The Big Wind
Page 71
Sterrin was put beside Father Hickey at breakfast and found that her partner on the other side was Mrs. Lonergan. She turned to greet her but to her surprise, the old lady took advantage of the cup of tea that was put in front of her just then to take a very long, appreciative draught and then leaned across to say, ‘It is too fond of the tea an old woman like myself is, Father. When the Gorta Mór was on us I didn’t know the taste of it. I was glad of porridge made with yellow meal from India. But now, the only thing I’ll miss when I go to Heaven is the sup of tay.’ She pronounced it ‘tay’ not so much from brogue but that she had received her schooling from a band of French nuns who had found refuge from the French Revolution in her father’s house. The priest looked pityingly at the patient face. She had been through so much. But hadn’t they all? Every face at the table bore the strong lines of suffering endured. He recalled when five rooms in this house held typhus patients and the two eldest girls and the father had died. His hand went abstractedly to the piece of turnip in his pocket. He had never lost the habit of carrying a piece since the time when it used to be the only thing that broke his fast on the long journeys by dark and day, bearing the Viaticum to the stricken.
‘And who,’ he asked, ‘told you that you would have to go without your tay in Heaven? Won’t you have Te Deum and Laudamus Te and Glorificatum Te. Sure isn’t it Te, Te, Te, all the time in Heaven?’
Mrs. Campion stopped pouring over the shoulders of her guests. ‘Is it jokin’ you are, Father? Bad manners to me to doubt your word. Didn’t I always hear that there wasn’t the beating of you in Rome for Teeology?’
Mrs. Lonergan sighed. ‘The dear knows I’ll be glad to go even without all that nice Latin tay. This world can do no more to me.’ She sighed again. ‘A queer, modern world, wars and trains and telegrams. Indeed we get the bad news as quick without the telegrams. I heard the banshee the night before Tim was killed. I heard it as—’
‘Tim!’ Sterrin put down her knife and fork and turned. ‘Mrs. Lonergan, I didn’t know. How did it happen?’
Talk and clatter quietened. For a moment Sterrin thought that she was going to be publicly slighted, then Mrs. Lonergan for the first time raised her head from the down-drag of spirit that held it in its grip. Her eyes looked straight into Sterrin’s.
‘Naturally, you didn’t know. The fate of one ordinary Irish soldier would be of no consequence to your kinsman.’
‘My kinsman?’ Sterrin was mystified.
‘Aye, your kinsman... the officer who killed my son... from here. His name is O’Carroll.’
The whole table had gone silent.
‘But Mrs. Lonergan I have no relative fighting in the Civil War. Ancestors of mine went to the American colonies more than a hundred years ago. We cannot be held responsible for what their descendants do. We have no knowledge of them; no contact.’
‘No contact?’ Mrs. Lonergan repeated. ‘Yet you send them food.’
‘But not to any O’Carrolls. We send food to relatives of my mother called O’Regan. And,’ Sterrin bridled, ‘why shouldn’t we? They sent big consignments of food here in the famine. Shiploads! My father used to go armed with guns to protect the waggons all the way from Waterford. It would be very strange if we would not send help to them now when they are in want themselves.’
There was a murmur of agreement. Mrs. Lonergan looked appealingly towards the priest. ‘Would there be a mistake, Father?’
She turned to Sterrin and her voice held its old caressing quality. ‘It was a chaplain in America who sent the story of what happened. I don’t know what to think.’
Sterrin was glad to have calmed the sweet old lady, and glad of the chicken and ham and griskins and all the delicious dishes that followed. She realised that it was nearly one o’clock and that she had been riding since six this morning with nothing to eat since the nine o’clock tea in the drawing-room the night before.
The priest followed her to the yard as she was mounting to leave. He noticed that the man with the scar seemed about to speak to her. ‘Are you sure, Lady Devine, that there is none of your family here fighting with the South in the Civil War?’
Sterrin shook her head. ‘Who could there be from here but Sir Dominic? My cousin Maurice of Waterford is the only other relative. He has no children.’
‘It is strange,’ said the priest. ‘My informant seemed certain. Tim didn’t die immediately on the battlefield. He told the chaplain who attended him in hospital that he had recognised the officer who followed on the heels of the two rebels who had given him the final lunge. He was seen to speak something to the officer and the recognition appeared to be mutual.’
