‘Forecaster,’ she corrected. Nina didn’t remember which one Gene was, but she guessed it was one of the barflies or busybodies she’d dodged all week as they tried to make conversation about the weather or to tell her about their daughters who were her age and sensibly living down south. She hadn’t taken much interest.
‘And what trends are you forecasting here in Port Willow?’ He was doing that smile again. Nina’s last nerve prickled.
‘I’m here to scout for product to pass on to my colleagues in New York. They’ll make it into the next big luxury brand,’ she replied flatly.
‘And?’
‘And… nothing. I’ve been here for a week and the distilleries, crystal factories and tartan mills are either closed for Christmas or they’ve got their branding established and relationships with distributors already and they won’t see me.’
By now there were a few more brave local men, most of them in their fifties and sixties, taking their seats while Beatrice collected their tickets and marked their names on the clipboard she’d bought especially for the occasion.
Mutt nodded his head towards them. ‘Well, lucky for you there’s at least ten local makers in tonight, some of them are sitting in those chairs. I’d say this is a perfect networking opportunity.’
Nina took another drink that emptied her glass. ‘There’s nothing here I’d pitch to my bosses.’
Mutt reacted just how she knew he would, drawing his neck back, offended. She’d read Gene’s crafting classes brochure from cover to cover on Christmas Day and, as she’d already suspected, it had been a waste of time.
‘I need something with international appeal. I can’t sell trinkets. I need stand-out, luxury products, heritage brands, the next big thing. Not amateur handicrafts.’
Mutt definitely wasn’t smiling now. ‘Have you spoken toanyof the locals? I think you’d be surprised. There’s Murdina over there, for instance.’
Nina looked over at the elderly woman standing in a huddle with some of the crafters. She had long grey hair and, Nina couldn’t help thinking, the air of something witchy about her. She wasn’t yet aware that women like her were almost always the most interesting in the room.
Mutt raised his glass at Murdina across the filling floor and the woman smiled back. ‘You know she makes her own yarns? Cards it, dyes it, spins it,’ he told Nina in a low voice.
‘She looks like she does.’
‘She knitted this, you know?’ Mutt angled his broad chest towards Nina, his hand touching the two dark brassy buttons at the side of the jumper’s high neck.
Nina only internally admitted it was one of the nicest sweaters she’d seen and Mutt definitely wore it well. ‘We have those in New York. Everyone’s seen a fisherman jumper. I can’t sell those to my bosses.’
‘This isn’tafisherman jumper; it’smyfisherman’s jumper. Hand knitted just for me. You know this is my family design?’
‘Huh?’ Nina looked at it again. The jumper was plain apart from intricate stitches all across its deep yoke which brought out the breadth of his shoulders. ‘What do you mean it’s your family design?’
‘Well, it’s an old tradition in Scotland, and Ireland too, for the women to knit their family’s or their village’s pattern into their men’s jumpers. They’re called ganseys. Their pattern would give details about the fisherman’s life. Some had diamonds to show they were married, others had zigzags called marriage lines to show the ups and downs of married life.’
Mutt ran his fingertips along one of the woollen cables down over his shoulder. The sight of this somehow made Nina want to look away. She concentrated on Bear instead who was now trying to clamber onto Mutt’s lap and Mutt bent to the panting creature while he explained further.
‘If a fishing boat overturned in the sea and a man was lost, the pattern could tell who he was and where he was from.’
He let Nina think that over for a second while he picked up the dog.
When he’d straightened once more he met Nina’s eyes. ‘Can you imagine being a sweetheart or a mother and knitting something like this for your lover or your son, thinking how it could be the thing that identifies him and brings him home from the bottom of the ocean? What a story every stitch tells. And this is my family’s pattern. Murdina based it on my great-grandfather’s own jumper. We were fisher folk going way back. In fact this pattern here, Murdina told me, is called a ridge and furrow; it represents my great-grandfather’s kitchen garden at Pennan.’
‘Wow.’ Nina couldn’t help but be impressed. ‘But Murdina adapted his pattern for you?’
‘Yes, she did away with the signs of marriage.’
‘No diamonds or ups and downs in your pattern?’
Mutt’s enthusiasm for schooling Nina seemed to fade and he looked down at Bear on his lap. ‘No ups and downs for me.’
Nina’s eyes were fixed to Mutt’s face, but he wouldn’t look at her now. He was so serious it was disconcerting. She’d written him off as the smirking Scot who thought she was ridiculous, but now some irrational, tipsy part of her brain was daring her to reach out and touch his cuff for some reason. She told her hands to stay put, clasping her empty glass, when he suddenly turned to her once more.
A different reflex seemed to be firing in Mutt now: a not entirely kind one. ‘Mind you, you could take this pattern and have a machine turn out ten thousand of them for a fancy shop in America and it would lose all its meaning instantly. You’re looking to mass produce something that can’t be replicated without losing its magic.’
Nina’s brows shot up. ‘I don’t want to mass produce anything. I’m not a Walmart buyer.’
