The Big Wind

by Beatrice Coogan

  At Lord Cullen’s funeral Sterrin met people whom she had not seen for years.

  Lord Templetown had come down from Dublin. His former tenants crowded round the elegant, worldly-minded man who had never lacked the saving grace of humanity. Master Hennessy came forward as full of classical quips as ever. ‘A noble cortège, My Lord. At least five hundred cars!’

  ‘You are inaccurate. Master,’ the Scout interrupted. ‘Five hundred and ten, including the hearse. It is heartening to see the fine funerals back again.’ He swept off his hat so sweepingly to Lord Templetown that his wig was knocked sideways. ‘Man’s life,’ he misquoted, ‘is as the hair of his head, as Tom Moore said.’ Master Hennessy looked silently at the bald exposure as though he considered the Scout’s prospects were not too bright.

  Sterrin shrank back when she saw Sir Jocelyn approaching the carriage. He bowed low to Lady O’Carroll and asked her permission to call at the castle next week. He would have occasion to be in the vicinity next week with a railway engineer, in connection with the proposed new branch line. He was so grave and gentle that Sterrin wondered if she had imagined his previous behaviour. The carriage had moved and he was gone. Sterrin suddenly sat up. Had she imagined what he had said just now? The proposed new Branch Line!

  Sir Jocelyn Devine gave the guarantee and the first line was laid with great éclat. The band of the North Tipperary Light Infantry, with unconscious irony, played the ‘Rocky Road to Dublin’. The Deputy Lieutenant addressed the big gathering and dwelt hopefully on the prosperity this new link with the outer world would bring to the district. His dreary list of statistics finally came to an end and Lady O’Carroll and Sterrin were free to lead their guests to the first luncheon party that Kilsheelin had known for many a year.

  Sir Jocelyn, on the right of his hostess, charmed her with his courtly deference and Sterrin, in new clothes and courage, wondered anew if she could ever have known repulsion from him.

  Mrs. Kennedy-Sherwin, watching the animation on Margaret’s face as she listened to Sir Jocelyn, scented romance and whispered to young Lady Cullen that it would be the best thing she could do. And Lady Biddy Cullen, remembering that he was supposed to be the richest man in Ireland, agreed. ‘Look what it would mean to Sterrin,’ she whispered behind her fan. ‘She could be presented and meet a likely party. There’s no one here for her except gombeen men and bankrupts. Wouldn’t it be terrible if she were to become an old maid?’

  Mrs. Kennedy-Sherwin looked towards the beautiful girl who was in the act of rising in response to her mother’s signal for the ladies’ withdrawal. What an unintelligent remark for anyone to make about such a glorious creature. Every man in the room was eyeing her. ‘Don’t be prissy, Biddy!’ Sometimes the city-bred urbanity of the former Miss Cuppage-O’Byrne grated. ‘The girl will either marry a duke or run off with a ploughman.’

  She suddenly remembered something. ‘Sterrin,’ she said, patting the ottoman invitingly, ‘what became of that picturesque-looking groom who used to be here?’

  Sterrin drew her dark brows together for a second. ‘The only picturesque thing about Mike O’Driscoll is his language. You must mean Big John, the coachman. He is still with us, of course.’

  ‘No, that is not the name, and everyone knows Big John. No, this young man was extremely good-looking. The first time I noticed him he was helping to remove that monstrous cake that had been made for the Queen. He had quite an air.’

  ‘Oh!’ Sterrin said quietly. ‘He has been gone some time. He... he emigrated.’ The slight stammer might have gone unnoticed but there was no mistaking the tell-tale flush. So I was right, thought Mrs. Kennedy-Sherwin, tingling with intrigue. And it is the ploughman instead of the Duke! Oh, this was delicious! But the gentlemen entered the room and Mr. Maurice O’Carroll came up to take his leave of Sterrin.

  ‘Isn’t it marvellous, Cousin Maurice?’ she said as she accompanied him to the carriage. ‘You can travel all the way home by train only changing once and at the same time that horrid mortgage is cleared!’

  He looked at her compassionately. ‘The arrears are cleared, child. That’s only...’ He changed the subject and complimented her upon her new gown. ‘I’ll hold a crown you never bought that in Lubeys.’ She looked down at the flow of champagne-coloured velvet and then held up her arms to display the blonde Valenciennes lace that flowed from elbow to wrist.

