The Big Wind

by Beatrice Coogan

  James took a step towards her, the eagerness he had been compelled to restrain bursting forth. ‘Sterrin, forgive me, I mean Lady Devine—I know nothing about Mr. Keating in relation to your letter—except the lamentable knowledge of his untimely death. But, but—the one who wrote the letter, who gave it me—it is incredible, he is the one I have been looking for, the son of my father’s sister—and it was you who led me to him: through the old hermit.’

  This fantasy, set in the grim reality of Donal’s death, was too much to absorb.

  ‘Mr. James,’ she said, addressing him as she had been taught to in her childhood, ‘this is an assumed name. This person performs on the stage under another assumed name—Thomas Young. Before that he worked here on the staff. He was one of our house servants—’

  ‘I know, Sterrin—Lady Devine. He was Young Thomas, your knife boy. I remember him well. He used to come and milk our cows twice a day when our staff was down with famine fever.’ Excitement drove his voice to a thin, penetrating pitch. On the other side of the door Hegarty was able to catch the rest of the words without further strain. ‘Young Thomas,’ he heard, ‘your former knife boy, is the lineal descendant of Sieur Dominique O’Carroll, dispossessed by his youngest son on an act of Disclosure. Young Thomas should be the heir to Strague Castle!’

  Not for over half a century, not since his own knife boy days, had Hegarty scurried kitchenward like now. He burst into the kitchen. ‘Wait till ye hear—’

  Eight minutes later he came through the hall with a tea tray, not due for another quarter of an hour. Mr. de Guider was in the hall and Miss Sterrin’s Ladyship was on for making him stop. ‘No, don’t leave it till another day. Tell her now. I’d prefer that she would hear it from you.’

  Hegarty, completely outside of himself, and agape for more, oared in with: ‘It isn’t goin’ you are, Mr. James? Sure I’ve put you in the teapot.’

  Tea was served in the drawing-room. Foosthering amongst the china, dragging out the ritual of service, Hegarty didn’t miss a syllable.

  ‘But what started him—I mean,’ Lady O’Carroll was asking, ‘what first gave him the idea that he might be other than what he was—?’

  ‘Other than one of the canaille!’ Sterrin put in.

  Hegarty, recalling his French, wondered at such contempt from Miss Sterrin, of all people, that should be leppin’ out of her skin.

  ‘It was Bard O’Ryan,’ James de Guider explained, ‘things he used to say. Thomas told me that he sometimes would call him Calvagh and sometimes he would say, “Are you Roderick Achilles, or some other name?” but only to Thomas, never to any other servant.’

  ‘Oh that’s the truth, many’s the time I heard him an—’

  ‘Hegarty!’

  ‘I beg your Ladyship’s pardon. I’m not at myself with the dint of excitement. I’ve heard talk so often of The O’Carroll who was cast out by his son—’

  ‘And, of course, Mamma,’ Sterrin interrupted, ‘Hegarty’s grandfather was killed while protecting my great-grandfather. That is why it is so difficult sometimes to be de-haut-en-bas with one’s servants.’

  Lady O’Carroll noticed Sterrin twisting the pearl ring on her engagement finger. She became aware of Sterrin’s hands and fingers. They had been covered with rings when she returned from Kilkenny. Unconsciously she said, ‘I’ve never noticed that ring before, Sterrin. It is a strange ring. So pale—pearls for tears they say.’

  ‘Yes, Mamma. All the others were so dazzling. They outshone it. But not anymore. They are all gone. Sold. It is my happy function in life to part with what I have—my jewels, myself, so that Kilsheelin stands and we can all be frightfully de-haut-en-bas. Isn’t it, Mamma?’

  ‘Sterreen! But you are bitter!’

  ‘No, Mamma. I am not bitter; not anything. I am past feeling.’

  The two might have been alone, regardless of the men—guest and servant.

  James de Guider tactfully intervened with a request to be allowed to see the portrait of the Sieur Dominique O’Carroll, which hung in the gallery.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, when they brought him there, ‘it is there. The likeness persists.’

