The Guesthouse on the Green Series Box Set 2 Page 14
He only stopped talking when the pot of tea and a plate of scones with fresh cream and a bowl of strawberry jam arrived and were put down on the table in front of them. They dived into them and when he leaned across the table to wipe off the blob of cream she’d somehow managed to get on the tip of her nose, Clio knew she was falling in love with the good-looking American with the candid smile opposite her.
Chapter 20
Present
Clio’s fingers hovered over the keys. She was in her writing room, the room that doubled as a guest room when she’d had Fidelma’s children stay over through the years. Her desk overlooked the back garden, which was an unruly display of cottage garden flowers in the summertime. Clio liked the disorderly and riotous colour that ran rampant through the warmer months in her otherwise orderly world. She liked to get amongst her flowerbeds and hear the humming bees as she pulled weeds and trimmed edges. She’d found over the years that, when she was in her garden getting her hands dirty, her mind was free to roam and the scene that had been tied in knots would become untangled so that when she sat back down behind her typewriter the words flowed.
Today the lawn was covered in a blanket of snow and she watched her little friend the robin redbreast, who visited her apple tree most days. It came to nibble on the bird feeder she hung from the branch of the tree. She’d placed it safely out of reach of Bess whose arthritic old bones meant her climbing days were over. The bird’s shiny black eyes fixed on something only it could see as it perched on the spindly branch. She admired its stillness and the vibrant orange, red feathers of its breast. There was a lot of folk lore associated with the bird; Clio knew the stories. To kill the robin, the tale went, would result in a tremor in the hand of the perpetrator for the rest of their days. They were messengers from the spirit world, that signalled the death of a loved one. She didn’t go in for all of that, she just liked to watch the little bird’s graceful, darting movements and enjoyed the splash of colour its visit brought on an otherwise dull day.
She was also glad of the distraction because since she’d received Gerry’s card, the words refused to come. She’d sat down in front of her typewriter, a cup of coffee you could stand a spoon up in alongside it because she liked the mellowed rich smell. It reminded her of her days working in a newsroom and she liked to think it was the scent of industriousness. There’d been nothing industrious about her sitting at her desk staring at the window these past days though, as she found herself lost in the past. It didn’t pay to look backwards when you got to her age, Clio thought. There was no point in questioning the decisions you made when you were young. What was done was done.
She sighed and got up, knowing she was going to read through the box of letters she’d tucked away in the attic years ago, and which from time to time she’d revisited over the years. There was one for every week Gerry was away from her for those three months until she’d broken things off. Love letters full of hope for the future. Mostly, Clio scanned through them, her eyes misting as she wondered how her life might have been had she gone to Boston as they’d planned. She knew he’d married from grainy newspaper copies of the Boston Globe thumbed through at the library. She knew too he was a widower and had been for some time. The knowledge he’d married had caused a bittersweet pain, especially when she’d read he’d had children too. Sons, three handsome mini versions of their father, and she wondered if the eldest would be expected to rise high in politics like his father and grandfather had before him. The shoebox was where she’d left it, downstairs on the side table next to her sofa. She’d been going through the letters again last night, enjoying the warmth from the fire as she’d travelled back in time.
Chapter 21
1958
Clio huddled inside her coat as she waited on the corner of Grafton and Dame Street for Gerry. The weather had been brutal these last few days. Winter seemed to be intent on not letting spring get so much as a look in, despite it nearly being April. She was wishing they’d arranged to meet inside a cosy pub instead of on this street corner where the wind whipped around. She watched a pile of leaves in the gutter dance about in a private whirlpool and then, looking up, spied Gerry’s familiar loping gait as he strode toward her. The smile, the one she could never contain when she saw him, broke out on her face despite the fact she was on the verge of hypothermia.
‘Hello, darling, you look frozen. You weren’t waiting long, were you?’ He kissed her with a passion that received a disapproving look from a woman marching past, whose headscarf was knotted so tightly against the wind it had given her an extra chin. He took her hands in his and tried to warm them.
‘That wind cuts you in half, c’mon let’s go somewhere warm,’ Clio said through chattering teeth once he’d released her.
‘Kehoes?’ he suggested, and she nodded, not really caring where they went so long as there was a fire. She tucked in under his arm enjoying the way she fitted just right and they made their way up Grafton Street. They veered into Anne Street where they burst in through the saloon style, stained glass doors of the pub with the same gusto as the cowboys of old. Clio loved the old place. It was to the Irish literary world what Sloppy Joe’s bar in Key West had been to Hemingway. Clio adored Hemingway although she admired Virginia Woolf more.
