SERIAL Designs For Life

Asha asked her father, Stephen, for help rebuilding the loom. But would she actually be brave enough to use it?

GABRIELLE had chosen the tearoom as the venue for what she knew would be a difficult meeting. It was neutral ground. Having just arrived and settled down at an empty table, she spotted a woman at the door, surveying the occupants.

There was no mistaking her. Their eyes met, and the woman came determinedly across.

“Mrs Melville?”

“Gabrielle, please. Take a seat, and let’s talk.”

The woman hesitated, then pulled out a chair and sat down. She was still clutching her handbag.

“I’m Ailish’s mum,” she said. “We’re plain folk. I don’t do fancy talking, so I’ll call it as it is.

“We want you to stop filling Ailish’s head with nonsense.”

“If it’s nonsense, how did she sail through her Advanced exams?

“And why has the Scottish Conservatoire offered her a place among its elite students?”

Ailish’s mother looked uncomfortable.

“She needs to concentrate on her proper studies,” she returned firmly. “We want her to go to university.”

“And so she shall. She will go to school as normal from Monday to Friday, then through to Glasgow to study music on Saturdays.

“Nothing will stop her from completing her GCES – or whatever they’re called these days – or from going to university.”

“Then there’s the money,” Ailish’s mum said. “We work hard, but where are we going to find that kind of money?”

“You won’t need to find it,” Gabrielle replied evenly.

Ailish’s mother stared. “What do you mean?” “I cover the costs. For the junior course on Saturdays, it isn’t much.

“The Conservatoire wants its study courses to be accessible to everyone.

“I’ll pick up the tab if Ailish doesn’t get one of their bursaries. And I’ll take her there and back each week.”

Gabrielle saw the knuckles whiten on the loops of the handbag.

“We can’t have that. We don’t want charity.”

“It isn’t charity. It’s a gift to your daughter.”

The knuckles grew whiter. “Have you a child yourself?” Ailish’s mother demanded, her voice rising.

Several heads turned from other tables.

“No,” Gabrielle said quietly, waving back the waitress who stepped

foward uncertainly.

“Well, you’re not having mine.”

“I don’t want your child. I want to help her. There is a difference . . .”

The woman stared at Gabrielle for a moment.

“Why do you want to help her?” she asked finally, her voice quieter again.

Conversation slowly resumed at the other tables – though with the occasional quick glance towards what had seemed to be a developing scene.

Gabrielle held the woman’s gaze.

“Because your daughter has more talent than I ever had, or dreamed of having,” she said gently.

“It would be a privilege to help someone so gifted. Not least when she’s been a student of mine for the last three years.

“With all my heart, I want to see Ailish reaching her full potential.”

Another long silence followed, then the woman’s knuckles eased.

She put her handbag on the floor.

“I’m Beth,” she said. “Listen, if it’s in my mind, then it’s on my tongue.

“Andy – my husband – says there’s no gap between brain and mouth.”

It was an apology of sorts.

“Would you like some tea, Beth?” Gabrielle asked. “Cakes?”

Beth’s eyes crinkled. “After that performance, maybe I should. But no cakes. I lost my schoolgirl figure years ago, but I keep on trying to get slim.”

Gabrielle waved the waitress over.

“Tea for two, please,” she said. “Tea and . . . scones? Fruit or plain?”

“Fruit scones are my Achilles heel.” The other woman smiled.

“Scones for two,” Gabrielle ordered. “And surprise us with a couple of cakes.”

As they waited, the two women studied each other.

“I don’t want to steal Ailish,” Gabrielle said eventually.

“She is a lovely, very talented girl – but you will always be her mum. And, please God, she will always see me as her teacher.”

“Ailish says you played in a real orchestra, in the violins section?” There was a touch of awe in Beth’s voice.

“What was that like?” “Noisy.” Gabrielle smiled, and it brought the first real laugh between them.

“It’s not a joke. Orchestral players often go deaf as they grow old, from being surrounded by huge waves of sound all the time.”

The waitress brought over the tea and cakes and placed them carefully on the table.

“Shall I pour?” Beth asked.

“Please,” Gabrielle said. Beth poured two cups of tea, slid one across the table, then lifted the other to her lips.

“Just how good is she?” she asked over the rim of her cup. “My daughter?”

“Have you heard of Nicola Benedetti?” Beth smiled. “Calum’s always teasing her that she’s Melrose’s answer to Nicola Benedetti.”

