Irish Lady
Authors: Jeanette Baker
Copyright
Copyright © 1998, 2012 by Jeanette Baker
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Cover illustration by Phil Heffernan
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The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
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Originally published in 1998 by Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., New York.
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To Sean O'Faolain, Kevin Toolis, Gerry Adams, Eamon Collins, John Conroy, Tim Pat Coogan, Jonathon Stevenson, and Seamus Heaney, without whose works I could not have come to an understanding of Irish politics.
Nuala, Belfast, Ireland, 1968
Four centuries had passed and yet I had not forgotten the smell of charred wood nor the searing heat of a fire bent on destruction. I opened my eyes and saw the leap of flame against shadow, gutted dwellings, the silhouette of a church steeple outlined against an orange skyâan entire world engulfed in fire.
Painful memories, long repressed, struggled for release. Deliberately I willed them back. I had not come through the shadowy portals of time to relive my past. I came for Meghann, poor lost child that she was, and Michael, too, but mostly Meghann. Michael knew who he was and what he must do. It was Meghann who needed my guidance to find her strength.
Gingerly, I stretched my arms and worked at placing one foot in front of the other. Every muscle ached with fatigue. How strange to feel my body again. I never realized how restricting human form could be, and how heavy, even for a small woman.
I didn't know yet where to find her. That would come later, after my thoughts became hers and hers mine, after we had stepped into each other's minds and traveled there, after she learned to face down the demons that kept her afraid.
She was still very young, and our journey together would be a long one. I admit that I was curious to know her. My own daughter had grown to womanhood without me. Like everyone, I assumed that I would live a long life, but it was not to be. Through Meghann, fate had given me another chance at mothering, it wasn't until I first saw her that I understood why.
When she was grown she would be tall. Centuries and the mixing of bloodlines had muted her coloring. Her hair would not be as red nor her eyes as green as mine. But the bones of her cheeks, the shape of her nose and mouth, and the pure, poreless texture of her skin could only have come from me.
She would never replace Chiara, my daughter and Rory's, our child of light and laughter. Meghann was herself, born into this world because of me, a distant ancestor, and that was close enough. From the moment I held out my arms in the burned-out rubble that was her home, and she ran into them, I loved her.
London, England, 1994
His Honorable Lord Justice, James Fitzwilliam, watched in fascinated awe as Meghann McCarthy trailed her fingers across the mahogany bar separating the jury box from the rest of the courtroom. Nearly three weeks had passed since she first stood before him proclaiming herself council for the defense. He knew her, of course. Everyone in London's exclusive legal community knew her. But it was the first time she had tried a case in his courtroom.
Meghann Anne McCarthy was something of a legend in British legal circles. An obscure civics student, of the Irish Catholic persuasion, she had made the nearly impossible climb from Queen's University in Belfast to the hallowed halls of Oxford University, where she shocked her professors and fellow students, mostly male, wealthy, and titled, by graduating first in her law school class.
Upon commencement she was recruited by the exalted firm of Thorndike and Sutton. Within a year she married the elderly Lord David Sutton and vanished from the judicial world. Five years later, after the death of her husband, she claimed his share of the partnership, redecorated his office, soothed his more conventional clients, and established her own reputation. Now she was regarded as one of the finest legal minds in all of England.
All of which Lord Justice Fitzwilliam was quite aware of before the woman stepped into his courtroom. What he hadn't known, what he couldn't have known, what he would never have believed without seeing firsthand, was the way Miss McCarthy manipulated an entire courtroom, himself included.
It wasn't that the woman was strident or domineering, nor was she abrasive or even dramatic. On the contrary, she was gracious and compellingly civil, combining an unschooled elegance of movement, an understated attractiveness with a voice so perfectly pitched, so filled with expressive understanding and compassion that it seemed as if the courtroom had been transported back to another time, a time before radio and television, a time when legend told of a siren's song and the men who fell helpless under her spell.
Good God! Fitzwilliam pressed his eyelids with his thumb and third finger. He hadn't heard a word in ten minutes. Even the prosecution had neglected to voice a single objection. Fitzwilliam didn't blame them, not when the senses of every man in the room were filled with the image of Meghann McCarthy. It was enough to just look at her even when she wore the required masculine wig and black robes of a barrister practicing in the Old Bailey. She couldn't be more than thirty-five. Where, for Christ's sake, had she acquired such technique?
Suddenly, Fitzwilliam was aware of his courtroom. Moments had passed. The silence stretched out, embarrassingly long. Faces looked at him expectantly. Was there a question? His face paled. Good Lord, was he supposed to do something?
As if she could read his mind, Meghann seemed to understand. Smiling conspiratorially, she called forth that compelling politeness for which she was renowned and repeated her statement. “This rests our case, my lord.”
Relieved, Fitzwilliam pounded his gavel. “Very well, then. Defense rests. The jury will begin deliberations immediately.”
