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  Later they went for drinks in O’Dwyers but the frenetic gaiety of the Christmas season seemed only to depress her. For some reason she felt lonely despite the crowds surrounding them, offering their congratulations. She excused herself to go to the ladies, and had just closed the cubicle door when she heard two voices outside. Unaware of her presence, one woman said to the other, ‘What do you think of Richard getting hitched, the bastard? I dated him a couple of times and I was crazy about him, but he just kept on seeing other women. What has little Miss Prim and Proper got that we haven’t got?’

  The other voice said drily: ‘Probably a Swiss bank account. You know, I gave that swine so much business through recommending clients to him, thousands of pounds worth. When I got his firm to handle my purchase of DESIGNER, the shit charged me down to the last penny. If you ask me he overcharged! I wish her joy of him, the penny-pinching skinflint! Anyway, he always loved having young girls fall for him. He wouldn’t be able to handle a mature relationship with a woman of his own age. That’s why it’s not you or I that’s flashing the diamond tonight, Elaine!’

  Caroline’s eyes were on stalks at this display of bitchiness, as she remained hidden in her cubicle. She remembered Richard telling her that the well-known business woman Joyce Jordan was buying a fabulous new boutique and that his firm was handling the sale, but imagine him not giving her a discount! She knew that Richard was careful with his money but still, if she had given him so much business he could have been a little bit generous! And who was this Elaine who had dated her husband-to-be? Oh well, he had dated many women, yet the remark about ‘mature relationships’ stung. She wondered if Richard had slept with Elaine? What a pity she hadn’t the nerve to walk out and mortify them.

  Caroline waited until they had finished their business and gone, before leaving and walking back to her seat. Richard was up at the bar and she met Charles Stokes’s inscrutable gaze. Thinking that perhaps he might feel that marriage might put constraints on Richard’s socializing with him she leaned over and said shyly, ‘You’ll always be welcome to visit when we are married.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, but didn’t meet her eyes. Caroline sighed. If he wanted to sulk that was his business. She wasn’t going to whisk Richard off and never let him meet his friends, for God’s sake! Honestly this should be the happiest day of her entire life. To hell with Elaine and Joyce and Charles Stokes! Surreptitiously her thumb caressed her engagement ring. She should be thanking God that she was not condemned to a life of spinsterhood. She was on the edge of that special magic circle. Soon she’d be one of them, a fully fledged married woman at last! Caroline took a long satisfying drink of her Guinness and blackcurrant. Tomorrow the engagement would be announced in The Irish Times for all the world and Ruth Saunders to see.

  ‘For business purposes,’ Richard said when Caroline told him that she thought such announcements the height of pretentiousness, but she didn’t quite believe him. Still if it made him happy. Maybe she would get pregnant straightaway. Richard wanted a son, he had told her, and the thought of having a baby thrilled her, especially as Devlin and Maggie were now pregnant.

  Smiling at the thought she sat among the throngs, her mind full of happy anticipatory thoughts. ‘Mrs Caroline Yates’ – how perfect it sounded! She took another sip of her drink and began to feel more relaxed. Everything would be fine, she told herself. And she was truly the luckiest girl in the world.

  Maggie’s Story – I

  Nine

  Maggie Ryan murdered a fly with an unnecessary amount of violence and slumped wearily on to the sofa, part of the furniture that had been included in the apartment supplied with Terry’s job in Saudi Arabia. At the moment the air-conditioning was into its third day of being out of order and if Terry didn’t get it seen to rapidly she was going to get on the next available flight to London. For heaven’s sake there had to be at least ten thousand engineers in this Godforsaken hole of a country. Surely one of them could fix the air conditioning!

  Rivulets of sweat ran down between her breasts, her hair clung damply to her neck and with a sigh of exasperation she walked into the white tiled bathroom and sat in the bath, turning on the cold shower. Later, when the heat of the day had died down a little, she would go over to the compound, meet some of the other bored wives, and maybe go for a swim. Life in a Saudi compound had begun to pall somewhat though at first it had been so exciting. There were people of all nationalities living in the huge foreign compound that was at least as big as the whole of Dun Laoire. There were parties morning, noon and night and on the compound itself, the social life was terrific. Had she been footloose and fancy-free she could have had a ball, she wrote and told Caroline and Devlin.

