‘There isn’t a marathon here,’ she said, as if breaking it to him that the tooth fairy doesn’t exist.
‘Oh yes there is,’ Taylor told her. ‘It’s on Friday.’
Taylor heard Becca before he’d stepped foot inside her loom shed. He’d passed by already, on the lookout for what he assumed would be either an artsy looking studio or some kind of small, industrial building. And then he heard laughter peeling up and away from a glorified garden shed, like a flock of birds in full song, followed by lively chatter. The voice stopped and rhythmic whirs and clacketing took its place. Taylor knocked and waited.
‘Enter!’
He was expecting an ancient lady at a spinning wheel straight out of an old Disney film. In fact, he looked around the shed for this person.
‘Shocked! Disappointed!’ the woman’s laughter filled the room. She was sitting behind the loom, a large contraption, the likes of which he had not imagined. It had legs and all these arms, sprockets and cogs and wheels and levers, chains, teeth and an array of gubbins all in motion, powered entirely by a treadle. Strand after strand after strand of long lengths of yarn were wound over rollers like a screen of pouring rain, and these were being slowly ingested by the loom. So many components, the smell of lubrication, cloth fluff on all surfaces. It was a glorious cacophony; the sound of something being made. There was alchemy at play, the plain and the basic becoming something so intricate, rich and complete before his eyes.
‘Look – no hands!’ Becca laughed, her arms crossed, while her feet worked the treadle. Taylor happily relinquished all previous thoughts of some shawl-wearing granny for this far younger hoodie-wearing, peroxide-blonde powerhouse with an infectious laugh.
For a while, she wove and he watched; the tweed growing before his eyes. She went through the process and the parts of the loom. It was like a poem. Shaft and crank, tappets and pennies. Lams and cams, levers, rollers, reeds and race-board.Hooks and springs, rods and pattern cards. Picking arms and shuttles, pawl and pirn.
‘Magic,’ he said.
‘Nah – just pedal power.’
Whatever it was, it was mesmerising.
‘So, Shona sent me.’
‘Aye, she said the Marathon Man was on his way.’ She paused her work. Two cats Taylor had not previously noticed, awoke and stretched. ‘Tea?’
‘Sure!’
She stepped away from the loom and set the kettle to boil.
‘This loom—’ Taylor was fascinated by it. He hovered there, not wanting to get too close. It was like a mythical creature at rest.
‘It’s a Hattersley Domestic Mark 2,’ Becca rattled off in a rhythm not unlike the loom itself.
‘I wonder if this was the type my family had?’
‘Most likely,’ she said. She paused. ‘I believe you’ve brought an heirloom – pardon the pun?’
She studied the cloths intently, pulled at them gently and considered how they moved, sniffed at them. Turning to Taylor, she grinned her grin, held them to her heart. ‘Treasure these,’ she said. ‘You can feel the hand that made them.’
‘Shona said she thought perhaps the wool was hand-dyed.’
‘Maybe so. This blue here – this’ll be ribwort. And that cinnamony shade – that’s from peat soot. Even these days, the wool is dyed before it’s spun – that’s how we can have a multitude of colours blended into the yarn.’
‘Can you tell anything from mine?’ He could stay for hours in this warm shed, drinking good tea, a cat curled on his lap.
She continued to inspect them. ‘Where are you staying?’
‘On Harris?’
‘In!In!You wouldn’t say you’re stayingonEngland.InHarris.’
‘Sorry Ma’am. So,inHarris, we’re overinLuskentyre?Ina cottage called Flora’s House. There’s me and my buddies Drew and JB. Only JB’s ankle is screwed so he’s in one hell of a mood. I think he’ll head to Edinburgh early, if you ask me. That’s our next stop. We met some girls on a train coming up from London.’
‘That’s a lot of information,’ Becca declared. ‘You could’ve just said Luskentyre.’
‘It’s been a long day,’ Taylor said.
It was getting dark outside and he had a trunk full of shopping to deliver to a cottage with an empty fridge, bare cupboards and his two friends, one of whom was injured. Meanwhile, Becca was still inspecting his tweeds.
