The Red Door (38 page)

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.

‘Well, Moses was like that. Every man who starts a large movement is like that. Jesus was like that. Moses’ movement was so powerful that though it began as a small drop not even the
Pharaoh himself could withstand it. Christ’s movement was so powerful that not even the Romans could withstand it. So don’t think that you can’t bring anything to God’s
kingdom. Even Moses was meek at first and unwilling to take on God’s work. Each of you may consider himself as a small drop but you must never forget that a small drop can start a river. Each
one of us can add a drop to water the desert and create an oasis here and there.

‘I will tell you a story. Once upon a time there was a man I knew, a dear friend of mine. Well, this incident happened in the First World War. He was a man who didn’t smoke, a
respectable Christian. Now one weekend there were no cigarettes in the camp and he was supposed to look after the stores. And this friend of mine was blamed for the shortage because everyone knew
he didn’t smoke.

‘But a group of rough soldiers determined that they would kill him for not having provided the cigarettes. Imagine that. Kill him. So one evening they waited for him. My friends, it was a
fine evening, a fine summer’s evening, and they waited for him. And what were they carrying? Well, I’ll tell you. They were carrying bayonets. And as he was walking peacefully along the
road he was surrounded by this group of soldiers. What could he do? My friends, what would you have done? He did the only thing possible. He prayed. He prayed very hard. Behind him was a hill which
was shining in the late sun. Well, my friends, the next moment he found himself on top of this hill and the soldiers below. How do you explain that? My friends, how do you explain that? Only faith
can explain that. Only the work of God. My friends, let us pray.

‘Dear Lord, do not let us think that just because we are small drops we are no use to Thee or Thy world. For every great river begins as a small drop. Teach us therefore to realise our own
potentialities and our own qualities so that we may bring them as gifts to Thee.

‘And now, Sister Perkins from Greenock will accompany us in the singing of
Be Thou My Vision
.’ I suddenly realised that the weird contraption was in fact an organ. She began
to press the pedals up and down, seated there in her long dress, very upright, while some of the crowd sang and the others drifted away.

When the singing was over the man said, ‘Next week, DV, and weather permitting, I hope to be at the Little Hall on Greenock Street. I shall see you there. If it is wet we will have a
change of venue.’

He got down from the box and he and the woman and another man put all the stuff including the box and the organ into a van. I watched them as they drove away.

The crowd queueing outside the hotel was lengthening. And suddenly I knew what the queue was for. On Sundays the hotels didn’t open till half past six for drink, and they were waiting to
get in. They were, however, very good-humoured and singing their Glasgow songs. One old woman was dancing what appeared to be a weird Spanish dance at the front of the queue. Now and again she
would shout Olé and the others would echo her joyfully. Her grey hair flashed in the setting sun and she would raise her legs high in the air, revealing red drawers. I stood watching her for
a long while till eventually the doors opened and they all poured into the bar of the hotel.

I arrived here last night at 9 p.m. and I am writing this in my room at the lodgings.

The journey was pleasant. I was in my bunk on the boat – the bunk you ordered for me – but in the early morning – about six – I had an impulse to go on deck. I passed a
steward in white as I walked, rather unsteadily, down the corridor in that sort of sick smell one gets on board ship. The morning was chill, with much sea stretching freely away. I felt my hair
lifting gently in the breeze, and then saw it – the sun – very red, like a banner rising over Skye. There was no one on the deck except myself. I have never seen anything so beautiful
– that sun rising through the mist, very red, very raw.

When we landed at Kyle there was a great screaming of gulls, porters hurrying past with barrows, smell of rolls and butter from the restaurant. My mouth felt foggy somehow. And then I saw my
first train. It was long and brown, the colour of mahogany or that kind of reddish-brown shoe polish I sometimes get. I sat down in one of the rather dirty carriages which at the time was empty but
later three boys entered. They were of my own age, perhaps, if anything, slightly older.

I discovered that they were students at the University too. They were reading brand-new Penguin crime stories while I had a copy of Homer, which surprised them. They were rather amused at the
newness of my case which was on the rack above me. I think they were also amused at my scarf and tie and blazer. They do not seem to appreciate what is being done for them. However they are
friendly. One of them – the most interesting – is called George. He is stocky and redhaired and quite irreverent. He studies medicine and calls one of his lecturers The Spinal Cord. It
turns out that he is in the same lodgings as me. I like him.

The countryside through which we passed is divided into geometrical sections – for farms – some squares, some rectangles. Sometimes it’s straw-coloured, sometimes lemony
yellow, and sometimes green, but very orderly and beautiful, comparing very favourably with the untidy patches at home. It looks very rich and fertile. Nothing of interest happened on the journey
except that my companions tried to buy my dinner for me but I refused. They had all been working during the holidays and had plenty of money. One was at the Hydro-Electric, George at the fishing.
His father comes from Kyle and is skipper of a fishing boat.