‘To the stirabout line?’ It brought her to her feet.
‘Yes, the stirabout line. It keeps people alive. Not pride.’
‘Pride? There are other kinds of pride. The pride that made you forbid your daughter to share her food with my children. The pride that caused your wife to drive past doing the Grande Dame. If only she had stopped this afternoon, she might have saved one of them, but when she did condescend to come—it was too late.’
Margaret had been here? ‘Was Lady O’Carroll here? This afternoon?’
She nodded. ‘Not to see me or mine. She saw Mrs. Kennedy-Sherwin carrying Adam in—Adam—’ She would have sunk but he caught her. It was like holding a bird whose nest had been plundered; no substance, just a trembling beat of life. ‘I had no right to speak to you like that,’ she murmured hoarsely, ‘but when you accused me of letting my darlings die. If only Pat were here! Why doesn’t he come?’
His arm tightened around her. She rested against him with a queer little peaceful flutter of breath. He put his hand on her hair. There was a dankness in the soft curls. Dear God, had that impish sprite become this broken fragment of womanhood? Was this the fearless girl who had sprung from his knee and gone riding off into the spinney; tossing back over her shoulder a laughing, beckoning glance from will-o-the-wisp eyes?
Suddenly something happened to him that had not happened since his mother and father had died one after the other. Tears gushed from beneath his lashes and fell upon her face.
In a sudden passion of tenderness he pressed her to him and when he stooped to murmur, ‘I’ll find Black Pat for you, little Nonie,’ his lips brushed her cheek.
On the way out he stopped dead. Two sleeping heads showed above the ledge of the settle bed. On either side of the ingle were two more sleeping figures. One was the oldest girl. The other, no bigger, but dressed in the height of bedraggled fashion, was the irresistible Mrs. Kennedy-Sherwin! Her little face was strained and its tearmarks were frankly smudged. She reminded him of a kitten that had been out all night in the bushes. A smile softened his lips. One could always count upon her to evoke a smile! He removed his hat again and doffed it in salute towards a very gallant little lady. Then he thought of Margaret—in festive gown, bathed in perfume!
He found Black Pat. It was easier to recognise him now. The strain had gone from his features. He lay with three others at the foot of the potbellied monstrosity that had become their tombstone!
It was a long time before Roderick remembered to uncover. He bashed his gloved hand across the obelisk and cursed. He cursed the system. He cursed the government that forced men to raise monuments to their own hunger until their dead bodies formed its pedestal. He cursed himself who had let the friend of his childhood die; for the simple want of food! The untrammelled presence of death released memories long-forgotten. Scenes and recollections beat upon him like blows. Foster-brother! The word mocked him; ‘Dear to a man—is his brother; but his foster-brother is the marrow of his heart!’
The first sleepy cock-crow was sounding from the fowl sheds as Roderick’s footsteps came up the stairs. They passed Margaret’s door and moved into the adjoining dressing-room. She stood and waited. She could hear him moving about. Then there was silence. She turned, disheartened, to put out the lamp. It was starting all over again! Just like that other time. And over the same person. She switched the reflections from her confused mind. They were sacrilegious in the face of this afternoon’s tragedy; and, she argued, how many nights had not Roderick gone to his dressing-room after dealing with the famine subscriptions rather than disturb her? He was probably exhausted. She relit the spirit lamp. She would take him a hot drink and she would tell him what had happened to her this afternoon; what she could remember, because her head was queer and more confused than ever before.
Behind her the door opened. She tossed the plaits from about her face and turned eagerly. He made no move to come in, just stood there and looked with a certain fixity at the equipment for the soothing draughts that she sometimes brewed in the night hours.
‘You knew didn’t you, that there were three children dead?’
‘Roderick!’—Oh, how was she going to explain if he stood there looking at her like that.
