The Red Door

by Iain Crichton Smith

  Would he be able to say to his wife when she asked him about the cat, ‘I’ve given it to the Stone Age People. They have made a god of it. We will never die, we are immortal, the little beings will look after it, they will bring it up on their long march through history. They will climb the steps through the passageways towards our bingo and our postcards and our guidebooks and our large coloured touring buses and our clothes that flutter transiently round our transient bodies and they will take our cat with them as their god. We will be part of their history as they climb towards number and alphabet, as they ascend from their shell necklaces towards Woolworths, our bluish cat will go with them catching their rats and voles: the wildness slowly taming’?

  He took one last look down. The postcards were strewn all over the place except that one of the little people, with strained knitted brows, was turning one over and over in his hands (on the back was the space for someone to write, ‘Dear Lucy, I am having a wonderful time. I am sending this to you from the cutest Stone Age village. Ha ha, imagine me in the Stone Age . . . ’) as he had seen the monkey doing with the coconut, abandoning it, and climbing the meshed wire to look out, its brows serious and ancient, an obscene man. The cat had gone to sleep and someone was banging two stones together endlessly while others were removing the antlers from the deer from which eventually they would make bone needles which could lead them to the large coaches where they would come and visit themselves in pink slacks, chattering excitedly with their guidebooks and postcards.

  God’s Own Country

  He coughed a lot, persistently and sharply, as if he had been smoking far too much for far too long. ‘I’ll tell you something about Rhodesia. They call it God’s own country, you know. That’s what they call it. I’ll tell you something. I’m an electrician, you understand. I’m over here for a few months. I’d like to go back but . . . ’ He waved vaguely and then drank more whisky. He was sitting in the pub, now and again banging at the notes of the piano which was sitting in an alcove. As far as I could make out he wasn’t composing any particular tune and I didn’t know whether he could even play the piano. It was one of the few things I could do myself, though I would never play in a pub. I like jazz but not classical music. The piano was old and the lid scarred by cigarette butts. Some of the notes were a bit flat. He looked restless and unhappy and he hadn’t shaved very well or perhaps his face always had that dark look. There were black hairs showing strongly and almost savagely against the brownness of his wrists.

  ‘I’ll tell you something about that bugger Wilson. When he was over seeing Smith, Smith took him out to the verandah and he showed him an African with a spear. “That’s all the bodyguard I need,” he said. Nobody attacked Wilson when he was over there. Your students attack him more than he would have been attacked in Salisbury. They’ve got good manners over there. Christ, I can tell you that, they’re well mannered. Smith doesn’t drink, you know. He was a pilot in the war. You drunken Scottish bums,’ he said to a friend of mine, “you’re always drinking.” But he didn’t mean anything by that. That’s what I heard anyway. You hear all sorts of things but I believe he would say that.

  ‘This place here is so cold. I left Glasgow in ’51. I’ve been dying with the cold since I came back here. I’ve had to put seven blankets on my bed. I came through London, and it’s foggy there and wet and cold. You wouldn’t believe the immorality you get in London. They talk about Rhodesia. Nothing but poofs and ponces in London. You can’t walk a yard without them trying to get your money off you. That’s all they want, money. All the time. You don’t get immorality in Rhodesia. You don’t get hardly any crime, and that’s a fact. That’s a fact. We had the Queen Mum over there: she’s a nice lady.

  ‘I’ll tell you another thing, we haven’t got a National Anthem yet but we will. We’re working on it.’ He ran his fingers along the notes of the piano, the black and the white. ‘Your country over here is going to the dogs. Anyone can see that. You go to Glasgow and see. They’re hanging about with greyhounds and the place is so dirty and wet. Who’d want to live there? In Rhodesia it’s warm and the people are friendly. If I was over there just now I’d be invited into somebody’s house for a drink.

