The Big Wind

by Beatrice Coogan

  ‘What are you doin’?’ he asked. ‘They’ll be here in a minute.’

  ‘I’ve to go out to the byre to set these eggs under the cluckin’ hen.’

  ‘That’ll hold till tomorrow.’

  ‘No,’ said Kitty moving to the door. ‘She’ll have gone off the cluck.’

  She tied a canvas apron round her waist and ignored their protests. As she took up a lantern and left the room, she said, ‘I’m dressed well enough for another woman’s leavings.’

  The brown hen pushed every egg under her puffy chest with as much cackling and scolding as though she had laid them herself. She had barely poked the thirteenth under the fertile heat of her feathers and given an ungrateful peck at Kitty’s hand when a low whistle sounded from the orchard.

  She blew out the lantern as she came into the moonlight from the dark byre, and hurried under the apple trees. The moon was making a kind of fireworks display out of the little waterfall and sending up shafts and sparks of silver flame. But it etched too clearly the tall figure of Mark Hennessey, who had been courting her for two years.

  ‘Mark,’ she whispered, ‘you could be seen a mile off.’

  He stepped backwards over the little stream and drew her after him into the field below, and under the shade of a great beech tree. ‘Have they bid for you yet?’ he asked her as he drew her into his arms.

  Her head was down on his shoulder and she left it there as she answered down between the frieze and the fresh skin of that grand body that would never hold her close again.

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve not been within. I made an excuse to set eggs under a clucker. Something told me you’d come. Oh, Mark!’ The words came tenser and forced her breath in quivers against the back of his neck.

  ‘To think this is the last time we’ll be together. ’Twould have been as well if I’d stayed inside but I had to torture myself with the look of you and the feel of you. I had to kiss you goodbye.’

  He turned his head sideways and pressed kisses into her black ringlets. ‘You said last Sunday week that you’d run away with me.’

  She drew away, and as she stood before him he thought her ringlets looked like shining ebony in the moonlight and the severe beauty of her features was etched like a marble statue.

  ‘That was before the cow died, and before the proctor thought the place looked so tasty that we ought to be payin’ more tithes to the parson and the agent thought we ought to be payin’ more rent to the landlord. It broke my heart to uproot the grand shrubs I got from Miss Cullen. Every time she passed on her horse, she’d turn down the boreen to see how they were doin’ and she vowed that they throve better in the shelter of our yard than in the glass house at Crannagh Abbey. ’Twas the same with the slippings I got from Miss De Lacey. I had to pull them up and we had to muck up the whitewash and paint, and leave the gate hanging on one hinge and be the dirty Irish we are expected to be.’

  ‘Sh, you’ll be heard.’ Her voice had risen and her breast was heaving. ‘I know,’ he soothed. ‘Whisht, wasn’t I forgetting what I came for.’ He took a purse from his pocket and took out three bank notes. ‘Look!’

  She took the notes in her hand and read clearly in the white light the three inscriptions of twenty pounds. Her eyes were wide with question.

  ‘Mark, is it, is it the Big Wind again?’ He nodded. ‘Where did you find them?’

  ‘In the field at the bottom of Graffin’s Hill. I was slashing briars on the headlands and I saw something white, two pieces of white. They were stuck within the heart of the hedge. I thought immediately of the two ten pound notes Jack Ryan found last year and he toppin’ thistles.’

  ‘But Mark are you right to keep it? Could anyone claim it? Don’t you remember the trouble there was about the gold that was found?’

  ‘That was different. That was Mr. de Guider’s gold beyond a doubt and it was found on his own grounds. Now this money was in a spot in the hedge that’s in direct line with my Uncle Larry’s house and, look here!’ He pulled out the purse again and held up something between his finger and thumb. ‘They are biteens of feathers that were stuck inside two of the notes that were rolled up together—’

  ‘Your Uncle Larry’s mattress that was blown down the hill?’

  He nodded again. ‘There’s no knowin’ what money he had sewn up in the feathers. He always made it an excuse that he meant to leave me plenty only for what blew away that night. Still, it didn’t keep him from leavin’ what was left to his wife’s nephew.’