The pub, with its dark wood panels and booths, smoky atmosphere, and aroma of whiskey that somehow permeated it all, felt like a space in which a great novel would have been plotted out. Since she’d turned eighteen and had finally been old enough to frequent the city’s pubs, Kehoes had become a firm favourite for its most excellent people watching. Although, she was happier sipping on a glass of lemonade than a pint of the black stuff Gerry had been so determined to enjoy. ‘I can’t be considered a proper Irishman if I don’t drink Guinness, Clio,’ he’d said.
She’d replied, ‘But you’re Irish American.’
‘Same difference where I come from,’ he’d said grinning, and she’d pointed to his foam moustache with a smile.
Now, she slid into a booth. The pub was toasty warm thanks to the fire, and a group of men who looked like they’d had a hard day’s labouring were clustered at the bar, putting the world to rights over their pints. There were a few younger people, students who fancied themselves intellectual types with little round glasses perched on their noses, hair a little too long, and wearing cool, black polo necks. They wore earnest expressions as they sat deep in debate, smoking languorously with their half-finished drinks in front of them.
There were only two other women in the pub, Clio noticed. The girlfriends of the intellectuals, but it pleased her to see they were taking part in the heated debate with just as much passion as their male counterparts. She glanced at her watch. It was five o’clock. She had time for one drink and then she’d have to get off home. Not that her parents would make too much fuss were she to run a little late for dinner. They thought Gerry was the best thing since sliced bread and had high hopes of her forgetting about her career and concentrating on more important things like marrying well. Marrying into Boston society to be precise. Clio planned on having both.
She watched him ordering their drinks. It was hard to believe they’d been courting since September. Time had passed so quickly and in the last six months Gerry had become so much a part of her life she could no longer imagine herself without him beside her. A shiver passed through her. In a few weeks he would be leaving. His passage was booked across the pond to America. Him not being here in Dublin would be like... well, it would be like losing a limb, or an integral part of herself at the very least. It was a pain she didn’t want to think about. All her spare time was spent with him, so much so that her mammy had warned her not to neglect her friends or she’d have none to choose from as bridesmaids. Fidelma and Neasa had been most indignant because, they’d told Mammy, it was they who should be bridesmaids. At that point Clio had held up her hand and told them that she had no idea where all this talk of bridesmaids had come from because she wasn’t even engaged.
‘Ah
, but you keep playing your cards right, Clio, and you might just find a lovely, sparkly ring on your finger.’
‘It’s Cliona, Mammy,’ was all Clio had dignified her mammy with by way of response.
Gerry returned with their drinks and slid into the seat opposite her. He’d no sooner settled himself and raised his pint glass to his lips when she launched into the breaking news from America. It was a story she’d typed for their World News reporter, Ed, that afternoon and one she was itching to share. The United States had launched its Vanguard 1 Satellite. ‘Isn’t it incredible to think of it orbiting up there?’ She pointed skyward. ‘They say it will be up there for two thousand years, imagine that?’
Gerry nodded his agreement but, as she opened her mouth to fill him in on the finer points of the US’s latest space mission he held a hand up to silence her. ‘Clio, honey, let me get a word in would you.’
‘Oh, sorry.’ She was contrite, and looking at Gerry’s serious expression a little worried as to what it was he wanted to say. She clutched her glass a little tighter, her knuckles suddenly white. To her relief his face softened.
‘Don’t look so worried. It’s just I think we need to talk about the future, don’t you?’
Clio studied him and her mouth suddenly felt dry. She took a sip of the sweet syrupy drink in order to stall the tête-a-tête she wasn’t sure she wanted to have. She didn’t want to think about him leaving, let alone put voice to it. His steady blue-eyed gaze didn’t falter from hers and finally she replied with a weighty sigh, ‘Yes, I suppose we do.’
‘I want you to come to Boston.’
Her eyes widened and he hurried on. ‘Hear me out. I’ll go back as planned and then in a month or so, when I’ve had a chance to talk things through with my folks and to put the arrangements in place, I want you to come over.’
Clio couldn’t make sense of what he was saying and her face must have reflected this because Gerry took her hand in his and said, ‘I’m not making a good job of this and I have a ring. It’s my grandmother’s actually but it’s not here.’ He stopped, his usual confidence having deserted him, his words sounding jumbled to his own ears, and took a deep, steadying breath. ‘What I’m trying to say, Clio, in my ham-fisted way is, I want you to be my wife.’
Clio gave a tiny gasp as his grip on her tightened ever so slightly.
‘Marry me, Clio Whelan. I’ve never met anyone like you before and I can’t imagine my world without you in it.’
‘Oh.’ She blinked. She hadn’t been expecting that but suddenly her mouth twitched and that big goofy grin, the one she could never contain for long when she looked at Gerry, spread across her face. ‘I would love nothing more than to marry you.’
