The Big Wind

by Beatrice Coogan

  A man’s voice spoke to her; not the Major’s, a grating, leaden voice. The wind blew the words away. It keened and moaned above her in the black, indignant trees.

  Bergin touched her arm and she whimpered with pain. The face she turned to him was stunned and horror-stricken; as it had been when he last saw it above the dead boy’s; as it had been when he first saw it, a little girl’s face peeping from a carriage window at the whiplash that had laid open his cheek.

  ‘I’ve come to take you to my house, Lady Devine.’

  He was making no move to help put out the fire. He had brought no workmen as other neighbours were doing. She caught the words and shook her head.

  ‘I must go home.’

  ‘There is no home there to go to.’ He nodded towards the blazing, roaring house.

  ‘Not there. That’s not my home.’ She knew no regret for the great, grand house that opened its doors wide in hospitality to great, grand people and never a welcome, never a crust for the hungry.

  ‘The little children won’t dance there any more. The gridirons have set fire to the house. The little children should have worn musical shoes. They would have protected their flesh. Burned flesh is so painful.’ A low moan shuddered through her.

  Bergin ignored her protests and carried her to the river and his boat. But Sterrin was not deranged. The fire that drove her was not the one that raged back there. She must get to Kilsheelin. It was in danger, and she held its safety.

  On the opposite bank of the river away from the obscene smoke she planted her feet on the cool ground and would not budge. A dark hedge outlined an avenue. Its darkness was the darkness of night, she knew its colour would be green and sane but she would not linger in the house it led to.

  ‘Thank you kindly,’ she said to his urgings, ‘but it is imperative that I get home tonight; if you could afford me transport? As far as Moormount, the Delaneys’ place, would do.’

  ‘I’ll drive you there,’ he said. If he didn’t, he knew that she would try walking it on her scorched feet.

  Mrs. Delaney, the voluble, made no comment at the sight of Sterrin’s face. While Ned Rua, roused from sleep, prepared the carriage, she put cool linen on Sterrin’s arms and painted egg white on her cheeks and on the scorchmarks where the glossy brows used to wing across the white forehead, that was white no longer.

  ‘You’ve lived up to the name the Liberator chose for you, Blaw-na-Sthurrim. Blossom of the storm. Inagh! You’ve known more storm than blossoming; but you’ll know your blossoming yet. I feel it in my bones, grá gal.’

  She kept hushing Sterrin’s thanks.

  ‘But,’ gasped Sterrin, ‘it is for the keys I’m thanking—only for them—one of them unlocked the deeds of Kilsheelin Castle—’ she spoke in jerks and gasps her lips swollen from blisters and sealing with egg white. ‘I didn’t know that he had them. I must get home—’

  ‘Is he after you?’ Mrs. Delaney, startled, cracked an egg on to the carpet.

  Sterrin shook her head. ‘He doesn’t know. I think. I’m not sure, but if I get them to Kilsheelin he can do his damnedest.’

  ‘More power to you, girl!’ Here,’ she splashed a big jorum of whiskey into a tumbler, ‘try and take a sip of this.’ Sterrin tossed the lot down in a gulp. Mrs. Delaney took the empty glass and looked reverently from it to Sterrin.

  ‘Oh, you’ll blossom again all right,’ she said, ‘if your spirit was only half the strength of your swallow, you’ll blossom.’

  52

  The old peacock gave its proud, high scream as Sterrin drove up the avenue to the home of her childhood. The castle was scarcely visible; just a deeper greyness looming out of the greyness of the dawn, but its buttressing arms reached out and enfolded her. And then, out of the clanging awakement, it was her mother’s arms and Dominic’s and Nurse Hogan’s.

  Down in the kitchen the fan wheel was set-to furiously and one by one the eight fires came to life under their cranes. Sleepy servants came towards their glow, buttoning livery and tying aprons and talking in shocked tones about the face that had gone from here in such loveliness less than two years ago. Hannah was put in the butler’s big chair in the inglenook while her shins and hands were tended to. They gave her the soothing herb brew that had sent Miss Sterrin’s Ladyship to sleep, and before it took effect she retold them what she had told Lady O’Carroll about the night’s horror that was like that of the night of the Big Wind; and with the mention of that night of nights they digressed as people always did. Poor Miss Sterrin was lucky to be born that night and they had been disappointed that she had not been the heir, but had not it proved lucky for all of them that she was not? If she hadn’t gone back through the flames a second time to save the deeds after going back to save Hannah they would all be facing the road now. And not one of them, from her Ladyship down, with a solitary notion that the castle was in danger!

