The Sea and the Silence (15 page)

‘Frank believes in a united Ireland,’ said Mother, ‘and I agree with him.’

‘Oh my God!’ cried Bella and closed her eyes. She turned to Nick. ‘The man I was
actually
referring to is Norman Penrose. He has taken over the running of our farm and
transformed
it. His uncle is Sir Charles Penrose.’

‘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.

I sat up in bed in The Wicklow and looked at seagulls on nearby ridges. Dublin was teeming with country people up for the Dublin Horse Show. I had met Frank the night before and we had not yet left the room. I relished the crisp sheets and the sheer dryness of the hotel compared to Longstead.

‘What are you thinking about?’ I asked.

‘You, ‘he said. ‘Me and you.’

The night before, I had thought that tiredness was the cause of a new seriousness in him, but now it was evident again. I stroked his chest.

‘You’re worried about something.’

He smiled. ‘Me? I’m not a worrier.’

‘Tell me what’s the matter.’

He grinned and tried to shrug it off. But then his chin went down. ‘It’s not really my problem.’

‘Go on.’

‘Do you remember that business near Cork a few months ago? A garda sergeant was shot.’

‘I read about it, yes.’

‘Stephen asked me to cover for him,’ Frank said.

I sat up. ‘And did you?’

Frank nodded. ‘The guards came to our house and I swore to them that Stephen had been with me all that night.’

‘My God, Frank. And he hadn’t?’

‘I made it all up. I never saw him that night.’

A droning inevitability made it hard to hear. ‘Did he murder the guard?’ I asked quietly.

‘I’ve never asked and even if I had, he wouldn’t tell me.’

‘And yet you lied.’

‘He is my friend.’

We lay there, suddenly cold.

‘If the guards find out I lied, I’ll be lifted on suspicion and interned. But the people Stephen is tied up with are even more dangerous. If I hadn’t lied, I could have been shot.’

I could scarcely breath. ‘And is it over now, or will they do something else?’

‘It’s never over’, he said.

‘But you — it’s nothing to do with you!’

He closed his eyes. ‘They get you into something, like misleading the guards, then they use it, they twist and twist.’

No time existed between my understanding the nature of his position and my decision. I got out of bed and began to dress.

‘We’re getting out,’ I said. ‘We’re leaving. The war doesn’t have to be over for us to go to England.’

He sighed. ‘You can’t do that. You can’t walk away from Longstead and leave everything behind.’

‘That’s exactly what I’m going to do,’ I said.

‘What about your mother? She’s a lovely woman, you can’t leave her.’

‘Mother is going to live in Yorkshire.’

It began to rain and the beak of a big seagull outside gleamed with wetness.

‘I have nothing,’ Frank said. ‘Just what you see now. No land, no house, no money. Nothing.’

I came around and sat on the bed beside him. ‘You have you and that’s all I want.’

‘No one will approve.’

‘To hell with them! We’ll make our own life. We’ll go to England and then, after Christmas, when the war is won we’ll go to… I don’t know, Australia. Someplace no one knows us.’

He laughed and gathered me to him. ‘You’re crazy,’ he said.

‘You’ll be safe there. It will be as if these problems never existed.’

He looked out, over the rooftops. ‘That would be a dream.’

‘You’ve got to live your dreams,’ I said. ‘No one else will do that for you.’

He nodded slowly. ‘Then that’s what we’ll do. We’ll live our dream.’

‘When?’

‘As soon as we can. A couple of weeks.’

I kissed him as though I could never kiss him enough, or again. I wished we could go to sleep in that little room, warm and safe, and that, when we woke, we would be in a place where our dreams would begin.

Three days later, a letter arrived from Bella.

Darling Iz
,

This has to be brief, because Nick says I must be careful about what I put down on paper
.

Please, please believe me when I say that the person you are seeing is
HIGHLY UNSUITABLE.
I implore you to believe me. Nick has contacts who have told him that
EVERY MOVEMENT IS BEING WATCHED.
The person in question is
EXTREMELY DANGEROUS.
So if our friendship stands for anything, just trust me in what I say
.

Your loving sister
,

Bella
.

Sick with fear for what might be about to happen to Frank, I walked into the village. We had arranged to meet in a week’s time in Dublin, at Kingsbridge railway station, and to go from there on the night mail boat to London. In the post office in Tirmon I filled out a telegram form: COME UP URGENT IZ.

Then I remembered Bella’s letter.
Every movement is being watched
. I felt the eyes of the post-mistress, into whose hands I was about to entrust the telegram. She lived in the house at the end of the village nearest to where our barn had been set alight. I suddenly understood the power of the alliances drawn up against us: those who wanted to grab Longstead; the Land Commission; their acquiescent allies in the public service, such as the woman in this post office; and now the guards, not to mention the IRA. I crumpled the form, threw it in a wastepaper basket, then realising what I had done, retrieved it and left the tiny shop and its open-mouthed custodian.

That afternoon, although our fuel was scarce and kept for dire emergencies, I took the car out and drove towards Dublin. I was terrified. I was sure that Bella had made the situation far worse for Frank with her enquiries. But if his every movement was being watched, then a telegram to him would be intercepted. In a post office in a tiny village on the outskirts of Dublin, I sent a telegram to Tom King, c/o Monumentals rugby club, with the message, COME TO LONGSTEAD SOONEST IZ.

I had no idea if it would be delivered. At home, exhausted beyond utterance, I went to bed and lay there, shaking, wondering what we had done to deserve the wrath of the world.