‘Hello,’ Terry said cheerfully again.
Susy hung up. The fuckers! They were having the new year’s meal without her and Patrick. The absolute nerve of them. How dare Maggie Ryan snub her like that. How dare she! By golly, she’d get even with her, see if she wouldn’t, Susy vowed, as she sat staring at the phone.
‘Pull the crackers, pull the crackers!’ Mimi shrieked. The happy crowd gathered around Maggie’s big dining-table complied with much laughter and fun and squeals of delight from the children. When they all had their multi-coloured party hats on their heads, Terry’s brother-in-law, Harry, stood and held up his glass.
‘A toast,’ he said. ‘To Maggie, for serving up this banquet and giving us all a lovely, relaxed jolly day. Here’s to great success with her writing. I’ll tell you one thing,’ he beamed, ‘Maggie’s a great cook and I always look forward to coming here for my dinner on New Year’s Day.’ His wife guffawed. It was well known that she couldn’t cook to save her life but she didn’t mind in the slightest admitting it. ‘So, Maggie and Terry, here’s to many more new year’s feasts in your house. I know I speak for all of us when I say how much we enjoyed it.’ Catching her mother’s eye, Maggie grinned, as Nelsie gave the tiniest wink.
She stood up and raised her glass, ‘Well, thank you, Harry, for your kind words. I do look forward very much to having you all here next year.’ Maggie smiled as she looked around the table at her nearest and dearest. ‘Here’s to family,’ she toasted.
‘To family,’ echoed the rest as they raised their glasses.
‘It went very well,’ Terry said later that night, as Maggie undressed and slid into bed beside him.
‘It did,’ she agreed. ‘Harry was in great form and Ma and Da were able to relax and Gran thoroughly enjoyed herself. Not inviting the other pair was the best thing I ever did.’
‘Susy won’t be too pleased,’ Terry said with a grin, putting his arm around his wife.
‘I’m deeply worried,’ Maggie replied dryly.
Terry yawned. ‘Ah well, they missed a great party; that’s all I can say, Maggie. Harry was right; you’re a terrific cook.’
‘You’re not so bad yourself.’ Maggie smiled in the dark. Seconds later, her husband was snoring. Wide-eyed, she lay awake. Today had been a really good day. Terry had done his utmost to make sure that all the guests had enjoyed themselves and he had spent hours playing with all the kids. He had always been very good at that kind of thing; it was one of the traits that had most attracted her to him.
To tell the truth, she was feeling a bit guilty. What would they have thought if they knew that she was having an affair with a man ten years her junior. She’d felt a bit of a hypocrite toasting the family.
Oh stop! Terry would never have let feelings of guilt affect his affair with Ria, she argued silently with herself.
You’re not Terry. The thought popped unbidden into her mind. Stop thinking about it, enjoy it while it lasts, she ordered herself. Maggie was too much of a pragmatist to imagine that there was going to be any future in her affair with Adam, although he had urged her to consider moving in with him, children and all.
Would it work? Could it work? Restlessly she tossed and turned, knowing that a time was coming when she’d have to make some very important decisions.
Thirty-Nine
‘Way to go, Mrs Ryan!’ Terry’s eyes widened in admiration and he gave a long appreciative wolf-whistle as Maggie appeared at the sitting-room door, all ready to go to dinner at the Montclares’.
‘Black really suits you, Maggie. You look gorgeous,’ Josie declared.
‘Thanks, Josie, and thanks a million for babysitting for me tonight,’ Maggie said warmly.
‘Do you know something, Maggie?’ the older woman sighed. ‘I’m actually looking forward to a peaceful night by myself. Dan’s mother came to us for Christmas. Every year I say I’m not having her, let one of her other sons have her, and every year I give in. I’m fifty-four years of age with my family raised and I can’t even watch what I want to watch on my own TV when she’s there, the old bat. Isn’t that pathetic?’ She gave a wry smile.
‘Don’t talk to me about in-laws,’ Maggie said sympathetically. ‘They can be a right pain in the butt!’
‘All the years I’ve known her and tried my best to be nice to her but she makes no effort at all,’ moaned Josie.
