Irish Lady

by Jeanette Baker

  Meghann reached for the delicate locket she wore on a chain around her neck. The chain was new, but the thin gold oval with the Celtic markings was very old. She didn’t know how old. It had been her mother’s and her grandmother’s and her great-grandmother’s, all the way back to a time she knew nothing about. No one remembered where the locket had originally come from. It was passed down to the females in her family, mother to oldest daughter, one generation to the next, in an unbroken line of succession until the night of Cupar Street. By rights it should have gone to Kathleen, the oldest girl. But after that awful August night, Kathleen had taken one look at the haunted expression on Meghann’s face and another at the white-knuckled fist clutching their mother’s brooch, and told her to keep it.

  There had been someone else with Meghann that night, someone other than Father Alex and Michael, someone who continued to appear at various timely intervals throughout her life. Father said it was Saint Brigid, Meghann’s own guardian angel, keeping her from harm. But the round face and sweetly pious features on the stained glass panel of the inner sanctuary of Saint Stephen’s Cathedral bore no resemblance to the woman who had appeared out of the mist to save her from the carnage on Cupar Street.

  That woman, dressed in the robes of a postulate, had a striking high-boned face, glittering green eyes, and red braids, twisted with gold thread, as thick as a man’s hand and so long they reached below her knees.

  After Meghann left Ireland, she had never seen her again. With every passing year the woman’s memory had dimmed until Meghann had almost completely forgotten her. Odd that she should remember, now, the youthful fancy of an introverted child’s imagination. Meghann stared at the rivulets of rain running down the wet curbs into the gutters and examined the facts surrounding the Killingsworth murder.

  Britain no longer wanted the expense of maintaining troops in Northern Ireland. The British government had no stake in the murder of James Killingsworth. Meghann didn’t believe Sinn Fein was responsible either. While Killingsworth was not a supporter of the party, he planned to travel with them in the same direction. Moving rapidly through her list of suspects, she discounted the IRA. Although they claimed independence from Sinn Fein, they were one and the same. She had seen the coffins of men adorned with the black jackets, gloves, and berets of the organization and knew them to belong to the same men whose faces appeared on political posters. That left the Unionists, the land-holding, job-holding Protestant loyalists represented by Ian Paisley. Who had better reason to assassinate James Killingsworth than those who had the most to lose?

  She sat back in her seat and closed her eyes, depressed by the sight of the rain-drenched city that no longer looked familiar. Michael would know who had done it. If she could just get beyond the past, she might be able to save him.

  Meghann changed coaches at the end of Ormeau Road. The only passengers left were those on their way to Long Kesh. The familiar banter on the public motor coach stopped altogether as the eight women closed into themselves, preparing for their monthly visits. Meghann pulled a tissue from her purse and surreptitiously glanced around. They were all young, in their early twenties, and not one had a decent coat or a well-heeled pair of shoes. Silently, she blessed Annie for suggesting a change of clothing. It would be difficult enough to blend in without the tailored wool slacks and cashmere jumpers she had packed in her bag.

  The coach stopped outside an iron gate. Ahead, on the M1 north, travelers would pass through the postcard beauty of the Glens of Antrim. Behind the gated camp a church, pristinely whitewashed, shown purely against a field of green. Meghann drew a deep breath and forced herself to look at the rows of cages that had housed three generations of her family. Black-tarred and gray metallic roofs, tinny cold huts that broiled in summer and froze in winter, furnished with cots, meager blankets, a hot plate, and one small black-and-white television.

  The women hurried to a door where a guard scrutinized their papers before ushering them inside. Meghann was careful to be neither first nor last. Her hands were lumps of ice. Fifteen years in England had not cured her of her terror of Northern Ireland’s yellow-vested police force. Today she wasn’t Meghann McCarthy, London barrister. She was an Irish Catholic visiting a prisoner accused of killing a British politician.

