Stitch in Snow

Chapter 01

'You've got problems, Dana Jane Lovell,' said my friend Mairead, unexpectedly grim. She took the newly finished Arran sweater, size 40, absently running her fingers over the pattern before she placed it with indifferent care on the counter.

'Whatever do you mean?'

Mairead's ugly-attractive face screwed into a grimace of distaste.

'That's the second sweater this month.'

'So?'

'So,' she took me by the upper arm, started me towards the door other tourist boutique, calling over her shoulder, 'Sally, watch the shop. I'll be in the other office.'

She marched me out to the street, ignoring my protests that I did not want a drink at this hour of the morning, and pulled me ruthlessly towards the pub across the little square, her 'other office.'

'Hush yourself, Dana, you've been worrying over Tim again.'

'I am not worried about Tim. At 20 my son is old enough to take care of himself…'

'Which is your problem, because he isn't here for you to take care of.'

'Mairead!' I jerked my arm out of her grip. 'You know I'm not that kind of mother.'

'I didn't say you were,' she snapped back, her brown eyes sparkling so fiercely that, in spite of having known her tempestuous moods for five years, I was a bit daunted. 'I said that you miss having him, or someone, to take care of. You're that sort, no matter what else you are and do!'

She took my arm again, her fingers biting into my flesh, and hauled me the rest of the distance to the pub. At eleven-fifteen on a bright Thursday morning in November, the pub was empty. Declan, the barman, was busy elsewhere for we could hear his cheerful whistle.

'When you're ready, Declan,' Mairead sang out as she gestured me to take a bar stool. 'I know you're not that sort of mother, Dana, and I respect you for it. But the fact remains that you're miserable.'

'I am not.'

'Oh, yes, you are,' and she wangled a finger at me, her eyes still snapping. 'Two Arrans in one month!' She made a noise of utter disgust.

'You keep saying that you'll take all I can knit for you.'

Mairead is dramatic and now she raised her eyes and hands heavenwards for patience.

'Look, get away from the knitting needles. Get out of that house for a break. Go see your London publisher, your agent. Go to Paris, you said you've always wanted to go…'

'I can't go anywhere right now…'

'I'll mind the house for you, and the dog, and the mail…'

'That's not the problem. I'm writing…'

'Then stop! Go away! Meet people! Get involved…'

'That's fine advice while I'm away and involved and meeting people, but it doesn't do anything for me when I have to come back, to take care of my house, my dog, my mail and finish my book. So what if I'm knitting a lot, there's nothing on TV right now that I care to watch and…'

The impetus of her attack faltered and her shoulders sagged a bit, admitting the logic of my refutation. She pulled her mouth down, glaring about the room under wrinkled brows. She'd need to pluck them again, I noticed. Then she reached for her cigarettes, glaring at me to forestall my inevitable protest. She did try to cut down on smoking in my presence.

'I'm coping, Mairead. I admit you've got a point. I am lonely. More so this year than last. Although I can't understand why I should miss Tim more now than when he first started college…'

In one of her mercurial changes, Mairead grinned at me, and chuckled in her earthy way. 'Should I remind you about Peter-pet?'

'No.'

'What'll it be, ladies?' asked the cheerful voice of Declan, the barman, emerging from his back premises. He twitched at the overlong sleeves of his shirt to get the cuffs above his wrists and rested his hands on the counter. Declan had been a jockey until a horse had come down on him in a hurdle race, fracturing his pelvis in a number of barely mendable pieces. He was a favourite of ours, especially since his racing tips were eighty per cent reliable. Tim had worked that out on his calculator over a month's betting performance.

We ordered lager and lime, Mairead absently reminding Declan to make it Carlsberg, while he reproachfully reminded her that he never forgot her preference. He poured the ale, leaving sufficient space in the glasses for the lime cordial, placed the bottles on the bar for us to suit ourselves, and went on about his business. He had an unerring instinct for knowing when you wanted to chat him up or be left alone.

