The Big Wind

by Beatrice Coogan

  Sterrin threw herself on the bed, panting and coughing.

  ‘You are overdoin’ it, your Ladyship’s grá gal. I’m thinking it’s a chill you’ve caught with them little wet, satin slippers an’ you overtired with the dint of such walkin’.’ She insisted upon Sterrin’s staying in her own room instead of going down to lunch.

  ‘What would you like me to bring your Ladyship?’

  All her Ladyship wanted was some oaten meal.

  When Hannah returned a few minutes later with a silver dish of oaten meal mixed with perfumed toilet water, Sterrin let out an unladylike expletive.

  ‘How the devil’s father do you expect me to eat that mess?’ she exploded.

  ‘Eat it? I thought that ’twas to put on your face that you wanted it.’

  She went off for another foray to the bin room only to return a few minutes later with empty hands. The room was locked and the housekeeper had gone out on business. The keys were with her.

  ‘Blast her!’

  ‘Miss Sterrin!’ Hannah forgot the title in her shock.

  ‘It is not to be borne. Could you imagine Mamma locked out from her own stores?’

  Sterrin was weaving her stockinged feet back and forth agitatedly and suddenly they hit something that gave a metallic sound that was not of musical shoes. She swooped. Sir Jocelyn’s big bunch of keys, lying where they must have fallen unnoticed in his so uncharacteristic rush of departure. But Sterrin was not wasting conjectures.

  ‘It is an answer to prayer,’ she breathed.

  Hannah rolled up her eyes. ‘Prayer!’ she ejaculated. Her mistress handed her the keys and gave her a playful push towards the door then pulled her back by the streamers of her apron.

  ‘Wait!’ She hurried to her room, dragged down a Parisian band-box, emptied it of its millinery and handed it to Hannah. ‘Get a supply while we have the key.’

  Fifteen minutes later Hannah shook her head over the spectacle of her mistress eating meal from an elegant pink and white striped hat box, like—like? A shaft of light lit up threads of red in the dark bronze hair—like—a Rhode Island Red hen!

  Next morning Sterrin awakened in high fever. ‘And no wonder,’ grumbled Hannah, as she wielded the long bed-warmer up and down beneath the blankets. Hannah was bitterly disappointed. Here she was with everything packed; all the lovely gowns to show Lady O’Carroll, and she herself counting the minutes to be back in the big, happy kitchen of Kilsheelin where the staff was the same as the closest blood to her, and now Miss Sterrin’s Ladyship was laid up with a shivering chill; burning one minute, cold the next. ‘Traipsing after them children all that distance and nothing between your little feet and the ground but a pair of satin bootees.’

  Hannah put the warmer down on the floor. She laid a hand on the hot forehead. ‘Mo bla ban na Sterrin.’ Concern had routed anger; formality too. Lady Devine was once again Hannah’s bla ban na Sterrin. Her white blossom of the storm! She pulled violently on the bell rope.

  ‘What the devil’s father are you doing that for?’ The blossom was white indeed, but uncrushed.

  ‘Ringin’ I am to rush someone for a doctor. You are in a roarin’ fever.’

  ‘I never want to see oaten meal again,’ Sterrin gasped.

  ‘Thank Heaven for that, anyway,’ said Hannah.

  ‘B-but,’ chattered Sterrin, ‘I must get to Kilsheelin. I must get that key copied.’ Hannah put a hand on the hot forehead.

  ‘Are you sure that you are at yourself, acquanie? You are talking like a man in the mystery of drink. What for would you have need of the key when you have taken the turn against the meal?’

  ‘I resent the indignity of having to ask my own servant for it. Mamma has a key to every room in the castle. Could you imagine her having to plead with Nurse Hogan or Mrs. Stacey or Hegarty to unlock a handful of meal for her?’

  ‘Hmph! I couldn’t imagine your mamma’s Ladyship stooping to anything so vulgar as to eat dry meal. Say this I must, whether you like it or not. You are lettin’ down the family at home; them that were there away back in Time when the likes of these—’ she waved a deprecatory hand at the surrounding splendour—‘were only in the cow’s horn. When your Ladyship’s mamma craved for anything it was for a peach steeped in champagne.’