  ‘I’ll tell you something – when I went to Rhodesia I felt at home. Know what I mean? It was so sunny and the streets were shining and everybody was strolling along. No hurry. No one is in any hurry. You can keep Glasgow for me. What have you done to this country? People can’t earn a decent salary. What did you say about servants?

  ‘How many servants did I have in Glasgow? Look, friend, don’t take the mickey. If you’re trying to take the mickey, don’t do it. I can rough it up with the next man. We pay them well, I can tell you that. Were you in the Congo, eh? Well, I’ve been in the Congo and I can tell you you’d be puking if you’d seen the things I’ve seen. I can tell you that, friend. Our Africans are earning more than they would earn in the Congo and you can tell that to your Socialist government.

  ‘I’m going back there the first chance I get.’

  I could hear the rain drumming steadily on the roof. He shivered and coughed again. ‘This bloody cold. If it was anyone else I’d say I’d got soft. You’re an educated man, you shouldn’t believe all the propaganda that you hear. Why have you people got it in for us? Oh, I can see it in your eyes, you’re one of those intellectuals. I’d put the lot of you against a wall and shoot you. Was Wilson in the war, I ask you? Did he fight for his country? I’ll tell you there are more patriots over there than you have over here, and don’t look so superior.

  ‘The lot of you should be shot. Intellectuals.’ He began to cough again, his face almost turning black with the pressure. ‘Look at the state you’ve got your own country in,’ he said, still spluttering. ‘I tell you, Glasgow is full of unemployed people. They looked like dogs standing against the walls, and look at the vandalism. I couldn’t even get a phone I could use.’

  He got up, steadying himself against the edge of the table. ‘My wife died, that’s why I left home. She died two months ago. And I went on the booze. Best wife a man ever had. But I left her alone all the time. See, the job I had, it meant travelling a lot. And I left her in the house. Thank God we didn’t have any children. Well, I went on the booze. I didn’t think, I didn’t think I’d take it so badly. See, somebody say to me I’d have taken it so badly I wouldn’t have believed him. But I’ll be going back, soon as I get the money. I’m looking for a job but I can’t find one. They tell you there are no jobs and I’m a qualified man.’

  His eyes focused on the piano as if he were seeing it for the first time.

  ‘These black notes are no bloody good. No bloody good there for music or for government.’

  I looked at his hands, the hairs startlingly black against the tanned flesh, primitive and barbaric.

  ‘Tell you something about you intellectuals, you don’t know anything. You think you know everything but you know nothing. Put you over there you’d be useless. I can tell you that. The worst people over there are the intellectuals. The Africans don’t understand them. And I’ll tell you something else. Do you know who the Africans like best? I’ll tell you. They like the man who’ll tell them what to do and doesn’t feel guilty. They like to be told what to do. The Imperialists, they like the Imperialists. They like people who’ll talk to them man to man. You should send more Imperialists over.’

  He swayed slightly and I noticed that one of the elbows of his jacket was patched, and that his soiled tie was slightly squint. ‘None of you intellectuals over there,’ he muttered. He made his unsteady way towards the door. ‘I’ve a good mind, I’ve a good mind . . . Aw, to hell with it. You’re all the same. But I’ll tell you something, they wouldn’t have you over there. They wouldn’t take you. Can you repair a TV set? Can you build a power station, eh? I was building a power station. I was away building a power station for six months and my wife died. Can you do that, eh? They need people like me over there. I’m a man’s man. I learned my trade and I had a
position over there. People will speak to you over there. Do you understand me? Aw, to hell, you’re sitting there weighing me up. No warmth.’ He staggered out the door.

  I looked down at the piano, at the black and the white notes, thinking of the island from which I had come, the black and the white. It seemed very distant though not so warm as Rhodesia. I wondered if he would ever get back there and I didn’t know whether I wanted him to. Perhaps as a human being I did.

  I looked down at my own pale hand lying on the table. It seemed very white and very frail. It couldn’t repair a TV set or set up a power station. It was hairless and white and in the half darkness it gleamed with a ghostly shine. I imagined him making his staggering way among the rain and the fog and the neon lights. But then wasn’t that what we all did? And why pity him more than another?

