The Big Wind

by Beatrice Coogan

  The feeling persisted as he mounted the stairs. The drawingroom was suddenly more than a place of flooding candle-glow, of colour and silk and firelight and laughter. It was a gay rallying ground for the commencement of the new Ireland. The greeting that burst from him to his host echoed the catch-cry from outside. ‘1843’, then, ‘Liberator!’ he cried.

  The Liberator gave a hand to each of them and drew them towards the company. ‘Leave numerals to describe other years. Sir Roderick,’ he smiled, ‘this is Repeal Year. Mark my words.’

  The party seemed to have divided itself into two groups. The older guests were more noticeable at the top fireplace. But the hilarity in the region of the fire that blazed at the lower end of the room was exclusively youthful.

  ‘That’s Davis down there reciting one of his own lampoons.’ The host indicated a young man surrounded by a group that hung, with obvious delight, on his every word.

  Roderick had not expected to see Davis here. The young leader begrudged time spent away from his gigantic task of nation building. His counselling, advising, writing; training the minds of the people for the new, freer life that was to come; training his colleagues for the higher duties that lay ahead. ‘By Jove, sir,’ said Roderick, ‘I had not expected the pleasure of meeting this new planet. Lady O’Carroll will be thrilled. She is an ardent admirer of his poems; particularly his more bloodthirsty ones. Aren’t you my dear?’

  The Liberator sighed gustily. ‘That is the trouble. His poems are too bloodthirsty; too revolutionary for my purpose.’ Davis made no secret of his impatience with O’Connell’s peaceful methods of attaining Repeal.

  Their host moved off, having disposed of Roderick between a Protestant parson and a Catholic priest and bestowed the gift of Lady O’Carroll’s company upon a French count. Roderick finally met Davis and fell under his spell. Here, he thought, was a force; no fiery revolutionary here! So much for rumour! He had heard that Davis was a religious bigot, opposed to O’Connell’s Catholicism. The high-minded young genius who clasped his hand with the warmth of friendship would be as incapable of being anti-Catholic as he would of being anti-Irish. Nothing that was ignoble, thought Roderick, could exist behind that broad brow. He felt again the exhilaration he had felt outside. A movement with two such leaders could not fail. But should two such leaders clash? ‘Well then,’ thought Roderick, as he gazed into the friendly countenance, the blue eyes set in a framework of solid strength, ‘well then, I should hate to have the choice of fealty thrust upon me.’

  Their meeting was interrupted by a weird-looking figure who passed between them and went up to his host with an apology for his dress. Instead of the conventional black evening suit, the long, lugubrious looking gentleman was wearing a blue body coat with great, gilt buttons, white duck trousers and Wellington boots. Just then a footman hurried up and Roderick caught the words he whispered in agitated Gaelic to his master, ‘Will your Honour’s Liberator come out and save Mr. Steele’s hat.’

  So this was the famous Tom Steele! The Cambridge graduate who might have been a great inventor if he had not chosen to go a-windmill tilting. He had mortgaged his ancestral estates in County Clare to the tune of ten thousand pounds in order to aid the Spanish insurgents against Frederick 7th. What he had salvaged from the wreck of his fortune he had, Protestant though he was, poured into O’Connell’s movement for Catholic emancipation. ‘There was a great inventor lost in him,’ Davis commented to Roderick. ‘But the only thing he has invented in recent years is his title for the self-made role of Head Pacificator of Ireland and the Repeal Funeral; and of course, the only time he ever varies the uniform for which he has excused himself to our host is when he drapes it in funereal black, as well as his carriage, horses, and coachmen and drives off to the scene of some agrarian outrage to reproach the transgressors and show them that they have put the Repeal into mourning.’

  The self-styled Head Pacificator of Ireland returned with a very high white peaked hat held tenderly in both hands. Behind his back O’Connell wagged an admonitory finger at some of the students near the end fireplace.

  ‘Well, Pacificator,’ said Davis, ‘I hear you have been conducting one of your funeral services today. I trust the evil-doers were duly grief-stricken.’

  ‘Aye,’ said the Head Pacificator, ‘I brought home to them the harm they were doing to the cause of Repeal and to the noble efforts of the Liberator. There won’t be another outrage there again.’

