Irish Lady

by Jeanette Baker

  When the news hit and Michael’s face appeared on national television, Bernadette Devlin McAliskey had left her husband and children in County Tyrone to be with her mother. For Meghann, she was a breath of life and sanity among the sober, tight-lipped Devlin males. With a sense of déjà vu, Meghann looked around the table with its cloth napkins and lace-trimmed linen. Nothing had changed in fifteen years. They were older, of course, and although Dominic and Liam had the thick, straight Devlin hair, both had gone completely gray. Connor was an older, less personable version of Michael. Sean and Niall were dead, killed in a pub bombing on Divas Street. Cormack and Davie, the merry, freckle-faced lads who had played soccer in the narrow streets of Clonard, were now hollow-cheeked, hard-eyed men who wore the traditional black jackets and blue jeans of the cause.

  Meghann stared at her soup. How could Annie bear it? Nine children and all of them marked targets. Later, while walking down the lamp-lit streets of Clonard, she posed the question to Annie’s only daughter.

  Bernadette linked her arm through Meghann’s and shrugged. “She bears it because she was born to it. Every mother in West Belfast knows that her children will struggle with the notion of joining the IRA. Some will join, others find it doesn’t suit them. Think of our history, Meghann. Two hundred years ago, a woman knew that only two out of her ten children would live past their fourth birthdays. We accept what is. There is no other alternative.”

  “There was for me,” Meghann reminded her, “and for you.”

  Bernadette laughed, a rich, clear sound that lifted Meghann’s spirits and brought answering grins to two shaggy-haired young men sharing a smoke and a Guinness in the doorway of Feeney’s pub. “We’re the two, Meggie. Don’t you see? We’re the exceptions. You more than I. Never once were y’ tempted out of your cerebral calm. ’Tis nothing short of a miracle, considering what happened t’ your family.”

  Meghann looked straight ahead, hoping Bernadette wouldn’t notice the telltale blush staining her cheeks. Was that really how she appeared to the passionate, opinionated Devlins? Were they all so filled with themselves that they hadn’t seen how it was between Michael and an orphaned refugee from Cupar Street? “I was tempted,” she confessed. “It just didn’t work out the way I expected.”

  “If you’re telling me that you were in love with my brother, I already know that,” announced Bernadette matter-of-factly. “It was inevitable. The signs were all there for anyone with eyes t’ see them. How could Michael, who read Yeats and Joyce until his eyes burned, whose mind was filled with rage and passion and romance, possibly overlook a girl like you?”

  Meghann shook her head. “Michael was not a womanizer.”

  “Of course he wasn’t. But there y’ were, living in his house, all wide-eyed and autumn-colored, with gorgeous legs and budding breasts. Only an idiot wouldn’t jump at the opportunity.”

  “The others didn’t.”

  “Now, Meggie.” Bernadette patted her hand. “I know he loved you, too. He told me the day he was going t’ ask you t’ marry him. I tried t’ stop him, y’ know.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I know you. Y’ wanted no part of Belfast, at least y’ didn’t then. Michael had enormous potential t’ help us. We needed him here.”

  Meghann no longer felt the cold on her legs. They had walked much farther than they had planned. “Why do you think I want any part of it now?”

  “Because you’re here.” Bernadette stopped and stepped in front of Meghann, forcing her to stop, too. “I know y’, Meggie McCarthy. Y’ aren’t here because my mother asked for you. Y’re here because y’ve stopped running away. Y’ve bedded down with the enemy long enough. It’s time t’ reconcile Cupar Street.”

  Bernadette Devlin was forty-six years old, but Meghann couldn’t see it. Her blue eyes flashed with the same fire they had twenty-five years before when she crossed the floor of the House of Commons to slap Reginald Maudling, the Home Secretary, after he had minimized the massacre of Irish Catholics at Free Derry Corner. She’d been twenty-one at the time, the youngest MP to be elected in over half a century.

