City Girl (43 page)

A woman was complaining that now that summer had arrived she would have no peace on the street because of the kids out kicking ball until all hours. She also told Gay that she lived in fear of
her life of her windows getting broken and that she hadn’t a flower left in her garden. The broadcaster had made light of her complaint, saying hadn’t she little to moan about –
kids were always bouncing balls and she must be exaggerating. Maggie found herself getting mad. The nerve of him! Wasn’t it all right for him living in secluded splendour out in Howth. He
wouldn’t be troubled by ball-kicking. Maggie knew
exactly
what that woman was going through. Hadn’t she gone through it in Templeogue. Maggie sat down and wrote a letter in
support of the other woman’s complaint, and to her great satisfaction it was subsequently read out on the programme. From then on she was hooked on the show which covered such a wide range of
interesting topics. At least if she was a housewife, she was an informed housewife, she told herself a little wryly. And so the bland routine of coffee mornings, playschool rosters, chore-filled
mediocrity that was her existence continued, broken only by her visits to Devlin and Caroline.

With the girls Maggie could escape for a while from the everlasting routine her life seemed to have turned into. She felt she was neither happy nor unhappy – she was just existing. Where
once she had lived life to the full, had crammed every minute with experiences, she now had the sense that the fast-flowing river of life was passing her by and she was stranded, clogged like a
reed against a weir and going nowhere. Where once she had chafed against entertaining Terry’s clients, she now found herself looking forward eagerly to meeting new people after the
stultifying boredom of being alone with two small children day after day.

Invitations to Maggie and Terry’s dinner parties were much sought after in their circle. Although she had a tastefully decorated dining room, Maggie much preferred to entertain in her warm
spacious kitchen. Not for her the elegance of Cordon Bleu cuisine. Maggie was not a country girl for nothing. Her mouthwatering roasts and casseroles and pies were always devoured by her very
appreciative guests who would then relax, elbows on the large circular pine table, sipping from their brandy-filled goblets. The after dinner discussions were always lively and amusing and she made
sure to have a good cross section of guests.

Several times she invited Devlin to stay overnight with the baby so she could join the party and it always did her heart good to see her friend dress up and enjoy herself for a few hours. Terry
was always especially kind to Devlin and for that she loved him. He never judged people, not like Richard, the bastard, who had been exceedingly cool to Devlin during one of their soirées.
Terry had become Richard’s investment consultant and although he was doing well for himself, her husband could not help but be impressed by the amount of money Richard and some of his other
clients were earning. Richard was making over one hundred thousand pounds a year, he informed Maggie one evening as they were preparing for a dinner party.

In spite of Terry’s carefully acquired successful-man-about-town veneer, Maggie knew he had never quite lost his boyhood sense of inferiority. It was this country-boy complex that pushed
him on and on. Status and material wealth were important to Terry and it frequently annoyed him that he couldn’t match the Yateses’ glittering lifestyle. Maggie couldn’t have
cared less whether she drove a battered old Renault or a Rolls Royce. As long as she got to where she wanted to go she was happy. She dreaded each occasion that Richard presented Caroline with
something new. Richard loved to boast and always brought it to Terry’s attention. The ear-bashing she would then get would usually end up in a row as Maggie tried to impress upon her husband
that she didn’t give a fig if Richard had spent three hundred pounds on a leather jacket for Caroline. What her friends or neighbours or anybody else had, meant nothing to Maggie. What Maggie
craved more than anything else was time. Time of her own, for herself, when she could do as she pleased. It was the one thing that seemed to elude her. There were the needs of her husband and
children to be taken care of. Her family in Wicklow were a constant drain on her time with her mother frequently arriving on her doorstep on a day trip to the city and expecting Maggie to drop
everything and escort her around. There were times when the utterly harassed Maggie really envied the childless Caroline and the husbandless Devlin. Now with this new baby on the way she’d
have even less time!

