The Big Wind

by Beatrice Coogan

  The colonel of whatever regiment supplied the band had the privilege of leading out the lady of his choice in the first folk dance of the programme. The Deputy Lieutenant’s wife, anticipating the honour, started to compress her hoops. The judge’s wife likewise snapped her fan shut. The bandmaster waited with raised baton. The colonel bowed before young Lady Devine. The chosen lady had the privilege of calling the tune. ‘I think,’ she murmured after demure reflection, ‘that I should like ‘Paddies Evermore’.’ She ignored her husband’s startled protest and went on, ‘You see, it was written by his Lordship, Mr. Justice O’Hagan.’

  The colonel beckoned a subaltern. ‘That should please our legal guests,’ he beamed. The subaltern was stammering; making no move to go. ‘Hurry!’ snapped the colonel. The subaltern hurried; the bandsman passed on his instruction, then turned in consternation. Next minute the subaltern was back whispering to the colonel. ‘Egad! Do you tell me so? A rebel song?’ Down the length of the room, the dancers, ranged in formation, every right foot poised, heard the exclamation. The Deputy Lieutenant’s wife had been led out by the judge. She gave him a look of perplexity. But the judge was wishing for someone to lead himself out; out from this embarrassing dilemma. The song had been written by his learned colleague back in the days when a coterie of young barristers had helped Davis to sound in verse the Reveille of a whole people. The judge had written a few incendiary verses himself at that time. But legal honours had dimmed the vision of young patriotism, and the judge’s ermine had muffled the last sound of its clamour. Now here he was, expected to dance to a tune for which he would have indicted these people had they been ranged before his Bench instead of on the floor of a ballroom.

  But the lady of the dance had stooped for her green brocade train. Donal and two juniors draped it over her arm. The dance began, topped and tailed by the Assize judge, and the Colonel of Her Majesty’s 49th Foot, footing it to as seditious a sound as ever jailed a rebel. ‘...our fathers bled of yore,’ carolled a group of juniors as they stood during the Ladies’ Chain. ‘And we stand here today like them, True Paddies Evermore.’

  The colonel’s bow was short at the finish. ‘A bit rebellious my Lady,’ he said mopping his brow. ‘I shouldn’t have thought such sentiments were quite your dish of tea.’ Sterrin gave him a knowing look over her fan.

  ‘I did hear the sentiments from the ear trumpet; about what is concealed being more discreetly provocative.’

  This time his bow was more clanking. ‘You have a nimble wit, my Lady,’ he said and he forgot sedition in the reflection that the eyes that were twinkling at him were as bright as the diamonds in the lovely hair above them.

  Sterrin forgot things, too. Her saucy victory, as she led her mainly mutinous corps down the ballroom, had gone to her head to mix with the praise and the clamouring for dances. She was exalted. She remembered only that she was young. Overhead a thousand candles bent with heat and sent their weary substance dripping down to bespatter the shoulders of her partners. She stopped troubling to peel off the particles of hot wax that landed on her face and neck; even dared to dim out the brilliance of her diamonds.

  The depression returned as she left the ball in the stark light of dawn. All around the carriage stood the homeless; in groups or moving a few paces and stopping, afraid to fall asleep lest they be arrested for vagrancy. Sir Jocelyn could scarcely wait for her to enter the carriage to start the attack about her choice of tune; about her public degradation of her husband, of herself. ‘Sheer clowning; nothing else; in the worst possible taste.’

  Sterrin lay back on the upholstery with eyes closed, wishing that Mrs. Delaney would hurry on so that they could get away from these despairing looks that reproached her to the bone. Her husband might as well have been whistling jigs to milestones. ‘You should display some concern for the feelings of others.’

  Sterrin sat up abruptly and faced him. ‘The feelings of others?’ she repeated very softly. She swept a gesture towards the window. ‘Do you mean the feelings of these out there?’

  ‘I mean,’ he snapped, ‘the feelings of Colonel de la Sarthe. He paid me a great tribute when he honoured you.’

  Sterrin went deflated. Everything that she did seemed to turn back on her. The business of the bread yesterday. A daisy in a bull’s mouth! The purloining of the ‘bag’; a childish escapade. The choice of a dance tune; boorishness. Mrs. Delaney got herself inside at last.