  In the beginning she had enjoyed it so much, the trips to the souk, the scuba diving, the crack. But after six months, the excitement and newness of it had worn off. The restrictions began to get the independent Maggie down. Having to wear the black abbaya that covered her from head to toe when she left the compound, not being allowed to drive because she was a woman, not being allowed to be driven by a man unless he was her husband. It was a man’s world in Saudi; women were definitely second-class citizens. Terry, her husband, was enjoying every minute of it. And then there was the heat. The harsh unrelenting sun was as oppressive as the religious laws that currently ruled her life. Still, the money was good!

  Her hands slid down over her swollen belly and she felt the child inside her kick vigorously. Terry assured her that it had to be a boy and she hoped for his sake that he wasn’t going to be disappointed. He had taken some getting used to the fact that she was pregnant, and if she was completely honest, she had taken some getting used to the idea herself. It hadn’t been planned. But when had things ever worked out according to plan?

  Because she had been so sick during the pregnancy she had had to stop working as a nurse in one of Riyadh’s biggest medical centres, and she was bored out of her mind. The days seemed to drag on interminably. They had lived in Riyadh since their marriage eighteen months before and had already made enough money to buy a house and help Terry set up his own accountancy firm at home. His financial experience here and in the States would be of great help as he intended specializing in foreign investment accounts.

  They had gone home on one of their holiday breaks to start getting things set up and to attend Caroline’s wedding. The feel of the soft Irish mist that had caressed Maggie’s face when she arrived at Dublin airport had been heavenly and she had stood gulping in great lungfuls of fresh blustery Dublin air. She had never been so glad of anything as she was of the overcast misty sky that had blotted out every trace of the red ball of heat that she had become heartily sick of.

  What she would give now to feel a soft Irish mist on her face! Even the humidity in New York hadn’t made her feel like this. It must be because of her pregnancy. How different she felt now from the day she had walked radiantly down the aisle on Terry’s arm, ready to face their adventurous new life abroad. She got out of the bath, wrapped a towel around herself and went into their bedroom. Pulling her wedding album from the wardrobe, she sprawled across the bed and began lazily to turn the pages. Observing the glowing vital person that she was then, she wondered if she was now the same girl at all. There was something about this country that sapped your energy and dried you out. Maggie felt like a grape that had shrivelled up into a wrinkled old raisin.

  She looked at a picture of her husband with a big pissed grin on his face as he cut his wedding cake. The life here suited him. He would have stayed another five years if she let him, so maybe the pregnancy was a blessing in disguise. She was certainly not going to raise a child in Saudi. A picture of herself smiling proudly in her virginal white caught her eye. She had worn white despite the fact that she and Terry had become lovers within three months of their first meeting. Terry hadn’t been the first either. Her eyes glazed over, and she could almost smell the fresh sweet hay, the musky masculine scent of Joe Conway as he brought her voluptuous seventeen-y
ear-old body to its first magnificent orgasm. It had been a hot August day, the sky a vivid azure with little white clouds scudding along in the warm sensual breeze that had rippled through her hair and across her young, tanned, naked, excited body.

  She would always remember seeing those little scudding clouds as she lay in the soft hay cradling Joe’s body on top of her, as he panted harshly, sweat moistening his lean muscular body, then groaned with pleasure as he felt himself becoming aroused again by the luscious Maggie who was seven years younger than him. She was by no means his first woman, she knew that. Joe Conway owned land as far as the eye could see and was considered the catch of the county. Yet, until he met Maggie with her open natural honesty he had never considered marrying. He had seen her around the village dressed in shorts and a teeshirt, her long shapely limbs and slim-hipped firm-breasted young figure causing many of the men to admit to impure thoughts in the confessional.

