by Kiley Dunbar
‘When growing is done with a bit o’ care, you’ll feel a connection to the landscape around you. Dinnae laugh when I tell you, but I cannae help feeling that when we break with the old traditions we lose our instinctive connection to nature, and I’d like to fix that a bit.’
‘I’m not laughing. That sounds perfect to me.’
They made their way through the willow coppice to the back door of the But and Ben. Atholl reached for the key hidden under a white seashell on the windowsill.
In long, propped up boxes along the cottage wall stood tall bundles of straight willow rods which Beatrice couldn’t help running her fingers over as Atholl tried the key and let the door swing open. The bundles were neatly sorted by variety, length and thickness, and each tied with a willow whip in a twisted knot around their middle. The stems reflected the sunlight in hues from copper to golden green.
‘I cut those in January, they’ve been drying for baskets all this time. I have more willow than I can keep up with. That’s what gave me the idea to bring in makers, like yourself. I’ve been supplying paying visitors to the tartan mill, the silversmith, the glassworks and the art gallery for weeks now. It’s certainly increased our custom at the inn all of a sudden, and the crafters are enjoying learning something new but it seemed right to start having folk up here too, to learn how to work the willow. You, uh, were my first booking.’
‘Oh! And I said I didn’t want to take the lessons after all. You must have been so disappointed.’ Beatrice smiled awkwardly and was relieved to hear Atholl’s wry laugh. She looked around at the neat coppices behind the cottage. ‘I’m sorry about that. I’m not much of a crafter, remember.’
‘No. I suspect you’re more of an escapee.’ Atholl threw a quick glance to check she wasn’t offended by his arrow-like accuracy. He was right; she’d washed ashore here with no plan other than getting away from home, and from herself. Unwilling to acknowledge the truth of Atholl’s observation she looked around, taking in the blooming roses, tall thistles and the long metal tank and smaller stone trough that ran along the back wall of the cottage beneath its low windows. Both troughs were full to the brim with water.
‘Don’t tell me the cows come round here too?’ Beatrice said, looking around nervously for any sign of marauding cattle.
‘Uh? Oh, no.’ Atholl laughed. ‘No, those are for soaking the willows. If you want to make baskets with your store of cut whips you need to soak it until it’s mellow and soft again like freshly cut willow. Here, sit by the door in the shade.’ Atholl spread a blanket over a rustic wooden chair by a rambling rose that had taken over the wall and much of the cottage’s low roof. ‘I’ll away in and get the tools if you’ll unpack the picnic?’
Heading inside the cottage, he left Beatrice to rummage in the basket and draw out a tall jar of honey with suspended golden blobs inside. Beatrice peered at them and grimaced. More weird Highland food. What could it be this time? She was relieved to find a flask of strong milky coffee, and ham and pickle sandwiches on fresh buttered doorstop bread.
Nothing about the meal was elegant or dainty, in fact it was like Atholl himself: rugged, hearty and wholesome. He reappeared just as this thought was running through Beatrice’s mind.
Atholl placed the wooden toolbox upon the bench and unpacked the strange-looking items; pins, pliers, secateurs, a medieval-looking wheel for punching holes in leather and a series of long metal spikes the use of which Beatrice couldn’t fathom.
‘Are we going to be performing surgery? On an elephant?’
‘You’ll see. It’s all fairly straightforward once you get the hang of it.’
‘And these?’ she said, indicating the jar of honey.
‘Hah! Those are honey buns; heather honey buns, to be precise. My mother’s recipe. Those things inside are cakes. You make them fresh then preserve them in honey, perfect with cream on a sunny day like today.’
Rugged, hearty, wholesome and sweet, Beatrice thought, though if it showed on her face Atholl seemed unaware. He was busying himself by pulling up a low stool to sit on, a hewn section of a tree’s trunk that someone – Beatrice guessed it was Atholl – had varnished so it gleamed in the sun.
