The Big Wind

by Beatrice Coogan

  When she saw his face she turned, still holding the tray, and made towards the door that had closed on Pakie. She must call someone: but even as the thought rose she knew that she was doing what she had done the night she had turned from her father’s prone body—seeking flight from what she had dreaded to face. Mamma, the shrinking one, had stayed at her post like a soldier.

  She urged the old man to eat. ‘A bird would eat more,’ she said.

  ‘Aye,’ he said, ‘a young bird.’ He reached out and touched a curl on her forehead then brought his finger slowly down over the arch of her nose. ‘An eagle,’ he murmured to himself. ‘And it was no grey bird of the eaves that fledged that other; an eagle too, perhaps, or maybe a hawk. A hawk,’ he repeated, ‘an shouk abú!’ And he fell asleep. The next morning, when Pakie Scally went into his room, the Bard was dead. The rallying cry of the O’Carrolls, ‘an shouk abú’, the Hawk to victory! were his last words.

  Sterrin felt as though she had been cut adrift from all her previous life. Even after her father’s death the castle had not become void. Its continuity had persisted because the Bard was there. He was the spirit of the castle; the guardian of all their lives, past and present, linked to him in a chain of history. And now the link was broken. Now they would be an ordinary bardless family like the planters and Anglo-Irish gentry.

  To Maurice, when he arrived, Sterrin seemed one with the harps, grouped in bereft silence in the Bard’s room; the knee harp of Brian Boru, the Tara Harp, the little table lyre that the old man used to carry round with him and the great ceremonial harp of booming applewood. Like them, she seemed to hold within her great throbs of feeling waiting to be evoked.

  After the funeral, Sterrin slipped quietly away on Thuckeen. She let the mare break into its beautiful quick canter and bear her away from the sadness. Vitality rushed all about her, in the warm wind, in the little music of birds, in every plant and flower. It was hard to think of the Bard lying dead beneath earth that held such life above it. It was hard to think at all with Thuckeen and herself close-knit in this glowing sense of speed and power. She set the mare to a great high bank and soared over; funny how some people were so timid of jumps! No jump ever gave her fear; only people did. They blocked up her thoughts and gave her that feeling that they were good and she was bad, or sinful, or guilty of something.

  She saw the hermit of Bannandrum watching her as she cleared the bank and cantered towards him, kin to the wind and the horse and to the great liver-coloured dog, half labrador, half red setter that loped beside her. He noted her light, firm seat on the saddle and as she drew off her glove to dab her moist forehead he sensed the fineness of her hands on the horse’s mouth.

  ‘I am sorry for your trouble, Sterrin, Daughter of Roderick O’Carroll,’ he said, addressing her in the olden way. ‘’Tis the end of a great tradition.’

  She didn’t want to hear any sympathy. She had no wish to be forced back into the past; she wanted to stay in this glowing moment, and she wanted a drink of water.

  When he brought it from his cave in a drinking cup of chased silver she smothered her amazement in a long drink. It would be impolite to show surprise that the old cave dweller should possess a thing so exquisite. Then she saw the bird engraved on the side.

  ‘Is that a hawk?’ she exclaimed. She peered close to read the inscription. Underneath was written ‘Hapsburgh abú!’

  ‘Aye, but not what you think; not the O’Carroll hawk. It was given to my grandfather by the Sieur O’Carroll who had a set of them given to him by Maria Theresa.’

  He told her that the name of the Austrian royal family, Habsburg, meant Hawk’s Castle. When the Sieur O’Carroll led his Irish soldiers on to the field roaring the O’Carroll war cry, ‘The Hawk to Victory!’ and his standard with the O’Carroll hawk flying in the wind, the foreign soldiers used to think that he was some Irish branch of the Habsburgs.

  There was a picture somewhere at home, she recalled, of the Sieur O’Carroll. He was really the Strague branch of the O’Carrolls—the dispossessed one.

  ‘I have never seen such a beautiful goblet. I am honoured to have been let drink from it.’

