Protection

by S A Reid

  * * *

  The next morning, Joey received a letter addressed to him in an unfamiliar hand. It was postmarked London; already opened and read, the envelope had been stamped APPROVED. Joey sat down at the small table to read the letter as Gabriel brushed his teeth at the basin.

  Joey—

  I wanted to tell you in person. But you won’t be permitted your first visitor until December. I wrote the board of governors asking for an exception, but it was denied. So all I have left is to tell you in a letter.

  You know I always believed in you. I still do. I have never doubted your innocence. If you were only due to be away for a year, or three years, I could bear it. Not just the loss of your company and my own loneliness, but my shame and isolation, too. I know you’ll despise me for telling you this, but when the Crown convicted you, it convicted me, too. Most of the villagers at home wanted nothing to do with me, once they realized I wouldn’t gossip about you. So I moved to London to stay with my cousin Dora. I don’t expect I shall ever go home again. I am starting a new life in the city and for it to succeed, it must be new in every way.

  Joey, please understand, I don’t expect you to forgive me. It must seem as though the entire world has turned against you, through no fault of your own, and now me, too. What I have chosen is selfish, and wrong, and I’ve chosen it all the same. I want to live while I’m young enough to have the things I once dreamt of – a husband, children, and a good name.

  Julia

  Joey stared at the letter. It was all in Julia’s handwriting, except for the signature, which was bold and slanted. Studying the smudge on the words “young” and “name,” Joey suspected Julia had wept so much while making her confession, she’d been unable to continue. So cousin Dora had signed the letter, written directions on the envelope and posted it.

  He was proud of Julia, happy for her. Her choice was what he’d wanted, echoing the very arguments he’d used during those black days after he was convicted and awaiting sentencing. Even if they’d been wed, Joey would have urged Julia to divorce him. The very idea of a twenty-three-year-old woman, bright and pretty and vivacious, waiting eighteen years for her fiancé to emerge from prison, middle-aged and no doubt broken, was obscene. What would Joey have to offer her by then? Disgraced as a physician and fit for nothing but manual labor, assuming he could even get it …

  Gabriel slipped the letter out of Joey’s fingers and pressed a clean handkerchief in its place. “Right. To your bunk.”

  Wiping his eyes, Joey struggled to control of himself. “It’s not – it’s not the letter,” Joey said, or tried to say, throat closing as Gabriel helped him up. “It’s just – just—”

  “In your bunk,” Gabriel repeated. “I’ll report you as sick to the duty guard. He’ll check on you once an hour, ask if you need the infirmary. Otherwise you’ll be left in peace.”

  Joey felt fresh grief well up, not for the loss of Julia, whom he couldn’t see, couldn’t talk to, couldn’t touch, but for himself – the last remnant of his old life, lost forever. Still in his uniform and heavy standard-issue shoes, Joey lay atop the rough gray blanket, turned his face to the wall and sobbed until no more tears would come.

  * * *

  When Gabriel returned after work detail, Joey was sitting at the table again, smoking a cigarette. Julia’s letter was tucked in his left breast pocket.

  “Lonnie said you were a carpenter before.” Joey nodded at the faint layer of sawdust on Gabriel’s uniform.

  “Still am.” Gabriel brushed at his trouser legs. “The governor and the administrators use me shamelessly, right under the eyes of God, a master carpenter’s free labor. And they know I won’t botch it up just to spite them, ’cause I take too much infernal pride in my work. Once the world learns the source of your pride, it owns you.”

  “I would say, the source of your shame.”

  “Ah. Well. That, too.” Pulling out the little table’s other chair, Gabriel turned it around and straddled it. An unlit Pall Mall appeared in his hand as if by magic. “Joey. Whatever news the letter brought. I’m damned sorry for it.”

  Joey stared into Gabriel’s hazel eyes. The rectangular face, the high cheekbones, the firm chin and creased forehead – he was utterly masculine, hard as granite except for those eyes. Like the eyes of a great predator, a cheetah or lion, Gabriel’s eyes could be soulful, hypnotic, beautiful.

  Joey laughed. The sound was nothing like usual. Was the old Joey Cooper gone for good? Had his earlier outpouring of grief been the death knell?

