City Girl (18 page)

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-year-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 ominously, 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.