The Red Door (37 page)

Matches went back into his cottage and looked around it. There seemed nothing obvious that he could use. There were only the guidebooks, the postcards, the remnants of the past in their glass
cases, the long narrow pieces of bone, the shell-fish necklaces, the map of the settlement. He looked around him in perplexity. He tried his pockets and came out with a lighter. He flicked it
absent-mindedly and put it back again. He took the wallet from his breast pocket, took out the single pound note and replaced it. He took out the cigarette packet and put it back again. He took out
the knife.

He studied the knife and as he was doing so heard the mewing of the smoky cat which belonged to his wife and which he often took with him because it was company for him and also because it
attracted the attention of the tourists because it was so elegant and so beautiful and so rich-looking. They made much of the cat with its large blue eyes and it got him a lot of tips because it
was so unusual and they didn’t expect a man like him, in his position, to own one. It had smoky fur and blue eyes and it walked in a very artistocratic way and it was the most precious and
beautiful thing he had ever owned. It mewed and pressed itself against his legs. He looked down at it (its name was Precious) and a thought swam into his mind. In the cottage he found some
cats’ meat and went out again, the cat following him. It was beautiful as it arched its body lazily, looking up at him, mewing, its eyes large and arrogant. He threw some of the cats’
meat down among the passageways. The cat leaped lightly down and he watched it. In the half-darkness its fur appeared darker: he felt like a sower sowing the first seed in the morning of the world.
It began to lick at the cats’ meat. He threw more down into the centre where the little people were chattering and saw the cat following the meat. The little people saw it.

The cat wanted to go towards the meat but at the same time its hair bristled and stood on end. It spat fiercely. The little people crouched down in their corners looking at the cat. It was
beautiful and fierce and strange and it emitted rays of energy. Blue electricity seemed to spark from it and all the place was full of the smell of blood and rank venison. A child started to crawl
towards the cat but was pulled back. Another one did the same and the cat flashed out a claw. There was a sudden howl and the people crouched, remembering the cat leaping down from above on them.
The child cried and the mother comforted it. The cat walked tall with arched body into the centre of the ring. It licked the cats’ meat warily. It sniffed the dismembered deer. It moved
delicately from the body to the antlered head.

There was a chattering among the people, intense and fierce like the magnified purring of a cat. The cat leaped and out of the sand dragged a wriggling animal which looked like a rat. It laid it
down near the fire and began to eat it. The people looked on, chattering. It shook and shook the animal and then lay down with it beneath its paws. One of the people touched it and it sprang away
but then slowly returned to its kill, circling. Gradually, it quietened down as they all approached it, all humming and chattering, not frightened. It stayed where it was, alert but not afraid:
they seemed dazzled by its beauty, its strangeness. They stretched their hands out carefully, and petted it. It purred. It lay down and purred. It seemed to know them better after a while than it
had known Matches.

He looked down at it from above: it was so strange to see it there among those people. He wondered for a moment whether he had wished them to kill it and thought that perhaps he had. It walked
among the scattered postcards, having fed. It did not seem to want to come up at all. It was wilder than he had thought, not at all an ornament but a really aristocratic being down among these
dwarfish tenements. Perhaps they would make a kind of god of it, worship it. He had a desire to suddenly shout out ‘Bingo!’ in a startlingly loud voice and see if they would start
running, in their scabby furs. For the first time in months he began to smile and almost to laugh out loud as he looked towards the sea, with its lazy waves. He felt more alive than he had felt for
years, so much so that he could have gone down there and picked the meat from the ravaged deer. The cat moved gracefully among the little people like an aristocrat, its smoky body compact and sure,
assured and full of hauteur.

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.

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?

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?’