  ‘She’s a hero,’ said Mrs. Stacey.

  Mr. Hegarty removed his pipe and requested her not to betray her ignorance. ‘She’s a hero-ess,’ he said.

  ‘’Tis a great credit to God the way he made her,’ Mrs. Stacey continued. ‘There is not her equal in the human world and when she dies the angels will make room before the fire of Heaven for her to warm her purty shins.’ Hannah drew back her own aching shins a little from the heavenly vision.

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed, ‘but you shouldn’t have let her see you make the sign of the cross when you caught sight of her face, and I know she heard you saying that eyebrows never grow again. There was no good in askin’ her to bid the divil good morrow until she has to meet him.’

  Mr. Hegarty rose to his feet and set the staff about their business and threatened, as he had threatened after every exciting disruption of routine for the past twenty-five years, that ‘there would be law and order in this kitchen from this day forth’.

  No pursuer came on the heels of Sterrin’s gallop-by-night. But she was taking no chances. She had them send for Cousin Maurice, and until his arrival the embroidery bag with its incongruously assorted contents lay beside her on the counterpane. No one dared touch it. It had cost her too dear. The doctor kept her under sleep as much as possible but in its intervals she lay in her bandages and relived the moments that, for her, represented the different sums that had made up the purchase price. The wedding night, the terrible night last August, the morning when she lifted the dead boy in her arms; the afternoon when she raised her husband’s murdered body in her arms, arms, arms. She lifted her bandaged arms and the movement brought a groan of pain.

  It was on the sound of her groan that Maurice O’Carroll entered the room. At the sight of her face he barely succeeded in suppressing an exclamation. He forced himself to be hearty and plunged into the matter of the deeds.

  ‘You are sure,’ he asked as he unrolled the parchment, ‘that there was no specific mention of them in the Will?’

  She shook her head; then in slow, pain-filled phrases she told him about the codicil that had been added recently in Dublin. ‘All horses in the stables at Noremount. That let Clooreen out.’ He could see that the grin she essayed was an effort. Ah, the lovely mouth of her; like a flower divided! And the brows that had been as soft and as delicate as moss. What had they done to the sweet, brave colleen?

  ‘The same,’ she went on, ‘with the documents in the library, deeds of certain properties and the titles thereto.’

  ‘Has the heir seen this?’ Maurice tapped the parchment.

  ‘I doubt it. He only arrived the night before the fire, late.’

  ‘I fail to understand,’ Maurice said slowly, his eyes poring over the deeds, ‘why this was not handed over to you after your marriage. It was to have been part of your husband’s settlement upon you. He undertook to clear the mortgage and restore to you the unencumbered property. I simply cannot understand it.’

  A throb of guilt broke the rhythm of Sterrin’s pulse. She could not tell Maurice of all people, that it was Young Thomas, the servant whom he had dismissed, who lay beh
ind all the bitterness that had terminated in merciless reprisal against them all.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Maurice, rolling up the parchment, ‘you’ve got it back, grá gal, and let anyone try taking it from you again. No gentleman would lay claim to this in the circumstances. But let him try and by God, I’ll call him out; law or no law.’

  Sterrin dragged herself upward. ‘If you don’t,’ she said grimly, ‘I will.’

  He put her back gently.

  ‘You’ve done more than your share, child. What you have to do now is to get well.’ He ran his fingers through where the silky curls used to cluster over her forehead but they recoiled from the scorched stubble that they encountered.

  When he had gone Sterrin asked for a hand mirror. Her cousin’s repressed start when he entered the room had not gone unnoticed. This was what Hannah had been dreading.

  ‘Miss Sterrin,’ she pleaded, ‘haven’t you had enough excitement for one day?’

  ‘Is the first glimpse of my face after so long to prove another excitement?’