  ‘Come Tom,’ Davis laughed, ‘do you really believe that your parade of funeral grief will suppress the impulses of resentment under which these men labour?’

  ‘I do believe, Doubting Thomas, that the bloodless method by which our leader liberated his people from centuries of bondage and blood-letting will prevail once more, in his efforts for Repeal.’ He raised his voice so that its lugubrious utterances boomed through the room. ‘They will benefit more from the words of my funeral service than from your war-mongering squibs.’

  As the servant was helping Margaret to salmon, the Liberator turned to her and told her to wish. ‘It is the first of this year’s catch.’

  From the end of the table Steele boomed up, ‘I can guess what your wish is. Liberator.’

  ‘You can indeed,’ said O’Connell. He held a piece of salmon suspended on a fork, ‘My wish is the Repeal for 1843.’

  ‘Oh Mr. O’Connell,’ she cried, ‘you should never reveal your wish. It is unlucky.’ But all the glasses were raised though it was early for toasts. ‘To the Repeal!’ thundered the young men.

  10

  The afternoon of the great presentation, Margaret locked herself away from human gaze to cover her face in a plaster of flowers and lotion. Roderick argued that it was ridiculous to apply plaster to skin that was flawless and Margaret argued back that because of that very fact a plaster was necessary. One did not bring one’s everyday face, flawless or otherwise, to the Vice-regal throne of Dublin Castle. Roderick took himself off on mysterious business of his own. The Mesdames O’Carroll retired for their nap and Sterrin was left to mope.

  Dublin had begun to pall on Sterrin. The fashionable Mountjoy Square could not offer the sustained interests of the square that formed the stable yard behind Kilsheelin Castle. There was life and clatter there all day; shops too, the estate carpenter’s shop, the forge where, for a small sum, tenants could order anything from a scythe to a thimble, the slaughter-house where they bought venison for a penny a pound. Slaughter-house! As if by a miracle the word brought into view the spectacle of a messenger boy kicking a cow’s bladder along the pavement towards the house. She strained on tiptoe to peep through the window. Miraculously the boy stopped at this very railing, then disappeared down the area. She tiptoed down the stairs and struggled with the hall door. The effort was a lesson in life for Sterrin. It was the first time she had ever opened a door. Always they opened to her approach. The boy was nowhere in sight but the bladder lay unguarded on the step all bloodstained and ballooned. She drew back her foot and kicked. Something banged against the drawing-room window as the footman was in the act of setting a tray before his mistresses. The next minute the house was in an uproar. The footman disappeared from the room with the announcement that ‘Miss Sterrin is kilt!’ The ladies joined by Margaret could just glimpse Sterrin lying on her back while a fierce and ragged boy stood over her saying something about a red-haired rip!

  Miss Sarah paused in her swoon to watch Sterrin rise, push a ringlet from her bloodstained nose and inform her adversary that she was about to ‘break his canister’. The term was unfamiliar to the Dublin gurrier. It was only after Sterrin’s fist had shot out and landed on his nose that enlightenment dawned. Just then a grandiose personage alighted from a carriage and ordered the footman to haul him inside. With sinking terror the urchin saw himself leaving his beloved Dublin slums on a convict ship. ‘Don’t send me “over”, your Honour’s Nobility,’ he sobbed.

  Nurse Hogan discovered that the blood on Sterrin’s nose was from the rebound of the bladd
er. She hastened to exonerate the poor ragamuffin. He was finding it hard to convince the gentleman that he had not laid a finger upon his daughter. ‘’Twas the bladder that bumped age’n her, your Nobility,’ he pleaded. ‘I only gave her one little shove an’ she up an’ hot me an’ if she hot me nothin’ at all furder I’d have no snotther left.’

  He went on his way with his pocket enriched by Sir Roderick’s shilling and his vocabulary enriched by what he assumed to be the Quality’s word for describing one’s snotther. He could be heard challenging a gurrier who had designs on the bladder to hit it a kick at the risk of having his canister broken!

  Miss Sarah was the only one of the three swooning ladies who showed no signs of recovering. Burnt feathers to the nose and smelling salts were all right for ordinary vapours; but for a first-class faint like this, something stronger was demanded and she wasn’t going to be baulked of her cure. Her wan lips parted, Roderick stooped to catch the tremulous whisper. ‘The French cabinet,’ she murmured. In a corner of a painted cabinet he found a brandy bottle three-quarters full. Halfway through the second glass she allowed herself to return to full consciousness.