Maggie grimaced, as a mental picture of a scowling Susy flashed through her mind. ‘I know exactly. Although I’m lucky as regards my own mother-in-law. I get on fine with her.’
‘Well, mine’s at home in a huff because I’ve gone out, but if I didn’t get away from her I’d probably end up strangling her. As well as saving my sanity, you’ve probably saved her life,’ Josie said with a grin. ‘So, off with you. Enjoy your night out and let me enjoy mine.’
‘Yeah, Maggie, time’s pushing on,’ Terry put in.
‘Oh Lord, I forgot my watch and rings. I won’t be a minute. You go on and get the car out of the garage. Sit down,’ she said to Josie. ‘Relax and have a drink and watch whatever you want on TV.’
Maggie ran upstairs to get her jewellery. She slid her engagement- and wedding-ring on to her finger, and fastened her watch. She pulled her fringe down a little more on her forehead and ran her fingers along her eyebrows. When she looked at her reflection in the mirror she was pleased with what she saw. Knowing Marian, the dinner party would be a very posh affair and, without being vain about it, she knew she looked her best. She’d treated herself to a gorgeous, slinky, black cocktail dress that she’d seen in Arnotts the week before Christmas, and although it had cost an arm and a leg, it clung in all the right places and was very slimming. It had an off-the-shoulder neckline and an elegant fifties air that had attracted Maggie to it in the first place. She was wearing a pair of the finest denier barely-black stockings and elegant black suede shoes. She’d even had her hair blow-dried. The pearls at her throat and ears finished off the look perfectly and the overall effect was very classy.
Maggie smiled to herself in amusement as Terry drove through the city, still festive with Christmas lights. Was she actually trying to impress Marian? It looked like it. In the old days she wouldn’t even have thought about having her hair done for a dinner with Marian, but these were not the old days and her relationship with Marian was totally different from what it had been. In their youth, Maggie had quite happily followed where Marian led, always impressed by what she had perceived as her friend’s sophistication and savoir faire. This had suited Marian, who always liked to feel she was impressing people. In that respect she had not changed one bit: if anything she was even more conscious of her image. Maggie, on the other hand, was at the stage of her life when she didn’t give a hoot what others thought about her. She was what she was and people either liked it or lumped it as far as she was concerned.
Marian, she could see, had found the new more assertive Maggie a little difficult to get used to. While it was nice to be on speaking terms with her again, Maggie knew that their relationship would never be of the calibre of her friendship with Devlin and Caroline. Marian had grown even more reserved in the years since they had last met, and it was only rarely that she let her guard down at all. To tell the truth, Maggie sometimes found her hard going. Marian was not relaxed. It was as if she felt it of the utmost importance to keep up her façade of brittle sophistication at all times. Since their reacquaintance, Maggie had never seen her in the same outfit twice or without perfectly applied make-up. Marian was all talk of how successful Alex was, and what she had bought and where she had been on holidays. When she heard that Maggie was a close friend of Devlin Delaney she had been extremely impressed.
Tonight was the first time that Maggie would visit Marian’s house. Although they had kept in touch by phone and met in town for coffee several times since the summer, and although Maggie had had Marian and Alex over to dinner twice, this was the first occasion the hospitality had been reciprocated.
Maggie was dying to see the F
oxrock mansion that she’d heard so much about. Alex’s elder brother and his American wife, Clarissa, would also be at the dinner party. Maggie had got the impression that Marian wasn’t enamoured of her brother-in-law’s wife.
‘A bit loud,’ Marian had confided in one of her few unguarded moments. Maggie took this to mean that she was a woman who enjoyed herself in an uninhibited kind of way. Marian would never be uninhibited, although she’d been a much more relaxed and easy-going person when they’d been friends in their young days.
After taking her degree in UCD she had gone into marketing for a couple of years and then she had become a researcher in RTE, for both radio and television programmes. That was where she had met her husband. She had had to interview him for a series of business programmes on TV, and when the broadcasts were over, he asked her out.
