The Red Door (56 page)

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THE VILLAGE

It was Easter Sunday and the women were all in church. They were wearing red hats and yellow hats and pink hats with flowers on them. On the blue velvet cloth that hung down in
front of the pulpit there was a yellow cross. The pews were varnished and the light reflected from them. In one window there was a picture of a thinnish yellow Christ surrounded by a lot of
weak-looking sheep.

Mrs Maclean was thinking, ‘What I can’t stand is the noise they both make in the morning, and their moods. If it isn’t one then it is the other. Depressions and moods.
Sometimes I feel that I shan’t be able to go on. I thought they would like the school but neither of them does, and on holiday they are unbearable. What I would like to do is sit by the fire
and read a thriller but I never have the time. Some day I shall manage that when they leave me and marry. That will be heaven.’

The minister said, ‘I have a friend who once visited Yarmouth and he saw some fishermen there and he asked them, “Do you know about Christ? He also was a fisherman.” And one of
them said, “But did he go deep sea?” Still, it’s not a joke really . . . ’

The minister was thinking, ‘I am wasting my time here. True, there is the picnic and the Guild but they don’t really listen. I feel uncomfortable trying to get down to their level.
I’m sure Christ wasn’t like that. I am a scholar really. I should be writing theology but I haven’t the time. I never have the time, though I have all the time in the world. They
think I’m eccentric. That was the mistake I made from the beginning when I came here. I should have appeared jovial among them and the thing is I don’t know anything about farming. It
is difficult for me to find the simple images that Christ used. Still, I shall have to continue. If only I took more joy in the baptisms.’

Outside the window there were the tombstones, some dating back two hundred years. Sometimes the children hand in hand in their little gaily-coloured frocks ran between them, playing games. At
Easter time the light shone on their polished surfaces.

Mrs Milne thought, ‘If he wants to leave me he can. I suppose everybody in the village knows that we don’t get on. We even sleep in separate rooms. I said that the black eye had come
from my falling downstairs. And they know perfectly well I don’t polish the stairs, so how could I slip on them? I know he took her to the dance. He didn’t make any attempt to disguise
it. He shouts at me, “I hate you, I hate you.” Though why he should I don’t know since I do everything I can for him. Maybe I should have married Alasdair when he asked me. But
that was a long time ago. I find this sermon silly. I wonder what he does with himself for the rest of the week. I wonder if he believes all this rubbish. Perhaps he does. But he’s no good at
funerals or visiting people, so they say. He’s never visited me. He only goes to the houses where he’ll get good food. I wouldn’t have come, except this morning being Easter I
felt so happy. I woke up and felt happy and I hadn’t felt so happy for such a long time.’

The church was cool and there were lots of flowers in vases. The congregation sang
Abide with Me
and the minister gazed around him with satisfaction.

‘That was the hymn they sang on the
Titanic
,’ thought Mrs Gray. ‘I remember hearing about that, or did I see a film? There was a pianist up to his knees in water. And
they showed a shot of ice cubes in glasses while the ship was sinking. I thought that was clever. I wish I was in the city, this place is so boring. Last holidays I nearly didn’t come back. I
lay on my bed the last night while Jimmy snored and I nearly ran away. I could hear the traffic, I could imagine them coming out of the theatres and the cinemas. I could imagine the night clubs,
women in furs getting into taxis, the glitter of the light on the street. We even went to the zoo which I love. There is nothing here, just those bloody hills with hardly any human beings about.
One of these days I’ll get a gun and shoot rabbits and hare. I might even shoot some sheep. I get up every morning and there’s nothing to do. I’m sick of saying good morning to
people I don’t care for. The minister will be standing at the door as usual, bowing and scraping, oily little man. But I’m getting too old now to leave and Jimmy’s job is here. I
suppose that’s life. I’m glad I didn’t wear my flowered hat. Everyone else is wearing one, like schoolgirls.’

The collectors dressed in their best suits walked down the aisle looking dignified and important. One was the local joiner and the other the local painter. They smiled at everybody and passed
the cloth bag along.

