New Girl in Little Cove by Damhnait Monaghan (fun books to read for adults .TXT) 📕

“Right then, Rachel,” said Biddy. “Do you want to start in on your own piece or just watch us and have a natter?”

I said I would watch and sat down beside Lucille on the daybed. “How do you do it?” I asked.

“You fits a piece of burlap sack between the top and bottom, see?” She touched the material trapped between the two sides of the frame. The bottom third of the burlap was covered in various shades of blue with scattered grey flecks. Sketched crudely above and waiting to be filled in was a fisherman, standing in a dory with his back to us.

“Watch now,” said Lucille. “I takes the hook”—she held up a small metal hook with a wooden handle—“and I holds it like a pencil, luh, or how you might hold a bit of chalk. Then I puts the length of wool in my other hand underneath.” She became bossier then. “Coopy down underneath now, Rachel girl, and take a peek.”

I knelt on the floor and tilted my head to look up under the frame. The tiny holes in the burlap shone in the light. When the tip of the hook broke through, Lucille said, “I dips down with the hook, see? And I pulls the wool through.” Lucille was a fantastic cook, and now I could see she was also an excellent teacher and craftswoman.

I sat back down beside her. She held the wool in her left hand and fed it smoothly through her callused fingers. The tip bobbed in and out of the burlap, bringing a wool loop through each time. When she reached the end of the strip of wool, she put a fresh one under the frame and started again. Lucille worked quickly and methodically, the hook moving across the burlap in neat, even rows.

“I guess that’s the sea?” I pointed at the bottom of the canvas.

“Yis.” The back of her hook traced the outline of the fisherman. “And that’s my John in his dory.”

“God rest his soul,” the other women said in unison.

“It’s for Linda,” Lucille said. “For Christmas.”

“She loved her dad,” said Biddy.

I knew what that was like. I sat slowly back on the daybed.

“Ah, he was a good man,” Lucille said. She stopped hooking and twisted her wedding ring. “He used to plait Linda’s hair every morning before school, remember?”

The other women nodded. Then Biddy said, “He used to say he was practising his knots, but sure we all knew he did it for Linda. She always had the most complicated concoctions in her hair.”

Lucille sighed. “She made me cut it all off after he died.”

“He was taken too soon,” Biddy said.

“What happened?” I whispered so low I wasn’t sure anyone would hear.

“He went out fishing one day and never came home,” said Lucille, her voice matter of fact. “Like his father and his brother.”

“Like too many,” said Biddy.

“Like Doug’s father,” I said.

The four women exchanged glances at this, and I thought I saw Lucille shake her head a little.

“My dad died this year,” I said, surprising myself with this disclosure.

“My dear,” said Lucille, putting down her handiwork and putting an arm around me. “I can’t believe you never said. I thought he was in Australia with your mother.”

I stayed quiet, conscious that tears were forming in my eyes.

“Tell me something about your dad, now,” Lucille said, patting my shoulder. “Grief is best shared. Like laughter and music, I s’pose.”

“He was a teacher,” I said.

“Well, isn’t it grand that you’re a teacher too?” said Biddy. “My dear, he’s looking down at you and he’s some proud.”

It felt good to have talked about Dad, however briefly, with these women. After a minute, Lucille picked up her hooking again. Biddy caught my eye and nodded at me as if to say, You’re safe here. I pushed myself off the daybed to go inspect her handiwork and the other women’s.

Flossie and Annie sat side by side, their hooks moving in time. Flossie was working on a small house with the ever-present sea behind it. Annie’s rug was much more detailed: a woman in a red dress and a white apron stood in a grassy yard, pegging sheets to a clothesline. Flossie and Annie hooked like Lucille, row by row. Biddy hooked freestyle. Her design featured a woman kneeling in a wooded area, picking blueberries. I marvelled as her hook roamed the surface of the burlap.

When I remarked on her style, she said, “Ah sure, as long as you fills it in, it don’t matter how. I likes to meander.”

As the women hooked, the scenes unfolded rapidly. It amazed me that they were creating such vivid works of art from bits of burlap, recycled wool and cast-off garments. But they brushed aside my words of praise.

“Ah, go on with you,” said Lucille. “It’s only a bit to rest your toes on.”

“You knows yourself,” said Flossie.

“Sure anyone could make these,” added Biddy.

“Well, I couldn’t,” I said. “They’d make great Christmas presents.”

“I’ve yaffles of them upstairs,” said Biddy. “You can have any you want, sure.” She put aside her frame. “Come on up and take a gander.”

“Smoke break, then,” said Lucille. I startled, but then I remembered I hadn’t said how Dad had died. Lucille lit cigarettes for Annie and Flossie, then for herself, inhaling, then exhaling with a contented sigh.

I was glad to follow Biddy upstairs. “You don’t smoke?” she asked.

“No. Do you?”

“No. That’s what killed me brother. Lung cancer.”

I grabbed the bannister. “My father too.”

Biddy stopped climbing. “It’s a terrible way to go,” she said. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

After a minute we started climbing again.

“You don’t mind them smoking here?” I asked, gesturing down the stairs.

“Ah sure, they’ve few enough pleasures,” said Biddy. “Widows, the lot of them.”

“Not you?” I asked, figuring when in Rome.

She was waiting at the top of the stairs now and touched the bloom on her cheek. “I got a face only a mother could love,” she said. But I