MOLLY SETTLES INTO HER chair, massages the gnarl in her knee. It’s the cartilage – worn down, or swollen, or both. Never mind. She will just sit for a while, get her rhythm back. Aoife can really take it out of her sometimes.
She pulls her knitting bag onto her knee. She’s not going all the way upstairs for the sock. She’ll start something new.
Baby Peig is always in hand-me-downs; neglected looking. It would be nice for her to have something of her own. Molly still has some of that fine merino 4-ply, a soft brown, like a wild baby rabbit, and so light to work with. She’ll make one of those lovely little matinee coats. Perfect for a child of that age. Something Cara can throw around the baby to put her in the pram.
Molly opens her needle case and selects a round needle, size 3.25. The yarn is easy on her fingertips as she casts on rhythmically. She might have to look at the pattern in a bit, but she knows for certain it’s fifty-three stitches for the back, then five rows of garter stitch. How many of those little coats has she made? Oh ten at least. At least. Didn’t she make three of them for Aoife – pink, yellow, green?
Is it the change or what? Molly doesn’t know, but she can really blow up these days, her Fifi. Doesn’t like to be kept in the dark. Fuming. Fuming is the word. That’s the word she’ll use when she tells Freya about it. Aoife always had a temper. The great scenes she could make as a child – the jiggle of her cheeks and the fat boxer fists and the stamping of her sausage-roll legs. Dinny would be splitting his sides with the sight of her. She who must be obeyed – that’s what he used to call her. Aoife used to make him laugh. He laughed a lot in those years. Everything was going well – Aoife was healthy; Dinny had friends; he was getting ‘recognised’ – that was the right expression. But the grief was still stuck into Molly. She hadn’t the strength for it. Some days it hit her in the gut as soon as she opened her eyes. Some days, she couldn’t breathe for it, she couldn’t see—
Molly stops and straightens out the stitches. She’s lost count now. Starting at the beginning, she marches her forefinger up along the needle, counting in twos, but, my God, she is weary after that visit.
She who must be obeyed. The way those cheeks huff and puff. Those dark, low brows that she got off of Dinny.
What is that, forty stitches?
She pushes the needle into the ball of wool, places it on the shelf. The cardigan will have to wait. She’s too tired now.
God, her knee. Freya might make her a compress for it, when she gets in.
She could try to snooze, here in her chair. An afternoon snooze and by the time she wakes it will be evening. Freya. The little boy. They can have a light supper together, cosy at the table.
She had Aoife in Dublin, in the Coombe Hospital. Dinny was more stuck into all that Soho nonsense by then than ever before, so it was a great defiance when she said she was going home and that was the end of it. She was not a contrary woman; she was never a fussy wife. It was only that she knew – and she knew, she really did, and she told Dinny in no uncertain terms – that she couldn’t let the child out of her otherwise. She went back to Ireland with four days to spare. She can remember on the boat, the enormous relief, rubbing her belly. ‘We’re alright little man, we’re alright.’
*
When she first saw it, Molly thought there’d been a mistake – a girl. It was much bigger and much redder than the baby she had been expecting.