The Big Wind

by Beatrice Coogan

  ‘What the devil...!’ From behind him a clear voice interrupted. ‘It is most unbecoming of Pat to speak in such a way of your daughter, Sir Roderick.’

  A tiny figure had appeared at the doorway. It was Mrs. Black Pat. A green cloak, hastily donned, was being tied at the neck with a green velvet bow. The voice, in clear and faultless diction, was emerging from the depths of the velvet-lined hood that almost covered the wearer’s face. As she crossed the yard towards him the flash of her shoe buckle made a ripple in the symphony of the greens she wore; green leather shoes, green cloak; deeper green in the velvet that banded hem and hood. Something of woodland elves occurred to him as he saluted her; no brim-touching, but a full uncovering with a sweep that he had scarcely thought to make towards Black Pat Ryan’s wife. ‘Such silly superstition!’ she said and proceeded to run her hand over his mount in the most expert manner. He might as well not have been there!

  ‘I hope,’ Roderick said coolly, ‘that you don’t think this is the horse that I am selling to your husband.’ The hood didn’t turn but the voice inside said just as coolly, ‘Of course not! This beauty is something too special for our barn yard.’

  ‘Hmph!’ He thought. ‘You seem a bit too special yourself for this barnyard!’ He wondered if she, too, were a beauty; but short of bending down and peering inside the green twilight of her hood there was no way of knowing. Anyway it did not matter. He was feeling strangely rasped.

  It did not help his mood, when, as he entered the house for the drink that must ratify the sale, a potato came flying out and barely missed his eye. The culprit came forward and chucked down a black curly forelock in salute. He was the chubby little boy whose logic had once earned him a half-crown from Roderick. ‘It wasn’t you I aimed to hit, your Honour,’ he assured his father’s overlord. ‘It was Norisheen.’ His sister rose from the music box she was playing in the parlour and curtsied. ‘Adam,’ she informed Roderick, ‘could not hit a haystack.’ She made a quick escape and left him alone with the tinkling strains of ‘Love’s Young Dream’.

  Shiny objects highlighted the gloom of the long, narrow room: a trinket box in chased silver on the cabinet; heavy silver candlesticks on the mantelpiece. Trifling but unexpected. And most unexpected were the water colours. The shimmer of their gilt frames drew his eyes. Egad! How did such artistry come to be on Black Pat’s walls? From the end of the room a duet of children’s voices informed him that the pictures had been painted by their mammy. Roderick turned in time to see two small nightclad figures who had been peeping at him from an end room. Immediately they jumped back on to a huge feather mattress and proceeded to turn somersaults.

  Their father came in with the whiskey and explained that they had the chincough. ‘Aye,’ he went on as Roderick continued to study the paintings, ‘herself drew them. A great notion she has for drawin’ and colourin’ and the like.’ He said it as though they were something to be indulged and dismissed like the chincough.

  Again Roderick was conscious of that rasped sensation. But just then he heard an alarmed stamping from the direction of the hitching post. He dashed to it in time to see Norisheen slide down the offside of his precious filly and vanish through the hedge. He had sprung into the saddle before he realised that it was Mrs. Ryan who was holding the bridle; in spite of his anger he was amazed to see how strangely quiet and timid the animal had gone under her soothing pats. Normally it would still be performing a dance of terror on its hind legs.

  ‘Do please forgive us; all of us, Sir Roderick!’ A white cheek came out from the hood and rubbed itself on the animal’s velvet muzzle. ‘I can’t think,’ said the voice from under the horse’s neck, ‘how that child came to take such an outrageous liberty.’

  He had a suspicion that she was laughing at him. ‘Can’t you?’ he exclaimed crisply. He jerked the horse’s head round and the white cheek beneath it disappeared into its hood the way a snail’s head vanishes into its shell at the approach of a human. ‘Trot, Mammy; trot, foal!’ he flung back at her over his shoulder. At the gate he turned back. She was still standing there. Like a miniature in a green plush frame, he thought! He had intended complimenting her upon her artistic skill. To atone for his brusqueness he doffed his hat in a high sweep and rode out, musing upon this highly individual household. Too demned individual—its juvenile members—and—Suddenly his smile tightened. The darraghadheal, he thought and nodded casually.