‘Mother’s heather honey buns have become one of Gene’s specialities. Well they were. I had to beg him to make them for us this morning.’ Atholl cocked an eyebrow and looked up at her through the curls falling over his forehead. ‘Do you approve?’
Beatrice let out a laugh at the boldness of his question and the mischievous smile on his face as he risked asking it.
She watched him work, tipping her head a little to one side. He had brought a tall bundle of soft willows from the cottage and laid them over his thighs, and was pulling at the stripped willow strap that bound them together.
‘Right, can you pour out the coffee, and we’ll get started? We can eat as we weave. I always work better with food to hand.’
Beatrice found the two mugs and they both watched the steam from the flask as it moved on the warm air. Beatrice inhaled the rich coffee aroma appreciatively.
‘So, what would you like to make?’ Atholl asked.
‘What’s easy?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Oh, OK, what’s easiest? Give me the dummies’ guide to willow-weaving.’
‘How about a simple decorative wreath?’
Perhaps Atholl Fergusson didn’t notice the fraction of a second where Beatrice processed the association between wreaths and mourning. It had passed with the tiniest pinch at the sides of her eyes and the widening of her pupils. Just another of the many million instances where her everyday life was shot through with sad little reminders of her losses, each one passing unvoiced. And yet he was watching her with an attentiveness she wasn’t used to and it made her lower her eyes to his hands as she tried to concentrate on the lesson.
‘Go on then,’ he urged. ‘Take your first willow.’
Beatrice surveyed the bundle he held out to her, at a loss which to choose. Was any one better than the other? Her inexperienced eye couldn’t tell.
‘Don’t be shy. You must choose with decision. Grasp the one that’s right. And once you’ve chosen, stick to your choice. If you want to build a fluent, strong piece you need to be bold.’ Atholl was offering a smile in the calm, steady way Beatrice was coming to recognise as peculiarly his own – at least she had never seen another like it.
‘Fluent?’
‘Aye. You want to make a piece that talks to you, and you talk with it. Working together with the willow to make something… intentional.’
Beatrice didn’t feel intentional when she grabbed at the first willow that seemed to stand out to her. ‘Will this do?’
He placed the bundle by his feet. ‘You tell me.’
‘Well that’s an infuriating answer.’
Atholl laughed again but soon let his attention settle on the single willow he had in his hand. ‘Each willow has a natural curvature of its own. See?’ He held the branch between pinched fingertip and thumb extended at his arm’s length in the air, letting its soft green body bend gently as he ran a fingertip along its middle down to where it touched the ground. ‘This inner arc is called its belly, and this…’ He switched his stroke to the outer curve, running the back of his hand along it in a smooth sweep. ‘This curve is called its back.’
Tracing the slow stroke of his rough-skinned hand somehow triggered a message from Beatrice’s eyes to her own belly, and a burst of something – adrenaline or endorphins – surged through her bloodstream. She recognised the heady, desirous feeling from a time long ago, pre-pregnancy, pre-Richard even, and found she was grasping her willow, pressing her nails into her palms to chase the feeling away.
Far away, it seemed, Atholl was still softly talking and his hands were working, bending the willow before seizing more and setting to work on intertwining them with the first as the wreath took shape. Beatrice found her own hands responding as she mirrored his movements and worked the willow, her mind flitting to the wonderful
unicorn and lion sculptures she had seen the day before above the bar.
‘What do you do with your finished pieces? Is there demand for willow sculptures?’
‘It’s never occurred to me to sell them. I mean, a few visitors have asked for prices and I have done one or two commissions for private gardens in recent years but your average shopper down South will buy things like this from fancy online shops with their warehouses in China, not from a one-man maker in the Highlands. It’s all upside-down to my mind.’ Atholl’s eyes remained fixed on his work.
‘Do you have an online store?’
‘Well, no. I’ve wanted to set one up for a while but helping Gene with the inn takes all my time. What I’d really like is a real shop here by my wee bit o’ land and workshop, and, uh…’ His eyes were alive in the afternoon sun as he stopped to check his enthusiasm before continuing more slowly. ‘I’d like to run a true school here to teach other folk the craft, and no’ just one-to-ones either, but whole classes full.’