  ‘It is I who am honoured,’ he replied gravely and he bowed the great head, ‘though ’tis few I have proffered it to. Thomas Francis Meagher drank from it and he on his keeping here a few years back, and the one with him of the O’Brien clan and, meaning no disrespect to you, so did the youth who used to serve in your castle. Somehow it did not seem ill-fitting that he should.’ He was reaching out for it and on a sudden she drew it back and put it to her lips again, as though to drain the last drop. Young Thomas had drunk from this cup! And then she felt a sense of shame, and that queer feeling of guilt. Young Thomas, and all the others downstairs, had drunk from something or other every day; wooden porringers, thick glasses, cups with Father Matthew’s face on them, or maybe the Duke of Wellington’s, with painted roses blooming beside his big nose and Waterloo under his chin. What of it! She put the cup into the old man’s hand and turned the mare’s head. He caught the bridle. ‘Don’t give too much of your young life grieving over those that are gone. They have lived their lives, your Bard and all these.’ He raised the cup as though it held the ones he spoke of. ‘Be said by my life. If I had to live it again I wouldn’t spend it burrowing under a wall that was all that was left to me of old glories; other people’s glories. I’d go out and make my own glory. That’s what he’ll do. I’ll be bound.’ He tapped the cup and she knew that out of all the people that it contained for him, he meant Young Thomas.

  She galloped home, ashamed of the singing happiness within her on this sad day! How extraordinary to hear another old man speak so soon again of the symbolic hawk, and in that same breath to speak of Young Thomas! Young Thomas who would make his own glory! Life that had seemed, a while back, to be closing in, suddenly opened out into a lovely beckoning vista.

  She found Cousin Maurice waiting for her in the stableyard. ‘Didn’t I give orders that you were not to ride that mare again?’ he demanded. And who might you be to give orders about me, said her mind, but it kept the words to itself.

  ‘I should have sold it long ago,’ he went on.

  ‘Sold Thuckeen? What right have you ever to talk of selling Thuckeen.’ There was no keeping the words inside now.

  He told her of his right. His right, as her father’s administrator, to pinch and scrape, dodge and plot to keep the place going until Dominic was of age to take over. ‘No enviable right whatever, let me assure you, Miss. That horse is worth too much money to be used as a hack for a thuckeen like you.’

  The moisture on her hair made it look black; made her look like her father, he thought, and the words that burst from her made her sound like her father.

  ‘By God, Maurice O’Carroll,’ she swore, ‘if you sell Thuckeen, you’ll sell me with her. Where she goes, I go. My father’s horse is no chattel.’

  He looked at her silently for a moment. ‘In faith,’ he said quietly, ‘you are no chattel either. You are your father’s daughter, but you could have done with a bit longer in that convent. We’ll talk about this tomorrow.’

  The stragglers that follow funerals—or weddings—still hung around the yard. Sterrin, striding towards the back door, took no notice of an old woman on a crutch who hobbled aside to let her pass.

  In her bedroom, while she changed from her riding habit, she fumed. Sell Thuckeen, would he? This was the last straw. She’d make a fight for her; this very night after the drawing-room tea she’d rub in hard to Mamma the enormity of letting Papa’s horse go to a stranger, and Mamma would back her up on that score, even if it sent her off into a—a what? Not a vapour which was what other girl’s mothers had, openly and genteely, with pretty bottles of smelling salts and providing interesting conversation afterwards. But those frightening attacks that had to be coped with behind closed doors and never alluded to afterwards!

  Utensils clattered outside and the door opened to admit Mrs. Stacey—of all people—
with two copper jugs of hot water. She was up to something. And Sterrin was in no mood to show concern about all this panting from lugging up a load that it was someone’s else’s duty to carry.

  It was because of her cousin, the cook explained. ‘My own first cousin, and first cousin to Black Pat Ryan’s father, back home this day of all days, after thirty-eight years of service with an English Earl; home on a crutch—only one leg—her other leg amputated a year ago. No more use to the earl’s house; no use to anyone, a burden, they said on the Poor Rates, so they gave her three ounces of tea and three ounces of coffee and three twopenny loaves and a shilling and three pence and sent her home to Ireland. Home! All belonging to her dead in the Great Hunger or exiled. Myself is all of home that’s left to her and what shelter have I to offer a homeless relative?’ She drew her wedding ring up and down her finger and waited.