  ‘An’ all the work you used to do! Well, ’tis an ill wind that blows no one good. I’m glad from my heart for you, Mark asthore, but,’ her voice broke, ‘I suppose it is America for you now.’

  He drew her back into his arms and held her face upturned so that the moon glorified the beauty of every feature that he inventoried. The blue eyes, the straight Grecian nose, the perfect teeth that gleamed through half parted lips. He thought with sickness of this flower being thrown away on Owen Heffernan’s dunghill! Suddenly he crushed her to him and kissed her as he had never kissed her since the first time their lips had gently met in the orchard.

  She pushed him from her, panting and frightened of the strange unfamiliar stirrings within herself. ‘Mark.’ He had never been like this before in all the tender courting of the last two years.

  He was panting hard but he held her from him now and gripped her hands till they hurt. ‘Kitty, I can make a bid for you tonight. Sixty pounds and the few I’ve saved isn’t much against fifty-four acres of land that’s as good as the Golden Vale, and I believe he has a stocking of gold forbye. But Kitty, my life’s love,’ he drew her again into his arms. ‘I’ve love enough to cover every one of his acres. It’s piled as rich in my heart as all his hoard of gold.’

  She pulled herself from him and looked back at the pretty house with braided thatch and latticed windows that stood in its generous yard under the shade of the silvery orchard. There was taste and industry there.

  ‘The talk of this marriage has lifted the dread from their hearts. Two years ago ’twas the sow. Last year our fine horse and then a cow. And when the cow died last week and they dropped its carcass into the quarry, the schoolchildren said, “There’s another beast in Dowling’s graveyard.” I could see that eviction was staring my mother and father in the eyes. One bad season now, and what would pay the rent and tithes? My father was born here and my mother came here to live when her own father was evicted. I’d rather see them shot the way her father was shot that day than see them walk down the boreen for the last time and turn their heads for the workhouse.’ She put her face into her hands.

  He drew down her hands. ‘’Twill be the same to me as if you were shot, the day you drive down the boreen on Owen Heffernan’s phaeton on your weddin’ drive.’

  ‘Stop!’ She clung to him. ‘Oh, Mark what can we do?’

  ‘Kitty, ’tis the way I was thinkin’, the other one of the ould Clarke couple is dead and the cottage is vacant. It’s not much more than a cabin—’

  ‘But we’d be together. We’d know our youth together.’

  ‘And we have strength enough to rise up out of poverty—’

  Someone called. They turned to see Niall coming down the orchard path. ‘Kitty,’ he called, ‘there’s money bid for you.’ She turned to step over the stream but Mark held her. ‘Give me an answer one way or the other. If you go this way we’ll never meet again.’

  Niall reached out his hand and pulled her over the stream. ‘Come on, girl,’ he said, ‘there is a gentleman widin, with a face that would stop a funeral and he’s gettin’ impatient.’ He turned to Mark. ‘God save you, Mark. ’Twould be a nice night for the coortin’ if there was no matchmakin’. Romance isn’t for the likes of us.’

  She turned back to Mark. ‘There’s a boy inside coordheecing.† A respectable boy in service at the castle. Thomas his name is.’

  ‘Young Thomas, I know him.’

  ‘I’ll give him a message for you and he’ll tell you what happens t
onight. Wait for him at the low part of the castle wall on the Sir’s Road.’

  ‘When I was poor,’ sang Young Thomas,

  ‘Your father’s door

  Was closed against your constant lover;

  With care and pain

  I tried in vain

  My fortune to recover.’

  ‘Musha, there was flour in the potatoes tonight,’ said Mark Hennessey stepping out from the shadow of the tree that grew high over the castle wall. ‘’Tis well for you that has the heart to sing so gay.’

  ‘There was indeed flour in the potatoes tonight,’ said Thomas. ‘I never tasted finer. And the butter was made by the finest butter-maker in all the country—’

  Mark interrupted angrily. ‘You are playin’ tricks with me. Did she give you e’er a message for me?’

  ‘She did. But first she gave a message to Mr. Heffernan. She gave it to him personally.’ Young Thomas chuckled.

  ‘Go on. It’s easy for you to laugh. What did she say to him?’

  ‘When he had complimented her on her butter, he very generously urged us all to put plenty of it on our potatoes as the butter-maker would soon be removing to his less hospitable roof.’

