The Red Door

by Iain Crichton Smith

  He reached the shore and felt as if the contact with land was an emotionally charged moment. He didn’t quite know how he felt, slightly empty, slightly excited. He walked away from the ship with his two cases and made his way along the main street. It had changed, no doubt about it. There seemed to be a lot of cafés, from one of which he heard the blare of a jukebox. In a bookseller’s window he saw From Russia with Love side by side with a book about the Highlands called The Misty Hebrides. Nevertheless the place appeared smaller, though it was much more modern than he could remember, with large windows of plate glass, a jeweller’s with Iona stone, a very fashionable-looking ladies’ hairdressers. He also passed a supermarket and another bookseller’s. Red lights from one of the cafés streamed into the bay. At the back of the jeweller’s shop he saw a church spire rising into the sky. He came to a cinema which advertised Bingo on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Dispirited trailers for a Western filled the panels.

  He came to a Chinese restaurant and climbed the steps, carrying his two cases. The place was nearly empty and seemed mostly purplish with, near the ceiling, a frieze showing red dragons. Vague music – he thought it might be Chinese – leaked from the walls. He sat down and, drawing the huge menu towards him, began to read it. In one corner of the large room an unsmiling Chinaman with a moustache was standing by an old-fashioned black telephone and at another table a young Chinese girl was reading what might have been a Chinese newspaper. A little bare-bottomed Chinese boy ran out of the kitchen, was briefly chased back with much giggling, and the silence descended again.

  For a moment he thought that the music was Gaelic, and was lost in his dreams. The Chinese girl seemed to turn into Mary who was doing her homework in the small thatched house years and years before. She was asking their father about some arithmetic but he, stroking his beard, was not able to answer. At another table an old couple were solidly munching rice, their heads bowed.

  The music swirled about him. The Chinese girl read on. Why was it that these people never laughed? He had noticed that. Also that Chinese restaurants were hushed like churches. A crowd of young people came in laughing and talking, their Highland accents quite distinct though they were speaking English. He felt suddenly afraid and alone and slightly disorientated as if he had come to the wrong place at the wrong time. The telephone rang harshly and the Chinaman answered it in guttural English. Perhaps he was the only one who could speak English. Perhaps that was his job, just to answer the phone. He had another look at the menu, suddenly put it down and walked out just as a Chinese waitress came across with a notebook and pencil in her hand. He hurried downstairs and walked along the street.

  Eventually he found a hotel and stood at the reception desk. A young blonde girl was painting her nails and reading a book. She said to the girl behind her, ‘What does “impunity” mean?’ The other girl stopped chewing and said, ‘Where does it say that?’ The first girl looked at him coolly and said, ‘Yes, Sir?’ Her voice also was Highland.

  ‘I should like a room,’ he said. ‘A single room.’

  She leafed rapidly through a book and said at last, ‘We can give you 101, Sir. Shall I get the porter to carry your bags?’

  ‘It’s not necessary.’

  ‘That will be all right then, Sir.’

  He waited for a moment and then remembered what he was waiting for. ‘Could I please have my key?’ he asked.

  She looked at him in amazement and said, ‘You don’t need a key here, Sir. Nobody steals anything. Room 101 is on the first floor. You can’t miss it.’ He took his cases and walked up the stairs. He heard them discussing a dance as he left.

  He opened the door and put the cases down and went to the window. In front of him he could see the ship and the bay with the red lights on it and the fishing boats and the large clock with the greenish face.

  As he turned away from the window he saw the Gideon Bible, picked it up, half smiling, and then put it down again. He took off his clothes slowly, feeling very tired, and went to bed. He fell asleep very quickly while in front of his eyes he could see Bingo signs, advertisements for Russian watches, and seagulls flying about with open gluttonous beaks. The last thought he had was that he had forgotten to ask when breakfast was in the morning.

