he ever gave me.
BAIL |BĀL| [NOUN]
the temporary release of an accused person awaiting trial, sometimes on condition that a sum of money be lodged to guarantee their appearance in court
• money paid by or for such a person as security.
bail out: eject, parachute to safety; desert, get out, escape.
bail someone/something out: rescue, save, relieve; finance, help (out), assist, aid; informal: save someone's bacon/neck/skin.
*
The world was back to work. I had a lawyer, a no-nonsense woman called Mags Halloran, hired the Irish way, through someone Pauline knew who knew someone. Mags was the only girl in a farming family of seven whose widowed mother had struggled and saved and steered them all into college. Each year in August, three of them took a week off their high-powered jobs in Dublin or London or New York to go home to Tipperary to help save the hay. This was the robust approach Mags took into the milieu of Dublin law, where she was known as "a character".
Short and squat, she wore calf-length skirts, flesh-colored tights and flat shoes of a kind usually worn by women twenty years older. Her dull-white blouses gaped under the bust, exposing dull-white flesh. I never met a woman who made less attempt to be attractive. Mags liked to be underestimated.
My case worried her from the start. She came to Doolough Barracks and sat opposite me at the table in the day room to explain that I might not get bail. The serious nature of my alleged crime, the strength of the circumstantial evidence, and the location of my home and business in another jurisdiction -- all these were against me.
"Anything in my favor?"
"You tell me. Any previous?"
"Of course not."
"So we'll go with good character, respectable, unlikely to offend again, yadda, yadda...They'll want a substantial surety, though. If they go for it."
"If?"
"Not going to lie to you, Dotes." Mags called everybody Dotes. "We're fifty-fifty at best."
"And if not? I'll have to stay here in the barracks until the trial?"
"More likely to relocate you to Mountjoy, I'd say."
"What sadist decided to name a prison Mount Joy?"
She shrugged. "A more pressing question: do you have the funds for bail? And for legal fees? They're going to want to be sure that you're not going to go skipadeedoo back to the States. And of course" -- this with a cheeky grin -- "the services of a good lawyer never come cheap."
Months later, after it was all over, I wondered why I didn't go "skipadeedoo". It seems to me now that nobody would have cared, except perhaps Dr Keane. The Irish justice system knew I was no danger to society.
Mags had brought a copy of The Wicklow Gazette to the barracks. I was their front page story. MERCY KILLING??? They loved the play on my name of course and their question marks never doubted whether he was killed, only whether it was an assisted suicide or something even more sinister. RETURNED EMIGRANT ACCUSED OF MURDER .
A news story on page one continued onto page three and, in the middle of the paper, a double-page spread analyzed the event, complete with a large photo of my father in his uniform, taken at his retirement do. And a smaller, blurry photograph of me in my convent-school uniform. Where had they managed to turn up that?
The reporter had talked to everyone he could find: to the police who said an arrest had been made; to old school friends who said they just couldn't believe it of me; to a neighbor who said I'd been estranged from my father for years before coming back a few months ago; to Dr Keane who said he was confident justice would be done. To everyone except Pauline or Star or Zach or me, the four people who were in the house that day.
"Could have been worse," Mags said. "They're going with the mercy angle. That's good."
"Why? Why is that good?"
"We may need to use that ourselves."
"I didn't do it," I said.
"Right. Let's get you filling these forms then."
She took them away with her. Eight days later, I was climbing into the
BAIL |BĀL| [NOUN]
the temporary release of an accused person awaiting trial, sometimes on condition that a sum of money be lodged to guarantee their appearance in court
• money paid by or for such a person as security.
bail out: eject, parachute to safety; desert, get out, escape.
bail someone/something out: rescue, save, relieve; finance, help (out), assist, aid; informal: save someone's bacon/neck/skin.
*
The world was back to work. I had a lawyer, a no-nonsense woman called Mags Halloran, hired the Irish way, through someone Pauline knew who knew someone. Mags was the only girl in a farming family of seven whose widowed mother had struggled and saved and steered them all into college. Each year in August, three of them took a week off their high-powered jobs in Dublin or London or New York to go home to Tipperary to help save the hay. This was the robust approach Mags took into the milieu of Dublin law, where she was known as "a character".
Short and squat, she wore calf-length skirts, flesh-colored tights and flat shoes of a kind usually worn by women twenty years older. Her dull-white blouses gaped under the bust, exposing dull-white flesh. I never met a woman who made less attempt to be attractive. Mags liked to be underestimated.
My case worried her from the start. She came to Doolough Barracks and sat opposite me at the table in the day room to explain that I might not get bail. The serious nature of my alleged crime, the strength of the circumstantial evidence, and the location of my home and business in another jurisdiction -- all these were against me.
"Anything in my favor?"
"You tell me. Any previous?"
"Of course not."
"So we'll go with good character, respectable, unlikely to offend again, yadda, yadda...They'll want a substantial surety, though. If they go for it."
"If?"
"Not going to lie to you, Dotes." Mags called everybody Dotes. "We're fifty-fifty at best."
"And if not? I'll have to stay here in the barracks until the trial?"
"More likely to relocate you to Mountjoy, I'd say."
"What sadist decided to name a prison Mount Joy?"
She shrugged. "A more pressing question: do you have the funds for bail? And for legal fees? They're going to want to be sure that you're not going to go skipadeedoo back to the States. And of course" -- this with a cheeky grin -- "the services of a good lawyer never come cheap."
Months later, after it was all over, I wondered why I didn't go "skipadeedoo". It seems to me now that nobody would have cared, except perhaps Dr Keane. The Irish justice system knew I was no danger to society.
Mags had brought a copy of The Wicklow Gazette to the barracks. I was their front page story. MERCY KILLING??? They loved the play on my name of course and their question marks never doubted whether he was killed, only whether it was an assisted suicide or something even more sinister. RETURNED EMIGRANT ACCUSED OF MURDER .
A news story on page one continued onto page three and, in the middle of the paper, a double-page spread analyzed the event, complete with a large photo of my father in his uniform, taken at his retirement do. And a smaller, blurry photograph of me in my convent-school uniform. Where had they managed to turn up that?
The reporter had talked to everyone he could find: to the police who said an arrest had been made; to old school friends who said they just couldn't believe it of me; to a neighbor who said I'd been estranged from my father for years before coming back a few months ago; to Dr Keane who said he was confident justice would be done. To everyone except Pauline or Star or Zach or me, the four people who were in the house that day.
"Could have been worse," Mags said. "They're going with the mercy angle. That's good."
"Why? Why is that good?"
"We may need to use that ourselves."
"I didn't do it," I said.
"Right. Let's get you filling these forms then."
She took them away with her. Eight days later, I was climbing into the
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