The Big Wind

by Beatrice Coogan

  Maryjoe disappeared at last and Margaret douched the fig tree. ‘In future,’ she remarked, ‘you must drink your medicine. Is that the gentleman who wrote “My Dark Rosaleen”?’ She opened a little gold casket and popped a chocolate into her mouth. ‘I prefer the poetry of the other gentleman who writes for the “Nation”. I doted on his poem about Owen Roe O’Neill.’

  Roderick looked at her in amazement. ‘The Lament For Owen Roe O’Neill’, the first ballad Mr. Davis had written, was designed solely for the purpose of rousing patriotic fire... ‘May God wither up their hearts!’, it clamoured. ‘May their blood cease to flow. May they walk in living death who murdered Owen Roe’. Hardly the kind of thing to appeal to a lady like Margaret who vapoured at the mention of blood.

  ‘Will you tell me, mo craiveen cno, why do you, of all people, say that you dote on such blood-curdling fare?’

  ‘What does “mo craiveen cno” mean?’

  ‘It means literally, my cluster of nuts. Figuratively, it means my nut-brown maid. That’s you. Answer my question.’

  He was disappointed when she explained that her interest was merely because of an association. Some Belgian school friends who were descendants of Owen Roe had been full of legends about Earl O’Neill.

  ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘is that all! I had hoped it stirred some flame deep below that calm and pearly surface.’

  She watched him silently as he eased his shapely figure into his body coat and smoothed down its velvet lapels. She flicked his silk ruffles into place. ‘Roderick, you are disappointed. I lack that—flamme you speak of.’

  He held her at arms length gazing into those enormous brown eyes. ‘My share of the world, my nut-brown maid, in your tranquil depths I am completely at peace. As for flamme, you have more than enough to consume me.’

  She couldn’t leave it at that. She couldn’t resist that age-old question to which Adam was the only man who could give a truthful negative. ‘Was I really the first woman in your life? Surely there must have been someone before—before I skated into your view? Some of these dashing horsewomen you so admire out hunting. I’m so terrified of horses!’

  Funny she should mention that! As though thinking aloud, he had reminisced about a girl he had once seen in the hunting field. He had assisted her when her horse stumbled and she became unseated. For an exciting moment they had ridden stirrup to stirrup and then—the scene came back. He forgot Margaret; forgot his surroundings and saw a laughing sprite tossing a gay glance over her shoulders at him from tiptilted eyes before she disappeared into a spinney.

  ‘Was she pretty?’

  ‘M’m. Her eyes were’— he almost said ‘unforgettable’. After all, their unforgettableness had been drowned in the limpid depths of the wonderful brown eyes that were gazing up at him now.

  A brief encounter: but it had been his initiation to romance. Over-serious for his age from a lonely childhood bereft of brothers and sisters; burdened too soon with responsibility, he had known a moment of shattering joy when he had picked the little hunts-woman from the ground. Instead of setting her upon her feet he had gone on holding her in his arms while someone steadied her mount. She had spoken to him from the saddle, but he had been too intent upon watching her eyes. Yes, they were unforgettable; they held three colours merged into a woodland hazel that was not of autumn but of spring when the bluebells—green-sheathed—tinted the brown tree boles. ‘Her eyes were—what?’ He came back to the brown eyes that probed, apprehensive of that moment of past romance. ‘I’m not certain, but I am positive that yours are—glorious.’

  But she must probe deeper. ‘And did you meet her afterwards?’

  ‘Never.’

  Margaret did not fail to note the wistfulness in the word that betrayed a bygone regret. ‘What was her name?’

  ‘Mansfield, I believe. What does it matter? Now I have you.’ He kissed her. ‘Mo cuid de’n saoghail! My share of the world. My completely satisfying share of the world.’ He gave her a little push. ‘Be off now and put your hair in curling rags until tomorrow night.’

  ‘Curling rags! Tiens! There is a very grand hairdresser coming tomorrow afternoon to curl me before I dress.’ But inside her Margaret felt something like a shiver. It had been a near thing; that encounter with the hunting miss.

  ‘I think that she went back to school.’

  So he was still thinking of her! Of his hunting miss! Thank heavens she had had to return to school! Margaret could too readily envisage Roderick watching the girl, entranced: as he had watched her when he saw her that first time skating over the frozen lake in the park at Anvers.

