‘I can’t tell you much more – but I know a man who can.’
She stretched out her legs and rotated her feet this way and that. She was wearing a pair of Nike trainers which were embellished with panels of tweed. ‘As your luck would have it, I’m in Luskentyre tomorrow visiting Donald John – I’m sure you’ve heard of the world famous weaver Mr Mackay?’ She grinned at the sight of Taylor wracking his brain. ‘Aye, so he rescued your Nike with our tweed – and don’t let people say it’s the other way around. He was asked to provide the tweed for a new sports shoe – and the order came in for 10,000 meters! Every weaver in the Outer Hebrides worked day and night on that one.’ With care, she placed Taylor’s tweeds on top of each other. ‘So may I show these to Donald John?’
Taylor shrugged. ‘Sure thing. Hey, is it true it can only be called Harris tweed if it’s?—’
‘—handwoven by the islanders at their homes in the Outer Hebrides, finished in the islands of Harris, Lewis, North Uist, Benbecula, South Uist and Barra and their severalpurtenances, and made from pure virgin wool dyed and spun in the Outer Hebrides.’ She paused. ‘That, Marathon Man, is the official Act of Parliament. Harris Tweed has its own legislation.’
‘I had no idea.’
‘Not many folk do. See? Every piece carries the defining Orb symbol.’
‘My tweed doesn’t have that Orb stamp.’
‘The Act came to be in 1993. These pieces are far older but they’re off-cuts, so you never know, they may have had a label back in the day.’
Taylor regarded his tweeds on Becca’s table, looked around her loom shed and all the paraphernalia connected with their creation. He was in the right place.
‘Well, thank you, it’s been a pleasure to meet you. And the cats. Great tea too, by the way. I think I broke the kettle at Flora’s House. I put instant coffee granules straight into it, added water, boiled it up.’
‘Were you drunk?’
‘Hungover.’ He visibly cringed at himself.
Becca looked him up and down with a raised eyebrow and, finally, a grin. ‘Why am I not surprised? And by the way Taylor – a word of advice? Don’t borrow the city.’
‘Huh?’
‘It’s not Edin-boro,’ she said. ‘Nor is it Lever-boro. B’ruh!B’ruh!Got it?’
He saluted her. She rather liked that. And, as he walked away, the whir and clicket-clacketting of Becca’s Hattersley filtered through the wooden walls of her loom shed. It was dusk, it was cold now. He’d left a little of why he was here in the safe hands of an islander who knew a man who might know. He was happy to have done so, he realised he felt somehowconnectednow, not such a foreigner. He drove back to Luskentyre, moreconfident on the road. He had the windows down, he wanted to listen to the sea.
All the way over that body of water, three thousand miles of it, North America lay. Had his mother sailed her way from here to there, or flown? He’d never thought to ask. All he’d ever known was that she’d packed up her life at sixteen years of age and left.
Chapter 7
Tuesday
The three of them; in their underwear, long lithe legs stretched this way and that, two and a half pairs of run-ready limbs in a lattice across the lounge area of Flora’s House the next day. Drew, sitting on the floor with his back to the wall, gazing at nothing. He often looked gormless in such moments; he was anything but. It was his default; staring at walls, out of windows, at bits of fluff, looking at the things no one else could see. Initially, it frustrated the heck out of his classmates and professors alike until people deduced it was simply the way Drew’s brain worked and what a brain. Top of his classes in everything yet every top mark appearing to surprise him. Drew, the dorky daydream guy. Here he was now, looking like he possessed just the two brain cells, both hard at work playing an appalling game of ping pong and preoccupying him entirely. Taylor looked up from his sprawl on the sofa where he had one long leg slung along the back of it whist the other lolled over the seat cushions. He noticed how Drew’s fingers, mouth, leg, would twitch occasionally, as if some synapse was sending a brainiaccharge through his body. Taylor made much of aiming carefully before launching a crust of toast at him.
‘Did you just throw this at me?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Cool!’ And Drew munched on it quite happily.
Drew was naturally slim and always a little pale; he never went to the gym, overslept most days, hadn’t really learned to shave properly, didn’t bother to watch what he ate, got drunk a little too often, smoked anyone’s weed that was going – and yet those legs and lungs which he took for granted could carry him 26.2 miles with ease, with balletic style, with minimal preparation; poetry in motion. Drew always smiled when he ran, he possessed an inward, soul-deep connection with the pace and it brought him profound joy. Taylor loved him dearly. Enough to chuck him his last scrap of cold toast from breakfast.
JB wrenched his t-shirt off. He was seated in the armchair, now just in his boxers and nothing else, his bad leg up high, coddled by a nest of cushions plus a pillow from upstairs. There was a pack of frozen peas in a tea towel across his ankle, while his good foot performed an irritated fast jig at the floor. ‘Can we turn that thing down? Does it go any lower?’
They stared at the peats burning in the grate. Taylor had built a hearty fire first thing when, despite the sunshine outside, the cottage had felt cold. For a small fireplace it was now belting out heat. They threw ideas into the room. Water. Sand. Open the windows. Cold peat. Wet blanket. Drew leant right over and looked up the chimney, his face roasting while he told the others it would just have to burn itself down, like a fever, like a bad mood.
It was nearing midday now and Taylor was desperate for fresh air, a brisk walk; to move, to dosomething. That was his family’s way; up with the lark and out there soon after for a hike, a bike ride, a run, the walk to school, to the stores, to the river fora swim, to Breckenridge to ski. Greet the day and stay fresh and energised until nightfall. Being active was a simple daily habit, it was second nature. Still being indoors five hours after waking, currently being cooked alive by clods of burning earth, was not natural to Taylor, it was stifling. But they couldn’t leave JB. That just wasn’t fair, that’s not what bros do, not even when one of them was in a foul mood with the other two becoming his verbal punch bag.
‘What the hell is that tee-shirt anyway?’ JB grumbled at Taylor who’d carefully stepped over his elevated leg in the most direct if challenging route to open a closed window.
Taylor looked down at his chest. The logo was of a cartoon eagle and bear in a canoe and the wordsGreetings from Arladuke Fallsin a large, happy font. He shrugged. ‘My Dad gave it to me.’
‘YourDad?You’re wearing some random piece of crap your Dad gave you?’
