The Big Wind

by Beatrice Coogan

  ‘Miss Sterrin, you know that your papa and mamma may be going to Dublin after Christmas?’

  Sterrin nodded. ‘Mamma is going to the castle to curtsey to the lady who rules over Ireland while the Queen is busy keeping her eye on England.’

  ‘Who on earth told you such a thing?’

  ‘Young Thomas.’ Before the nurse could remonstrate about her associates, Sterrin’s eyes spilled over. The nurse’s heart smote her. The child rarely cried or made demands. It often seemed to the nurse as though the child lacked the security of direct and all-enveloping love. Her parents’ love came to her through the muffling sense of their disappointment that she had not been a boy: and then they were so wrapped up in each other!

  ‘I shall be very lonely when everybody goes away. You and Papa and Mamma.’

  The nurse hugged the warm, heaving body; she thought of how her frozen heart had responded to its warmth the first night she arrived at the castle. The child’s mother too, for all her grandeur and her possessions, had a lost, helpless look in her lovely brown eyes that had made an appeal to one who had thought never again to respond to human emotion.

  Did you have an unpleasant experience that night? her Ladyship had asked. Nurse Hogan gripped the child closer as though to protect herself from the memory of that experience. Unpleasant! It was unpleasant to have the roof ripped from above your head; unpleasant to be hurled in your bed with your husband and your child down through ceiling after ceiling to the basement. She thought now of the day when she returned from the funeral of her husband and son and passed the bustle of a waiting mail coach. Someone had shouted something about Templetown. The name had penetrated her numbed brain. That was the place where she had been engaged to go as Nurse-Tender for the confinement of a lady of title! She had lost that too; everything and everyone. Then she heard someone expostulating with the guard who was insisting that those who had paid to travel on Monday must get the first preference. As she stood on the sidewalk looking at the gaping rooms of her roofless home, a thought crawled like some unexpected living thing across the ruin of her world. She had paid to travel last Monday. The mail coach had not been able to travel until now. Husband, child, home, purse, all swept away. All she possessed in the world was a claim to a seat in that mail coach!

  Sterrin wriggled. ‘You are squeezing me.’ The nurse came back to the present. Her grip relaxed. She held Sterrin from her and looked into her face. ‘Listen to me, Miss Sterrin, if you promise to be very good and to keep away from the kitchen and never do anything so unladylike as to clean knives, I think I could get your mamma to agree to take you to Dublin.’ It was Sterrin’s turn to squeeze hard. Then with an ‘Up the Whiteboys!’ that went ringing round the room and down the passages, she went head over heels in a cartwheel of pantalettes and petticoats.

  The nurse grabbed her. ‘Miss Sterrin, you limb of the devil, who taught you to say that? Was it Young Thomas?’

  Sterrin shook her head. ‘Young Thomas does not say bad words. Sometimes he speaks like Papa.’ The nurse agreed; mentally.

  ‘Was it Mickey the turf boy?’

  ‘No. He merely taught me how to say the divil damn me ould brogues and—’

  ‘That will do. Don’t you know that these “Whiteboys” are wicked men?’

  ‘Some of them are gentlemen.’

  ‘Gentlemen can be wicked too. Miss Sterrin.’

  ‘That’s a sin.’

  The nurse gave her a shake. ‘Don’t you know that the Whiteboys nearly killed your mamma?’ Sterrin’s face masked over with an impenetrable stillness that always baffled the nurse. ‘What would your mamma say if she were to hear you shouting that terrible catchcry?’

  ‘She would say, “Oh, La la, the bed it is shaking”.’

  ‘You unnatural child. You little know what your poor mamma went through so that you could come into this world, she—’

  ‘I know what Young Thomas went through. He suffered a terrible lot to bring me down into the world; just as much as Mamma did. She was in bed but he was out in the storm and he never blames me for headaches or for the Big Wind blowing—’ The nurse was about to shake her quiet when the white stillness of the small face broke up into tears. ‘Sit down, Alannah,’ the nurse said gently. ‘Give me your solemn promise that you will never again say “Up the Whiteboys”.’

  ‘May I stick to the chair if I ever say “Up-the-Whiteboys” again.’ Sterrin raised herself slightly and gave an apprehensive glance towards the part of her that covered the cushion.

  ‘Now promise that you will never go into the kitchen again.’