  Sterrin drew herself up in anger, but fell back in weakness.

  ‘Who,’ she demanded in a croak that was meant to be a shout, ‘said anything about “cravings”? I chew meal to keep myself from eating chocolates because they are spoiling my waistline. That’s why Eugénie’s ladies-in-waiting smoke cigarettes.’

  ‘Aye,’ muttered Hannah, going to the fire to replenish the bed-warmer, ‘by the look of the carry-ons ’twasn’t chocolate that bulged some of their waistlines.’

  For a week Sterrin throbbed in pain and fever but fiercely resisted every suggestion of a doctor. The day before Sir Jocelyn was due back she was up at dawn, with the carriage ordered for Mrs. Delaney’s place. The forge at Moormount was the same old time, all-purpose type as the one at Kilsheelin Castle. Its blacksmith could forge a thimble or a scissors or a key as readily as he could a set of horseshoes.

  ‘Why this one only?’ asked Mrs. Delaney when Sterrin, her mission explained, had detached the store room key from the rest. ‘Why not have them all copied? It is up to you to know what lies behind locked doors and drawers.’ Then, with a sapient nod of her head she added, ‘Knowledge is power.’

  It was the small hours when Sterrin reached home. Her husband’s keyring had held a lot of locksmithing and Sterrin now had a perfect copy of every key, safe in her reticule.

  Sir Jocelyn’s agitation at not finding Clooreen in the stables seemed to Sterrin out of all proportion.

  ‘But she ought to be here! Here in these stables.’ He kept repeating the words as though it were of some very special significance that the mare should be back; and at that particular time.

  When he heard what had prevented Sterrin from carrying out his instructions, he became still more agitated. ‘You’ve been ill? What was wrong? What did the doctor say? Why wasn’t I informed?’

  ‘For heaven’s sake!’ Sterrin exploded. ‘I was much too busy sneezing to send a medical bulletin to Dublin.’ She had the feeling that his anxiety was linked with this Clooreen business. It had no concern for herself.

  Next day, she slipped away and went to see the relatives to whom the boy’s uncle had handed him on. They disclaimed all knowledge of his whereabouts. She rode on, brooding over the cruel fate of the little chap; his sisters and brother too. As she skirted a shrub the horse swerved and reared up. Next moment the figure of a boy emerged and started running wildly. She called after him, but he redoubled his efforts. When she caught up on him he was trembling with exhaustion and terror.

  ‘Surely you are not afraid of me?’ she called.

  But he was. He knew her identity now. She was the wife of the terrible man who had torn his mother away from him to the ends of the earth and made him an outcast.

  He was scarcely recognisable from the plump-cheeked boy who had dipped into her basket of goodies that August night. He was gaunt and unkempt from hunger and exposure. When she pressed money upon him he backed away again. ‘They will say that I stole it.’ But she insisted upon him taking it back to his relatives. It would sustain him while she made arrangements to get him to America. The boy took it fearfully. A widow, he told her, who had lived for fifty years in the house next to his uncle had been evicted for taking in her widowed daughter who had been turned out in the mass evictions last August.

  *

  It was early December when a letter arrived from Donal Keating telling her that the sorrows of the boy and his sisters were at an end. He had written to the Emigration Society in America. One of its most prominent members was John Holohan of Upper Kilsheelin. He had arranged for passages for the children. They would be met at Castle Gardens and looked after until they could be reunited with their mother.

  The news so heartened her that she decided t
o ride out that morning to her first Meet of Hounds. Her husband and his doctor were standing in the hall as she came down. She included them both in a gay good morning as she passed without slowing. Sir Jocelyn halted her. ‘Dr. Denning thinks that you ought not to hunt today.’

  She turned to the doctor. ‘Is there contagion abroad?’ Her husband came close and peered through the thick veil that was drawn tight against her face and secured behind over the curled brim of her tall silk hat.

  ‘Your look suggests to him that you might possibly be exposing yourself to risk by hunting. Are you concealing—are you concealing what it is my right to know? It is imperative that I know—immediately.’

  For all his sophistication, she thought, with a string of mistresses behind him, he sounded like an old maid. Concealing what is his right to know indeed!