  Sixteen-year-old Michael had fairly burst with pride when he told how his sister, impervious to tear gas, had led the Bogsiders’ resistance in the Rossville Street area of the main war zone. Pictures taken of her breaking bricks to throw at the police earned her a six-month jail sentence.

  Now those remarkable blue eyes, so like her brother’s, were staring at Meghann, insisting on a commitment the younger woman was not sure she could even begin to make.

  Meghann wet her lips. “I’ll do everything that I can for Michael. You know I will.”

  Once again, Bernadette linked her arm through Meghann’s, turning them back in the direction from which they had come. “I wonder if y’ have any idea how much it will cost, Meggie.”

  ***

  In the weeks to come, as Meghann waded through paperwork at her London office, commuted to Ireland on the weekends and endured the ghastly bus rides to the Maze and the even more ghastly interviews with an increasingly uncommunicative Michael, she was to think often of Bernadette’s words and wonder where the woman had acquired her omniscience.

  At the end of Michael’s seventy-two-hour internment, the Crown appointed a lawyer to defend him. Miles French was a capable, soft-spoken Irish Protestant who, to his credit, believed in fair representation for Catholics. Meghann chafed at his inexperience and at the limitations the Devlins had placed upon her. But memories were long in the Six Counties, and until Michael gave the word, she would not divulge her role in his defense.

  When Bernadette introduced her as a family friend, the young barrister had looked at her curiously but kept his thoughts to himself. If he wondered at her grasp of the facts or the pointed questions she asked, he never hinted that anything was other than it should be. Meghann didn’t like deceiving him, but her loyalty was already determined.

  She knew that, eventually, her services would be needed. Miles French was a fine lawyer, but he would never command the media attention needed to save Michael’s life. Only Meghann could do that, and until she had something to go on, something other than an instinctive belief in Michael’s innocence, she was like a swimmer floundering in a merciless current.

  It turned out that maintaining Meghann’s anonymity had been a wise decision after all. While ten-year-old Susan Killingsworth continued on life support, London buzzed with speculation about her father’s murder. Meghann had no doubt that she would have heard none of it had she come out publicly as lead counsel for Michael’s defense.

  Meanwhile, inside the confines of the H-Blocks, Michael refused to compromise his prisoner-of-war status, thereby losing his monthly visitation privilege. Annie was terrified, Bernadette jubilant, and Meghann, when she found out in the receiving line at the St. Johns’ ball, furious.

  Theodore Thorndike had just introduced her to Lillian St. John’s eldest daughter when the news broke, electrifying the crowd like a lightning bolt. The hunger strike of the eighties that had immortalized Bobby Sands and increased membership in the IRA a thousandfold was resurrected as the primary topic of conversation.

  Meghann excused herself, found the study and, in the middle of a dozen cigar-smoking aristocrats, listened as the anchor reported the latest news from the Maze.

  “The clever bastard,” she heard someone say.

  “It won’t help,” said another. “He’s a marked man. He won’t be set free, even if he didn’t do it.”

  Meghann turned, a slim regal vision in green satin. She recognized every man in the room except one. “On the contrary, gentlemen,” she said coldly. “This isn’t 1974. The eyes of the world are upon us. We’ve a great deal to answer for after the Guildford debacle. If Michael Devlin is innocent, he will go free.”

  “Come now, Lady Sutton,” Robert Gillette protested. “He’s a self-proclaimed member of the Irish Republican Army. Who else would have done such a thing?”

  Just in time, Meghann realized where she wa
s. Her eyes widened and the corners of her mouth tilted in a smile intended to charm. “Who indeed?” she asked demurely.

  Collectively, the men laughed and the tension lifted.

  ***

  “Bloody Prov. Have it your own way.” The guard backed out of Michael’s cell, leaving the chamber pot unemptied.

