The Red Door (43 page)

I wanted to tell you that because it’s the thing that’s been troubling me. The pressures are so tremendous. You must try to understand, please. It will be terrible if you don’t
try.

I haven’t had an answer to my last letter yet so this is an extra.

Your loving son,

K
ENNETH

I am sorry I’m late in answering your letter. The truth is, I’ve been ill but not at all seriously. Strangely enough, it is a recurrence of my asthma which I
haven’t felt since I was twelve. I was sitting down to my books the other night when it began. I went to bed and felt like a fool.

I lay in my room in absolute silence for most of the day. It was a strange experience listening to the silence, and watching the leaves swaying slightly against the window. My room is high up
and I don’t hear the traffic. In the evening George would come in and sit at my bedside (for company) studying. He has exams soon and he’s working hard. He looks more cheerful now. Jake
also came to see me, and appears more responsible. I think Joan must be making him wash the oil from his face. He doesn’t spend so much time with his motor cycle now.

The landlady left me alone during the daytime. In a way it was a luxurious illness. I felt, not quite alone, but rather at ease for the first time during an illness. I read nothing and would lie
there for hours not even thinking but allowing thoughts to flit across my mind like leaves across the window pane. I can’t understand why I should have this asthma now.

The landlord sometimes came in after he’d been to the pictures. He is fairly tall with a moustache and very white teeth. He told me all about the pictures he had seen. At first I used to
laugh at him quietly inside myself but I don’t any more. My new humility almost frightens me. He talked to me about the taxis. Apparently he prefers to drive by night. That’s surprising
isn’t it? When he has no film to speak about he says nothing but sits there with his hands between his legs as if he were a guest in my house. Funny, isn’t it? George listens to his
stories very seriously which is a new development.

One morning I was awake watching the dawn come up. Usually in the past I have felt nervous in the early morning, with a hollow in the pit of my stomach. This morning however I felt at ease as if
in tune with the day which was coming into being like a poem into a poet’s mind. And I thought: what a miracle light is. What would happen to us if one night we suddenly realised that the
thick darkness would last forever, the thick furry darkness. Fiona wrote me a note but did not come to see me.

I spent four days in bed and when I got up I decided I would not be sick again. I went into the bathroom. The sun was shining on the white bath, and its rays were on the mirror. The diamonds on
the floor were very bright and real. After I had shaved and washed my face I felt new. Then I went downstairs for my breakfast: it was like a royal entrance. I loved everybody. Rising from the sick
bed is like being reborn. I knew that this love of mine would not last but it did not matter. For that moment it was precious – the stumpy landlady with her vulpine face appeared angelic, her
tray silver and her tea wine: her two children could even have sprouted wings: red-haired George was my dearest friend: Jake and Joan were Adam and Eve in the Garden: and there was no evil in the
world. (Strangely enough I happened that same evening to overhear the landlady complain about her tiredness caused by her climbing stairs with my food but that did not matter either.)

No, I believe that people are essentially good. If it is possible to see them like that at all, then that is the way we must see them. (Do I sermonise too much?)

In the evening George and I went to the cinema. It is an old cinema. Once upon a time one could get in with empty jam jars (presumably lemon curd for the balcony) and during the performance,
believe it or not, a man sprayed us all over with disinfectant. It was a western film and I enjoyed it very much. After sickness, how much one enjoys the world, like a dewdrop on a thorn! We had no
need to talk to each other.

Tomorrow I’m going to one of the CND parades with Fiona. It should be interesting.

I hope you are well. Here the weather is good and I suppose it will be the same at home.

I mean that: I’m not going to be sick again.

Your loving son,

K
ENNETH

An extraordinary thing has happened which I must think about. Today Fiona and I went to the CND sit down demonstration. We sat down on the pavement opposite the City Chambers
which are next to the Art Gallery. It was all very quiet and companionable somehow, people sitting down in the sunshine eating sandwiches as if they were on holiday. The pavement was quite warm
(unusually warm – mind you, I don’t make a practice of sitting on pavements). There were no speeches. The speeches had already been made at Hutton Park. We sat there surrounded by a
crowd of people most of whom we had never seen before and would never see again. It is interesting to watch people passing. After a while you only see their legs, some dumpy, some thin, some
active, some slow, some old, some young. There were one or two mounted policemen. They look tall on their gleaming horses, and in their leather leggings.