  By the Sea

  On Sunday I was sitting on a bench in the Public Gardens of the small town when she came and sat down beside me. At first she didn’t notice me, perhaps because she didn’t expect to find me there. She was smaller than when I had seen her last – about five years before – and she looked older and more bowed. Her back had begun to curve like a hoop and I don’t think her eyesight was as keen as it used to be. She was carrying a basket and was puffing and trying to get her breath back when I drew attention to myself. She was surprised and said, ‘I can see very well with my glasses but without them my eyesight isn’t so good. And how are you?’

  I said I was fine.

  It was quite warm sitting where we were. Behind us was a large clock in a tower and a garden with red and white flowers. I was looking straight down a street beyond which I could see the sea and people wandering about on the promenade. It was a Sunday during the tourist season and as well as tourists there were weekenders from the city about seven miles away. In the gap between the houses I could see yachts sailing.

  To tell the truth I hadn’t actually wanted to run into her, she being a relative of mine whom I had rather neglected over the past few years.

  ‘How are things with yourself ?’ I asked.

  ‘Didn’t you hear that George is in the hospital?’ she said.

  ‘Oh, is he ill?’ I asked.

  ‘Not ill,’ she said. ‘Not ill physically. Ill mentally. He thinks he’s a colonel in the army. And sometimes he plays with toys. He doesn’t recognise me.’ She spoke very clearly and exactly as if she were talking about a stranger.

  I felt rather guilty not knowing about the illness. But she looked prosperous enough. She was wearing a greyish jumper with a necklace like small loaves around her neck.

  ‘Do you go to see him?’ I asked.

  ‘My daughter takes me sometimes with the car,’ she said. ‘You remember Evelyn? She’s married to the distillery manager who lives in N——,’ and she named a small town on the East coast. ‘She takes me to see him, but it’s no use, he doesn’t know us. And he used to be so lively. He had a motor hirer’s business for three years,’ she said. ‘But then his leg began to bother him and he had to give up. He began to get lonely and restless sitting in the house all the time.’

  I stood up and said, ‘Come along and I’ll buy you your tea.’

  She stood up clutching her bag. I offered to carry it for her but she said no. She looked very old but very determined. I slowed down my steps to conform to hers.

  All around us were the green leaves, and shadows lay on the road. Two boys were fooling about at a telephone kiosk.

  The restaurant which was only about a hundred yards away on the same side of the street had a black frontage and, inside, black leather seats.

  ‘We’d be better upstairs,’ she said. ‘The food is better upstairs.’ I looked at her in surprise not realising that she would know. She took a long time climbing the stairs but eventually we came to a large dining room facing out towards the sea. It had black and red decor and there was a large number of women in large hats and bright dresses at the tables.

  They nodded to her and she smiled frostily, arranging herself and her bag. I thought that it couldn’t be easy for her to be so obviously dined in a place to which she had in the past brought others to dine. But of course in the old days she had been better off, people would talk to her at the church door, for example, they would value her opinion.

  ‘I don’t see much of them now,’ she said, ‘they never come to see me.’ She deliberately sat with her back to them and they regarded me briefly and then started to talk again among themselves.

  ‘Would you like some wine?’ I said.

  ‘No, thank you.’

  She studied the large menu very carefully and then said, ‘I’ll have the fish. I won’t have any soup.’ I said I would have fish as well.

  ‘You remember Murdina,’ she said (another of her daughters), ‘she’s married in Canada. She works in insurance and she’s in charge of a lot of people. Ethel is married in America. The other day she wrote me that she had to drive five hundred miles with her children to be with her husband: he’s just got a better job. I brought them up to be good wives. When they were young I would send them to bed at nine o’clock and teach them how to sew and knit and cook. They’re clever girls.’

