The Big Wind

by Beatrice Coogan

  The shock dried the tears that his lovely record of herself had released. The nurse’s voice recalled her to the moment’s terrible urgency. She flicked the pages. ‘Here’s the recipe,’ she said and frowned. This was not for cholera. This was a recipe for the brewing of the small leaves of the ground ivy. She had drunk this brew herself when she had those swayings. Why was it entered here? She scanned the directions in Roderick’s slanting copperplate, and then in brackets she read ‘...believed to be particularly efficacious in the treatment of madness—’

  Madness! A gasp escaped her. Was that why they gave her brew? Why the recipe was kept from her sight?

  Nurse Hogan came over and saw the recipe that she had prepared so often.

  ‘Your Ladyship,’ she said in a firm voice, ‘this is no time to be dwelling on yourself.’ She flicked the page. ‘Here is what we want—The Cholera Cure, one sixth part of camphor dissolved in six parts strong spirits of wine—’ She glanced up at her mistress’s distended eyes and resolved that she wasn’t going to have three patients on her hands. She brought the ingredients to the sick room and asked Margaret to mix and administer them. Margaret forced back her rising hysteria as she poured two drops of the mixture on to granulated sugar and mixed it with an exact spoonful of cold water. With her watch extended she counted five slow minutes and then repeated the dose. At the end of five minutes more he was still shivering. After the fourth interval of five minutes when a full eight drops had been administered, Margaret had shed all pre-occupation with herself. According to the cousins there should be signs of returning warmth before this. They had tried it with Lord Ponsonby and it had been most efficacious.

  The nurse urged her to go on with the treatment but Roderick set his teeth against the spoon. ‘It is killing the gentry off like flies,’ he muttered, ‘they make no fight.’

  ‘But it cured Lord Ponsonby,’ urged Nurse Hogan with naive sincerity. ‘Miss O’Carroll said so.’ What stronger proof of its efficacy? The medicine had cured a peer of the realm!

  Roderick dozed. When he awoke the fever was worse. He refused the medicine again. ‘It is killing the gentry like flies. They make no fight,’ he insisted. Margaret’s heart contracted. The treacherous swaying started in her head. She must fight it; because Roderick was refusing to fight. Roderick, who was—deathless—was willing himself to die!

  When Mrs. Stacey heard the trend of his wanderings she faced boldly up into the sick room. ‘Master Rody,’ she called firmly into his brain, ‘you are no gentry to the fever. You had it an’ you fosterin’ an’ you learned how to make a fight. Don’t you remember, agra?’

  He looked up at her, seeking to remember.

  ‘You had it with Black Pat,’ she urged. It was a risk to mention that name but she had to convince him that he was not like the unaccustomed gentry who succumbed. Fever was almost endemic in homes like the one where he had fostered.

  He took medicine from her hand. Not the aristocratic kind but the brew she had given him as a child. It seemed to turn his delirium to that time. Repeatedly he spoke Black Pat’s name and once Margaret heard him mutter ‘Nonie’ and then a name like ‘Mansfield’.

  Gradually Roderick’s fever subsided. The time came when he could sit, first at the open window, then in the garden. One afternoon, while he snoozed in the garden, she went to the library. Fearfully she approached the black book. It had acquired an ominous quality; like a locked room that held a grim secret. She gazed fascinated at the entry that Roderick had interposed amongst his father’s records. What had taken place that afternoon that had caused Roderick to come straight here and write her surname beside her petit nom—Nonie—so gay, so intime! For all time! And why in that flaunting green?

  Margaret had a sudden recollection of Nonie sitting in her porch, her golden head bent over masses of wool, and about her shoulders a charming green shawl! And then another recollection; Roderick standing in the bedroom in Mountjoy Square telling her about a girl in a green riding habit, a girl with blue flecks in her hazel green eyes! A girl called Mansfield. Nonie! And Roderick had known all along! Yes, now she understood. Mrs. Black Pat Ryan was the romantic love that had escaped Roderick, only to be recaptured too late.