What does one talk about? We talked about examinations mainly. It was almost weird. I wondered what many of them were doing there. I wondered what I was doing there. Everyone was very orderly
and placed sandwich papers in bags or in those wire bins one sees attached to posts. There was one woman beside me: she was dressed entirely in red and reading
Woman’s Own
.
Extraordinary! Then something happened. We were such an orderly crowd with this hum of conversation going on, like a gala, girls in light summery dresses, men in open-neck shirts. There were
babies, milk bottles and lemonade bottles.

Then it happened. One of our group – a student I think – had been pushed towards the middle of the road. It wasn’t his fault. It was simply the pressure of the crowd. A
policeman came up to him – one of the ones who had been directing the traffic.

It’s a funny thing about policemen. Usually you don’t notice them at all. You don’t somehow think of them as people with emotions. They are there to look calm and controlled
and placid and that is what they do. That is what they are paid for. They walk in such a deliberate manner as if they have an understanding with time.

Anyway this policeman came up to him and began to tell him to move back. Now I can understand that some of the policemen must have been harassed. The day was warm – even hot – and
there were a lot of people and perhaps they didn’t quite know what to do. Furthermore it can’t be very comfortable for a policeman to walk about in cloth of such thick texture on a hot
day. This was quite a young policeman. I looked at his face and in a surprised flash I realised something. This policeman wasn’t being merely tired and harassed, he actually appeared to hate
this student. It was in his eyes and also in his teeth which I saw for a moment bared as he hissed out a command. It startled me coming out of that fine day. He pushed the student ahead of him
roughly: the student pushed him back (I saw his blue untidy scarf). Then the policeman twisted the student’s arm behind his back, and shouted, upon which another policeman came running up: it
was like the natural order being overturned. The student’s face was white with pain: whistles were being sounded: the crowd was milling aimlessly around. I saw some milk spilled on the
pavement beside me and bits of glass. Then I saw Fiona pushing her way through the crowd. I could hardly recognise her. Her face was pale and set. I tried to follow her but I lost her. I climbed up
on the top steps to see. She went up to the policeman and hit him on the back of the head with her handbag. Then she was seized by another policeman. By this time a black van had driven up. She and
the student were bundled inside. The door was locked. The van was driven away.

I stood there watching. The young policeman faced the crowd. He was almost grinning. I heard him shouting but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. It was as if he hated us. The crowd began
to move away until I stood on the steps alone. It wasn’t the steps of the Municipal Chambers at all: it was the steps of the Art Gallery. There are ten: I counted. The young policeman was at
the bottom looking up, his legs wide apart, while the crowd drifted away. I looked down at him. There was a book in my hand. My flannel trousers swayed slightly in the breeze. I felt thin, even
though I was angry. I nearly threw the book at him but he looked and was stronger than me. He did not seem to be standing on the soles of his feet but rather on his toes. I could see his face under
the diced cap. It was of a high red complexion: his shoulders were wide and he had the free composure of the fit. His lips appeared petulant and cruel. He stood as if grinning at me for a while
– I had the strangest sensation as if he was daring me to attack him – then with an arrogance which was entirely unlike that of a policeman he turned and began as if in parody to pace
up and down with a slow deliberate tread.