“Well, that’s exactly what she is . . . or could be, if her talent is properly developed. And if she works at music until she drops.

“After she’s finished school, of course.”

The smile faded on Beth’s face.

“You’re joking.”

“No,” Gabrielle replied. “I’m deadly serious.”

She set her cup down quietly, hesitated, then reached over to cover Beth’s hand.

“That’s why I want to help.”

Beth’s eyes held hers. “Then count me in,” she said.

Stephen contentedly checked the individual pieces of the dismantled loom.

It was good to be tinkering in this shed again, where he had worked for the past few months restoring a classic Austin 7.

“You’ve made a good job with these replacement parts,” he said over his shoulder.

Calum, busy at his work bench, grunted back.

Stephen smiled. Calum was a real craftsman – and that was an important part of the bond which had grown between them.

If a job was worth doing, it was worth doing well.

A few more minutes passed in silence, then Calum finished up and dusted his hands.

“Ready to assemble it?” he asked. “Need any help?”

“Not yet,” Stephen replied. “I’m going to rebuild the main support frame, then everything else should slot into that.

“These old cottage handlooms were made by local joiners, as and when an order came in.

“Each would have a basic pattern in his mind, but every craftsman had his own variations.

“So I’ll just have to use my common sense, and rebuild it like a jigsaw puzzle.”

The door of the shed opened, and they turned to see Asha enter carrying two mugs of tea.

“Not finished yet?” she asked, tongue-in-cheek. Stephen took a mug. “Just starting. Why the tearing hurry?”

Asha grimaced.

“You don’t want to know.” “We do,” Stephen said. “So talk us through it.” She sighed.

“It’s difficult to explain to anybody who isn’t an artist . . . but sometimes the creative part of your brain just . . . sulks. Like now.

“It’s not just the business that’s struggling at the moment, it’s me, too. I’m toiling to come up with new fashion ideas – for the first time in my life. I can’t get going.

“But when Jim Turner sends a broad outline to me and asks for some fabric designs to match it, I’ve no problem.

“My brain works for him, but not for myself. I need something to get me going again – something that triggers ideas.”

“And the loom?” Calum prompted.

Asha shrugged.

“I sense it has something to give me.

“I can see in my mind the rough texture of the raw twill, and sense all sorts of ways for this to set off other materials, other shapes.

“I need to get some of it made, to see it, feel it.

“Design comes as much from hands-on pinning material to mannequins as from sketches on paper.” Stephen drained his tea. “Therefore, like an Egyptian pyramid slave master, you have come here to gently encourage your workers?”

Asha grinned. Her dad’s daft jokes always seemed to put things into their proper perspective.

“I’ll go back and get my whip,” she said.

“No need, I’ll get started.”

This is going to be a very long day, Gabrielle thought.

They had caught an early train from Galashiels, connected at Waverley, then made a last-minute dash across Glasgow in a taxi to deliver Ailish for her eight-thirty start.

After the day’s intensive tuition finished around six p.m., they would then have to tackle the marathon journey home.

It would be worth it, though.

After a week at school, this would tax Ailish’s powers of concentration – but it would also help her to develop her talent more fully.

It would be the first of many such Saturdays. But how was Gabrielle herself going to spend the next nine-hours-plus?

For today, yes, there were exhibitions at the Gallery of Modern Art and at the Kelvingrove Museum.

If a job was worth doing, it was worth doing well

No doubt there would be cups of tea and coffee, and a snack lunch – which didn’t include a huge burger. Gabrielle flinched at the memory.

What should she do after that? Go to the cinema?

She was just leaving the Conservatoire to search for a friendly coffee shop when she heard her name being called.

It was Phil Roberts, someone she knew well from her days in the Scottish National Orchestra. He came hurrying over and took her hands.

“You look great,” he said, smiling. “And you’re maybe an answer to my prayer.”

“You look fine yourself,” she replied. “How are you?”

“Never better. But we have a problem today, and Tim Small said he saw you come in a few minutes ago with your wunderkind. Do you have some time?”

“I have the whole day to kill. What’s going on?”

“We’re a couple of tutors short – the usual cocktail of family emergencies and commitments.

“Tim told me you’ve gone back to teaching . . . could you possibly step in and help us this morning?”

Not so long ago, a request like that would have launched Gabrielle into a full-scale panic attack.

Now, though, she was flustered, but sensible in her response.

“I’ve had no chance to prepare for any sessions, Phil,” she said.

