The Sandycove Knitting Circle

Chapter 29

The following morning, just before breakfast, I slipped into the hotel library to grab my notebook, when an old, tatty guidebook caught my eye on the shelf.

I picked it up and flicked through it. It seemed to be a guide to Sandycove from half a century before.

I brought it with me to breakfast, and propped it open while I ate.

Just over a week ago, I had been in Boston at the awards, wearing those uncomfortable shoes, and now here I was with messy hair and no make-up, wearing shorts.

It was as though I had entered the Twilight Zone.

There was another picture of her on the following page, this time with another young woman, with short hair, the two of them laughing, Lolly had her arm around the girl’s neck, the two of them creased up about something.

I stared at it for a while, their faces were blurred, but it was a moment in time, two girls laughing, just like me and Caitlin.

And there were maps too, like old-fashioned pirate maps with dotted lines for the walk, the sea was all squiggles and a sea monster, and there were other notes for where the church was and its denomination and the main street had every shop listed and labelled.

There were portraits of different businesses, such as a local brewery called Blake’s Beers and the Richmond Laundry.

There was a small grocers called Murphy’s, and also what was called the ‘fish factory’ where the daily catch was quickly processed and sent into the city centre of Dublin to be sold at the markets, and there was even a double-page spread about ‘The Knitting Circle’.

And then I understood what Finnuala had been referring to when she’d said that they were bringing it back. It had been an actual business.

I read on.

‘I happened upon a most wonderful enterprise,’ it said in the book, ‘headed up by the marvellous and inspiring Antoinette DeCourcey. An Irish woman by birth, she had been schooled in England but told me how desperate she had been to return to her native land and “do some good”, as she put it, in her firm, matter-of-fact tone. And do some good she has done…’

So there it was, the old knitting circle that so many people kept referring to.

I read on, rapt. The article went on about this knitting circle and how the women of the village were able to make jumpers in their spare time ‘and other knitted garments’ and they would be packed up and sent off to Britain and America, where Antoinette DeCourcey had many contacts.

‘A great premium is placed on these garments,’ wrote the enthralled author, ‘and the indomitable Mrs DeCourcey insists on high prices, which she shares among those in the knitting circle. Why is it called the knitting circle, I asked her? “Because in life what we put in, we get out,” she explained. “The money earned goes straight back to my ladies. They are exceptionally talented and were taught these skills by their own mothers and grandmothers and beyond. It’s the circle of womanhood, of family and friends, of skills handed down, and what I feel is most important for the ladies is economic independence, something which I endeavour to achieve for them. In fact, very shortly, I will be taking the steamer to New York to meet with the owners of some of the city’s biggest stores, as they call them, with the design to ensure that our knitwear is seen by the highest in that city. ”’

There was a photograph of Antoinette DeCourcey, standing in the middle of a group of twenty women, in front of a warehouse with a painted sign: ‘The Sandycove Knitting Circle’.

Some of the women were smiling for the camera, others looking seriously ahead, all holding what looked like a hand-knitted sweater.

I must have stared at that photograph for ages.

And then I spotted something at the edge of the photograph, half hidden by a bush of some sorts, two girls peeking out, again slightly blurred.

Staring closer, I was sure it was Lolly again and her pal.

It was such a joyful photograph, Antoinette DeCourcey’s chin held high, the women beside her equally proud of their achievements.

You could almost step inside the photograph, back in time, to that day in…

I checked the date, 1960… and you could hear their voices as they were settled down to look at the camera lens, shushing each other’s chat, their laughing, Lolly and her friend being told to stay back while the shutter closed, and the moment was captured forever.

Later, when I walked down to meet everyone at the knitting circle at the Laundry Lane warehouse, I pulled out the guidebook. ‘Look what I’ve been reading,’ I said. ‘And it’s given me a few ideas. We need to make contacts with store buyers… just like Antoinette DeCourcey did.’

Finnuala came over and picked up the book. ‘Haven’t seen this in a good few years.’

‘She went to New York and talked to store managers,’ I said. ‘I could do the same.’

‘She had some drive, that woman. My mother always said she was a visionary and feminist. A lesson to us all.’