  She looked up as Margaret bent to apologise for Sterrin and gave a squawk. ‘Your face!’ she gasped and swooned off again. Roderick looked across at his wife. The candles had not yet been lighted. In the twilight her face was purplish and splotchy. He stared horrified. Once before he had seen her look this way! That night, before he set out for the witch for Sterrin’s birth. Sterrin! What had the brat brought on her mother. Tonight of all nights. He rounded on the child where she stood apart, her face a white gleam in the dimness. ‘Go to your room, miss,’ he roared. ‘I’ll deal with you later.’ Just then the butler appeared with lighted sconces and announced the hairdresser. Margaret clapped her hands to her face, ‘Dieu!’ she cried. ‘I had thought to have this stuff off my face before he arrived.’ She started to pick off the violet petals that had been brewed in the lotion for her complexion. The butler lapsed into speech. ‘And me to be thinking that it was the cholera that her Ladyship was gettin’.’

  Margaret hesitated at the door. ‘Cousin Hester, do you think it is really necessary for me to have a hairdresser? I’m sure he will frizz me. I vow I should hate to be frizzed.’

  Miss Hester was shocked. ‘My dear, think of your lappets and your feathers! You must have curls and pouffes to hold them—’

  ‘Besides,’ murmured the invalid, ‘curls are so ladylike and so dainty I’m sure Roderick would prefer you with curls. Wouldn’t you Roderick?’

  Margaret wondered if the question would remind him of that hefty hey-nonny-nonny huntswoman with the curls who had managed to fall off her horse into his arms. For a second she thought to dismiss the hairdresser. She didn’t want curls!

  But Roderick looked lovingly at her, clotted cream, withered petals and all. ‘I prefer her hair when it is in two glossy plaits hanging down over her shoulders,’ he said. The suggested intimacy of his words sent Sarah burrowing in her reticule for a fan to cool her blushes. But suddenly the brandy altered her viewpoint. She stopped groping and began to giggle.

  At last the long tulle lappets and the regulation three feathers were pinned in place on the shining curls. The inmost petticoat of horsehair weighted at the hem with a thick straw plait was covered with a succession of petticoats, from muslin ones to those of lace-edged silk that increased in elegance towards the final one of satin, quilted to the knees and fortified above and below the waist with whalebones placed a hand’s length apart. While Margaret relaxed in a wrapper before donning the tour de force of the white satin presentation gown, Roderick came into the room. ‘Shut your eyes,’ he ordered. He clipped on her wrist a gold bracelet set with diamonds. She turned to him with a cry of sheer delight. His kiss stifled her outcry about its beauty, its costliness. ‘The bangle is my own presentation gift. Close your eyes again.’

  This time when she opened them she made no outcry. The glory of the necklace that he had hung about her throat evoked the supreme tribute of unvoiced rapture. The row of candles on the dressing-table were duplicated by the mirror’s reflection. Roderick, standing behind her chair, had the impression of an altar alight with candles before the rapt face that was enshrined by the mirror. She touched one of the diamond leaves that shimmered on her throat. ‘Roderick!’ she breathed but could not go on. Instead she rose and put her arms about him. He held her from him at arms length, fearful of disturbing her court coiffure, and told her the story of the diamonds.

  ‘The oaks of Kilsheelin,’ she murmured when he had finished. ‘The diamond oaks! I feel so unworthy of them.’ He risked her grande toilette to crush her to him and tell her that it was the diamonds that were unworthy. And while they stood thus together they did not notice the little figure that came in and stood watching them wistfully, then tiptoed away.

  She was lurking in the shadows of the corridor when they emerged in the full ceremonial of court dress. Her papa was superb in velvet court dress under a cloak, swung casually back from the gold clasps that held it at his throat. Her mother with her regal plumes and lappets and an ermine cloak over her white satin gown was like a snow queen. Sterrin couldn’t restrain herself. ‘Oh, Mamma,’ she cried. ‘You look like a beautiful queen and Papa looks like a prince, and I’m sorry for kicking a common boy’s bladder and giving everyone vapours.’

  Margaret had forgotten all about Sterrin’s disgrace. ‘Where on earth have you been?’