‘How shall I tell my mother,’ thought Mary, ‘that I’m pregnant? I’ll have to tell her soon. It’s a wonder she doesn’t know already. And he won’t
marry me, I know that. I could tell it from the beginning almost, but I lived in hope. He’s a Sagittarius and I’m a Capricorn. Capricorn and Taurus get on all right but not Sagittarius
and Capricorn. It said in my horoscope today that relationships this weekend would be tricky. Actually it was that particular night. I don’t know what came over me, it must have been the
Bloody Maries. It was like something you’d read in a woman’s magazine. We were coming home from the dance and suddenly we were in a field. I didn’t even know how we’d got
there, perhaps we had wings. That’s a laugh. Anyway he began to stroke me and talk to me and he said how touch was so important, I remember that. He stroked me and his talk went on and on,
and there was a stream that I could hear flowing at the edge of the field. She’ll throw me out. If it was the city it would be different but in a village everybody knows. Perhaps some of them
know already. They’ll sit in church but that’s as far as it’ll go. When it comes to helping there’ll be a different story. It’s going to be pretty tough and he
won’t help. They told me he has started going out with Susan. They were seen at a hotel last Friday. There are always spies who tell you these things. It might be better not to know, the
pain’s so great. The only problem is I don’t know what to tell my mother. It’ll break her heart, or so she’ll say. But she won’t think about me. She’ll think
about all those bitches with their flowery hats.’

The minister made the sign of the cross and hurried to the door to talk to them before they left. He hated that. The fact was he could hardly ever think of anything to say and they knew it. They
knew that he didn’t like them. They stood in the way of his ideal sermon which would be delivered to empty pews. He held out his hand, bowing slightly. They murmured some words which he could
hardly hear. The children ran down to the road between the gravestones. They would turn out more or less exactly like their mothers. Sometimes he had terrible dreams of a figure in a huge office
with a stamping machine which duplicated people. Transparencies. Once he thought he saw Christ himself turning his back on the village and setting off into the wilderness among the deer. Not even
He could take them all the time. He would sometimes prefer the wastes and the innocent beasts. That was why he often went out on boats, to get away from them.

He watched with relief the last one leaving in the sparkling sunshine. The coloured hats bobbed down the road. He turned away and thought of his study where he could involve himself in the
labyrinthine delights of theology. Thank God Christianity wasn’t simple, there was so much to reconcile. If it had been simple it would have died long ago.

I sat in the tall chair, my feet not quite touching the floor. It was a Sunday afternoon and I was visiting the unmarried fat girl who was called Rhoda and who seemed to me to
be quite old, though perhaps she was about thirty-five. Her mother, a sharp-edged woman in black and with a perpetual drop at her nose, was in church as she so unfailingly was. I never knew what to
say, but to be in another house was at least a change. I picked up a magazine called
Woman’s Own
and looked through it. Rhoda was talking to the other fat girl from the village, a
friend of hers also unmarried whose name was Annie. They were whispering and giggling – both fat girls together – and I turned the pages of the magazine. My attention was caught by a
story which described how a nurse in a hospital stabbed her rival to death with a pair of scissors. I shook with fear and disgust. The two of them in front of me wavered like glazed dolls, their
red faces gleaming.

Rhoda was saying, ‘There was this Pole I met and he took me to the cinema. It was in the blackout.’ There was much secretive giggling and I heard the last words, ‘and I said I
don’t take Woodbines.’ I felt hot and flustered and I thought of the scissors. Such an ordinary evil. Outside the window I could see the bare landscape, entombed in Sunday. A seagull
was perched on the earthen wall staring stonily around it, its head moving in quick jerks as if it were on strings. I hated seagulls, they were so blank-eyed and voracious. There was nothing that
they wouldn’t eat.

Having nothing to do on Sundays I just went to people’s houses and sat there, sometimes not speaking. I would often get a piece and jam. Annie was sitting opposite me, her huge red legs
spread so that I could see her large green bloomers. I was thinking that the following morning I would have to explain to the teacher why there was a large blot of ink on my exercise book. I knew
she would belt me. She had thin glasses above a narrow nose and she would sometimes belt people for no reason. The composition was called, ‘A Day in the Life of a Postman’. I had
written a story about an old woman who never got any letters from anyone and would stand in the lobby watching the letter box all day. It wasn’t really about the postman at all and that was
another reason why I would get the belt. I had spent three hours on it because I liked writing but I was miserable thinking how I would be belted.