  Eyes lowered, heart hammering, she prayed that the guard noticed nothing more on her identification papers than her birthplace. A minute passed and still he examined the document. Perspiration gathered between her breasts. Nausea rose from the pit of her stomach.

  Breathe, Meggie, she told herself. She was becoming irrational. Worst case would be that she was sent away and told to apply for visitation privileges through proper channels. There would be publicity, of course, and she wouldn’t be able to see Michael unless she came out publicly as his attorney. Theodore wouldn’t like it. She brushed that away. Theodore’s prejudices had ceased to worry her long ago.

  The real problem lay with Michael. If he had murdered James Killingsworth, no power on earth, not even Annie’s pleas, could talk her into defending him. Once, Meghann had known Michael Devlin better than anyone. She was counting on that now. Only by seeing him face-to-face would she know if he was innocent.

  “Move on,” the guard said abruptly, motioning her through the door. Meghann was so nervous she could barely stand. Carefully, she placed one foot in front of the other until the door closed behind her. Then she leaned against the wall, drinking in deep sustaining breaths until her heart resumed its usual cadence. The communal visiting room was near the end of the hall. A guard stopped her at the entrance. “Who do you want?”

  Meghann wet her lips. “Michael Devlin.”

  The man directed her to a door around the corner. “Political prisoners wait there.”

  Murmuring her thanks, Meghann walked to the closed door and pushed the button. She heard footsteps and then the sound of keys in the lock. She tensed.

  Again, a guard answered and motioned her inside. Two more armed men stood behind him. One of them stepped forward, grabbed her shoulders, turned her around and pushed her against the wall, holding her arms above her head.

  Meghann was no longer a Catholic schoolgirl from Clonard. Rage and logic warred with each other in her brain. She opened her mouth to protest when a meaty hand pressed up into her armpit and down her rib cage, boldly squeezing her waist, her hips and thighs before moving to her other side.

  Awareness exploded in Meghann’s mind, shaking her as much as her moment of anger. The man was frisking her. A male prison guard was actually frisking a woman visitor. She filed the details in her mind and forced herself to endure the indignity of blunt fingers digging into her flesh. Finally, it was over. Another door opened and she was motioned inside. Behind her a lock clicked and the bolt slid into place.

  At first she was disoriented. The room wasn’t as bright as the hallway had been. She blinked and looked around. It was empty except for a small table and two chairs facing each other. Where was Michael? For the first time she felt the cold and rubbed her arms. Again the door opened and two men stepped inside, one wearing a guard’s uniform, the other dressed in faded jeans and black jacket, official garb of the Irish Republican Army.

  Without a word, the guard removed the handcuffs from Michael’s wrists and disappeared out the door, leaving Meghann staring at the floor with burning cheeks, wondering what on earth could have possessed her to come here and face him. Fifteen years of telling herself that Michael was a man like any other, that her obsession was hero worship and nothing more, that when compared to others more sophisticated, more educated, more diplomatic, he would fall short. He couldn’t possibly be as handsome as she remembered. Eyes could never be so blue nor teeth so white nor a grin so dangerously disarming. And yet here he was, in the flesh, as vital and potent and glittering as ever, as if this were some practical joke and he’d never been arrested, never been accused of a terrible crime and beaten to within an inch of his life, never lost a spleen and copious amounts of blood in the operating
room at Royal Victoria Hospital.

  “Dia duit, Meghann.”

  The lilting beauty of the ancient words blending with the richness of a voice that could never be mistaken for anyone else’s washed over her. She swallowed and raised her eyes to his face, wondering if she could still form the syllables of her first language. “Conas ata tu?” she managed.

  He shrugged. “I’ve seen better days.”

  “So I’ve heard. Can I help?”

  Something flickered in his eyes, something deeply personal and shockingly intimate. “Do y’ want to?”