  Sterrin’s eyes widened with dismay; then her mouth bunched. ‘Promise!’

  Sterrin raised herself slightly above the chair. ‘May I stick to the chair that I am sitting upon if I ever go into the kitchen again.’ The nurse was not too enthusiastic about the wording but she knew that it was solemnly binding with those from whom Miss Sterrin had acquired it. ‘Very well, now come with me to your mamma’s boudoir and we’ll see whether she’ll take you to Dublin.’

  *

  ‘Hist!’ Thomas, sweeping hot ashes from the recessed wall ovens, turned towards the sound. Miss Sterrin’s head was inside the kitchen door. The part of her that ‘might stick to the chair’ was well outside in the passage. He shook his head to her beckoning. ‘Come on in here yourself,’ he said.

  ‘Do,’ urged the cook. She was wrapping a big currant soda cake in a cloth to steam. ‘Come in and I’ll cut you a piece of currant cake, Miss Sterrin, grá gal.’ She had a hundred forms of address for the child, but Sterrin liked best ‘grá gal’ that was a diminutive of ‘bright love’.

  ‘I dare not,’ Sterrin whispered. ‘I promised Nurse. I swore a mighty oath.’

  ‘Was it “that I may stick to the chair”?’

  Sterrin nodded. ‘But,’ she temporised, looking towards the steaming cake, ‘I wasn’t actually sitting on the chair when I swore.’

  Thomas suspended his besom. ‘That’s cheating,’ he said.

  The cook buttered a slice of the hot cake and sent Thomas out with it. ‘Maybe you had better stick to your word for a few days until the strength has left it. Miss Sterrin, aquanie. Wait!’ She handed another slice to Young Thomas, ‘I can’t have your own mouth watering.’

  Sterrin squatted in virtue at the foot of the back stairs while the knife boy leaned against the banister. ‘Why,’ she demanded, ‘are you demeaning yourself doing Mickey-the-turf’s work?’

  ‘He has the smallpox.’

  ‘Isn’t a knife boy high-classer than a turf boy?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Well, if Mickey-the-turf dies, what will happen?’

  ‘In that event Johnny-the-buckets will be promoted in his place and young Johnny-the-rat will be promoted to the buckets.’

  They sat in silence pondering on the possible changes in the lower echelons of the kitchen staff. ‘Wah—’ she paused to swallow the last piece of cake, then stooped and wiped her mouth with the plainest of her petticoats. ‘Miss Sterrin, that is a most unladylike thing to do,’ he remonstrated.

  ‘Huh!’ she snorted. ‘I saw you blowing your nose like this.’ She put a finger to the side of her nose and gave a convincing demonstration. He ate in silence while the shamed flush covered all his face; then he pointed out that those who could afford handkerchiefs of fine cambric didn’t seem to know what to do with them. ‘Wiping your mouth on your petticoat! Nasty little—’ he stopped.

  ‘Knife boys have no right to call ladies “nasty little—”’ She put her elbows on her knees and leaned her chin in her hands. ‘Nasty little what?’ she wheedled. He moved off. Over his shoulder he said, ‘At least you don’t have to worry about wiping the soles of your shoes.’ She turned up the soles of her little slippers, ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because you can always wipe them on the knife boy.’

  ‘Young Thomas,’ she called after him, ‘don’t look so cross with me. I’m going to Dublin too.’

  He stopped with h
is last piece of cake suspended at his lips. ‘You’re not?’

  ‘I am so; and you needn’t pretend that you are not sorry. You look sad.’

  ‘I—of course I’m not sorry. Now I shall be able to get my work done instead of always getting into trouble.’ Upstairs Nurse Hogan’s voice could be heard calling, ‘Are you down there again. Miss Sterrin?’ Her charge had to content herself with sticking her tongue out at Thomas and then scampering out the back entrance.

  A moment later she walked demurely in the front door sniffing a flower. The nurse gave her a speculative look and ordered her upstairs to have her hands washed for her embroidery lesson.

  *

  The long-planned journey to Dublin was halted almost at the outset by crowds. Every kind of vehicle from carriages to donkey carts filled the highway; and all the time people kept streaming from fields and side roads.