  George Lucas uncovered to his landlord but the black eyes held no friendship; only the blue-green shimmer of the beetle. The darraghadheal had been observing the friendly visit his neighbour had received from the Sir. Black Pat’s roars of laughter; the child’s easy familiarity. Mounting the Sir’s horse, no less! There were landlords who would evict for the like. This was the kind of association he had visualised when he married the foster nurse of the Sir’s child. The Sir sweeping off his hat to Black Pat’s wife as though she were a very grand lady!

  Black Pat Ryan, the little man argued bitterly to himself as he gazed after the arrogant figure on the superb horse, was after all only the nephew of the Sir’s foster-mother. Not her own child, as his was the child of Miss Sterrin O’Carroll’s foster-mother; and the recognition she gets—on this same day that the Sir himself visits his foster-brother—is a prim call from a patronising bitch of a governess!

  Roderick rode on, oblivious of the thoughts that were twisting the mind of this newcomer to his estate who saw himself as a millteoir orda.* He basked in the gentle warmth of Saint Martin’s summer; golden weather, soft and silent. A film of mist lay on the Devil’s Bit. All day in the woods flakes of gold fell gently, making a golden carpet beneath a golden canopy.

  Tenants looked up as Sir Roderick passed and halted the stroke of the flail to give him a Dia agat. This was the finest hour of the year. Their hearts rejoiced at the spectacle of land pleasantly burdened with the produce of their toil; gardens of stubble covered with ‘shocks’ of wheat, oats and barley; fields of potatoes where the pits full packed were already raised. There was a silence about Golden Meadows that proclaimed an early harvest saved and stored and the family off with their neighbours, the Ulick Prendergasts and the Campions, to their lodges at Tramore for the sea water. Never had Roderick seen the thatched roofs look so attractive. There was Black Pat again working his field. But what on earth was he up to?

  Black Pat was standing in front of his spade that stood upright in the ground. For a moment he stood that way, motionless. Then he doffed his hat skywards, spat on either hand, rubbed them together, then plunged the spade deep into the earth. Roderick waited tensed, sharing with his foster-brother this moment of homely drama. Black Pat was performing the opening ceremony of his potato harvest. And it was a good one. He raised the first stalk high and shook from it a shower of potatoes. Roderick spurred onwards with a sense of gladness.

  As he cantered home, he realised that he had forgotten to ask Black Pat for his wife’s maiden name for the record book. Whoever she was, he thought as he hummed the tune, his foster-brother had captured a prize. Roderick had the impression that Black Pat was being deliberately reticent about his wife. He never presumed on the old association and now it looked as though he was reluctant to foist his wife’s superiority upon the notice of his landlord. An independent devil!

  ‘Love’s Young Dream’ beat the rhythm of his homeward canter. It must have been Black Pat’s wife who had been playing the violin! When Young Thomas came to take his horse the Sir was humming... ‘when my dream of life from morn till night, was love, still love.’

  Sterrin came through a wicket gate with her governess. He asked her what she had learned that morning and regretted the query. ‘Love’s Young Dream’ retreated before the flow of her learning. There were, she told him, nine hundred and fifty-two publications in Great Britain. A new kind of beehive had been invented—and, oh yes, Sterrin had also learned the exact day upon which the snake emerges from its winter sleep.

  Miss Ferguson-Coyne found her employer’s obvious amazemen
t flattering. ‘I feel,’ she said, ‘that the study of nature is most broadening to the mind of a child.’ An overhead whirring made him look up. Sterrin sent a long whistle skywards. The governess was shocked. ‘Ladies don’t whistle.’ Sterrin looked at her curiously, ‘What other way could one call to a jack snipe?’

  Roderick followed the course of the snipe until they disappeared into the wood, ‘Yes, Miss Ferguson-Coyne,’ he said at last, ‘the study of nature is indeed broadening to the mind.’ He gestured towards the golden woods. ‘...earth crammed with heaven and every common bush afire with God; but only he who sees takes off his shoes’. He looked lazily through long lashes at the confused blue-stocking. ‘The snake must be one of those who “sees”. He does take off his skin. Doesn’t he?’

  The governess took Sterrin’s hand. ‘It is getting chilly out here.’

  Her employer looked after her. ‘I’ll wager it is chilly!’ He chuckled. It must be! ‘For a woman who studies the undressing habits of snakes.’ From under the horse’s head came a suppressed snort. Roderick had forgotten the knife boy. He wheeled. ‘If you have digested your nature study, my lad, take that filly around to the stables.’