  2

  The following day at two o’clock in the afternoon he took the bus to the village that he had left so many years before. There were few people on the bus which had a conductress as well as a driver, both dressed in uniform. He thought wryly of the gig in which he had been driven to the town the night he had left; the horse was dead long ago and so was his own father, the driver.

  On the seat opposite him there was sitting a large fat tourist who had a camera and field-glasses slung over his shoulder and was wearing dark glasses and a light greyish hat.

  The driver was a sturdy young man of about twenty or so. He whistled a good deal of the time and for the rest exchanged badinage with the conductress who, it emerged, wanted to become an air stewardess. She wore a black uniform, was pretty in a thin, sallow way, and had a turned-up nose and black hair.

  After a while he offered a cigarette to the driver who took it. ‘Fine day, Sir,’ he said and then, ‘Are you home on holiday?’

  ‘Yes. From America.’

  ‘Lots of tourists here just now. I was in America myself once. I was in the Merchant Navy. Saw a baseball team last night on TV.’

  The bus was passing along the sparkling sea and the cemetery which stood on one side of the road behind a grey wall. The marble of the gravestones glittered in the sun. Now and again he could see caravans parked just off the road and on the beach men and children in striped clothing playing with large coloured balls or throwing sticks for dogs to retrieve. Once they passed a large block of what appeared to be council houses, all yellow.

  ‘You’ll see many changes,’ said the driver. ‘Hey, bring us some of that orangeade,’ he shouted to the conductress.

  ‘I suppose so.’

  But there didn’t seem all that many in the wide glittering day. The sea, of course, hadn’t changed, the cemetery looked brighter in the sun perhaps, and there were more houses. But people waved at them from the fields, shielding their eyes with their hands. The road certainly was better.

  At one point the tourist asked to be allowed out with his camera so that he could take a photograph of a cow which was staring vaguely over a fence.

  If the weather was always like this, he thought, there wouldn’t be any problem . . . but of course the weather did change . . . The familiar feeling of excitement and apprehension flooded him again.

  After a while they stopped at the road end and he got off with his two cases. The driver wished him good luck. He stood staring at the bus as it diminished into the distance and then taking his case began to walk along the road. He came to the ruins of a thatched house, stopped and went inside. As he did so he disturbed a swarm of birds which flew out of the space all round him and fluttered out towards the sky which he could see quite clearly as there was no roof. The ruined house was full of stones and bits of wood and in the middle of it an old-fashioned iron range which he stroked absently, making his fingers black and dusty. For a moment the picture returned to him of his mother in a white apron cooking at such a stove, in a smell of flour. He turned away and saw carved in the wooden door the words MARY LOVES NORMAN. The hinges creaked in the quiet day.

  He walked along till he came to a large white house at which he stopped. He opened the gate and there, waiting about ten yards in front of him, were his brother, his brother’s daughter-in-law, and her two children, one a boy of about seventeen and the other a girl of about fifteen. They all seemed to be dressed in their best clothes and stood there as if in a picture. His brother somehow seemed dimmer than he remembered, as if he were being seen in a bad light. An observer would have noticed that though the two brothers looked alike the visitor seemed a more vivid version of the other. The family waited for him as if he were a photographer and he moved forward. As he
did so his brother walked quickly towards him, holding out his hand.

  ‘John,’ he said. They looked at each other as they shook hands. His niece came forward and introduced herself and the children. They all appeared well dressed and prosperous.

  The boy took his cases and they walked towards the house. It was of course a new house, not the thatched one he had left. It had a porch and a small garden and large windows which looked out towards the road.

  He suddenly said to this brother, ‘Let’s stay out here for a while.’ They stood together at the fence gazing at the corn which swayed slightly in the breeze. His brother did not seem to know what to say and neither did he. They stood there in silence.