Present
CLIO GAZED AT THE LETTER she had clutched in her hand. It was the last correspondence she’d ever received from Gerry until the Christmas card that had arrived the other day had sent her into such a spin. Old memories seemed so fresh when they were brought out and examined like this, she mused, eying the words in that oh so familiar handwriting in front of her. Words she could almost recite by heart. The letter was dated the eighth of July 1958. Gerry had been home for three long months when she’d received it. She’d run up to her bedroom, ripping it open eagerly, as she did every Friday when his letters arrived like clockwork, and the ticket for her passage had fallen out along with a note from his mother.
It was real, it was really going to happen, she was going to Boston, she’d thought, picking the ticket up and staring at it with both fear and excitement. The note, she saw, was neatly written on embossed personalised stationery and it was intended to welcome Clio to the family. Mrs Byrne wrote how excited she and Mr Byrne were over her and Gerry’s engagement. How lovely it was going to be to welcome a daughter into the family, and that they were so looking forward to meeting her. She’d expressed sympathy, understanding the idea of setting sail for a new country must be daunting both for herself and her family, but that she, and her parents were not to worry. She’d be well looked after. Arrangements had been made for the sake of propriety for her to stay with a Mrs Geraghty who was used to lodging homesick young women and would look after her well. She ran a clean and respectable establishment where Clio would stay until the wedding. After which she and Gerry would be gifted a townhouse in which to start their married life. Cliona had skimmed over the rest of the note.
We’ve a lot to organize, my dear, with your engagement party and the wedding. John pulled some strings and the Holy Cross Cathedral is booked for the 9th of November. It’s quite the coup given the short notice. Wait until you see inside it, Cliona, my dear, it is breathtaking and the acoustics have to be heard to be believed. I get goosebumps just thinking about it all. You and Gerald will be the toast of the town! Now, given it’s to be a winter wedding I’m thinking Balmain for the gown. Audrey Hepburn wore a Balmain on her wedding day and the sleeves were magnificent and perhaps, Balenciaga for your engagement? Oh, we’re going to have such fun, you and I, Cliona. As for the invitations plain black ink on cream paper is simple but stylish don’t you think?
The rest of the words had blurred. It was like trying to read a foreign language. She’d put the note to one side and scanned Gerry’s letter, wanting to find comfort in hearing his voice through his words. It hadn’t helped quell her anxiety though, as he’d written his mother was driving him nuts because all she could talk about was the engagement party and the wedding. The engagement party was intended to formally introduce Clio to Boston society and Mrs Byrne was hopeful of the Kennedys attending both. She was getting herself very agitated over the arrangements and was impatient for Clio to arrive so they could finalise the details. There was a lot to be done, or so his mother said. He’d be just as happy for them to elope but he’d never be forgiven if they did. Don’t worry, my darling, he’d written. Once we’re married our life will begin.
The letter and its enclosures had arrived seven days before she was due to sail, plenty of time for Clio to begin to feel apprehensive about the idea of crossing the Atlantic on her own. She wanted Mammy to come with her but she couldn’t leave the littlies and ‘Besides,’ she’d said, ‘wasn’t it better they saved their pennies for the wedding? Sure, you’ll be grand, Clio, aren’t you a capable young woman, who’s going to be welcomed into her new family. There’s nothing to be anxious about.’ But Clio was anxious.
Mammy and Daddy were in raptures the more they learned of what she could expect on her arrival. ‘You’ll never have to work again, Clio. Sure, it’s a life of fine clothes and a fine home for you, my girl. You’ll be living in the lap of luxury,’ Mammy had trilled. She’d caught her telling Mrs Fitzpatrick two doors down that she and Gerry were being given a townhouse in Boston as a wedding present. ‘Imagine that?’ she’d said to the hard-faced old woman who used to tell Clio and her friends off for being boisterous when she was younger. Mrs Fitzpatrick had turned pea green. Mrs Byrne had said she and Gerry would be the toast of the town. Well, she was definitely the talk of the street, Clio had humphed to herself, because she’d also overheard Mrs Fitzpatrick telling Mrs Murphy in a voice designed to carry, that young Cliona Whelan had gotten ideas above her station.
When Mammy wasn’t telling anyone who cared to listen about Clio’s new life in Boston she was fretting over the Whelans showing her up. Worried they’d arrive in Boston looking like country hicks from over the sea. She’d been making cutbacks when it came to the food bill so as to deck them all out in clothes befitting a society wedding. This was to the disgruntlement of Clio’s brothers and sisters who were sick to the back teeth of being told they’d have to behave themselves when they were in Boston. ‘Why couldn’t you marry someone normal?’ Fidelma had whined, upon finding the strawberry jam had not been replenished.
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 o
f 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.