Peter Cunningham - The Sea and the Silence

‘I have had a room made up here for you tonight,’ Norman said with great weight.

‘Here?’

‘In your new home.’

‘Oh.’

‘It will be the first time a woman has slept here since my mother died. You will be taking her place,’ he said.

Hot and a little dizzy, I went outside and lit a cigarette. The storm had suddenly died and a moon had come out. I could see John Rafter, also smoking, standing in the field beside his van.

‘John?’

‘How’s it going, Iz?’

‘I’d like you to drive me home.’

Feral eyes floated from hedgerows as the van weaved the lanes between Grange and Tirmon. I was chilled although I had done little else but dance.

‘Are you all right?’ John asked.

‘I’m just a little tired.’

‘You’re shivering’, he said and reached into the back and handed me over a jacket which I put around my shoulders. When he dropped me at Longstead, he said: ‘I’ll go back and wait for Bella and her old fella.’

The house was already asleep. How I relished its softness and disorder, its lack of purpose or ambition. I went in and put on the lights in the hall and found a pair of outdoor shoes and a coat, then went outside to the wall beyond the lawn and lit up a last cigarette. How many times I had observed Longstead from that spot, seeing but unseen. My smoke eddied in the night air and I batted it away. Bella and Nick would be home soon and if they found me up, Bella would be full of awkward questions about my leaving my own party so early. There was a noise. I turned. As I did, I was clamped at the mouth and around my waist.

We fell back and I saw the stars reeling. I tried to shout for help. I was pinned, and could feel the strength of my attacker and hear him grunting as he held me. I kicked and bit. I could think only of the land agitators, the dispossessed, now come to remove their last remaining obstacle to Longstead. My throat cut. I bit again. Hard.

‘ Iz! ’

He had released me.

‘Jesus, but you can put up a fight!’ Frank gasped.

His face flitted in and out of shadow as clouds ran across the moon. He was unshaven and his clothes were wet and bedraggled. My first thought was that Bella and Nick would return at any moment.

‘Quickly,’ I said and caught his arm.

I led him down the avenue, across the stile and into the lake field. I took off my shoes, hoisted my dress and ran, my legs drenched from the dew. The moonlight was eerie and erratic and each time it shone I kept thinking it was the lights of the van. Inside the old lambing shed, the floor was covered with the musty hay of former seasons.

‘Why..?’ I began, but I couldn’t finish the question, nor did I need to.

He shook his head and I could see in a beam of moonlight how thin he was.

‘It was Alice,’ he said softly. ‘Had to be.’

‘She told me… she told me that you’d said you didn’t want both our lives to be ruined,’ I said.

Frank’s eyes closed. ‘I sent her to Dublin to bring you back down with her. I thought it would be safer to cross to England from Monument. She came home and said that you had broken it off with me, that you’d decided it was for the best.’

My chest hurt where my breath was caught. ‘Why?’

‘Because she was crazy, which is a terrible thing to say about your own sister when she’s dead. Because she thought I was betraying what she stood for.’

His head was down and his hair fell forward.

‘Are you on the run from the guards?’ I asked.

He nodded.

‘And yet you came back for me,’ I said.

‘Tom sent me the notice of your engagement,’ he said. ‘I knew that wasn’t what you wanted, because you told me. I knew then that Alice had told me lies.’

We kissed in that damp little shed, although I didn’t care if the heavens opened.

‘I love you,’ he said. ‘I will die if I can’t be with you.’

He unbuttoned my dress, then kissed my shoulders and gently pulled down each strap of my white slip. Unclipping my hair, he smoothed it out with his fingers. I undid his shirt and saw bruising on his shoulder. His chest hairs were darker than those on his head, spreading out before diving in an ever darkening line. I could feel blood I had forgotten surging powerfully, my ears humming and my whole head resonating. Afterwards, I stroked his back and tasted his skin.

‘What will become of us?’ I asked.

‘We will become like the stars in the sky,’ he said.

‘The ancient Greeks used to think the stars were their gods.’

‘Then I want to be Hector, son of Apollo,’ he said.

‘Hector, the great warrior, the greatest in Troy,’ I said and hugged him close. ‘My Hector.’

Frank said, ‘I want to do this for the rest of our lives.’

I came down to breakfast, my feet barely touching the ground. All night in bed, or what part of it I spent there, I could inhale his skin from mine.

‘What on earth came over you last night?’ Bella asked. ‘Poor Norman was crestfallen. I had to make your excuses.’

‘I was feeling ill.’

‘Perhaps you should see a doctor,’ said Nick, and as always when he spoke, I felt a chill on my neck.

‘I’m perfectly well now, thank you,’ I said and cut myself a slice of soda bread.

‘Stanley Penrose took me aside last night,’ said Bella, eyeing me. ‘He thinks it’s only reasonable that you give Norman a firm date for your wedding.’

‘Did he indeed?’

‘I must say I do think the poor man has a point.’

He’s far from poor , I wanted to say; but instead I said, ‘I know. It was unfair of me. I’ll decide a date with Norman before the end of this week.’

‘Well, at least that’s something’, Bella said and she and Nick exchanged a look.

As if the storms had swept away the final traces of winter, heat poured from the sun, birds sang and darkness and menace were forgotten. Light was exquisite in the garden, illuminating the heads of snowdrops. The love that ran through me, that was my blood, made me want to shout for joy and tell everyone what I was doing. Fifty yards from the house, under a monkey puzzle tree, I sat and made myself remember all the good that had unfolded here, the fine lives that had had this place at their beginning, the great hopes that Longstead had given rise to.

‘You’re singing.’

I whirled. Nick had materialised behind me.

‘Oh!’

‘It was lovely,’ he said. ‘Sorry, did I startle you?’

‘No. I mean, a bit. I was miles away.’

‘Anywhere in particular?’ He seemed to radiate a power that threatened everything I wanted. ‘Bella and I are taking a picnic down the fields and were wondering if you’d like to join us?’

He was smiling, but his eyes were too knowing, as if my mind could conceal none of its plans.

‘I… I can’t today, thanks, but maybe another day.’

‘What’s happening today?’

‘I thought… that I would go and see Norman… and plan the date for our wedding.’

‘Now there’s a good idea,’ Nick said and strode away down the lawn, hands behind his back.

I would have liked to have had Mother to myself for the morning, but Bella and Nick were always in the room.

‘I must get a photograph of you girls,’ Nick said.

We stood at the front door, Mother in her black straw hat, Bella in the centre, and me. Nick peered down into his box camera.

‘Lovely,’ he said and I heard the clock in the hall strike noon.

Bella went to the kitchen to see what had become of their picnic and Mother took her easel and pallet to the lawn. I helped her carry her paints and her chair. We went to a spot to the right of the avenue, from which the shining lake could be seen in the distance. Nick and Bella were making their way down to the stile. Even this far away, I could hear Bella’s voice.