“It’s just three young students – they’ve been given a piece to work on for this morning, and another for this afternoon.

“All you would have to do is listen, give some broad guidance. We keep it one-to-one and informal.

“It would be great if you could just . . . do what you can, as an ex-pro, to save what would otherwise be a blank day for them.”

The thought of having almost ten hours to fill flashed across Gabrielle’s mind.

Anything – even having to live on the professional edge – was preferable.

“Fine,” she said, her heart stuck in her throat. “Provided neither you, nor the students, expect miracles.”

Phil lifted the fingers of her right hand and kissed them.

“Spoken like a real trouper,” he said. “You can’t do timpani, too, can you?”

His smile showed that he was winding her up.

“No drums,” she said. “Not since my brother was given a set when he was five years old and took to waking up the whole street in the middle of the night.”

“Timp players never really seem to develop beyond that age,” he said with a wink.

Pushing her away a little, he looked at her critically.

“Marriage suits you,” he said. “I can see happiness, behind the terror.”

“I am happy,” Gabrielle told him. “Or I was, until five minutes ago.”

“Nonsense. They’re nice kids. You’ll love it.”

He dragged as much as led her up two flights of stairs, to a small room at the end of a corridor.

“They should be in here,” he said. “Unless they’ve tunnelled out and escaped.”

They hadn’t; inside there were three very shy young teenagers – two boys and a girl – keen enough to have tuned their violins while they were waiting.

“Miss Menzies is off ill,” Phil told them. “Instead, we’ve managed to trap one of our best-ever violinists from the Scottish National Orchestra.

“She has volunteered – with a little encouragement – to help us out.”

There were tentative smiles all round, which faded as Phil left. Gabrielle sighed. “Well, how do you live up to an introduction like that?” she asked.

“If you want the truth, I was in the first violins, until an accident stopped me from playing. But I was nowhere near the best.

“Right, which piece are we working on?”

It said much for the informality of the Conservatoire’s classes that she slipped seamlessly into their rehearsal session.

After some introductions, she asked each of them in turn to play through the complex, challenging piece of music.

All three students were superb – nothing less than she would have expected.

“Excellent,” Gabrielle said. “Almost note perfect, all of you – only three slight mistakes in total.”

The students looked at each other grimly.

“Mistakes don’t matter,” Gabrielle continued, “so long as you learn from them.

“The person who never made a mistake never made anything.

“So I won’t dwell on them. Instead, we will break down the piece into sections, and spend the morning working on the detail and the phrasing of the score.

“But before we start, I want you all to step back and think about the composer, and what he was trying to capture.

“What nationality was he?”

“French,” the girl said. “Well done, Amy. When did he write it?”

The three looked as though they were racking their brains.

“Late nineteenth century?” one of the boys suggested.

“Thank you, Peter. French, mid-to-late nineteenth century. So, what huge creative force was going on then, in that country?”

Gabrielle was surprised at how much she was enjoying not only the music, but her involvement with these young minds. Amy’s face lit up. “French Impressionism,” she said. “In art.”

“Exactly.” Gabrielle smiled. “Think Monet, Cézanne, Renoir, Degas.

“They all tried to look at everyday things from new angles, taking a different perspective to get a new and better understanding.

“They used small, thin brush strokes to show that the moment of the painting was fragile, ephemeral.

“And they were obsessed with how light can change, and with it, not just the shadows in the painting, but the subject, too.”

She paused, gathering her thoughts.

“So where are we? We have a French composer, who would be well aware of the art scene, and the Impressionists.

“He composed this piece in a friend’s garden, after lunch. How many of you have sat out in France on a sunny afternoon? What were your impressions?”

“Golden light,” Peter said instantly. “Thick as honey, almost.”

“Heat,” Andrew said. “You can feel it seeping into you.”

“Flowers,” Amy chimed in. “A riot of colour.”

“So, think of those small cascades of notes in the score – these are the composer’s brush strokes.

“Think golden light, bees, butterflies, the movement of tree leaves in the odd breath of wind, the strong colours of the flowers and shrubs around the garden.

“That was what he was trying to paint in his music.

“And that is what you have to try to capture, as violinists.”

She reached for the girl’s violin.

“May I, Amy?” she asked. The girl held out both violin and bow.

Gabrielle gathered her concentration.

“It isn’t enough to be note-perfect,” she murmured. “You have to translate, interpret.

“You have to see the garden in your mind, then feel what the composer was thinking as he sketched out the notes, and turned into sound the images in his mind.

