The Words of the Mouth
Page 40
CHAPTER ELEVEN
On the night of the party, vehicles of every sort choked the yard and the lane, and spilled out on to the road. Young men carried amplifiers, speakers, and microphones into the hall, where they unpacked electric guitars and keyboards.
Impudent, over-excited children, dressed as clowns, gipsies and supermen, swirled about the entrance, accosting each new arrival: "What are you, what are you?"
Dressed as a Scottish Viking, and resplendent in horned helmet and kilt, with a long wolf's fur cape and a chain mail shirt for period effect, I welcomed guests as they came into the yard.
One floor of the Mill was given over to food and drink; crumbling hand-sliced loaves of home-made bread lined one table, behind large trays of yellow and red quiche and pizza. Two metal kegs of ale lay on their sides on another table, red plastic tubs below the taps already swimming with brown spillage, in which a half-eaten apple lay drowned. Dark bottles of various ancestry held home-made wine from a dozen kitchens, already being decanted into a superabundance of white plastic cups.
A knight-templar in evening dress and long flowing white silk robe, bearing a red Maltese Gross on one shoulder, made urbane conversation with a Nazi officer whose peaked hat was casually tilted back on his head. In a corner, George, wearing a gipsy headscarf and a dark Arab tunic, was bent over, beating time and playing his fiddle with energetic concentration, while his tartan-clad sidekick. Poacher, stamped and hooched through his bushy beard, the rakish pheasant tail feather in his bonnet jerking and wagging.
Even some of my enemies were there, old quarrels now behind us. Don came as a wizard, his gown sparkling with stars and celestial shapes. Mick grinned from beneath the broad-brimmed hat of a cavalier, his long flowing locks dangling over a red tunic with a blue Scottish Saltire on the chest. Charley, his personality deceptively inflated by a t-shirt bearing a picture of Bob Dylan, tried to help Richard chat up a couple of blond German girls.
Mairi was belle of the ball, elegantly clad in a flowing eighteenth century gown complete with high wig and black facial beauty patches. I caught sight of her leading little Sheena across the yard, bearing a chamber pot aloft in one hand.
Two policemen arrived, ineffectually trying to pass on a complaint from the neighbours about the bagpipe noise, and were baffled ‘by the exotic array of the costumed guests. When I heard of their intent, I exclaimed triumphantly, "Pipe music is perfectly legal; only electronic music can be too loud!”
The band started to play and dancing began in earnest; a white-robed bearded monk with a nine week old baby strapped to his chest, jigged and pranced. Flora MacDonald, in tartan, doublet and lace, danced with Spiderman. Jake bopped, totally absorbed in the complex rock and roll steps he executed with his wife, rolling and catching her as he turned, A coal miner with blackened face and red knotted neck scarf, holding a white plastic cup, watched sardonically.
People leaned over the balustraded balcony to watch, or slumped back on sofas and mattresses to lose themselves in the ritual of joint-building and smoking. Several large dance studio mirrors leaning against the walls reflected the leaping revellers. I saw myself cavorting, and grinned hugely; I was dancing with everybody.
During an interval, a magician appeared and conjured coloured scarves from his sleeve, his ear, and from the ears of the squealing children who crowded up to him.
A joint floated towards me, connected to a hand, a white sleeve, and a pair of red, heart-shaped spectacles propped on Vile's nose. A bearded hermit, dressed as Dr Who, with a long, knitted scarf, described to me his latest religious experience which had resulted in him being heavily sedated and locked up in a mental hospital.
Trying to descend the stairs against a stream of people coming up, I edged past a young man in a denim jacket slumped over the steps, either being sick or attempting to roll a joint.
Outside, the nearly full moon had risen above the trees to the south. Guitars were being played by youths leaning against a car. Groups of tireless children ran between the Mill and the farmhouse, where a secondary growth of the main party had developed. In the kitchen, women were discussing childbirth, hippies in Afghan hats were swilling wine, and Jamie lay incoherently drunk on the dog's blanket.
Drowsiness finally began to embrace the children, who were borne away to cars or to beds in various rooms. Cars extricated themselves from the huddled throng in the yard, A sleeping body lay in the grass where a heroic but doomed struggle with alcohol had been fought; his victorious bottle still clutched in his hand. I lifted it gently and took a swig.
When the last band had packed its instruments into its van, and only a few straggling survivors remained, the brightly-lit windows of the Mill were emptier than ever I had seen them, emptier than when Mairi and I had first looked through them and peopled the rooms with our imaginations; now only the spent after-glow of our life together shone out into the night. Our dancing days were over.
Mechanically, I entered the empty hall and surveyed the wreckage of cups, balloons, and cigarette butts. Log embers still burned in the iron stove, as when I had sat beside it while listening to Single Minds. There was a large floor brush under the stairs, and I began pushing it across the floor, sweeping the rubbish into a heap.
If Mr. Baston could see me now: a scaffie once again. A bit of a poem he had showed us floated into my mind;
When I reach the bottom
of bottomlessness, there will be
no broken wings beside me
no chariot of the sun
and no crystal battlements
will infinitely shine above me
I will be left with only
the loneliness of falling.
******
When Sheena awoke the next morning, I sat on her bed and explained that I had to go away for a long time. I took a rounded stone from my pocket and handed it to her.
"This is a magic stone, Sheena. If you miss me, all you have to do is hold it and think of me and I'll be there. But don't do it too often or I'll get cross."
"But where are you going, Daddy?"
"I'm going to look for a magic mountain, which has a green giant living in it, and he wears a funny hat," This explanation seemed to make perfect sense to her, and she exclaimed, "I've seen the mountain, I know where you're going!"
"Draw me a picture of it, then." And she took the paper and crayons I offered her and began to draw.
Most of my things had been given away, lent to friends, or put in storage. There-was nothing holding me now from the final step.
I got in the Renault, and Mairi came over to stand by the window,
I looked up at her, raising my eyebrows.
"You know I love you," I said.
"I love you, too," she sighed from depths of weariness and resignation.
I looked at her closely, questioningly - Was this a change of heart?
No; her expression still held me at a distance.
"Well, I'm off, then," and I switched on the engine.
************
Acknowledgement
Poem by Norman MacCaig
from 'The Collected Poems of Norman MacCaig',
Polygon Press