  The castle staff seethed. Hannah was waiting for Sterrin. ‘Can you get over it, Miss Sterrin!’ She was ‘Miss Sterrin’ now, as in the days of Young Thomas. Mrs. Stacey laboured up the backstairs. ‘It’s like a fairy tale, Miss Sterrin.’

  Maybe you are a fairy prince. Young Thomas! It was a dull thud of memory.

  ‘Sure it happened to others—Lord Templetown, meaning no disrespect to him, has no real claim to that title. His father was lorded for votin’ for the Union. The last real Lord Templetown was working in a livery stable. There is many like him, if only they could come into their own. Big John says it doesn’t surprise him at all. He always expected to hear something like that about Young Thomas.’

  Nurse Hogan had the same to say. ‘He was the only one of the lads who could speak English to me when I came. An’ teaching himself to write from the tombstones ’twas as if something deep inside him was striving upwards. I never heard from him since the day you came from the convent and he wrote to say how well he was doing on the stage and he never in a jail at all, only—’ she stopped herself: too late.

  ‘You knew that he was not imprisoned?’

  The nurse looked apprehensively towards Lady O’Carroll’s room. Sterrin took her first quick step since the news of Donal. As she entered the room her mamma turned from the open wardrobe. In full view, not out of sight, as always, hung the white satin gown: the dark brown splotches clearly visible on the skirt; and on the bodice where his head had rested. Papa’s blood! Sterrin turned and went out, the reproach unuttered. Margaret wondered what she had been going to say when her glance rested on the bloodstained gown.

  Sterrin went back to the library to the book of poems she had been looking up when James de Guider had been announced; some lines she wanted that had run wordlessly through her brain since the news of Donal. Here it was! ‘And once again shall oft-widowed Erin mourn the loss of her brave young men’... the print blurred out. She banged it shut and pulled another towards her. It was Papa’s black Book of Records.

  She glanced through it indifferently. Incidents of his life since he took over from his own father stood out in his graceful continental slant. They read like a novel. His meeting with Margaret; the clothes for her wedding; the homecoming to the castle; the parties for her.

  *

  ‘On the night of January 6th in the year of Our Lord 1839, a great wind blew across Ireland. It caused havoc and disaster and the loss of many lives, how many it is not yet known. In the course of this storm, nigh five acres of the land that my forefathers have held through centuries against all unwarranted approaches, was raised skywards in my presence and borne out of my sight. The seventh of January of this same year I rode forth to the lands of James Keating of Poolgower and there did witness my own land lying unbroken as it went from me. I pray God that this act of Nature will not affect the lives of those whose heritage has been so strangely visited.’

  Sterrin snatched up a quill: ‘On the night of March 5th, 1867—a snow-storm blew across Ireland—’ She paused. She thought to write something about Donal—weren’t the fortunes linked? He was part of their heritage. Their field had ‘visited’ his family and stayed. And Donal’s life was affected. She threw down the quill. This was superstition. And suddenly she remembered the one whose life had really been affected by the storm’s visitation—the little boy whose identity had been blown away. She turned from the thought of him and read the entry about her own birth. The writing was less meticulous—a hurried entry: ‘An afterthought,’ she said aloud, and then she gave an exclamation. ‘I wasn’t born the night of the Big Wind. I was born the morning after! I’m a day younger than I thought.’ No one had ever bothered to refer to the fact. She had never known a birthday treat; never received a gift! Except once! On her fourteenth birthday the knife boy had given her a little leather-bound diary—the one o
n which he had later written—‘They told us we should never wed—And yet we kissed as though we should...’ It was gone in the flames.

  On a sudden impulse she drew his letter from her reticule. The irony of it! That the only writing he had ever again penned to her was to convey to her another man’s undying love! Beyond the sunlit windows the chaffinches and blackbirds and thrushes were at it again! Moidering her senses. She rang for Clooreen to be saddled. It was a long time since she had gone riding.

  The mare was led round by Mike O’Driscoll, eager to discuss the knife-boy-to-knight-errant saga. But he was deflated at Lady Sterrin’s indifference. Did they expect her to hoist the flag over the castle? she thought as she rode out. Let his blind wife do the jubilating.