  ‘Fiddlesticks,’ she said, ‘I’m as healthy as a salmon.’ She strode across to the waiting groom, ignored his proffered knee and swung herself into the saddle.

  What was so imperative for him to know! She flicked her horse to outstrip her thoughts; because she knew the answer. The only consequence to the revolting experience that night last August that Sterrin had ever considered was that it had ended her hopes of annulment. It had rendered her marriage consummated. But it was too unnatural a deed, too gross, for any other consequence. She lashed the horse into a full gallop. If she rode hard enough she would outdistance this shackling menace. Nothing would happen!

  Pink-coated men on fine horses looked appreciatively at the splendid horsewoman who rode so recklessly, but so sure. They shouldered and jostled their mounts nearer. All that they could glimpse under the thick veil was the deep pit of her eyes, the moulding of her cheek bones, the poreless pallor of white skin. But the body showed its perfection in the tight hunting coat of darkest green.

  Cattle scampered out of her way. A little donkey ran alongside her till the first fence, then brayed pitiably when she left it behind. Laughter rippled across Sterrin’s mind and broke upon her lips. She forgot everything but the joy of the hunt. She thought only of her mount’s easy grace; of the tall fences that its feet despised; the great wall that had loomed and vanished; the sparkle of water in streamlets, so lightly crossed, like that problem back there.

  The Master was straight in front of her, heading for the next ditch. Beside it stood a riderless horse. As the Master approached the ditch the tousled head and muddied shoulders of its rider rose up. The Master had barely time to shout, ‘Duck, Peregrine!’ and over with him. A cloud of divots came hurtling into Sterrin’s vision. The head of the unfortunate Peregrine was within four inches of the feet of her mount before she saw him. If she chucked sideways, herself and her mount would be in the green-bronze water of the ditch. There was nothing for it. Here goes! ‘Duck, Peregrine!’ she yelled and Peregrine ducked for dear life. Sterrin soared over, high and sure and never a touch of iron on the ditch. Her spirits soared. She might as well have been riding a cloud as a horse. Laughter bubbled out on the steam of her breath, as over her shoulder she glimpsed the benighted Peregrine, whoever he was, going down for the third time.

  From a hilly lie there came a whimper. A patch of geese cackled as hounds waded in. There was no covert for the small brown thing that lurked in the gorse. It broke and slipped through a hedge, down a boreen that led to a house. Hounds followed in full cry, jaws mouthing towards their hunt. Suddenly their cries changed to whines.

  A voice said, ‘Have they made a kill?’

  Sterrin flung herself from her horse, barely conscious of a pain that rent her back. The circle of hounds, no longer baying, were backing away from the body that lay in their midst. She lifted it and held it in her arms.

  ‘They’ve made a kill. Oh, God, they’ve killed the little hunted boy.’

  A voice said, ‘These were not made by hounds.’ It was Bergin who had dismounted beside her. He pointed to the hands manacled behind the boy’s back, to the fingers crusted with blood.

  There was a house nearby in the clearing. A face appeared at the window, then the curtain was drawn. Sterrin looked down at the body of the boy, then her eyes focused on the blood on the lintel and on the ground in front of the door of the house. She looked up at Bergin.

  ‘Who could have done this? Who could have chained him this way?’ Her eyes were hard and unforgiving.

  Bergin dashed for the house. He forced the frightful story from the man and woman who lived there. Twice last night they had hunted the boy away. When he returned the second time they had chained his hands and brought him to his uncle’s door. All night the boy had banged his manacled hands against his uncle’s door. When Bergin returned to where Sterrin still cradled the child’s body on her knee, a neighbour came forward and said that he had heard the wailing, but thought it was the Banshee. Another spoke up and said he had heard a voice crying, ‘Put me on my feet.’

  Sterrin listened to Bergin tell of how the boy had been left to die, pleading for shelter, for humanity, for the right to live.

  Bergin stooped and took the body. As Sterrin attempted to swing herself into the saddle the pain reasserted itself. She jerked on the reins for support. The horse responded and moved forward, dragging her along with one foot in the stirrup. Two men rushed to help her. As they jerked her upwards a wild pain went rending through her, then everything went black.

  Sir Jocelyn watched as the men carried Sterrin upstairs. At brief intervals he rapped on her door and demanded reports from the harassed doctor. Finally he broke in without knocking.