Ironically it was her pregnancy that gave her a liberation of sorts. She was in her fifth month and as in the previous pregnancy their love life was suffering. She knew that Terry found
pregnancy a sexual turnoff. Maggie accepted this quite philosophically. Terry was solicitous of her comfort and for him, quite caring, especially after the awful pregnancy she had endured before.
Although this pregnancy was much easier on her, healthwise, she found taking care of two lively toddlers very tiring. She promised herself that this was going to be her last child. Three were more
than enough. Nor was she ever going to take the pill again. She hadn’t gone back on it after her first pregnancy because she had been breast feeding for so long, and it hadn’t been too
much of a shock to her to get pregnant again. She wanted to have her children close together because it was much easier to rear them, but after this one, Terry was going to have to have a
vasectomy, or she was getting her tubes tied. No more messing around her internal rhythms with the pill. And there was certainly no way she would consider an IUD, as Terry suggested when she told
him she didn’t want to go back on the pill. She’d like to see him having his insides mucked about by foreign bodies! It was easy for her husband to suggest she use the pill or the IUD.
She wasn’t getting any younger, and she had been using contraceptives since her late teens and she was fed up with it. His body wasn’t affected and it was either a vasectomy or tied
tubes from now on, she informed him firmly, much to his dismay.

It was about ten days after this conversation that she came home to find her husband making love to another woman. To discover that little slut Ria Kirby in her bathroom! In her house! Making
love to her husband! This was the most devastating experience of Maggie’s life. Nothing that she had ever experienced before had prepared her for the pain and trauma of Terry’s betrayal
of her and there had been a row to end all rows.

She had always intensely disliked the overpowering self-confident Ria. Their paths had crossed for the first time when they were living in Saudi and Maggie had been pregnant with the twins. Ria,
who worked in the Department of Agriculture and had been in the Gulf as part of a team sent to teach animal husbandry to the Arabs, also hailed from the same part of Galway as Terry. She lived in
the same apartment block as Terry and Maggie and she was a hard-drinking hard-living young woman who took what she wanted and to hell with other people.

Although she was small and on the plumpish side she had an incredible ego and a loud imperious personality. At any party they attended Ria could be found, her brown eyes sparkling, her carefully
tousled black locks tumbling in disarray over her plump little shoulders and invariably decolletée, as she flirted outrageously with every man in the room.

Maggie judged her to be in her early thirties, although it was difficult to tell with the amount of make-up she always wore, and it seemed to her that beneath the gaiety there was the faintest
hint of desperation about Ria’s giggly flirting. She would often loudly declare for the other women’s benefit that she was strictly a career girl and that marriage was certainly not on
her agenda at the moment.

‘Wash some man’s socks! Not me!’ she’d declare. The men were charmed by her! Ria had taken one look at Terry and the heavily pregnant Maggie and had made a determined
play for him. One night, having spent the evening sniping rudely at Maggie, she remarked insultingly, ‘You’re sooo
tall
, Maggie! I bet your nickname was beanpole!’ She
laughed gaily.

Maggie had had enough of her sarcastic comments. It was bad enough to sit and watch her flirting cheekily with her husband who was enjoying every minute of it, but to have to listen to her
making personal remarks was too much. She was not in the humour to take any more and she snapped coldly, ‘I’d rather be a beanpole than a fat smart-ass tarty dwarf!’

A stunned silence had descended on their table and then Maggie got up and walked out as Terry tried to laugh it off by saying it was her ‘condition.’ From then on out-and-out
hostility existed between the two women and it wasn’t too long after their exchange that Maggie began to suspect that Terry was seeing Ria behind her back. Maggie never actually caught them,
but she knew from the sly triumphant looks that Ria flashed her that something was going on. Terry was out late and Maggie was no fool. When she confronted her husband, he indignantly denied that
there was anything between himself and the other woman. And Maggie, because she wanted to believe him, accepted his word. They returned to Ireland and she had put the episode out of her head. Ria
had in fact returned to Dublin before the twins were born, and Terry never referred to her again. During her second pregnancy, Terry was so considerate of her welfare that Maggie was totally
unprepared for the shock that awaited her.