  Margaret turned the pages one by one but there were no further references to the girl; she went back to the entry where the reference to herself as ‘bewitching’ had caught her eye the evening he had been carried home. ‘...for the pink creped gown in which my wife looked so bewitching that night when the cowardly Whiteboys terrified her so that the doctor feared for the health of her mind as well as her body—’

  The health of her mind! Her mind! She could feel pain pounding at that dull spot in the back of her head. She tore through the pages marked so meticulously with dates of the succeeding years. She came to a page dated simply Repeal Year. Beneath was written the horrible recipe. In that golden year when Ireland had stood on the tiptoes of gaiety and hope, Roderick recorded the treatment for his wife’s madness!

  The silence in the library was deep. August, Roderick always said, was the silent month. The great bird chorus of the year had packed up long ago, and the sap energy had abated in all growth. He knew so much about nature! Her eyes ranged over the shelves that held his botanical books. She got up and peered at their covers. Here it was! The one that would tell her about the ground ivy. ‘A hairy, creeping perennial—’ she read and went no further. She dropped the book with a scream as though some horrid thing had crawled on to her skin.

  That afternoon Lady Cullen arrived to pay her first call. Roderick was well enough for visitors, and when Lady Cullen was told that Margaret had gone for a walk, the irrepressible old lady decided to speak plain and true.

  ‘How could you, Rody,’ she demanded availing herself of the unexpected tête-à-tête, ‘accuse your wife of unfaithfulness? Before all those people! No,’ she said putting up her hand, ‘you’ve used your tongue enough, hinting smart cleveralities with it, like a tradesman hinting for a settlement of accounts. If you suspected your wife of having a lover why the devil’s father didn’t you stick your sword into his gullet instead of his cake? Dammit, it’s not done, Rody.’

  Roderick wondered if the old lady were feeling all right. Very gently he suggested that she might be a trifle ‘en fièvre’.

  ‘En fièvre, my foot,’ she snorted. ‘The others were not “en fièvre”. But they were burning, I can tell you; with unholy excitement. I’ll wager it was the first time any of them was invited to witness the free spectacle of a gentleman publicly declaring that his wife had cuckolded him. Raise the wall against the cuckoo, indeed!’

  Roderick sat astounded. He had gone through that party in a state of fever. ‘It is absurd,’ he said at last. ‘Nobody would dream of putting such an interpretation on my words—not unless they wanted to.’

  ‘Cullen didn’t want to. He wanted to call you out. I had to stamp on his toe; the gouty one.’

  ‘But it’s fantastic! To make a mountain—a scandal—out of a scrap of pishoguerie! The dammed bird was there. For everyone to see.’

  ‘So was the dammed cake—for everyone to see. No one saw the cuckoo.’

  When Lady Cullen had departed, another carriage swept in the gate; a resplendent four-horse affair with lackeys erupting from all points; two from the backboard, one from beside the driver, one from the inside; all helped Lord and Lady Strague to alight.

  The carriage belonged to Sir Jocelyn Devine, who had sent it back with the Stragues. They had been his guests all summer since Lord Strague’s recovery from a gun-shot wound received during an armed raid on his grain waggons. Roderick examined the coach with all the curiosity of a boy. He could not resist the sight of anything new in coachwork. This one was the very last word. The slender shafts were attached to a spring to neutralise the motion of the horse; whalebone screwed under the shafts to increase elasticity; every ingenuity to make the carriage glide softly and evenly over rough roads. A fantasy on wheels, Roderick thought.

  Minutes lat
er he thought that he must be listening to fantasy. Lady Cullen’s revelations were followed up by apologies from Lady Strague for Lady Margaret’s dreadful experience at the Soupers kitchen conducted by Lord Strague’s Vestry committee at Aughnacoll.

  ‘We did not discover until weeks later that the lady who had been trampled down was Lady Margaret, and by that time we were at Jocelyn’s place and Strague had developed a fever from the wound.’

  The suggestion that Roderick had put to Lady Cullen about being en fièvre could not possibly be made to Lady Strague. Her voice was too cool, too assured. It flowed on in a cool recountal of the dreadful scene. After the Stragues had left, Roderick sat in stunned silence. Poor Margaret. She had endured so much for so long. How to make up for it?

  Nurse Hogan interrupted his musings. She was worried. ‘Her Ladyship ought to have been back from her walk long ago.’