  Gabriel seemed unoffended by the laughter. “I know, ’tis useless to go round saying sorry for things we’d naught to do with, nor any power to heal. But—” He broke off, transparently startled when Joey struck a match and lit his cigarette for him. “Why. Thank you.”

  “I wasn’t laughing because you said sorry about the letter. That was decent. Polite.” Taking a drag off his cigarette, Joey blew smoke out his nostrils. “I was laughing because you had the bollocks to say sorry for a letter you never read and not for what you did to me in the showers.”

  Gabriel stared back silently for so long, Joey began to think the other man wouldn’t respond in words. He braced himself for Gabriel to leap to his feet, overturn the table, curse and rage. But Joey didn’t shrink away. Part of him welcomed it.

  At last Gabriel put the Pall Mall to his lips and inhaled. “If could take it back, I would.”

  Pointing with his own cigarette, Joey leaned across the table, stabbing the lit end mere centimeters from the tip of Gabriel’s nose. “Not an apology.”

  “You wouldn’t accept it.”

  “You don’t get to say what I’ll do with it!” Joey cried, on his feet all in one motion. “Last night you – I – we almost—”

  Cigarette held between taut lips, Gabriel was also on his feet, catching Joey’s arms and overpowering him with ease. “Quiet,” he said, forcing Joey back into his chair. “Say your peace but say it low, unless you want us both birched for fighting.”

  “Everyone who should have stood by me turned away,” Joey said fiercely, trembling all over. “I wanted Julia to join them, I asked for it, I expected it. The only thing left that doesn’t make sense is you.” Joey glared up into Gabriel’s face. “I hate you. I don’t want your protection. Let them kill me!” Flinging down the half-smoked cigarette, Joey crushed it under his heel, wishing everything could be stamped out so easily.

  “Joey—”

  “No more! I’m done with you. Let them kill me or kill me yourself,” Joey cried, throwing himself back on the bunk and covering his face. For a long time there was silence. Then Joey heard Gabriel’s footfalls departing as the other man headed for the cafeteria, and supper.

  * * *

  When Joey woke up, the cell was locked down and the overhead lights were snuffed. With effort, he managed to read his wristwatch in the mirror-reflected light: eleven thirty. Gabriel was probably still awake below, immersed in a novel. It didn’t matter. Joey’s bladder was too full for him to remain in the bunk much longer.

  He climbed down the steel ladder as quietly as his prison-issue shoes allowed. Slipping them off, Joey made it within half a meter of the bucket when Gabriel spoke.

  “Careful now. Don’t kick it over. I took a shit in there the size of the Albert Hall.”

  Joey heard himself chuckle. This time the sound wasn’t the mirthless noise of a stranger. When he finished with the bucket he sighed, muscles relaxing, and sat down at the little table.

  “If the guards catch you sitting there after lights out, they’ll order you back to your bunk.”

  “I’ve spent too much time there already.”

  Gabriel threw his long legs over the side of his bunk. Feeling around for his pajama bottoms, he pulled them on and sat down across from Joey bare-chested. “Fancy a smoke?”

  “God, yes.”

  Gabriel lit two Pall Malls and passed one over. Joey took a grateful drag.

  “You never asked what I’m in for,” Ga
briel said after they’d smoked in silence for a while. “Guess someone told you.”

  “They said the charge was originally double murder. Your father …?”

  Gabriel nodded. “If you kill your father, they call it patricide. Your mother? Matricide. Do them both in one night, send your parents side by side into the next world, and there’s no word grand enough for it. Which is funny,” Gabriel said, “because in the history of the whole human race, I can’t be the only sorry bastard who’s done it.”

  Joey brought his cigarette to his lips again. Gabriel waited a moment, then reached across the table and poked Joey lightly in the shoulder. “This is where you ask me why I did it.”

  “Why did you do it?”