***
“Brilliantly done, Meghann, brilliantly done.” Cecil Thorndike, junior partner at Thorndike and Sutton, lifted the Sèvres china teacup to his lips and beamed at his companion. “You were inspired today, truly inspired.”
Meghann smiled politely and looked out the bay window of the Saint James Hotel. The rain depressed her, as did the gray London streets and the man who insisted on plaguing her with conversation when all she wanted was an anonymous spot to drink her tea in peace.
Deliberately, she closed her mind against Cecil's endless prattle. It wouldn't matter. He always repeated himself. She would get it the second time if she missed it the first. Normally his harmless quirk didn't bother her, but today it grated on nerves already sensitive from the case she had won.
Loman Willard was a killer. Meghann knew it, the judge knew it, the prosecution knew it, even the jurors knew it. Yet, for all that, he would walk free, suffering nothing more than a minimal fine and probation, simply because he was an expatriate Orangeman from Derry and his victim had been Catholic, a despised minority in a majority of Protestants determined to maintain their advantage in the status quo. There was a special place reserved in hell for men like Loman Willard. Most likely there was also a place for their lawyers. Cupar Street had never seemed so far away.
Unconsciously, Meghann rubbed the tips of her fingers across her lips, smoothing the lines into fullness, worrying off the last vestiges of coral lipstick. The haze around her head lifted and she heard Cecil's words. “You're tired. Why not take a holiday? I'll handle your load at the firm.”
Meghann stared at him in disbelief. When the day ever came that she needed Cecil Thorndike for anything, she would retire to her house in Surrey and take up breeding hounds.
Cecil occupied a spot on the payroll, nothing more. He was the only son of Theodore Thorndike, original owner and creator of the firm, Thorndike and Sutton. Meghann often marveled at how a genius like Theodore could have produced a son like Cecil. But then she remembered Elizabeth. The late Elizabeth Thorndike, Cecil's mother, had passed her unfortunate genes down to her only living child. How Cecil had ever passed his third levels remained a mystery. The man had the mind of an artichoke, plodding, perennial, mushy, tunnel-visioned and completely devoid of insight. Still, he meant only kindness. Because he was inherently warmhearted and had loyally visited her husband's bedside during that long and painful year before David died, Meghann cared for him deeply.
Because of that, and because of the good manners instinctive to one born in the Six Counties, she smiled graciously and said she would think about it. Years later, looking back at the quiet comfort of that drizzly afternoon, Meghann mentally thanked Cecil Thorndike over and over again from the bottom of her heart, realizing that his sympathetic offer, his plodding mind, and the tenacious nature of his personality had made all the difference during those terrifying weeks after Michael's escape from Long Kesh Prison.
Frowning into her bathroom mirror later that evening, Meghann remembered looking critically at the color of her hair. The telltale copper, proclaiming her heritage, was beginning to appear in strands around her temples and forehead again. If she didn't make a salon appointment quickly, her natural color would take over and the dark, burnished elegance of her coiffure would disappear, turning her into a different person, a person she had worked for thirteen years to eradicate, a person who remembered that the civilized, refined people with whom she surrounded herself were capable of acts so horrific, so inhuman, so hate-inspired, so filled with prejudice, that names like Auschwitz and Buchenwald flitted through her mind more than occasionally.
Securing the auburn-tinted cloud on top of her head with a clip, Meghann slipped off her robe and stepped down into the recessed marble tub. Scented water lapped against her knees, closing over her breasts and shoulders as she stretched out full-length in the soothing warmth. Deliberately, with the discipline acquired during weary nights of study in the dimly lit, damp-infested quarters she'd rented while studying for her exams, Meghann closed her mind against the smirking countenance of Loman Willard. She was Meghann McCarthy, Lady Sutton, wealthy widow, respected barrister, and major shareholder of the law firm of Thorndike and Sutton. The past was of no consequence. Her two living sisters had emigrated to America, married, and become citizens. There was no one left, no one who could possibly matter.
Despite his acquittal, Loman Willard would rot in hell. Meghann knew it with the same pure faith she had known twenty-seven years before when she lifted the white mesh of her First Communion veil and accepted the flat, tasteless wafer of the Body of Christ on her tongue.
It had been almost that long since she had stepped inside a church. Even so, Meghann had great confidence in the wrath of God. Occasionally He exacted his vengeance immediately, mercifully, with a minimum of pain. More often He would wait, allowing the sinner his flush of glory, the rosy, hedonistic glow of premature success. Then, without warning, He would strike as flawlessly and systematically as only a master archer bent on destruction can strike. Either way, justice would be served. Meghann would soak in her bouquet-scented water and leave Loman Willard to God.
The faint ring of the telephone penetrated her thoughts. She tensed, waiting for the shrill second half of the double ring. It came, followed by the professional tones of her housekeeper. Mrs. Hartwell was on until nine, a luxury David had instituted upon their marriage and Meghann continued to allow herself after his death.
