The Big Wind

by Beatrice Coogan

  ‘Of the house?’

  ‘Don’t be absurd. Lady O’Carroll! Of the—the THING! And to think,’ she wept, ‘that the Lord Lieutenant never saw it.’

  ‘The—the THING?’ choked Margaret.

  ‘Lady O’Carroll! How could you? As if His Excellency would look at—No, I mean my bonnet-babet-blonde. I had hoped it would be the first to be seen in Ireland. They were only starting to be the rage in Paris when we were leaving there. And as for my Marie Antoinette—’ She broke down completely. The fate of the gown à la Marie Antoinette was too much for her. It was intended to electrify the guests at the Melon Show, the great outdoor event that highlighted the Dublin season. According to its great Parisian designer, the gown was a daring innovation that ‘permitted the ankles to be glimpsed’.

  And here, hadn’t the rain driven the guests indoors? And Mrs. Kennedy-Sherwin found herself jostled into a nook in an upper corridor where the gown itself was not glimpsed, much less the provocative ankles it had dared to reveal.

  ‘Just think,’ she sobbed, ‘of my having to arrive bareheaded in the full afternoon! I shall never lift my head again!’

  ‘You were brave,’ soothed Margaret, ‘to face it at all with your head uncovered.’

  ‘And her ankles uncovered!’ said Lady Cullen, appearing round the screen. ‘There is, after all, a Providence that designs our ends; both ends!’

  That evening in the drawing-room Captain Kennedy-Sherwin was telling Roderick about the stampede at the Melon Show when word came, just as the refreshments were being handed round, that the host, Lord Cloncurry and several other gentlemen including the Liberator and his son, had been deprived of their office as Magistrate.

  ‘By gad, that is a portentous move. It is the first step that the government has taken against the Repeal Movement—’

  ‘It has ruined my Marie Antoinette gown from Paris,’ said Mrs. Kennedy-Sherwin emerging from the screen. Sir Roderick swept her a bow, ‘And what,’ he asked her, ‘is the latest from Paris, apart from that exquisite gown?’

  ‘In Paris,’ the Captain interposed, ‘the talk, as in Dublin, is all Repeal. The leader of the French radicals, Ledru Rollins has announced his intention of coming to Dublin to present in person the big sum of money that his party has collected for the cause.’

  ‘Repeal indeed!’ shrilled Mrs. Kennedy-Sherwin. ‘Everyone of the “haut ton” is more concerned with the scandal of the Comtesse de Clery locked out on a balcony with His Majesty with nothing but her satin gown à la Marie Antoinette—the dernier cri in fashion, that permits the petticoat to be glimpsed underneath.’

  ‘Hmph!’ said Lady Cullen, who was in Dublin trousseau-shopping for her niece Patricia. ‘It is just as well that she is not coming here. Dublin balconies can be very chilly during a Repeal reception; and so can Dublin hostesses, should they catch their menfolk “glimpsing” the petticoats of their lady guests.’

  ‘Repeal receptions,’ cried La Petite. ‘One might as well be gowned “à la red petticoat” for all those repealers note of a lady’s gown. It is amazing the way politics divert gentlemen from their normal interests.’

  Some of the French party had arrived already. Americans, who had attended the week-long meeting in New York addressed by the President and had heard his threat to seize Canada with American arms if force was used against the repeal movement, were thronging into Dublin. So were English statesmen. Extra boats brought English holiday makers. There was to be a great rally at Tara.

  ‘Roderick, could I not travel to Tara with you,’ pleaded Margaret, ‘while the road is still clear?’ Roderick was going in his official capacity as Warden in the Liberator’s cortège. It would be a gruelling journey and Margaret’s pale and peaky looks made him fear another of her wild spasms.

  ‘My darling, there is no such thing as a clear road within twenty-five miles of Tara. People have been bivouacking in the fields for days past. Look at these.’ They were driving through Sackville Street where formations of dust-grimed figures streamed endlessly by, as though they had marched through many nights to the Assumption Day meeting. An event, he thought, to speak of to one’s sons. ‘Though I vow,’ he said aloud, ‘that I should like Sterrin to witness it. It will be an epic of history. Perhaps we could go the canal route. I’ll try to find a way.’

