The Words of the Mouth

by Ronald Smith

CHAPTER FIVE

  Jura was only a temporary refuge until we could find a place of our own. We were staying with a poet, or wordsmith as I called him, named Andrew. Mairi and I wanted to start some kind of workshop - we didn't as yet have a clear idea of precisely what - where she could work on her tapestries and make preserves, and I had a lot of ideas free-wheeling around my head about painting, music, computer animation, greetings cards, and films.

  We had to return to Edinburgh, but we continued to look all around Scotland for a place we could buy. Months went by and nothing suitable turned up; then Andrew, who was still in Jura, sent us a newspaper cutting describing an idyllic Mill in North Fife; there was an old farm-house, a couple of cottages, outbuildings, five acres of land, and even a wood with a stream flowing through. It seemed too good to be true.

  Another couple, Harry and Sandra, had been sharing in our fantasies, and we had made a tentative arrangement to buy a place together. They were as enthralled by the advertisement as we were, and we decided to set off at once, to see the place.

  That same afternoon we all crowded into the VW van. First I had to pick up Sandra and her kids on the south side of Edinburgh, which meant we were running late. My impatience mounted as we headed north down Causewayside. Ahead was a bus overtaking another . bus, both coming towards me, and a third bus was parked on my side, I was going too fast to stop, and the space between them was narrowing

  rapidly. I floored the accelerator and whooped as the van shot into the opening, both wing mirrors snapping flat against our sides as we scraped through. Sandra covered her head and screeched with alarm, and I laughed delightedly - this was a sign, I thought; nothing was going to stop us, we would squeeze through every obstacle.

  We drove at top speed into Fife and beyond Auchtermuchty into the rolling hills with their grassy fields and long strips of woodland, liking the countryside more and more. The looming pyramids of the Lomond Hills were behind us now, and we were soon passing Lindores Loch, lined with trees. Each time we saw a big house or a farm, we wondered excitedly 'Is that it?'

  Then we came down the hill towards the Tay estuary, and marvelled at the faraway vista of the mountains to the North, where clouds gathered above the Grampians.

  Suddenly, there it was: a square stone mill three storeys high, and a stone farmhouse.

  We slowed and turned up the gravel drive into the courtyard, the two cottages just ahead with their red-tiled roofs, and the wooded slope of a hill behind them. It was deja-vu. I felt I knew the place; I loved it at once. We explored building after building, like bees in a flower-bed, exclaiming: "I'll take this house, you can have that bit; we'll do up the mill for our workshops." We were high on each other's enthusiasm.

  While I knew nothing about building, my confidence was unbounded; Harry was a builder with lots of experience in doing up houses. His attitude was 'No worries, nothing is a problem; we can handle everything.'

  The buildings certainly needed a lot of work; Mairi and Sandra both suggested getting surveyors' reports. "Fuck surveyors; we can do it, I know we can," I interrupted, “I don't want anybody saying 'It's too expensive' or 'it can't be done'."

  Mairi and I had £5000 her father had left her, and my flat. Harry was waiting to sell a house and didn't yet have any money; he wanted to come in with us, but he felt we should put the offer in our own names.

  "You can just decide the final amount yourselves; I'll go along with it," he said breezily.

  We offered the owners £8000 with a 24 hour closing date, hoping to rush them into taking it off the market before any more offers came in, but they held out for a week. We waited until the last day; then we went to the solicitor's address and hung around outside until almost five p.m. to see if anybody else was coming in with an offer. No one appeared.

  The full sum we could raise was £10,000. "I think we should bid it all," I told Mairi, She wavered, dubious. "It's our only chance," I insisted, "we'll never find another place like this. Make up your mind; do you or don't you want this place?"

  "Well," she hesitated. "...I suppose you're right..."

  With only five minutes to go, I entered the lawyer's office: the other offers were on the table. I could see one was for £10,000, "We're IN for £10,000," I told him.

  The other offer which matched ours was from a group of Cistercian Monks who wanted to turn the Mill into a monastery. When the owners, who were staunch Church of Scotland people, saw it, they decided not to sell to Catholics and accepted our bid. The Mill was ours.

