City Girl

by Patricia Scanlan

  Maggie grinned back at him. And so do you, Doctor Leonard Craigie, she thought happily.

  If she had enjoyed life in New York before she met Leonard, she enjoyed it twice as much after they became friends and eventually lovers. Leonard took her here, there and everywhere. They went to concerts, exhibitions, they took boat trips on the river, they visited the Bronx Zoo and Long Island. Here she saw the famous Hamptons, elegant suburbs where the moneyed people lived, full of exclusive restaurants where Maggie indulged her love of food to the limit. They had a wonderful time. He took her sailing in Martha’s Vineyard at the weekends. Whenever they could both get a free weekend together they would leave the city and make for the beautiful countryside that surrounded New York. She saw Connecticut in the fall. Its display of multi-coloured autumn leaves like a woven tapestry left her speechless. They went skiing in Vermont and rented a log cabin where they spent a romantic weekend together skiing by day, sitting in front of a roaring log fire by night, exchanging confidences and getting to know each other even better.

  Leonard told her that he was divorced and his wife had custody of their two children although he had unlimited access and took them for holiday periods. His wife Anya was an ambitious lawyer who worked for a prestigious New York legal firm. She had worked hard for her position but their marriage had suffered. Of their nature his working hours were unsociable and it had been a bone of contention in the marriage that Leonard would not go into private medicine where the money and status was. He preferred working with his public patients, he had several clinics in the various public hospitals and although he earned a generous salary he could have earned five times the amount if he practised privately on Park Avenue. And of course there was no status whatsoever in ministering to the lowly paid of New York City. Eventually Anya had had an affair with the vice-chairman of her company. Leonard had found out about it from a ‘well meaning’ friend of his wife’s who was attracted to him. His wife had informed him that she was going upstate to a seminar on company law and of course he believed her. The nanny was taking care of their two little girls and he had arranged to take a day off to be with them. Instead he had gone to the address given to him by the woman and found his wife and her lover in bed.

  Disgusted, betrayed, Leonard had given the company vice-chairman a bloody nose, his wife her walking papers, and returned home and contacted his lawyer to begin divorce proceedings. A very honest and direct man, he could not cope with his wife’s infidelity and the relationship had been damaged beyond repair. They had agreed, however, that it was better that the children remain with their mother, although it was clear to Maggie that they were the light of Leonard’s life. He had moved out of their comfortable Queens home and taken a three-roomed apartment in the house where Maggie lived. He was rarely there, having thrown himself into his work in an effort to get over the trauma of the divorce. It was only since he met Maggie, he told her, that he started to enjoy his leisure time again.

  Maggie found him to be a sensitive, caring man with a wicked sense of humour. She could see how private practice on Park Avenue would hold no attraction for him. Leonard was a born doctor. His patients loved him and he loved his work. Money was not the be-all and end-all of his life. She found herself becoming more and more attracted to him and in her direct and open way welcomed his growing desire for her. They became lovers and the relationship that they shared was the happiest, most trusting one she would ever know. Leaving Leonard and New York had caused her immense unhappiness and even now four years later her mouth tightened at the memory of the letter she found waiting for her one beautiful October day as she arrived at her apartment, red-cheeked from the malicious little autumn wind that was blowing up the East River. She had been on night duty nursing an AIDS patient, a young man of twenty-four who was dying slowly and painfully. Mentally and physically exhausted, she had taken breakfast in the hospital cafeteria with Leonard, who had several operations to perform. Seeing her exhaustion he had told her to go home to bed.

  ‘Good idea,’ she agreed. There was nothing else in the world that she wanted more than to tumble into her warm welcoming bed. She had pre-set her electric blanket and in weary anticipation of the cosy warmth that was waiting to envelop her aching body she ran up the steps of the brownstone. There was a letter from home in her mailbox and she smiled happily.

  Maggie loved getting letters from home. Sometimes she would stick her nose in the envelope and assure herself that she was inhaling good rich healthy Wicklow air. The last time she had been home for a visit was Christmas of the previous year and there were times she really missed her family. She noted with surprise that it was her father’s writing on the envelope, and her fingers, cold from the wind, were a little clumsy as she opened the seal.

