Chapter 6 #2
Taylor took a beat. ‘I don’t suppose you’d know where I could find some tweedy weaver person who might know something about anything? As you’ve probably guessed I know jack.’
‘Can your mother not tell you more? Oi! Eyes up!’
With a start, Taylor realised he had been staring at her name badge which was pinned over her left breast. He pointed at it, which didn’t help his case.
‘Shona,’ he said.
She placed her hand over the badge protectively. ‘Your mother?’ she prompted.
Taylor shrugged. ‘She left here when she was sixteen.’
Shona regarded him intently, during which time he felt as if he was being assessed, as if he may or may not be granted entry into some secret weavers’ coven.
‘You’ll be wanting to visit Becca Hutton in Northton,’ she said brightly.
‘I know where Northton is – and that is has a name that looks and sounds nothing like Northton.’
This made Shona laugh. ‘Wait until you visit Amhuinnsuidhe,’ she said.
She handed him back the tweeds. ‘Becca’s a weaver and if she can’t help she’s sure to know someone who can.
I’ll give her a call, if you like. She’ll have a cup of tea and a story or two for you, for sure.
’ She regarded him quizzically. ‘You do know there’s this thing called The Internet?
You could’ve hit Google and saved yourself a very long journey? ’
Taylor shrugged. ‘I know.’
‘Instead you’ve brought them back.’
‘I have.’
She thought about this. It seemed to make sense.
‘Here,’ she said. ‘You left this at the till.’ It was an energy gel in blackcurrant flavour, his favourite.
‘I’m running a marathon here,’ he said, taking it gratefully.
‘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 staying on England. In Harris.’
‘Sorry Ma’am. So, in Harris, we’re over in Luskentyre?
In a 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.
‘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 several purtenances, 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 somehow connected now, not such a foreigner.
He drove back to Luskentyre, more confident 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.