  ‘I have been waiting to be dealt with—by Papa. Nurse said that it meant a spanking.’

  Roderick’s heart smote him. ‘Perhaps Nurse mistook me. I may have said that little ladies who kicked cows’ bladders on city pavements deserved to be slapped.’ He wondered if he had ever kicked a cow’s bladder with Black Pat. Margaret laid aside her bouquet and held out her arms. The pathos of the child! Waiting in misery to receive her punishment while she herself was receiving gifts and love! She kissed her. ‘Promise that you will never do such a thing again.’

  ‘I promise,’ said Sterrin, then temporised. ‘I promise never to kick a cow’s bladder on a city street pavement.’ That didn’t include the Kilsheelin slaughter-house where the bladders were bigger and bloodier.

  ‘Hm,’ said her papa, noting the reservations. He kissed her and told her that he would take her to the Rotunda gardens next afternoon to see the dancing bear.

  Sterrin was thrilled until she remembered something. ‘Lieutenant Fitzharding-Smith has promised to go with Nurse Hogan and me tomorrow to help me choose a book for Young Thomas. Perhaps you would come instead and afterwards we could see the bear?’

  ‘No,’ said Papa. ‘I’m afraid that I am not sufficiently conversant with the literary taste of Young Thomas.’

  He swept her a mock bow and gave his arm to her mamma. There were exclamations of admiration from passers-by as the two were lighted to the carriage by the butler and footman holding aloft great brass lanterns. Even Big John relaxed his wonted dignity to stare from one to the other with prideful admiration. He had never before seen the young Sir dressed this way. A cold rain was falling and her Ladyship reminded him to put on his oilskin cape. His gratitude was respectful but his refusal was firm. Big John was driving to the court of Dublin Castle. The Kilsheelin livery would not be covered tonight. Not if it was the Big Wind itself that blew!

  He drove them through avenues of spectators; Dubliners of all classes, but mostly the patient Lazaruses snatching the dazzling glimpses vouchsafed them from the Dives’ carriages. There was no begrudging in their looks. Only the eagerness for life’s pageantry hinted by the sparkle of a diamond on a white neck, the gleam of a gold epaulette on a scarlet tunic. The lights of hundreds of carriages, the street lights, the opened candle-lit windows filled with craning heads had transported them out of the sleety greyness of the January night into a brightness that was climeless and timeless.

  At last the wide staircase of the State Apartments unrolled its blaze of scarlet carpet before Margaret. Foo
tmen in maroon coats and salmon breeches stood on every landing; more scarlet glared out from big, fur-hatted guardsmen. All these shades would clash horribly in the daytime, she thought, but now, in the benign sheen from thousands of candles in blue and gilt candelabra all tints were blended.

  In a cloakroom she found Lady Cullen shedding layers of cloaks on to the attending servants, and they went together to take their places in the procession. It was a long and painful ritual.

  Margaret began to feel wilted. It was a full half-hour since the procession had made a further move. It was all right, she reflected, for girls seeking husbands to endure this elegant hardship but, she had—Roderick! And, without any of this; just a quick encounter in the brisk exhilarating air of the ice rink. She looked up at the candles bending in the stifling heat. The shoulders of the gentlemen’s court suits were frosted with the drippings. Roderick’s shoulders had been frosted that day at the ice rink. Something pricked at the back of her ankles. Like a pin! Could anything have come undone? In panic she went over the list of her petticoats. Her long drawers were secured twice around her waist with running string. She never tolerated pins. Nothing but buttons stoutly sewn. When the procession moved again she could feel the pricking all around her ankles. Dieu! The whalebones in her petticoat couldn’t possibly have come undone! Suddenly she realised that it was the straw plait in the hem of her horsehair petticoat. The press of bodies was crushing it into her flesh. And, horrors! Despite all the perfume sachets that had been sewn into the plait it was giving out a whiff! She looked about her. But in that atmosphere of sublimated humanity the straw in one lady’s petticoat made neither reck nor reek. She flinched, someone in front was looking around and whispering over her shoulder. Margaret thought in agony that she had noticed, but she merely said, ‘Fancy all this fuss for the sake of being kissed by the Viceroy!’ Margaret could have sworn that the girl had rouge on. A few minutes later, she was certain.