The Words of the Mouth

by Ronald Smith

  ******

  From dawn till dusk, and often late into the night, the Herculean labours of the Mill obsessed me, and I failed to notice how Mairi and I had let ourselves drift apart by not spending time together and talking. She had placed herself completely behind me and given me total support, but at the price of neglecting her own tremendously creative abilities. She had found it difficult to argue with the single-minded domineering overseer and bully I was fast becoming. Now she was expecting a baby, and I had no time to give her between my journeys to Dundee, my battles with bureaucracy, and my increasing dissatisfaction with the work being done.

  The team's work had started to go adrift and they became more and more careless; the brickwork was so crude I felt even I could do better; and the joinery was jagged and shoddy.

  Jamie was drinking ever more heavily, and smoking dope constantly. Often, he refused to get out of bed, sleeping off his hangovers. I remonstrated with him, but he argued back: "I'm the boss and it's my job. You're paying us, but I say how things are done, I tell the crew what to dae. It doesna matter about me no being there."

  He became completely lazy, staying in bed all day and letting his men do everything, Jamie hated work, it dawned on me; when he did any, there was no smoothness or pleasure in his handling of the materials; it was all smash and bang.

  Next, he became ill. I was fuming with impatience and complained bitterly to Mairi, but he had won her sympathy,

  "Poor Jamie," she said, "He's not at all well. You can't expect him to work."

  While I had been toiling flat out night and day, hardly able to be alone with Mairi, Jamie had become her confidant, cleverly playing on her feelings of neglect, telling her how horrible I was to her, while she tended him. Her ingenuous innocence caused her to take people at face value; she wasn't cynical enough to see through them and consequently was a real target for hangers-on.

  The work became more and more nightmarish: the whole place was dug up, and holes surrounded the house and criss-crossed the yard like trenches in Flanders, filling in with mud and water into which people fell regularly. Vast mounds of rubble were heaped everywhere. Concrete refused to set in the cold weather and fires had to be lit upon it.

  While the cottage roof was being rebuilt, a blizzard struck and we had to work in the blinding, swirling snow.

  One evening I returned to the Mill after being away for a couple of days. After picking my way precariously over the planks spanning various trenches, I walked into the kitchen in a filthy temper, to find it full of the usual louts hanging around doing nothing: Jamie, Andy, Wilson, and Charlie from the village. I began wrangling with Jamie right away, about a job he wasn't doing to my satisfaction, when I noticed with renewed fury, a complete stranger sitting in my chair with a cup of tea in both hands, watching me with amusement.

  "And who the fuck are you?" I snapped, rounding on him.

  "I'm Bob," he grinned disarmingly, a huge toothy smile I liked at once. "I came to help; sorry if I'm in the way."

  He had just hitch-hiked up from Edinburgh, where he had heard about the Mill from friends of mine. "I don't know anything about physical work, but I'm keen to learn."

  Bob told me about himself: he was a Cambridge graduate, but University life had become a bore because he had found exams and studying ridiculously easy; able to read quickly and understand at once the essence of any book, he came effortlessly to the top in all subjects, finding no challenge whatsoever. He then did law briefly, but soon decided it was utterly immoral, and left to become a tattie-picker.

  When he heard about the Mill, he saw it as a chance to work with his hands, and he hoped I would let him start an organic garden and grow vegetables, in return for his contribution.

  We quickly struck up a friendship and in no time he had established himself as a right hand man, an invaluable ally. With his support, I began to see, dimly at first and then in vivid detail, a monstrous debacle looming unless I acted decisively. In my despairing moments, it had seemed things had gone on too far to get rid of Jamie and his men and start again.

  What was revealing itself was the sheer incompetence of these bunglers who were wasting our money on slapdash construction that would have to be done again. Pride and fury flamed within me and I cast aside my reluctance to be a builder, and took command of the work.

  On New Year's Day, when the crapulous crew surfaced after their orgy of drunkenness, I greeted them with my newly-minted resolution.

  "Well, that's the old year gone, boys. This is the New Year, and you're not gonna be here any more," I informed them sardonically.