  At the crossroads the carriages of Lord Cullen and Lord Strague waited by arrangement. Lord Strague was in a towering rage. ‘You must change your route,’ was his greeting. ‘The police tell me there are forty thousand assembled in Roscrea already. There’s no knowing how many are ahead of us. I’ve seen eighty thousand turn out to meet the fellow in Glasgow.’

  The ‘fellow’ proved to be Father Matthew, the apostle of temperance. The priest, urged by the Quakers of Cork some years before, had started a movement to cope with the problem of drunkenness. The movement had spread like a flame, not only over Ireland, but over England and Scotland. A police officer came up and advised Sir Roderick to postpone his journey. The roads were impassable. Margaret could have wept aloud.

  But the journey was not postponed. Lord Strague, a distillery owner whose receipts had been reduced to a fraction by the temperance campaign, finally stopped inveighing against the priest and the stupid people who were flocking to take his pledge against alcohol. His cousin, Sir Jocelyn Devine, he told Sir Roderick, had extended an invitation to them to journey across country and spend the night at his mansion in Kilkenny where he was entertaining a houseparty for the Carlow Races. ‘He has engaged that Hungarian musician chap to play—’ A squeal from inside his carriage interrupted him and Mrs. Kennedy-Sherwin’s head came through. ‘La, Lady O’Carroll,’ she shrilled, ‘don’t you just long to see Mr. Liszt? He played in Dublin last week and I’m told his long golden hair is too—’ Lord Strague motioned the coachman and the elegant bonnet receded to permit his Lordship to resume his place.

  Margaret was thrilled, Hein! The visit was proving to be one of the blessings of temperance. Her small daughter, however, shadowed the prospect by recounting the legend of Sir Jocelyn’s mansion. According to the Bard, it was haunted by the cries of little children who had been compelled by Sir Jocelyn’s ancestor to dance on red hot gridirons for the entertainment of his guests. Her papa rapped out sharply that little girls should be seen and not heard and remarked to Margaret that the child’s head was overstuffed with bardic mythology. But Lady Cullen, that evening in the drawing-room, fluttered rays of truth on the tale from behind her fan. She leaned across Margaret to tell her grandniece whom she was presenting at the Vice-regal drawing-room, how her own aunt, a cousin of the then Viceroy, had got him to investigate the story and proved it to be only too grimly true. Fortunately for Margaret, at that moment the host announced the Hungarian musician... and a small, pasty-faced boy of about twelve dressed in a black velvet suit, bowed and seated himself at the piano.

  He wasn’t Mr. Liszt, but he was Hungarian, and he had played last week before Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort. Margaret, watching the dull, white face, had the impression that the boy was maintaining the ghostly tradition of child performers. Roderick saw her lips tremble; then at a gust of wind against the shutters, he saw that she barely repressed a shriek.

  It was the same as last year, and every year on this date, 6th January, she could not forget—even in this splendid social setting—that this was the date of the Big Storm that had almost unhinged her mind; and again as on previous years, he recalled as an afterthought that this was also the date of their daughter’s birth. Tonight she was four years old.

  Sir Jocelyn, believed to be Ireland’s wealthiest landlord, could not allow for any plan of his to be disrupted. It was somewhat later before his guests discovered for themselves that Mr. Liszt, on his way to an engagement in the North of Ireland, had been hauled from his carriage by a crowd of Orangemen and was within inches of being ducked in a pond when his identity was discovered. Because he was a splendid personage in a splendid equipage, some of the Orange brethren had come to the wishful conclusion that he was Daniel O’Connell. Meantime Sir Jocelyn produced another Hungarian musician.

  Next morning his carriage led the cavalcade along the road to the race course...

  9

  Dublin was a pleasing surprise to Margaret. She had expected to see a decaying capital with grass-grown streets. But there was nothing of this about the stately houses that lined Sackville Street. Roderick explained that all these houses had been overhauled and refurbished for the visit, some years back, of George IV. The stonework, the graceful fanlights were all in perfect condition; and already the wrought iron lamps outside the Adamesque and Venetian doorways were cheerfully alight. Sackville Street, the centre of its great expanse—the widest street in Europe, her papa used to tell her—held a tree-lined mall where fashionable ladies promenaded on the arms of their escorts.

