Douglas Stewart

And now, today, it feels like such a rare thing to have something made by hand in place.

And it's just the most remarkable thing.

But Cal returns from...

art school, as you say, and his father has always been a weaver.

And so he's almost gone to textile college, couldn't find work and finds himself back working for his father anyway.

John had a Presbyterian respect for education, but there was too much of the unknown about university life, and there was something about art schools that sent him into a moral panic.

The notion of self-expression was antithetical to religious obedience, and the art schools seemed too liberal, the women too unfettered and bent on their own pleasure.

Ella had sat Cal down and advised him that half a victory was still a victory, and so in the end he chose a modest technical school.

It was the campus that was farthest from home, but closest to his father's understanding of the world.

The textile school was forty miles south of Edinburgh, tucked away in the sleepy valleys of the Scottish borders.

The school had no desire to re-examine or reinvent.

It came to be simply because there had been a practical need for generations of workers to learn how to make textiles in the correct historical manner.

So you've no work and no woman to show for it.

John could be blunt like this, not born from a meanness of spirit, but from a desire to speak the economical truth.

Cal hesitated.

John kept cutting his eyes towards him, awaiting his response.

Cal wondered if now was the time to be honest with his father.

Part of him wanted to tell his father he was gay, if only to hurt him for demanding his return.

Certainly, as deacon of their church, John could not be seen to be harbouring such sin at home.

If he told his father the truth, that he had no natural attraction to women, he wondered if John would send him away for good and if this would be the last time they ever saw one another.