‘You know,’ said Matty, who had been knitting on the couch beside Betty, a tangle of wool in his lap, ‘I was thinking about that time, do you remember, Eddie, when we were growing up? God, Mrs DeCourcey was some woman, wasn’t she? She always wore black.’

‘That was after Lolly,’ said Eddie.

‘Ah. Lolly.’ The two men glanced at each other and lapsed into silence. ‘Poor Lolly.’

Eddie had picked up the guidebook and was peering at the picture of Lolly.

Mary’s face softened. ‘And there she is, looking so beautiful and so heartbreaking.’ Mary and Eddie exchanged a look, as she took the book from Eddie. ‘My mother is in it, though. I have the original photograph. There’s one of the knitting circle…’

She turned to the page to the image of the women sitting in two rows, Mrs DeCourcey in the middle and the two laughing girls at the side.

‘It’s such a beautiful photo.’

Mary nodded. ‘Isn’t it just? Mrs DeCourcey arranged for everyone to be given a framed copy that Christmas.

I remember Mam coming home with it, wrapped in tissue paper and a ribbon, she was always so stylish was Mrs DeCourcey.

And it hung on our wall until Mam died and now I have it, pride of place. ’

‘Which one’s your mother?’

Mary pointed at a face in the group. ‘There she is, with the big smile.’ Mary stared at it for a moment. ‘It’s good to see her like that, surrounded by all her friends. They were happy times for those women. Until it was shut down. Forcibly.’

‘By who?’

‘By the Richmonds, of course!’ said Finnuala.

‘William Richmond’s father wasn’t a nice man.

None of them are. I mean, Charlie is a bit hapless, the poor lad, but they are the kind of family who think very well of themselves.

And old Mr Richmond, Oliver, well, he didn’t like the women being economically independent, it meant fewer women to work in the laundry for one thing.

’ She flicked through the book and found a page which she placed down and tapped with her finger. ‘That’s Oliver as a young man.’

I stared at the photograph of a young-looking Oliver Richmond, the caption was ‘Heir to the Richmond Laundry’. He looked self-satisfied and handsome.

Mary looked at him closely again. ‘They didn’t want Mrs DeCourcey to have any power in the village,’ she went on, still angry after all these years.

‘She had plans to take over the Sandycove Arms, this hotel. She was in negotiation with the owner at the time, when Lolly had her accident. Lolly was Mrs DeCourcey’s daughter.

’ Mary’s face was stricken. ‘She was my pal. The most lovely and vivacious of girls. Was going to go to university and was all set. And then… well… she… drowned. At the regatta.’

‘That’s terrible,’ I said. ‘I’m so sorry.’ I knew what it was like to lose a best friend.

Mary nodded. ‘Poor Mrs DeCourcey was broken by it all, hadn’t the will to carry on. The knitting circle was closed.’

Maureen came over to the table with a fresh pot of tea.

‘It’s great to see the women,’ she said.

‘Our mothers, our aunts, our grandmothers. There’s Mam,’ she said, pointing her out to Mary.

‘And my auntie Bernadette. And there’s Mabel O’Driscoll and your auntie Peggy.

And there’s Lolly,’ she said, pointing to the page.

Mary shook her head. ‘What a tragedy.’

‘So what happened?’ I asked. ‘When was this?’

‘Oh, it’s going back a bit now. Fifty years or so,’ said Mary.

‘How old was Lolly when she died?’

‘She wasn’t twenty,’ said Mary. ‘We were the same age. In the same class together. It took me a long time to get over it, I can tell you that much.’ She turned the page, stopping at the photograph of the parish priest, and jabbing at it.

‘There he is,’ she said. ‘Devil in sheep’s clothes.

Or sheep’s cassock.’ She gazed at me. ‘In league with the Richmonds. Ah, it was a dreadful business, from beginning to end. He denounced Mrs DeCourcey from the pulpit after she organised a strike at the laundry and from then on it was war, really. And the Richmonds won. But there was a time when we thought the people would win and were on the side of Mrs DeCourcey. The whole village refused to go to Mass and the bishop was sent down to Sandycove and all of that, but the village wouldn’t give in and, for two weeks, no one would go to Mass.

