Irish Lady

by Jeanette Baker

  After she realized the true nature of her son’s feelings, Annie resolved, for both their sakes, to forget she had ever known Meghann McCarthy. Until now she had kept her promise. Meghann had been widowed for a long time and Michael had never married. Annie knew the stakes were high but she had little choice. Personal feelings were of no consequence when weighed against a man’s life, especially when that man was her son.

  Michael had been silent for a long time. One arm was thrown over his eyes and the other ended in a clenched fist by his side. “Are y’ finished with y’r sulkin’?” his mother asked.

  “Why would she agree t’ come?”

  “If y’ have to ask that, then y’ don’t know Meghann.”

  His laugh was bitter, twisted. “I’ll not argue that point. When did any of us know her?”

  Annie looked down at her hands. Time was running short. He had to accept Meghann’s help. “I had no idea y’ were so angry,” she said softly.

  “And why not?” He pulled himself up against the pillows, grimacing against the pain. “She lived with us for years, accepting our food, our lodging, our friendship, and then she betrayed us by becoming English t’ the core.”

  “I’m not angry, Michael,” his mother reminded him. “Meghann saw her family and neighbors murdered, her home burned. I understand her choice. Perhaps she felt she had no other.”

  “She had another,” he muttered, closing his eyes once again.

  “Did she?”

  “Aye.”

  Annie waited, but this time Michael had finished. “Well, then,” she said crisply. “I’m sure y’ll remind her of that when she comes. I suggest y’ change y’r attitude, Michael Devlin. Because this time y’re in more trouble than you’ve ever been. This isn’t ten years in the Maze, my son. This time they want you t’ move in permanently. And if Meghann McCarthy was nothing more than a Catholic solicitor practicin’ in Belfast, y’ wouldn’t have a prayer of a chance. So count y’r blessings. Y’ve a few more days before they release you. Meggie will see y’ after y’ve been transferred back t’ the Maze.”

  With that, she leaned over, kissed his cheek, and left the room.

  Michael shifted his body so that he lay flat on the bed once again. The light from the window told him it was late afternoon. He remembered that the season was spring. It had been a late afternoon that spring when Meghann no longer smiled at him or talked to him or even acknowledged his presence. Soon after, she’d earned a scholarship to Saint Louise’s Catholic Preparatory for girls. She planned it so that her visits home no longer coincided with his and after her term at Queens, she never came home again.

  He knew why, of course. He had always known why. Meghann was as opposed to violence as he had been convinced of its necessity. But he never imagined that she would put him away, out of her mind and heart and memory, as surely and completely as she had the tragedy of Cupar Street when the loyalists revolted, burning and killing women and children while the police, Belfast’s RUC, and British soldiers stood by and did nothing.

  At first, Michael believed that he could change her mind. But she continued to elude him until one day, determined to speak to her, he waited from morning until nearly dark, his collar turned up against the rain, in front of her lodgings at the university.

  She came alone, as he knew she would. He never suspected a rival or even a friend. Meghann had no time for relationships. She was driven to earn her degree and escape the curse of Northern Ireland. Wrapped in a knee-length belted raincoat, her face hidden beneath her umbrella, she didn’t see him until she was almost on top of him. Without a word, he reached out and grasped the umbrella handle, transferring it from her hand to his.

  “My goodness. Dia duit, Michael.” She laughed self-consciously. “You’re the last person I expected to see.”

  He returned her greeting in the Irish they’d learned as their first language. “Dia is Muire duit. Now, why is that, Meggie, my love?”

  Meghann ignored his question, fumbled for her key, unlocked the door and left it open. He followed her inside, closed the door behind him, folded the umbrella, and left it in the hall.

  “I’ll make tea,” she called back from the kitchen. “Is everything all right at home?”

  “Ma’s grand. The others are the same as always.” He followed her through the shabby studio flat and stood in the doorway, watching as she spooned tea leaves into the pot and added hot water. “It’s been a long time since anyone’s heard from you.”

  “Not really. I met Annie for tea two weeks ago.”

