.’

‘When we fought… you know, before Hector went away. I thought you were magnificent. I couldn’t work out why we hadn’t done it before, got all the bad stuff out in the open. I wanted to come up that night, break down the door and ravage you. Sorry, but it’s the truth.’

‘You’ve been drinking, Ronnie.’

He was now lying on the covers, stroking my neck.

‘Sometimes drink brings out the truth.’

I looked at him, at his warm eyes, his still somehow inviting skin. With drink, he lacked the guile of the day-to-day Ronnie, so that all was left was a quite charming if tipsy, middle-aged man.

‘I don’t want to be hurt again, Ronnie.’

‘You won’t be, ever, I swear.’

‘I wish I could believe you.’

‘That’s all finished. I was a fool, I know I was, but I’ve changed. And apart from being even more beautiful, so have you, I think.’

He had a tenacity at such moments lacking in all the other aspects of his life.

‘You are beautiful,’ he murmured, baring my shoulders and kissing them. ‘So bloody lovely.’

It was a time of change. Factories were built outside Monument, people acquired cars and houses began to appear on recently green fields, almost as far as the holy well on Captain Penny’s Road. When Hector stepped from the boat at Easter, it took me a moment to recognise him, six feet tall and twice as broad as I remembered. I saw girls on the wharf suck in their breaths.

‘Hector!’

He smiled and held me.

‘You’re enormous!’

‘I’m ravenous.’

‘Your old mother had reckoned as much. Let’s go home.’

We drove out Captain Penny’s Road and took the fork for Sibrille. The grass had that glistening, April newness. In some places, milk herds had just been let out after their winter’s confinement and, muddied and shed stained, bucked their way across green meadows.

‘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.’