Chapter 5
For Drew, running was simply something he could do well.
It required little thought and even less effort.
His style was natural and graceful, fleet-foot, his pace almost musical.
What JB lacked in natural ability he made up for in his drive and commitment and by being a great actor who could hide pain behind his trademark swagger, mask struggle with banter and use laughter and a constant litany of expletives to keep himself going.
JB also had a taskmaster for a father which had created an enduring terror of failure.
Taylor was pretty good at all sports but happy enough to excel at none.
Camaraderie fuelled him and he loved running with JB and Drew best of all.
Drew, whose energy and aptitude appeared to be transferable; JB, whose constant stream of bullshit and bluster drowned out objection from limbs and lungs.
And so here they were with hangovers of varying intensity, loping their way along the long and undulant twist of the Luskentyre road, heading for Tarbert and the hire car they’d overlooked yesterday.
It was ten miles, mostly rolling with a long descent into town.
On paper, it was a sensible final leg-turner before the marathon.
In reality, it was a terrible idea really, coming hot on the hungover heels of the excesses of the night before.
However, the landscape in which they found themselves gradually soaked up their self-pity while the soft air of coming spring refreshed sore heads.
Taylor took position at the back. Ahead of him, JB laboured and yelled at himself to come on you ass-wipe, while Drew just laughed, running as if he’d had ten hours of restful sleep and zero alcohol.
Taylor listened to them trading choice insults and there were some good ones today: cock-dicker, ass-eating-shithead – and fuck you and the boat you sailed in on, whatever that meant.
Invective, it seemed, gave a far better boost than any energy drink.
Then, at some magical point, they all settled into a steady pace; Drew singing Springsteen, JB silent at last as he focused on staying in the zone, Taylor feeling his legs truly carrying him.
And on they ran; on and on, passing occasional sheep, the postman in his van, a gnarly old farmer, two tourists in foldable chairs next to an RV.
The vast bay which had been filled with all that blonde sand this morning was now drinking in the tide.
Taylor recalled his mother saying that she’d felt her childhood homeland was floating, floating all the time.
He tuned in to being on an island flung out in the ocean but it all felt rock steady to him; anchored.
Sometimes he could be in the most familiar of places and wonder quite where he was. But not today.
I am here. I am here.
Iain MacAllister had set off for Stornoway from his home in Nisabost for a meeting and to pick up various things from Tesco for his wife.
It was a drive he enjoyed: up and over the Clisham, a mountain whose mood could change in a moment, and then that breathtaking swoop around Loch Seaforth while the North Harris hills sternly demarcated Lewis from Harris and kept the two islands distinct.
He was just opening a chocolate wrapper with his teeth, his thermos of tea between his legs, when suddenly he saw them.
Strung across the road in a line they were, arm in arm in arm, moving very slowly.
Iain swerved and bipped his horn. Oh Dhia – good Lord!
Of all the numpties! Only then did he see that the middle lad, flanked by the other two, was all but hopping.
So he pulled in a little further on and left the car to see what all this was about.
The car was crammed. His wife and daughter could fill it well with their chatter when they were out as a family but this was different.
These three lads dominated every pocket of space, from the bulk of them and the sweat steaming off them to the boom of their accents and the bit of bother they’d found themselves in.
Two were squished in the back while the injured one was in the front appearing a wee bit grey around the gills, seat shunted right back for those long legs.
Iain rolled down his window as tactfully as he could, introduced himself and asked their names, wondering how to remember them.
Somebody somebody somebody the Fourth. JB for short, thank goodness.
‘Trip over a sheep did you?’ Iain asked.
‘No Sir,’ JB said. ‘We thought we had a shortcut licked until I summersaulted over some random rock.’
‘Oh aye, JB, they’re easy enough to miss,’ Iain said dryly, nodding at the landscape they were driving through, bombarded as it was by rocks of all sizes humping and bumping through the vegetation as far as the eye could see.
‘I’d advise you to wear your specs when you’re having a wee jog around these parts. ’
The boys in the back stifled a laugh, and JB grinned magnanimously, teeth clenched in pain.
‘You boys on a rock-kicking holiday?’
‘We’re running a marathon here – this Friday.’
And before Iain could tell them that there wasn’t a marathon, he was hearing all about Paris and Harris and how fast they could run and that this marathon would be their fourth this year, with six more to go. They’d done Home to Rome, now they were doing Harris from Paris.
‘Laddie,’ Iain said, ‘the only thing you’ll be running in the next few days is a hot bath.’
‘Where we’re staying there isn’t a bath to run, only a shower.’
‘I hate to break it to you, but there is no marathon here on Friday,’ Iain said.
‘Yes there is,’ said the one called Drew who was gazing out of the window thinking that this landscape belonged to a different planet.
‘It’s our own marathon,’ said the tailor or the sailor.
‘Taylor’s from these parts,’ JB said, mid-wince.
‘You’re a Hearach?’ Iain remarked, glancing in the rear view mirror.
‘Sir?’ said Taylor.
‘A Hearach,’ Iain repeated. ‘One who is from Harris.’
‘No Sir, I’m from Colorado Springs. It’s just my mother was born here, is all. She left years ago.’
And Iain thought about this. He thought but you’re here – marathon or not – here you are and that’s a long way to come for a wee run.
They had arrived in Tarbert and Iain pulled in to the health hub. In a tumble and limp, the lads extricated themselves from the car. They thanked him profusely and, with a bip of his horn, off he drove thinking how his car now felt as big as a bus, to him. Big as a bus.