  An hour back Sterrin could have melted to this pathetic tale. Now it exasperated her. Why come to her? Gone was the day when Mrs. Stacey might ask Miss Sterrin to put in a good word for her over some favour she sought. The cook’s status had altered since Sir Roderick’s death. Her sorrow then had been a personal thing that had brought home to everyone the relationship that had bound her to her master. Lady O’Carroll would be slow to refuse a favour to the foster-mother of her beloved husband. Why this hinting?

  For the first time Sterrin noticed how much the cook had aged since that tragedy. And tonight there was a red puffiness of recent tears. Remorse softened her. ‘Don’t you know well, Banaltra,’ she said gently, ‘that Mamma will not expect you to turn away your poor cousin?’ The term that her father had used towards his foster-mother startled her own ears. It was a while before the cook could answer. When she had wiped the tears with the apron she said, ‘I know that. Miss Sterrin,’ but she made no move to go.

  And then she said what she had come to say. Her cousin had brought ‘newses’ of Young Thomas.

  Sterrin listened in silence. The cook’s voice trailed out awkwardly into the silence. What was I thinkin’ of, to come barging up here with my story? Times have changed and a servant now is a servant. Young Thomas was a servant and one who had spoken against his betters; preached against them in the public street. An ‘agitator’, they had called him. This proud silent young lady was not the eager child who had followed at Young Thomas’s heels; whom Young Thomas had doted upon, waited on hand and foot. She had grown out of her child’s world of the kitchen and the stable the same as she had grown out of her dolls. She is not living in the past like the likes of me. She will side with her caste; that he had reneged. Muire Dia, but you’ve paid for your folly, my splendid boy! Twenty years in Australia, they had told her cousin. A life sentence!

  She moved across and left the water, unpoured, on the wash stand. Sterrin knew that the omission was deliberate, because of her own silence. But she dare not part her lips; dare not release their trembling.

  Mrs. Stacey turned from the doorway and spoke with unaccustomed quietness. ‘I am sorry, Miss Sterrin, for intruding. I had no right in the world to come up here to you with that story.’

  Sterrin reached the door in a stride. She clutched the cook towards her by the wide shoulder straps of her apron, and the cook saw the stricken eyes. ‘Banaltra!’ It was a child’s stricken cry; from the child of her loved foster-child. No proud young lady!

  ‘Banaltra, to whom else in the world would you come to with that story?’

  Then the door was closed and the cook heard the great key groan protestingly towards its unaccustomed lock.

  *

  Reverend Mother held the quill suspended over her correspondence. It was rarely that the traffic on the avenue disturbed her concentration. But there was no ignoring these approaching hooves. Their clamour filled her quiet study with the portent of hasty news; the kind of news that it was the duty of Reverend Mother alone, to break. With a sigh she sanded over the unfinished page. Pray heaven it would not be necessary for her to crush the joy from the life of some unsuspecting child!

  Instead of the lay sister’s quiet tap there came a quick knock that was an afterthought. The knob was already turned. The figure that stepped up to the table was not a lay sister’s. The curtsey it started to drop became shortened to a jerk by saddle stiffness. Words poured out in a rush.

  ‘Reverend Mother, I—I’ve come back; for good! I shall never run away again. I wish to enter.’

  Not for holiness alone is a nun chosen to be Reverend Mother. Mother Berchman looked at her visitor as though it were part of the day’s routine for people to come thundering up the drive; forcing their way into her sanctum to make breathless renunciations of the world. Her calm gaze took in the dust-grimed figure. The skirt was coated with dust. Dust masked the eyelids and lashes. A ridge of dust defined the arch of the nose. It gave grotesque emphasis to its arrogance as though the chastening process of the convent had already commenced.

  No dust begrimed the lips. The Reverend Mother found herself following the high, full crescent of the upper lip. Had it always looked like that, she wondered? Three years ago when the girl first came here her lips had been too pallid to notice their outline. Now, exertion probably had lent them colour, a curved blob of scarlet that glowed as though it had been freshly painted on to the grey masking of the face. Could a face change so much in—how long was it? Eighteen months? Or had the other, earlier face been masked too; with the filmy mask of young unawaken-ment that had been held all too rigidly in place by the grip of tragedy?

