Page 73 of Scotlander

‘Nerves.’

She bit down on her full bottom lip and shook her head. She didn’t believe him. He almost laughed at the role reversal. She’d been his maypole throughout the morning’s ‘amends trip’ as he’d named it. She’d been there for him, a kind, generous cheerleader as he’d rehabilitated his image to the community.

It was his turn to do the same for her.

He held out his hands and looked around. ‘I feel like I’m in the show.’

‘Really? How can you? I mean . . . No offence, but we’re not the superfans.’ She pointed out to the courtyard where the other guests were gathering. ‘I really want them to love this and Orla’s set such a high standard.’

‘Orla thinks it’s genius.’

His stepsister had actually cried when he and Willa told her about the Outlander-centric activities they’d either planned or had agreed to take over when Orla admitted to having been over-ambitious with her promises in the brochure.

Willa gave the thick piece of cloth they’d picked up in town a swipe with her hand, fretting at its edges as she asked, ‘Orla knows we’re using orange soda instead of pee for the tweed-dyeing, right?’

‘Aye. And she’s given me buckets of fresh water so everyone can wash their hands and all. It’ll be fine, Willa.’

‘But what if it isn’t? What if they’re all, “That tweed doesn’t exist in Outlander. That tweed’s from the future. You’re a sham!”’ She looked up at him, little creases of strain fanning out from her dark eyes. Her cheeks were flushed with activity and nerves, tendrils of hair escaping her wayward, messy bun. She looked beautiful. A stress bucket, but beautiful.

He shook away the thought and put on his ‘Jamie’ accent. ‘Dinnae worry, Sassenach.’

‘Oh my god! If you’re trying to prove to me you’re the best source of feedback on whether or not I got this right, you have just fallen at the first hurdle.’

He tried again. ‘Dinnae worry, lass.’ He took her by the shoulders and turned her round as one of the women from the Balcraigie Women’s Institute illuminated a string of artificial candles that even he wouldn’t have known were fakes.

‘Oh.’ She pressed her hands to her collarbones and did a little squeee! ‘It looks amazing.’

It did as well. Under the extended eaves of the low-ceilinged potting shed, the setting was a near exact replica of the show’s. Four women of various ages were arranging the huge skein of tweed she and Finn had bargained out of the nearby woollen mill’s seconds bin. At one end sat a big wooden bucket filled with warm, yellow liquid. He’d been assured by the WI grannies that a bit of Irn-Bru wouldn’t hurt the cloth at all.

When they called the group in from the stables yard, everyone’s eyes lit up in recognition of the scene before them. The women at the table, all dressed in yesteryear frocks, began pouring out liquid on to the table as the oldest of them, a beautiful dried-apple-faced woman, began singing in a voice as pure as a young girl’s.

Willa was, of course, first in, plunging her hands into the soppy fabric and sloshing it about with verve. Jules, ChiChi, Jennifer, Fenella and Rosa were right behind her. The fairy lights played off Willa’s hair like starlight and even though she didn’t have the remotest clue what the women were singing, she joined in on choruses, eyes sparkling with delight as the local women beamed in pleasure at her enthusiasm.

To everyone’s surprise, Jennifer knew most of the songs. (‘YouTube,’ she explained.) Finn faded into the background as they rolled up their sleeves, paying no mind to the fizzy orange liquid splashing on their arms and faces. Their ‘husbands’, as expected, begged off the wool-dyeing, saying they were going to take advantage of the early night to head down to the pub. Jeff and Dougie joined them, while Lachlan and Gabe ‘nipped off for a wee nocturnal road trip’. Finn could’ve gone to the pub too. The lads were always trying to get him down there when they caught wind he was at Balcraigie. Usually he said no, he was knackered. But it was really the wagging tongues that got to him. Gossip about why he was there, if this was the time he was finally going to claim ownership of Balcraigie or, as others speculated, sell it. But this time he said no because he was one hundred per cent enjoying being exactly where he was.

Listening to the women, watching them turn hard, physical work into something beautiful, touched something dormant in him. A vital spark. He closed his eyes and let the sounds take over until he finally pinned down the elusive sensation he’d been feeling. He felt Scottish. Organically so. It wasn’t about politics or the kilt grazing his knees or the scent of the nation’s popular soft drink. It was the blood running through his veins. The songs in the air. The earth beneath his feet. The ground he’d learnt to crawl, then walk, upon.

Though he understood only a fraction of the Gaelic songs the women pulled out of their memories one after the other like endless spools of thread, he felt the history in them. The longing. The relationship to the land that provided them with sustenance and shelter.

He thought of his mum and the position she must have been in when his father died. A heartbroken widow with a bewildered, angry son living in a caravan, whose dreams of crafting the ‘family seat’ from the ruins of another had been destroyed. He’d been furious with her for not following through on his father’s plans. They had some money, she’d said, but not enough. Without his dad there, and his income, restoring the castle would be impossible. Then she’d married Duncan who’d taken the money earmarked for the castle and built the modern, pebble-dashed atrocity that, admittedly, had kept them all much warmer and drier than the caravan ever had, and life had moved on. Or, more accurately, changed course. Though they never spoke of it, his mum, like himself, had never set foot in the castle again. Not with Orla. Not with Duncan. No one.

He’d not been there once until a few mornings back when he’d chased Willa in after she’d crashed into his life like Dorothy in Oz.

He’d barely thought twice about it, following her in. And once they’d left, he hadn’t given it a second thought. But now, the moment struck him as significant. He’d done exactly what his father had done when he’d bought his new bride a castle without a roof. He’d followed his gut. Or, to shift the instinctive urge to another organ, his heart.

He allowed himself to be absorbed in the moment. Swept away by the songs of the past swirling round him. The atmosphere was thick with history and emotion, making it impossible not to think long and hard about how to move forward. His gut – his heart – everything was telling him not to let the farm go. Was finding a way to do up Balcraigie a fool’s errand? A desperate attempt at exorcising old ghosts? Or would it be honouring his father’s love for his mother without undermining the graft Duncan, Orla and Dougie had poured into the place in his stead?

It felt Shakespearean.

A complex mix of family, history, death and passion so knotted up in itself it was impossible to discern one end of the tale from the other. He looked down at his kilt pin. Though the kilt itself was modern, the pin was one of the only Jamieson heirlooms he possessed. Shaped like a tiny sword, it had been fashioned to look like a Celtic knot – a loosely woven tie that had no start or finish. It represented eternity. Never-ending loyalty, faith, friendship . . . love.

He traced his finger along the pin, then looked up, his eyes catching with Willa’s.

He mouthed, ‘You having fun?’

Her soft smile stretched into a happy grin. ‘The best,’ she mouthed back, before, once again, raising her voice to join the others in a reprise of an ancient-sounding choral refrain: hì rì rì hù lò, mo nigh’n donn hò gù.

As he listened to the women sing, he let his eyes drift from them to the heather thatch on the cutting-shed roof and beyond to where he could just make out the crenellated outline of the castle walls standing proud of the farm buildings. It was an amazing structure. It had once housed great rooms for both the laird and his lady. A dining hall with enormous fireplaces at either end. Private chambers for the castle’s caretaker, and, of course, extended family and staff. Secret passageways. An underground passage from the cellars to the loch. At least two very inventive wee wee shoppes.