She had driven down to Wicklow one Friday to see her parents and had told Terry she would be back late in the evening and that his dinner was already prepared in the fridge. Nelsie, for once
noticing her daughter’s pale and tired appearance, had unexpectedly offered to keep the twins for the weekend. Maggie jumped at the idea, it was so rare, a chance to have time to themselves.
Driving home she hummed happily to herself. It was a lovely warm afternoon and maybe she could persuade Terry to leave work early and take her away for the weekend. Noting with some surprise that
his car was already in the drive, she was astounded to find that the French doors to the patio were wide open and towels and suntan oil strewn around their well-sheltered lawn. Her mouth tightened.
What the hell was going on? Instinctively she knew it was something she wouldn’t like.

Heart pounding, she mounted the stairs and walked into their bedroom. She could hear the sound of running water and a female giggle and she didn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to know that
her husband was with someone in the bathroom. Opening the door, the steam almost took her breath away and her housewifely pride was annoyed by the fact that they hadn’t even bothered to open
a window. Flinging aside the shower door she found Terry and that little fat bitch Ria Kirby! Her plump little dimpled bottom was the first thing that Maggie could see through the steam.

Terry’s jaw dropped in horror and Ria gave a little squeal of dismay. Maggie’s blazing eyes met those of her arch enemy. ‘Get out of my house, you fat little trollop!’
she yelled. ‘What’s wrong? Can’t you get a man of your own? Well keep your claws out of mine or you’ll be sorry, you vulgar little tart!’

Hustling the startled Ria out of the bathroom she flung her clothes at her and snapped angrily, ‘Get dressed you or I’ll put you out on the street naked.’ The other girl,
scarlet with humiliation, had wasted no time, her fingers fumbling at the fastenings under Maggie’s laser stare. Terry remained bashfully in the bathroom until his lover was gone and then
came into the bedroom with a sheepish grin on his handsome face.

‘Aw, Maggie, don’t be mad! I just needed some sex. I know you’re not in the humour for it these days. You know it means nothing!’

‘You dirty lowdown bastard! Don’t use that as an excuse,’ she shrieked. ‘Did it have to be with her? Did it? And in my own house? How long has this been going on? Since
we came back from Saudi? What do you think I am? A doormat? What about your marriage vows? Don’t they mean anything?’ she raged, hurt beyond belief.

‘Ah come off it, Maggs. You’re getting upset over nothing.’

‘Over
nothing
! Don’t insult me, Terry. How would you feel if you caught me with another man? Would
you
think it was
nothing
? Would you even care?’
She glared at her husband, hating him. ‘Let me tell you something Mister, I’ve just had enough of you! I’m going to stay with Devlin for the weekend and when and if I come back
there’s going to be some changes in this household – whether you like it or not!’

Slamming the door behind her she left a thoroughly shaken Terry standing dripping on the carpet.

How Maggie got from Castleknock’s lush greenness to Ballymun’s grey drabness alive she never knew. She drove automatically, her mind full of hurt, anger, bitterness.

Betrayed! Once again she had been betrayed by someone she loved. Just as her best friend Marian had once betrayed her, so too had her husband. The man who had vowed to be faithful all the days
of his life. Ha! Faithful! Terry didn’t know the meaning of the word. Poor Leonard. Was this how he felt the day he discovered his wife with another man? Leonard would never have done this to
her.

Why? why? why? she asked herself over and over again. Did she not give enough love? Was she someone who invited betrayal? Did people think because she was a fairly tolerant person that she had
no feelings? Why did the two people in her life who had meant the most to her, hurt her so brutally?

‘Bitch! Bastard!’ she sobbed, tears blurring her eyes. She was stopped at red lights and she knew that the man in the car beside her was staring. To hell with him, she didn’t
care. All she cared about was the anger that was bubbling up inside her. First Marian, now Terry! What a pair they would have made. Users! Abusers! They didn’t deserve her love. Marian and
Terry would have made a perfect couple! Why was she thinking of Marian now? It must be the feelings of pain and hurt that Terry had caused her that had brought back all the old memories so long
buried in her heart. The pain of betrayal was the same no matter who caused it.