She was wearing an intricately embroidered white wrapper tied with a girdle of plaited ribbons in every pastel tint. Her chestnut plaits had the gleam of a well-groomed horse. Margaret was always well groomed; even in déshabillé. No curling papers rattling and bulging under her nightcap; no acrid smell of lotions. The sensuous appeal of her beauty was almost overpowering. But Roderick had been emptied of emotions tonight. Above his foster-brother’s body; and when he had caught Nonie as she sank after he had told her what he had to tell her, he had felt that his own soul had approached that region that holds the hosts of the dead. The beauty of this woman who had hastened from that hecatomb to perfume her body and deck it with silk had no power of appeal to him.
He made no effort to spare her the details of the Ryan tragedy and all that had led to it. ‘And you assured me that they had plenty, that—’
‘But I thought—’
‘You thought! All you thought was that I was philandering. It has taken four dead bodies; four splendid lives to convince you that they were trying to cover their hunger with decent pride.’
He turned to the door then turned back. ‘But,’ he said, ‘it wasn’t really hunger that caused their deaths—’
‘Oh!’ The sound came from her in a little breath of relief. Anything but hunger! ‘Was it fever?’
‘Not fever,’ he said looking at her levelly. ‘Jealousy!’
She stared in stunned silence at the door that had closed on the terrible word. When she ran to it at last with a long drawn ‘Roder-eeck’ she was answered by the slam of a bolt.
*
The Coroner’s verdict was Wilful Murder By Her Majesty’s Government of the four Ryan Duvs. His own censure was couched in such strong terms that it was feared that he would be charged with treason, staunch Protestant loyalist though he was. But Mr. O’Neill-Balfe had been unmanned by the findings of the autopsy on little Adam Ryan. Three grains of oats had been found in his empty stomach. He had snatched them from his brother and run away, then some stranger had given him a lift to Templetown Soup Kitchen where Mrs. Kennedy-Sherwin had found him collapsed and had taken him home to his mother.
A few nights later Sterrin awoke screaming from a nightmare. Roderick found her apologising abjectly to Nurse Hogan who was reproaching her for the fright she had given her poor mamma, and her mamma was saying that she must get another governess immediately. Miss Ferguson-Coyne had returned to Dublin that day in hysterics. She had been driving Dominic and Sterrin in the pony chaise when Wright’s bread van came towards them. From nowhere a fierce mob had suddenly collected. They attacked the driver and tore the bread from the van and from each other like savages. When the pony bolted, Miss Ferguson-Coyne had lost all control. Sterrin had had to seize the reins and cope with her terrified brother. ‘It is a terrible thing, Papa, when a grown-up is frightened.’
The child’s world had been taken from beneath her. The white guilt on her face infuriated him. What were they doing to the stalwart little girl who would follow him on her pony over high jumps without a quiver? Another child victim of appeasement. He put an arm about her and told the nurse in a tone of dismissal that included Margaret, that he would see to Miss Sterrin.
‘And that poor little Ryan boy,’ Sterrin said. ‘When his brother swallowed down the bull’s eye he ran away from him that day also. Just as he must have done with those three grains of oats.’
For the first time, Roderick heard the story of the bull’s eye.
‘It was the day you told me not to bring them any more food—Is your hand hurting, Papa?’ Unconsciously he had put the side of his hand to his mouth. Where he had struck it against the obelisk ‘folly’ there was a wound.
She went on. ‘Did you know. Papa, that their mamma used to ride to hounds like
a lady?’
His lips sucked the cut: she could hear the hurt breath.
‘Norisheen told me. Her papa bought a blood horse so that he could breed from it and soon she would ride again like a lady.’
His mind went back to the ‘footing’ kiss. It takes an artist, he had thought as he looked into the blending colours in her eyes, to mix colours. And, presuming bounder that he was, he had dared to assume that he himself was that artist! Not Black Pat who could make this grand fling in the cause of love’s romance! Like Roderick’s grandfather and the oaks!
‘It is a terrible thing, Papa, when a sweet slips down one’s throat before one has tasted it. I know.’
He looked down at the promise of beauty in the too-thin face. ‘I hope, my stormling, that the sweets of life will not continue to evade you before you have savoured them!’
