The Big Wind

by Beatrice Coogan

  ‘Who do you think you are?’ She flashed and saw his hurt flush. He might risk the liberty of putting such a question to her. But never she to him. It cut too near the bone of the nameless scullion.

  ‘Anyway,’ he called after her, ‘your charity is misplaced. The Ryans have rich relations.’ The young Ryans had a way of making Thomas feel his position. Their mother looked through him as though he were not there. And Black Pat would nod casually as he rode by on his fine horse.

  Now from a distance he watched Miss Sterrin deposit the food in the hollow trunk of a tree. From nowhere the Ryan children appeared and fell to like wolves.

  Riding back, Sterrin heard footsteps following her from behind the hedge. A wild-looking, long-haired boy was watching her with a passion of intensity. The Scallys, the mountain children, were still ensconced in the fever hut under the lea of the hill out of sight of the castle and—the Sir!

  ‘What are you following me for?’ she called sharply. It must have been this Nosey Parker who had told Young Thomas about her feeding the Ryans.

  He looked blankly at her as she reproached his ingratitude. He understood only the Connaught Gaelic. But Attracta was picking up the Munster Gaelic. She came forward and explained that the sight of Sighle, Sterrin’s pony, made the lad homesick for his mameen and his wild mountains. Especially as Sighle had been such a pet; she being a half capaill uisge.* Her sire had been one of the fairy horses that come up out of Loch Corrib on moonlight nights. He had come one night to the pony shed when Sighle’s mother was horsing and Sighle was their offspring. Daddy had kept the shed locked after that but when the water horse came up out of the lake again Sighle’s mother beat down the door with her own hoofs and went off with it. Mameen followed them but it was no use. With her own eyes she had seen the little mare go into the lake with the fairy horse and the water closed over their heads forever.

  ‘Mameen took the little foal that she left behind, into the kitchen on moonlight nights and let it sleep in the chimney corner where the capaill usige couldn’t get at it. It became a great pet.’ The boy reached timidly and stroked Sighle’s nose.

  Sterrin was disturbed, ‘I didn’t realise that there was so much fairy blood in Sighle.’

  ‘As long as you keep away from water, your Honour’s Miss,’ Attracta assured her. ‘But, of course, meanin’ no disrespect to you, the colour of your hair might draw the fairies.’

  Sterrin looked over her shoulder, ‘Nonsense!’ she said, ‘I’m over age for their power. I’m past seven.’ But she hurried the pony’s homeward pace.

  Young Thomas was sympathetic about the homesickness of the Scally boy. ‘I could let him help me with Sighle.’ The little pony had become his special care. He had advanced in all directions from the knife chore though its title persisted. ‘I could do with an assistant,’ he said grandiosely.

  ‘Thomas,’ she breathed, ‘I knew you’d think of something. I don’t know what I’d do without you.’

  He whisked off the saddle and started to rub the pony. ‘You have her sweating terribly,’ he grumbled. It was not for him to reply that he didn’t know what he’d do but for her own small self. When he was at his chores and she came down the stairs—a speck on its scaled expanse—when she entered a room, stole into the kitchen, the stable, it was like when the grand actors and actresses from England came on to the stage in the Assembly Rooms; peopling its emptiness, colouring its every day drabness. ‘And there are no water horses in Lough Bawn for you to worry about. The lake has disappeared again.’

  She went off, relieved. Every few years Lough Bawn had a habit of disappearing for a whole year. Scientists gave all sorts of explanations, but the locals knew that it merely was Peig the fairy woman retrieving what was her own. Long ago when water was scarce here she had carried the lake to them, all the way from Killarney, in her apron. And who could blame her if she took it back the same way now and then?

  Thomas drove the governess chaise past the vanished lake that afternoon. The sight of its empty bed would assuage Miss Sterrin’s fear of lurking steeds of the síog. Miss Ferguson-Coyne held forth about secret streams and suctions and volcanic forces. Thomas glanced over his shoulder at Miss Sterrin, as they passed the pathetic stirabout line on Major Darby’s estate—

  ‘It’s the Funny man!’ she cried.