‘That sounds easy enough. You’ve got the willows growing, you’ve got the classroom, all it needs is a bit of renovation and you could have a proper shop, and a little kitchen too for refreshments, and you could update the inn’s website to include a storefront for your willow products.’ Beatrice swallowed, considering her next words, before going on. ‘You know, I could help you apply for funding for some Crafts Council or Heritage Fund money to get it off the ground, and it would be easy to connect you up to guilds across the country, maybe form some partnerships, and we could link it all up to the inn’s website. You said yourself the crafting holidays have taken off, so you could reach people all over the world, and I bet you could get featured in some lifestyle mags and on travel blogs. The Boden catalogue sometimes features real artisan blokes as models these days – total hunks they are – and it does little stories about their craft products; you could be in one of them easily, and it wouldn’t be long before you could entice some reviewers here, and… what?’ She paused. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’
Atholl was grinning. ‘Enjoying yourself?’
‘What? It’s what I do. Well, it’s what I did. I used to run an arts network.’ A feeling she hadn’t had for a long time was kicking in, a kind of intellectual muscle memory made up of her competence, expertise and enthusiasm. ‘I was good at it,’ she said with a decisive nod, but letting her eyes drop to her wreath.
‘I can tell.’
She heard his quick intake of breath that told her he was about to ask questions and she felt her shoulders stiffen. Maybe he noticed, because instead of probing he exhaled and reached for the sandwiches. ‘Hungry?’
They ate in silence, working at their wreaths in between delicious savoury bites, accompanied by the shushing sounds of the waves on the coral beach behind the cottage. A heron watched them unseen from one of the ancient Scots pines at the far end of the coppice marking the boundary between the land that enclosed the But and Ben and the rolling fields beyond that stretched inland all the way to the foothills in an uninterrupted patchwork of green and yellow.
As the sun reached its summit in the cloudless blue sky, Beatrice felt her focus return. Concentration and diversion settled upon her, things she missed most from her old life. Her hands seemed to find the rhythm of the task.
The willow in her grasp glowed like copper in the intense summer light. She felt, rather than thought, how she and the man beside her were recreating a scene that could have played out here by the door of the But and Ben at any time in the last three centuries. Finding she was smiling, she looked up at Atholl, and there he was, deep in concentration, his brows smooth with relaxation, absorbed and intense.
‘You’re happy,’ she heard herself saying.
‘Aye.’ His voice cracked as he spoke. He cleared his throat. ‘I don’t get enough time to do this, but it’s where I’m happiest. Are you enjoying it too?’
Beatrice nodded. Atholl hefted the bundle of willow across his thighs again, his tongue loosened and eloquent with the focus of his work. ‘There’s no machines can do what we’re doing now. See how this whip is shorter, and that, thinner? And here the buds were spaced wide apart but on this one they were close together? You make allowances for each individual willow; you incorporate it differently depending on its strengths.’
Beatrice peered at the willows as he spread them in his hands.
‘No, there’s no machine can do this,’ he repeated.
‘So you resist the modern world, one willow sculpture at a time.’
He laughed, a hearty rattle at his throat. ‘You could say that.’
‘Damn the man!’
‘Aye, damn him.’
They both laughed this time and Beatrice felt herself swept along in his enthusiasm. Atholl was soon weaving again, cutting short some splayed ends of willows so they stuck out from his wreath like the flames on a Catherine wheel.
‘It really is beautiful,’ she said. ‘No matter how modern and mechanised the world gets or how uniform production methods make things, people will always want beautifully crafted, unique things that connect them to nature and remind them they’re human.’
‘Aye,’ he stopped to observe her at work for a moment, his lips parted and eyes narrowing. ‘Exactly that.’
‘How did you learn to do this?’ Beatrice asked.
He took his time answering, rotating the wreath between his thighs and cutting the decorative edges of the willows to the desired lengths.