  ‘Have you been out seeing them?’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I was out for a month last year before George got ill. I liked it out there. We went out on the plane, the two of us. I thought I would be frightened but I wasn’t at all though it was my first time on a plane.’

  The fish came and she ate it slowly, chewing every mouthful carefully as if she were storing up nourishment against hard times. She ate with great concentration. Now and again she would pause and ask me a question but most of the time she kept at the fish.

  ‘I broke my leg some time ago,’ she said. ‘I fell on the floor. It was slippery. I had just been polishing it. There’s no need for people to live like animals even if they are alone. They give me a pension, you see, and during those weeks, I don’t know how it happened, they overpaid me. So I got a letter from this man in Dunbrick and he said could he have his money back. I couldn’t go at the time because I was limping and I had come out of hospital. Well, when I got better I phoned him and said could I go and see him. So one day I got on the bus – I was a bit nervous at first but it was all right – and I went along to the office. It was shut for lunch so I waited in the park till it opened. Then I went along and I met a lady there and explained the situation to her. I had brought along the money, you see, because I didn’t want to be in debt. I spent a long time talking to her and she was very kind. After a while she took me in to see this man in black glasses and I explained it to him again. He told me it would be all right and I paid him. And I went home. And do you know, that woman comes to see me regularly, the one in the office. It’s very kind of her. She’s like a home help to me.’

  She carefully put the bones at the side of the plate and said that the fish was very good. ‘Very nice indeed.’

  ‘Would you like a sweet?’ I said.

  ‘No, but I should like some coffee.’

  I ordered coffee. The women were still chattering behind her, looking very fresh and healthy in their yellowy hats.

  When we had finished our coffees she said, ‘That was very nice, dear,’ to the waitress. We descended the stairs carefully. At the bottom I paid the bill and she recognised the woman behind the till.

  ‘And how are you, dear?’ said the latter, a thin, slatternly woman who looked very busy.

  ‘Very well, thank you.’

  ‘That’s good. This weather is better, isn’t it?’ She handed me the change.

  ‘This is Chrissie’s boy,’ she said to the woman behind the till. ‘He’s got a good position in Newington. You’d have seen his name in the papers.’

  ‘Thank you, dear,’ said the woman, nodding indifferently at me.

  ‘I’ve got some food here,’ she said. ‘Would you like to come up to the house?’

  ‘No thanks,’ I said, ‘I’ve got to get back tonight. I only came up for
the day.’ As a matter of fact I was staying in a hotel and going away on the following day.

  ‘Well, thank you for my tea,’ she said. ‘I better be getting home.’ I watched her climb the brae to her small council house. She looked both vulnerable and indomitable, climbing steadily, and turning to wave to me at the top, I didn’t know whether she was seeing me or not. In any case she would be all right as there were no big streets to cross on the way home.

  I remembered something she had said to me at the meal. ‘We had a couple staying with us for bed and breakfast once and they tried to pay me with milk bottle tops.’ She had laughed out loud. ‘Really. It was quite fantastic. Milk bottle tops. And the man had a good position as well. You wonder sometimes what people will do.’ I made my way down to the shore. The street was crowded. On one side of the road there was a long queue of people, some of whom were shouting cheerfully at each other, ‘A pint for the balcony’, and so on. The queue started outside the door of a hotel.

  I stood on the pavement and watched little naked boys wading out to sea. There were dogs running about and fat men throwing stones into the water for them to retrieve.

  There were crowds of people lying on the grass, stripped to the waist, and others sitting on deckchairs.

  As I walked along I saw a man standing on a box with a small group of spectators gathered round him. In a corner by herself was a woman in a long coat seated beside an odd-looking contraption. The man who was wearing a dark suit and thick glasses with frames like black liquorice was saying: ‘Sisters and brothers, you have all heard about Moses and the Jews and how they crossed the desert. Well, in Canada there is a river which begins as a small drop in the mountains. One small drop. Then as this river goes down the hills it gathers other drops and it becomes a large river which eventually flows into the ocean.