  She was looking at Dominic Landy, the ‘funny man’ who had been dressed up as the clown in the Wren Boys’ procession on Saint Stephen’s Day. Dominic cut no gay capers now. His hat was low over his eyes; his head deep in his collar for fear of being recognised taking charity. Fancy a good farmer like Dominic in a stirabout line! It was only the very poor with no land except potato patches who came for free stirabout to Major Darby.

  People looked expectantly towards the sound of the wheels then turned back disheartened. A great cauldron was smoking away its substance over a barbecue fire. The smell tormented those who shivered in the afternoon wind waiting to break the day’s fast. ‘Oh God, why doesn’t he come?’ a woman cried. No one dared touch the cauldron till Darby himself arrived. Someone cried:—‘Here he is!’ A big heavily-built man, with moustaches branching like plough handles, sauntered across the yard, tapping his leggings with his crop. Hunger emboldened one man to reproach, ‘We’re here this two hours, your Honour.’ His landlord looked at him as though he were some new species of flea. Leisurely he went through his pockets until he found a toothpick. Then, more leisurely, he proceeded to free his teeth from the clingings of a substantial meal. Thomas’s hands clenched on the reins. Dominic Landy’s hands clenched too, but slithered open from the clammy moisture of febrile hunger.

  Darby dropped the ladle into the cauldron and called out the cry that summons pigs to the swill. ‘Suck! Suck! Suck!’ he yelled.

  Dominic stepped from his place near the head of the line. ‘That’s no way to address human beings.’ His voice meant to be defiant, but weakness caused it to be cracked and shrill.

  Darby let the porridge pour slowly back into the cauldron. ‘If you don’t like the way I issue my invitations,’ he sneered, ‘you don’t have to accept my hospitality.’ From behind, a voice softly counselled Dominic to patience. It had taken him weeks of hunger, and those last three days of complete starvation before he could face in here for the brew of charity. Now, someone had moved into his place. ‘Get back there to the end of the line!’ Darby suddenly snapped, ‘or get out.’

  ‘All right. I’ll get out. Keep your pig’s swill. I want no man’s charity.’ The words echoed bravely round the spaces reserved for the dignity of his soul. He marched to their sound as tired soldiers march to the strains of their martial music. All the way down he marched; not Dominic Landy, of course, but the Wren Boys’ Omadhawn, the jester without his cap and bells; down to the very end of the queue.

  Next day Sterrin tiptoeing upstairs with head down, bumped into Miss Ferguson-Coyne. ‘What have you in that pocket?’

  From the left pocket, bulging and discoloured, came creeping crawling, buzzing, caterpillars, crickets, ladybirds, the live collection of Sterrin’s own private brand of nature study.

  ‘Not that pocket!’ The governess’s hand shot out and grabbed the pocket that Sterrin clutched. She squealed. Something moist and clammy had met her fingers. ‘Another frog! If you dare to put it in my bed—’ Sterrin struggled.

  ‘I’m going to my own room. Word of honour. It is a matter of life or death.’

  The governess was becoming used to her pupil’s dramatic phraseology. Sterrin bolted her door. From her pocket she took two wobbling blobs, one large and white, one small and red, and placed them before the statue of the Child Jesus. The scene she had witnessed at Darby’s, the suffering, haggard look of poor nice Dominic Landy who had singled her out to dance with on St. Stephen’s Day, called for a sacrifice of something she loved. Jelly! ‘Oh please Iosagain, accept my sacrifice for the suffering people and avert famine and if you like jelly. I’ll make the soupreem sacrifice on Friday, if we get any, and keep you a bigge
r piece. Amen.’ A piece of fluff clung to the jelly. She licked it off and turned away, then turned back to ensure with another lick that there was no more fluff. Sacrifice, Mamma had said, was the highest form of prayer. Jelly certainly was the highest form of sacrifice. An hour later, when she peeped in, the blobs had vanished. Her sacrifice had been accepted.

  She heard a noise outside the window which faced the Sir’s Road. There was something happening out there. Down the road a posse of redcoats and constabulary marched. In their midst walked Dominic Landy. In handcuffs. Behind walked a tearful woman and two girls.

  Across the fields Papa was galloping like mad, scattering the Ryan children in all directions. He jumped the hedge and pulled his horse across the width of the road. It barred the passage of a giant of a man who was following the soldiers. ‘Go back, Holo-han!’ she heard Papa shout. ‘Go back, I tell you. There is nothing you can do. Don’t implicate yourself!’