  The year’s procession moved on until it caught up with Little Christmas. Margaret and Roderick were going to a whist party at the De Lacey’s. It would be Margaret’s first outing since the birth of Dominic. There would be carpet dancing as well and games and forfeits—and feasting! Margaret shuddered pleasantly at the thought of the De Lacey menus. Their dining-room suggested a butcher’s stall to her. Only that the carcasses were cooked and they sprawled from under silver cover dishes instead of hanging from hooks.

  But the gaily repressed shudder at the sight of roasts was different from that which convulsed her when the winds blew about the castle on the feast of the Epiphany. Every gust and scurry presaged a recurrence of the night that Sterrin was born. People overlooked the fact that Little Christmas was Sterrin’s birthday. It was the anniversary of the ordeal that her Ladyship endured over Miss Sterrin. For poor Sterrin it was a day of undefined guilt. Every time her mamma tapped the barometer or dropped something or stifled a scream Sterrin knew that it was because of something terrible that she—Sterrin—had in some way caused to happen on this day to her own mamma!

  But on this particular birthday she was summoned to the hall door and there was Big John leading a Connemara pony up and down.

  The mountainy man who brought her said something about the pony having fairy blood; Big John couldn’t follow the man’s Connaught Gaelic.

  It was with reluctance that Sterrin accompanied her parents to the party. Normally she would have been delighted. Mrs. De Lacey had sent a last minute request that she be brought as she had abandoned the idea of sending Bunzy and the younger ones to bed. Every bedroom would be occupied by overnight guests. Last year every step of the stairs and upper corridor had been a ‘sit-outery’ for couples. The youngsters hadn’t slept a wink; nor tried to.

  The mountainy man had made another sale. Immediately Sterrin arrived at Kilincarrig Lodge she was led out to the stables in an aura of mystery and lanthorn light. Bunzy’s new pony was bigger than Sterrin’s. ‘But that,’ Sterrin suggested, ‘is probably because it is pure mortal. Mine has fairy blood.’

  ‘If that be so,’ Bunzy said, ‘your pony can’t be a thoroughbred.’ Sterrin didn’t like the sound of that at all. The infusion of fairy blood made her pony a more rarefied thoroughbred! ‘No ordinary thoroughbred could catch up on a fairy pony. It would leave them all behind,’ she argued.

  ‘But supposing,’ said the logical Bunzy, ‘that it left them so far behind that it never came back? Supposing,’ she whispered with awful solemnity and holding the lanthorn close to Sterrin’s face, ‘that it were to vanish with you on its back?’

  Sterrin preferred not to consider the supposition. She shivered. ‘It is cold out here.’ But inside in the glow of the candle-lit hall her courage returned. Her mamma was crowing with laughter as Mr. De Lacey strained on tiptoes to kiss her under the mistletoe. A big blue punch bowl, the biggest Sterrin had ever seen, was steaming on a wainscoted seat inside the hall door. Every new arrival had to sample it before removing a stitch of wrapping. Whether the punch was lowered willingly or under good-humoured coercion the tone of the night was established. Hilarity began on the threshold.

  One didn’t have to pretend to be cold to cover one’s fear in this bright warm din of music and chatter and protective grown-ups, all of them happy; some of them in fits laughing at being forced to swallow a ‘toshkeen’ or to yield a kiss under the mistletoe! ‘Besides,’ said Sterrin blandly resuming their discussion in the pony stall, ‘I don’t believe in fairies.’ Not just now!

  ‘Be careful!’ Bunzy hissed into her ear. ‘Red-headed children are not safe from the fairies until they are seven.’ And suddenly Sterrin was conscious of freedom from the lifelong fear. ‘They can’t touch me ever again. I’m seven tonight!’

  Winter lingered too long like a guest that has outworn its welcome. In early March the mountains were still clothed in dazzling white and the pale spring sunlight fell about them like a vesture of gold. ‘Mountains,’ Roderick told Sterrin, ‘are never more sublime than when wrapped in snow.’

  He held her leading rein as they skirted the ploughlands, and while he trained her to ride he imbued in her the love and the lore of the land. Everywhere the lesser farmers were rushing to get the last drill closed before Saint Patrick’s Day. He slowed and watched the seed fall gently into his beloved soil, to be held in tender consummation until the harvest. ‘Only there, Grá gal,’ he said, ‘lies true fulfilment.’