  However, Maggie was completely unaware of her own beauty, innocence adding to her vibrant sensuality. One day Joe had given her a lift in his Land Rover to the meadows where her father was gathering in his hay, helping her to carry the large basket of food and the cool bottles of beer for the men at work. Her sparkling green eyes, clear and glowing with good health, had met his directly and for her age she was amazingly self-possessed with none of the giggling coy ways of her peers. Maggie for her part, had felt her body tingle with reaction the first time Joe Conway had looked hard at her with warm, admiring black eyes.

  Joe Conway was a hard-muscled lean young man in the prime of life. He reminded her of a powerful stallion biting at the bit, eager for challenge and adventure. When he had taken over his father’s huge dairy farm he had completely modernized it, introduced a battery of new technology and after two years was on his way to being the biggest dairy farmer in the county. What he wanted he took, and he wanted Maggie. And she wanted him. The teachings of the nuns, the warnings of her mother, the sermons at Sunday mass, had not made one whit of difference to Maggie’s views on sex. She had an open uncomplicated view of sex and sexuality. To her it was the most natural thing in the world and when she felt the warm excited tinglings that occurred when she was with Joe she wanted more and, even at seventeen and unlike her peers, she was quite untroubled by any feelings of guilt.

  Something as nice as making love couldn’t be wrong. She wasn’t going to be a hypocrite, not like half the creepin jesuses of the village who went to mass daily, and then proceeded to pass the time gossip-mongering, and taking away people’s characters.

  ‘I’d swear that young lassie deliberately got pregnant so he’d have to marry her! Isn’t it a shame for her?’

  ‘She’s only marrying that ould yoke because she’s afraid of being left. He’s sixty if he’s a day and she won’t see thirty-five again and she’s no oil painting!’

  ‘Young Neil Doyle has been up fixin the Widda Mullan’s central heating! I’d say it’s more than the central heating he’s fixin, meself.’

  The hypocrisy of people sickened Maggie, as she watched certain individuals claiming social welfare who weren’t entitled to a penny of it, and saw others making fortunes at the expense of their neighbours. The village publican was selling drink to all those who would buy it, whether they were under age or not. He didn’t care that half the men of the village went home pissed out of their skulls more often than not, and that many was the wife who was left short of money for her family’s needs, money that lined his till. And then there was the doctor, who made more visits than were strictly necessary and who made patients come to his surgery to get their test results rather than give them over the phone. Phone calls couldn’t be charged to a medical card! And what about the sergeant, who owned three houses in the area, and who had them let and never declared a penny for tax? But then, of course, nobody reported him, because the sergeant was great for turning a blind eye if there was a bit of after-hours drinking, or someone’s car wasn’t covered by tax and insurance. And the priest in his big house, looked after by the nuns from the nearby convent, fed the best of food and wine, able to afford foreign holidays and a big fancy car and membership of the select golf club – although she had to admit he worked hard for his luxuries.

  These upright, Godfearing self-righteous members of the community would have branded Maggie a loose woman if they had known that several weeks after their first meeting she had lost her virginity in glorious abandon to Joe Conway. She had been out riding, savouring the smell of the new mown hay and inhaling deeply the warm flower scented breeze. As she rode along happily, she saw Joe standing by his Land Rover at the edge of the meadow and cantered over to him. He held out his arms to help her dismount and it seemed the most natural thing in the world to meet the firm sensual mouth that was so close to her own. They walked over, arms entwined, to a soft rick of new-mown hay, and, miles from anywhere, in the scorching heat of the afternoon had made passionate and utterly uninhibited love. It had been the mercy of God she hadn’t got pregnant, she often thought later, and from then on she told Joe he’d have to wear a condom. Maggie liked making love but she was not irresponsible.

  When she was eighteen Joe proposed to her, but Maggie turned him down. She wanted to see the world and had grown tired of the restrictive tapestry of village life. Having secured a place in a teaching hospital in Dublin, she was anxious to go and become a nurse. It was a bitter man who watched her reject a life that many girls would have given their eye-teeth for. As the wife of the biggest cattle-exporter in County Wicklow she would have rubbed shoulders with the landed gentry of Ireland, had her own yearling to run in the Curragh, taken trips to Paris on Concorde to watch her horse race at Longchamps, mixed with the Smurfits and the Sangsters, the O’Briens and the O’Reillys, drunk champagne and eaten strawberries at Epsom. Joe couldn’t believe his ears when she told him that it all sounded dreadfully boring and that her mind was made up.