Marian had spoken about her time in RTE with great enthusiasm and Maggie felt it was a shame that she’d given up her job after she got married. It was obvious to Maggie that part of her friend’s trouble was that she was bored, despite all the entertaining and all the expensive holidays she had with Alex. Her husband hadn’t wanted her to continue working after they’d married, Marian confided in Maggie, and at first, she said, it was a real treat being able to do as she wanted. But although she didn’t say it, Maggie knew that the thrill of this had worn off and Marian was at a loose end.
‘Couldn’t you go back part-time?’ Maggie had suggested.
‘Maybe.’ Marian had been non-committal, and Maggie had left it at that, knowing that Marian did not want to discuss it any further.
Alex’s brother, Edward, was a lawyer in Atlanta, and the loud Clarissa worked for one of the state’s welfare agencies. From what Maggie had heard of her, she sounded like a lively woman. All in all, it might prove to be a very interesting evening.
Marian checked the dinner table once more, looking for flaws, making sure that the place settings were evenly spaced, and that the bowl of red roses, white gypsophila and green ferns was precisely at the centre of her round mahogany table. Red, white and green, the Christmas colours, were her theme colours, carried right through to all the decorations. The tree was an elegant picture, with red and white bows so striking against the deep green of the foliage. No gaudy balls and tinsel for Marian, just small white lights and her red and white bows. ‘Less is more,’ was Marian’s motto this year and simple wreaths of holly entwined with white ribbons were her only other decorations. She had candelabra with red, white and green candles. She was extremely pleased with her minimalist approach. Maggie would surely be impressed.
It was very important to Marian that her dinner should be a great success. She wanted Maggie to see how well she had done for herself. To see what taste and style she had. To see what a lovely, elegant house she was mistress of. Nobody could deny that it was a hell of a lot more elegant than Maggie’s Castleknock home. Not, Marian thought, that there was anything wrong with Maggie’s house. It was very nice, if a tad in need of repainting. But there had been toys everywhere except the sitting-room, which admittedly was very cosy and pretty. In her house, Alexandra had a playroom, and was expected to play with her toys there, and there alone. Toys all over the house would have driven Marian bananas.
She was so pleased with the new conservatory that they’d recently had built. That was why she’d waited so long before inviting Maggie to dinner at her house. She’d wanted everything to be just so, and there was nothing worse than having the signs of workmen around the place.
Everything was fine, she reassured herself. Alex was taking care of the wines. All she had to do was to go upstairs and slip into the new burgundy velvet dress that Alex had bought her for Christmas to go with the ruby earrings and necklace he had given her on their last wedding anniversary.
Walking past the guest-room occupied by Edward and Clarissa, Marian wrinkled her nose in distaste. That one was smoking again, she fumed. God, she was as common as dishwater. Marian loathed smoking and would not permit it under her roof. If anything went wrong tonight, it would be because of big-mouth Clarissa. Once she had drunk a few glasses of wine, she’d say anything. Maybe she should have waited until they’d gone home before inviting the Ryans, but her visitors were here for another two weeks. By then, the season would be over and she wanted Maggie to admire her house complete with its tasteful Christmas decor.
What Edward saw in Clarissa, Marian could not imagine. From the way he was always pawing her, she could make a guess at one thing, she thought primly, as she closed her bedroom door behind her. They’d been married for twenty years or more – you’d think they’d have more sense. If Alex mauled her the way Edward mauled his wife, she’d slap him across the face. Maggie and she would probably get on well, Marian thought crossly, remembering her friend and the good-looking blond man she’d seen her kissing outside Clerys.
Marian had never really enjoyed sex that much. You had to reveal too much of yourself. And Alex, like herself, was a reserved, controlled type of person. They understood each other perfectly. Nevertheless, remembering the glow in Maggie’s eyes, and the lustre Clarissa always seemed to have, Marian wondered wistfully what it would be like to be consumed, body and soul, by lust for a man. It was something she had never experienced and, she thought with a vague sense of dissatisfaction, it was something she was certainly never going to experience with Alex.
