She shrugged. ‘As good as you’ll get in Stornoway, I guess. You should have tried Lews Castle. They do rooms and suites there now. Very luxurious.’
He smiled sadly. ‘Next time. Other circumstances.’ She had prepared two drinks the same, except that only one had whisky. She pushed it across the counter to him. They chinked glasses. ‘To Ruairidh,’ he said. ‘One of the good guys.’
Niamh couldn’t bring herself to speak.
‘And speaking of castles, Lee tells me his party has taken a whole castle to themselves on the Isle of Harris.’ He raised his hands in confusion. ‘Which I’m told is the same goddamned island as the Isle of Lewis. Who knew?’
‘What castle?’
‘Oh some unpronounceable place. Avan... Avin... something.’
‘Amhuinnsuidhe?’
‘Yep. What you said.’
She nodded thoughtfully as he sipped on his whisky soda.
‘You know,’ he said, almost lowering his voice, ‘Ruairidh should never have mentioned the Tony Capaldi shooting in that interview he did for the New York Times.’
Niamh raised her eyebrows in surprise. The paper had carried the interview earlier that summer in an article on the success of Ranish Tweed. They had described it as a cloth derived from a weaver’s hut on a remote Scottish island, rising to become one of the world’s most sought-after fashion fabrics. Ruairidh’s story of the shooting in New York had been a throwaway line in passing. ‘What do you mean? Why not?’
‘Jees, Niamh. You don’t fuck about with these people. I gotta tell you, I’ve been keeping my own head pretty low ever since it came out.’
Chapter Twenty-Nine
It was the first time either of us had been in New York. At the time it felt like the most extraordinary adventure. And of course it was.
It came in the aftermath of that first Lee Blunt collection which rocketed the name of Ranish Tweed to international stardom. It was a name on the lips of fashionistas everywhere, and we were having to pick and choose which orders to accept, because it would have been impossible to fulfil them all.
It was dizzying. There we were, tucked away in an old croft house on the Isle of Lewis, with half a dozen weavers in tin sheds churning out cloth to our own designs, and people in America and Japan, Australia and Europe were clamouring for the stuff.
Ranish had become famous overnight. Magazines like Vogue and Elle and Cosmopolitan were featuring clothes in our tweed. Models we had only read about or seen on TV, or on the covers of Harper’s Bazaar and Vanity Fair, were wearing it on the catwalks of Paris and Milan and New York. Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista.
And to us it all seemed that it was happening to other people somewhere else. Until we got the call from an assistant to the buyer in the tailoring department of Gold’s of 5th Avenue. This was one of the most prestigious tailors in the world. They dressed presidents and movie stars, pop idols and royalty.
The way it worked was clients would get measured up by Gold’s in New York, choose their material and style of suit, then the cloth would be sent off to Yves Saint Laurent, or Armani, or whoever, to have it cut. The suits might cross the Atlantic umpteen times during the course of several fittings, and then the finishing would be done by Gold’s themselves. Their customers paid thousands, sometimes tens of thousands.
And Gold’s wanted to introduce an exclusive line of Ranish Tweed as an option to offer clients. Designer suits in the hottest new tweed on the market. They wanted to fly us to New York, the assistant told us. They wanted us to bring samples and designs, and meet with the head of the tailoring department, Jacob Steiner, to discuss exactly what was going to suit Gold’s needs. They would, she said, reserve us first-class seats on Virgin Atlantic and put us up at the Waldorf Astoria.
I can remember dancing around the room after taking that call, and having trouble finding my breath to tell Ruairidh. The Waldorf Astoria! I had only ever seen or heard about the legendary New York hotel in the movies. And someone was going to pay for us to stay there! And flying first class to New York? Something you could only dream about. Who could afford that? Certainly not us. It seemed no time at all since we had taken the bus down to Lee’s show at London Fashion Week and stayed in the cheapest hotel we could find.
How could this be happening to me and Ruairidh?
But it was, and it did. We arrived in New York on a steamy hot summer’s day in July to be met at the airport by Mr Steiner himself. Immaculately suited, wearing the whitest shirt I had ever seen, and the most delicious plum-red tie, he was the personification of charm. Not a greasy or sleazy or manufactured kind of charm, but a real charisma that genuinely reflected the man himself.
I suppose he must have been in his early sixties at that time. He reeked of expensive aftershave and Cuban cigars (I only found out later they were Cuban when he confessed to having his own illicit supply line from the Caribbean island in contravention of the US ban).
‘Guys,’ he said, and shook both our hands warmly, ‘I cannot tell you what a great pleasure it is to meet you at last. I was blown away by Ranish Tweed the first time I saw it. But when I felt it, actually ran it through my fingers...’ He seemed to run out of words to express his feelings. ‘I can only say there have been very few times in my life that I have genuinely felt I was touching the future. That’s how it was for me when I first handled Ranish Tweed.’
An assistant collected our luggage from the carousel, and Mr Steiner led us out to a waiting stretch limo. He slid into the back and sat opposite us.
‘I want us to have a relationship that is going to make our suits in Ranish Tweed the most expensive and exclusive in the world. Which means we gotta be friends. We need to understand each other, to have a feeling for what each of us is about. That’s why you’re here. I want to get to know you guys, and for you to know what it is that makes me tick.’ He opened a small refrigerator and tossed ice cubes into three glasses, before filling them with whisky and topping them off with a splash of soda. ‘Glenturret,’ he said, handing us our glasses. ‘Oldest distillery in Scotland, I’m told. So it should be good.’ He raised his glass. ‘To Ranish.’
We echoed his toast and sipped from our foaming glasses. I had never tasted whisky and soda before, and was surprised at how good it was. It was to be the first of many.
‘Sit back and enjoy, meine Kinder. First we get to know each other. Then we do business.’
The Waldorf Astoria exceeded all my expectations. The white stone building in Park Avenue seemed to drip gold, a constant procession of limousines and taxis drawing up beneath its extravagant canopy, an enormous Stars and Stripes furling and unfurling in the slow-motion movement of hot air. After the cool brisk summer winds of Lewis, New York City seemed burdened by the weight of its own heat and humidity.
We hurried from the air-conditioned bubble of our stretch limo, through the hot, wet, slap-in-the-face air on the sidewalk, and into the almost chilly atmosphere of the hotel itself. Up steps and into a vast marbled area of lobby and lounge. Our room was huge, but to my mind gently disappointing. It had all the trappings of grandeur. Heavily embroidered curtains, a gold-braided bedspread, antique furniture. And yet there was something tired about it all, careworn. Rotting wooden window frames, tashed wallpaper and worn carpets. But nothing could take the gloss off our excitement.