  ‘Paris!’ she proclaimed. ‘Lubey sent boxes of stuff on approbation, and pairs and pairs of the silk evening boots he had refused Mamma, but she sent them all back unopened. The shoneen!’

  ‘He is that all right. But don’t over-antagonise him. He is the biggest shareholder in the iron road and it was a blow to his pride to be the only one you left out of today’s party.’ He sighed as the carriage rolled down the avenue and wondered how many more times he would visit the old place. Only last week he had parted with his own precious library of priceless books to a Waterford gombeen man. Paris gowns! God help their innocence. And the sum of money from the railroad only a daisy in a bull’s mouth!

  But Sterrin was jubilant. She was convinced that she had brought prosperity back to Kilsheelin when she had recaptured some of its soil from Poolgower. In the kitchen she was regarded as a saviour. The whole staff had gathered at the back stairhead to watch her as she moved down the stairs in her first formal gown and they gloried in the proud-held head that others mistook for arrogance.

  ‘If the Sir could see her now!’ breathed Mrs. Stacey. ‘Ye’d think he spat her out of his mouth.’

  Big John was the only one who could see over the cook’s head. ‘If only Young Thomas could see her now,’ he said, surprisingly. ‘She used to come to him with every new stitch she got. He’d criticise it for her as good as any lady of fashion and she had no more pleasure in any garment that he didn’t approve.’

  Mrs. Stacey brushed the back of her hand over her eyes. ‘God be with him,’ she murmured as though she spoke of the dead.

  They felt strangely embarrassed when Sterrin suddenly appeared among them after the guests had departed. It was seldom she came to the kitchen nowadays and tonight in her long, rich gown she stood apart in the world they lived to serve. But Sterrin wanted to share with them her sense of achievement. Hadn’t they shared in the plot that had brought it about? Besides, she wanted Attracta to read her cup.

  Pakie Scally helped Mrs. Stacey to lower the rungs of the crane to bring the kettle nearer the flame and as he straightened up he was surprised to see Miss Sterrin’s eyes fixed on him intently. To cover his embarrassment he ventured timidly to say that the sods had brought luck, but she scarcely heard him. He was wearing Young Thomas’s livery. She was seeing glossy curls instead of Pakie’s lank hair and the lithe frame of Young Thomas as he deftly swung the great crane and inserted the kettle hook two holes down when Miss Sterrin came to the kitchen. ‘And there’s shamrocks spreading all over the place where we put the centre sod. Miss Sterrin.’ The curls disappeared and the hands that brushed the crane grime from each other were no longer shapely and well-kept.

  ‘That’s unusual,’ she said at last. ‘I have never found shamrock in that field.’

  ‘Nor anyone else either, Miss Sterrin,’ said Hegarty. ‘Isn’t that right, Big John?’

  ‘It is indeed, Mr. Hegarty,’ said the coachman. ‘Not even before the night of the Big Wind.’

  ‘Well, in that case,’ said Mrs. Stacey, ‘we can take it that the luck of Kilsheelin has turned.’

  Hannah placed a big napkin across the velvet-covered knees and tucked a corner inside the neck of the lovely gown. ‘’Twas an answer to prayer. Miss Sterrin. We stormed the heavens.’ Sterrin sipped her tea and slowly swirled it round the cup to toss the leaves.

  ‘And I stormed the earth,’ she said grimly.

  ‘And there’s storms still to come, Miss Sterrin,’ said Attracta, peering into the cup. ‘Storms and violence. There is an elderly man wishing on you and there’s a young man wishing on you too, a fine young man and you’ll m
eet him sooner than you expect, but treachery will part you. I see you standing over a horse. Miss Sterrin.’ Attracta was looking out over the rim of the cup into space. ‘A horse that is lying down.’

  The girl’s gaze returned from the dreamy distance. Attracta looked vaguely at her young mistress. ‘I can see no more.’

  Sterrin got to her feet. ‘You are not in your usual form tonight, Attracta. Nothing you have seen links up with anything for me except Thuckeen. It’s quite likely that I shall stand over her when she foals.’

  Months later Sterrin stood over the prone, prostrate mare and watched the eyes glazing as Thuckeen reached feebly to lick the natal slime from the quivering colt. But the lovely gesture that would reunite the little foal to its dam was never made. The great mare had fought all night and now her questing nuzzle was denied its fulfilment. Before it reached the foal her head fell back. Sterrin, in utter and complete abandon, threw herself across the carcass, her arms clasping its neck, her hair mingling with the silky mane she had tended as long as she could remember.