'Peter did fill a void… Whoops! Sorry about that, pet,' said Mairead the irrepressible. 'He was good for you in some ways,' she went on, in a pensive mood, turning her lager glass so that the wet bottom made damp circles on the bar wood. 'But he sure wasn't a permanent answer for you.'

'I don't want a permanent answer,' I said. 'Peter was in many ways just what I needed…'

'You sure as hell were what he needed.' Mairead can never suppress her jaundices. 'A mother figure! Christ, what is it with this country's men? They'll either charm your pockets bare or they're grown up little boys creeping back into the womb! Sick of 'em! That's what I am! Sick of the whole lot of 'em.'

'I…'

She whirled before I got another syllable out, her finger under my nose. 'And don't you dare say I've tried the lot of 'em!'

'Oh, ho and have you?'

'Never you mind about me, Dana Jane Lovell. I can and do take care of myself. It's you I'm worried about. You gave Peter-pet the boot last May…' her voice altered from stern to amused, 'just in time for Tim to come home to a pure household. It's November now and it's not fair on you. Mind, I'm not saying you should find another Peter and slough him off next April again, but you do need someone about for a while.'

I was both annoyed and amused by Mairead. Amused because she was so intense about sorting out my life to her satisfaction, never mind about mine; and annoyed because she felt her solution would suit me. Annoyed also because she so acutely identified my malaise: a restlessness I had refused to admit to myself. However, standing in the way of any candid admission were my principles, or perhaps, just a large pride.

From the onset of the lung cancer which killed him, my husband, Ray, had withdrawn from much physical contact with me. It had taken him two years to die, fighting every day to keep alive. His courage, his humour, his wisdom in the face of death had endeared him far more to me than any physical relationship. After his death I had gone about in a sort of numb shock, and then, while I was in graduate school, I found solace in the arms of a fellow student. I even considered marrying Ross, but something had restrained me. Much later I realised that it had been because Ross couldn't measure up to the standards Ray had set. Specious, perhaps, but I saw no reason, then, or since, to compromise. I think that was a basic difference between Mairead and myself. She could, would and did compromise, enjoying a relationship for what merit it had, then severing it, sometimes rather brutally, when something about the relationship displeased her.

Physical needs don't appreciate esoteric principles. So I was left, holding a bag of knitting.

Mairead argued and threatened me for the better part of an hour, getting so fraught herself that she departed, swearing she wouldn't take another sweater off my hands for six months, so I needn't waste my time running up another one. She wouldn't buy it for all the gold in the county: she'd be selling dangerous goods. Who wanted a sex-starved sweater, reeking of frustrations, strong enough to haunt the purchaser and she'd be to blame, she would!

One of our whimsies is her sales pitch on the Arran jumpers I knit for her: they're made by a little (I'm 5'5"), white-haired lady (my once carroty hair, bane of my existence as a young girl, has plenty of silver streaks), living in a gatelodge in County Wicklow.

To this gatelodge I repaired, having solved nothing except the disposition of an hour, and sixty-nine pence on lager and lime.

I tried to stimulate the sense of pleasure I usually have when I see my pleasant abode, framed by a stand of magnificent beeches and the estate wall. The gatelodge is a gem, complete with an enclosed garden of about a half acre. I was extraordinarily lucky to have acquired its lease, a fringe benefit of being an author. With Gothic wooden trim on its peaked roofs, the lodge was also like a Gothic L-cross, the leg being a new addition with a modern kitchen and bath-room. The top cross piece contained the hall and two small bedrooms, the living room was the shaft. There was a lovely big fireplace in the living room which, in theory, heated the house. The wall to the left of the fireplace was covered with shelves for my books and record collection with a special drawer for the hi-fi and tape recorder. The stairs to the single upstairs room were on the wall opposite the fireplace. My garret, which had a more modest fireplace, was the only one in the attic and took up the whole gable area. The vaulted ceiling gave me a glorious feeling of having more space than I actually did. Two windows gave views of meadows and mountains, pleasant for unfocused looking-at during moments of inspirational gazing.

