Although she often claimed she would never wash a man’s socks and that being an independent woman was the only life for her, Ria knew well that if any man who was half-fanciable proposed to her, she’d accept like a flash. Who’d want to work in the Civil Service for the rest of their life, for God’s sake? She thought Joan and Anne in the office were mad to be working when they had husbands who could keep them. Imagine being able to stay at home all day and sleep in as long as you liked and then watch TV to your heart’s content. That’s what she’d do if she was married. And then in the afternoon she’d dress, put on her make-up and make her husband take her out to dinner. Cooking was not Ria’s forte.
Please let him ring me, Ria sent up a fervent prayer to the heavens as she took out an emery board and began to shape her nails.
Maggie’s car wasn’t there, Terry noted glumly, as he drove into the drive. He was hungry – he hoped Josie had something nice for the dinner. Today was her day to clean the house and take care of the kids while Maggie was off ‘having time to herself ’. There were no lights on in the front of the house. They must be all out in the kitchen at the back. He let himself into the house, expecting to be leaped upon by his offspring, but all that greeted him was silence. No children, no Josie, no dinner. Nothing. The doorbell rang and Terry opened up to find the girl from next door standing in his porch, holding a beautiful arrangement of peach roses.
‘These are for Mrs Ryan. The delivery man left them in our house because there was no answer here this afternoon,’ she informed him cheerfully, thrusting the flowers at him. ‘Bye, Mr Ryan,’ she smiled, and skipped off down the drive. There was no card with the flowers and suddenly a red rage engulfed Terry. That fucking fancy-man of hers was sending flowers to his wife at their house! He flung the flowers across the hall, thundered up the stairs and into his bedroom. Throwing open drawers and wardrobes, he shoved clothes into a case. Maggie had the nerve to say she wasn’t a doormat. Well, by God, neither was he! To hell with Maggie; he was going to go to a woman who had always appreciated him. Ria Kirby would never treat a man like dirt. He ran back down the stairs, still fuming, and slammed the front door behind him.
Terry’s car wasn’t there, Maggie observed, as she brought the car to a halt outside the front door. She didn’t know whether she was glad or sorry. She was a bit tired and was looking forward to getting the children to bed and sitting in front of the fire to watch the Late Late Show. The hall light was on, though, so Terry must have come home and gone off again. Maybe he’d gone to get himself a Chinese takeaway, although she’d left him a hotpot ready to be popped in the microwave.
Opening the front door, she followed her children inside and stopped short when she saw the peach roses strewn across the hall. What the hell was going on, she thought in confusion.
‘Look at the lovely flowers, Mammy. Why are they on the floor?’ Mimi asked.
‘I don’t know, pet.’ Maggie bent down to pick them up, wondering who they were from and how they had got scattered all over the hall.
A minute later the doorbell rang, and she found her next-door neighbour on the step with a small white envelope in her hand. ‘Maggie, I sent Charlotte over with flowers that were delivered for you when I saw Terry’s car in the drive. She dropped the card in the porch, so here you are. Have to fly! Jonathan is taking me out for a meal and I’m trying to get the gang to bed before the babysitter comes.’
‘That’s exactly where mine are going this minute,’ said Maggie, taking the card. ‘Thanks, Stella.’ She grinned. Stella was always in a rush, no matter what she was doing. Closing the front door, she slid the little white card out of the envelope and smiled as she saw the note from Devlin. ‘Sorry for pontificating,’ it said. But why had Terry flung them around the hall? A thought struck her and her lips tightened. The idiot! He must have thought they were from Adam. Her heart sank like lead. So much for her plans for talking things over. If that was the kind of humour he was in, she could forget it.
She gave the children scrambled eggs for tea and after an hour’s play got them ready for bed. When she noticed the light on in the master bedroom, Maggie went in to switch it off, and saw the open drawers and wardrobe doors. A queer, sick, heavy feeling came over her. Terry must have taken some of his clothes. But where was he going? He must be leaving her and the children. Why couldn’t he even have left a note? Sinking on to the bed, she put her head in her hands and wept. What a way for their marriage to end!
She half-expected him to phone to say he wouldn’t be home, but by the time the Late Late Show was over, she angrily accepted that he wasn’t going to call. He could have at least had the guts to tell her to her face that he was leaving.
Maggie spent a restless night tossing and turning, before falling into a fitful sleep. She was giving the children their breakfast the following morning when the phone rang. Her heart began to thud and she strove to keep her voice normal as she answered it.
The voice at the other end was not Terry’s but her eyes widened at what the man who spoke to her was saying.
‘Thank you,’ she replied. ‘Yes, I’d be very interested, I’ll be in that neck of the woods this afternoon, so I’ll call – if that’s all right,’ she said, and smiled as he agreed to the arrangement.
If Terry was making a fresh start, well, so was she, she decided, as she walked into the kitchen to finish her breakfast.
Forty-Three
‘You bought a mobile in Wicklow! Congratulations, Maggie.’ Adam gave her a hug. His eyes brightened. ‘Hey, you know what this means?’ He took her hands in his. ‘I can take my holidays and spend them with you in the summer. We can be together for three weeks.’ Adam was all excited by the idea.
