The Red Door (58 page)

My mother screamed, a high scream that went on and on. She of course knew of my disguise and she told him who I was before he could belt me out of the room and the window. In any case he offered
me all sorts of money which I refused. I was really very dignified, asking him what he thought I was, did he think that I would corrupt myself in that cheap manner, etc. etc. I must say that he
seemed very confused and that his eyes gradually glazed over. I have found that this happens often when older people have any real dealings with me. I had of course succeeded in getting my mother
into my power which had been my aim from the start. There is nothing that she will now refuse me, nothing at all.

But I’ll tell you something. Where I’m going to now is the cave. I want to test out my father’s words about the threads which bind the village together and which vibrate all
the time according to him. What I shall find in the cave I don’t know but I’m sure it must be something horrible, some terrible stinking monster which gnaws and sleeps and belches, some
being such as the world has never seen in the daytime. I have had this feeling in my bones for a long time, as if it was my destiny to find this monster and see what it has to say for itself. Not
that I want to fight it really. I shall make use of it if I can, but I do know that it is waiting there in the darkness. It won’t suspect a ten year old boy of trickery or cunning or
destructiveness, surely. Like all monsters it will probably be stupid. Like all people, really. And in any case the victory is predestined. After all, my father didn’t name me Theseus for
nothing.

‘Thank you for coming, Iain. Pain? No, he wasn’t in pain. He got quieter and quieter. You wouldn’t have known him, he got so quiet. You see, the minister used
to come a lot. He is a very kind man really though he is strict and he helped him a great deal. Norman gave up all his nonsense and became very calm.

‘The minister used to sit by the bed and read passages to him from the Bible even on the hottest days. I admired him for that. I will always remember him for that. Not many ministers would
do it but this one is a good visitor.

‘At first before the minister came Norman would talk about the tricks he used to play on the village people, like the time he put a crab on Roddy’s chair. These were the vain things
he would talk about but of course he didn’t know then that he was dying. We should always remember, Iain, that we are going to die. Joking is all very well, but life is a serious thing.

‘And he would talk about his school-days and about football games and things like that. After all, he was only sixteen.

‘But then the minister came and he changed for the better. He would lie in his bed and listen to the Bible and ask questions. I once heard him asking why Abraham was ready to sacrifice
Isaac and the minister told him the reason. The minister said that he had a natural spirit of inquiry which was a good thing if it was steered in the right direction. He said that his questions
were those of the natural man but that later they would lead to the calmness of the spiritual man.

‘And the minister would pray with him for a long time. He would ask for God’s help because we are all sinners and if God won’t help us who will? We must all remember that we
are in the hands of God.

‘One day I went in and Norman screamed at me that the minister had told him he was dying. There were tears running down his cheek. I took his hand in mine and I said, “We are all
dying. That is what the minister meant.” “That is not what he meant,” he said weakly as he lay back on the pillow. It was a great struggle for him to fight against the natural
man; after all what can you expect of a boy of sixteen? It was warm in the room; a summer dying is the worst. I used to bring him in cups of milk and he would drink them propped up on his pillow.
Sometimes he would look very beautiful, like an angel, he was so thin and white. The minister would never take anything. Perhaps he thought that as we are very poor we needed all our food for
ourselves.

‘One night Norman had a nightmare and he shouted to me to put the minister away because he was killing him but I knew that was just the devil trying to master him. And so I hushed him to
sleep.

‘But the minister was attentive, I must say that for him. He is a real minister, a real compassionate man. He wished to save Norman’s soul before he died, and he wrestled with the
devil on his behalf, and sought to take his thoughts away from the vain things of this world to the eternal treasures of the next world which moths will not corrupt. The doctor asked me if anyone
was visiting Norman and I told him about the minister. He didn’t say anything but he is not really a good doctor anyway, he bounces into the room joking all the time as if he was a clown.
Sometimes he will even dance, he has no dignity at all. I’ve even heard him singing a song. Imagine a professional man acting like that. That’s all he is, an actor. A lot of people like
him, but I don’t think a man as undignified as that can be a good doctor. Professional people should be more serious and not allow themselves to be laughed at. Norman liked him well enough.
Indeed he looked forward to his visits.

‘One afternoon on a hot day – it was a Wednesday – I went into the bedroom and it was very quiet. The curtains were blowing gently in the breeze. I was carrying a cup with some
milk in it and when I looked at the bed I thought at first that Norman was asleep. He lay so still and his hair was over his brow. He looked like a statue. I put the milk down beside the bed on a
small table and I touched his forehead. It was cold. I knew then that he had died. I picked the Bible up from the floor where it had dropped from his hand as he fell asleep. The Bible was cold but
underneath it the floor was warm. I remember that very well, the black leather of the Bible, and the warmth of the floor round about it. That was a week last Wednesday. He was buried on the
following Friday. He was sixteen years old and three days when he died.