  John Holohan came on unheeding; white fury on his face. Sir Roderick swooped and caught his collar. ‘Do you want to drag your own mother at the heels of a procession like that?’

  The big man slumped. Helplessly he stood watching them take his friend to jail; to the convict ship; for fourteen years.

  Dominic had suffered beyond endurance. Last night, his mind festering and his brain poisoned from the fumes of a swilled out stomach, he had attacked the grain carts.

  Lord Strague had tried the case this morning. It was over when Roderick, appealed to by Dominic’s friends, had arrived at the Petty Sessions Court. Darby’s evidence had been overpowering. Incitement, insolence, obstruction of his benevolence in feeding his tenants.

  When Roderick told Lord Strague the true facts, his kinsman yawned. ‘Always said Darby was an outsider. Damned bad form.’ Roderick blazed with impotent rage. ‘By God, Strague, had Darby been killed for calling a man as one calls a pig to the swill I’d have pronounced it justifiable homicide—with a strong recommendation for mercy.’

  At dinner Roderick was morose. He pushed the half-eaten food aside and called for cheese. The butler looked appealingly towards her Ladyship and vanished. ‘There is no cheese,’ she said. Roderick’s dismay was comical. Margaret herself made the cheese from an old Flemish recipe that she would not divulge to the cook. No potatoes was an act of God. But no cheese was an act of—of feminine vindictiveness! He glared at her. She glared back. Did he think she was some little housewife, to make cheese—like bread—at the top of her voice for passers-by to hear and halt?

  He started to tell her what he did think. Then realised the goggle-eyed presence of his daughter. It was only since relationship with Roderick had become strained that Margaret had started to let Sterrin join them at meals when there were no guests. ‘Are you aware,’ he asked Margaret, ‘that your daughter is handing out cheese, and bread and butter in basketfuls, to the Ryan children?’

  Margaret looked slowly at her daughter as if she were Judas or his agent, the darraghadheal. The girl, she thought, was the picture of her father, only for the red hair. They were all alike, these O’Carrolls; secretive.

  Sterrin quailed under the unusual scrutiny that was followed by a severe lecture. At last she made her curtsey, managed to palm her father’s rejected jelly and made off with it to her sacrificial shrine. Mamma was unfair! She had told her weeks ago to share with the needy and to make sacrifices. Now she eats the head off a body for just being—obedient.

  Carefully, Sterrin divided the jelly between the statue and herself. The Divine Child seemed to be finding her sacrifice very acceptable. She eyed the statue and the generous blob that was richly flavoured with port to make up for the shortage of cream. For how long more must she make these sacrifices? They were yielding no results. Look what had happened to poor Dominic Landy! And now she must go out and break it to the Ryans that she was forbidden to bring them any more food.

  The two little Ryan boys and their youngest sister broke into tears when she told them. They climbed up and looked into the hollow where the food was usually concealed. They couldn’t believe that there would be no more feasts. The older ones tried to put a face on their disappointment and say that it was really quite all right. They had just finished their dinner. But Sterrin was doubtful. There was a quaver like tears in their voices and despite what Mamma had said about them having plenty and having rich relations to help, they looked hungry. Or else sick!

  She drew out three bulls-eyes she had been keeping for Sunday. ‘Here,’ she gasped catching up on them, ‘you could have one between every two of you and share licks. There is a lot of licking in a bull’s eye.’

  And then something tragic happened. Young Pat claimed first suck of the one he shared with his brother. While Adam watched Pat’s lips with slavering gums, there was a sudden gulp. The beautiful sweet had slithered unsucked, unsavoured, down into the empty void of Pat’s stomach! Adam screamed. He rose on tiptoes and looked into his brother’s mouth as he had looked down the tree trunk. Pat walked slowly home, cheated, betrayed. Every step of the way he could see it, a hard dark thing, squatting in the middle of his empty stomach; gloating over the slow delights it had withheld. Nonie heard Adam’s cries. There was no turning a deaf ear now. The whole story came out in sobbing gasps. ‘...and the girl-with-the-red-hair’s father saw the food and told her mother to forbid it’.