  Michael tucked the thin blanket around his legs and lowered himself back down on the concrete floor. The cell was completely barren, stripped of furniture, books, clothing, everything except a chamber pot. The inmates had been on the blanket protest for six weeks now and the no-wash for two. Rather than wear prison issue that labeled them common criminals, they wore nothing at all except blankets. They would have washed, but the guards refused them new towels and they refused to wrap themselves in wet ones on their way back from the showers. Michael no longer smelled his own filth, but he could tell from the strained looks on the guards’ faces that he stank like a pig. He grinned. It amused him to think he offended Protestant noses.

  His cell wasn’t as bad as some whose slop pots had overflowed. Some of the more outrageous had smeared fecal matter on the walls beside their mattresses, risking disease and body orifices filled with maggots. Cardinal Tomás Ó Fiaich, who on his last visit barely managed to avoid vomiting, had compared prison conditions in the Maze to those of refugees living in the sewer pipes of Calcutta.

  His grin faded. It was bloody cold here on the concrete. Soon Miles French was coming to go over his defense. Swearing under his breath, he consigned the young lawyer and his endless patience to a swift and merciful end. How often did he have to tell them, he wanted no English lawyer?

  Flanked by two screws, Michael made his way down the hall to the visitation room. Miles French, briefcase in hand, waited for him. He stood when Michael entered and held out his hand. Michael stared at it pointedly but did not take it. For a long moment the two men stared at each other, one nattily dressed in tweeds and smelling of cologne, the other unshaven, filthy, and naked except for a gray wool blanket wrapped around his waist and another across his shoulders.

  The barrister cleared his throat. “I’ve arranged for a court date on the seventeenth of June,” he began. “You’ll be asked for your plea. I don’t think there is any point to pleading guilty in the hopes of commuting your sentence. The press has already crucified you. The defense is asking for the maximum. They want to make an example of you.”

  Michael continued to stand, saying nothing.

  The lawyer balled his fists and shoved them deep into his pockets. “Does any of this matter to you, Mr. Devlin? Do you understand that unless you can come up with a reasonable suspicion of evidence that someone else was responsible for this act, your life as you know it will effectively be over?”

  “I understand.”

  “Then why won’t you cooperate?”

  Michael frowned, narrowing his eyes until the brilliant color appeared as a glittering turquoise line. “How long have y’ been practicing law, Mr. French?”

  The barrister flushed. “Four years.”

  “Is this your first murder case?”

  The flush deepened. “Yes.”

  Michael laughed, pulled out a chair and sat down, motioning for the younger man to sit opposite him. “I’d like a smoke, if y’ don’t mind?” he said when they were settled.

  French reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of American Camels, offering one to Michael.

  After several satisfying drags, Michael blew out a ring and considered the glowing tip as he spoke. “Don’t lose sleep over this one, lad,” he advised. “There isn’t anything anyone can do.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m done for. They have their scapegoat.”

  “But, if you’re innocent—”

  “From where do y’ hail, Mr. French?”

  “I was born in Belfast.”

  “But recently returned, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Y’ know nothing about us.”

  The barrister sighed and sat back in his chair. “I’ve been practicing in Manchester for the last three years. Before that I clerked in London.”

  Michael’s eyes narrowed. He tapped the ashes of his cigarette against the table leg. “London, y’ say?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have y’ told Meggie?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Michael ground out his cigarette underneath his chair and leaned forward. “Have y’ told Meghann McCarthy that y’ know who she is?”

  Again, the silence dragged out between them. “No,” French admitted at last.

  “Why not?”

  Miles French frowned and shifted in his seat. “At first, I wanted to know why she was involved at all. I didn’t buy her story of an old family friend.”

  “And now?”

  French squirmed with discomfort. “I don’t really know. It doesn’t seem right to tell her when she obviously doesn’t want me to know.”

  “Do y’ buy her story now, Mr. French?”

  The younger man looked surprised. “Of course. I’ve seen her with your family. They trust her. There could be no other reason for her interest.”

  “What would y’ say if I told y’ that Meghann is trying t’ secure my release?”

  “I’d say you were one hell of a lucky man, Mr. Devlin.”

  “Do y’ think I’m guilty, Mr. French?”

