Peter Cunningham - The Sea and the Silence

‘Mrs Shaw?’

A small, hunched man holding a bowler hat at his chest stepped from the shadows. I recognised him as the undertaker from Peppy’s funeral.

‘You’re welcome home, Ma’m. Would you like to see the captain?’

For a moment, the meaning of his words confused me. Then I grasped what he was asking.

‘Oh, you mean, Langley. Hector, he’s asking do we want the coffin opened.’

Hector drew in his breath. ‘Why not?’

The man removed wreaths from the lid and placed them around the bier, then with quick, knowing fingers went to screws along the side and gently lifted off the top. I stared.

‘Isn’t he the real old captain? The real McCoy’, the undertaker said.

Langley was dressed in hunting pink, complete with neck stock, britches and gleaming black boots with the brown top cuffs of a master of foxhounds. In one yellowing hand was clasped his riding crop; in the other, his hunting horn. Above all this splendour presided his head, midway to the skeletal, but touched up with foundation and rouge so that no resemblance whatsoever to Langley Shaw remained.

‘Good Lord,’ Hector said.

‘Whose idea was it?’ I asked.

‘Captain Shaw’s idea, Ma’m, I mean, your… his son’s idea. To send him off in style the way he liked.’

‘Could you not have put a horse in too?’ Hector asked.

We settled on the left of the central aisle, one pew from the front. Very quickly, the little church filled as people came to the coffin and genuflected and placed down their flowers. Langley might not have lived here in over ten years, nor hunted this country in thirty, but the respect he was due for his exploits shone from the faces of the countrymen and women who had come to bury him. Nor was his ancient magnanimity to the Catholic Church forgotten, judging by the numbers of priests making their way, satchels in hand, through the alter rails to the sacristy. Father O’Dea, now a parish priest in Monument, paused and shook our hands.

‘The end of an era, or maybe not,’ he said and winked at Hector. ‘I don’t think I’d bother hunting if there wasn’t a Shaw to show me the way.’

We sat there at the front, unable to turn in our seats and inspect the whispering congregation. Then, as if a blade had fallen, the murmuring ceased. I could hear nothing. Hector was seated forward, elbows on his knees, head in his hands. It was a sliding noise at first, imperceptible unless you listened for it. I strained my eyes into the very corners of their sockets. My husband, alone, had arrived level with our pew. It was Ronnie, beyond a doubt, yet it was Ronnie with twenty years added. He stood, looking down at us. Then, he genuflected, a most laborious business, and took his place in the foremost pew on the aisle’s other side.

I remember little of the service or of the eulogies, hunting stories and prayers. Three teams each of six men from the locality shared the shouldering of Langley out into a day of blissful sunshine, of high swallows, of warm air tinged with the ozone from the nearby sea. When he was lowered down, the huntsman sounded the ‘gone away!’, shrill pips that stirred the blood, and then the long, mournful notes that draw in the close of the hunting day.

‘Ronnie.’

He turned to me.

‘I just wanted you to know that I am very sorry for your grief. I feel for you.’

‘Thank you, Iz.’

He was looking over my shoulder to where Hector had been a moment before.

‘Will you and Hector come back to the pub for a drink? I’ve arranged food.’

‘I think not, Ronnie.’

‘Iz, can we not… things are not good.’

‘I’m sorry to hear it.’

‘I’ve been a fool.’

I couldn’t hurt him beside his father’s open grave.

‘Ronnie, we are what we are. It’s not our fault. Don’t torture yourself, not today.’

‘Hector…’

‘He’s upset, Ronnie.’

‘He’s my son.’

‘He’s upset and angry.’

‘Oh God. Come back for ten minutes.’

I thought of Hector. ‘Sorry, I have to go now.’

‘You don’t have to go, Iz.’

‘Yes, I do.’

I felt a wonderful freedom all at once, for I was no longer tied there. I had escaped and could leave without constraint or conscience. Even the sea could not keep me, much as I had once thought it could, for now I ached for the trees in my Dublin garden, the silence at night, the faces of strangers and the balm of solitude. I found Hector by the car.

‘Do you want to go to the pub?’ he asked. ‘I can drive you there, but I won’t go in.’

‘I want to go home. Now.’

It was not until we were coming in along Captain Penny’s Road that either of us spoke.

‘He looks like death,’ I said.

‘She’s left him.’

‘I don’t believe it.’

‘A couple of months ago. Dick Coad told me.’

‘Was Dick there?’

‘He was looking for you. He told me she’s run off to England with some old farm hand.’

I looked at Hector. ‘Not Beasley?’

‘Dick didn’t say.’

To laugh seemed the only response. ‘Oh, God, wait till Bibs hears. Poor Ronnie. What a fool.’

‘He’s up to his neck, according to Dick. Some old case in which he diddled someone. They’re taking him to court.’

‘That happened years ago!’

‘Dick said he could do jail,’ Hector said and slammed through the gears of the rented car. ‘And you ask me whether I’d like to come back here again? And be the son of a man who left his wife to live with a tart and who’s now all but in the clink because he’s a crook? Christ, I never want to set foot in this bloody place again.’

As we met the foothills, I thought of how, had it not been for Hector, I might well have gone back for ten minutes, and then learned that Lucy was gone, and of the old trouble that now seemed set to put paid to Ronnie once and for all; and if I had, and had come within reach again of the sea, perhaps I might have thought my freedom to be an illusion and, once again, persuaded myself that my place was with a man who needed me.

Very slowly, I grew into the daily life of Dublin. The people had a quickness and agility to them, an eye for the main chance but a ready sense of humour that was different to the more open, easy-going inhabitants of a village like Sibrille. Yet Dublin was an amalgamation of little villages, being quite rapidly subsumed into a sprawling conurbation. I went to the cinema one week, to the theatre the next, and struck up polite friendships with the women of my own age who lived in that part of Ballsbridge. I learned bridge and found myself looking forward to our weekly tournaments.

One morning, about a year after Langley’s funeral, Rosa Santry rang. Like myself, Rosa was a solitary person and her days were spent in the Santry estate at Main. We spoke about her son, Kevin, who was going to be a solicitor, and about Hector, still with his regiment in Germany and now a captain.

‘A real Shaw,’ Rosa said.

I smiled, a private smile.

‘Iz, Ronnie’s not well,’ Rosa said.

‘Oh.’

‘It’s this wretched case. Jack says he’s gone to nothing.’

‘I no longer live with Ronnie.’

‘We just thought you should know.’

‘He is alone now because he has so chosen. What exactly does Jack mean?’

‘That he’s very thin, neglects his appearance. One would have to be concerned.’

‘I am concerned. But over the last twenty odd years, every time there has been a crisis in Ronnie’s life he has used me to get over it and then, when everything’s all right again, he’s resumed his old ways. Anyway, we’re in the middle of a legal separation. If I become involved with him he’s quite likely to use it against me.’