  Suddenly the lips lost their strangeness. They became familiar to the nun, the lips of a young thing; uncertain, trembling.

  ‘I—I have brought my dowry. Oh, not here!’ The nun’s eyes had dropped to the tight-clutched saddle bag that held a few belongings. ‘It is outside. It—she is worth a lot of money.’

  Reverend Mother rose and pulled a bell rope.

  ‘Sit down, Sterrin,’ she said gently, ‘you must first have some refreshment.’ She moved to the window and glanced down. A great black horse was quivering and blowing at the hitching ring.

  ‘I think,’ she said, ‘that your—dowry could do with some refreshment also.’

  *

  The first weeks back at the convent were happy ones for Sterrin. It was a relief not to be reminded of Young Thomas at every turn. Of course she missed Dominic and her mother but far better a useful life here than sorrow at Kilsheelin. Even the grim ceremony of the final vow which Sterrin watched a young nun take, failed to dampen her spirits. For a moment when she watched the young nun, newly veiled in black, lie prostrate on the floor, her heart beat wildly in terror. Four nuns held a black pall over the black-robed figure. The doors were barred for this symbolic entombment. And then, as suddenly as they had quickened, her heart beats steadied. Sterrin looked across at the nun lying beneath the funeral pall. What was it but a piece of cloth. It would take more than that to frighten her back to her emptied world.

  Sterrin was resolute as she made her way towards the common room after the ceremony. She had conquered her doubts. The recreation room was gay. One of the boarders was playing the piano. But it was a waltz, and four pairs of girls were dancing. Waltzing was strictly forbidden. Sterrin glanced towards the piano. She might have known! No other girl would defy the ban so blatantly. And no other girl could play like that. Sterrin gripped a chair-back to keep her body from following the dreamy rhythm of the music. The pianist, Eileen Morton, was an enchantress at the piano. Away from the piano she was sullen, slangy and uncouth. Her frequent indiscipline was not that of young high spirits. It was a deliberate thing done out of mature resentment. And she knew that she was barely tolerated by the Sisters for the sake of her musical talent.

  A great, gangling, Parlour Boarder went up to her and told her to play something else. The pianist told her to go and boil her head and went on playing. When the big P.B. put a restraining hand upon her arm she shrugged it off violently, then lifted her hand over the keys and the entire hall heard her ask what blasted right had she t
o give orders. A current of shock ran through the room. But, apart from the ‘blasted’, Sterrin was in complete agreement with the query. Parlour Boarders had no special authority. They were mostly girls who had returned after their schooling was finished for the sake of the companionship; because life at home was too dull and monotonous. A few of them came with the idea of testing their inclination to enter. The one remonstrating with the pianist had been here for six years. She had a fortune of twenty thousand pounds, but even the most daring Abduction Club member would have found her difficult to run away with. She was six feet-one!

  ‘You are a disgrace to the school,’ she said now. ‘I feel it my bounden duty to report you.’

  The pianist closed the lid of the piano and jumped to her feet ‘And I,’ she shouted, ‘feel it my bounden duty to tell you to go to hell!’

  A week later Sterrin watched another ceremony. The whole senior school watched and most of the nuns and governesses. Near the door stood a woman. Sterrin could not place her. Her clothes were shabby and rather townish. Her face would be sharp but for the softening moisture of tears. It was extraordinary, Sterrin thought, the way tears had softened the face of the girl who knelt in the centre of the floor; softened it to pulp. Eileen Morton’s eyes were two red blobs. Her lips wobbled pitifully as they strove for the words that she must say.

  Rarely it might happen that the parents of a difficult pupil would be asked to withdraw her. But this was the awful ceremony of being Publicly Expelled. It must be like a public court-martial, Sterrin thought; like when an officer is drummed out of his regiment and his commanding officer deprives him of his sword and decorations.

  Poor Eileen Morton possessed no decorations, though her father, it seems, had possessed a sword. He had been an officer who had married beneath him and had kept the existence of his wife and daughter a secret until his death.

  The girl’s lips and throat worked convulsively and finally the words came in strangulated gulps.