The Red Door (29 page)

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 he 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.

4

The following day which was again fine he left the house and went down to a headland which overlooked the sea. He sat there for a long time on the grass, feeling calm and
relaxed. The waves came in and went out, and he was reminded of the Gaelic song
The Eternal Sound of the Sea
which he used to sing when he was young. The water seemed to stretch westward
into eternity and he could see nothing on it except the light of the sun. Clamped against the rocks below were the miniature helmets of the mussels and the whelks. He remembered how he used to boil
the whelks in a pot and fish the meat out of them with a pin. He realised as he sat there that one of the things he had been missing for years was the sound of the sea. It was part of his
consciousness. He should always live near the sea.

On the way back he saw the skull of a sheep, and he looked at it for a long time before he began his visits. Whenever anyone came home he had to visit every house, or people would be offended.
And he would have to remember everybody, though many people in those houses were now dead.

He walked slowly along the street, feeling as if he were being watched from behind curtained windows. He saw a woman standing at a gate. She was a stout large woman and she was looking at him
curiously. She said, ‘It’s a fine day.’ He said, ‘Yes.’

She came towards him and he saw her red beefy face. ‘Aren’t you John Macleod?’ she asked. ‘Don’t you remember me?’

‘Of course I do,’ he replied. ‘You’re Sarah.’

She shouted jovially as if into a high wind, ‘You’ll have to speak more loudly. I’m a little deaf.’ He shouted back, ‘Yes, I’m John Macleod,’ and it
seemed to him as if at that moment he were trying to prove his identity. He shouted louder still, ‘And you’re Sarah.’ His face broke into a large smile.

‘Come in, come in,’ she shouted. ‘Come in and have a cup of milk.’

He followed her into the house and they entered the living room after passing through the scullery which had rows of cups and saucers and plates on top of a huge dresser. In a corner of the room
sat a man who was probably her son trapped like a fly inside a net which he was repairing with a bone needle. He was wearing a fisherman’s jersey and his hands worked with great speed.

‘This is George,’ she shouted. ‘My son. This is John Macleod,’ she said to George. George looked up briefly from his work but said nothing. He was quite old, perhaps
fifty or so, and there was an unmarried look about him.

‘He’s always fishing,’ she said, ‘always fishing. That’s all he does. And he’s very quiet. Just like his father. We’re going to give John a cup of
milk,’ she said to her son. She went into the scullery for the milk and though he was alone with George the latter didn’t speak. He simply went on repairing his net. This room too was
cool and there was no fire. The chairs looked old and cracked and there was an old brown radio in a corner. After a while she came back and gave him the milk. ‘Drink it up,’ she
instructed him as if she were talking to a boy. It was very cold. He couldn’t remember when he had last drunk such fine milk.

‘You were twenty-four when you went away,’ she said, ‘and I had just married. Jock is dead. George is very like him.’ She shouted all this at the top of her voice and he
himself didn’t reply as he didn’t want to shout.

‘And how’s that brother of yours?’ she shouted remorselessly. ‘He’s a cheat, that one. Two years ago I sold him a cow. He said that there was something wrong with
her and he got her cheap. But there was nothing wrong with her. He’s a devil,’ she said approvingly. ‘But he was the same when he was young. After the penny. Always asking if he
could run messages. You weren’t like that. You were more like a scholar. You’d be reading books sitting on the peat banks. I remember you very well. You had fair hair, very fair hair.
Your father said that you looked like an angel. But your brother was the cunning one. He knew a thing or two. And how are you?’

‘I’m fine,’ he shouted back.

‘I hope you’ve come to stay,’ she shouted again. He didn’t answer.

‘You would be sorry to hear about your mother,’ she shouted again. ‘We were all fond of her. She was a good woman.’ By ‘good’ she meant that she attended
church regularly. ‘That brother of yours is a devil. I wonder if your mother liked him.’ George looked at her quickly and then away again.

He himself shouted, ‘Why do you ask that?’ She pretended not to hear him and he had to shout the words again.

‘It was nothing,’ she said. ‘I suppose you have a big job in America.’

He was wondering what she had meant and felt uneasy, but he knew that he wouldn’t get anything more out of her.

‘They’ve all changed here,’ she shouted. ‘Everything’s changed. The girls go about showing their bottoms, not like in my day. The boys are off to the dances every
night. George here should get married but I wouldn’t let him marry one of these trollops. And you can’t visit your neighbours any more. You have to wait for an invitation. Imagine that.
In the old days the door would be always open. But not any more. Drink up your milk.’

He drank it obediently as if he were a child.

‘Jock died, you know. A stroke it was. It lasted for three years. But he never complained. You remember Jock.’

He didn’t remember him very well. Was he the one who used to play football or the one who played tricks on the villagers? He couldn’t summon up a picture of him at all. What had she
meant by his mother and his brother? He had a strange feeling as if he were walking inside an illusion, as if things had happened here that he hadn’t known of, though he should have. But who
would tell him? They would all keep their secrets. He even had the feeling that this large apparently frank woman was in fact treacherous and secretive and that behind her huge façade there
was lurking a venomous thin woman whose head nodded up and down like a snake’s.

She laughed again. ‘That brother of yours is a businessman. He is the one who should have gone to America. He would have got round them all. There are no flies on him. Did you not think of
coming home when your mother died?’

‘I was . . . I couldn’t at the time,’ he shouted.

George, entrapped in his corner, the net around his feet, plied his bone needle.

‘It’ll be good to come home again,’ she shouted. ‘Many of them come back. Donny Macdonald came back seven years ago and they hadn’t heard from him for twenty years.
He used to drink but he goes to church regularly now. He’s a man of God. He’s much quieter than he used to be. He used to sing a lot when he was young and they made him the precentor.
He’s got a beautiful voice but not as good as it was. Nobody knew he was coming home till he walked into the house one night off the bus. Can you imagine that? At first he couldn’t find
it because they had built a new house. But someone showed it to him.’

He got up and laid the cup on the table.

‘Is Mr Gordon still alive?’ he shouted. Mr Gordon was his old English teacher.