  She wet her lips, forcing herself to hold that mesmerizing blue stare. “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Meghann’s throat worked and she turned away to hide the unexpected tears so appallingly close to the surface. Breathe, the voice of a fourteen-year-old boy from long ago Cupar Street sounded in her ear. Breathe and the pain will stop. She breathed. The tears receded and her voice returned, but the words she spoke were low and close to her heart, not the ones she’d intended for him to hear. “If I owe anything to anyone in this world, it is to you and to Annie. Let me pay my debt, Michael.” She turned back, forcing herself to meet the remote, archangel beauty of his face. “And then you must let me go.”

  For an instant, before the shutters fell again, his eyes blazed like living blue flame. “You’ve already gone,” he said softly. “Y’ left your family, your religion and your heritage t’ live in London and marry a bloody Brit. You’ve money and a title and all the respectability that beauty and brains and an Oxford education can bring. Just how much farther can a Catholic from Clonard aspire, Meghann? Are y’ itching t’ become prime minister?”

  “I’ve no desire to have my body parts blown up all over Malone Street.” She winced, despising the sharpness in her voice.

  He grinned. “You’ve changed, Meggie. But I don’t mind. I imagine your tongue will serve me well.” The grin faded. “I didn’t kill him.”

  Relief washed over her. She believed him. “Who did?”

  Michael pulled an unaltered cigarette from his jacket pocket, swiped a match against the concrete floor, brought the two together and inhaled deeply.

  “No, thank you,” Meghann said sweetly. “I don’t smoke.”

  He blew out a blue-tinted curl. “I know. Not that I would have offered. We’re rationed in here, or maybe y’ didn’t know that. Maybe y’ think we get Guinness and lamb chops twice a day.”

  Meghann released her breath. “Of course, I don’t think that. You haven’t answered my question. Who killed James Killingsworth?”

  Michael shrugged and leaned back against the wall. “Not the Brits and not the IRA. Maybe Paisley’s group. I don’t know.”

  They were getting nowhere. “Come, Michael. If you don’t know, no one does.”

  “You’re giving me more credit than I deserve.”

  Meghann shook her head. “I don’t think so. News does reach England. I know very well what you’ve become.”

  For an instant the blue eyes flamed again and Meghann thought she saw the old Michael. But then his flash of temper disappeared, except for a slight flaring of his nostrils. When he spoke, sarcasm and the accent of West Belfast were thick in his voice. “I’m flattered that y’ve kept up. What do y’ do with y’r spare time, Lady Sutton? Read the Irish Times or, better yet, the Sinn Fein home page?”

  Gritting her teeth, Meghann willed herself back into the control for which she’d earned her reputation. She pulled out a chair, using it as a footrest while she sat on the table. It was an awkward position, but Annie’s shoes made her feet hurt and she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of towering over her. “Tell me why they arrested you.”

  “I was in the area.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Listening to a speech.”

  “Whose speech?”

  “Killingsworth’s.”

  Meghann’s eyes widened. “Good Lord, Michael. Don’t tell me they caught you inside.”

  He flicked the cigarette into the far corner of the room and shoved his hands deep into his pockets. “Christ, it’s cold,” he complained. “Of course they caught me inside. I was on the guest list.”

  Pressure was building inside Meghann’s head. “How could you possibly afford a five-hundred-pound-a-plate dinner?”

  His mouth tightened and a muscle below his right eye twitched angrily. “None of your bloody business.”

  She forced herself to speak calmly. “I’m afraid it is. That’s the first question the prosecution will ask.”

  “Let them. Their courts have no jurisdiction in Ireland.”

  This time her voice rose. “Do you want to go to prison for the rest of your life, Michael?”

  He didn’t answer, which only infuriated her more. Kicking the chair away, she slid off the table and stood before him, her head tilted to look up into his face, her shaking finger pressed against his chest. “How dare you do this to us? Your mother has aged ten years. She can’t sleep at night, which might be due to worry over you or it might be because every one of your brothers is home pretending to give her emotional support while eating her out of house and home. Even Bernadette came, and you know how dangerous it is for her to be in Belfast. As for me, I’ve lied to my associates, my housekeeper, my clients, and all of my friends, not to mention the fact that I’m here, in a prison, under false pretenses. I’m trying very hard to help you, Michael Devlin, but if you don’t want my services, please let me know.”