  He didn’t think it necessary to tell her that the lovely little face under the feathered riding hat had tossed its beckoning eyes into his dreams. That he had ridden his horse exhausted to trace where she lived—to the banks of the Ara River where her house stood in its enclasping trees. But the woodland sprite had vanished forever.

  Its apparition still made a haunting in Margaret as she dressed for her shopping expedition.

  ‘What colour was her hair?’ He put an arm about her waist and drew her down the stairs.

  ‘Whose hair? Oh! fair, I think.’

  ‘And, was it straight or curly?’ Roderick hadn’t dreamed that his passing recollection would have aroused such a passion of curiosity.

  ‘I—forget.’ A sudden vision of wind-tossed curls glinted across his memory. ‘Curly, I think.’ He put a finger on the smooth brown coils beneath her bonnet. ‘Forget her, my cluster of brown nuts. She will never trouble you; a wraith of forgotten memory! You are my reality.’

  The cousins, cloaked and bonneted, watched them descend the stairs, his arm about her waist. ‘They are so in love!’ they breathed, unanimous in thought and word and wistful longings undefined.

  Hester stuck her head out of the carriage to ask Roderick if he had taken the potion. Roderick assured her that he had. Then Sarah’s head came out and she said that her dear papa always said that it went to his very roots whenever he felt indisposed the morning after he had—after he had entertained gentlemen to supper!

  Roderick assured her that it had gone to the roots of this morning’s recipient. ‘My anxious spouse saw to that. Didn’t you, Margaret?’ He gestured the coachman on and as he turned back to the door his eye fell on the knocker. ‘By Jove, solid gold!’ He examined the heavy ring held in the mouth of a lion. It was tempting Providence, he thought, to allow that to hang there in these modern times when no footman slept inside the door on his trestle bed. A good thing the knocker-snatching young subalterns from Templetown were not knocking about!

  He had scarcely closed the door before a knocker-snatching young subaltern from Templetown grasped the ring, then halted in surprise. ‘By Jove, solid gold!’

  On the inside, Roderick heard his words thrown back and wondered if the door held an echo like that place in Killarney. He reopened it just as Lieutenant Fitzharding-Smith was about to let the ring crash against the lion’s brazen neck. ‘I wouldn’t advise you to try any funning with that,’ was his greeting.

  Lieutenant Fitzharding-Smith felt that the greeting was not in the tradition of Fine Old Irish Hospitality. ‘Oh, sir, I wouldn’t dream of anything like that.’

  ‘No, by all accounts you don’t waste time dreaming in the presence of door knockers. You act, forcibly.’

  Roderick continued to stand in the doorway.

  ‘It was such a fine morning,’ the lieutenant said, puzzled by Roderick’s discourtesy, ‘that I thought I’d take a walk in this charming square. I had no idea it was so close to Mr. Gresham’s.’

  Sir Roderick looked significantly at the dove-grey moistness of the unbeckoning morn. ‘Too bad that you’ve missed the ladies. They’ve gone shopping. I was about to fill in these cards for the Levée and Drawing-room,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, please don’t let me detain you,’ said the guest. He went on detaining him, then looked with amazement at the parcel he was holding in his hand as though he wondered how it had come
to be there. ‘These are chocolates. I thought that Sterrin might like them.’

  Roderick was finding his own discourtesy a strain.

  ‘Won’t you come in a while?’

  ‘I mustn’t detain you,’ said the lieutenant, promptly following him into the dining-room. Roderick moved to the sideboard. ‘Brandy, say you? It is such a fine—such a raw morning. Or would you prefer claret?’

  The officer preferred brandy. The Dublin claret, he thought, compared unfavourably with the claret in the South of Ireland and particularly with that served at Kilsheelin Castle. The young gentleman considered that deucedly splendid claret!

  Roderick thawed. He considered the Dublin claret was hog-wash. But he did not think it necessary to explain that the Kilsheelin brand came by night off a French boat to a Waterford cove called Straud-na-Coaleen, whose full name and meaning was The Strand of the Little Peoples’ Music. An underground cave and passage from the fairies’ strand conveyed it to cellars of his uncle’s home there. Instead, he called out to Sterrin who was passing the door.