  ‘Worried!’ Her master rounded on her as he had never done before. Where was her worry the time her mistress had endured unspeakable horrors? It was the nurse’s turn to wonder about fever. Had the Sir suffered a relapse? He was talking of things that might possibly happen in a nightmare. She did recall the evening that her Ladyship had returned like a sleepwalker whose face still held a nightmare’s horror! She recalled the filth on her Ladyship’s gown!

  She told him all she knew. Her Ladyship had never spoken of what had happened. The nurse didn’t tell him that her own conclusion had been that some maniac had attacked her Ladyship and she could not bring herself to speak of it. She didn’t dare remind him that no one—not even her Ladyship—could speak to him after that night when Black Pat Ryan and his children had died.

  The autumn sky deepened to purple and still no sign of Margaret. It was dark when Roderick climbed weakly into the saddle and galloped towards Templetown to search for her. Mrs. Kennedy-Sherwin was finishing up after her turn of duty at the Relief Depot. Roderick felt deep respect for the outrageous little flirt who was proving herself one of the famine’s heroines. But Margaret was not there.

  Sick with disappointment he turned away; then on an impulse turned back and asked Mrs. Kennedy-Sherwin about that night at the Ryan Duvs.

  She told him that she had seen Margaret running along the road towards the Ryans, that Margaret had called out to Mrs. Kennedy-Sherwin as she emerged from her carriage carrying the sick Ryan child. She described how Margaret stood horrified in the doorway of the Ryan house. ‘She’d probably been running for help. Poor darling, she must have fallen too. Mud on her face; and her gown!’ Mrs. Kennedy-Sherwin’s voice shrilled up. ‘It was revoltingly ruined! Poor Mrs. Ryan wasn’t too cordial to her either.’ She sighed. ‘The famine changes people; like war. Jeremy says that gentlemen behave queerly under war conditions. Personally, I don’t see that it needs either war or famine to justify their queerness—’ Sir Roderick was half way across the road. He turned back to bow and to say that he was in a hurry.

  ‘Who’d have thought it?’ she murmured after the thudding hooves. ‘What a delicious quarrel that must be! Cuckoos, cakes, gallops by night.’ She gave a long sigh. ‘Some women have all the luck!’

  When the hooves had thudded to a standstill at Kilsheelin there was still no Margaret.

  From the oratory window, Sterrin watched with dread as the men started out to search for her mamma. There was something ominous about the slow-moving figures, some carrying lanthorns, others with glowing turf sods impaled on pikestaffs. Out there in the darkness her mamma was lost or ill or—Sterrin shivered, terrified to let the dread word take form in her mind. But it must have formed in Papa’s mind. Because he was afraid! She had never thought that such a thing could happen. Now there was no shelter left in all the world.

  Young Thomas saw her face at the window as he crossed the yard. They had ordered him to go back to bed. He was but a day or two up and could scarcely crawl. Still he tiptoed into the oratory just as Sterrin had dropped to her knees after the last of the lights had moved into the distance. She turned at the little sound and all at once it was as though shelter was restored. How could she have forgotten the one who was down there in the shadow inside the door? Her heart steadied. There was always Young Thomas!

  30

  The Ballduff jingle stopped at the crossroads to let down a passenger. Lady O’Carroll stepped up and took the vacant place. At the next crossroads passengers alighted and hurried towards the long Bianconi car. She followed them. When they alighted at Thurles railway station she did likewise. As she approached the booking office where they were buying tickets she felt her first nervousness. But she listened while the gentleman in front of her asked for a first-class ticket to Dublin. She moved up into his place and asked for another. Travel was easy!

  But when the great monster came chuffing from under the tunnel, clanking and roaring and belching smoke, she panicked.

  She stood trembling on the platform while doors opened and banged shut. A porter went on holding the door for her. Everyone else had got in. Timidly she put her foot into the carriage. The engine emitted a fearful shriek. Margaret sprang back. The porter, all sympathy with her, shouted to the driver to put a muzzle on his ould chimney. The driver requested him to put a muzzle on his own chimney.