  Michael digested that interesting bit of information. “She didn’t mention it.”

  Meghann poured the tea, took several biscuits from a tin on the counter and set them out on a plate. Then she motioned him to the table. “What are y’ really doing here, Michael?” she asked, fixing her gold-flecked eyes on his face.

  He stirred milk and sugar into his cup. He’d intended to bait her, to draw her out until she lost her temper and admitted she would have nothing to do with an IRA man. The way to Meggie’s soul had always been through her temper. She was slow to anger but when it hit, everything in her mind was blazingly, furiously evident. Without the rage that slow-burned within her, Michael knew he didn’t have a chance at making her see there was nothing less that an Irishman could do and still call himself a man. She wouldn’t want him if he were anything less. He had to make her see. But first he had to reach her. “Do y’ realize this is the first time in two years that we’ve been alone together?”

  “Surely you’re mistaken.”

  Michael shook his head. “No. I’m not. Are y’ deliberately avoiding me?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then why haven’t y’ come home?”

  “I’m studying, Michael, and working.” He watched her hands. Not a tremor to them. “There isn’t time for everything.”

  “Shouldn’t old friends be a priority?”

  Again, her eyes met his. “I told you that I met your mother for tea, and Bernadette calls me every week. Perhaps it’s you who don’t go home enough.”

  Her words shook him. She’d kept up with his mother and sister, and neither had mentioned a word to him. He couldn’t look away. Meghann McCarthy had not been what anyone would call a pretty child. Her expression was too serious, and her eyes above her short, freckled nose had taken up her entire face. But one drizzly afternoon when they had been alone together in the house, she’d read to him from her poetry text in the low, husky tones she would have when she was grown. He watched her push the heavy mass of russet hair away from her face and look up at him from beneath feathery lashes. He’d swallowed, reached out to pull her close, and like Adam to Eve’s apple, bent his head to her open, willing mouth.

  Nineteen was not an uncommon age for a man to marry in the Falls, but Meghann was only fifteen. There had been more than a few women in Michael’s life, but never one who meant anything more than an evening of craic at the pub. A revelation struck him, and he realized now why that was. He had waited for Meghann to grow up, and she was very nearly there.

  Two months later he’d joined the IRA and Meghann shut him out. There were no more stolen afternoons in the Falls Park or carefully planned meetings at the ice cream shop on Divas Road. No more holding her slight body close to his chest. No more listening as she read Yeats in her sultry woman’s voice. No more tasting the insides of her sweet mouth. No more feeling the slide of cool hands on his neck. No more seeing her across the room or down the street or across his mother’s table and knowing that the thick fall of copper-tinted hair, the leggy beauty of her maturing body, the banked heat in her whiskey-colored eyes and the promise of her wide sensitive mouth were his to touch and taste and pleasure. She behaved as if they’d never been, as if his tongue had never slid between her teeth, as if his hand had never felt the firm roundness of her breast, as if the promises they’d exchanged were never made. She did it by surrounding herself with his family and, because there were so many of them and because housi
ng was so short for Catholics in Belfast, she was completely successful.

  Michael, in love for the first time, found himself stymied at every turn. Frustrated, he decided to wait, to lull her into complacency, to force her into needing him as much as he needed her. And so he waited and watched and went about his activities for three long years until he could wait no longer. She had turned eighteen. He was nearly twenty-two. He wanted a wife. He wanted Meggie.

  He reached out to touch her hair. She didn’t move. “You’re beautiful, Meggie.”

  She lifted her cup and sipped her tea.

  “Do you have any idea what y’re doin’ to me?”

  Still she said nothing.

  “I want you t’ marry me, Meggie.”

  That did it. Her eyes blazed gold with anger.

  “How dare you?” she gasped. “How dare you come t’ me after three years and ask such a question?”

  “It isn’t the first time I’ve asked.”

  “The circumstances are not the same.”

  “Why not?”

  Pushing herself away from the table, she stood and picked up his plate. “Tea is over, Michael. You can go now.”