  Strange, she thought. Usually it was her mother who wrote while her father would add a postscript. As she read the contents a myriad emotions assailed her. Guilt. Anger. Frustration. And a bitterness that was completely alien to her nature. Twice, three times, she read the letter in which her father asked her to come home and nurse her mother, who was going to have a hysterectomy. It was not that she minded so much; it was the way her obligations were pointed out to her that hurt.

  Her father reminded her that she had never wanted for anything. That he had supplemented her income generously during her nursing training even though they had been bitterly disappointed when she had refused to marry Joe Conway. As her father had put it, for the last four years she had been off gallivanting in the States. Surely she must feel it was time to come home and settle down? Himself and her mother were getting on and they might need her to take care of them. She should have married Joe Conway when she had the chance and not be messing around with some divorced joker in New York.

  Maggie fumed. It was incredible. They still hadn’t forgiven her for not marrying Joe. To have married into the wealthy land-owning Conway family would have conferred a kind of prestige on her family. People would have pointed her mother out as she shopped in the village, or outside Mass on Sunday.

  ‘That’s Nelsie MacNamara now. Her only daughter Maggie is married to Joe Conway! She did well for herself didn’t she now?’

  ‘By gor of heaven didn’t she just. They won’t be short of a penny!’

  Her mother would have loved it! Only a son entering the priesthood could equal the importance of marrying a Conway in the village. And Maggie had deprived her parents of their moment of glory and just taken off to Dublin to nurse without as much as a by-your-leave.

  ‘Ah shit! It’s not fair,’ she muttered, flinging the letter away from her. Why did her parents feel they owned her? God knows she had sent home money every month, and clothes and sheets and things. She was a good daughter! Some of the girls she worked with never contacted their parents from one Christmas to the next. Why did they have to make her feel so guilty? Maggie wondered wryly if her father had written to her younger brother Patrick, who was training as a chef in Switzerland, to come home and cook for their mother. She doubted it. Always it had been Maggie who had to make the sacrifices. The boys were treated like little Gods.

  ‘Get up and make Patrick his tea, Maggie!’ or ‘Maggie run down to the village,’ which was a mile and a half away, ‘and get a few nice rashers for Tony; he doesn’t like fish.’

  If she was watching something on TV and the boys wanted to watch sport the channel was changed without a thought. Oh yes indeed! The notion of equality among the sexes was a very foreign concept to many Irish men even in the Eighties and in many cases it was because of the way the mothers had raised their darling sons. Women were their own worst enemies. Had Maggie been a son, that letter would never have been written!

  Unable to sleep after several futile hours of tossing and turning, Maggie dressed in jeans and a thick chunky jumper. Throwing on her parka she went walking. It was a lovely fresh autumn day. The air was crisp and sharp, the sky a deep cobalt blue unmarred by smog. Rambling through Central Park, ankle deep in crunchy red gold leaves, she sighed dee
ply. To think that this eight hundred and fifty acres of park, carved out of the vast concrete jungle that surrounded her, was the only countryside that many New Yorkers had ever known. At home too the leaves in her native forests would be turning to rust and catching the breeze fluttering here and there. All along she had intended returning home if an opportunity arose that suited her. But she had wanted to go back when she was ready. Not like this! Not when she was enjoying her life so much.

  Dodging skateboard riders and joggers and Walkman-deafened students and ghetto-blasting youths, Maggie walked on, trying to think of a solution. There was none! If she didn’t return home to look after her mother she would never be forgiven. No use in pointing out that millions of women survive hysterectomy without requiring someone to give them twenty-four-hour attention. She was a daughter who was a nurse and her father saw it as her duty to give up her job and her independent life to come home and nurse her mother for at least six months after the surgery. Maggie would willingly have taken leave and gone home for six months, but she knew this would be unacceptable to her parents. Frances had stayed in California and Maggie had continued living in her studio, but Frances might not like the idea of the apartment being empty for six months and besides there was no possibility that Maggie could afford to continue paying the rent if she wasn’t working. She’d just have to go home and that was it.

  At home the neighbours would say, ‘Isn’t she the grand girl? Nelsie, you’re lucky to have such a devoted daughter.’ And her mother would lap it up delightedly.

  Oh she’d have to go . . . she knew, because if she didn’t, grown mature woman that she was, she’d feel guilty to her dying day. Defeated, Maggie thrust her hands deep into her pockets and headed towards the nearest hot chestnut vendor. It might be her last chance to indulge. There was no such thing as hot chestnut sellers at home . . .

  Within three weeks she was seated in a huge green and silver Aer Lingus Jumbo, winging her way across the Atlantic to home. Leonard had been stunned by her decision.

  ‘Can’t you go for six months and come back? You can always move in with me.’ He smiled at her. ‘I’ve got used to having you around, I guess.’

  ‘Me too,’ Maggie said. She knew that Leonard, scarred by his first marriage, was not anxious to marry again. He had been quite straight about it and she was under no illusions about their relationship. Maggie would have been happy to marry him; she loved and cared for him deeply but realized that financially and emotionally Leonard was a long way from remarriage. It was this realization that helped her part from him less painfully than if there was total commitment on his part. Maggie was nothing if not a realist. Although when they parted at the airport she had buried her face in his coat and cried like a baby.

  ‘I love you,’ she whispered.

  ‘I love you too, Maggie. I’ll never find a woman like you again. Think about coming back.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ she told him, but somehow she knew that she’d never go back to New York. Later she would think it had all been fate because it was on that transatlantic flight that she met Terry Ryan, the man who would woo and wed her.

  Thirteen

  In the heat of her non-air-conditioned apartment, Maggie looked at the wide gold wedding band that circled her finger. Terry had courted her with a persistence that had taken her breath away. Sitting up on the crumpled bed, she leaned across to her bedside locker on which reposed a photograph of her husband. She traced the outline of his handsome face, her finger lingering on the heavy-lashed black eyes which he used with such effect when chatting up women. She had often seen him in action at a party. He would corner the most beautiful woman in the room, his eyes would work overtime, his head bent attentively to catch what was being said to him as if no-one else existed in the room except the pair of them.

  Maggie had become used to it. She never lacked attention herself and sometimes while he was chatting up the women he would wink boyishly at her and she would laugh. He was very lovable really. It was his brash boyish optimism that had attracted her in the beginning as she sat next to him on the plane, depressed and lonely at leaving New York.

  ‘You don’t seem very happy to be returning to the ould sod,’ he remarked cheerfully as they fastened their seat belts for take off. Maggie’s heart sank. Just her luck to be seated beside a chatterbox when all she wanted to do was to nurse her broken heart and feel sorry for herself. She ignored the comment, hoping that he would take the hint. No such luck!

  ‘The name’s Terry Ryan,’ the irritating personage said, holding out a hand.

  ‘Maggie MacNamara,’ she replied, unenthusiastically returning the handclasp.

  ‘Aren’t you looking forward to going home?’ he asked curiously.

  Maggie glared at him. ‘Frankly no!’

  Terry laughed. ‘Well I can tell you one thing, Maggie MacNamara. I can’t wait to murder a pint of Guinness in Mulligans. They serve the best pint in the world.’

  Despite herself Maggie laughed and by the time he had finished telling her how he was looking forward to a feast of bacon and cabbage and home-made brown bread and a decent cup of tea, her own mouth was watering and the future didn’t seem quite so gloomy. She listened to him as he told her that he had just spent three years as a broker in New York and how he wanted to set up as a tax and investment consultant in Dublin.

  ‘There’s plenty of rich boyos there looking for tax havens and ways of investing their goodies and I’m the one who’ll show ’em,’ he proclaimed.

  Terry thought she was mad to give up her career in the States to go home and nurse her mother. ‘Couldn’t your Da hire a nurse?’ he asked incredulously, not believing she could leave so much behind her and go home to nothing. He told her that he came from an impoverished family from the west of Ireland where he had worked all hours of the day and night to put himself through University in Galway. There he had taken an honours degree in Commerce and then gone to Dublin to continue his studies. He had firmly and unemotionally put his past behind him and he told Maggie that he rarely went home. She guessed that despite his brash self-confident ways he would never quite erase the memory of his childhood poverty and that it would be those memories that would spur him on in his career.

  They talked about everything on that long journey home as others slumbered around them in the dimly-lit cabin of the 747. When they landed, stiff and red-eyed in Dublin at breakfast time, he helped her with her luggage and as they were waiting to clear customs he asked if he could see her again.

  Maggie laughed, telling him that her home was nearly fifty miles from Dublin. He had taken her address and phone number nevertheless. She hadn’t really expected to hear from him again, and she wasn’t too pushed, her mind still full of thoughts of Leonard. They had got separated as the other passengers, anxious to see loved ones, poured out of the passageway to the arrivals hall, and as Maggie was greeted by her father she caught her last glimpse of her travelling companion with his arm around a stunning blonde. Smiling wryly, she thought: men! they’re all the same!

  After a month in Wicklow it seemed to Maggie that she had never been away from home. Her mother had her womb removed and came home from hospital to languish in bed despite her doctor telling her she would be flying around and feeling much better after a few weeks.

  ‘By gor of heaven!’ she declared. ‘But that doctor had the impudence to tell me I’d be flying around an’ me after havin half me insides removed. Them young fellas are just in it for the money, Maggie! If only Doctor Roche were still alive. He’d know how to treat me.’

  Maggie sent a brief prayer of thanks heavenwards that Doctor Roche had gone to a better life because if he had been there to treat her mother, Nelsie would still be in bed this day next year. Doctor Roche had been God’s gift to the hypochondriac and Nelsie MacNamara and half the women of the parish had loudly mourned his passing.

  ‘You know,’ her mother continued mournfully, ‘I can’t take to that Doctor Lyne at all. Do you know what he had the nerve to say
to me one day when I went to visit him?’

  ‘What?’ said Maggie, trying to suppress a smile. She knew Doctor Lyne, a lively no-nonsense man with an outrageous sense of humour which often had her in kinks of laughter but which sometimes passed over the permed heads of his more staid patients.

  Nelsie’s nostrils flared at the memory and her mouth tightened. ‘Well, I went in and told him about all my complaints.’ God help him, thought her daughter unsympathetically. ‘And do you know what that . . . upstart . . . said to me?’ Maggie bit her lip. She could just imagine Frank Lyne listening to her mother’s litany. ‘He gave me a cheeky grin and asked me did I ever think of being put down!’ Maggie guffawed. She couldn’t help it.

  ‘Maggie!’ Her mother was outraged. A sense of humour was not Nelsie’s greatest characteristic. ‘Well really, Maggie! I’m surprised at you. And you being a nurse! Do you know that fella doesn’t even wear a white coat. He’s no more like a doctor than the man in the moon and if you are going to sit laughing at me I’ll thank you to leave me alone.’ The older woman gave a huffy sniff.

  ‘Ah Ma, don’t be so cranky. Lie down there now for a while and I’ll bring you a nice cup of tea,’ her daughter said briskly.

  And so it went on. Old routines were resumed and life itself became one long routine. Up early to make breakfast for her father and Tony before they went off to do the milking. Then her mother’s breakfast had to be prepared. Maggie’s mother was perfect martyr material. Nothing was ever said directly, just hinted at obliquely. It seemed to Maggie that she could do nothing right.

  ‘That’s not the way I do it but you do it your own way,’ or, ‘Don’t mind me sitting here after me operation, go off and enjoy yourself.’ This came usually on a Saturday night when, after a hard week’s grind, Maggie would borrow the old runabout and drive up to Dublin to stay with friends. She would grit her teeth and fume all the way to Dublin. Was her mother blind? Did she not see her doing the washing and ironing, the cleaning, the cooking! Three big meals a day for men hungry from working outdoors. By nine at night she was more wrecked than she would have been after doing a double shift at City General.