Our joint wedding made the front page of the local paper, and we’d have made the nationals too, if Mac the Dentist hadn’t threatened the editor — another patient — with mortal agonies under the drill if he even dreamed of selling the story on.
It all happened so fast that only after the wedding did Jan and I get round to looking for a place to live. However, it didn’t take us long before we found it. . or did it find us?
Given our country upbringing, and our love of dramatic views, why the hell, one might ask, should Jan and I have chosen Glasgow, a hemmed-in hybrid city whose charm is mostly at ground level, in which to set up our first home as Mr and Mrs Blackstone? The answer began with the fact that each of us had excess emotional baggage, one way or another, through in Edinburgh. Much as we loved our Old Town loft, which had been in the past my home and Jan’s refuge, we decided that we must have a new place for our new beginning. We were both self-employed, with clients spread across the central belt, so we could live as conveniently on the River Clyde as on the Forth.
And then, to seal the deal, there was the apartment itself.
Even on a horrible, grey November Saturday it called out to us as we drove along Sauchiehall Street with Jonathan and Colin in the back seat, all of us beginning the journey back to Fife after a fruitless morning of house-hunting and a trip to the Glasgow Transport Museum. ‘Look up there,’ said Jan, pointing to her left from the passenger seat. Normally I’m a firm believer in watching the road while I’m driving, but this was the wife who was talking to me, so for once, I risked a quick glance.
She was gazing at a tall, square, stone tower rising from a chunky, rectangular building up on the crest of the hill. It was one of the many treasures which stand out on the bumpy Glasgow skyline. I pulled the Ozmobile across the inside lane and stopped on the yellow line. We looked up at the imposing structure.
‘Very nice, my love,’ I said, ‘but it looks like some sort of church to me.’
‘In that case, why’s there a For Sale sign towards the top of the tower?’
I leaned forward and took a closer look. As usual, she was right: Jan always did have long vision like a hawk. ‘It looks interesting,’ she said. ‘Come on, Oz, get us up there. Let’s take a closer look.’
It wasn’t easy getting there, thanks to the one-way system, but eventually we made it. I had to admit, the place looked really impressive close up. And yes, it had been converted into flats: converted from what, we could not tell, but in terms of size it looked more like a cathedral than a mere church.
The ‘For Sale’ sign was on the third of what appeared to be four levels in the tower itself. A hell of a long way up in other words, and there was no sign of a lift, but there was no holding Jan by this time. . or me for that matter. We bribed the boys to stay in the Ozmobile with the promise of chips and stepped into the porch, which was at the other end of the building from the tower, and where we found that a row of entry buzzers and a video camera were set into the wall. Beside one we saw a note reading, ‘For Sale, viewing 2–5, weekends.’ I checked my watch; it was four o’clock.
Jan pressed the button, and after a few seconds a woman’s voice crackled from the speaker. ‘Come to see the flat? Just step inside, and I’ll come for you. It’s a bit awkward first time.’
She was right: I’ve been on shorter training runs than the walk from the porch to the front door. But as soon as we stepped inside we had forgotten all about it; we were sold. For the third time in my life, I fell in love at first sight. . this time with a house.
The place was what the Edinburgh estate agents would call a ‘double upper flat’, meaning that it wasn’t a flat at all, but on two levels. The small entrance hall was lit by glass panels in the main door, and by another fully glazed one at the far end. A bit pokey, we thought, until we stepped into the living room. . and into the City of Glasgow itself.
The first thing to strike us were the tall, wide, insulated windows on three sides of the great apartment, reaching from the polished wooden floor almost up to the high ceilings. Even in the dying light of the winter afternoon, the view they gave was sensational. From where we stood, as we looked straight ahead, cars flooded incessantly over the Kingston Bridge, the Clyde crossing. To our right we saw the great baroque tower of the University, and set beneath it the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum and the Kelvin Hall. To our left, Sauchiehall Street and Bath Street ran away up towards George Square and the City Chambers.
The owner didn’t need to show us the recently fitted kitchen, or the three bedrooms at the top of the spiral staircase, the largest with its en-suite shower-room. She didn’t need to tell us about the cable television and the private off-street parking places. We let her though, for she was dead keen. She was trying to sell the place even harder than we were trying to buy it.
‘I’m sorry about the climb up here from the street,’ she said, as she finished her tour. ‘That’s what puts people off, I think.’ She looked at Jan hopefully, woman to woman.
I’ve never known any one who played their cards closer to her chest than my wife. On that afternoon she had them stuck right up her jumper. She was absolutely poker-faced as the lady handed her the specifications. ‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘I can understand that.’
I did my best to follow suit. ‘Thank you,’ I muttered solemnly as we left. ‘We’ll think about it.’
We thought about it all the way to the car. Inside the Ozmobile, Jan looked at me, still unsmiling. ‘Just one thing, darlin’,’ she said. Her rich voice, which was made to impart extra meaning to every word, was at its throatiest.
‘What’s that?’
‘Absolutely no bloody iguanas. Okay?’
The deal was done inside a week. It’s amazing how fast the professionals involved in house-buying can move if you really press them. . or in the case of surveyors, if you promise them enough alcohol. The place was expensive, but nothing we couldn’t afford. I still had a cash pile left from my share of an earlier adventure, and we sold the loft to my pal Ali, the demon grocer, without even having to advertise it.
I’ll never forget the day we moved in. We stood there arm in arm, before the curtains went up, or the first of the furniture was delivered, looking all around us at the bright sunny morning outside, feeling like guardians of the city.
Jan was standing on the very same spot as I returned from showing the black giant down to the entrance door. Only she wasn’t looking out; she was staring at me, still stunned by the sheer awesome presence of our visitor. ‘Who the hell was that?’ she gasped. ‘Or what?’
‘I introduced you, didn’t I? That was Everett. He’s my new client; I’m going to do some work for him.’
‘That’s a lawyer?’ she asked.
I smiled as I slipped my arms around her waist, drawing her to me. ‘As a matter of fact, he is. But that’s not what he does now. I tell you, honey, our place in the affections of our nephews is secure.
‘See the big fella down there?’ I nodded at the window. ‘He’s their favourite wrestler!’
Chapter 3
From the outside, the headquarters of the Global Wrestling Alliance. . ‘The trading identity of Everett Davis Sports Entertainment plc,’ as it said on the big man’s business card. . looked like any other shed on the Craigton Industrial Estate.
Even the cars in the senior executives’ parking area were similar to those in the unit which faced it across the street, a mix of BMWs, big Fords and Toyotas. The two exceptions were a gleaming new Range Rover, which I guessed was the only car there that could accommodate Everett Davis’ bulk, and a plain white Winnebago camper van.