Leaving JB, Drew and Taylor walked to the car hire, passing the hotel and groaning at all the things they probably said and sang and did in there but had no recollection of.
‘Did some guy drive us home?’ Drew wondered.
‘He said his name was Murder,’ Taylor said.
‘No one’s taking the marathon seriously.’
‘I wouldn’t take us seriously, if I’d met us last night.’
‘True that!’ said Drew. ‘What did that Iain dude call you? Sounded like he was clearing his throat.’
‘Hearach,’ Taylor tried the word tentatively.
He thought of his mother, she’d rarely invited him into her past but here he was now, trespassing all over it.
Had she been on this very street at some point, looking at the same grinning harbour and the sea rolling beyond?
The stores would have changed, obviously, but not that hill, nor that one either.
‘You good, bud?’ Drew sensed him go quiet. He knew how Taylor could disappear into himself. ‘Taylor – you okay?’
‘Yeah,’ Taylor shrugged. ‘Don’t you think it’s weird our parents did—I don’t know—stuff, that they were young?’
Drew thought about that. ‘I guess.’ He should message his mom, send her some photos of the last few days.
He imagined her showing them to her friends at the restaurant, to DeeDee and Mary and Lou – she’d scroll about on her phone in that annoying way, muttering to herself, but DeeDee, Mary and Lou wouldn’t get impatient with her like he did.
It made him miss her just then. It had always been just the two of them and now he was out in the world and she was still in her tiny life in Beaverton.
‘Hey Taylor – remind me to message my mom, hey?’
They walked by terraced cottages opening right onto the street and small shops, a couple open, some closed for the season, one derelict and for sale. Neither of them remembered seeing any of it yesterday, the bee-line for the bar had tunnelled their vision.
‘We need to get food,’ Drew said. ‘Shall we get food now then pick up the car?’
But Taylor was crossing the road, heading away from the stores.
‘Bit soon for souvenirs,’ Drew laughed as he caught up with Taylor who was entering the Harris Tweed shop.
Hats and caps and neckties and scarves. Spectacle cases, pencil cases, washbags, handbags.
Hip flasks, hunting flasks, dog collars and leashes.
Hair scrunchies, place mats, pot stands and keyrings.
Teddy bears, pin cushions, bedspreads and slippers.
Suits, skirts, waistcoats and gilets. Overcoats and dog coats and everywhere knitwear.
So many patterns in so many colours: check, plain, tartan, herringbone, houndstooth, windowpane, barleycorn.
Straight away, Drew got busy with the men’s jackets and trying on caps at this angle and that, saying yo Taylor!
what do you think? But Taylor was transfixed by the bolts of the cloth; giant rolls in double width and single; superfine, mediumweight, standard.
The tickle and the soft. All the colours, every shade and tone and texture of this land, this sea and this sky, the lochans and lochs, the rock and the peat and the weather through each season.
Every inch of island life captured in its cloth.
Taylor thought of his grandfather’s tweeds, wondered whether they’d been cut from bolts like these, fifty meters long.
He could see similar designs and colours right here.
None, however, were the same. He knew them off by heart, the four pieces currently tucked in a pocket of his backpack at Flora’s House.
‘What do you think?’ Drew was saying, admiring the cut of a waistcoat which fitted him perfectly. ‘Hey, how much is one-thirty-five in bucks?’
‘Cool,’ Taylor said without really listening, heading away from Drew to the till.
‘Ma’am - how do I find out about a particular tweed?
’ Taylor asked. ‘Like—someone’s tweed? I mean—is tweed like handwriting?
Can it be read?’ He knew he was rambling but she was regarding him patiently.
‘It’s just I actually have some tweed, it’s pretty old, and I’m wondering if there’s someone who might recognise it? Or, like, the person who made it?’
Marion Stewart took a long quizzical look at him and came out from behind the counter to regard Drew still at the back of the shop.
‘Are you the lads running the marathon?!’
Taylor blinked. Yes he was in a tracksuit splattered with the ill-fated shortcut, but he didn’t think she’d been in the bar last night; she was cosy looking, like a grandma, like someone who spent evenings happily at home with a mug of tea and the TV. ‘You know about our marathon?’
‘Oh aye,’ she continued, deadpan. ‘The whole island’s talking of your marathon. We’ll have the finish line up for you in no time. A podium too, if you like.’
Taylor glanced around for Drew but he was still at the back, waistcoat hunting. ‘I—er. I mean, sure, we’re running the marathon – a marathon, our marathon, but—’
‘My sister is Morag,’ she explained warmly.
Morag? Did he recall a Morag? Oh Christ, had JB made out with a Morag?
‘She was managing the bar yesterday?’ Marion said. ‘So aye, we know all about your wee marathon.’
‘Hi,’ said Drew, suddenly at the till, waistcoat off but clutched against his heart. ‘Do you know how much this might be in US dollars?’
‘Around 185,’ she said without pause, noting Drew’s face fall. ‘Give or take, according to the exchange rate,’ she added. ‘Will I hold it for you? You could do your run in aid of the Waistcoat Fund.’
‘You know about our marathon?’
She turned back to the blue-eyed boy with the man’s body. ‘Now what was it that you wanted to know about the tweed?’
And finally Taylor’s words tumbled and flowed like the falls along the Maraig river.