I left that place and began to walk, not knowing where I was headed for. Eventually I found myself at the iron gates of the university. I walked past the sacrist in his navy-blue uniform with
the yellow facings, up the flagged road and into the library. The ivy was very green and grassy, the library very cool. I sat down at a table to rest my feet. In an alcove the logic professor was
leaning down close over a book so that his face almost seemed to touch it. I watched him for a while, then suddenly realised that he was asleep. I looked at the dead-white cool busts scattered
round the library. I laid my sweating hands on the cool table. I was surrounded by rows and rows of books, but I had no desire to read them. After I had sufficiently rested I got up and went out,
carefully closing the door after me. Then I walked down the flagged path. The sacrist was no longer to be seen and the sliding window at the enquiry office was shut. I walked back into town over
the rough tarry stones and went home. Then I sat down at the window and thought. Eventually I dipped my pen into the ink and began to write. That is what I could do.

But I shall have to think.

Your loving son,

K
ENNETH

Today I went to the courtroom. It was 11 in the morning and I was allowed to enter among the few spectators. I sat down on one of the varnished benches, feeling the hot sun
warm on my shoulder. There was a big clock which I could see through the window. The atmosphere in the courtroom was very cool and quiet, as in a church, but on the seat at the front of the
adjoining benches sat that policeman, his cap beside him on the seat, his hair brilliant and black and cropped, the back of his neck scrubbed and red. Sometimes he looked round as if he were
waiting to arrest one of us but none of us was making a noise. He didn’t seem to recognise me. Why should he?

At 11 o’clock the clerk – or whoever he is – came in and we all stood up. Then the judge, a small old man, walked rather unsteadily to his raised seat. He wore a hearing-aid.
Imagine it! It was like something out of Dickens. It’s perfectly true! Then Fiona and the student were led in. She did not look at me, though she was looking towards me. It was strange how
that was: yet she appeared calm, though pale. The student was thin, dark-haired, with dark rings under his eyes. He didn’t look as if he had slept and he answered questions in a low voice. I
noticed that one of his turn-ups was turned down: I found this endearing and pitiful. His tie was also slightly askew. He kept feeling in his pocket as if he were hunting for something –
perhaps his cigarette case – but all these things are taken away from prisoners.

The first witness called was the policeman. (I now noticed that there was another policeman beside him: I hadn’t noticed before.) My policeman walked up to the witness box and stood there
for a moment before reading his statement in a heavy placid self-satisfied tone. But before he began to read, the judge suddenly turned to Fiona and said:

‘I hear your father is a lawyer and that you refused his services. Is that true?’

‘Yes.’

He looked at her for a moment as if there was something he didn’t understand, then said to the policeman:

‘Carry on, constable.’

I thought that was a very old-world word. The policeman had hardly begun when the judge said: ‘Could you please speak a little louder?’

The policeman glanced at him, I thought, with a curious masked contempt, but raised his voice as he had been ordered, the judge meanwhile cupping his hand over his right ear, and leaning towards
him. Fiona was staring right through me and through the window asking nothing of me but existing in a world of her own which was also a real world for she did not look like a statue or a coin: she
looked what she was, pale and weak. I wondered what sort of night she had spent and sensed that she was frightened. I thought of how my own stomach turns over when I am frightened and how the sweat
prickles my hands.

‘ . . . then the accused’ – looking briefly at the student – ‘began to rain blows on me.’

‘That is not true.’ I had stood up. It was my voice. I had said, ‘That is not true’ because it was not true but I had not said it as one interrupts a lecturer who is
demonstrating a theorem and who has made an error. I had said it as if I were throwing a stone. It was curious how the policeman continued as if he had not heard me: it was the judge who stopped
him. The judge was old, but he had heard me. Fiona was looking at me, as if she was seeing me for the first time. Beyond the hearing-aid, the judge’s mind was feeling towards me.

I said, ‘It is not true. He was not raining blows at him.’ I was appealing to the judge but at the same time I had the strangest feeling as if I was happy though I was frightened. It
was like having the sweetness and terrible coldness of ice-cream on your teeth at the same time. The policeman had stopped speaking, and was standing as if he didn’t know what to do.

The old judge’s eyes moved slightly. It was as if he was puzzled by something for a shadow passed across the redness – as you can see a crow at sunset – I have seen that look
often in the eyes of the old, the shock of the unexpected and the strange. I thought he was going to fine or imprison me, and I began: