Clio recalled her mammy asking her, on the Thursday before she was due to sail, what they’d said when she’d told them she was getting married at work. She’d carried on eating her toast even though, like everything else she tried to eat of late, it tasted like cardboard. Her mammy, who had her back to her at the worktop as she strained the tea, hadn’t waited for an answer. ‘I’d have thought they might want to run a story on you. You know local girl makes good, that sort of thing. Did you tell them there’s a possibility Mr and Mrs Kennedy might be at your wedding?’ She turned around then and Clio had just smiled and nodded vaguely which was enough to appease her. She’d picked up her plate and rinsed it in the sink before kissing her mam goodbye on the cheek and heading out to catch the bus. She’d tried not to think about it being the second to last time she’d ride this bus through the streets she knew like the back of her hand but her eyes had burned with threatened tears, nonetheless.
She hadn’t said a word to anyone at the newspaper, not a word and she didn’t know why. Oh, she’d tried. She’d hovered outside her boss’s office and when he’d shouted at her to stop loitering and get on with her work, she’d scurried off instead of saying what needed to be said. That long-ago Thursday as she clacked away at her typewriter she’d found it hard to believe that come Monday she wouldn’t be there. Her chair would be empty and all she’d be remembered for was the girl who’d skulked off to America to get married without so much as a word. Nobody would ever say, ‘Cliona Whelan, she was one of the finest reporters we ever had.’ So it was, she left the building at 4.30pm on the Friday afternoon as though it were just any other day. She waved to the girls from the typing pool and called back to them to enjoy the weekend before getting on her bus and going home.
The next few days had passed in a strange twilight-like fugue for her. She went through the motions of packing her case—she planned to travel lightly—and on Saturday night there’d been a farewell supper held in her honour. As her friends and family laughed, chatted and clinked glasses she’d felt as if she were standing outside herself, a stranger listening in to people talking about some girl she didn’t know. Nobody noticed anything amiss with her and Clio had wished more than anything that she could sit down with Gerry, face to face, and tell him how she was feeling, but he was literally an ocean away from her.
The day itself rolled around as big occasions always do and in this new dreamlike state that had overtaken her, she’d found herself being jostled by the crowds gathering at Dublin Port, waiting to board or wave off loved ones on the Orion. The huge liner loomed over them all with its steady stream of passengers walking up the gangplank. The day was cold but it didn’t touch Clio; she was unaware of the sorrow, anticipation and excitement that filled the crowded dockside. She was oblivious to the scent of the sea, salty and fishy, which made Neasa’s nose curl and Tom declare the port, “stinky” which saw him get a cuff around the ear.
She was hugged and kissed and aware of Fidelma urging her to look out for her orange scarf when she stood on the deck to wave down at them; she’d worn it in order to stand out. Mammy was crying, and Daddy was stoic as he nudged her into the throng filing up the gangplank. Her case banged against her leg as she was swallowed up in the crowd, all eager to board the ship and begin their journey. She showed her ticket and passport and then followed the sea of coats and hats to the upper deck where she squeezed in between two families to scan the dock for a last glimpse at her own family’s familiar faces.
An orange slash of colour split the grey day and her gaze settled on Fidelma waving frantically with her scarf. A wave of love for her sister crashed over her and she waved back, hoping she could see her. Her arm began to ache with the effort, and the stupor Clio had been in began to lift. The calls of the men working on the wharf below mingled with the excited chatter all around her became overly loud. She could smell the salt air and everything sharpened and cleared like the lens of a camera being twisted into focus. Her arm dropped to her side as it hit her what had been niggling at her since she’d received that last letter from Gerry.
If she were to marry him, she would cease to be. That girl who’d stood outside Brown Thomas admiring the yellow dress, the dress that suggested she be a ray of sunshine on an autumn day, the girl who’d been strong enough to know her own mind, would be swallowed up. Because just as she wasn’t a ray of sunshine on an autumn day sort of a girl, nor was she cut out for Balenciaga or Balmain. Her life she realised, were she to travel to Boston would be immersed in Gerry’s. Her job from the moment she said “I do” would be to support him, and his family’s political aspirations.
She loved Gerry. She loved him with all her heart, but she knew right then that she couldn’t marry him. She began to elbow her way back through from where she’d come, moving against the tide as