  Her parents hadn’t spoken to her for a month, unable to believe the chance she was turning down to marry into the Conway family, one of the richest and best-known in the south-east. None of them had understood, not one of them; the only person who supported her decision was Marian.

  In the scorching heat in Saudi, Maggie sighed deeply as she pulled out an old photo of Marian Gilhooley from the back of her album. Sadness came into her eyes as she stared at the blonde curly-haired blue-eyed girl with the laughing face who stared back at her out of the photograph.

  Where was Marian now? Had she too married? Had she any children yet? If anyone had told Maggie that her best friend would not grow old with her, Maggie would have told them they were mad. Marian, who was closer to her than any sister could ever have been. Marian the sharer of all the joys and traumas of growing up. Marian who had ended their friendship so abruptly and for reasons Maggie could still not understand. Even after all these years, Maggie found herself shaking her head in bewilderment.

  They had met at school, two spotty gawky schoolgirls of thirteen, Maggie the tomboy, and Marian the effervescent extrovert. Maggie grinned as she remembered their first meeting. How well she recalled sneaking into the toilet to have a fag. Peering under the dividing walls she saw no trace of white-stockinged legs or brown-brogued feet. Some of the girls at school were right little tattle-tales. Only the previous week there had been drama:

  ‘Oh Sister! Sister! There’s smoke coming out of one of the toilets. Come quick! It might be on fire.’

  Poor Annie Mary Worley had been hauled out of the cubicle, smoke almost coming out of her ears, her lovely comforting fag smouldering ignominiously down the toilet bowl. Sister Mairead’s eyes behind their thick-lensed old-fashioned glasses had been two slits of ice-cold anger.

  ‘I should have known, Madam Worley!’ she hissed dramatically, her wimple quivering with indignation.

  ‘I was gaspin Sister!’ said the unabashed Worley, who had already been caught in such a crime.

  ‘I’ll have you gaspin before I’m finished with you, Miss!’ exclaimed Sister Mairead omi
nously, as she hauled the hapless Annie Mary, who in spite of her predicament had begun to giggle at the horrified expressions on the faces of her friends, up to the front parlour to be interviewed by The Head.

  Sister Concepta, the headmistress of the convent school, decreed that Annie Mary be brought forth before assembly to confess her awful crime to the whole school. She then had to break her remaining cigarettes one by one into little pieces. Sister Mairead had been ecstatic at this punishment; she loved to see people humiliated, and her sly shortsighted eyes couldn’t hide their pleasure as she watched Sister Concepta march her pupil up the steps of the stage in the assembly hall.

  In silence the whole school had watched as Annie Mary had lovingly stroked each ‘Occasion of sin’ before defiantly breaking it into bits. What Sisters Concepta and Mairead didn’t know, however, was that Annie Mary had managed to conceal two fags down her cleavage, which she duly smoked before a thrilled and admiring audience in the dorm that night. Overnight the school had a new heroine.

  Maggie, however, had no desire to be a heroine. She didn’t want Sister ‘Never Got It,’ the nickname given by the incorrigible Worley to Sister Mairead, to catch her smoking. If her father found out she’d be killed, and Sister Mairead would be the first one to tattle-tale if she caught Maggie at it. Hence the caution as she made sure the loos were vacant. Closing the door of the cubicle behind her, she hopped up, a foot on each rim of the toilet, and lit up. Ooh the joy of it! Silently she exhaled a long thin stream of smoke, waving her arms to dissipate it. She had just begun to take another long drag when she thought she heard a muffled cough. Surprise caused the smoke to go the wrong way and she began to splutter. She had been so sure there had been no-one else in the loos. Tears streaming down her cheeks, she coughed and choked and gasped and wheezed and in her distress lost her balance and one leg plunged into the wet ceramic depths of the toilet bowl. A wail of dismay echoed through the dim dark-green-tiled den of iniquity.