  “I was the eldest MacKenna.” Gabriel’s gaze slid away from Joey’s. “My sister Maureen was ten years younger. I loved all my family, you know how that goes, but I loved Maureen best. She was my plaything, my own little girl. Used to nurse her with a bottle and rock her on my knee. One day in summertime she came to me crying. Pregnant. I said, tell me his name. He’ll marry you or go to his grave and there’s an end to it. But she wouldn’t say. First time Maureen ever refused me when I was in a state. I bellowed and threatened, but all she did was cry. I thought the bastard was married.” Gabriel gave a humorless laugh. “Anyway. Next week she tells me it’s all over, she got rid of it. I knew a mad old bat down the lane did abortions. But I never thought Maureen would go for one, come hell or high water. And she hadn’t. She’d been made to do it. Being with child frightened my little sister but she wanted the baby, wanted someone of her own to love. Being forced to let that old woman rake into her …” Gabriel took a deep drag off his Pall Mall. “The guilt tore Maureen to bits. I grabbed her and shook her until she gave up the name of the man responsible.”

  “Your father.”

  “Oh, yes. Keeping it all in the family, don’t you know?” Gabriel took another pull off his cigarette. “And me such a damned fool, I never guessed. All us kids were scared shitless of the old man, he’d cuff us soon as look at us, but I never knew he poked his fingers up the lasses’ skirts. And Mum knew. God help us, she knew. When Maureen confessed he’d gone farthest with her, taking her to bed, I … well. You know how they say an angry man sees red?” Gabriel’s mouth stretched, but his eyes were blank. “’Tis true. The world went crimson. Maybe it was the devil coming over me, I don’t know. I smoked and paced the back garden while Mum cooked supper. The second Da came home, the second he entered the kitchen through the back door, I was on him. Don’t remember what I said. Don’t remember how it felt. But I broke Da’s neck with my bare hands.”

  Joey tried to imagine such a thing. But Lionel Gates had never truly been a father to him. The adoration, the fear, the father-son rivalry – it was all foreign to Joey. Even when Coates had been moved at the sight of his pretty bastard boy, even when he was charmed by Joey’s popularity within the village, Coates had done no more than hire Joey to work in his gardens. Every other advantage Joey had enjoyed, including his scholarship to Oxford, was earned through personal merit alone.

  “Tell me everything,” Joey said when Gabriel didn’t continue. “I can guess. But tell me.”

  Gabriel smiled again. This time it touched his eyes, crinkling the skin around them, and something in Joey’s frozen midsection turned over. The man was handsome. Not just physically, not just in face and form. Within those eyes.

  “Two things run in my family on my mum’s side,” Gabriel continued. “Ginger hair and madness. I don’t have the ginger hair. I’m the only MacKenna of my generation who doesn’t. Neither did my Aunt Sally, but she had the madness, don’t you know. Always jabbering to the saints, which every Irish woman does, but in her case they jabbered back a little too much. As for my mum – she had the ginger hair and the madness. She was mad for my da. He was meat and drink to her – the sun and moon in one suitcase, if you mark me. Loved Da more than me and all the other kids put together. When I took Da by the throat, she came at me with a cast-iron skillet. Don’t remember taking it from her, or knocking her down. But it must have been a hell of a blow because,” he sighed, blowing out smoke, “she died a few hours after they arrested me.”

  “Did you flee?” Joey wondered what he would have done in Gabriel’s place. He couldn’t imagine lifting a finger to his mum. But she was gentle, easy and utterly his. It wasn’t true that he’d lost every remnant of his former life. His mum would wait faithfully for his release as long as her health held out.

  “Flee?” Gabriel blinked at Joey as if returning from someplace far away.

  “Do a runner? Hide?”

  “No. Never occurred to me. Next thing I remember, I was sitting at the kitchen table. My little brother Joseph came in – twenty years old if he was a day but never missed a meal at home – and called the constable. At the trial he gave evidence against me.” Gabriel shrugged. “’Twas the right thing to do. The only thing.

  “The Met charged me with double murder. But Maureen offered to testify for me. Told the whole story, every bit of it, though she knew she’d never be able to hold up her head in the old neighborhood again. The abortionist was arrested. Maureen, too. Forced to submit to a medical exam.” Gabriel sighed again. “You know I meant to protect her. But all I did was shame her, shame myself and destroy our family. If I’d asked her, she would have rather pretended it never happened. Instead she was named in the papers, just like me. That’s how Rebecca Eisenberg got involved.”