  She came in dressed in her fur-trimmed cloak of green velvet, and curtsied. Each of them felt as he gazed at the perfect features set in gleaming red curls so admirably framed in her green hood, that he was looking not at just a lovely child but at the beginnings of a poised and lovely lady. She carried two sticks pointed at each end. Big John, she explained, had whittled them for her so that she could play tipcat with the children in the park. Lieutenant Fitzharding-Smith handed her the parcel. ‘These are for a good little girl,’ he said, feeling that he was talking like an impertinent buffoon.

  ‘I’m afraid I have been rather good since I came to Dublin,’ said Sterrin in a tone that suggested there was no possibility here of being otherwise. She undid the parcel and gasped at the sight of the satin-covered box, then she looked up at him seriously.

  ‘But this is a grown-up lady’s box. Is it really for me?’

  Her papa hastened to assure her that it was. Who else would Lieutenant Fitzharding-Smith want to bring such a nice box of chocolates to? I’ll hold a crown, he thought, that they were never intended for Sterrin.

  In an excess of gratitude Sterrin invited the young officer to join her for a game of tipcat in the park. He accepted with unexpected alacrity. It would give him an excuse to escort Sterrin back to the house later.

  Into his damned burrow, thought Roderick, as he made his way to the study at the top of the house. A queer place to have a study! Number nine was not really a terrace house. It had stood here before the square had been erected. It held nooks and crannies not required by modern life.

  Roderick sauntered round the room examining the floral designs on the bog oak panelling. Suddenly, there was a clicking sound under his fingers and the panel gave way, revealing a room exactly like the study, the same sloping ceiling and panelled walls, except that in the ceiling there was a large skylight window.

  This must be the room where his grandfather’s marriage had taken place. It was bare of furniture except for a low tapestry-covered seat, a chair and a plain chest of drawers made of bog oak, but without any carving or adornment. Roderick ran his fingers over the top surface until he found what he suspected, a spring that lifted the plain top, revealing below a beautifully-carved altar piece. It was a relic from the Penal days when the Protestant O’Carrolls made it possible for their Catholic kinsmen to have Mass there, and a look-out warned them of danger so that the lid went down hurriedly upon an innocuous looking chest and the priest made his escape through the skylight.

  He opened all the drawers and rummaged through them until he found another spring that released a panel. From behind it he drew two dust covered miniatures and a small, thick diary.

  When the dust, almost hard from damp, had been scraped away from the miniatures he looked at his grandfather’s face. Except for the elaborately curled wig, and, yes, the contours of the face were a little softer, the lips a trifle fuller, Roderick felt that he might be looking at his own portrait. The second miniature held his grandmother’s lovely face framed by her famous black ringlets.

  Roderick leafed through the diary. It was his grandfather’s. Much of it was in French, but there were a few references to ‘Straud-na-Coaleen’ that Roderick had been thinking about scarcely an hour ago. There were references to hours and tides and a few times the name of a boat and its skipper and its cargoes of silk and brandy and wine. One item had such a nonchalant and unrevealing tone that Roderick wondered that his grandfather had troubled to record the event—‘June sixteenth, year of Our Lord Seventeen seventy-nine I did give satisfaction to Asculph O’Flaherty this morning in the Barley Fields below the Rotunda Gardens where Dr. Mosse has his lying-in hospital. His pistols were more than one foot long. Like all Galway gentlemen his skill lies in the sword. Pray God he recovers.’ Your pious prayers, it seems were not answered, Roderick recalled.

  The next day’s item followed in unemotional routine, ‘June seventeenth, I was married to Miss Beamon Blake at my brother’s new house in Dublin—’ A light filtered through into Roderick’s mind. Miss Blake penniless, but beautiful, had been a Galway lady; from an estate close to that of the hapless Asculph whose skill, to his misfortune, had lain in the sword. The duel and the marriage were not unrelated!