  The air hushed towards her. It brushed past her face soft, soothing. She avoided Cuilnafunchion, her favourite ride. That was where Donal used to watch out for her. She took the little bog road—a famine folly—for its champagne air, but she jumped a low hedge into a field before it reached the spot where it ended in stark bog. Across that strip, narrow but deadly to the unwary, was the hermit’s cave, and between it, half hidden under purple pools and brown skeough grass, lay the stepping-stones that Donal had trod so surefootedly going forth to the rebellion.

  As she jumped back into the little road on her return she glimpsed a vehicle landed in an impasse. Nothing but bog in front and no room in the little road to turn the vehicle round. They must be complete strangers. This was just one of those roads leading to nowhere that had been built in the famine to make the hungry work for their fivepence-halfpenny a day Relief money. A young lady stepped from the chaise and came hurrying towards her.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said, ‘but could you direct me to a road called the Wolf Track? It is a narrow road like this.’ She spoke with an accent that might be American. An extremely pretty lady, very dark and vivid. Sterrin took in the saucy hat, the elegant fur-trimmed travelling coat.

  The Wolf Track! It was years since she had heard the road called by that name.

  ‘You would need to circle all that bog to reach it, but actually it is only a short distance down there.’ She pointed down the fields. ‘It lies behind the railroad. There!’

  ‘Why, of course!’ the girl cried, ‘we have been down that way already, but the tracks confused me. There was no railroad when I used to live down there.’

  If she lived down that road, Sterrin reflected, then she must belong to one of the tenants, but she wasn’t the usual ‘returned Yank’. Her assurance was that of breeding.

  ‘I guess,’ the girl went on, ‘that it would not take me long to walk down there, to run down; that is, if the owners do not set their dogs on me for trespassing.’

  ‘That is unlikely,’ Sterrin smiled. ‘What is the name of the people you are visiting?’

  The girl gave a faint shrug. ‘I am not visiting people. I am visiting a house; taking a peep rather—and a quick one at that. There is no one of my name there now.’

  ‘And what, may I ask, is your name?’

  ‘Oh, my name has no significance. Butler is my name. It was my late husband’s name. I never got used to it as mine. He went off to war the morning we were married. My father’s name was Ryan. He died in the famine.’ She looked over her shoulder. Someone was calling her from the chaise.

  ‘Will you excuse me, please?’ she said and with a little bow and a smile she turned in the direction of the chaise, called out something to another lady then went skimming across the field.

  Sterrin sat her horse, astounded. The girl was surely one of Black Pat Ryan’s daughters; one of the children with whom she used to share her own dinner. She had the dark good looks and independence of her papa’s foster-brother; the breeding of her mother—Nonie Mansfield. The strange encounter had thawed a little the frozen casings around Sterrin’s heart. If ever anyone had met with sorrow, with tragedy, it was that blithe being hurrying over the fields as to a bridal. Her mother dead of ship’s fever—and now this reference to her ‘late’ husband. More tragedy! Yet there was no bitterness on the girl’s face; no blank numbness, no sign of emotional paralysis. She just took her fences like a thoroughbred hunter. Sterrin straightened in the saddle. Her head lifted. In the distance she could just see the top of the broken turret. It was a God’s disgrace not to have had it mended long ago. There were a few pounds left from the sale of her jewellery. Every penny that came her way seemed to go into that maw of a castle. But wasn’t it good to have held on to it, not to have let it go to some Scottish game-keeper, English shop-keeper or Irish Gombeen man—or James’s James Keating?

  A light footstep sounded behind her. She turned and saw another girl approaching. Beyond her, the chaise driver was forcing the unfortunate horse back into contortions in an endeavour to turn the vehicle round.

  ‘What are you trying to do, you stupid man?’ Sterrin rode down to him and dismounted. ‘Don’t you know that you’ll never turn there unless you take the horse out of the shafts.’ It infuriated her to see animals ill-treated. She let Clooreen crop and took hold of the hackney horse’s bridle to soothe him. She was on the brink of the bog, the very spot she wanted to avoid. Another hand, in a kid glove, reached beside her own to pat the animal’s forehead.

  ‘You seem to have wonderful control over horses. I’m terrified of them.’ The voice had a foreign intonation that was attractive, something like Mamma’s. Sterrin turned to the speaker. This must be another Ryan girl.

