City Girl Read Online Free

and down in the warm puddles of water left by the outgoing tide, screaming with pleasure as they wriggled their toes deep in the wet squelchy sand. The Shelly banks! That’s where
she’d go: down to the ‘Shelliers’ to watch the tugs tow in the huge cargo ship that had just appeared as a dot on the horizon of the bay.
    Leaving the flat she began to walk towards Ringsend, turning right before she got to the village so that she was heading down past the attractive new homes built on land triumphantly reclaimed
from Dublin Bay, down towards the Glass Bottle Co. and then on to the river, that long blue winding vein that flowed right through the belly of the city and on out to sea. Devlin sniffed the air
that was laden with the smell of Dublin and the sea and began the long walk down the Pidgeon House Road towards her destination. On her right, small terraced houses faced the panorama of dockland.
Cranes, containers, small boats ploughing up and down the river and gulls circling and screeching. Soon the tugs would be heading out down the river to meet the big ship coming to its
journey’s end. Her pace quickened; she wanted to be there to see it all.
    Deliberately she emptied her mind of all worrisome thoughts. Only this was important now. Don’t think about anything else. Not that you’ve taken the day off work because you
couldn’t face the thought of going in when Colin wasn’t there. Don’t think that you’ll be in the house alone until Caroline gets back. Don’t think . . . don’t
think!
    Down past the ruined dwellings of the coastguards, past the coalyards. Her tense face relaxed briefly into a smile. Once she’d been to a party on a ship in the days when Ireland had
possessed a National Shipping Company. She’d been dating one of the second officers from Irish Shipping and one day his ship had sailed proudly into its mother port having traversed the wide
powerful Atlantic. She had seen the pride on his face as he stood uniformed and smart on the gangway to meet her for the party the crew were throwing. It had been a wonderful party and she had seen
the pink gold sun rise over the city of her birth from the impressive bridge of the vessel. They had been good times, before unemployment had become rampant and an air of hopelessness had enveloped
the towns and cities of the country as jobs got fewer and the dole queues swelled like big malignant growths.
    Almost before he knew it, her good looking sailor had been made redundant, as the government had liquidated the shipping company, leaving some of its crews under arrest in foreign ports, its
workforce destined for the dole and the liquidator earning thousands a week. The arrested crews had eventually been repatriated and Devlin had marched down O’Connell Street one Saturday with
them and their wives and mothers. The men were proud and dignified in their braided uniforms and white-topped caps. All they wanted was justice and their dues but sure who had listened to them? The
ordinary man and woman in the street wished them well but they were only one protest group among many on the streets of Dublin.
    Devlin felt a bitterness rise within her. Frank had emigrated to America and how could she blame him? She too had seen the long queues waiting at the dole office once a week. Not that she had
ever really wanted for money – her parents were well off— but how people without any other means existed on social welfare was beyond her.
    Glumly she walked on down past the power station, around the dump where birds scavenged like something out of a Hitchcock movie, then down the road where the sea lapped up against the rocks and
she could see Sandymount, where she had come from. On she walked, the wind rippling her thick blond hair, the sun caressing her still tanned face, oblivious of the children with their mothers, the
lovers sitting in their cars, the old men smoking their pipes chatting and reminiscing with their lined weatherbeaten faces, keeping