Chapter 33
Swimming first thing in the morning was so much more enjoyable than being in an airless, windowless, hermetically sealed compression chamber of my gym back in Boston.
Lucy, Ellie and I met again in the Forty Foot, my swimsuit still damp from the night before.
Being in the cold sea again, after the chill had squeezed out your breath, was somehow like melting into a deep glow, your body now warm, humming with life.
Ellie had her knitting bag with her, the needles poking out.
‘I’m making a cashmere scarf,’ she said.
‘I know I could buy a nicer one in the shop, but I think I am becoming obsessed. Who knew knitting could be better than meditating? My heart rate is practically flatlining when I knit. I have to have an extra coffee to bring it up again.’
All the other swimmers at the Forty Foot were full of talk of the following day’s regatta.
They all asked Lucy if she was ‘giving it a go this year’.
And Lucy nodded and said she was going to take it easy, not try to win, but just enjoy it.
At the harbour itself, trucks and vans were unloading barriers and seating, the marquee being raised like an Amish barn, a winner’s podium erected.
My phone rang. Finnuala.
She sounded nearly tearful. ‘Kerry-Anne, bit of bad news. Barry from the council, remember him? Wispy hair? Nostrils? He’s just called.
He’s just been told we don’t have a licence to stay open.
We’re a fire hazard and apparently they don’t trust elderly people to leave a burning building quickly enough so they are closing us down. ’
‘Where are you?’
‘I’m here. In the warehouse. We have orders to send out. Betty was going to be running a brushing-up-your-skills workshop later. Oh, Kerry-Anne, what are we going to do?’
Forgetting about my soda bread and jam, I raced back to the village to meet Finnuala at the warehouse, where the entire knitting circle had gathered.
Eddie and Matty were there, as well as Mary, Betty, Diana and all the other women I’d met over the last week.
Everyone looked very concerned, but poor Finnuala looked particularly devastated, Sheila had her arm around her.
‘We’ll find somewhere else,’ she soothed. ‘Not to worry.’
‘But what if we can’t?’ Finnuala spotted me. ‘What if we can’t, Kerry-Anne? It was a miracle getting this place, it really was. There won’t be another place, not if we have to jump over all that health and safety hoopla nonsense. Guard rails. Wheelchair accessible. Fire-retardant wool.’
‘That wouldn’t make a very nice jumper,’ said Mary.
‘Barry from the council was actually very apologetic,’ began Sheila.
‘As he was closing us down,’ said Finnuala, beginning to rage. ‘Oh, when I think of him and his thin tie, I considered garrotting him with it, I really did!’
‘A prison sentence is not going to get us our warehouse back,’ said Sheila.
Meanwhile, I was trying to think. Could we meet in the café?
Jules would be fine with it, but it wasn’t big enough and the whole point was a dedicated centre, with production, planning, distribution all taking place together.
They all turned to me, as though I had answers. ‘We can continue online,’ I said.
‘But it’s not the same,’ said Sheila.
Everyone nodded in agreement.
‘The plan was to make a community hub,’ said Finnuala. ‘And that’s gone now. Barry says we have to clear out of here by C.O.B. today. What for the life of me and all the saints and sinners is C.O.B. when it’s at home?’
‘Close of business,’ I said automatically.
‘Well, why don’t they say that then?’ said Finnuala, furious again. ‘Why do they use silly phrases and bleat on about fire-retardant wool and handrails and the distance from kettle to fridge and how many people would be in the space and if there are enough bathrooms?’
‘There’s one,’ said Sheila.
‘It’s perfectly fine,’ said Mary.
‘I wouldn’t use it if it wasn’t,’ said Diana.
‘We can try to sort this out,’ I said. ‘Go online. Sell everything that way.’
Finnuala shook her head. ‘But that’s not what we are.
’ She was adamant. ‘Any fool can sell a jumper, but we’re more than that.
This was about community, and better than that, this was about women of a certain age flexing their power and their talents, and being together.
With a couple of honourable exceptions…’ She nodded at everyone.
‘This was about us coming together, chatting, being part of each other’s lives again.
We had action and now we’ve been defenestrated.
Emotionally filleted, completely destroyed. ’
There was a roar of approval from my elderly friends. ‘Yes, Finnuala! That’s right!’
‘Hear, hear,’ said Diana.
‘Putting it mildly,’ said Betty.
But Finnuala wasn’t stopping. ‘The whole point of the knitting circle was so every day we’d have somewhere to go, so we would talk and laugh, have a dance. And pass on our skills, teach other people, create something important. The knitting was just an excuse.’
‘A fecking great excuse,’ called out Matty, who had two knitting needles in the top pocket of his short-sleeved shirt and a spider’s nest of wool hanging from his shorts pocket.
Finnuala had fire in her eyes, the kind I had never seen in my decade of working with start-ups and business owners.
This was a passion I had never actually witnessed before, someone so committed to something so personal, something she was doing for the good of others.
This wasn’t a bit of fun, this small enterprise was important; it meant something. I felt electrified.
‘But it’s over,’ said Finnuala. ‘We will knit, but we won’t meet.
And it was the meeting that was the whole point.
It was being social together, having a bit of craic.
Social isn’t what you do on your phones, it’s what you do when you are with another like-minded human. We need it, we need it more than ever.’
And I knew she was right. Meeting is the whole point.
Being with others, caring for people, talking, laughing, being part of something bigger than just ourselves is the entire point.
It’s why we form communities and families and friendship groups, it’s what makes us human.
It’s why the puffin chooses a mate for life, or why we fall in love.
It’s because we are meant to be with other people.
Not all the time, but to have friends and people to love, when you need them or when they need you, is the whole point to life.
My priority was to try to work out how to save the knitting circle.
I had to make sure they had somewhere to go and be together, because otherwise it was just knitting and no circle, and it was now clear the essential part was the circle.
My phone rang again, just as we were crossing the road towards Laundry Lane.
It was Johnny. ‘K, we’re coming over, me and the Big G. She’s looking up flights now. We’re going to rescue you.’
‘Please don’t. Everything’s fine. I don’t need rescuing. Stop being such a drama queen.’
But he wasn’t listening. ‘Stay where you are. We’re on our way. The Big G is insisting. I don’t know why, considering she’s never wanted to go back to Ireland. She says we need to bring you home.’
‘Don’t, Johnny, please! I’ll be home soon. I’ve got enough to think about here, now…’
‘Bye, K. See you soon.’ And he ended the call.
Surely, they wouldn’t come? Granny Annie had always said she had no interest in returning. Why would she?