  ‘Are you not going to visit your old home, too?’ Sterrin asked. She tried to study the girl’s face but it was partly concealed by the peak of a very pretty bonnet; one of the new small type that perched on the top of the head, but it was not fashionable to have the peak down shading the face like this one.

  ‘I came to see—a person. I have come specially all the way from America. He is here, in this district, but there is so much secrecy. He is one of those Fenians.’

  ‘If he is a Fenian, you are risking his safety to make enquiries about him from strangers.’

  The girl was stroking the animal inside a diamond-shaped patch of white on its forehead. She went on stroking without replying; her finger tracing the diamond outline. Then very quietly she said, ‘You are not a stranger.’

  Sterrin was startled. Most people round here knew her by sight. But this was an American—and the girl hadn’t even looked at her. The driver led the horse out of the shafts. Sterrin stepped back. Across the bog she saw the old hermit coming to the entrance of his cave and peering across at her. Suddenly she remembered the American officers she had harboured. Ah! That must be the link. She waited a moment for the girl to establish herself, then she said:

  ‘I hope you trace who you are looking for. I’m afraid I cannot help you. Good day.’

  The girl took a step after her. ‘You can help me. You know Mr. Young. I believe it is because of you that—Thomas is focusing his—patriotism in this area.’

  It seemed a long space of time that the two faced each other in that wilderness; so desolate that even the grouse and mountain hare avoided it.

  Sterrin started to say something but her treacherous heart was at its thudding again. It always made her voice shaky and now as never before she needed it steady, controlled. She tried to see the girl’s eyes, but that damned ospreyed peak was too concealing.

  ‘Are you another daughter of Black Pat Ryan’s?’

  The girl shook her head. ‘Thomas brought me to Madame Hennessey—Norisheen’s relation. He was to have come back there for me after the war, but instead he came here. I’ve waited for him all that time but—’ the mouth, a pretty one, made a bitter moue, ‘you had become a widow meantime and he became a Fenian.’

  Behind the veil Sterrin’s eyes probed frantically. This couldn’t be the woman who had been with him—she had an irritating way of holding her head at an angle. All Sterrin could assess was the flawless skin, and out of the chaos inside herself there emerged a clear-cut envy. Something else emerged.

  ‘How do yo
u come to know who I am?’ Norisheen, quite unmistakably had had no idea.

  ‘You—you rode out of that castle when we were on the other road and, oh, anyway, Thomas described you.’

  ‘And how did he describe me?’ No shake in the voice now.

  ‘Oh,’ there was hesitancy. ‘Tall, horsey—’ The eyes seemed to flicker upwards, ‘dark hair—I forget.’ Her back was to the bog. Behind her Sterrin saw a movement at the cave entrance. Another man had joined the hermit.

  ‘He described you to me also.’ The other man had started to move forward. It was Thomas. ‘He told me you were blind. I will lead you to him.’

  Sterrin put her two hands on the girl’s shoulders, with one swirl she propelled her to the brink of the bog. ‘Walk straight in front of you and you will find him. He is only a few yards across from where we are standing.’

  She gave her a gentle push. A hump of solid ground rose immediately beside her out of the bog, beyond was a sheer down-suck of quagmire. The girl stepped on to the hump.

  ‘Go on,’ Sterrin said, her heart had shifted to her throat. I won’t raise a hand to help her. One foot was raised towards the hump. From the other side came a warning shout.

  The girl stepped off the hump; not forward into the ooze; sideways to where a half-concealed piece of turf gave a solid footing, then forward to another foothold, then sideways again, then forward. There had been lighted sods on them to guide Donal, but even by day one might miss the footholds if one hadn’t good sight.

  ‘Dorene!’ It burst from Thomas in astoundment. And then, ‘You have recovered your sight. You can see!’

  She can see, all right! Sterrin couldn’t say it aloud. She was trembling from head to foot and he was calling something to her, something like, ‘My God, what were you thinking to do?’ and the ‘blind’ one clinging to him like a limpet. Blind inagh! She moved towards the horse and tried to swing up.

  ‘Will I give you a hoist, Miss?’ It was the hackney driver. For once in her life Sterrin was glad of a leg up.