Stitch in Snow

Anne McCaffrey 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.