And fire and brimstone was yelled about, but no one was listening because there was no one to listen.

And then it was the regatta and poor Lolly died and it broke Mrs DeCourcey, it really did.

Sunday morning, you know what people did?

They met down at the harbour and they gathered there, and they said their own prayers, away from the church.

You know in those days, it was still so important to everyone, their faith.

They all still believed in it all, just not Father Joseph.

And of course he was in cahoots with Oliver Richmond.

’ Mary pulled a face. ‘He ran everything in town. Had a business, a laundry. They looked after all the linen from the big hotels from here and across Dublin, you know the sheets and the pillowcases, the towels, all of it. And there would be a fleet of vans going in and out of town, the drivers in uniforms and caps, “Richmond Laundry” on the side of the vans. He used to give money to the church, always on a Sunday, there’d be a crisp twenty-pound note, it would be there in the basket they used to pass around, and the note lying there ostentatiously.

Handsome fella, you might say. He’d inherited the laundry from his father who had died when Oliver was only nineteen, and he stepped into the breach, and…

oh, I don’t know… he wasn’t nice. My mother never trusted him and refused to work in the laundry, out of respect to Mrs DeCourcey…

’ Mary stopped talking. ‘She didn’t like him.

We’ll leave it at that.’ She shuddered, as though shaking a spider off her head.

‘Anyway, I’m glad you have found the guidebook.

It’s a great aide de memory lane.’ She paused, breathing out slowly.

‘But we don’t need to go into all that ancient history, do we?

Not when we have more positive things to think about.

Now, Henry was telling me you’re going for a night-time sail.

That’ll be nice, won’t it? Are you all set? ’

‘I think so,’ I said. ‘As long as I have a life jacket on, I don’t mind.’ And as long as Henry was doing the sailing. I felt safest with him.

* * *

In the afternoon, back in my hotel room, I called Mom.

‘I already know,’ she said, when she answered.

‘Already?’ I had only ended my engagement twelve hours earlier. Surely it hadn’t made its way through the Boston rumour mill so fast. Must be a slow news day for the PAs of Boston.

‘Yes, already. I was so furious when I heard. Mitzi, of course, told me. Her PA told her…’

‘You mean you know about his affair?’

‘Yes, what a fool he is. And with someone from Bloomingdale’s. I’ll never go there again. And to think I have patronised that store all my life! Mitzi thinks you should still go through with the wedding.’

‘And what do you think?’ I dreaded her response.

Would she really want me to marry someone like Milhouse?

Was her desperation for me to be married stronger than her desire for me to be happy?

Would she lecture me about forgiveness, and men’s predilections and peccadilloes and how I wasn’t getting any younger and how Audrey Callaghan had managed to get engaged?

‘Do you think I should go through with it?’

‘I think I would disown you if you did. No daughter of mine is going to put up with being second-best.’

I laughed. ‘Don’t worry, Mom. I’ve already ended it.’

‘Oh thank God,’ she said, ‘I’m so relieved. I was going to go to his office and give him a piece of my mind.’

‘I already did that before I left Boston. Except, somehow he managed to convince me it was normal behaviour and he didn’t want to be a dog on a leash…’

Mom snorted. ‘He’s a dog all right.’

‘I’ve been thinking about it and I decided it’s over. I would prefer a lifetime of being single than being married to him.’

Mom breathed out a sigh of relief. ‘I am so pleased. He’s one of those mediocre men that unfortunately proliferate to an alarming degree. Mitzi and I agree that marriage is overrated.’

‘Mom, you’ve had four marriages.’

‘Well I should know, then. I’m an expert. But perhaps it will be different for you. When you come home, we’ll try to find you one of those non-mediocre men. Mitzi says she knows a few. After all—’

‘Mom, please,’ I said, smiling, relieved that Mom was on my side regarding Milhouse.

But still… she needed to drop the wedding business.

Being in Ireland had made me realise that there was a whole world to explore and I wanted to keep going.

‘You and Mitzi stay out of it. When I come home, I might just be single for a while. Or forever.’