The kitchen was small but, as the landlord had been remodelling it (I hate to think what it had been for my first glimpse had been bare walls and floor) when I took the lease so I had a chance to make it more efficient, adding a few things at my own expense when Mr. Hengarty muttered darkly about costs. We were both pleased with the result. I had a counter-top range, for one thing, space for an almost American size fridge/freezer, an under-the-counter washing machine, good working and shelf space. The bathroom was also small but had a bathtub with shower attachments and the hot water heater was topped by a good linen press. Irish houses do not run to American-style closets so I connived with Mr. Hengarty's carpenter to build me some in both the small bedrooms and my office-bedroom. We were right and tight in my little houseen, on a long lease. Mr. Hengarty could brag about his American author tenant and I generally paid the rent on time.

Tim had cut me a vegetable garden the first year so we had fresh produce and the original tenant's fruit trees were mature and bore generously. Right now, everything in the garden was bare, including my response to it all as I parked my Peugeot on the blacktop beside my empty house.

I sat for a long time in the car, in a limbo of sorts, like Christopher Robin, half way up the stairs. I've often felt that a car is that sort of mid-point. I do a lot of good thinking while I drive, suspended between point A and point B, especially when I don't want to stand on either point. I could think about my problem - loneliness - more objectively in the car than I could in the house where the absence of someone to care for, namely my son Tim, would be palpable. I had missed him last year, but I had been enjoying an amusing affair with Peter Neville, one which I'd hoped would mature into a lasting relationship. Peter had been my plane seatmate from New York to Dublin on my return from a lecture tour I'd done after winning a young adult fiction award for one of my 'Timmy' books. Peter was employed as a film editor for RTE though he never seemed to spend much time editing anything, except his funny stories. He'd been very good company, amusing, witty, inventive, charming… most of the time. When 'drink taken,' as the phrase goes, he underwent an alarming metamorphosis. Admittedly, he could hold enormous quantities of drink before the switch occurred. It was during one of those infrequent episodes that I broke off our relationship, at the top of my lungs, afterwards regretting far more that he had goaded me into losing my temper than that he had departed.

Tim had come home soon afterward for the summer and his presence had satisfied that home-making instinct in me that defies the independence of mind and discipline of the body.

Mairead can tease me unmercifully about my maternal instinct, my deplorable (her adjective) need to succour the friendless, hungry and selfish. Fond as I am of Mairead, I could not be as hard and cynical as she, however much that would protect me from my impulses and trusting nature.

I didn't want another entanglement like the one I'd had with Peter Neville which had posed more problems than it solved. Mairead had accused me of having a distorted recollection of my married life with Ray before he took ill: she said I couldn't compare all men with an idealised Ray.

'No man could be as nice as that Raymond of yours,' she'd said in disgust one night when I'd tried valiantly to explain the respect we'd shared, the gentleness and kindness of the man. 'Furthermore, once you'd rubbed together a few years longer, you'd have rubbed against each other, too. He died before you lost him.'

She could be right, I'd thought privately, having seen other 'ideal' marriages disintegrate. But Ray had been different. My memories of our brief years together could not be tarnished by the wisp of any doubt.

Memory is, unfortunately, cold comfort in bed, or cold company in a lonely house.

Circumstance, in the form of a letter from my publisher outlining another lecture tour for March and April, raised its charming head. I welcomed the opportunity because it solved so many problems and laid to rest all current doubts. I'd be visiting 24 cities in six weeks - rather a stiff program, but I'd have weekends clear and generally at the publisher's expense. I'd be able to stay with my sister in New York and visit Ray's sister in Berkeley, and that marvellous children's librarian in Pittsburgh. There were other people I could visit but sometimes, on such a busy schedule, it was wiser to retire gratefully to the impersonal room of a hotel and regroup one's energies. The letter asked many questions about my wishes on the tour.

I phoned Mairead to tell her I was taking her advice about travelling.

'Weaseled out of it again, have you?' she replied. 'Mind now, I still won't take another Arran off you.'

'I won't have time. I've got letters and lectures to write and this novel to finish.'

And I didn't have time to knit again until March when I took off for New York. To relieve the tedium of 7 hours flying time, I cast on the border of a size 44 Arran pullover.