Maggie got up from the sofa and walked over to the window. There was an early-blooming cherry-blossom outside Adam’s sitting-room window and the buds were just opening. It was young and fresh and pure, heralding the change of season and the arrival of spring. Usually this would have cheered Maggie enormously, but today she felt desperately sad as she turned to face her lover.
‘You can’t come down to the mobile, Adam,’ she said quietly. ‘The children will be there. I can’t see you in front of them.’
‘But Maggie!’ Adam protested. ‘Terry’s living with someone else. Why can’t you do the same?’
‘He doesn’t live with someone else in front of the children. They don’t know of her existence and they don’t know of yours. I don’t want them to be confused and hurt.’ Maggie sighed. ‘It’s bad enough for them at the moment. Michael cries himself to sleep at night and Mimi’s become very aggressive at playschool. Her teacher told me.’
‘But what about me? And what about you?’ Adam’s hazel eyes flashed with hurt and resentment.
Maggie took a deep breath and looked him squarely in the eye. ‘I don’t think we should see each other any more.’
‘What!’
‘Believe me, Adam, it isn’t easy for me to make this decision,’ Maggie said wearily. ‘I’ve thought of nothing else, night after night. And you can’t be satisfied with this type of relationship, either. It’s going nowhere.’
‘I’m not!’ he barked. ‘You know that. You know I want us to be together. I’m fed up with an afternoon here, an evening there. Tea in Clerys, for God’s sake! It’s pathetic. Now that you and Terry have split, I can’t see any reason why we can’t be together, at least for three lousy weeks in the summer. Why can’t I take my summer holidays and be with you and the kids in your mobile? I mean, it’s nothing at all to do with Terry.’ Adam was highly indignant.
‘Adam,’ Maggie explained gently, feeling miserable but knowing that what she was going to say had to be said whether he or she liked it or not. ‘My children have got to be my priority at the moment. I have such a huge responsibility to them and I can’t forget that. When we go down to the mobile home at the end of May, we’ll be there until the end of August. That’s three months. I can’t see you for those three months. I’m not going to get my mother to
babysit in order to come up to Dublin for an afternoon under the pretence of meeting my editor. I can’t take the deceit any more.’ Her lower lip suddenly wobbled and tears smarted her eyes.
Adam grimaced as he put his arms around her. ‘Well, I’ll wait the three months, then.’
‘Look, Adam,’ Maggie said unsteadily. ‘This is no kind of a life for you to be leading, hanging around waiting for the few hours I can spend with you. You should have a girlfriend of your own age with no commitments. This is not right for you; you can do much better for yourself.’
‘But I love you, Maggie!’ Adam said desperately. ‘No-one else understands me like you. If it hadn’t been for you, I would have gone off my rocker when I got my manuscript back a few weeks ago. I love you,’ he repeated. ‘I want to be with you. Why can’t you and the children come and live with me?’
‘Because I won’t do that to them. Terry calls every evening to put them to bed. He couldn’t do that if I was with you. I won’t deprive the children of their father.’
‘Even if it means sacrificing us?’ Adam asked bitterly.
‘I don’t want this to happen!’ Maggie cried. ‘You know how much you mean to me. You must know how happy you’ve made me. But I can’t be totally selfish. I brought those kids into the world and I’m going to do my best for them. And if that means putting my personal life on hold until they’re reared . . . well then, that’s tough on me but that’s the way it’s going to be.’
Adam was horrified. ‘For Christ’s sake, Maggie, this is the twentieth century, almost the twenty-first. Women and men are changing partners all the time! You can’t be serious about putting your personal life aside. You’re talking like someone out of your mother’s generation.’
‘And what’s wrong with that?’ Maggie flared. ‘At least my mother’s generation raised relatively stable families grounded in the basic decencies. It’s just too easy now to walk away from a marriage because of a few setbacks. My mother’s generation had to grin and bear it and for the most part, things worked themselves out. Our generation ups and runs at the first setback.’
‘You’re never going to go back to Terry!’ Adam exclaimed, aghast.
Maggie shook her head wearily. ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen between us. What I do know is that we both want the best for our children – it’s the one thing that unites us – and if that means Terry coming home every evening for an hour or two, or coming down to the mobile for the odd weekend, I can cope with that.’
‘Well, you’re a bloody idiot, Maggie!’ Adam said in disgust.
‘Maybe,’ she said soberly. ‘But at least I’m facing my responsibilities as best I can, in order to be able to live with myself.’
‘And so I’m getting the bum’s rush?’ he asked harshly, turning his back on her.
‘Don’t be like that, Adam,’ she pleaded.
‘Well, what should I be like?’ He turned angrily back to face her. ‘Where do my feelings come into this? What about your commitment to me?’
Maggie exploded. ‘Adam, when we first fell in love, I warned you I was a married woman with children. You knew that from the start, and you have no right to expect anything more from me. So stop trying to make me feel guilty. You knew how I was fixed. You knew I’d always put my children’s interests first.’