  After a while John said, ‘Come on, Murdo, let’s look at the barn.’ They went into it together. John stood for a while inhaling the smell of hay mixed with the smell of manure. He picked up a book which had fallen to the floor and looked inside it. On the fly-leaf was written:

  Prize for English

  John Macleod

  The book itself in an antique and slightly stained greenish cover was called Robin Hood and His Merry Men. His brother looked embarrassed and said, ‘Malcolm must have taken it off the shelf in the house and left it here.’ John didn’t say anything. He looked idly at the pictures. Some had been torn and many of the pages were brown with age. His eye was caught by a passage which read, ‘Honour is the greatest virtue of all. Without it a man is nothing.’ He let the book drop to the floor.

  ‘We used to fight in that hayloft,’ he said at last with a smile, ‘and I think you used to win,’ he added, punching his brother slightly in the chest. His brother smiled with pleasure. ‘I’m not sure about that,’ he answered.

  ‘How many cows have you got?’ said John looking out through the dusty window.

  ‘Only one, I’m afraid,’ said his brother. ‘Since James died . . . ’ Of course. James was his son and the husband of the woman he had met. She had looked placid and mild, the kind of wife who would have been suited to him. James had been killed in an accident on a ship: no one knew very much about it. Perhaps he had been drunk, perhaps not.

  He was reluctant for some reason to leave the barn. It seemed to remind him of horses and bridles and bits, and in fact fragments of corroded leather still hung here and there on the walls. He had seen no horses anywhere: there would be no need for them now. Near the door he noticed a washing machine which looked quite new.

  His brother said, ‘The dinner will be ready, if it’s your pleasure.’ John looked at him in surprise, the invitation sounded so feudal and respectful. His brother talked as if he were John’s servant.

  ‘Thank you.’ And again for a moment he heard his mother’s voice as she called them in to dinner when they were out playing.

  They went into the house, the brother lagging a little behind. John felt uncomfortable as if he were being treated like royalty when he wanted everything to be simple and natural. He knew that they would have cooked the best food whether they could afford it or not. They wouldn’t, of course, have allowed him to stay at a hotel in the town during his stay. That would have been an insult. They went in. He found the house much cooler after the heat of the sun.

  3

  In the course of the meal which was a large one with lots of meat, cabbages and turnip and a pudding, Murdo suddenly said to his grandson:

  ‘And don’t you forget that Grandfather John was very good at English. He was the best in the school at English. I remember in those days we used to write on slates and Mr Gordon sent his composition round the classes. John is very clever or he wouldn’t have been an editor.’

  John said to Malcolm, who seemed quietly unimpressed: ‘And what are you going to do yourself when you leave school?’

  ‘You see,’ said Murdo, ‘Grandfather John will teach you . . . ’

  ‘I want to be a pilot,’ said Malcolm, ‘or something in science, or technical. I’m quite good at science.’

  ‘We do projects most of the time,’ said his sister. ‘We’re doing a project on fishing.’

  ‘Projects!’ said her grandfather contemptuously. ‘When I was your age I was on a fishing boat.’

  ‘There you are,’ said his grandson triumphantly. ‘That’s what I tell Grandfather Murdo I should do, but I have to stay in school.’

  ‘It was different in our days,’ said his grandfather. ‘We had to work for our living. You can’t get a good job now without education. You have to have education.’

  Straight in front of him on the wall, John could see a photograph of his brother dressed in army uniform. That was when he was a corporal in the Militia. He had also served in Egypt and in the First World War.

  ‘They don’t do anything these days,’ said Murdo. ‘Nothing. Every night it’s football or dancing. He watches the TV all the time.’

  ‘Did you ever see Elvis Presley?’ said the girl who was eating her food very rapidly, and looking at a large red watch on her wrist.

  ‘No, I’m sorry, I didn’t,’ said John. ‘I once saw Lyndon Johnson though.’

  She turned back to her plate uninterested.

  The children were not at all as he had expected them. He thought they would have been shyer, more rustic, less talkative. In fact they seemed somehow remote and slightly bored and this saddened him. It was as if he were already seeing miniature Americans in the making.