“You have to turn these notes from the score back into the picture he saw.

“You are translators, not simply musicians.”

Holding the strange bow and violin, she eased gently into the middle of the piece

“Hear the frisson of wind in the leaves . . . sense that wonderful golden light, and the sleepy French heat.

“Use your bowing to make the violin talk.”

After a few minutes of playing, she

stopped abruptly.

“I’m rusty,” she said. “And nowhere near noteperfect. I haven’t been practising, like you.

“Now I want you to play with your mind less on the score and more on what the composer was trying to transpose into music.

“Make the notes and their phrasing sound like a piece of Impressionist art.”

“Right, let’s get down to serious work on the opening section,” she said, handing back Amy’s violin.

“Think of it as what a well-fed man would see and feel when he settled into a friend’s garden on a warm summer day.

“Peter, will you try first?” Much later, Ailish was waiting for her in the entry hall of the Conservatoire.

“Absolutely brilliant!” she said enthusiastically of her own day. “But how did your day go, Gabrielle? Did it drag for you?”

“Not in the least. It seems to have gone past in a flash.”

When Stephen knocked on the back door of the cottage, Asha called for him to come in. She sounded distracted.

He sighed. When her mind was on something else like this she could as easily invite in a lorry-load of burglars.

He opened the door to find her sitting at the kitchen table, staring at her laptop screen. Glancing up, she smiled. “I see you’ve brought your shadow.”

Stephen looked down at Franz.

“He won’t let me go anywhere without him.

“Gabrielle says she can really empathise with Ailish’s mum about feeling that somebody has stolen her baby.”

Asha clicked her fingers at the dog and was ignored.

“Oh, yes. Calum told me they’d met,” she said.

“That was potentially very nasty. Did they sort things out?”

“They did. They met in a tearoom and emerged from it as the best of friends. Crisis over.

“Ailish’s future as a musician has been restored.

“Gabrielle and Beth are going to fund her jointly.

“Beth is taking on a home help job and will pay what she can. Gabrielle will pick up the tab for the rest – which isn’t likely to be much, apparently.

“The Junior Conservatoire’s under- nineteen classes are part-time, and only run on Saturdays.”

“I’m glad.” Asha closed her laptop and pushed it away.

“So why were you frowning when I came in?” Stephen asked.

“I wasn’t frowning.” She sighed. “I was studying videos on handloom weaving.

“They weren’t much use – most of the looms they were using were much more modern than mine.

“And as for the old clips I’ve found of cottage weavers: they never show you what you want to know.

“The weaver’s hands and feet are travelling so fast it’s impossible to follow what they’re doing.”

She looked up plaintively. “The only time I’ve ever seen an actual, working loom, it was a big, mechanised broadloom – all computerised, and virtually doing the weaving by itself.

“I’m a wimp.i don’t even know how to work a primitive loom, let alone the monster out in the woodshed.”

“It’s not a monster,” Stephen said protectively.

“It looks like something from a mediaeval torture chamber.”

Stephen flinched.

In a strange way, the old handloom had become his baby.

The slow rebuilding job had fascinated him.

It looked like a huge, rough, four-poster bed, supported by heavy beams above and below, with rotating rods supporting the horizontal loom itself.

The foot pedals, he had discovered, were for raising and lowering the different small wooden frames – heddles, from his research – which would lift or lower groups of warp threads for the shuttle to pass the weft thread through.

Surprisingly it wasn’t a foot pedal which fired the shuttle across, but a simple overhead cord and handle, which the weaver would tug first to one side, then the other.

The wooden pegs which had puzzled them seemed to be wooden dowels for holding the structure together without the need for nails or bolts.

He was impatient to see it working.

But it was Asha’s loom, so he couldn’t push too hard.

And she seemed strangely reluctant to get round to getting started.

“The only way to find out how it works is to sit down and try,” he urged.

“Set your warp yarn between the two horizontal loom beams, and use a couple of heddles for the grouping of threads we want to lift and lower.

“Then load up the weft to your shuttle and start firing it from side to side.”

“No, I need time,” she said. “Both to set up the loom, and to find the courage to sit down and start moving the pedals with my feet.” “Treadles,” he corrected. “Whatever.”

The kitchen door opened, and Calum appeared.

“Sawdust!” Asha said sternly.

“I’ve dusted it off.” “You’re worse than him when he was working on the old Austin Seven.