A soft knock sounded on the bathroom door. Meghann frowned. Mrs. Hartwell never interrupted her in the bath. “Yes?” she asked with a hint of subtle disapproval in her voice.
“I'm sorry to disturb you, ma'am. But the woman said it was an emergency. She said you would take the call. Her name is Annie Devlin.”
Meghann froze, the sponge clutched in her right hand, the bath gel in her left.
Annie
Devlin? Good God! Annie Devlin.
The blood left her extremities and her arms sank lifelessly down into the bathwater.
“Lady Sutton?” The housekeeper knocked again. “Will you take the call? Shall I tell her to ring again?”
Words formed inside Meghann's throat but no sound came out. She tried again. The words were hoarse, rasping.
“Lady Sutton? Are you ill?”
Meghann's heart resumed its beating, and the blood pulsed against her throat and wrists. She looked at the wall clock over the towel rack. “Take down her number, please. Tell her I'll call back at half past the hour.”
Solid footsteps marched down the hall, stopping at the phone. Again, Mrs. Hartwell's comforting voice penetrated through the bathroom door. Not until she heard the comforting click of the receiver and the diminishing tap of the housekeeper's soles against the wooden floor did Meghann rouse herself, pulling the purple terry robe from its hook on the door, dropping it in a crumpled heap near the floor mat.
She began reciting the mantra that calmed her nerves and reduced the emotions roiling within her. “
Je
suis, tu es, il est, nous sommes, vous êtes, ils sont.
” Again and again she conjugated the French verb. “
Je
suis, tu es, il est, nous sommes, vous êtes, ils sont.
” To feel deeply was dangerous. “
Je
suis, tu es, il est, nous sommes, vous êtes, ils sont.
” Caring threatened one's sanity. She'd cared for her parents and Michael and David. “
Je
suis, tu es, il est, nous sommes, vous êtes, ils sont.
” David was different. He was ill. She'd had time to prepare for his death. David had saved her. He had been her sanity.
Again she looked at the clock. Twenty minutes. She had twenty minutes to compose herself, dismiss Mrs. Hartwell for the night, punch in the numbers on the phone pad and hear the voice that would bring it all back, the person she had buried and the life she had left behind, the guns and guard towers, the barbed wire of the Peace Wall that had nothing to do with peace, the internment of Catholics, the late-night searches and the dreadful, inevitable singsong whine of a police car forcing young men to the side of the road to search for weapons, bombs, and Irish Republican Army sympathies.
Automatically, Meghann stood and reached for a towel, wrapping the generous length of it around her body before reaching for another to systematically wipe dry her legs, her feet, her arms, the back of her neck, and her shoulders. There had never been enough towels at Annie's. Plumbing wasn't reliable in the Falls. Washing was a horrendous chore, and two towels for one person was an act of selfishness not even contemplated by the residents of Clonard.
That person, the person who would no more use a second towel than she would spit on the curbside, the Meggie McCarthy buried beneath a cultured accent, expensive clothing, and buffed fingernails, first made her appearance thirty-five years ago. She was the youngest child of a large, unemployed Roman Catholic family living in West Belfast's public housing, one more member of the despised forty-six percent of the population destined to be forever on the dole of the British welfare rolls.
Even worse was the Republican inclination of her family. Her grandfather, James Connelly, one of the original thirteen Bloody Sunday martyrs, had been executed for proclaiming Ireland a republic, free and separate from Britain. Her father, Padraic McCarthy, remained a loyal Fenian and member of Sinn Fein during the apathetic years of the fifties and sixties, and all three of her brothers, self-proclaimed IRA members, had done their time in Long Kesh and the H-Blocks, formerly “the Maze,” a prison located outside of Belfast on the scenic road that led to the Glens of Antrim.
Armed with cakes and chocolate biscuits, two of her sisters had made monthly pilgrimages to the jail cells to visit their husbands, all political prisoners, all IRA members, all indivisibly harboring a rabid hatred of everything British.
They were dead now, her father, her mother, her brothers, all victims of plastic bullets, those six-inch-long, three-inch-wide missiles condemned by Parliament and the Human Rights Commission for use in the London riots but accepted as commonplace against the Irish Catholic population of Ulster. Lance Cavendish, liberal reporter for the London
Times
, reported that the lethal missiles were projected with deadly force from the guns of Ulster's finest, the Royal Constabulary, the same pro-union force who shot men in the backs if they crossed into the Shankill at night and who bashed the heads of children carrying rosary beads in the Falls.
They had died, all together on one shattering night, and Annie had taken her in. Gentle, warmhearted Annie, her godmother, the mother of her heart, the woman in whose ample lap she had rocked, at whose table she had worked on her lessons, drunk her tea, consumed a thousand salty, grease-soaked fries, the table where slowly, painfully, over years of unconditional love, the empty hole in her heart had filled and she had smiled and teased and laughed and loved as if the ugly, hate-filled, rampaging crowd had never broken through the Cupar Street barrier and destroyed everything and everyone that was hers.