What on earth had got her into this frame of mind, Marian wondered with irritation, as she slipped the dress over her immaculately coiffed hair. She was perfectly happy the way she was . . . totally in control. She had a wealthy, supportive husband, a beautiful little girl, a fine house, a big car and money to do as she pleased. What more could a woman want? Her mouth tightened as she heard Clarissa give one of her husky chuckles. It wouldn’t surprise Marian one bit if they were doing it right this minute.
‘Stop pinchin’ my ass, you horny devil,’ Clarissa reprimanded her husband with a grin, as she drew deeply on a cigarette. She leaned out the bedroom window and exhaled a long thin stream of smoke. ‘Gahd! I needed that. I know she’s your brother’s wife, honey, but Jeez, I dunno how I’m going to put up with her and her airs and graces for another two weeks. Can’t we say we’re gonna do some sightseeing or something and get the hell outta here and stay in a hotel?’
‘Alex would be really hurt, Clariss. I haven’t been home in five years. Just stick it out until next week and we’ll go and spend a few days in Kerry,’ her husband urged. ‘OK?’
‘Oh Gahd, Teddy, the things I do for love!’ Clarissa said with a grin. ‘I wonder what this friend of madame’s is like. Probably another right royal asshole. When I heard she had a friend you could have knocked me down with a feather!’
‘Clarissa, stop being a bitch,’ Edward ordered, his eyes twinkling.
‘I love it when you order me around, you great big hunk you.’ Clarissa grabbed her chubby little husband around the waist and planted a big kiss on his lips.
‘You’d better get dressed,’ he declared.
‘Don’t you mean undressed?’ Clarissa gave a hearty chuckle, removed her bathrobe and twirled it around her head as if she were Salome doing the dance of the seven veils. ‘Come on, babe, we’re on vacation. Let’s jiggle those bedsprings!’ She giggled. ‘I’m a postmenopausal woman and I’m in my prime.’
‘You’re telling me!’ Her husband enthusiastically put his arms around his voluptuous wife, who, even after twenty years of marriage, could still turn him on like the first time.
‘Very impressive,’ Terry remarked as they drove up the gravel-lined drive of Manresa, the Montclares’ imposing Victorian house in Foxrock. ‘This guy isn’t short of a bob or two. He has a hell of a good client list.’ Terry drew the car to a halt. ‘He was telling me all about it the last time you invited them over for dinner. He’s not a bad contact to have at all, Mags,’ Terry said with satisfaction. He was looking forward to the evening immensely. Good food, good drink no doubt, a man with whom he had a lot in common, businesswise . . .
and Maggie at his side, looking sensational, a million dollars. It just went to show what she could do when she made the effort. Tonight when they got home, he’d make sure to show his appreciation, he thought happily.
All in all, it hadn’t been a bad Christmas, although Maggie had been furious at the carry-on of Susy and Patrick at her gran’s. But Susy had picked the wrong cookie to tangle with when she started her shenanigans. If Susy thought for one minute that Maggie would stand quietly by and let her treat Patrick’s family like dirt, she had made a mighty big mistake. She was very loyal, was his Mags, he thought appreciatively. She’d never let on anything about his affair to her own family, which made things much easier for Terry. He genuinely liked his in-laws. They didn’t interfere or make great demands of Maggie and himself. It could have been very awkward if they had ever come to know about Ria.
Susy was a different kettle of fish. She never had a good word for Patrick and actually gave out about him in front of all of them. Sometimes he felt like telling her to put a sock in it. If she was his wife, he knew what he’d do with her. Patrick was a hell of a good husband. He cooked meals and did housework on a regular basis. Terry’d never have put up with that. Sure, he’d cook the dinner occasionally and do a bit of cleaning if Maggie was sick, but not every day of the week. The trouble with Susy was that she always had to be the centre of attention, with everyone running right, left and centre to do her bidding and make a fuss of her. He wouldn’t stand for it if Maggie carried on like that. Not that she would anyway, he thought fondly: she was a very supportive partner. His sister-in-law didn’t know what being a wife meant.
All in all, apart from her obsession with what she called her ‘writing career’, Maggie wasn’t a bad old wife at all. They’d had their bad times but they’d got over them and at least they weren’t fighting these days.
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