  But it was not so easy to shake off Jamie, His health took a nose-dive, and we both felt it was our duty to help him. My mind was still crippled with religious misconceptions from my mother's ecclesiastical family and I hadn't yet learned that helping others can he a terribly negative act if you don't know how to look after yourself.

  I soon found that Jamie had cleverly persuaded Mairi to lend him money to buy a flat in Edinburgh, and told her to regard it as advance pay for work he would do. He had used his winning ways and his sleekit smile to charm Mairi, who was like a beautiful fish swimming in the sea, unaware that this lamphrey from the murky depths had leeched onto her and was feeding on her sympathetic nature.

  As Mairi was expecting our baby, my sister arrived to stay with us and lend a hand. Anne is very Christian and full of good works; Jamie played the helpless, hounded invalid so convincingly that she turned on me for mistreating "the poor, suffering lamb."

  It was becoming apparent that he had a hidden talent for turning people against one another.

  Jamie had held up a mask to us, but now I could begin to see behind it. He worshipped booze and dope, and was completely heedless of his body, making himself sick with over-indulgence. He seemed to sober up only in order to get drunk again, to get well only to make himself sick and get more sympathy. It seemed incredible to me that I could ever have allowed this incarnation of the dark side of human nature to insinuate himself into my life and taint my dreams with his sickness.

  The women would not allow me to say a word against him; every time I tried, it only made them more hostile towards me. To my consternation, I realised he was sleeping with my sister. He was still polite to me in front of the ladies, but alone, he had the boldness and effrontery to remark, "1 don't like how you treat your wife,"

  I had to appear at the Sheriff Court in Edinburgh on a minor drugs charge. I had been busted for a tiny piece of hash weighing about one-tenth of a gram, which was really ironic when you consider how much I have handled. While I was standing around waiting my turn, a court officer walked over and greeted me warmly; I didn't know him at all at first.

  "Hello, Will. How are you doing? Don't tell me you're here on a charge? What have they got you for?"

  I recognised him as he spoke; he had been the local bobby on the High Street Beat; we had become close through his interest in art.

  Two drug squad policemen came over to laugh at me, and he put his arm around my shoulders protectively.

  "Listen, this is a personal friend of mine; you leave him alone, hear?" That made me feel a lot better; court can be very depressing if you're on the receiving end.

  When I went into the courtroom, I saw with a disagreeable start that it was the same judge who had presided over the Chinese waterpipe trial years before, the one whom I had deceived with my show of innocence. And he recognised me right away, I could see from the frown that came over his face.

  The trial commenced, charges were read, statements given. I listened,only a spectator, not really taking much interest. Then I heard something that focussed my attention promptly.

  "I'm considering sending this man to jail," the judge declared.

  "I protest," said my lawyer, "you can't send someone to jail for such a tiny piece."

  You bastard,' I thought; 'if you put me in jail, I'll. . . put a huge curse on you.'

  He stared severely over his half-spectacles at me for a m
oment.

  "If you ever come here again, young man, I will put you in prison." He gave me a fifty pound fine.

  Outside, I noticed a familiar, thickset figure, dressed in ragged jeans and a nondescript jacket; his rounded bullet head made him look like a bloated turnip. It was Black Bob, minus his Mohican hairstrip.

  He told me he had married and had been living with his wife and three kids in a housing estate; then she had left him to bring up the boys on his own. I admired the way he was coping and thought 'My God, he's changed', although his appearance was not inspiring. I had always been attracted to him because he was a good artist, and he liked my paintings.

  I asked him to come up to the Mill and help, confident that he had overcome his mental instability. He said he would, and brought the children with him.

  He didn't get much work done; after he had been here a week he began drinking two bottles of whisky a day and started to behave more and more erratically. Matters got steadily worse.

  One day as I was driving him up from Edinburgh, we began arguing and it escalated somehow into a violent shouting match. Suddenly, he smashed the bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale he had been drinking over the dashboard, and thrust the jagged edge an inch from my neck.

  I stopped the car.

  At that moment a police car spotted us and pulled up, and the constable came over.

  "It's all right, officer, we're just having an argument," I shouted at him, and he turned away, perhaps wary of getting involved needlessly.