  “I’m not goin’ anywhere. Why aren’t circumstances the same, Meghann?”

  Without answering, she stalked to the sink and began washing the dishes. Slowly he came up behind her, resting his hands on the curve of her waist. He felt her tremble and moved closer, his breath soft on the lobe of her ear.

  “Why aren’t circumstances the same, Meggie?” he whispered, sliding one hand up the side of her rib cage, the other to the base of her spine. “I love you. Y’ know that. Y’ must know that.”

  “I know that you believe it, Michael.”

  “There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  He found the bare flesh of her middle and she shivered. When he turned her around to meet his kiss, she came willingly, pressing against him, winding her arms around his neck and kissing him back. Meggie always had been a fool for affection.

  Michael was on safe ground now. He hadn’t planned this, but nothing short of an act of God would make him throw it away. He knew what to do, and words had no place in the heat-filled, dizzying pleasure of this moment. Lifting her in his arms, he carried her to the couch, unbuttoned her sweater and freed her breasts. Burying his face in the generous curves, he pulled open her wrap-around skirt, stroking her skin, fondling and murmuring encouragement until she was more than ready.

  Removing his own clothes, he kissed her lips, her throat, her breasts and, when he felt her open beneath him, positioned himself between her legs and for the first time, came completely into her.

  She gasped and went still. He waited until he felt her relax before resuming his slow, reassuring movements. She tightened her legs around him, heard his low groan and felt the shuddering warmth of his release.

  “Y’ do love me,” he murmured, collapsing against her shoulder, his lips on her throat. “I wasn’t sure.”

  She said nothing.

  He lifted his head. “Say it, Meggie. I need t’ hear the words.”

  Reaching up, she brushed away a lock of hair that had fallen across his forehead. “I do love you, Michael. I love y’ so much that it frightens me.”

  “Why would it frighten you?”

  She turned her face into his bare shoulder. “No one should love another person this much. It’s too dangerous.”

  All at once he understood. “I’m not goin’ anywhere, Meggie,” he said gently. “I’ll always be here for you. I promise y’ that.”

  “No one can promise that.”

  “T—”

  She pressed her fingers against his mouth. “Don’t,” she whispered. “Don’t say anything. Just know that I love you. No matter what happens, remember that.”

  To this day, Michael still had no idea what happened. He went over it, again and again, in his mind. He would have sworn, when he left her, that their future was settled. One day he was sublimely happy, planning his life with the woman he’d practiced a lifetime of celibacy for. The next she left for England without so much as a good-bye or a forwarding address.

  At first he was bewildered, then, in stages, hurt, angry, and indifferent. Still he waited, hoping for a letter, a call, anything. Finally he told himself he was over her, believed it too, until five years later when he saw her wedding picture in the London Times.

  Now she was home to defend him. Michael smiled at the irony of it. She, who had worked so diligently to eradicate her past, found herself dumped right back in the ugly center of it. His smile widened. God worked in mysterious ways.

  Three

  Meghann leaned across the table, her eyes intent on Annie’s face. “Are you sure that I should go alone? Michael and I didn’t part on the best of terms.”

  “And why is that, Meggie?” Annie poured milk into two teacups, deliberately avoiding Meghann’s penetrating gaze.

  Meghann lied. “I can’t remember.”

  “Then it can’t have been very important, can it?”

  Annie always ended every answer with a question. Meghann had forgotten that. She was also very elusive about her answers. But that was to be expected in a nationalist family. Self-preservation had forced her to become adept at avoiding the truth.

  Meghann sighed. She wouldn’t find out any more than Annie intended she should know. “What if someone recognizes me?”

  Looking up, Annie perused her carefully from head to toe. She looked nothing like the girl who’d left the Falls eighteen years before. It was more than expensive clothing and her hair, redder today than when she first arrived, that separated her from the residents of Clonard. Meghann carried herself differently than she had when she lived in Belfast. She exuded the kind of confidence that came with education, money, and influence, the same confidence Bernadette had after her maiden speech on the floor of Parliament. Involving Meghann had been the right thing to do. If anyone could save Michael, Meghann could.