  “Rebecca Eisenberg?” Joey didn’t recognize the name.

  “Social reformer. Prison reformer. Women’s rights reformer,” Gabriel added with both eyebrows raised, as if daring Joey to mock her. “Rebecca found a solicitor and got Maureen off straightaway. She even tried to help the mad old bat who did the abortion, but that was a lost cause. There were too many other complaints, too many women coming forward, maimed for life. Then Rebecca took my case, entirely on Maureen’s word, before ever meeting me. You know the type? Doesn’t believe any man should hang, no matter what he’s done. Has a million and one arguments – Jesus, Buddha, Paddy down t’pub, any authority you can think of. And she engaged a barrister who defended me on the grounds of ‘irresistible impulse.’”

  “I’ve heard of that,” Joey said. “It doesn’t mean a man is insane. It means he was so provoked, so inflamed, he couldn’t help himself. So he would have committed the exact same crime even if a policeman had been standing at his elbow.”

  “Well done.” Gabriel lit a new Pall Mall off the dog-end of the old. Joey studied Gabriel through the wreath of smoke, tempted to reach across the table and touch the other man’s hand.

  Not because what he did to me doesn’t matter. Even in his lowest moments, Joey didn’t value himself so little. But because in this place where he’d lost so much, where nearly every comfort had been taken away, he alone had the power to forgive Gabriel. And with the realization of his power came the sweet, painful temptation to use it.

  “So. I was spared from the noose, as you see,” Gabriel continued dryly. “I’d been prepared to die. Confess, be shriven, and go. Suddenly I was looking at the rest of my life as a prisoner without hope of parole. I was so angry I could have strangled Rebecca,” he added, grinning. “She came to see me as soon as permitted. I walked into the visiting room ready to tell her just what I thought of her – her and all the do-gooders who stuck me here for eternity, or near as makes no difference, to think on what I’d done. Then I saw her.”

  Joey couldn’t read Gabriel’s expression. “You mean – she was pretty?”

  “Thirty-five or forty. A spinster. Dressed like a blind man picked her clothes. Hatchet face and big brown cow eyes,” Gabriel smiled fondly. “Do you know, Rebecca earned a law degree? Top marks, but couldn’t find anywhere to practice, being a woman. Earned a doctorate in sociology, too, what do you think of that? And there I was, with my primary school education, feeling superior to her because she was homely. But ignorance pushed me to do the right thing. I swal
lowed my bile and thanked her humbly. And she said saving a man from a meaningless death was its own reward.”

  “Do you still hear from her?”

  “Sure and I do.” Gabriel winked as if discussing an old girlfriend. “We correspond, don’t you know? Discuss books and what not. She visits me twice a year. Closest thing to a wife I’ll ever have.”

  “What happened to Maureen?”

  “Took the veil. Joined the Benedictines as Sister Mary Michael. Says she’s found true peace with God. Writes me every Christmas and Easter to say she loves me and prays for my soul.” Gabriel stopped, looking across the table to meet Joey’s gaze. He opened his mouth to say more, then closed it, plainly unable to get the words out.

  “Gabe,” Joey put his hand on the other man’s. “Last night felt good. Not just getting off. After. Why did you pull away?”

  Gabriel’s eyes dropped. Shifting the Pall Mall to his mouth, he placed his other hand atop Joey’s, his two hands enclosing Joey’s slightly smaller one. “Forgive me.”

  Torchlight flashed into the cell. Buckland, who’d pulled night duty for the month, pretended not to notice as they hastily pulled apart.

  “For Chrissake, MacKenna, Cooper, what’re you doing? Holding a séance? Trying to make contact with a dead witness since all the live ones say you’re guilty?”

  Joey, shaken by the interruption, didn’t know what to say, but Gabriel chuckled. Maintaining close relations with guards like McCrory and Buckland served him well.

  “Just woke up to find Cooper sick over the bucket. Fancy a visit to the infirmary yet?” Gabriel turned to Joey.

  “No. I’m better. Back to meals and work detail tomorrow, I promise.”

  “Good man.” Approaching the bars, Buckland lowered his voice. “MacKenna. Cranston showed me the restoration you did on his sideboard. Bang-up job.”