  The shamed flush burned Nonie’s cheeks. The children watched her nervously as she stormed about the house. Would she skin them alive? But Nonie was thinking of that ‘footing’ kiss. And she to think that it was a token of their meeting on the hunting field. She was just the tenant’s wife who had caught the lewd attention of her landlord as he passed. The devil fly away with him, and his stuck-up foreign wife with her big brown eyes like a cow with colic. Himself and his forget-me-not blue eyes. Raking through a body, making her so churned up that she had gone off with the next horseman to gallop into her life. And look where that gallop had landed her!

  The children’s scared faces halted her thoughts. Lord, she hadn’t realised that their faces were so pinched and their stomachs so swollen out. It was that new yellow meal from India. It swelled people up but left them hungry. She counted the few shillings left from the sovereign that her mother had secreted in the cast-off clothes sent by her sister. Nonie’s father had died and his eldest daughter was in grim possession of the home—and of her mother. There was no danger that the mother’s relenting charity would be allowed to reach the outcast.

  Ten minutes later Nonie was emerging from the little all-purpose shop at Upper Kilsheelin just as Lady O’Carroll’s brougham was drawing up.

  Margaret had run out of wool. She was constantly knitting for the poor who had not been able to buy wool last winter. Now she would have to drive on to Templetown. It didn’t soothe her annoyance to be told by the shopkeeper that if she had been five minutes earlier she could have forestalled Mrs. Black Pat Ryan. Mrs. Black Pat had bought up her entire stock of yarn. ‘I don’t know why she needed so much. But sure, she always buys big.’

  Nonie made a pleasing picture knitting on the porch as Lady O’Carroll approached. A wealth of yarn overflowed from a pretty work basket. A pale green shawl from India draped the shabbiness of her gown. The grease from the heel of the flitch of bacon hastily rubbed on the pan at the first sound of the wheels, sent the odour of frying bacon out through the opened door.

  Margaret’s misgivings over Sterrin and the food business subsided. There was no want here. She stole a glance at the gold head that hadn’t bothered to look up for the overlord’s carriage. The mignon, type! Petite! About twenty-six, she would be. Looks eighteen!

  Without warning the head came up. Too late Margaret looked straight ahead. She could have sworn there was mocking laughter in those tiptilted eyes. No slightest bow or acknowledgement of her landlord’s wife. Just cool appraisement.

  A horse pushed its head over the hedge and whinnied at the carriage horse. What a superb animal to grace a small farmer’s haggert, Margaret thought. It lent a ki
nd of cachet to the place. This must be the horse that Roderick had sold to Black Pat. He must think much of this foster-brother. Or is it that he thinks much—too much—of his foster-sister-in-law.

  The smell from the empty pan was torturing the children. ‘It is carrying pride too far, Nonie,’ said Black Pat. Nonie was gazing after the carriage. I might have been sitting there instead of My Fine Lady! Too late had she heard that the week after the hunting encounter, young Mr. O’Carroll, the son of Sir Dominic O’Carroll, had twice been seen on the opposite bank of the river that flowed in front of the lawn at home. That lovely little river! Trickling its green depths between the willows.

  Eyes staring through her brain, made her turn from the window. She couldn’t read the look in her husband’s eyes. She busied herself mixing a handful of precious flour with yellow meal and sour milk to spread on the pan before the grease would evaporate. It would beguile the children’s hunger.

  ‘You are a nice one to talk of pride. You had only to ask him to let you have meal, aye, and stock, on credit till the harvest. What need was there to be first with the rent? He is not just a landlord to you. He was fostered in your home.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Pat, and his tone was bitter. ‘Like the River Shannon was fostered in a pool like a pot at the butt of a hill.’ He stood up and it was to himself that he talked as he went out. ‘The stream goes out from the field that fostered it and becomes a river; full of power—and treachery.’

  Day and night Nonie worked at the knitting. Stockings lengthened and multiplied from her needle until she had a basketful to carry to Templetown. By night she flitted in the shadow of a wall across the barrack square to the married quarters. But there were others before her. Respectable farmers’ wives bartering their crochet and lace-edged clothes, exquisitely worked cuffs and collars and fichus and babets, for the price of a few loaves!