He could hear his mother talking, her voice gentle and sweet. She wasn’t angry with him. And he could hear old Duncan MacDonald telling him that his grandfather had been a cruel and harsh man – how his meanness was caught in the cloth he produced. And it struck Taylor just then how his mythical grandfather had actually been his mother’s real dad. She hadn’t spoken much about her family, just that they weren’t close and that she’d left home when she was young. That’s all he’d previously known because that’s all she’d chosen to say. Why was that? But also—did he need to know why?
‘Mom?’
‘Honey.’
‘You were a weaver – even when you were young?’
‘Put me at a Hattersley and I very probably still am.’
She laughed then, as if the concept was slightly mad but also made her happy.
‘But why were you throwing it all away?’ And oh, both he and she knew how he was referring to so much more than the tweeds.
‘I don’t know Taylor,’ she said softly. ‘Sometimes we sense we need to spring clean. But actually I am glad that you have them, that you have searched for meaning in the warp and the weft, that you’re looking for patterns, that it touches you.’
‘Mom,’ said Taylor.
He desperately wanted to ask her what the hell she was doing, what the hell she was thinking, why she wasn’t in Colorado Springs with his Dad, why the house was being sold, why nothing would be the same again. But he thought of what Drew had said last night about his mom and her bra and her lipstick and the messages that were not the sort of messages that a mom would write. And he thought of the journey he’d taken to be here, his desire to make sense of things he didn’t understand, things he knew so little about; to find out what his mother was made of and where he slotted in to it all. And he thought of all that he’d achieved by the crazy big run he’d done yesterday. From the north of the island to the south, through rain and pain, battling climbs head on, so that he could reach soft sand and warmth. He hadn’t been running away, he’d been running towards.
‘Mom?’
‘Yes honey?’
‘Um – nothing.’ That wasn’t true. ‘Well – are you okay?’
‘I’m okay, Taylor.’ Emotion rippled her voice, he could hear it even though she was in another day, another continent. He heard her breathe in, he heard her breathe out. ‘And so is your dad. And you will be too. You have our word.’
Just now, that was enough.
‘We’re leaving soon,’ he told her. ‘For Edinburgh.’
‘I like your pronunciation.’
‘Mom, I never asked – but where did you live, here in Harris? Where was your house?’
‘Rhenigidale,’ she said.
He’d not heard this word, he hadn’t seen this place on the map.
‘Is it still there, your house?’
She sighed. She was tired now. It had been a long day. Life was topsy-turvy. She had to believe it would straighten out. Over the sea, on that brooding wild island, standing on his own two feet was her only child, her son, her boy. She could see him there so clearly.
‘I don’t honestly know, Taylor,’ she said. ‘It was such a long time ago.’
They have left Flora’s House. Apart from the kettle and the dirty pillowcase, the cottage is in good shape and nothing has been broken. They are now sitting in the hire car and they are gazing at the little building.
‘Good bye, wee cottage,’ JB says.
Drew waves.
Taylor starts the engine, reverses in a smooth arc and off they go.
JB looks out of the window and continues to wonder where the trees might be. Drew looks out of the window and wonders if he’ll ever have the opportunity to return.
‘Hey Taylor,’ he says. ‘You should set your novelhere.’
At the ferry terminal, the CalMac is ready for boarding. This ship is called MV Hebrides, or Innse Gall in Gàidhlig. In anarchipelago stretching 130 miles, there are over one hundred islands and skerries forming the Outer Hebrides, fifteen of which are inhabited. From a map, from the air, they may appear to be strung out across the Atlantic like wisps of lace but they are strong and they are hardy and they act as a windbreak against weather barrelling in from three thousand miles of ocean. The Minch, the sea which separates the outer from the inner Hebrides, is churning today.