  ‘An’ did he admit that much against himself?’

  ‘Not in so much words. But he left us in no doubt that when that butter was being made by his wife, it would not be put down so lavishly with the potatoes for coordheecers.’

  ‘His wife?’ The words jerked out hoarsely as Mark turned away. ‘Ye need say no more. Goodnight to ye.’

  Young Thomas kept up with him. ‘If it’s all the same to you, Mark, I’d as lief give the message I was given. ’Twould only be civil.’

  Mark halted. ‘Say it quick and be finished with it.’

  ‘She bade me tell you hurry and get Clarke’s cottage before anyone else grabs it, and she made me promise to serve the Mass at your wedding.’

  Mark swung round and grasped Young Thomas’s arm in a vice. ‘Is she goin’ to run off with me, you mean?’

  ‘She’ll tell you that tomorrow night. You are to be down the orchard at the same time and you are to be sure and have word about the cottage.’

  ‘I’ll be there, and I’ll have the few lines of writing for the cottage. May God increase you. Young Thomas, whoever you are—’ Thomas stiffened.

  ‘Don’t take offence, avic,’ cried Mark. ‘’Tis long sorry I’d be to belittle you. But look there.’ He swung his hand in the direction of the Devil’s Bit. ‘My great-grand-uncle was said to be the handsomest officer in the French army. His people owned all that land as far as your eye can see but the gentility is gone thin in us with hardship and poverty and no learnin’. What I mean is that you have it in you as strong as ’twas bred. You’re not like the others up there. I’ll always be your friend if you want one and ’tis proud I am that you’ll serve me Weddin’ Mass. God be with you.’

  Young Thomas still jangled a little under the reference to his unknown origin, until he had vaulted the wall. The familiar park scene had its unfailing effect upon him of soothing graciousness. He brushed the brambles from his knees and resumed his song:

  Far, far away.

  By night and day I toiled to win a golden treasure.

  And golden gains.

  Repaid my pains

  In fair and shining measure.

  When the song reached the back courtyard, Mr. Hegarty stopped translating the newspaper into Gaelic for his underlings and laid down the Freeman’s Journal, ‘I’ll repay that lad’s pains, and in a spot where he’ll repair his breeches.’ He looked sternly over his steel glasses. ‘A nice hour, a nice hour,’ he repeated, ‘for a boy of your age to be nightwalking.’

  And who sent me nightwalking? thought the culprit. ‘I couldn’t help it, sir,’ he said. ‘They made me wait for the potatoes.’

  ‘Musha, what else would they do?’ cried Mrs. Stacey. ‘An’ was it praties they had? But sure of course, what else would they have an’ it only a “drawin’ down”. Sit in and tell us all.’

  He told them all and an hour later when the first sleepy crow sounded from the hen shed, Ellen, the parlour maid, as she rose nearly brought her hands together in applause. ‘Do you know,’ she said, ‘you had me forgettin’ where I was. I was between two minds whether it was to genuflect, I should, like comin’ out of the Church, or to clap like the end of a play.’

  ‘But what I can’t understand,’ said Mrs. Stacey, ‘is, how did Kitty come to have her Sunday gown on her and the red shoes from France and her hair brushed down around her, seeing that she left the kitchen in her sack “praskeen” and her father’s brogues; and she to say before she went to set the hen that she was dressed well enough for another woman’s leavings?’

  Young Thomas sighed. This was the third time he had described that scene. Though indeed it had stirred himself so much that he had been lost in the telling. There had been something so unusual in the way Kitty had let the long ringlets fall, brushed, but ungathered down her back, that although his own curls swept back and down only to the top of his collar, the eyes of his audience seemed to see through him the long, black ringlets flowing over the blue gown as Kitty emerged from her room and confronted Owen Heffernan with her scorn of his ‘evicted land’. She had heard all from Niall. ‘The first time I call to your husband’s house, Kitty,’ Niall had said, ‘I’ll be wearing a white shirt on the outside of me clothes and black on my face, and I won’t go alone.’

