by Ronald Smith
******
It made no difference; she was determined to sell the place and go away on her own.
The wind had gone out of my sails. I no longer cared about the Mill, and with a heavy heart I turned my mind to advertising it in the real estate sections of the newspapers, I wrote descriptions of the buildings, made drawings of them, had photographs taken, prepared a brochure as a handout, and waited for interested enquiries to roll in.
At first it was degrading trying to interest buyers in the solid expression of fantasies that had dominated me for years; I alone knew how much of my life had been hammered and trowelled into the walls they looked at so casually, I wanted to take them by the lapel and say, "Look, this is my blood."
Then I grew to appreciate the extent to which the property had become my opium: I was caught up by material possessions, the trap I had always persuaded myself I would never fall into, 'Let it go,' I thought,'you only get to keep what you-would not lose in a shipwreck;, if you try to keep it you will lose more besides,'
I had the experience, the knowledge of building, of wheeling and dealing, the person I now was; this was all that really mattered.
The old urge to travel now reappeared; I wanted to leave Scotland, walk away from, the debris of the past, travelling light.
"I'm going to Australia," I said to Mairi as a by-the-Way, the next time I saw her. "You can sell the place and keep what you get. That's it; I'm clearing out,"
Her; freedom had been restricted by my efforts to raise money through hiring the Mill as a studio; now it was all up to her, an offer she couldn't refuse because it was in fact a fait accompli.
Two days later, she came to find me, "Halloween is at the end of this month. What about having a farewell party for everyone - Could you stay for that?' We can have a fancy dress party, get in several bands, make lots of food."
That was what she really liked doing, organizing parties, having lots of people around. And it appealed to my theatrical sense, also my nostalgia for the old days that were gone. "Right, And I'll leave the next day."
In the solitude of my bachelor flat at the end of the farmhouse, I began painting a little picture of a dog baying at a star. It was like an icon, dark warm colours and stylized shapes, almost Egyptian.
Each night, I felt compelled to add to it, or change it, until gradually I had painted over the dog's body and only his head remained. The overall effect was a little sinister.
Late one night while I was carefully brushing on some more opaque water colour straight from the tube with a tiny camel-hair brush, the front door opened, and Mairi entered in her nightgown, distraught with wide frightened eyes.
“Will, something dreadful has happened," she exclaimed, with a helpless sag of her mouth.
"What is it?" I replied.
"It's Jamie, he's been horribly battered. Somebody attacked him
in the sitting-room and his head's all bloody. I've just been washing him at the sink."
"I'll have a look," I said, rising from my chair and following her back over to her part of the house.
Jamie was in a sorry state; his head was swollen and bound with cotton, and I could see red bruises beginning to appear on the parts of his face that were not covered. He was very drunk and could barely speak, We half-carried him back up to the sitting-room and laid him on the sofa, where he lay groaning.
The next day, Mairi phoned a homeopathic quack - she had little faith in conventional medicine - who came over and sprinkled white powder on Jamie's cuts and contusions and gave him white pills to suck.
He had been drinking heavily in a pub in Newburgh and attempted to cycle home, but fell off his bike onto the grass, too drunk to go any further. He had managed to crawl as far as the Mill, although he now stayed several miles up the road, letting himself in and crashing out on the sofa, while Mairi had been sleeping upstairs.
Someone had followed after him, someone bent on revenge for a drunken insult or with an old grudge to pay off, and stalked him into the house and up to the sofa, beating him about the head with an iron bar as he lay there in a stupor.
It was an old tinker's trick, and I had a couple of ideas about who was responsible, but I felt cold and detached, as if this were merely the enactment of the words of a sentence passed long ago.
******