  Her words echoed against the metal door, reverberating off the walls, making the silence that followed appear even deeper than it was.

  Michael stared at her, noticing for the first time how her mouth quivered and how the blood leaped in the hollow of her throat. Her hair was darker than he remembered and shorter, cut into a wispy, layered style that framed her face and rested on her shoulders. Her cheeks were flushed, but beneath the scarlet her skin still had that curious golden sheen that only the darkest redheads have. Michael did not have the words to describe Meghann’s eyes—Irish eyes. They were no true color, but a combination of green, gold, hazel, and amber, clear brook water running over peat moss shot with silver, only brighter, clearer, changing with every mood. Just now they were black with anger and something he had seen too often to deny. Meghann was terrified. She had moved to the other side of the room, as far away from him as possible.

  Hand outstretched, he moved forward, his only thought to offer comfort. He stopped in midstride, turned his head to the window and listened. Without warning his hand snaked out, grabbing Meghann by the wrist, pulling her into the nearest corner. “Pretend y’ like it,” he muttered, before his arms wrapped around her and his mouth came down on hers, hard.

  At first Meghann was too shocked to protest. Then the door opened behind her and she understood. Reacting instinctively, she pressed herself against Michael’s chest, slid her arms under his jacket, and kissed him back. His mouth gentled and moved against hers and for a moment Meghann forgot she was in prison under false pretenses, forgot that the man whose lips and hands were taking such shocking liberties was her client, forgot that eighteen years had passed since she’d kissed anyone with such wanton abandon.

  “Are you all right, miss? We heard you call out.” The guard’s sincere voice broke through her reverie.

  Michael broke the kiss, lifted his head, and lashed out angrily. “Get out, y’ bloody screw. Find your own girl. I’m allowed my thirty minutes.”

  Purple with embarrassment, Meghann hid her face against his shoulder.

  The guard, no more than a schoolboy, backed out of the room, apologizing profusely. He stopped for one brief look from the outside window. Michael saw him and deliberately turned his back. Threading his fingers through Meghann’s silky chestnut hair, he pulled her head back and kissed her again.

  Later, after the silent bus ride through the rain-wet streets and the long walk up Divas Road to Clonard, when she was back in the safety of Annie Devlin’s kitchen, Meghann wondered why
it had never occurred to her to stop him.

  Four

  “I can’t do anything without a full investigation, Annie.” Meghann paced back and forth in her hostess’s small kitchen. “I need information, witnesses, anything. The only way to free Michael is to prove it might have been someone else. What we don’t want is a Diplock court. Without a jury, he won’t have a chance.”

  “I’m thinkin’ that he’ll be made to confess.”

  Meghann frowned. “What do you mean?”

  Annie’s hand shook as she folded towels. “We still live under the Emergency Provisions Act. The limit is seventy-two hours without a lawyer. Michael can’t take another seventy-two hours of torture. The last beatin’ almost killed him.”

  “A case of this magnitude will have the eyes of the world on it. They can’t touch him if they know someone other than a court-appointed attorney is watching out for his interests. It’s the only way, Annie. Unless I come out in the open, my hands are tied. I can’t request any files from the prosecution without legal authority.”

  Annie shook her head. “Y’ll have no peace, Meggie. Connor says they’ll bring out the big guns if they know y’re on the defense. Wait a bit,” she pleaded. “See if y’ can find out more before they find out about you. Bernadette and the boys are workin’ on it. They’ll be here for supper. Please stay.”

  Meghann sighed. Had it always been this difficult to get them to move forward? She couldn’t remember. Maybe it was different looking out from the inside. Thank goodness for Bernadette. As a past Member of Parliament, she would offer a perspective that none of the others could.