  Roderick’s old lady cousins, with whom they were to spend the season, had implemented the warmth of their welcome by ordering a second fire in the grate at the far end of their spacious drawing-room. Its chimney protested against this strange invasion of heat and sent it back into the room in clouds of smoke. Margaret, entering the room, had the impression of two quaint figures in bygone finery extending arms to her from mists of time. The mists dispersed in puffs down into her eyes, nostrils and throat; everywhere but the chimney. But they cast no cloud upon her delight at this charming room whose walls had the friendliness to permit a muted penetration of the cheery street cries and music.

  Just to sit at her bedroom window in this pleasant house brought joy to Margaret. The park outside held no grey tinge from a lost field; no shadowy figures conjured out of eerie tales of hauntings. Only the sounds of children trundling hoops beside streamered nursemaids wheeling elegant bassinets; of vendors crying, ‘Malahide oysters, threepence a dozen, Dublin Bay Herrings a penny a dozen!’; the pieman calling his hot jam puffs a penny each, the dairyman crying ‘Milk-o’, and always that distant diapason of the street musicians.

  Sterrin asked her something but Margaret didn’t reply. She was intrigued watching the manoeuvres of a beautifully-dressed girl and her beau trying to elude their fat chaperone. They slipped down a shady avenue near the park railings and the chaperone continued walking on the main avenue for yards before she discovered their evasion. Margaret went off into peals of mirth at the spectacle of the chaperone doubling back in her tracks looking, in swaying hoops, like a large, agitated duck.

  ‘What is it, chérie?’ Sterrin had asked again if she might go out and put her ear to the roadway to listen for Papa’s returning carriage. Margaret went off into fresh peals at the thought of her small daughter, like the garçonnerie at Kilsheelin, listening for the sound of her papa’s carriage from among all the wheel-rattling and hoofbeats of a city’s traffic.

  Roderick was late. He had gone to the Grecian Club with Lord Cullen. He was also a little bit drunk.

  He drew Margaret to him.

  ‘Here is the lovely girl all aglow from skating on the Lake of Nightingales, I am happy to meet you again.’ He kissed her long and tenderly.

  ‘Oh, you silly Roderick, I am not a nightingale and I do not sing.’

  ‘There were swans on that lake. You are like a swan but not so white.’

  ‘Hein? Not as white. That is not a bon mot.’

  ‘Yes it is. The whiteness of a swan is too stark for a lovely lady. It would give her a white-washed look. Now, let me see.’
He took her face in his hands and scrutinised it. ‘Yours is a creamy whiteness. Still, that’s not right either. There’s a yellow in cream. That’s because little flecks of butter come through.’

  She laughed delightedly. ‘Oh, la, la, now it is you who are the charming Irlandais who followed me home to the Place de l’Eglise. M’sieu, I am enchanted to meet you again!’ She kissed him.

  ‘Egad,’ he cried gaily, ‘this is yet another reunion. What a pity Lord Cullen is not here. It would give me an excuse to roar “Bumpers Gentlemen!” Ugh!’ He put his hand to his head. The very mention of bumpers sent wine blasts through it.

  ‘Ah, now I know your shade of white,’ he said next morning as he picked up a tall glass filled with a yellowish fluid. ‘It is the whiteness of a pearl from a very rare oyster that has blood in its veins that tints the translucence of its pearl. And now, my pearly swan, will you be good enough to throw this out of the window.’ He handed her the glass.

  ‘What on earth is this, Roderick? Ugh! It has an ugly smell.’

  ‘It is a concoction that the old ladies used to make up for the gentlemen when they had advanced far in their cups the night before. Give it to the fig tree.’ He stretched and yawned.

  Margaret waited at the window for a chance to douche the fig tree that grew out of the cobbled backyard. She did not mind Big John, busy moving to and fro from the stables to the coach-house, but the coachman belonging to the cousins was also moving in and out of the yard all the time, making a fuss about their solitary horse that had to be housed in the coach-house to make room for the Kilsheelin horses. Neighbouring windows found occasion to open more frequently than usual now that the Misses O’Carroll’s yard had come alive. And Maryjoe, the maid who was not exactly a housekeeper, but ranked higher than the professed cook, seemed suddenly to have a great deal of business to take her from the kitchen door to the little drying green near the stables and Big John.

  Roderick emerged from the small dressing-room in trousers and ruffled shirt. He started to tell her about the interesting people he had met at the ‘Grecian’ the previous night. ‘...and I saw the poet James Clarence Mangan. He looked like the walking sublimation of tragedy.’