  Bob wanted a drink, and I wanted to calm him down, so when we reached Gateside I took him into a pub. He began playing pool with several locals and immediately got their backs up by claiming he was the U.S. pool champion, which they laughed at derisively. He swore he was, and became aggressively boastful and overbearing, talking faster and more furiously, I could see a fight erupting at any moment.

  "Look, Bob, just leave it out," I said, pushing him out to the car and driving back to the mill.

  'What's happening?' 1 wondered.

  I soon found out.

  The next day, he shaved his head.

  I should have realised this was a sign that he was going on one of his psychotic trips and got rid of him at once.

  In my studio, a few days later, I found he had been putting bizarre additions on some of my drawings, trying to change my reality. Written on the back of some of them, were enigmatic remarks like, 'Now it's open'

  That night I had a dreadful dream: I was in the darkened Mill, and as my eyes grew accustomed to the dim light they revealed a congregation of every devil and demon that ever was, sitting around, watching me intently. An ominous sense of foreboding gripped me.

  Late the following evening, Bob appeared at my door, stripped naked and covered from head to foot in smearings of black grease. My heart sank.

  "I have come to purify you," he announced in a portentous way.

  "Oh, fuck off." I snorted.

  But he began running round and round the house, chanting and shouting "MAKOOMBEE, MAKOOMBEE'." He had evidently gone into total alcoholic psychosis and was trying Black Magic on me, which works through auto-suggestion; you give it power over you by being scared. His behaviour was a calculated terror campaign to get me under his power, but I knew it was all just an illusion, a trick.

  I drew a mental ring round myself, Mairi and the child, and kept saying "Just shut up!" every time he came near the window.

  He grew progressively more angry, shouting and bounding around in the night. He encountered Bob, who was staying across in one of the cottages, started a violent argument, and punched him in the nose.

  I couldn't call the police, as it was then against my principles to get involved with them. I began to get rattled, unable to think what to do next.

  When he seemed calmer, I ventured out and tried to talk him into leaving. It was about two in the morning, and as we walked across the dark courtyard, a bat flew around us three times, then vanished into the Mill, like a scene from last night's dream. As the bat flew out again, we entered the Mill, still arguing.

  Abruptly, he began shouting wildly and clutched one of the square wooden pillars in a bear hug, trying to pull down the building, like Samson. He is hugely strong and I feared he would do it.

  ."Just shut up and stop that," I said impatiently, and he let go of the pillar, only to snatch up a knife lying on the workbench among the tools.

  "I'm going to kill you!" he snarled, pressing it against my throat.

  I was frozen, unable to respond.

  "If you wanna kill me, go ahead, just make it quick," I said without expression. Seconds went by, filled by the pounding of my heart as he pressed the knife, watching me, his eyes focussing and unfocussing.

  He grabbed my wrist and dragged me over to a vice, shoving my hand into it.

  'He's going to torture me; what am I going to do?' I could see a Charles Manson-like apocalypse coming, newspaper headlines with "Hippy Violence", all my efforts and idealism crashing in ruins because of this madman.

  "Take my right hand," I told him in a deadpan voice, "not my left; I draw with my left hand."

  But he didn't tighten up the vice; instead he became hysterical and began to squeeze his own hand in it. My calmness had unnerved him. I noticed that I had clicked out of the freeze, that 1 could react. 1 should have grabbed a hammer at that point and brained him, but I felt sorry for him and said consolingly,"Don't do that, Bob,"

  With a tormented cry, he jerked his hand out of the iron jaws and ran off into the dark.

  In the morning I phoned up Jake and a couple of other friends and begged them to come over and give me moral support. Jake took Black Bob away to a pub in Newburgh, while Mairi cleared out.

  The two of them returned, having had a lot to drink. They were alone in the kitchen, when Black Bob suddenly lunged at Jake from behind, like a bull.

  Jake adroitly side-stepped and he ran headlong into the stone wall, stunning himself. Jake flew into a murderous rage and smashed a wine bottle over the stove, "One move and I'll kill you; I'll cut you to shreds I" he shrieked as he shoved the broken glass into Bob's face, cutting him slightly.

