Peter Cunningham - The Sea and the Silence

‘Ah,’ Nick said and nodded.

‘Iz, Norman Penrose adores you. Are you completely stupid?’ Bella asked.

I marvelled at my own composure.

‘Bella, I am so pleased for your happiness, and for yours, Nick. But since no one bullied you to come to your decision, I’d be grateful if you could bear that in mind when it comes to me.’

‘I don’t believe this,’ Bella said again.

‘I may even hold an exhibition,’ Mother said, gazing at the tiny bubbles spiralling up from the bottom of her glass.

Later, Bella got me on my own.

‘By all means have your fling with your handsome dock man, but, for God’s sake, when you come to your senses, marry Norman and save Longstead.’

‘How dare you speak like that, Bella! Why should I forsake my happiness to suit you? Or anyone else?’

‘Because the happiness you refer to is an illusion. This is the first man who’s managed to lay a hand on you, so of course you like him, but then you have to take a thousand other things into consideration. Such as, who is he? What does he represent? Is his background compatible with our own? Sadly, the answer is no.’

‘You are despicable!’

‘I’m a pragmatist. It just won’t work and it’s my duty as your older sister to tell you.’

‘You are so stuck in the past that it makes me ill!’

‘I’ve spoken to Mother,’ Bella said quietly. ‘She told me he’s quite the hothead, your docker. Wants to burn down Mount Penrose, she said.’

‘That was a joke!’

‘Maybe it wasn’t. Nothing would surprise me in this country nowadays. It’s being run by corner boys. And dock hands.’

I faced her. ‘I used to worship you, Bella. I used to be so proud to watch you and to have such a beautiful older sister. But what you have just said makes me ashamed that I have ever known you.’

My sister set her face at its sharpest. ‘I’m going to forget that. But believe me when I say this: I have a duty to Daddy and this family that you seem to have decided to ignore and I’m not going to stand to one side and watch my younger sister make a complete fool of herself.’

One evening as we sat by the fire, Mother suddenly put her book down.

‘Iz, I want to go home,’ she said.

My first thought was, She’s losing her mind .

‘You are at home, Mother.’

She sighed. ‘I want to go home to Yorkshire.’

I saw her, the ghost of a tall, pretty woman, sitting before me like a child.

‘Why?’

‘It’s time.’

I made us a pot of tea. Ever since Daddy’s death, she said, she had thought about returning to Yorkshire, where some of her cousins still lived and where there was a house left to her by her stepfather. It was, she said, despite all the years in County Meath, the place she loved most and whenever she woke up and imagined for the briefest moment that she was a child again in Yorkshire, she was happiest.

‘Of course you must go, if that’s what you wish,’ I said.

‘Might you come with me, Iz?’

‘I don’t think so, Mother,’ I said gently.

She smiled. ‘That’s all right, I understand. I didn’t think you would.’

I wrote at her request to a land agent in Skipton who managed the house and told him that she would be taking it over. In the context of Longstead’s problems, it seemed like a very sensible decision.

Although Ireland was neutral and although the most all-engulfing war the world had ever known was referred to in Ireland as “the Emergency”, ours was a benign and knowing neutrality, so that when, on June 7 th, all the newspapers carried banner headlines announcing the invasion of Europe, there was a lift in everyone’s step. We in Ireland knew that only when the war was won would shortages ease and the full benefits of being independent begin to be exploited.

But there were those who were determined, against all the odds, to strike against what they saw as the remnants of imperialism. A week after D-Day, I read of an attack on a lonely police barracks in Munster and the death of a garda sergeant. Subversives were responsible, the paper said, reporting that the Minister for Justice had vowed to hunt down the killers without mercy and to bring them to account.

Allan wrote from France and his letter did the rounds of everyone in Longstead. He had come in with the first landings. He was well, Hitler was beaten and the war would be over by Christmas, Allan said. I brought his letter down to the village and read it to the Rafters.

‘Thanks be to God,’ Mr Rafter said.

‘I’ll see the word gets around, Iz,’ said John, the son, and nodded reassuringly.

It was turning into a good summer from the point of view of fattening cattle and saving hay. Norman had been almost every day in one part of Longstead or another almost every day, directing teams of men in their tasks. In late June, the hay had been drawn into the barns near the house and also into a hay shed renovated by Norman for the purpose, which stood by a boundary wall not far from the village. But one morning in early July, one of our farmhands came in, wide-eyed.

‘The new barn, Miss…’ I knew what he was going to tell me. The look of fear in his face was the worst part. ‘They burned it to the ground.’

It was the waste I found most distressing, for I too had helped in the fields, bringing out flasks of tea and bread and working until ten at night to get the hay saved. Forty cattle could have wintered off what had been destroyed. Although people in Tirmon must have seen the blaze, since they lived the other side of the wall, no one had raised the alarm or tried to help.

Word of Longstead’s problems travelled fast. Among the first to drive up our avenue and show solidarity were Stanley and Norman Penrose.

‘It is an outrage,’ Stanley said, many times. ‘I have taken the liberty of writing to the government minister who is supposed to be in charge of law and order in this country, expressing my fears for the future of the Free State if this sort of behaviour is allowed to go unpunished.’

The day was close and a heaviness lay on the fields and in ditches. Whilst Mother was forced to drink tea with Stanley, Norman asked to walk with me down the avenue.

‘You have been on my mind, Ismay,’ he said, swinging his blackthorn stick.

I thought of Frank and of the evening we had had together in Dublin the week before, walking the streets and listening to the cries of the newspaper vendors.

‘I would be less than honest if I did not admit that I admire you greatly.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘It’s not as if we haven’t known each other since we were children. I would try, with all my power, to give you whatever your heart desired.’

The sense of his words came to me gradually, like the growing beat of drums.

‘I mean it. I have never meant anything as much.’

‘This is inappropriate,’ I said.

‘I know what your concerns must be, but I have tried to anticipate them. My father wants to live in Dublin. He says the winters down here no longer suit his chest. Mount Penrose will be ours entirely. There is a lovely small house on the grounds which I will adapt for Mrs Seston. She will be comfortable and all her needs looked after. Until your brother comes home, I will continue, at no charge whatsoever, to manage and maintain Longstead. Despite the outrage that has just taken place, I believe it will be far more difficult, if not impossible, for the agitators to succeed against Longstead if they see me involved as, so to speak, a member of the family.’

I stared at him.

Norman said, ‘I have, if I can be permitted to speak on my own behalf, a good sense of judgement in these matters.’

I began to run back up the avenue. I never looked back. I saw my mother by the hall door with Stanley Penrose, her face vacant, his stern. I ran on, into our walled apple orchard where fruit was budding. I wanted Frank. His voice, his hands. I wanted us to fly away beyond the grasp of all the forces that were trying to wrench us asunder. Why was I the one who could not love the man of her choice? What I was caught up in, I dimly understood, was the embodiment of history. But history was what I most feared.