  Harry did not come up with the money, and weeks went by; then I heard, to my consternation, that he had bought a concrete yacht. I went to see him.

  "What's this about a concrete boat?"

  "Well, I want to sail around the world. But it's OK about the Mill, I'm still going to buy it with you."

  "But what about our doing up the place together?"

  "First I want to sail around the world in my yacht, then we'll do it. I'll do my share, don't worry,"

  "All right, then," I agreed, but with misgivings; I didn't like his tone, and he wasn't looking me in the eyes.

  Later, he let me know as a by-the-way that he had bought another house and wouldn't be joining us after all, I felt betrayed; we would not have put out all that money on our own. Defiant and resentful, however, I told him, "Great, I'm glad you're out. We wouldn't have got on together anyway.”

  Secretly, I was glad, too; it was to be my castle, my creation. I didn't want to share it with anyone except Mairi and whomever we invited to stay.

  The immediate task that now faced me was modernizing my High Street flat so I could sell it; then Mairi and I would be able to move into the Mill and devote ourselves to remaking it around our dreams. But I needed help. I went to see an old associate named 'Vile' MacVinish, a plasterer; he lived on the fourth floor of an old tenement near Leith.

  Listen, Will," he told me, "I'm doing up my own flat. If you give me a hand, I'll help you with yours. I need you to help me put up scaffolding."

  "I've never put up scaffolding in my life; I wouldn't know what I was doing."

  "Ach, I've put up so fuckin much scaffolding in my time I know it backwards. I did the High Rises in Wester Hailes, I used to be a parachutist in the Army, nae fuckin worries, I'll keep ya right. Just come around on Saturday morning."

  I arrived at his flat around 9:30 but he wasn't even awake yet. The scaffolding he had hired was piled on the pavement outside. I shook him and he groaned like a rusty door hinge, peering resentfully at me through bloodshot eyes.

  "Vile, the scaffolding's outside; are you going to get up?"

  "Ohh, Jesus, I had a rough night. Will. I've gotta have a joint first," He sat up, still in his clothes from the night before, and began to roll a huge joint, eight inches long, of Manali dope, one of the most potent in the world.

  "Hey, take it easy,Vile; we've, got to climb up scaffolding,"

  "Nae worries. Will," he assured me, inhaling copiously, then coughing.

  I refused to smoke any; I wanted to keep my head clear. He smoked it all, and staggered unsteadily to the toilet; the sound of a long and heavy urination gurgled through the flat.

  Vile clumped unevenly ahead of me down the stone stairs, pulling on his leather jacket.

  We had erected ahout two storeys when he threw down the piece of pipe

  he was holding.

  "Fuck this, I gotta get a bottle of whisky. You into sharing a bottle?"

  "I'm not drinking. Vile, you can have the whisky." I followed him back up to the flat, where he drank half a bottle in surprisingly few swallows, then smoked another joint, while I watched with growing concern.

  By the time we went back down the stairs he was almost legless, and incoherent. How he didn't fall as we climbed the scaffolding, I don't know. But the scaffolding went up.

  A couple of days later, I returned to help him take it down. A gale was blowing and the structure swayed precariously; it was only held by one tie on a third floor window. We ha
d disassembled one level when he began cursing:

  "Ah to Hell with this. I don't care about this bloody scaffolding We'll just chuck it doon. You go below and stop the traffic."

  "There's cars down there," I protested, "and people are shopping."

  "S'all right, we'll chuck it doon."

  It's your job, your scaffolding, I thought, and went down to the street, waving people back and stopping cars.

  Scaffolding pipes were bouncing all over the road, bending under the impact, knocking holes in the pavement. Women cowered in doorways, and I wondered whether the police would come.

  Then, when all the pipes were down. Vile remembered that he had forgotten to do the most important job, the reason he had hired the scaffolding in the first place: to knock a hole under the kitchen window for a drain. So I had to hold him by his boots, hanging upside down from his fourth storey window, as he swung a pickaxe at the solid sandstone wall, the wind howling around us.