Black tribal interlace design

The rope-walk smells the same as ever, tar and wet hemp, though Mr Lowry has put a radio in the loft and it tells us about the gales twice a day, so we know which ones to dread. I finished the mooring cable for the Adelaide Rose on Tuesday, and Dad's old bench is still under the window where he left it. You asked in your last letter whether I had found his drawing book. I have. It was wedged behind the tar drums, swollen at one corner, and nearly every page is the same design drawn again and again: a loop that climbs back through itself, then a second loop slipping under the first, until the whole thing reads like a wave folding into a coil.

I sat with it for an evening, trying to trace the path with my finger the way he taught us to follow a splice. The lines go round and round and I kept losing my place. On the last page he had started one more loop and stopped halfway, leaving a gap where the line should have passed beneath. I was cross about it at first, as if he'd left a job half done for me to finish.

Then I remembered what he used to say when we were small and tangled the net on the slipway: a knot needs somewhere for the water to go out, or it holds the sea in and rots. So I have left his gap open. I think that is what he meant.

This morning I walked down to the wall with a length of tarred cord and dropped the end into the harbour. The tide was making, grey and slow, and I watched it find the opening and draw the cord through, loop after loop, until it was gone out past the breakwater. Come home when you can. The book is yours if you want it.

Nell