  He found the Grand Canal harbour and a long stretch of the canal packed with gaily decorated flyboats from the Barrow and Suir and even the Shannon. They had cruised up through Munster and Leinster and dropped their passengers at points of vantage, then continued on to Dublin to ply for more. But every seat and space was sold out.

  As Big John watched the Sir moving from boat to boat through disappointed crowds he spied a limping figure that he recognised. He was the skipper of a canal boat and was the same Carney that had lost his shebeen the night of the Big Wind. He tossed the reins to Joseph and talked with his old acquaintance. He pointed to Sterrin and reminisced of his experience on the night of her birth.

  ‘And you tell me she was born in that storm?’

  The skipper saluted Roderick. ‘Your coachman has told me of your Honour’s difficulty.’ He dropped his voice. ‘There’s talk of running a new barge on Assumption Eve. There are no bookings for there’s nothing fixed— But your Honour’s name will be the first down. A fine Milesian name for such a journey.’ He saluted Sterrin. ‘We’ll weather the storm again, Little Lady.’

  But there was no storm. It was a golden day when the sound of the harbour clock, striking two, drew a long, musical blast over the waters and streets from the postillion’s bugle. He squared his shoulders in the new blue livery, drew his whip downwards across the towing horse and out into the waters slipped the Colleen Bawn at a good four miles an hour. Cheering crowds on either bank wished her Godspeed on her maiden voyage, and incoming boats sounded courtesy blasts. Rowing boats gave the only impression of movement and the sun, glittering on the harp of the Repeal flag, gave the suggestion of a flutter on the Colleen Bawn’s pennants.

  ‘We are going to take a speed test between the twelfth and thirteenth lock,’ announced Sterrin, returning from her proud position beside the skipper.

  Margaret had dozed from the somnolent heat and the gentle movement and the incessant muffled thud of the Repeal marchers on the grassy banks. Sometimes the formation would break and banners were unshouldered while the thirsty and exhausted sat round three-legged pots over picnic fires. The smell of home-cured bacon cooking on bolsters of cabbage challenged the strong fragrance from hedgerow and hayfield.

  When the Colleen emerged into the thirteenth lock even Repeal yielded place to the speed test. The skipper grasped the steering lever and fixed his eyes on the great turnip watch suspended from a nail before him. An elderly English Earl brought forth his gold repeater. Other gentlemen did likewise. And foreigners, thinking it was part of the Repeal agitation, solemnly produced their watches. The skipper of Lord Cloncurry’s boat, where it stood in readiness at the private landing of his country estate, gave a courtesy blast to the Colleen that nearly upended her tow horse and diverted her course. But the thirteenth lock was achieved with a flourish and a triumphant blast and the captain announced an average speed of four and a half miles an hour. When the cheering ceased and flagons had been distributed with the Company’s compliments, the Earl said they would have clocked five miles per hour only for that damned horn that upset the tow horse.

  The skipper agreed and returned to his instructions from this amazing young lady who was born the night he lost his old home. It had never dawned on him that moths and butterflies had names and significance until she pointed to a butterfly that had lighted on his steering arm.

  ‘That’s called “Skipper” like you,’ she remarked. ‘It’s a male butterfly, you know,’ and then proceeded to enlighten him about Meadow Browns and Green Artillerys and Red Admirals until a little old woman in a big white apron loomed up and demanded her American letter. The boat slowed while the captain harangued Mrs. McNally.

 
; Did she think that the Colleen Bawn on her maiden voyage, bearing the Quality from all ends of the earth to Tara of the Kings, should slow up to deliver Mrs. McNally’s letter from her daughter in America?

  Mrs. McNally did. ‘And the two loaves of baker’s bread I left word you were to pick up for me at the thirteenth lock.’

  The skipper nearly hit the bank. ‘Are you aware that between the twelfth and thirteenth locks there was history being made? The Colleen Bawn achieved a speed never before accomplished by any vessel on these waters. She made five miles an hour.’

  Mrs. McNally looked pathetically at the letter in her hand. The skipper was pulling out without reading it. The postillion urged the horse from a walk to a trot and Mrs. McNally had to run alongside to keep up.

  ‘Sure there’s no one left in the townland that could read it for me,’ she pleaded. ‘They are all gone to Tara and there’s none left but a handful of children to help me to milk all the neighbours’ cows and feed their stock.’