  ‘Take some more meat,’ said his brother, piling it on his plate without waiting for an answer.

  ‘All we get at English,’ said Malcolm, ‘is interpretations and literature. Mostly Shakespeare. I can’t do any of it. I find it boring.’

  ‘I see,’ said John.

  ‘He needs three Highers to get anywhere, don’t you, Malcolm,’ said his mother, ‘and he doesn’t do any work at night. He’s always repairing his motor bike or watching TV.’

  ‘When we got the TV first,’ said the girl giggling, ‘Grandfather Murdo thought . . . ’

  ‘Hist,’ said her mother fiercely, leaning across the table, ‘eat your food.’

  Suddenly the girl looked at the clock and said, ‘Can I go now, Mother? I’ve got to catch the bus.’

  ‘What’s this?’ said her grandfather and at that moment as he raised his head, slightly bristling, John was reminded of their father.

  ‘She wants to go to a dance,’ said her mother.

  ‘All the other girls are going,’ said the girl in a pleading, slightly hysterical voice.

  ‘Eat your food,’ said her grandfather, ‘and we’ll see.’ She ate the remainder of her food rapidly and then said, ‘Can I go now?’

  ‘All right,’ said her mother, ‘but mind you’re back early or you’ll find the door shut.’

  The girl hurriedly rose from the table and went into the living room. She came back after a while with a handbag slung over her shoulder and carrying a transistor.

  ‘Goodbye, Grandfather John,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’ She went out and they could hear her brisk steps crackling on the gravel outside.

  When they had finished eating Malcolm stood up and said, ‘I promised Hugh I would help him repair his bike.’

  ‘Back here early then,’ said his mother again. He stood hesitating at the door for a moment and then went out, without saying anything.

  ‘That’s manners for you,’ said Murdo. ‘Mind you, he’s very good with his hands. He repaired the tractor once.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ said John.

  They ate in silence. When they were finished he and his brother went to sit in the living room which had the sun on it. They sat opposite each other in easy chairs. Murdo took out a pipe and began to light it. John suddenly felt that the room and the house were both very empty. He could hear quite clearly the ticking of the clock which stood on the mantelpiece between two cheap ornaments which looked as if they had been won at a fair.

  Above the mantelpiece was a picture of his father, sitting very upright in a tall narrow chair, his long beard trailing in front of him. For some reason h
e remembered the night his brother, home from the war on leave, had come in late at night, drunk. His father had waited up for him and there had been a quarrel during which his brother had thrown the Bible at his father calling him a German bastard.

  The clock ticked on. His brother during a pause in the conversation took up a Farmers’ Weekly and put on a pair of glasses. In a short while he had fallen asleep behind the paper, his mouth opening like that of a stranded fish. Presumably that was all he read. His weekly letters were short and repetitive and apologetic.

  John sat in the chair listening to the ticking of the clock which seemed to grow louder and louder. He felt strange again as if he were in the wrong house. The room itself was so clean and modern with the electric fire and the TV set in the corner. There was no air of history or antiquity about it. In a corner of the room he noticed a guitar which presumably belonged to the grandson. He remembered the nights he and his companions would dance to the music of the melodeon at the end of the road. He also remembered the playing of the bagpipes by his brother.

  Nothing seemed right. He felt as if at an angle to the world he had once known. He wondered why he had come back after all those years. Was he after all like those people who believed in the innocence and unchangeability of the heart and vibrated to the music of nostalgia? Did he expect a Garden of Eden where the apple had not been eaten? Should he stay or go back? But then there was little where he had come from. Mary was dead. He was retired from his editorship of the newspaper. What did it all mean? He remembered the night he had left home many years before. What had he been expecting then? What cargo was he bearing with him? And what did his return signify? He didn’t know. But he would have to find out. It was necessary to find out. For some reason just before he closed his eyes he saw in the front of him again the cloud of midges he had seen not an hour before, rising and falling above the fence, moving on their unpredictable ways. Then he fell asleep.