Sterrin shook her head again. ‘I don’t understand it. There could be a great many of our name out there for all I know. It is a big war.’
‘A big war, indeed,’ the priest agreed. ‘No war is as hate-inspiring as a Civil War. Ah, the wanton waste of those young lives that went out from here in friendship with each other; neighbours’ children killing each other.’
Out of the corner of her eye Sterrin saw Bergin watching her. He must be her contact. But the priest was not finished. He drew his piece of turnip to the tip of his pocket and then dropped it back, but made no move to go.
‘What’s this I hear about a talking head at the castle?’
‘Talking head?’ Sterrin was puzzled. ‘Oh, you must mean the talking machine. Would you like to hear it? I’m afraid the cylinders that contain the sound have gone silent. They need to be kept in a certain temperature and the castle is so damp. But if you care to hear Mr. Steele’s voice, his cylinder is a bit better than the others. He adjusted it himself.’
The priest shook his grey locks. ‘No, I knew that Mr. Steele had the inventive faculty, but, the human voice!’ He shook his head again. ‘To seek to perpetuate it in a separate mechanical existence is—is a presuming on the divine power of creation—it savours too much of Deism and Spiritualism.’
Sterrin glanced towards Bergin. He was waiting for her. She reached her hand down. ‘Goodbye, Father. It will do no more harm. It has been silenced.’
‘That’s good. That is what Saint Thomas Aquinas did as far back as the thirteenth century. A philosopher called Magnus invented a thing called a Talking Head. He introduced the mechanism into a skull. The saint had it smashed.’ Sterrin pulled one rein a little, but the priest had taken out his piece of turnip and was taking a nibble as he always did in preoccupation. ‘Sterrin, I may call you that since I had the pleasure of knowing you since your infancy. There are people here today who did not come to participate in the sacred functions of the gathering. It is heartening to see you here, though.’ He nibbled at his piece of turnip. ‘I have never before encountered you at any but the one in your own oratory. I have witnessed your charitable activities amongst the unfortunate people but don’t allow your pity to lead you into dangerous paths. Young people are being led into taking rash oaths that are a profanation of the sacred name of God. They have grievances, the dear knows, but oppression is better than putting their necks in the halter by disturbing the peace of society. No rulers on earth will permit any order of men to overturn established law by private authority. My Lady, Sterrin child, your mother has had her share of sorrow.’
And with that cryptic remark he moved towards his phaeton. There was no sign of the scar-faced man as Sterrin rode out. Her mind was torn with the unease of the priest’s very pointed homily and concern that it might have caused her to lose her ‘contact’. But before she emerged from the boreen on to the high road he emerged from a field.
‘I waited to give you the password.’
She reined in. ‘You gave it to me last week,’ she said coldly. ‘I passed it on that same night.’
‘It must be changed immediately. There is an informer in the circle. The whole group was surprised last night. One of them was captured a few hours back and shot!’
‘Without a trial?’
He nodded. ‘They have orders to shoot at sight, if necessary, and apparently they dee
m it “necessary” to shoot men drilling with shillelaghs and a few pikes. But they did hold an inquest upon this one. He was of sufficient consequence. The verdict this morning was—justifiable manslaughter.’
Her heart turned over. Would they have caught Donal after she left him. Not Donal! ‘Was it Donal—Mr. Keating?’
A suspicious look narrowed his eyes. Would Keating be the cause of her zeal for Fenianism?
‘Our mutual friend of the anvil must be warned. They are looking for him,’ and then he answered her query. ‘No, not Keating,’ he said shortly. ‘Listen,’ he went on. He spoke the password and made her repeat it. ‘Pei Marier.’ It is good to be quiet. He had chosen the watchword of the Maories. She took up the reins. Over her shoulder she tossed a taunt.
‘Are you quite sure that you can trust me to pass it on?’
His constant air of cold watchfulness was beginning to get on her nerves. He swung up to the saddle.
‘This time,’ he said, as he wheeled his horse towards the bridle path, ‘I take it there is no inducement to make you break faith.’