  It was unfortunate for Owen that Kitty Dowling herself of all people had been witness to the eviction of Widow Fogarty, one of his tenants. She stood before him and spoiled the good of the fine potatoes and butter and sweet milk, as she told him how the bailiff’s man had kneaded the woman’s knuckles with his own until she released her frantic grip of the latch she would never raise again. How she had watched the widow kissing the grass that grew inside the yard gate, as they pushed her through with her children clinging to her skirts. It was an accepted caress. ‘But do you think,’ said Kitty, ‘that I’d walk in on that grass that she was pushed from to fall flat on the road with weakness and heartbreak. How dare you come to this house for me...? I’d rather go to my grave!’

  His kitchen audience could see the two matchmakers wilting in their chairs. And then Young Thomas described how the old suitor turned back from the door as he was about to leave and shouted ‘An’ me to be near buyin’ a new suit for this! ’Twas God done it that I hadn’t the money from me, and the suit on me back tonight...’

  ‘Suit, inagh!’ Kitty had cried. ‘’Tisn’t a suit but a shroud you’ll be needin’ when the cross is painted on your door...’‡

  He wondered privately would Kitty have been so accusingly dramatic if there were no handsome lover waiting in the orchard. He yawned. What was Mrs. Stacey saying? Surely she didn’t want him to go over all that again.

  ‘An’ I suppose,’ said Ellen, ‘that Kitty showed off the hair and the gown and shoes to grig him, let him see what he was missin’.’

  ‘No,’ said Young Thomas, rising sleepily, ‘I think the idea was prompted by her strong sense of drama.’

  ‘What on earth is that?’ demanded Ellen. Thomas shook himself awake and smiled. ‘It is a thing for a gate,’ he said and ducked from the piece of turf that she pelted after him.

  Mr. Hegarty sensing that all possible ‘newses’ had been extracted from the occasion rose and announced that there would be Law and Order in this kitchen from this day forth.

  * Carryings-on.

  † Visiting.

  ‡ Crosses were painted on the doors of farmers who bought the land of their evicted neighbours.

  15

  Lady O’Carroll, gripped the bed post while Nurse Hogan pulled on her corset laces. The gown for the big event of the Dublin season drooped on its dummy. ‘Try again Nurse Hogan!’ But it was no use. Every time the Nurse tugged, her Ladyship heaved. ‘I’ll die if I have to miss the Melon Show at Lord Cloncurry’s,’ Margaret moaned.

  ‘My dear, you l
ook awful,’ said Mrs. Kennedy-Sherwin, calling on her way to the Show. ‘I must rush, there will be such a squeeze that my gown will be hidden out of sight if I am not there early. It is the first in Dublin—my gown à la Marie Antoinette that permits the petticoat to be glimpsed. I brought it back from Paris. The first there too, except the Comtesse de Clery’s—but no one saw hers. His Majesty—you know who, State visit, no names, no pack drill—slipped her out on the balcony but the Queen slipped after them and locked the window. They were out on the balcony all night, dare not tap. Now she won’t be coming to Ireland for the Repeal rally; caught a chill, Comte de Clery is coming alone. I’ll tell you all this evening. My dear, you do look awful. Better stay at home if what I suspect ails you.’

  ‘Could she be right?’ Margaret asked the Nurse later. ‘All that nausea? And my wedding ring finger is paining exactly as it used to before Sterrin.’

  ‘You know what Dr. Mitchell said, your Ladyship. It is out of the question. No, it is only all the flies on the meat this hot weather.’

  It was a woebegone and bedraggled Mrs. Kennedy-Sherwin who called on the way back from the Melon Show.

  ‘What on earth happened?’ gasped Margaret. ‘Surely the rain didn’t do that?’ She pointed to the crushed and sodden bonnet that the little lady held fastidiously away from herself by the top of a streamer.

  ‘My bonnet-babet-blonde is...’ she started to wail, but was silenced by the usually complacent Jeremy.

  ‘Stop wailing about your wretched bonnet!’ he snapped. ‘You are lucky to be alive.’

  His wife beckoned Margaret behind a screen and explained the mystery. As their carriage had driven along the sea road a maid had come to an upper window to empty a chamber-pot into the sea. It slipped from her grip and came hurtling down over the carriages.

  ‘The horses reared up, then bolted! A most aristrocratic-looking house. Lady O’Carroll; and all the contents!’