  ‘I’ll read it on the way back.’ But she urged that she’d die with the dint of waiting to know how her daughter fared.

  ‘And the child expected and all! At my age,’ she urged, ‘the next day might never come at all.’

  ‘She’s quite right,’ said the English Earl who, along with Sterrin, had taken up a position next to the captain. ‘The old may not indulge in the luxury of postponement. Read the woman’s letter.’

  Margaret, with all due sympathy to the old lady, considered this a bit high-handed. The skipper pondered a suitable comment about the Grand Canal Company’s time to quell Lord-do-as-I-tell-you when Sterrin tapped him and said, ‘Please read the poor old woman’s letter.’

  ‘Dear Mother,’ he read. ‘I hope this finds you as it leaves me, a bit weak after the birth but in good health...’

  ‘Thanks be to God,’ cried Mrs. McNally. ‘Is it a boy or a child?’

  The skipper glanced over the top of the page and resumed.

  ‘Michael John was on special duty at the big meeting here in New York in aid of Repeal...’ Cheers burst from the craning heads in the Steerage while the captain courteously explained to the First Class that Michael John was the writer’s husband and a policeman.

  ‘Go on,’ urged the old woman.

  ‘Go on,’ said the Steerage.

  ‘He was that near to Mr. Tyler who is the President of America that he could have put out his hand and touched him. “On the question of Irish Repeal,” said the President, “I am no halfway man”.’

  The skipper paused for the cheers from the First and Steerage to subside. He was beginning to enjoy his position.

  ‘Go on!’ yelled the Steerage. ‘What does she say next?’

  ‘She says,’ he resumed, ‘“did you get the woollen combinations I sent?’” Mrs. McNally nodded repeatedly.

  ‘Indeed, ’twas them kept the life in me last winter. ’Twas only in the real hot weather of last week’—her eyes, unquesting, met those of the Earl’s, ‘that I left them off.’

  The Earl bowed. ‘I should think it would be good weather for washing them too!’

  She agreed. ‘They’d dry in a night, but,’ she turned back to the skipper, ‘you didn’t say yet if it is a child or a boy?’

  The skipper frowned in perplexity. ‘It’s neither—or else it’s spelled wrong. D-a-n-i-e-l-l-e, after the Liberator I suppose...’

  Quite unexpectedly the elegant Lady O’Carroll intervened with the information that Danielle was a girl’s name. ‘The feminine of Daniel.’

  ‘Did she say how she got over the confinement?’ urged Mrs. McNally.

  ‘There’s details in that, not fit for public hearing. There’s been enough of indelicate things aired.’

  He pulled out midstream though the voices of the Steerage protested that ‘they’ had not been washed much less aired.

  Down in the cushioned saloon the pint of wine that accompanied the regular four-and-tenpenny dinner of turkey and boiled ham and mutton was extended without limit and there were sweetmeats and all kinds of dainties. The party grew more friendly as it dwindled to disembark passengers at private landing stages where gaily decorated boats awaited the morrow’s journey. On drifted the boat in a haze of golden sunset. The marchers on the bank merged into the velvety darkness. Their grass-muffled footfalls sounded the heart beat of a nation. Music spurted from the hayfields and waned into distant roads. From a narrow country road a torchlight procession wended its way over a bridge. Lights, gleaming through the boughs on every shoulder, gave the impression of an illuminated forest moving through the darkness. Out from its curtain veil stepped that incurable romantic, the moon, and it bade the martial airs give place to love songs.

  ‘It reminds me of Venice,’ said the voice of the Earl. From the floorboards, with her head on her mother’s knee, the sleepy voice of Sterrin murmured, ‘I wish Young Thomas were here.’

  As Roderick drove through dawn-hazed Dublin to the Mass in the privileged oratory of the Liberator’s town house, he had the impression that the familiar streets had been transformed into forest glades. The fantasy persisted in the bouquet of flowers handed by a pretty girl to each guest of the breakfast party given in honour of the Liberator by Mr. McGarry of Baggot Street. When the corner of his eye caught a colourful figure in the balcony of the dining-room window, Roderick thought for a frivolous moment he was seeing the Marie Antoinette gown that ‘graciously permitted the petticoats to be glimpsed’. But when the host appeared with the Liberator a burst of bardic music brought into view a full-dress harpist who played throughout the breakfast.