The crack of her whip made a duet with the larrup he gave his own horse as they made off in different directions. The insufferable churl! It was the very devil, thought Sterrin, to have to take instructions from him. But she couldn’t allow Denis O’Flanagan, the blacksmith, to incur the risk of the wrong password.
She thought to rush straight off to warn him, but Mamma must be very worried about her not returning to breakfast, much less lunch, and also she would need to change horses. Clooreen would be overworked before nightfall. As she turned in the stable yard, she saw the Delaney equipage being wheeled back and forth through the carriage-cleaning pond.
‘It must have been hard driven,’ she said to Mike O’Driscoll.
‘Too hard,’ he said. ‘But it had hard reason.’
‘What reason?’ Sterrin asked and looked curiously at the faces round the pond. Big John’s, Ned Rua’s and Mike’s. There was a definite something in the air. Mike took out his straw to explain, but Ned Rua intervened.
‘Let your Ladyship go inside. Miss Katie will tell you herself. Some people,’ he looked angrily at Mike, ‘are inclined to forget their place.’
Mike put back his straw. ‘Someone has forgot their place now with a vengeance!’ said Mike.
In the drawing-room Sterrin found Mrs. Delaney as near to a vapour as it would be possible for her to achieve. The ‘someone’ who had forgotten his place was the young groom with whom Belle was in the habit of pillion riding. The pair had eloped.
‘What!’ Sterrin was scandalised.
They had been seen by a Bianconi driver heading towards Templetown. ‘We caught up on them but we lost them in Temple-town; another Bianconi driver said he saw them heading for the Thurles road, but at your cross the lynch pin came loose. It finished me altogether to find you away. I was counting on you.’
‘Where were you, Sterrin?’ her mother demanded. ‘I have been distracted with anxiety.’
‘She’s here now.’ Mrs. Delaney was impatient of petty grievances in the face of such calamity. ‘You’ll go after her, Sterrin dear?’ She mistook the look of consternation on Sterrin’s face. ‘I suppose it is too much to expect from you.’
Sterrin dropped on her knees in front of Mrs. Delaney and gripped her hands. ‘Nothing is too much for you to expect from me.’
She was thinking of the night of the fire when Mrs. Delaney could not do enough for her; but she was thinking, too, of her commitment to the secret cause she was sworn to. Why did she have to swear that terrible oath? And Father Hickey said that it was a profanation. But if she didn’t start out soon Denis, the blacksmith, would have set out for the night’s rendezvous; his freedom was at stake; his life. She trusted the big man with his quiet strength; his quality of utter reliability. And the blacksmith had rewarded her confidence with his implicit trust.
Every foot of the wood and mountains was familiar to her; and the haunts of the wild bird and its cry. Sometimes men scattered over the Devil’s Bit ‘on their keeping’ would hear the sweet musical cry of the Grey Lag Geese long before it was time to look upwards for the V-line gaggle. They would know then that someone was telling them that men had come over the Atlantic; Americans to drill and equip them. And if some hidden outlaw spied Lady Devine roaming on horseback over the hilltop he did not suspect that it was her lips that had uttered the wild goose cry.
Denis was surprised to see the carriage draw in at the forge. Always she came by horseback and by night. She passed on the warning. There was an informer among them. The blacksmith was able to put her on the trail of the elopers. A body wouldn’t need to look twice to know what they were up to. Ill assorted and guilt-marked, they had been spotted easily.
‘Ah, youth is a drover,’ was his comment. ‘There is a clamouring inside it like the sounds from a red-hot anvil. High or low, it makes no difference. But he should have respected her—and, she should have respected herself.’
Sterrin was surprised at the calm way he had taken her warning. No anxiety, no drama. The little saucepan spat out its own warning. He opened the cupboard that contained the little china cup. The sight of it, flowered and fragile amongst the big, stark mugs reminded her of herself amongst those stark revolutionaries; except Donal. The hovering cloud melted into the recollection of him.
‘You will pass my message to Donal... Mr. Keating, if he comes tonight.’
Denis paused. ‘Now there’s a young gentleman who knows how to respect a lady, even though he might adore the ground she’d walk on. The big men tell me that he is a brilliant barrister with a great career ahead. They tell me that when he is in Clonmel Assizes the ladies actually condescend to go into a courtroom just to listen to him.’