  ‘You led that poor colonel the divil’s own dance, Sterrin. Yourself and your ‘Paddies Evermore’!’

  She eased herself back against the upholstery. ‘And as for the judge, he looked as though he were dancing on a hot gridiron.’ The icy silence recalled to Mrs. Delaney the legend of the children who had danced on the hot gridirons. She decided that she was not making a fist of her conversational gambits. Before she could think of something to amend her lapse a stone was flung at the carriage.

  Suddenly, strangely, a long forgotten scene came to Sterrin’s mind. A hunger-maddened mob was raiding Wright’s bread van. It overflowed around the pony trap. The terrified governess had dropped the reins and allowed the pony to bolt while she sat there screaming her terror. An adult, Papa had said that night when Sterrin awoke from a nightmare, should control her fears; at least in the presence of a child. And here was her husband, his aplomb shattered, screaming like a woman for the footmen; for the police.

  When the police arrived the crowd had vanished in the direction of the workhouse. Sir Jocelyn turned in fury to Sterrin. ‘There go your “Paddies evermore”. They stone you for your pains, then run to the workhouse to shelter at my expense—’

  ‘At two and twopence halfpenny per pauper per week,’ said Mrs. Delaney, and the dignified modulation, so different from her usual offhand speech, compelled his attention. ‘They will not burden you for long; the expectation of life maintained at that price level is very short indeed.’

  ‘Anyway,’ said Sterrin, ‘they ought not to be hunted by police for simply throwing a stone. If anyone had made me homeless I should not be satisfied with a stone. I should fire a bullet.’

  The English footman, fussing with Sir Jocelyn’s lap rug, was caught off guard. He gave a startled gasp. Sir Jocelyn dismissed him with an angry flip. He would like to have dismissed Mrs. Delaney, too, but at least she had the good taste to go to sleep; deeply asleep, since no lady in possession of her senses would snore like that in the presence of a gentleman.

  He leaned towards Sterrin. ‘Now I know,’ he started. Sterrin’s head was leaning towards Mrs. Delaney’s shoulder. He shook her knee but her head landed comfortably. ‘Listen to me,’ he whispered. She replied with a gentle snore; then for good measure she added a little nasal click like Mrs. Delaney’s.

  *

  After breakfast the younger members of the houseparty were assembled on the lawn as eager for their morning’s ride as if they had slept all night. Some of the mounted grooms wore massive belts for the support of the more fragile young ladies who took their horse exercise pillion-style. Sterrin was scandalised to see Belle Delaney mounting a block and taking her place behind a groom. Belle, like herself, had always scorned the mounting block. Much less to ride pillion! And then Mrs. Delaney, of all people, hurried out and linked the hooks in her daughter’s buckle to the one at the back of the groom’s belt.

  ‘Mrs. Delaney,’ Sterrin called, ‘what on earth is Belle doing riding pillion?’

  ‘Doctor’s orders.’ Then, grasping Sterrin’s bridle, she reached up and whispered, ‘Internal.’

  ‘What!’ A thrill of delicious horror ran through Sterrin.

  ‘I’m surprised at you to think such a thing,’ said Mrs. Delaney. ‘The girl may be a bit of a tomboy in the way of riding but she has never been permitted to forget that she is a lady. Knows nothing about that kind of thing; doesn’t know how she came into the world, thank heavens. It is just that these doctors are finding out more about our insides. I told Dr. Drennan that he was insulting us. Cut him dead at the Meet.’
/>   Sterrin’s mount was growing restive. ‘Be careful of yourself, too, Sterrin. You’ve had one miscarriage already.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘Oh, now,’ said Mrs. Delaney, soothingly. ‘Sure it is no secret that you had a terrible miscarriage as a result of your little walk the wrong way up in front of the Emperor.’

  ‘Who said that?’ Sterrin’s voice was very quiet.

  ‘Oh,’ she was informed, ‘Sir Jocelyn himself said it, well, not in so many words but he inferred it.’

  Sterrin turned her horse’s head towards the avenue. But her mind was seething. Now she knew that Sir Jocelyn, suspecting that she had swapped confidences with the little ex-comtesse in Paris, had found a way to hit back.