  ‘Is there no hope of saving the child?’

  Faint but clear his wife’s voice answered. ‘The child was already dead when we found him. He had been—’

  ‘Pshaw! That brat!’ He dismissed the dead boy as so much vermin. ‘My child! My child that you have deprived of—’ He looked wildly about to assess what his child had been deprived of. He had been about to say ‘existence’, but it was too meagre a term for the plenitude of life that awaited the being of his creating. Beneath all his sophistry and cynicism he had maintained a superstitious acceptance of the tradition that no child would inherit the property direct. It had zigzagged over the years from one distant relative to another; an oblique heritage. Somehow to him had been vouchsafed the privilege of stabilising the heritage; the founding of a dynasty. His voice spiralled to a scream.

  From her bed, Sterrin had the sensation of having died and was witnessing the judgment of a soul. This man who had held the power of life and death, the dereliction of six hundred lives, stood confronted by the spectacle of his own futility. He was powerless to recall the embryo life that would have crowned his own. She wanted to tell him that he had had a long crack of the whip, that God is not mocked, but her voice sounded calm and assuring as it announced that she would have other children. Her husband was startled into silence, then he turned and let them lead him away. He sensed that it was her own young body that she was reassuring.

  51

  The child’s lonely death sent a throb of horror around the world. In Westminster, Mr. Bright raised his beautiful voice and this time a shocked House listened in moved silence. All over England right-minded men and women clamoured against a government policy that could expose a helpless child to such a fate. Not since the famine had so concerted a feeling pulsed through the nations.

  The American press was outraged. Newspapers edited by men of Irish blood expressed rage and sympathy in terms that an Irish tenant would have been afraid to whisper in his secret heart. Articles were written by young men who had been homeless, evicted boys a decade before. In black captions they dared to cite the names of Irish landlords. They dared to suggest assassination. They urged homeless men who still dared to shelter beneath Irish hedges to rise up against their oppressors.

  It was a misty, muffling afternoon in December when Sterrin drove up the avenue after a round of calls. She was back sooner than was expected. The calls were but a card-leaving and the lamps were not lighted. With a word to the waiting footman she
turned and walked across the lawn where a little gate gave on to the river path.

  It amazed her to see masses of blue beneath the beech trees. She drew near, and hundreds of pigeons that were gorging themselves on the masts they had drawn from the beech sheaths rose up in flight. She looked up at the blue cloud they made. Their long-drawn cooing with the great overtones of their winging made a symphony of muted thunder. She was saddened when a potshot sounded; but no bird fell.

  A few yards further on she came upon her husband’s body.

  For a numbed second she stood looking down. Was this the threatened stroke? A blue-grey feather wafted down and settled on his face. The gentle encroachment defined its white stillness. Jocelyn was dead!

  She dropped to her knees. There was something she must do; something her mother had done when she had held Papa’s dying body in her arms. As she bent to breathe into his ear the prayer for mercy she noticed, as one notices the trivial in the moment of solemnity, the judicially placed curl. The valet had placed it where it would conceal a distorted muscle. She pushed the hair from over his ear and displaced the pomaded curl. It disclosed a bullet hole!

  She raised her head and saw Bergin standing on the path. Her eyes travelled slowly and rested on the gun held so nonchalantly beneath his arm.

  ‘It was you!’ she breathed. Her eyes widened with horror.

  He shrugged. ‘What I killed is back there.’ He gestured over his shoulder. His assurance ridiculed her suspicion. ‘Shall I summon aid—for you?’ he asked.

  ‘I—’ she was about to give a cold refusal; but no words came. The shock was beginning to tell. He raised his hat and replaced it quickly. The respect was for her and not for Death’s presence.

  ‘I shall inform them at the house,’ he said. As he opened the little gate he looked up at the sky. ‘The outriders should have reached there by now,’ he said grimly. ‘No doubts the gates will have been flung wide!’ He passed unhurriedly through the gate to the great mansion. Before his mind flashed a vision of the lashings he had received in that Penal fortress where he had spent his youth and early manhood. His hand unwittingly went to his gashed cheek. ‘I wonder,’ he said. He pulled the bell with great strength. It clanged long after he had given his news.