‘There was a willow grower lived at the But n’ Ben, Hector his name is, and I was apprenticed to him when I left school. I was with him a good few years but I never got the chance to involve myself in the business properly. We lost our father for a long time to dementia – bloody awful thing it is – and then when he passed away we found my mother didn’t want to run the inn on her own anymore and the inn passed to Gene. For a time, my two younger sisters helped us out and we did well enough, but when Mum moved back to Skye my sisters went with her, and they’re married now and living with their partners over the water, so Gene and I have been running the inn alone, and well… you see how that’s worked out. I lease the But n’ Ben and the willow fields from Hector – he retired across to Fort William. I expect when he passes away I’ll be turned out and the school sold.’
‘Not unless you buy it,’ Beatrice cut in.
‘Ach, I’ve often thought of it, but how can I? I have Gene to babysit and the inn to manage now he’s given up the cooking and can’t work the computer systems to save himself. Christ, some days I think he’s given up on being a human being altogether. Having the occasional guest, like yourself, here at the workshop is, realistically, all I can see myself managing in the future.’
‘Well, bring in a chef. Let Gene continue with the breakfasts and have the new person do the dinners. Easy!’
‘And break Gene’s heart even more? I expect Seth’s filled you in on my brother’s marriage? And you must have heard Gene on Saturday night when he stormed out of the restaurant. He thinks his wife’s coming back one day and they’ll carry on where they left off.’
‘Will they though? Is she honestly coming back after all this time?’
Atholl’s chest swelled with a deep breath. He didn’t speak but Beatrice had the bit between her teeth and wasn’t about to give up now.
‘I could help you write a business plan if it’s a bank loan that’s needed. It wouldn’t take me long. That way you could make your old teacher an offer? He might not accept it, but what’s there to lose? Other than this place, which you obviously love.’
Silence again. Beatrice didn’t push him, instead letting him think. Eventually he spoke. ‘No. Gene is right. I can’t fix everything. This is a knot only time will untie.’
‘You’re not even going to try?’
‘You don’t understand, Beatrice. I spend my life fixing things. Fixing up the inn, trying to attract new business, protecting Gene from harm, mainly from himself, and it’s maddening that I can’t fix this situ
ation, infuriating, in fact. But I can’t.’ The hint of terseness in Atholl’s voice told her to stop. ‘But, uh… I am grateful to you for the offer. It’s the first of its kind. But I manage alone.’
Beatrice didn’t dare risk a return to the stroppiness and tension of their first encounters, so she nodded and let silence fall between them.
Working the willow was beginning to hurt her thumbs so she placed the wreath on the ground beside her and reached into the basket for the spoons and white china dishes Atholl had packed that morning.
Atholl eyed her every now and again over his own wreath, substantial and intricate, so unlike her own smaller, looser efforts, as she unscrewed the lid on the tall jar of honey and attempted to fish out the little buns with a spoon.
The first came out streaming with honey, and the sweetness filled the air as she settled it in the bowl and poured cream over it. This one she passed to Atholl, before repeating the process.
Atholl seemed glad to stop working, even lifting his stool and shifting it over to the door so he could sit in the shade by Beatrice’s side to eat. The buns – sticky Madeira cakes – were, Beatrice noticed, in the shape of fat little hearts.
She took her first bite. ‘Mmm, you must tell Gene these are delicious, and thank him for me. I could attack this whole jarful given a big enough spoon and some alone time.’
She was relieved to see Atholl smiling again, a drop of honey and cream at the edge of his lips. She realised with a jolt of horror that part of her wanted to watch him lick it away but she knew she couldn’t without being all too obvious and, she told herself, this was meant to be a forty somethings’ crafting holiday, not some X-rated Love Island rendezvous, so she had better just calm the heck down. She forced her gaze out over the fields behind the willows instead.
‘What’s that sorry-looking field over there? That’s not willow, is it?’ she said with some relief at having found a change of topic.
Atholl followed her line of sight. ‘Ah, that would be Lana’s field. Her lavender.’