Rhoda had a bicycle pump which she had taken over from the bed on which it had been lying. I knew that she didn’t have a bicycle. They were talking about something and Rhoda was stroking
the pump in her lap. They were both laughing and then Annie began to stroke it as well. I could’t imagine either of them on a bicycle, they were so fat. I knew that both of them had been in
England and sometimes they talked in English thinking that I was too young to understand. But I read a lot of English books and I could write good English.

Annie was saying, ‘He took me to his flat. He had everything there. Everything.’ They looked directly in each other’s eyes and laughed in a high hysterical manner. Sometimes
they stared at me sideways and seemed to be whispering about me. I could feel my knees flushing below the woollen shorts which my mother had knitted for me as she had also knitted the stockings
with the diamond tops. The clock ticked heavily. Sunday was heavy on the village. It was like a huge dull suety pudding with dull heavy raisins in it. The ditch outside the window was full of dirty
old cans and there were little yellow primroses lodged in the bank above it.

I felt uncomfortable as if there was something going on that I didn’t understand. I wanted to leave but I couldn’t think how I could manage it. Sometimes I went to a house and I
couldn’t get up to go because I was too shy. I felt that perhaps they wanted me, for some reason, to go. One of them looked at me and said, ‘Too small,’ and they giggled again. I
felt my face redden and grow hot. I didn’t want to be belted but there was no way round it. It was unjust but that was how things were. I hated the teacher. I hated her thin glasses and her
sarcastic voice. I hated the dusty globe which lay on her desk. But I would have to go to school anyway since this time I didn’t feel sick.

I got up, thinking, ‘Tomorrow I shall wear my new sandals and I shall run home from school.’ I was suddenly happy. They were whispering, their heads close together, Rhoda stroking
the bicycle pump. When I reached the door I opened it quickly, pulled it behind me quickly, and ran as fast as I could home. I would try on my sandals again if my mother would let me. It was
something to look forward to. But I couldn’t do anything about the blot. To rub it out would leave a worse mark. I would just have to take what was coming to me. I couldn’t do anything
at all about it.

When the old woman went into the barn she saw the rat and she also saw the feathers of the little yellow chicken among which the rat was sitting. It was a large grey rat and
its whiskers quivered. She knew that there was no way out for it but past her, for there was a hole between the door and the wall and she knew that this was the place where the rat had entered. She
regretted that she had not filled this up before. It seemed that the rat was mocking her but certainly it knew that she was present. And it also knew that the chickens had belonged to her, those
beautiful little chickens of bright yellow which she had nursed so carefully and which had seemed so much the sign of a new spring. The day was Easter Friday.

As she gazed at the rat she felt a ladder of distaste shudder up her spine climbed by many rats, but she stood where she was and then bent down slowly to pick up a plank of wood with nails at
one end of it. Her back ached as she bent. The barn itself was large, spacious and clean with a stone floor. At the far end were the remains of the chickens and the hens. Above were the rafters on
which hung an old mouldy saddle which her father had once had for the horses. It hung its wings on both sides of the rafter. She thought, and then quite deliberately she stuffed it, mouldy and
breaking as it was, into the hole which the rat had entered by. All this while the rat watched her with bright intelligent eyes as if it knew perfectly well what she was up to. The arena was
prepared, the large clean spacious arena. She made her way rather fearfully towards the rat. She felt rather unsteady but angry. After all, she was quite old and she had arthritis in her hands and
she had varicose veins in her legs. The rat certainly was fitter than her, more agile, more swift. She advanced on the rat steadily with her plank, the nailed end foremost. It waited, almost
contemptuously. She went up to it and thrust the plank at it. It moved rapidly away and crouched, looking at her, its long rat tail behind it, its whiskers quivering, its bright eyes moving hither
and thither. Where have you been? she thought. Before the chickens, where have you been? She thought of her husband, dead in the cemetery, and closed her eyes. She deliberately made visions of
flowers appear.