He tucked the clothes about her. ‘Forget all this ullagoaning. Forget governesses, too. Tomorrow your knife boy squire must take you bird-nesting. The tomtits have started house-hunting. Perhaps you may encounter that domesticated pair you saw last year.’
He knocked at Margaret’s door and entered. Her heart lifted, but she curbed the smile that was starting. She wasn’t going to fall on his neck straight away. She—
‘I want no further talk of governesses,’ he was saying. ‘No child who has to witness the squeamishness of its elders will acquire self-control. An adult should stand up to things—at least in front of a child. Goodnight.’
*
Twelve little black eyes gazed unblinkingly at Sterrin from the tomtits’ nest at Golden Meadow. But they were not tomtits’ eyes? Mrs. Lonergan, with a maid, was ladling porridge to a queue. She hurried up, all apologies. She could not invite them in, she crooned. Mr. Lonergan was down with ‘The Sickness’. It was most catching. Tim came along and explained that the tomtits had cleared off last year before their family was half-reared. They had let the nest to a field mouse. ‘They climb up by that,’ he said, indicating a currant bush.
Blackcurrant bushes as ladders for revolting little field mice had no interest for Sterrin. They only interested her as the source of blackcurrant tarts. All the way over she had been thinking of that delicious tart that Mrs. Lonergan had once given them. ‘Oh dear,’ she sighed aloud, ‘you have no idea how disappointed I feel.’ None whatever, she thought!
Tim led them by a right-of-way into the De Lacey estate. There was a joyful hail and Hubert De Lacey and two of his sisters came hurrying down the avenue. Sterrin’s spirits rose. She hadn’t been inside anyone’s house for over a year. Paying calls or dropping-in was a thing of the past.
Hubert offered to recompense their disappointment about the tomtits with a sight of something very rare. But Sterrin hastily interposed with a polite enquiry about his parents and a pointed glance towards the pretty white house in the trees. ‘A sparrow-hawk’s nest,’ went on Hubert. Fiona, murmuring something about her mamma being indisposed, led the way very purposefully after her brother towards a rocky crag.
High above them, two fierce eyes watched and suddenly swooped. The sparrow-hawk had spotted a prey. Next minute a poor curlew was twisting backwards and forwards in the grip of those terrible claws. Sterrin lashed out with her whip but the curlew lay with its tender breast cut off as neatly as if it had been carved with a knife.
‘If you don’t mind,’ said Sterrin politely. ‘I’d rather not see the nest today.’ A row of drops of blood picked out its lie. ‘That has taken away my appetite’.
‘I wish,’ sighed the uninhibited Bunzy, ‘that it would take away mine—I’m always—ouch!’ Her sister’s elbow discouraged further disclosures.
When Thomas saw the faint flush on the faces of Fiona and Hubert he remembered suddenly the whisper that De Lacey’s livestock had been impounded for debt. There was not a beast in sight; not a clatter of maid or workman.
‘You must excuse us. Master Hubert and Miss Fiona,’ he said. ‘The Bard warned me to have Miss Sterrin back for a harp lesson. He is terribly crotchety.’
When they were out of earshot Sterrin demanded what the devil’s father did he mean by telling such a fib. ‘I had to say something,’ he said, ‘with you harping on about appetites and hunger. It is bad manners to drop in uninvited on people these times. The De Laceys were mortified at not being able to ask you in. And when Mrs. Lonergan couldn’t invite you in you looked fit to join the stirabout line.’
‘I had been hoping for a piece of tart, like that blackcurrant tart we got there before,’ she admitted. ‘The thought of nice food—a tart or cake it makes my mouth water. It always waters now when I think of food—nice food.’
Thomas was too embarrassed to reply. Miss Sterrin’s confession of hunger made him feel the way he did whenever he surprised her in the garden on her way to the ‘Necessary’. It had never occurred to him that she—that any of the family—might know what it was to feel hunger. The famine might have altered their existence. No more visitors, or visiting; no balls or whist. No dainties; bread measured by the slice. All the game poached despite the beeves and sheep that were slaughtered all the time to feed the hungry. But hunger! He studied the thin outline of her face. Not a pick on it. And its whiteness was thin, too. It used to look like the top of the milk.
