Peter Cunningham - The Sea and the Silence

Never was there a moment that day that I did not love Monument. I was not to know then, of course, how it might be in rain, or storms, or, once every ten years or so, in snow, but, that day, sunlight infused every façade and pediment, every alleyway and wrought-iron gate, each set of steps disappearing, it seemed, between tight buttresses or facing gables on their way to the clouds. I had not been prepared for the size of the town, since the bulk of it lay concealed in successive terraces, behind old battlements, through gates that revealed tiny courtyards, in unsuspected squares from which the river could be made out far below one’s feet. Where did he live, I wondered? What did he do? And if he looked out of his window and saw me, would he remember that we had met, however briefly, once before?

It was not Ronnie’s party at all but the annual supper dance of Monumentals rugby club. The banner of the club, white with tassels at both ends and the letters MONUMENTALS either side of a crouching lion, the club’s emblem, was slung high across the hotel’s dining room. On a raised platform to one end, four elderly men in dinner jackets were playing musical instruments. The room was crowded and already too warm.

‘You’ll like us down here,’ Ronnie said with his roguish smile as he held the tips of my fingers and then brought them to his lips. ‘We’re a mixed lot, not nearly as grand as the crowd you knock around with.’

‘I already do like you down here,’ I said.

The band started up another tune and Ronnie led me out onto the little dance floor.

‘I’m sorry too about not turning up earlier,’ he said, ‘but the car broke down.’

‘It doesn’t matter, I enjoyed my afternoon.’

‘I would have liked to have shown you the sea. People who haven’t seen it before gasp.’

‘I have, as I have told you more than once, seen the sea.’

‘But not this one, as I have told you.’

I laughed. The band, stumbling through some of its faster routines, reminded me of an old, spluttering car, yet Ronnie danced well and we glided around.

‘You shine, you know,’ Ronnie said.

‘It’s hot in here.’

‘You are radiant, is what I mean.’

‘When are you off?’

‘I’m serious.’

‘There you go, headlong again. Tell me when you’re off.’

‘First thing tomorrow morning.’

‘Oh. I hadn’t realised.’

‘Happened all of a sudden. I go to barracks in Belfast tomorrow and enlist. With luck I’ll be shipping within a month.’

‘My brother is with the Royal Engineers. I wish he weren’t.’

‘Why so?’

‘There’s no one at home to run the place. We may lose it to the Land Commission.’

‘Join the club,’ Ronnie said.

We swept by our table where a thin beef broth had already been served.

‘May I tell you something? Something important?’ Ronnie asked.

‘By all means.’

‘When I got your letter I jumped three feet in the air.’

‘You should be more careful.’

‘I couldn’t care tuppence if I’d broken my neck. Your being here has made this evening for me. I’m on the moon.’

‘I think they’re serving the main course,’ I said.

We ate boiled bacon and cabbage and drank glasses of brown ale. The people at the table, to whom I had been introduced to but whose names I could not remember, chatted about rations and the war and what lay before Ronnie. Some of them asked me polite questions about Dublin, which they had been to once or twice, but mostly they were happy in their familiarity with one another, laughing about incidents from rugby matches and feats of daring of which I had no knowledge.

I had been searching for him since I had come in, hoping that it would not be obvious, but ultimately not caring if it was. He was nowhere to be seen. Neither was Tom King, the man who had driven us home. Perhaps they didn’t live in Monument. Perhaps they had left and gone to live elsewhere, in England, for example, where good jobs were to be had in war industries. Ships sailed from Monument to Wales every other day.

Rice with custard was served. Ronnie kept getting up and dancing with women from other tables. Then I looked up and saw him. He had just come in and was standing at the door with Tom King. And the girl I had seen on the rugby field, her glossy dark hair now at her shoulders, was beside him.

Ronnie went over to the door and had his back slapped. He kissed the girl’s cheek. She was tall, with strong, striking features. Her arm was linked through that of the man whose image I had woken to every day for weeks. Ronnie was laughing and saying, ‘She’s right over here.’

I wanted to run. I had made a huge mistake.

‘This is Iz, the most beautiful woman in County Meath’, Ronnie boomed. ‘Tom you already know. May I introduce you to Frank and Alice Waters?’

We shook hands. The girl looked me over, slowly, up and down. I wanted to die. I could scarcely bring myself to look at him. Ronnie had seized Alice and made for the dance floor.

‘This is the lady I drove all the way to the County Meath,’ Tom was saying.

‘I know,’ Frank said.

‘Would you like a drink, Iz?’ Tom asked.

‘No, thank you.’

Tom made his way towards the bar and Frank sat in Ronnie’s chair. I saw everything blurred. Where before there had been light inside me, now there was dimness and dismay. It had never occurred to me that he might be married. He said, ‘We’ve met before.’

‘Have we? I don’t remember’.

‘You were down for our pipe-opener. When Ronnie got knocked out.’

‘Oh, that. I’d forgotten about that.’

He smiled. ‘I haven’t. Ronnie talks about you non-stop.’

‘Non-stop? I don’t think so.’

‘I’m not surprised.’

‘What does he say, then?’

‘That you’re the youngest of several sisters, that you live on one of these enormous estates. That you live a charmed life.’

‘Ronnie knows very little about my life, ‘I said dismissively. ‘And our estate is by no means enormous.’

‘The fact that you live on any kind of an estate is important for Ronnie because the Shaws never stop talking about the enormous estate they used to own. But they lost it.’

‘Do you approve of that?’

‘Oh, no, I think it’s tragic,’ he said and the side of his mouth played with a little smile.

He was trying to make me rise, which wasn’t difficult, because I was seething at myself for the assumptions I had made and the long journey I had undertaken for nothing.

‘I’m sure it was tragic for the Shaws,’ I said tightly.

‘Not half as tragic as it was for the hundreds of tenants who had been grubbing a living from Shaws for centuries,’ he said.

From the corner of my eye, I saw his beautiful wife gliding around the floor with Ronnie and I felt profoundly foolish.

‘Every case is different,’ I said. ‘We, for example, have no tenants and yet we live in fear of our lives from people who throw rocks through our windows under cover of darkness.’

He blew his cheeks out. ‘There’s no excuse for that, but look at it their way. I bet you live behind walls. These people have lived for hundreds of years outside those walls. But now, suddenly, it’s dawned on them that they run this country, they make the laws. And the people inside the walls, except for their land, have no power any more. They have no allies and, with respect, no meaning. What’s happening is inevitable.’

On any normal day, I would have agreed with him wholeheartedly, but I hated myself so much at that moment that I wanted him too to despise me.

‘Are you some kind of politician, Mr Waters?’ I asked.

I could see how clear were his eyes and how deeply one could delve into them.