The entirely moss-green ‘Gamekeeper’s Argyle’ kilt, tweed jacket and thick hunting socks hadn’t gone down well with his audience either and he’d looked pleadingly at Ruth and asked if he couldn’t just wear a suit. The tailor had other ideas though.
‘Sir, was there ever a time you felt most attractive in your clothes? A time you had a special outfit you loved?’
The couple’s eyes had instantly met and, after a moment’s thought, Mark nodded in resignation. ‘Go on then, you tell the man.’
Ruth grinned her way through the whole story, eyes shining, as she described the night she’d met her husband on the dance floor at Alley Catz when he’d sidled over to her during Adam Ant’s ‘Puss ’n Boots’.
‘Well, he was in leather trousers, a sort of white blouse and black bolero type jacket, do you remember that? It had those military buttons down the front, andum, andum… a little bit of eyeliner.’
Nina’s jaw dropped, scanning Mark in his tweedy get-up and white knees.
‘You can’t imagine it, can you? I was a lot fitter then.’ Mark’s shoulders bobbed with the laughter now. ‘She didn’t even mention my long hair, and how I had highlights!’ Unconsciously, he raised a hand to the thinning spot above his temple.
Now everyone was smiling, and Nina found herself up on her crutch and leading the tailor to one side, talking through ideas with him in hushed tones, their backs turned on the Firths.
‘OK, this is definitely the one,’ Nina said, peeking in through the curtains. ‘You ready to see this?’ she asked.
Before Ruth could answer, her husband stepped out into the watery late morning light spilling through the shop windows.
‘This is the Bonnie Prince Charlie style, favoured in the nineteen eighties and making a strong comeback now,’ the tailor announced.
This time nobody was laughing and it was Ruth up on her feet and walking around her husband, her eyes wide, taking him in.
Midway between a bride groom and a hussar, his darkest navy velvet jacket fit snugly around his shoulders and waist, tapered neatly in folds and cuts at the small of his back, and studded all the way down the lapels with silver diamond-shaped buttons. A royal-blue and navy kilt in a thick Harris fell to just the right point mid-knee where the fabric met with long thick white socks pulled up over his shins and revealing a flash of the silver dagger tucked inside. Its glinting drew the eye down to his shining black shoes and black leather laces criss-crossed around his ankles and up his calves.
‘Do you like it?’ Mark asked Ruth. Only her opinion mattered now.
She brought a hand up to the cluster of white lace falling in a cascade from his throat. He held his wrists up for her to inspect, showing her the same white lace at his cuffs.
‘Very dandy highwayman,’ she told him quietly, and they’d both smiled, a little abashed, but with the familiarity of thirty-seven years since that fateful night at Alley Catz between them.
‘Shall I wrap them up?’ the tailor asked, and Nina had to answer for them, the Firths were so absorbed in looking at Mark’s reflection in the mirror, saying unheard things and chuckling.
‘They’ll take it,’ Nina assured him.
The rest of the excursion had been just as revelatory. Their second stop was a designer dress rental shop behind a light industrial unit on the banks of a loch where Nina’s attention was drawn to the sounds of sewing machines running and she’d left to explore the other buildings, leaving Ruth and Mark to step inside alone.
Again, there wasn’t anyone else there other than the owner, a young woman dressed from head to foot in vintage red tartan Vivienne Westwood and long spike-heeled boots. Ruth told her she used to have a little number like that herself, long ago, only it had come from C&A. The owner picked up on Ruth’s nerves and made her and Mark a cup of tea before pulling out a selection of gowns in blues and blacks to complement Mark’s outfit and leaving her to try them on behind the curtain.
Mark had been called upon to help with the zips and after only five changes they struck upon the perfect thing. A deep midnight-blue dress, fitted at the waist, with an A-line asymmetrical hem falling in thick gathers and longer at the back, giving the whole thing a glamorous hint of Christian Dior’s full-skirted forties New Look. Or at least that’s what the owner told her when she swooped back in to the changing room exclaiming, ‘That’s the one! That’s it.’
The scoop neck came into its own when the owner suggested a thick double rope of faceted crystal beads and long black gloves. When she’d taken Ruth aside to pay, she’d also suggested some sheer black stockings and Ruth had asked her to add them to the bag, looking round to see if that had pricked Mark’s ears up. He hadn’t heard a thing.
Later, when Ruth told Nina she’d got everything but shoes, Nina had asked her size and assured her she had just the pair of ankle boots for her, if she trusted her, which Ruth told her she did. They agreed to meet on the afternoon of the ball when Nina would share her make-up products and help her do her eyes since Ruth told her she couldn’t see well enough without her specs to do her eyeliner anymore, another gift of the ageing process – thanks a bunch.
They’d remarked upon Nina’s not having bought anything for herself and she’d told them with a shrug she hadn’t needed anything, she wasn’t going anywhere, and she did a good job of hiding how crestfallen she was about not having found any products to recommend to Seamus either.
The Firths had dozed off in the minivan surrounded by their bags, their heads tipped together and clasping hands for the first time in a very long time.
All the way back to the inn, Nina thought about the workshops she’d stumbled across as she made her way round the little industrial estate.
There’d been a glassworks that was part store, part workshop, where the shelves were lined with beautiful bottles, baubles and suncatchers in speckled glass. When she’d told the owner that she was on holiday and staying at the Princess and the Pea Inn, the arty-looking man, Munro, told her he ran the glass-making sessions there during the quiet autumn months and asked if she’d send his best to the Fergussons. That’s when she remembered seeing him at the speed-dating event at Hogmanay, one of the few locals brave enough to take the hot seat. She didn’t think it wise to mention it.
He’d opened up the glass kiln and demonstrated how he made the hand-blown rounded bottles in rich fluid amber with speckled metal flakes that were somehow captured and turned liquid inside the molten glass.
She’d been thrilled at the extremes of heat and the hissing steam as Munro plunged the glass into water to cool it. She had bought a small, squat bottle off the shelf to post to her mother, knowing she’d definitely like this gift.
She’d been in a hurry to get back to the taxi by the time she left Munro’s glassworks but had discovered a designer making her own garments inside a little lock-up office. The sign on the door told her to ‘please come in and browse’, so she had, and she’d been awed by the frock coats the woman was making in every colour under the sun.