  Hannah busied herself picking up things as though she had not heard.

  ‘Hannah,’ called Sterrin as sweetly as her puffed lips would allow. ‘Do you remember when I had measles and you covered the mirror when I asked to see my spots. You said that it was Hallowe’en and that if I looked in the mirror on that day I might see the devil. What are you afraid that I might see now?’

  ‘Miss Sterrin’s Ladyship, it is the way that the doctor said you are to sleep as much as possible that you have had a great shock and that—’

  ‘And that if I see my face I’ll get another shock. Hand me over that mirror.’

  A long-drawn wail of horror brought Maurice and Lady O’Carroll hurrying up from the drawing-room. Sterrin was lying face downwards, her whole body heaving with deep, hoarse sobs, her bandaged hand still clutching the mirror.

  Days became weeks. She studied the mirror by the hour, hoping for the improvement that the doctor promised her, though he doubted it himself. At last, Hannah suggested to her what she had suggested in desperation to Sir Roderick the night of the Big Wind, when no doctor could travel and Miss Sterrin near losin’ her fight to be born; that they call in Mag Miney.

  The old woman had reached the landing from the back stairs when Lady O’Carroll spied her. The sight of her brought back to Margaret the sight and the smell of the rancid butter with its growth of greenish black fur that Mag, after delivering Sterrin was about to apply when the doctor arrived and bundled her out. And now, before she could reach Sterrin’s door, she was bundled out again.

  Her mother’s display of authority prompted Sterrin’s first urge towards the renewing of her life. ‘Get me into my clothes, Hannah. We’ll go to old Mag. I didn’t haul this castle back under my arm after being near roasted alive just to return to being treated like a child again.’

  But at the cottage she shuddered away from the evil-smelling concoction made mostly of stale, thick goat’s milk on which a hairy fur had grown.

  ‘The cure is in that hairy fur, your Honour’s Ladyship.’

  But Sterrin would not tolerate it near her face. At last she yielded to an application on her arms. On the way home she for-got its smelly presence in the first sight of the great boglands rising up behind the castle. She had missed the bogs in Kilkenny. The spring bustle of farming was in progress. Ploughmen were shearing through the black soil, the great, patient horses pulling; crows solemnly following the freshly turned furrows and the sowers moving in harmony, dipping into the great slings about their shoulders and making the wide, splendid, ritual gesture of sowing the grain. She looked at the home that had seen her birth and the birth of her ancestors; great-hearted, heroic men. The other home that she had seen die in its flames had been but a lodging. Here was peace. Here was hospitality. Here, old servants lived happily. And by the heels of Christ they’ll go on living happily here! Did that upstart back in Kilkenny dare to think that he would ever warm his backside here? He nor his that had never fought an inch for it; never spilled blood as Normans and Elizabethans and Cromwellians had, to win themselves a lien on the earth of Kilsheelin! The cure had started, not in her arms but in her spirit.

  After a few visits to Mag the dreadful scarifying marks on her arms seemed to grow less, but nothing would induce her to endure the filthy mess upon her face. She took to wearing a veil when she rode abroad on Clooreen and, at sight of anyone she knew, drew it down over her face. Once as she rode, unveiled, up to Coolnafunchion, savouring the cool, fresh breath of the air upon her cheeks, a horseman slowed towards her and raised his Caroline. A thrill of pleasure shot through her as she recognised Donal Keating but it was stilled at birth by the recollection of her lost beauty. She tugged the veil down over her disfigured face and rode past him without a sign of recognition.

  He gazed after her, stunned. Oh, but this was too much. Was she starting her capricious tricks again? Only a few short months ago and they were corresponding amicably over the disposal of the Brennan children. And now, not even a thank-you for his trouble in getting those little girls off to America while she was ill.

  *

  Kitty took the newspaper from the post-cart driver. ‘Here, Dorene,’ she said to the quiet figure waiting in the doorway, ‘give this to Thomas. The driver tells me there has been some big landlord assassinated in Ireland.’

  Some time later Kitty came into the sitting-room saying, ‘Who was the landlord, Thomas?’

  ‘Oh, Madame Hennessey,’ exclaimed Dorene, ‘I have been too busy pleading with Thomas to take me with him to see the house that he is building on his land in the South.’