  The deep, hoarse sobs unnerved her mother when she came to coax her away. The sight of Thuckeen loosed a flood of memories, Roderick leading the field on the peerless Thuckeen; Roderick smilingly refusing fantastic sums for her; Roderick soaring high over the bay-leaf hedge while she watched with smiling lips and terrified heart.

  Nurse Hogan led her Ladyship away and Big John standing beside Mr. Hegarty was crying openly. Tears blinded Mike O’Driscoll as he carried the new-born foal to a foster-mother. He collided with Sir Jocelyn Devine who had sauntered casually towards the stable yard when his knock at the hall door had gone unanswered.

  41

  Sterrin paused as she walked up to the gap at Poolgower. She leaned her arms over the ridge. Never, she realised, had she had to climb this gap before. Always, she had sailed over it, clean and straight, never a sod disturbed. Thuckeen had helped her to rise above the crosses that had sprung up so frighteningly in her path; her father’s death, the loss of Young Thomas, the death of the Bard.

  The poignancy of the horse’s death had an evocative quality that would not be suppressed. Young Thomas burst through the self-enforced barriers of her memory. She ached for the comfort of his presence. That day, when Sir Jocelyn—Heaven sent—had led her gently, but so firmly away from Thuckeen, there had come a mnemonic flash of a dark, yearning face and a voice that had said, ‘You’ll always have me, asthore!’

  She started to chew a blade of grass but spat it forth. It, too, was evocative; of undigested grass and the green drool on the lips of the famished. And why, she thought inconsequentially, did Mrs. Kennedy-Sherwin keep looking at her at the luncheon party when she harped on the scandal of the titled lady in the Queen’s County who had run away with the ploughman!

  Ploughman indeed! Young Thomas’s shapely hands, so fastidiously tended, flicked away the implication. She shifted her head and leaned it sideways on her arms, and suddenly the hedge-flowers became a fragrant evocation of the perfumed soap that Young Thomas used to buy out of the crown piece that Papa always gave to him on the anniversary of the Big Wind. The other servants used the dark soap that Mrs. Stacey made from mutton fat, but everything in Young Thomas’s room possessed the quality of—not just taste or of apeing his betters—a kind of natural acceptance that his personal belongings should possess quality; but never ostentation. His brushes, bought singly as his wages increased, had been of unadorned ivory. His bookshelves held the library of a cultured mind. Such an accumulation of books since the first one that Lieutenant Fitzharding-Smith had helped her to choose that day in Dublin.

  Her cuff button chafed her cheek and she shifted it to the other arm while her eyes dreamed up the crystalline gleam of quartz and mica that Young Thomas’s scrubbing had seduced from the granite of his floor. It used to look so exotic around the eastern prayer rug that Lieutenant Fitzharding-Smith had given him when he was dismantling his quarters. What ploughman would show such discernment? Pakie Scally had the room now and no jewels gleamed from its flags.

  The sigh that came from her was long and sad. An echoing sigh followed it. Donal Keating had been watching her from the shade of the headland. His sigh turned into a cough.

  Sterrin stepped back, startled, and trod on the tail of one of her two dogs. Its yelping started its companion barking, then the red setter, crouching behind the horse, joined in from sheer boredom.

  Donal, holding his handkerchief with one hand, had to drop the reins from his other hand to raise his hat. The horse, already disturbed by the sudden yelping, began to plunge madly.

  Habit compelled Sterrin to reach out a hand to restrain the animal. Unwittingly she patted the silk neck whilst instinct brought soothing words from her until the horse quivered into quiescence. Midst all the barking and bolting and coughing she was forced to stand there holding her resentment in check. Now, as he thanked her, it burst forth.

  ‘There would be no need for thanks,’ she stormed, ‘if you had not been spying on me.’

  ‘I vow and declare, Miss O’Carroll,’ he protested, ‘that I did not mean to spy upon you.’ She did not realise that she was still holding the bridle as she stared straight up into his face.

  ‘Of course you were spying upon me! This is not the first time. Why the devil’s father do you do it?’

  His sudden laughter set him coughing again; as he dived for the handkerchief in his tail pocket she was forced to take a firmer hold of the bridle.