He escorted her to the carriage, and gave directions to Big John where to find the inn that the lovers had inquired about.
‘Don’t kill yourself rushing after them. There won’t be a Bianconi passing that way for more than an hour and, I’m thinkin’ by the looks of her she will be glad to see you. She has had her fling.’
He was right.
Belle threw herself straight into Sterrin’s arms. The groom stood sheepishly by the table, fearful to seat himself in the unaccustomed setting of carpets and mahogany and brass; disorientated. Sterrin curtly ordered him on to the box seat and bustled Belle into the carriage. How could she! she thought, but she uttered no reproach. Belle unfolded the story of her love and of her disenchantment. Mamma had forbidden her to go horse-riding, only pillion riding, doctor’s orders. Sterrin recalled the spectacle of Belle fastened to the groom by a hook attached to her big pillion belt and holding on to him around the waist. For nearly two years now they had roamed the countryside up hill and dale in an embrace that had lost its exigency in affection.
‘But, oh Sterrin, he hadn’t enough money for the dinner and he called the waiter “Sir”.’
Mike O’Driscoll intervened for the unfortunate groom against the onslaught of Mrs. Delaney. ‘It was askin’ for trouble. Miss Katie. Up there behind him on the same horse; her arms around him day after day. Him sittin’ there ridin’ within her woodland.’
‘There was no need to ride within her hold,’ stormed Mrs. Delaney. ‘She was attached to him by a strong iron hook.’
‘Iron hook, how are you, Miss Katie! Hadn’t she a pair of arms too? And where was she to put them only around his waist? Women’s flesh is very temptin’.’
Back in the drawing-room, Mrs. Delaney admitted that Dr. Drennan had said something that must have meant the same thing. ‘He called it “pro-Pink” something.’
‘Propinquity,’ said Lady O’Carroll and looked, unwittingly, towards Sterrin. That was the word that Cousin Maurice had used the day Sterrin had fallen from the horse and the knife boy had carried her home. Sterrin fumed. It had never occurred to her that there was any resemblance between this squalid affair and her association with the knife boy. Comparing Young Thomas to an oaf who said ‘Sir’ to the waite
r and couldn’t order a meal! Young Thomas, who from childhood had ordered the garçonnière like a commander-in-chief; spoken with authority to shop assistants; respectable farmers had uncovered to him. She recalled that night after the ball in Kilkenny when she had conspired with him to elope—God, why hadn’t she gone with him that night—the easeful authority with which he had spoken to the body-servant with the alphabet of names. Propinquity! That was an unjust dig.
‘I have never been able to accustom myself,’ Lady O’Carroll went on, ‘to the fraternising with servants that prevails in Irish households. Servants are bound to take advantage. At home in my country the relationship is more de-haut-en-bas.’
When Mrs. Delaney had gone, Sterrin strolled to the little table beside her mamma’s chair. ‘May I have a cigarette, Mamma?’ Without waiting for a reply she reached into the embroidery bag and drew out a little satin-covered box inscribed in gold, ‘Ma Chérie’. She proceeded to light one of the tiny cigarettes that were the vice her mother thought no one knew about.
‘Sterrin!’ Force of habit brought the shocked remonstrance to Margaret’s lips. Guilt brought colour all through her creamy pallor. ‘When did you start to smoke?’ she brought out lamely, just to prevent herself saying ‘How did you know that I smoked!’
‘I started,’ Sterrin told her, ‘with a clay pipe in the kitchen when I was about six. I progressed from that to cigar butts in the turf ricks. Unlike the fortunate little girls in Belgium, there wasn’t always the concern available for me about “fraternising” and “de-haut-en-bas” and the consequences of “propinquity”!’ She went out in a puff of smoke, feeling mean for giving her mother one in the eye for all those long spells of near neglect when the household revolved around her mother’s malaise. In the corridor she collided into Hegarty.
‘Miss Sterrin!’ The butler was scandalised. She removed her cigarette.
‘Yes Hegarty?’ She was very much de-haut-en-bas.
‘Your Ladyship, I—er, I must see to the lights in the drawingroom.’ He hurried on. He’d have a word about this with her other Ladyship.