‘Do you know something, Maggie?’ Adam’s lip curled in disgust. ‘I feel used, really used. You had your sex and you had all the support from me that I could give you and now you’re dropping me like a hot potato because of your kids. Wow! This is a turn-up for the books! I never knew women did this to men, I always thought it was the other way around. Goodbye, Maggie; you know your way out,’ he finished coldly.
Maggie was pale with shock. Not in a million years had she expected Adam to react like this. Did he not realize that she was making one of the hardest decisions of her life, a decision that had caused her many sleepless nights. In silence, she picked up her bag and walked out his front door. As she sat into her car, she realized with dismay that she was shaking. She had expected him to understand. Not to like her decision, but at least to understand. Kind, sensitive, intuitive Adam, always encouraging, always supportive. But he had failed her when she most needed his understanding. A shocking thought struck her: Adam had behaved just like Terry, full of me, me, me, and wounded ego and pride. That, to her, was the ultimate betrayal of their relationship. She drove through Drumcondra and turned on to Botanic Avenue. Pulling into the hard shoulder by the park, Maggie buried her head in her hands and cried her eyes out.
‘Well, to hell with you, Maggie Ryan! And your bloody kids!’ Adam stared angrily out the window and watched Maggie drive off down the road. He had given up a lot for that woman – and for what? To be dropped because she felt her kids were her priority? He couldn’t believe she was such a fool. Everybody knew kids grew up and left home and forgot all about the sacrifices their parents made for them. Oh yes, not too far in the future, her children would fly the nest and she would end up one very lonely lady indeed.
He sat down and gazed into space. He just couldn’t believe that Maggie had walked out on him. How could she do it just like that, with no thought at all for his feelings? All this time, he thought he was someone really special in Maggie’s life and that she needed him – needed his love and encouragement and support, which he lavished unstintingly on her. How often had they sat for hours discussing every aspect of their writing? When she hadn’t felt like writing another comma, it had been he, not the kids and certainly not Terry, who had urged her on to get back on track. That had obviously counted for nothing, Adam thought bitterly.
A lump lodged in his throat. He had been so sure that Maggie loved him. He felt a tear slide down his cheek and angrily he brushed it away. What a wimp he was, to be crying about a woman who had used, abused and dumped him. ‘Ah, Maggie, why did you do it? Why? I loved you. Don’t you know that? I loved you very much.’ The lump was nearly choking him and in utter misery, he sat down and cried.
‘Daddy, will you come down and see us?’ Michael held tightly to his father’s arm, as two other pairs of eyes turned anxiously in his direction. Terry shot Maggie a glance and she nodded imperceptibly.
‘Of course I will,’ he promised. ‘We’ll have great fun in your mammy’s new mobile, and we’ll go to Brittas Bay and into Arklow . . . and we might go to Rosslare . . . and even on a ship to Fishguard for the day.’ There were screeches of delight at this news. ‘Go to sleep now,’ Terry ordered, ‘because you’ve to get up early in the morning. I’m going to help Mammy pack the car.’
‘Dood night, Daddy,’ Shona held out her arms to him and Terry hugged her tightly.
‘Won’t you come down soon?’ Michael held up his face for a kiss.
‘I will,’ promised Terry.
‘I wish you still lived here,’ Mimi said angrily, and marched from the room. Terry met his wife’s troubled gaze. Maggie looked very tired and down in herself, he thought guiltily. Maybe he should offer to take the children out more at weekends and give her a break. But Ria would go mad. She was already complaining about the way he came home every evening to put the kids to bed.
‘I’ll go up to her,’ he murmured. Mimi was sitting on her bed, hugging her teddy tightly to her. She glowered at her father as he entered the room.
Terry sat down on the bed and lifted his elder daughter into his arms. ‘Why are you cross with me?’
‘Why do you go away to sleep somewhere else at night? Why don’t you sleep here any more? You don’t love us any more!’
‘Of course I love you, you silly billy. Don’t I come home every night to play with you and put you to bed?’ he answered lightly. ‘And don’t I come to sleep some weekends?’
‘But why don’t you come every night?’ Mimi insisted.
Terry prayed for guidance. He smiled at the cross little face in front of his own. ‘You know your friend Catherine and how her daddy’s a detective?’
Mimi nodded.
‘And
you know that sometimes he has to work at night. It’s called doing night duty.’
Mimi looked at her father earnestly.
‘Well, I’m doing a lot of night duty,’ Terry fibbed lamely.
‘But you’re not a detective,’ Mimi protested.
‘Oh, but lots of people do night duty. Nurses. Doctors. Telephonists. Lots and lots of people.’
‘Well, I wish you didn’t have to do it,’ Mimi said. But Terry could see that his explanation had given her something to think about.
‘Sure, we all have to do things we don’t like.’ Terry kissed his little girl and tucked her up in bed. ‘Now, go to sleep as quickly as you can and then, before you know it, it will be morning and you’ll be off on your holidays.’
‘Do you wish you were coming?’
‘I sure do,’ Terry declared, and, to his surprise, he did.
An hour later, the quilts and pillows that Maggie had bought for the mobile home were neatly stashed in the back of the car, and the cases containing all their clothes were arranged neatly in the boot, along with an array of buckets and spades and swimming rings.
City Woman Page 38