  ‘What is the use when you won’t be able to see it,’ said Norisheen brutally. Kitty frowned at her warningly.

  ‘The weather is cold for you to travel so far,’ she said to Dorene. In emphasis, she threw a quite unnecessary log on the fire. ‘And indeed for you too, Thomas, after your long tour, would you not wait till the spring?’

  Dorene lifted her head from Thomas’s shoulder. ‘But, Madame Hennessey, we must get our house started. We cannot stay with you indefinitely.’

  Thomas answered Kitty as though Dorene had not spoken. ‘I am booked up for the rest of the winter, right into the middle of spring. Besides,’ his tone became less explanatory, ‘my—kinsman expects me.’

  Kitty stepped back from the scorching flames that suddenly held a shiver of bleakness, like the east wind’s breath filtering through the May sunshine. She had hoped that with Miss Sterrin’s marriage he would have given up this dream of building one of those old colonial mansions on the land that he had purchased when he first toured the South. The South had seemed so far away, so improbable to Kitty when she had been all of home and kin to Thomas. But now that he had traced this O’Carroll kin somewhere in the region of his own property, it was ‘my kinsman’ expects me!

  The irrepressible Norisheen mimicked his words. ‘“My kinsman expects me.” Hoity-toity, let no dog bark!’

  Thomas burst out laughing then turned to Dorene. ‘I’ve told you Dorene, it is a long journey and it has got to be a quick one. I cannot be—’ he stopped as he was about to say ‘hampered’ and now he wanted to be alone, untrammelled when, for the first time in his life, he would meet someone in whose veins ran the same blood as in his own. ‘I shall be very busy in New York, signing and attesting and what-not for my citizenship.’ He had postponed seeking out American citizenship until he had finally established his identity. Not under a nickname reversed would he register himself as a citizen of America.

  ‘Pleece, Tòmas, pleece!’ Dorene linked his arm and entwined her fingers in his. He gently extricated himself and left the room. After a moment Dorene followed him, sure-footed in the space that had been left clear of obstacles for her progress from the sofa beyond the fireplace to the door.

  ‘I believe,’ said Norisheen, ‘that she waves those hands of hers helplessly in front of him, just to impress on him how pretty they are. She’s always creaming them and buffing he
r nails.’

  ‘Hush, Norisheen,’ Kitty answered. ‘She has as much right to titivate as you have. It is good that she has the heart to. When a woman loses her vanity she loses her flavour.’ She picked up the newspaper from behind the cushion where Dorene had sat.

  ‘Well,’ said Norisheen, ‘I think that she piles on that foreign accent.’

  Kitty didn’t answer. She was deep in the newspaper’s account of the assassination of Sir Jocelyn Devine. That night, she wrote to New York to Fintan, her brother, who had left Ireland in Repeal Year and studied by night after his day’s labour, to make himself a solicitor.

  *

  Marcus O’Carroll read aloud the document that Thomas handed him—the accomplishment of the odyssey that had brought him on his long journey.

  ‘...and we, Richard and Dermot Rourke of Molesworth Street, Dublin and The Parade, Kilkenny, Notaries by Royal authority, do hereby testify that according to references made in the record office of the Exchequer concerning... hm... hm... and attesting the accuracy of extracts made from the cantelury of the monastery of Holy Cross and papers in the public archives in Paris... Thomas O’Carroll to be a gentleman recognised reputed and qualified by parentage... issue of the illustrious house and family of O’Carroll...’ The American looked over the top of the document, ‘And you claim to be this Thomas O’Carroll?’

  Thomas felt sorry that he had come here. He crossed his legs and took out his cigarettes. ‘May I smoke?’ He leaned back and gestured towards the document. ‘That Thomas O’Carroll was my father and I did not come here to make claims—’

  But his host was on his feet, proffering cigars, pulling the bell-rope for refreshments; making up for his initial reserve. Even without the credentials he had been favourably impressed; but one had to move guardedly. His family had had no truck with the acting profession. And the Irish were great ones for claiming greatness.

  ‘I’ve come at this particular time,’ Thomas started, but his new kinsman held up his hand in sudden enlightenment.