  With blood trickling down his face, Black Bob burst like a rotten turnip, all the fury went out of him and he became pathetically apologetic.

  We got a van the same day, and bundled all his belongings into it, while he begged me to be allowed to stay. But we shipped him and his kids back to Edinburgh.

  "1 could have ended up doing life for what I almost did," Jake said reflectively when we talked about it later.

  Then 1 began receiving threatening phone calls from Black Bob. 'How should 1 cope with this?' 1 wondered. The words 'You are a dead man' came to me in a dream, and 1 realised I would have to fight him on his own wavelength. I found a postcard of a Mexican death's-head skull, one I didn't like, and drew a black cross on it, then wrote the words and sent it to him. I heard no more from Black Bob after that.

  His psychotic outburst had shaken me, however, and weakened my faith in myself. 1 had been buoyed up by a visionary belief in what I was doing, and I couldn't comprehend how decisions of mine could go so far wrong. I felt it was all my fault, and depression unlocked a gate to further misjudgements.

  I had gone over to Kinross around January to visit Mick, and buy some dope off him. Somehow, 1 lost the key to my car. 1 tried to start it by fiddling with the ignition, but only managed to mess up the wiring. Mick generously offered me accommodation for the night, even giving up his own bed.

  He and his wife were having a hard time, eviction was imminent, and when he asked me if he could stay at the Mill and do some work for rent, I said yes. I put them in the middle cottage while Mick was to search for another house. But he took a fancy to the hut up the hill and said he wanted to fix it up and live there.

  "1 think you should stay where you are and we'll think about that," I told him noncommittally. "You can live here until the first of May."

  The morning after he moved in, the polic
e raided us, looking for drugs, probably because I knew some of the local dealers. 1 did have some dope lying around, but they didn't see it; instead, they caught Mick trying to throw away three-quarters of an ounce and busted him.

  It was the first time he had ever been caught, and although it was his own carelessness, he blamed me.

  The result was that he fell out with me right away. He really wanted the hut badly and was angry that I wouldn't let him have it. He was supposed to be doing fifteen pounds worth of work a week, but he worked grudgingly, and more uncooperatively with each passing day.

  Three weeks after that night at his house, I found the car key in my pocket, where it had been all along. I wondered whether I was losing my grip on things, or if he had hidden the key and returned it later.

  When the first of May came, and Mick had not yet found another house, he claimed I had said 'May', not the first of May, and accused me of changing arrangements. Referring to promises I was supposed to have made, he persuaded Mairi to believe him rather than me, which introduced more poison into our relationship. He took to bad-mouthing me to everyone, sitting in the yard and saying,

  "See that fuckin Sangster, he's no artist at all, just a breadhead. Fuckin shithouse, this place,"

  I felt as if I had dry rot of the mind, with him brooding over there, hating me and spreading distrust by twisting everything. I tried to push Mick into leaving, but he dug in his heels. He stopped working altogether and refused to pay rent or return the seventy pounds I had lent him.

  When he told me he had been promised a house in June, I relented and let him stay for a bit longer. Then his case came up in court, his drug conviction featured prominently in all the newspapers, and the landlord refused to rent him the house.

  "OK, you can stay another month," 1 told him, giving him the olive branch. But he wouldn't give anything in return; rigid, unbending defiance repaid my gesture. I resorted to harassing him, but there were limits. "My wife's pregnant," he complained, "She can't live with all this tension."

  He was like a reed that would snap under too much pressure. If I got in the bailiffs or a team of heavies, it would break him, perhaps drive his wife to suicide. So I simply cut off the electricity and water and did nothing.

  One day a lorry load of gravel arrived and the driver dumped it near the entrance to his house. He ran out, shouting and raving, convinced I was trying to seal him in, bury him alive. That finally spurred him into finding another house.

  Mick was so busy hating me that it was disturbing everything he did. But in the end, I made him stronger; after his departure, he became much more successful than he had been before he came here.

  He had abused me for being a ‘breadhead’ capitalist, yet now he was wheeling and dealing constantly, buying and selling for as large a profit as he could get. I suppose I taught him to accept that part of himself he despised and projected onto me.