  The Liberator’s own bard occupied a carriage to himself at the head of the long procession that awaited the moment of departure from Merrion Square. Roderick and Patrick Cullen and other members of the bodyguard disputed minutes from conflicting timepieces. But the Head Pacificator, with great gold hunter extended, arbitrated the ultimate moment. At exactly eight forty-five, to the drop of Tom Steele’s peace bough, the Liberator ascended his four-horse chariot. The picked musicians entered the carriage behind and the two-hundred-carriage cortège moved out.

  The sudden thunder of cheers that seemed to come from the skies made Roderick look up. The roof of every tall house was thronged. Every window was blocked with people waving handkerchiefs and flags. The sidewalks had disappeared beneath a solid mass of cheering, waving humanity. He turned to Patrick and expressed a doubt that there might not be so vast a crowd at Tara.

  But it looked as if no one had stayed at home. Horses were rearing up and upending vehicles at the tumult of cheering that rose and swelled through every green-clad street, and everywhere was the all-pervading odour of flowers and foliage and fresh dung.

  When Tara hill came in sight, Roderick stood up and his figure came in view of the men who marched behind the Templetown band. They gave the O’Carroll rallying cry: it was taken up and sent back to him by the curly-headed giant, John Holohan from Upper Kilsheelin who bore the satin banner on which Master Hennessey’s niece had embroidered in gold, ‘O’Connell Monarch of the Irish Heart’.

  Acres away, Sterrin pulled her mamma’s gown. ‘Papa must be coming near,’ she said excitedly. ‘I hear the O’Carroll cry.’

  ‘An seabac abú!’ came the rallying cry of the ancient O’Carrolls—‘The hawk to victory!’

  ‘And what’s more,’ said Sterrin, ‘that’s Felix Downey. He can split a glass with his voice.’

  And for the second time Big John encountered Felix marching along the high road with a leg of mutton on his shoulder. ‘It’s becoming a habit with you, Felix,’ he greeted, recalling the night of the Big Wind when he had seen Felix emerging from Carney’s burning shebeen with a prize he had won at a game of Twenty-Five. Beside Felix marched the Scout with one of the most unique of the humourous banners that interspersed those of silken seriousness. ‘Made to my own design by James Wright,’ he explained as he lowered the great five foot square loaf impaled upon the staff that supported his weary form.

  R
oderick, still standing, raised a white flag and one of the Repeal Cavalry on the hill took the signal and gave the word of command as the ten thousand waiting horsemen moved forward to escort the leader. Over the central plains of Ireland surged the acclaim of one million voices like the sound, not of many waters, but of many oceans. Again and again the old harper touched the chords but the sound died on the strings.

  The ruddy face of the Liberator paled as he stood in moved silence. No High King ever witnessed such a spectacle from his subjects converging upon his palace from the four highways of Ireland that once led to Tara.

  Sterrin was amazed to see so many English ladies and gentlemen as well as Irish blow their noses and dab their eyes the way grown-ups did when they didn’t want to let on they were crying. Lady Cullen did not care who saw her tears. Neither did her husband. When he watched through his glass the Trades of Drogheda carry their flags to the summit and plant them around the Stone of Destiny so that the colours drooped forward in a mourning circle, it was not of the kings of Ireland that were crowned on the Stone that he thought but of the Honourable Edward Cullen, slim and fair and dandified who lay with the United Irishmen who fell there in ’98. Through the glass he watched the group of Protestant men escort old James O’Byrne of Wicklow and place their Orange flag beside his green one on the stone. It was their women-folk who had flung themselves in supplication before the redcoat soldiers for the life of James’s seventeen-year-old son. But the boy was hanged before his kitchen door and the Protestant women had died in vain beneath the horses’ feet.

  Major de Courcey lowered the telescope to Sterrin’s eyes and pointed out the different Guilds that marched behind their banners. ‘These are the shoemakers and I think that the ones behind are the glassblowers.’

  ‘And who are the giants with the funny hats?’

  ‘They are not giants,’ he laughed. ‘They are the coppersmiths. They wear the tallest hats in Europe—in fact in the whole world.’

  ‘I wish they’d take them off. I cannot see what is happening in front of them.’ And as if they had heard her, the barrier of towering hats vanished as every man uncovered to the tinkling of the Mass bell. The priest ascended the central altar and a million people knelt in prayer.