  ‘—The ceremony was performed by Mr. O’Loughlin at nine o’clock at night, he then leaving by the roof to ride by night to my Uncle John’s estate at Annestown in the County Waterford to await the “Françoise” for Bordeaux, he not being a registered priest. I gave my wife a diamond necklace from the sale of the oaks by the field of the Hungry Grass. The design was in keeping. She looked pretty in a white damask redingote and a petticoat. I was bravely dressed in a buff cloth suit with waistcoat of satin, much trimmed with gold—’ And as though conscience had pricked at the despoiling of the land, there was a note in brackets. ‘(With the slackening of the Penal savageries there is scarcely the old need for the concealment of our existence in a dark cloak of forestry. “He that troubleth his house,” saith the proverb of the bravely dressed and likewise gold-vested Solomon, “shall inherit the wind”.)’ Only, thought Roderick, rising to his feet, it was I who inherited the wind. Not even the demned necklace. Wonder what became of it! It had not been among the meagre jewels he had taken over from his own mother. There had never been a reference to the necklace. Probably sold to meet some other eventuality! He pushed the diary far back into the concealed nook and his fingers gripped something cold. It was a necklace of diamond oak leaves strung together by links of gold and with a cluster of diamond acorns forming a pendant. The design is in keeping! In keeping with the oaks; not with the lady’s dress as Roderick had assumed. ‘Grandpapa,’ he breathed, ‘I—I almost apologise for questioning your prodigality. You loved her very beautifully—your Beamon!’ The necklace appeared to have been pushed hurriedly and unexpectedly out of sight. His grandfather must have been compelled to make one of his hurried flights from the country. Possibly on account of that duel...

  Roderick hurried excitedly to the stairhead as the butler was admitting the ladies. Then he frowned. Lieutenant Fitzharding-Smith, holding Sterrin’s hand, had arrived at the same moment. Blast the young squirt! He needn’t think he was going to introduce the Templetown garrison customs into his household. It might be bon ton for officers’ wives to have a sort of cupidon déchaîné, in the form of a young subaltern, in tow. But this would not do for his wife!

  He pocketed the diamond plantation. The news of his dramatic discovery must wait.

  Later he realised that the young officer’s presence had saved him from releasing the diamonds like a charge of bullets. The cousins themselves might have hidden them there for safety. For some reason or other, the diamonds must have been willed to them. But the ladies, when they heard of them, were as surprised as he had been. Who but Roderick had a right to them, they said? The diamond leaves and acorns of the Kilsheelin oaks! Miss Sarah suggested that he keep them a secret from Margaret until she was dressed a
nd ready for her Presentation the next night. Roderick agreed, but he whistled as he bounded up the stairs, and sang as he dressed for this evening’s dinner party at the Liberator’s great house in Merrion Square.

  There had been times when deep in the pre-Celtic roots of his being Roderick had wished that he had not cut the hawthorn trees that used to grow in the field of the Hungry Grass. He knew well that the servants and tenants and even some of the neighbouring gentry attributed the field’s misadventure to his own high-handedness with that mystic circle and all that it might enclose.

  Now, he felt something ridiculously like relief to know that it was his romantic grandfather who had exposed the field to the merry orgies of the Big Wind. But as he rode with Margaret to dinner at Mr. O’Connell’s town house in Merrion Square he felt as though a sparkle from the romanticism of that superb recklessness had suddenly shone out through the years to englamour his love for his own wife.

  Margaret was conscious of his suppressed excitement but she put it down to the general excitement that was abroad since Mr. O’Connell’s dramatic announcement. He had stated publicly that this very year of 1843 would see the repeal of the Act of Union. The announcement had sent a wild, concerted throb of hope through all the populace. At every street corner that they passed, glee-men were singing the songs they had composed overnight to commemorate the announcement. Their ragged children were doing a roaring trade selling the printed version at a penny a sheet.

  The usual crowd of sightseers, native and foreign, that waited nightly for a glimpse of the great man had swelled tonight to a multitude. The gig lights twinkled on the livery facings of the Liberator’s servants as they went from carriage to carriage, haranguing the onlookers and forging a path for the guests.

  Roderick’s spirits responded to the surging hope. ‘The Repeal for 1843!’ cried the crowd. Why not? he thought! Must Ireland’s agony drag on till the world itself dissolves? At some time, in some year, it must end. Why not 1843? As he crossed the hall in the wake of the servants he felt as though he were moving bodily towards the starting point of some new and glorious era.