  She brought her whip down and the horse rose in the air before galloping wildly down the park. Grooms with pillion-riders were hard set to restrain their mounts that stampeded in pursuit. She cleared the park and a field before steadying to a canter.

  Voices hallooed and Eva Delaney reined alongside. ‘Phew!’ she gasped. ‘You’ve led us a nice dance. Like you did last night. Shall I ever forget the bandmaster’s face when you asked for “Paddies Evermore”. Hadn’t you the nerve?’ When there was no answer she said, ‘Do you know, I don’t believe, Sterrin, that you have heard one word that I’ve been saying.’

  Sterrin recollected herself. ‘By the way,’ she said, ‘it must be an affliction on Belle to have to ride pillion.’ Eva shrugged.

  ‘This was my turn for the riding habit. Belle wore it to the Maryborough Show last week.’

  Sterrin turned and regarded Eva’s costume. If anything it was more perfectly cut than her own. Nothing but the best material; the most flawless cut, would satisfy Mrs. Delaney for her own or her family’s riding clothes. They were never very strong on gowns but at least they had always had one riding costume apiece. Fancy Mrs. Delaney covering up with such an outrageous whopper.

  ‘Then there’s nothing wrong with her health?’

  ‘Oh, she has some trouble with the interior mystery; but nothing that a riding habit wouldn’t cure as far as keeping her from riding is concerned. Didn’t Mamma hunt all day until a half an hour before Belle was born? That’s why Belle is still expected to believe that she was found in a covert. Come on. I’ll race you to the gap.’

  The two tore across the field, a splendid pair of horsewomen, superbly matched and mounted. The others slowed to watch and cheer. Beyond the gap lay the road gate. Eva made for it and soared over. Sterrin, in the act of following, recalled the scene she had jumped into yesterday morning. She turned aside; Donal followed her. The others jumped the gate after Eva.

  Donal strove to keep pace with Sterrin. The railroad tracks intruded. She took them with a jump and landed safely on the far side. Donal, leading his horse along the embankment, saw her slow to speak to a group of children. They were running and screaming after a blue-cloaked woman. Sterrin spurred after her. ‘Why don’t you wait for the children?’ she demanded.

  ‘Don’t stop me,’ the woman panted. When she raised her head the folds of her hood fell away from a fleshy growth beneath her chin. ‘I’m going to America,’ she said.

  ‘And deserting your children?’ Sterrin was horrified. The woman never slowed. ‘God forbid! It is to have them with me that I’m going to work for another home over there.’ A train whistle sounded. The woman doubled her speed; behind her the children called frantically. ‘He turned us out.’ The words came in breathless sobs. ‘Out of our lovely home an’ their father—’ she choked, ‘their father not three weeks dead.’

  Round the bend came a puff of smoke. She raised her arm high over her head and waved towards the train. ‘Mammy! Mammy!’ The smallest toddler had stumbled and fallen. Its mother returned and lifted the child in a fierce caress and covered its face with kisses. ‘My baby; my baby. Here, Storeen!’ She shoved a penny into its hand. ‘Buy sweets. Mammy will be back tonight.’ She put the child down and fled.

  The train halted. The guard reached out, took the bundle, and the little peeping sod of the ground from which she had been uprooted and drew her gently inside. ‘Keep clear of the line, children. Your mammy will be back shortly.’

  Donal came to his senses as the train moved off. He grasped the carriage window and galloped alongside. ‘Do you know where you are going to? Have you friends over there?’ She leaned out. ‘I’ll be all right that way, sir. I’m goin’ to a place a few miles beyond America, Quebec, it’s called. There’s a neighbour’s son works there, or in the next ploughland from it. He’ll get me a situation.’ The train pulled ahead of Donal.

  Sterrin was squatting among the children, the reins looped over her arm; just as he had seen her on that first occasion. A girl crouching in the moonlight, curls tumbling over her forehead, her arm linked through the reins of a horse that nuzzled at her hair. She rose to her feet and squeezed the handkerchief that had mopped their little wet faces. ‘Does she know where she is going?’ The children could not hear what the beautiful lady was whispering to the gentleman. He continued to look after the train while he replied. ‘She is going across the world to a place called Quebec where anyone will tell her the way to her neighbour’s son in the next ploughland.’ He raised his hat towards the vanishing train. ‘God carry you safely,’ he said grimly, ‘to that next ploughland. It is probably a thousand miles from Quebec.’