  ‘Just look what your violent language has done to me!’ he spluttered.

  The horse’s soft nuzzle brushed her. For a nostalgic moment she pressed her cheek against the breathing velvet. Behind the handkerchief he eyed the wistful caress and coughed to prolong its proximity. Finally he gasped, ‘Surely if a cat may look at a queen a mere mortal may pause to worship when he is vouchsafed the vision of a goddess...’

  ‘For heaven’s sake,’ she snapped, ‘don’t call me a goddess!’

  ‘Yes, it is unoriginal, isn’t it?’ he grinned. ‘But I don’t mean a simpering goddess in a niche. I was thinking of a flying goddess of the chase. A Diana!’ He bent lower towards her. ‘A Diana without her steed.’

  She dropped the bridle as though she had been stung. Then with a swish and a froth of petticoats and pantalettes she was over the gap and running down the slope. Oh, to have been able to turn her horse’s head and gallop from his odious presence! Instead of standing there holding his damned horse like a lackey! To cast it in my teeth that I am without a horse! The bacach!

  At the sound of a train whistle she turned involuntarily; she could still see Donal, watching her. The train! She had a sudden inspiration. I’ll let him see that I don’t have to travel Irish tandem,* even if I am without a horse! Diana without her steed—inagh! She ducked behind a tree, pulled up her skirt and fumbled with the strings of her white cambric petticoat and of the white cotton one and the one underneath.

  As the train approached, the driver saw a young lady waving a large red flag, and groaned. He was already half an hour behind and now, willy nilly, he must stop. He had got into trouble a month back for not stopping because the biteen of red had been so small that he had not seen it. But be the power of war, this here flag would stop a bull, much less a train!

  An English businessman fumed audibly at the spectacle of a hatless, breathless girl coolly holding up an entire train and jamming herself in amongst first-class passengers. To make matters worse a donkey strayed on to the tracks and caused further delay. ‘This is outrageous,’ he said, taking forth his repeater. ‘I intend to report this.’ Sterrin was uncertain whether he meant to report herself or the donkey. The officer in the opposite corner left her in no further doubt. ‘I certainly shall report this matter. Young woman! How dare you inconvenience your betters?’

  The ‘young woman’ was too much for Sterrin’s silent composure. ‘I inconvenience my “betters”,’ she answered, ‘for my own convenience.’ Then, with iciest hauteur, she deigned to explain to him that
it was her family’s privilege, if they wished to travel while the train was passing through their territory, to stop it by waving a red flag.

  The officer eyed the now unmistakable young gentlewoman who travelled unescorted in a carriageful of gentlemen, then glanced towards the castle outlined in the near distance. ‘I beg your pardon,’ he said gruffly.

  Sterrin, having disposed of all challengers, both here and outside settled herself comfortably. Then, ‘Pardon me, Madam,’ the officer beside her, a younger one, was leaning towards her. ‘Did you say flag?’ He adjusted his monocle and directed her gaze downward to where a white string rested upon the gleaming toe of his boot. She froze. Her flag had worked itself from her relaxed grip and hung over her knees, its purpose disclosed. The white tapes from the waistband lay on the officer’s shoe. A row of blue and white featherstitching treacherously defined the hemline.

  She gazed silently at the revolting garment that had been forced upon her by Nurse Hogan and her mamma to prevent rheumatics after one of her severe wettings on Thuckeen. Then, before anyone had realised what was happening, she was on her feet reaching for the communication cord. The train came to a clanging halt, and Sterrin, her flag slung nonchalantly over one shoulder, stepped from the train, and ran all the way home to Kilsheelin.

  She passed the empty rooms to the kitchen where Dominic was listening with delicious terror to one of Attracta’s ghost stories. Ghosts! There were too many of them about today. Attracta and her endless lore of Connemara’s dead and undead until, as Young Thomas used to quote, ‘I thought in my heart and even in my soul that the dead who had died still lived.’ She raised the latch that led to the yard and the empty stable she had avoided this week past, but now the foal was giving cause for concern. It was not thriving with its foster-dam.

  The slight sound made Attracta turn and as she rose to her feet, Sterrin heard her hiss, ‘Ask her now, Master Dominic, sir.’ She paused.

  ‘What is it that you want him to ask me?’ Sterrin’s voice and face were so proud and cold that Attracta stood confused. Mrs. Stacey spoke up for her.