Peter Cunningham - The Sea and the Silence

‘You’re very good to me,’ Mother said as I put the chair down.

‘It’s not difficult when you love someone very much,’ I said.

‘Oh, I do understand how you must go, Iz, but I wish you didn’t have to,’ Mother said.

I stared at her, as if she too, and perhaps all the world, knew my mind.

‘Go?’

‘To live in Mount Penrose,’ Mother said. ‘Longstead is so much prettier.’

I put my cheek to hers and my arms around her neck. ‘I will always love you, wherever I am,’ I said and made my way back inside.

At half past twelve, I walked down the avenue with only the clothes on my back. I could never have foreseen that I would be leaving Longstead without a solitary possession, but that too felt good and uplifting in the way I imagined pilgrims or hermits must feel uplifted as they cast off all in pursuit of a higher goal. I waved to Mother, but she didn’t see me. I called,

‘Goodbye.’

When I reached the gates, I was out of breath, although I had made a point of not hurrying. The village of Tirmon, whether on mornings of icy sleet or as now, when the sun bathed it in almost beatific light, showed few signs that people lived there. I passed Mr Rafter’s shop. The clock inside showed ten to one. Scents of coffee and jute sacking followed me along the footpath. I began to sink, unaccountably, as if scents alone could unlock the responsible part of my reasoning process. Turning back, I ran into the shop.

Bells chimed and faces looked up from behind counters. It was one of the small miracles of life that Mr Rafter, despite all his business interests and the need to be in so many different places at once, was nonetheless always in his shop when he was needed.

‘Miss,’ he said. ‘Have you heard the news?’

I felt the familiar internal plunge as dismay overcame hope.

‘Oh God, what?’

‘The Ruskies are heading for Berlin,’ Mr Rafter grinned. ‘It’s as good as over.’

I closed my eyes with relief. ‘I didn’t know what you were going to tell me.’

Mr Rafter’s girth, so often derided and sniggered at, was all at once so very replete and comforting. I said,

‘The reason I’ve come in is that I wanted to say that I’d be… most grateful if you could keep an eye on Mother. If anything should ever happen to me, Mr Rafter.’

The grocer’s clever eyes seemed to join the ranks of all those who could read my intentions.

‘And what could happen to you, Iz?’ he asked quietly.

‘I don’t expect anything to happen. It’s just that, well you’ve always been such a friend, I thought that if…’

He ran his hand over his face and rubbed his nose vigorously. ‘Your father and I were the best of friends. We’d talk about history and how each of us had got to where we were. We knew the changes that were coming, we just didn’t know when.’

‘Mother wants to go back to England. Now that the war is nearly over, she’ll soon be able to.’

‘We’ll all be sorry to see her go.’

‘I’m sorry, Mr Rafter. I’m meeting someone, I’ve got to rush,’ I said, cursing myself for having come in.

‘Ah, you were always the best of them as far as I was ever concerned,’ he said and walked with me to the door. ‘But you’re far too young to be worrying.’

‘I know, ‘I said. ‘I’m sorry.’

He held the door for me. I could feel his eyes on my neck as I resumed my journey through Tirmon.

The bull-nose Morris sat like a small, dogged animal at the far side of the village, a little wisp of white steam drifting from its bonnet. I ran the final fifty yards.

‘Another minute and I was gone,’ said Tom King.

We lurched away, dust behind us.

‘Is Frank all right?’

‘He’s fine,’ Tom said and looked in his rear-view mirror. ‘Everything will be fine.’

We drove for an hour, weaving back and forth through the lattice of tiny roads, gradually working south and then east, before meeting the north-south main road into Dublin. Tom had booked a cabin and two tickets in his own name on the mail boat to Holyhead that would sail that evening from Dún Laoghaire. Frank and Tom had spent the night before in the Dublin Mountains. Tom shook his head, as if trying to come to terms with the starkness and finality of the day. ‘These are queer old times, aren’t they?’ he said.

‘Did you hear that the Russians are heading for Berlin?’ I asked.

‘It’s a good omen,’ Tom said.

On the outskirts of Dublin, people were in their front gardens, digging or weeding.

‘Can I ask you something?’ I said. ‘Why did Alice do what she did? She took months out of our lives. Why? If she hadn’t, I’d never have agreed to marry another man, Frank and I would have gone away and by now we’d be free in England instead of being in danger here. Why did she do it?’

Tom’s big chin sank into his chest and he gripped the steering wheel.

‘It wasn’t her, it was history. It was years of resentment and difference, it was people long dead whose blood is your blood. It was about wanting and having and greed. She saw her chance and she took it. With some people, it’s beyond their control. She’d probably have liked you, you know. ‘

‘I can’t understand it.’

‘You don’t have to understand it,’ Tom said. ‘Frank tells me you have a sister much the same.’

Old, bowler-hatted men sat on a canal bank in the sun, and beneath them, on the water, swans glided, their hinged reflections perfect. Trams veered around St Stephen’s Green. Tom parked, nose in, and we walked together down Grafton Street. The billheads for the evening paper shouted, WAR SOON OVER! Metal wheels hummed on their tracks and bells clanged. Tom looked back over his shoulder more than once. We turned into Wicklow Street. I longed for Frank. Childbirth would be like this, I knew, pain bearable because of love. I went in through the Wicklow Hotel’s revolving doors, and then through its homely hall, hat drawn over my eyes, past the panelled dining-room with its white-jacketed waiters setting up for dinner, past the staircase up which we had gone together so often and so happily, and into the busy bar at the back. He was sitting in a booth near the door to the toilets, his face drawn and pale.

‘I thought you’d never come.’

I began to kiss him, not minding who was watching. I covered his face in kisses and he held me close and said, ‘It’s all right.’

I knew then, if ever I had been in doubt, that I loved him completely, for love, I understood, won’t settle for anything less than its full entitlement. Tom handed him an envelope with the boat tickets.

‘What time does she sail?’ Frank asked.

‘Eight,’ said Tom.

‘We don’t want to go on board until the last minute,’ Frank said.

Tom went to the bar and I found myself checking the clock over the counter.

Frank asked, ‘What did you tell them at home?’

‘Nothing. They think I’ll be there for supper,’ I said and had a sudden, guilty image of Mother sitting, waiting for me.

‘That must have been difficult for you.’

I looked at him and saw in his eyes what I had seen the first night.

‘It’s for the best,’ I said. ‘I’m just bringing forward what would have happened anyway.’

Tom came back with whiskies and we swallowed them.

‘I think we should get out to Dún Laoghaire,’ Tom said. ‘The car is up on the Green.’

‘You two go first,’ Frank said. ‘I’ll meet you at the car in five minutes.’

I stood up and then, before I reached the door, looked back. The whiskey had brought some colour to his cheeks. He winked at me. I winked back. I went out the hall for the street, striding ahead, my chest filled with hope. And I saw Nick.