  Sir Jocelyn was replacing one of his precious birds when his wife burst into his silent aviary. Words came tumbling from her; nameless babies; a mother torn from her children; travelling alone to some unknown destination at the other side of the world. ‘Get her back! The express train would overtake her. Bring her back to her poor little children.’

  He held the bird up to the light. ‘I do believe that there is a chip in the eye of this bird and, yes, the setting is loose. How on earth can that have happened.’

  ‘God’ll mighty!’ she stormed, ‘you are not a dummy like—like these lumps of metal. You have a soul. You have to face your God. You are answerable for these children. For the fate of their mother—’

  ‘I shall have to send to Dublin for a silversmith,’ he murmured gently. He replaced the bird on its polished branch. ‘No, I shall go there myself though I suppose that means that I must wait until the houseparty has finished. I must not take you away from your guests.’

  Words halted themselves within her in a shocked surge. Nobody could be this callous. Nobody in all God’s world! ‘I shall take myself away.’ At last she said, ‘It would be a crime for me to continue to live here and sanction such—such abominations.’

  He came close to her. ‘Where will you go to, my dear? To Bankrupt Castle? Or perhaps to Quebec and send back later for your own homeless ones?’

  A feeling of futility assailed her and suddenly she knew it again for the feeling she had experienced in those bleak, almost foodless days of the famine when the great sacrifice of her precious jelly had turned into something ridiculous.

  ‘They shall be homeless, you know; if you withdraw your collateral.’

  ‘Collateral? Isn’t that something in a bank? And isn’t that an unnecessary taunt? I don’t possess such a thing.’

  ‘Oh, but you do, my dear. Collateral has many forms. Clever women use their bodies as collateral; as you did.’

  He watched her deep-set eyes rise level to their brink. They became like painted eyes done in primitive colour upon bleached-white linen; then he saw her crop go up and he sidestepped like a dancing master. It landed on the bird that he had replaced and sent it clattering to the floor.

  The silence stretched out like doom. Gradually she became aware of the way he was looking at her. His lips were drawn back over the maroon gutta-percha gums of his false teeth. She felt a shiver. ‘I have told you,’ he was saying, thin and low, ‘that some day you might go too far. This, I think is the day.’

  There was no time to assess the meaning of his remark; no time to carry out her threat of a dramatic departure. The guests were waiting for her and to
night those little motherless children would be waiting also. She had arranged with them. But the devil himself, she felt, was inside the younger guests that evening. There was no getting away. They clamoured for carpet-dancing, charades, treasure hunts; anything rather than dissipate their festive spirits in sleep.

  When she finally escaped she had to weave in and out through the concealed paths of the maze and hug the margin of the artificial lake where the soldiery dare not intrude. The Brennan children gazed at her in awe. Her shimmering cloak suggested to them a church; something on a pedestal or on a stained glass window. Worth had called it his ‘resperatum’ cloak but he had never designed it for concealing a big kitchen basket of food.

  The four of them gathered round the basket and timidly savoured the wonderful dainties that she had brought to them. Soon food and friendliness released their tongues.

  The eldest boy, the little girls were saying, had a terrible distance to go. He was staying with relatives miles off. The other three were divided amongst two households. They had to be disposed of that way, unobtrusively, since the law forbade any householder to take in evicted tenants or their families.

  The hug she gave them at parting had more than pity in its warmth. It had something of affinity. And though it had saddened her to find that they were not to have at least the solace of each other’s company there was a new excitement in her wistfulness.

  She hurried away, making plans for them in a surge of compassion. She had moved from the grass back to the ornamental paths when she heard footsteps behind her. Her heart lurched. Inside or outside, there was no place here that was free from the hauntings of those little children and their ghostly footsteps! The darkness of the night with its great immensity of stars turned all the world into a ghostliness. She quickened to a run. The footsteps became less ghostlike. She turned. ‘So it’s you!’

  She was in no mood for Donal Keating. Her cloak caught in one of the walls of toparied yew. Donal released it.