He scraped his throat. ‘What about tickling a trout? I’ll make a fire.’
‘A secret picnic? Just the two of us.’ But, as suddenly as it had come, the light went from her face. ‘Papa would be horrified. A gentleman would not disturb a trout just now.’
‘I am not a gentleman; and—you are hungry.’
The trout he caught was well over two pounds but his fingers after the icy water could scarcely hold it for cleaning. She took his hand between her own and chafed it, and when she stooped and blew upon his fingers, the little warm breathings were as if, for him alone, the sun had suddenly shone down out of the January sky and warmed his being and filled it full with gladness. He gave his throat another scrape. ‘I—er—it will be able to hold the trout now.’ He gave the hand a businesslike shake then prepared the fish and gathered twigs and lit them with sparks from the iron tip of his heel and all the time he hummed and whistled as gay as the voice of the young stream that went sparkling and gurgling between miniature rocks.
When he proffered her the sizzling fish on a big dock leaf, she insisted upon him cutting half for himself.
‘You surely don’t think that I would sit and eat in front of you!’ she exclaimed.
Thomas refrained from pointing out that it was his lot in life to serve her while she ate in front of him. But just now he felt disorientated. Away from servitude; away from the famine; alone in a world that held Miss Sterrin and himself in the warm circle of the dancing flames.
‘I wish,’ said Sterrin and ’twas as though she spoke his thoughts, ‘that we could stay here forever.’ It was so bright and cosy here with Young Thomas; away from that awful stirabout line and the sad, sick faces. Just Young Thomas and herself sharing the lovely big fire and the lovely trout. A shadow loomed over the flames and a voice said, ‘God save you. Miss.’
‘Céad míle curses!’ murmured Young Thomas. ‘It is the darraghadheal.’
George Lucas was standing on the other side of the stream. ‘A nice little picnic ye’re havin’. It does a body good to see children havin’ a bit of comfort an’ so many starving! The poor little Ryan Duv children! Three grains of oats, God bless us! I’m sure the Sir would not have objected to them trespassing here for a bit of fish; his foster-brother’s children!’
Young Thomas jumped to his feet to remonstrate but Sterrin silenced him with a gesture. ‘You have no right to be here. My father permits no right of way on either side of this stream.’
Thomas was surprised at the man’s quick look of alarm. He started muttering something about taking a short cut back. His wife had had a child this morning. ‘Another covala—foster-sister—for you. Miss Sterrin,’ he called over his shoulder.
Thomas watched the retreating figure
through narrowed eyes. ‘I’d swear that fellow was up to something. Covala, indeed! Makes me sick the way he keeps trying to claim fostership with you just because his wife was your wet-nurse. There’s no such thing, these modem times.’
‘There was such a thing between Papa and Black Pat. That’s what Lucas was hinting at—blaming Papa for—’ She swung into the saddle. ‘Hell roast the darraghadheal! I was so happy!’
Thomas scattered the fire with a kick. Happy! He had never been so happy in all his born days. ‘May the devil roast crabs in his—’ He stopped aghast. But his lapse into coarseness had dispelled the cloud evoked by Lucas. Sterrin was flopped over the pony’s head in peals of laughter.
*
There was no laughter the next afternoon as Sterrin followed humbly in the heels of Young Thomas. She had never seen him cry before. The sight of his tears stirred her deeply. It was the funeral of little Theobald, Kitty’s and Mark’s firstborn. He had died while Sterrin and Thomas were picnicking by the stream. It was Thomas who had discovered it, for he had run to the Hennesseys’ the moment he and Sterrin had returned to the castle. He didn’t know what had prompted him to steal that hour to see how things fared at the cottage. As he reached the door a weird-looking dog was dragging the sweet, small body of his godchild across the threshold and from the room beyond came sounds of moans.
The Big Wind Page 28