  “Y’ don’t look much like your pictures now that y’r hair’s lightened up a bit,” Annie said. “Besides, no one will suspect Lady Meghann Sutton t’ show up in the Maze. The lads in prison with him wouldn’t betray Michael, even if they did recognize little Meggie McCarthy from Clonard.”

  “I wish you would go with me.”

  Annie filled the pot with boiling water and wiped her hands on her apron before turning back to Meghann. “I’ve already told y’, love, they only allow one visitor a month.”

  “But I would visit as his lawyer. That shouldn’t preempt family visits.”

  Annie’s eyebrows drew together. “Have y’ forgotten so much, Meggie? This is Ulster. Rules aren’t the same here.”

  Anger flashed through Meghann’s eyes, turning the rich whiskey color to a brilliant gold. “We’ll see about that.”

  “I knew y’ would,” Annie said softly. ‘That’s why I sent for you.” She glanced guiltily at the bulky fisherman’s sweater and cotton skirt Meghann wore. “How do y’ like the clothes?”

  Meghann lied again. “I like them.” At this rate she’d be in Purgatory for the rest of her life. Wasn’t there anything she could be honest about?

  “They’re not what y’re used to, but at least they’re clean.”

  “They’re grand, Annie. Really.” Meghann ran one hand up the rough wool of her sweater. Nothing was worth hurting Annie’s feelings.

  “They’re warm and y’ll need all the warmth y’ can get in the cages,” Annie continued. “I don’t think they have any heatin’ at all in that place.”

  Meghann shuddered. “I’m not sure that pretending to be someone else is the right way to begin.”

  “It’s the only way. If y’ tell anyone that y’re representin’ Michael, they won’t let you in. Talk t’ him first, Meghann. Find out what happened.” Her lip trembled. “We don’t even know why they’ve accused him.”

  Meghann had a very good idea, but she didn’t voice her sentiment
out loud. Hooking her purse over her shoulder, she reached for the umbrella, hugged Annie fiercely, and started toward the door. “I’ll be back after I’ve spoken with him.”

  Annie nodded. “Godspeed.”

  Meghann hadn’t been on a coach since before her marriage. She stared out the window at a Belfast she didn’t recognize. Tidy brick homes replaced the waterless tenements that made up Andersonstown, Little India, and Shankill’s Sandy Row. Grass grew in city parks on both sides of the Peace Line, a brick and wire structure that had little to do with its name, and women with baby prams thronged both Catholic and Protestant shopping areas, apparently unafraid of separatist retribution.

  Fifteen years ago the octagonal guard towers were filled with British soldiers, their guns pointed at Catholic women and children as they shopped, attended Mass, and played in the schoolyards. Police, afraid to leave the protection of their vehicles, patrolled in armored Land Rovers. Barbed-wire barricades kept intruders from coming into the Falls after curfew, and the stench of gasoline bombs permeated the streets.

  Eighteen years ago, Clonard, with its columns of row houses—one family lined up against the next, no hot water or bathtubs, toilets in the back, fifteen streets and sixteen trees—had been home to two thousand Catholic residents. Fire trucks and police cars singsonged as they passed one another, some going to East Belfast or the Shankill on missions of mercy, others to Andersonstown or the Falls to bring English justice and retribution. The barricades were gone now, as were the row houses. The soldiers had pulled out in the wake of a peace initiative that everyone except the extremist right wing of Ian Paisley’s Protestant Unionists supported.

  Above it all, and yet still part of it all, on the border of Catholic Clonard and Protestant Shankill, was a dark turn-of-the-century brick monastery built by the Redemptorists, an order aptly dedicated to the service of the most abandoned souls. If it hadn’t been for the courage of a Catholic priest and a fourteen-year-old boy, Meghann would not be on this coach weaving expertly through the streets of Belfast toward the Maze. She would not be anywhere at all. For that alone she would do whatever was necessary to keep Michael Devlin alive.