“Thank heavens sawdust is easier to clean than oil stains.”

“There were only a few,” Stephen objected.

“Still too many,” she replied, neither forgetting nor forgiving.

“Returning to your loom,” Stephen interjected.

“We have no owner’s handbook, nor anyone to show us how to make it work properly.

“The only way to learn which heddles to move, and when, is by doing it.

“Then, once you master a basic weave, find the spacing of warp threads that gives you the pattern you want.”

“Not today,” she said. “Why not?” “Because I want the loom shed to myself – not doubling up as Calum’s workshed.

“And I want the house to myself, so that there’s no audience, and no point in throwing a tantrum if I get it wrong . . . I’ll just have to get on with it.”

“You’ll sort it all out,” he said with confidence.

“If my customers were as easy to please as you and Calum, I’d soon be a millionaire.”

“Give them time.” Stephen smiled. “Oh, and I’ve just remembered why I was sent here.

“I’ve brought a summons. Well, an invite. Gabrielle wants you both to come for dinner tonight.

“She’s flying high, and wants to cook up a storm to celebrate.”

Asha smiled.

“To celebrate . . . what?” “Didn’t I say? The Conservatoire has asked her to work as a tutor for them while she’s taking Ailish there for her lessons.”

“That’s great!” Asha said. “I’m so pleased for her.”

“She stepped in as an emergency a week or so ago and loved it.

“The kids made a point of telling the principal how much they had learned from her sessions, too.

“It’s not a permanent deal – it’s only covering the rest of this academic year, then it’ll be reviewed.”

“Tell her we will be happy to come and celebrate with her.”

“Great. I’m here to act as chauffeur, too, so that the rest of you can relax and have some wine with the meal. I will drive you home.”

“I’m a wimp. I don’t even know how to work a primitive loom”

“I always said you were probably the best dad in the world.” Asha smiled at him.

“Only probably?” Stephen protested. “Has my rating slipped?”

She kissed his cheek. “Give me a couple of minutes,” she said. “Let me just wash my face and put something decent on.

“Calum – that sawdust, those jeans . . . get rid of them. I won’t be a minute.” She flew upstairs. “You’re going to spend the rest of your life waiting for her, you know,” Stephen warned.

“I don’t care,” Calum said. “She’s worth it.”

This is ridiculous, Asha thought miserably.

She didn’t even know where to start.

Or rather, she did. But she was scared to try.

With all her heart, she wished she had listened to her tutors more closely when they had prattled on about weaving techniques.

She was always too impatient to get started on the new computer-driven models and experiment with patterns.

And while the textile history books she had recently found were helpful, they didn’t answer even half the questions crowding into her mind.

“They’re all different,” her father had told her. “Every one with its own personality, because each of the local joiners would have had their own ideas.”

Without an instruction book, she felt utterly lost.

This was a job for men, who never looked at instructions anyway.

They usually just dived in and somehow managed to get things going.

She wished her dad was here to help. But this one was down to her.

Or maybe not just her? Asha looked up at the wooden heart hanging on the wall of the shed above Calum’s bench.

“Did you ever do any weaving, Grandad?” she asked.

She sensed a smile. Maybe even a slight shake of the head.

“OK,” she said. “This is it. I’m starting.

“If you can still help me from wherever you are, will you guide my hands and feet?

“And if they don’t like you doing that sort of thing up there, just send down some courage.”

Reaching forward, she checked for the twentieth time that the strong warp threads were tight between the rotating rods.

Then she checked that she hadn’t made any mistakes in her painstaking lacing of each of the threads through the loops in the heddles.

Lifting and dropping these wooden frames would not only make the space for the shuttle to fly through, it would set the basic pattern of the weave.

She had settled for the herringbone pattern, one of the oldest of the traditional weaves.

Once she could produce a length of usuable twill in that pattern, then it would be down to experimenting with both heddles and warp thread groupings.

Until she found what she was looking for.

No electronic computer programme, nor even an old computer punch-card, to tell the machine what to do.

Only her hands, and her feet. And her brain.

Frowning ferociously, she stamped on the right treadle to raise the warp yarn and make the space for the weft thread in the shuttle.

The old loom clanked, and the sound made her pause.

Then she determinedly tugged the overhead cord to the right, and the old wooden shuttle whizzed across.

Her mouth suddenly dry, Asha stamped on the left treadle and reached for the cord again.

She’d heard the saying that the longest journey started with but a single step.

But did it also apply to twill?

To be continued.