Peter Cunningham - The Sea and the Silence

‘No, just someone who cares about their country.’

‘It will all lead to ruin,’ I said, hearing Bella in my voice. ‘If you can’t distinguish between patriotism and theft, then I feel very sorry for you.’

I was irking him, yet he struggled to keep composure.

‘You’re angry. Why?’

‘I’m not angry,’ I replied, furious with myself. ‘I just hate the politics of people who ignore the feelings and circumstances of others. What about law? What about fairness?’

‘Where’s the fairness in the fact that ninety-five percent of the wealth of this country is owned by three percent of the people?’ he asked and his cheeks all of a sudden blazed.

‘If I may say so’, I said, ‘that’s a half-baked philosophy that allows people who own nothing to take what isn’t theirs.’

I was blazing too, but I didn’t care. I wanted to burn any question or hint of affection that might have existed, however ephemerally, between us. I wanted never to be in this place again. I wanted to go home.

‘I’m sorry if I’ve upset you,’ he said, getting up. ‘I hope you enjoy your time here.’

I went out to the ladies room and stayed there for twenty minutes. I had been prepared to come and risk Ronnie’s advances in the hope of meeting the man I had dreamed of; and now I had met him, Frank Waters, and Alice, his wife, all I could wish for was that the time until the train left the next morning might somehow dissolve and that I could leave Monument. I was trembling with frustration. If I had taken the merest precaution of asking a simple question during the five hours it had taken Tom to drive us home the last time, I could have prevented this disaster. I think I had been afraid of Bella, who had commandeered the front of the car, afraid of her picking up my interest and her subsequent reaction, which would have been one of scorn. But it was no use blaming Bella. The thought that Frank might have sensed my interest and was amused by it added farther vinegar to the wound. I put my head into my hands and shrieked into my lap for my embarrassment.

I emerged some time later, resolved: I would tell Ronnie I was ill and that I would have to retire early. As I made my way towards the dining room, I heard shouts. The band had stopped. A commotion was ensuing near the door and I realised that the rugby club’s banner had been torn down. A woman screamed. I heard a shout of Up the Republic! Half a dozen men or more were struggling to regain possession of their banner from a diminutive, bearded figure who had been wrestled to the floor. A man to the left of the ruck led with his foot. The circle around the fallen man closed.

‘Kill the little fucker!’

‘Dirty Shinner!’

The sight was appalling, a man on the ground being kicked.

‘ Get away from him! ’ Alice Waters flew at the kicking men like an enraged hawk. ‘ Stop it! ’ she screamed.

She clawed at them, trying to drag them off, but they scarcely noticed her. Blood appeared on the fallen man’s face, or what I could see of it. Some of his attackers fell over in their eagerness. Then, in a movement so fast that it was hard to follow, Frank Waters was in the thick of it, diving to the floor. It might have been a rugby match. Seconds later, he was in the centre of the crowd, a space cleared around him, panting, standing over the fallen man.

‘That’s enough!’

‘Fucking little republican bastard!’ swore one man. He drew back his foot again. Frank punched him square between the eyes and he went down.

‘I said, that’s enough!’ Frank shouted and faced them. ‘No one’s getting killed here unless I do it! Now get back! And you, get up, Stephen Duggan, and hand over our flag!’

Slowly, the man got up, blood on his mouth and in his beard. His eyes were crazy.

‘God help you all that you have to play a British game in Monument,’ he said thickly, still clutching the banner.

There was a threatening, collective roar. Frank snatched the flag from the man’s hands and threw it into the centre of the room. He put his arm around the man’s shoulders.

‘Let’s go home,’ he said.

Although Tom King made a presentation of cufflinks in the shape of rugby balls to Ronnie, and Ronnie spoke of his chances of coming home from war in one piece being much greater than surviving a training session with Monumentals, a remark which everyone cheered, the mood was sombre, as if a basic fissure had opened and ugliness had been revealed. I saw Tom come in with Alice’s coat and then go out with her. Ronnie was being brought drinks at the bar, but I had declined all offers of alcohol and said that I was going to bed.

‘We’re not like you think we are.’

Tom had come back in and was sitting beside me.

‘I’m not shocked, really. These things happen’, I said.

‘It was bad form’, he said. ‘It ruined the evening.’

‘Who was he?’ I asked.

‘Stephen Duggan. His father’s a blacksmith, they live in Balaklava. They’re decent people.’

‘And is Stephen decent?’

‘He’s too hot, but at least he’s got courage.’

‘To pull down a banner at a dance?’

‘He’s got opinions,’ Tom said quietly. ‘It’s dangerous at the moment to have opinions in Ireland. There’s emergency legislation, I’m sure you’re aware of it. The Special Branch shoot people like Stephen with republican sympathies. Men are dying in jail on hunger strike. Men are hanging for their beliefs.’

‘He seemed to go home when Mr Frank Waters told him to,’ I observed dryly. ‘I expect he’s a republican too’.

‘Frank and his sister grew up beside the Duggans,’ Tom said. ‘They’re childhood friends.’

I felt my mouth go dry.

‘Frank and his sister?’

‘Frank and Alice, yes.’ Tom looked at me. ‘Are you all right?’

I sat at the window of my bedroom, looking out over the night wharves, all but invisible because no lights were permitted due to the war, and at the occasional vessel slinking into port or downstream through the black folds of the river.

I had never felt so miserable. The thought of what I had done, of how deliberately rude I had been to him, of how successfully I had ruined what I had set out to accomplish, drove me so deep that I was ill. The day that had begun with such brightness and hope now lay irretrievably broken. I imagined him lying on a bed in his house somewhere in the town above me, his fair hair on the pillows, and the thought made my blood plunge. A knock came to the door.

‘Who is it?’

‘May I come in?’ asked Ronnie.

I sat on the bed, my feet beneath me, and he sat in the only chair. He looked sterner and somewhat older, perhaps to do with the light, or as if the imminent prospect of enlisting had seasoned him all of a sudden.

‘I thought I’d say goodbye,’ he said.

‘We’ve said goodbye, Ronnie.’

‘We said goodnight,’ he said and lit a cigarette. ‘You don’t mind me being up here?’

‘Why should I mind?’

‘A girl on her own away from home and so on.’

‘I’m quite independent, don’t worry.’

‘That’s one of the many thing I like about you.’

‘And I’m very tired.’

‘May I say one thing?’ He had a way of smiling that was half way between roguish and the embodiment of integrity. ‘May I ask you a question that I sincerely hope you have not been asked before?’

‘Which question?’

‘Iz, will you marry me?’

I gaped at him. He had actually gone down on his knees. I began to laugh. ‘Is this some sort of prank?’

He looked up at me mournfully.

‘From the very moment I first saw you in the garden of your home, I wanted you. I cannot get you out of my mind. You have taken root in my imagination. I know this all sounds absurd, but I cannot go away tomorrow to join an army and fight a war without knowing that you will be here for me when I come back.’