  Saint Patrick’s Eve was a raw day. In the afternoon as Roderick approached Black Pat’s on the homeward ride, Sterrin far behind him, a group of girls ran with a scurry of laughter across the road and into the house. Suddenly he slowed and frowned. A cordon of green wool was stretched in a barrier across the tiny road. If he hadn’t slowed in time the horse might have taken fright!

  This Ryan Dhuv household would need to have its vivre toned down! ‘Will you kindly remove this demned thing!’ he called out. Alarmed squeals sounded behind the toparied hedge. There was a further scurry as the girls rushed to the door. Before it closed he heard an unmistakable voice urge them to go on back and ‘claim their footing!’

  Footing! His frown was chased by a smile. Not since he was a child had he seen the green thread across the road on Saint Patrick’s Eve and the spinning girls claiming a shilling for ‘footing’. If the stranger were handsome he was let pass on the forfeit of a kiss. His father had always paid with a kiss; and his progress on Saint Patrick’s Eve had been slow. There were always a lot of green barriers in Sir Dominic’s path.

  A small figure came out of the house. ‘They have no courage. Sir Roderick,’ said Mrs. Ryan.

  ‘Who are they?’ he asked. She told him they were friends on a visit for the Holy Day. He didn’t catch what she said. He was thinking that it was difficult to believe that this immature little figure had produced one child; much less six! Instead of the matron’s high-cauled cap she wore a dainty babet†; just like the ones Margaret wore. For the first time he saw her face. High cheek bones, long eyes demurely veiled, a pointed chin. They sketched a picture in his memory. Scarcely a picture, an impression, of prick-eared laughing fauns flitting through trees. He couldn’t be mistaken, no one else could claim those woodland hazel eyes. The memory of that magic moment so many years ago came flooding back. ‘So it’s you!’ he said softly.

  She lifted the long lashes slowly. A wicked gleam slipped out. ‘Fancy your remembering me!’

  ‘I—’ He was about to say that he had wondered what had become of her after that day in the hunting field! Better say nothing. Let the encounter go on lying in the tomb of memory.

  He went on looking into her eyes. Yes, there were still three colours in their depth. Woodland colours. The green of leaves in a brown pool; blue from the faint reflection of bluebells on its brink.
/>   She held up her hand. ‘The shilling! I’ll collect it for them, though they don’t deserve it.’

  He dropped back the shilling he had been drawing from his pocket. ‘I haven’t got a shilling. You must collect the forfeit instead.’

  She looked up at him, dainty and cool as a goldfish. ‘There is no necessity for you to pay forfeit on this road.’ This was his own road. Narrow and rough, and rugged—and proud!

  And the ‘footing’ was for handsome strangers. Like the one in the hunting field. So, she thought, he remembered! It had been like a caress when he had lifted her after she had fallen from her horse. And when he had dropped on his knee to let her remount it had seemed like an act of homage.

  She looked at the green ball in her hand. What had prompted her to this folly? ‘I’ll remove it.’ She started to roll up the ball.

  He seized her wrist. ‘Now, who has no courage?’ She pressed her face into the horse’s cheek. Did he think to snatch a kiss from a wayside wench! She’d let him see!

  But all that she let him see above the velvet muzzle was one eye charged with provocative deviltry. He jerked up Thuckeen’s head and brought down his own.

  The kiss lasted through an eternity of seconds. There had not been enough time in Nonie’s life to discover that a kiss could be so overpowering and yet so gentle. Pat’s kisses had never caused this tumult.

  When she thought it had subsided she looked up. But it had swept the colours in her eyes together and tossed them to the surface. It requires an artist to mix colours; something like that was his impression. It wasn’t a conscious boast. But it was so obvious that Black Pat was no artist.

  He has availed of his landlord’s privilege, she thought and murmured, ‘Droit de seigneur.’ She dropped him a mock curtsey. ‘I’m honoured—your Honour!’

  He frowned. He felt rasped again; the same feeling he had known the day he had sold them the horse. But now as he looked at the porcelain figurine with the honey-gold hair he recognised the feeling for what it was; the irritation that an artist feels at the spectacle of a lovely picture crudely framed.