  ‘Come on, ma’am,’ urged the porter, ‘put yourself in the hands of God an’ I’ll hold your own hand.’ She thought of the dignified stage coach driver; the ostler handing up his immaculate gloves on the point of departure. As she gave her hand to the porter, the guard blew a whistle and the train gave a preliminary lurch. She withdrew her hand and fled.

  Behind her the porter harangued the guard for his bad manners.

  ‘You and your tin whistle! And a lady that’s used to the elegance of horse carriages in the middle of makin’ up her mind.’

  There was no going back to Kilsheelin. That kind of conduct would be just another instance of her madness. She endured a night at the nearby Man o’ War and the next morning stepped firmly into the Dublin bound train. The porter almost clapped. ‘You’ve a powerful strong mind,’ he commented.

  The compliment bore her over the first stage of the journey. This was really nicer than the stagecoach. One was not crushed against undesirable persons. One did not have to watch out for one’s flounces. No one spat. A most polite notice requested gentlemen to refrain from doing so. And the sleepers were wooden; not like the granite ones in that train she had travelled in from Dublin to Kingstown, in Repeal Year.

  Once she caught her reflection in the carriage window and peered intensely. Strain widened her brown eyes so that they looked wild to her. At last, she thought, she was face to face with her own—Madness. She saw the whiteness of the reflection as a symptom of her malady. The gentleman in the opposite seat was thinking that her pallor glowed with colour as an alabaster lamp glows from the light within.

  The children’s faces swam in and out of the rushing landscape. Sterrin’s so sweet but remote. Dominic, still a baby. Would they miss their mad mother? Mon Dieu! Look at the fields! Was her head going to start this treacherous swaying in front of these gentlemen?

  ‘The fields are running.’ She spoke without realising. Immediately the gentlemen reassured her.

  ‘One gets that impression when travelling in a train.’ The gentleman in the corner said that when he brought his wife for her first train journey, she was terrified at the way the fields seemed to run past the windows.

  She thanked them. Her thoughts turned to Roderick. No gentleman would dream of accusing his wife in public. No matter how wickedly she had behaved. Cynthia Appleyard, it was known, indulged in more than just light flirtations; sinful, bed affairs. Yet her husband had fought a duel in her defence! Roderick had used his sword to point fun at his wife in front of their friends.

  The gentleman in the corner seat was giving his neighbour advice about travel arrangements. Margaret listened carefully. ‘Better drive straight to the packet,’ he was saying, ‘and stay on board all day instead of waiting to embark in the evening. There will be no gett
ing through the crowds later, on account of the funeral.’

  There was no form or purpose to her flight. Like a child she followed these knowledgeable grown-ups. She bade the porter who procured their hackney chaise to procure one for her and drive to the place they had mentioned. She saw the others pay their fares and step aboard. But when she asked her own driver what was his fare, the efficiency of her itinerary collapsed. The Dublin jarvey’s renowned formula, ‘I’ll lave it to yourself, your Honour,’ left her bewildered.

  He watched the sovereign emerging from her reticule. ‘Will this be enough?’ she asked.

  He buried it deep under the capes of his surtout, before he answered, ‘I’ll not ask for a penny more. It is a pleasure to drive such a lovely lady.’ Since he wouldn’t dare to ask a seasoned traveller for a penny more than one-and-six he threw in a word of advice for good measure. ‘I’d put away that ridicule of yours Miss. There’ll be a power of purse snatchers abroad today on account of the funeral.’

  His concern touched her. His compliment like the porter’s eased the ordeal of going aboard. Travelling on a ship had the quality of travelling over a narrow mountain road. One went where the road went. She paid her money to go where the ship was going.

  Her air of distinction, and the shiny contents of her reticule, secured her a nice cabin. When food was brought she realised that she had not eaten since the previous morning. No wonder the famine-hungry were always exhausted. She stretched her tired body on the little bed and the lullaby of the lapping waters sent her into a deep sleep.

  She awoke startled and afraid. The little room was moving. Up and down, then sideways. Overhead there was clanking. It was coming down the chimney! It was the turret! Smoke drifted past the window. My God! Where was Mrs. Mansfield? No, Nurse Hogan; ‘Roderick, Roderick!’ But no one could hear her above the roar of the Big Wind.