  “Of course, Mr. Devlin.”

  “Why haven’t y’ informed against Meghann?”

  Beneath his wire-rimmed glasses, the lawyer’s eyes misted with excitement. “Are you insane? This is the case of the century. Meghann McCarthy is the best legal counsel in England. With her help, we can win this. And if we win, you won’t be the only one to benefit, Mr. Devlin.”

  “Y’ have everything figured out, do y’, Miles?”

  The young man looked very pleased with himself. “Yes. I suppose I do.”

  Holding the blanket like a shawl around him, Michael stood, walked to the window and pounded for the guard. Before the door opened he turned back to address the lawyer one more time. “Do y’ know what they say about the best-laid plans, Miles?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Be sure all the players learn their lines.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I’m not guilty, Miles. But y’ should ask yourself why I’m the one standing for the crime.”

  ***

  “He told you himself?” Meggie stood against the beautifully mounted Georgian window in her office, her charcoal gray jacket and skirt suitably framed against a backdrop of London fog.

  “Yes, he did. Volunteered it, actually.” To Miles French, Meghann looked to be the epitome of corporate efficiency with exactly the right amount of feminine softness. He liked the way her red hair brought out the green in her whiskey-gold eyes. How would a woman like that, the wife of an English peer, know the Irish Catholic Devlins?

  “Well then, Mr. French. It appears that my time has come. The next time you visit the Maze, I’m coming with you.” Meghann picked up the telephone. “Better yet, I’ll go alone. There are a few things I’d like to discuss in private with Michael Devlin.”

  “You had better take an oxygen mask when you do that. The reek of the place will kill you.”

  Meghann felt no need to mention that she had been brought up in the slums of West Belfast, where nine families shared one latrine located no more than ten feet from the back door.

  When Mrs. Hartwell brought in the London Times with her tea the following morning, Michael’s picture was featured on the front page. He had called a hunger strike. Unless the British government agreed to his demands, all of which seemed perfectly reasonable to Meghann and therefore impossible for the government, four men would refuse all food until they starved to death.

  Meghann knew that hunger strikes were common in Irish history. The early Celts used self-immolation as a way of discrediting someone who had done them a disservice. An unpaid
poet or tradesman would starve himself in front of the residence of an uncaring patron, the result being either death for the tradesman and a ruined reputation for the patron or payment for services received. Bobby Sands’s death by starvation made world news in the eighties.

  Meghann pushed aside her cooling tea. She was well aware that in order to make the front page of the Times, the strikers had already gone weeks without food. God alone knew what Michael’s physical condition was at this moment. “Mrs. Hartwell,” she called out.

  The housekeeper poked her head through the kitchen door. “Yes, Lady Sutton?”

  “Call my office, please. Tell them I’ve been called away rather suddenly. I’ll be in touch within the week.”

  “As you say, ma’am.” Not by so much as the lifting of an eyebrow did the well-trained Mrs. Hartwell suggest that Meghann’s announcement, the third such in three months, was the least bit unusual.

  The phone rang just as Meghann was leaving. When she learned that it was Cecil Thorndike, she debated with herself before picking up the extension in her bedroom.

  “Meghann, what the devil is going on?”

  “I’m in a bit of a rush, Cecil. What do you mean?”

  “Why the sudden need for another week away from the office?”

  Meghann’s voice cooled. “I can’t imagine why my travel plans should be any concern of yours.”

  The long silence on the other end of the line unnerved her until she reminded herself that it was Cecil on the other end and he wasn’t in the least bit intimidating.

  “I thought we were friends as well as associates, Meghann,” he said at last.

  “I’m sorry, Cecil,” she said, instantly contrite. “Please forgive me, but I really don’t have time to discuss this now. I’ll give you a full accounting when I return.”

  “Are you all right, my dear?”

  “Yes, quite. Thank you for asking.”

  “What shall I tell my father?”

  Meghann bit her lip. She was going to miss the flight. “Tell him I’m taking care of a legal matter for my family.”