‘Are you going then? Are you sure you won’t have a cup of tea? No? Well, thank you for coming, Iain. You and he were great friends in the old days, I know that; he often used to talk
about you. But as I told you he became very quiet and serious at the end. He put away the natural man and became more spiritual and I am very glad of that. For if we aren’t spiritual, if we
do not lean on the mercy of God, what are we? What are we indeed?’

Life is very strange and we never know when we are young how things will turn out. I had bitter thoughts about life this evening when my grandchild Robert told me his story.
Like his mother he is fair-haired and blue-eyed and looks as if butter would not melt in his mouth though in fact like most children he is cunning, watchful and various.

Robert as I have said came rushing in to tell his story, very frightened indeed. There is in the village an old fat woman with red legs and a large red face and a moustache who stays by herself
in a thatched house and is the butt of the village boys. They knock on the door of her house and run away as she comes out, staring angrily round her and swearing in a loud voice. Her name is
Murdina and she has been alone now for many years after her aged parents, whom she looked after, died. Those who out of compassion have visited her house say that it is extremely dirty and smelly
and infested with cats which she feeds haphazardly from saucers which litter the floor.

This particular summer’s day Robert (whom I have often belted for playing pranks of this nature) and some of his friends knocked on the door as usual and waited for the fat woman to come
out, trembling with rage, her red cheeks inflated and turning a deep purple, and her knickers as usual half down her ankles. This time, however, no one appeared and out of the bravado created by a
summer’s day (having tired of the tent choked with smoke) they crept up to the door again, feeling cheated by her failure to appear, and fearfully crept inside. They came face to face with a
number of half-wild cats with green eyes and nearly ran back into the hot sunlight again where the corn and grass were fiercely growing by the well not far from the thatched house. But feeling that
it would be cowardly to run away after coming so far, they crawled into the main room. They saw her lying asleep there, her head leaning against the back of the chair, her arms sprawled in front of
her like those of a boxer who has gone back to his corner after a particularly fierce round and leans exhausted against the ropes, his legs spread out.

The house was very silent and the only sound to be heard was the buzz of a fly which finally as they watched settled on her almost bald head and stayed there, vibrating. What frightened them was
that she made no move to swat at the fly and displace it from her head. There was no fuel in the fireplace and on the floor was a saucer which the cats had licked of all the milk that it had
contained. For a long time they stayed there in the silence watching the large black fly settled on her bald head. Then with one accord, knowing that there was something wrong, they all rushed out
into the hot sunlight and ran home to tell their story. Robert told me. I leathered him and told my wife who immediately with some women went to the house. They found her lying dead in the
chair.

We lay in the corn on that autumn night while the autumn moon shone overhead. I kissed her and touched her breasts. She closed her eyes and the moon lighted the small blue veins. Her face was
small and white and fragile, her outspread legs luminous in the moonlight. There was no sound to be heard but that of the sea in the distance, resonant and nostalgic. The tides of her blood seemed
to move with the salty tides. It was barely possible to feel such tenderness and not have one’s heart broken. It was not possible to see any other face in the harmony of the universe in that
harvest time. As her arms encircled me she looked vulnerable, desirable and precious. I kissed her, holding her tight in my arms. She moved a little, sighing with either contentment or sorrow. We
would not marry because of her aged parents as she had a great sense of responsibility. The sea roared in our blood and beyond us, heavy with its burden of the dead and the resurrected. I touched
her cheeks and they were wet with brine.

I woke up and there was a fly on her bald head. Large and fat she swam towards me across the water, a porpoise that had come to grief, a whale of that terrifying sea with its many currents.
There was a child somewhere crying. I brushed the fly away hearing his nightmare cry in the cool room with the moonlight on his brow. My aged wife was telling me about the ring that had been found
in a drawer in a piece of aged blue cloth. I didn’t say anything, but the brine sprang from my eyes as I thought of how we live, tethered and roped, by that well which once contained the
freshest of waters and now will hardly show us even our own reflections without comedy and bitterness.

One night I met the ghost at the corner of the road and it looked exactly like a spook I had seen in a small book of paintings by Miro.

‘It’s a fine night,’ it said, wavering in front of me, just like a sheet such as my mother used to wash in the spring.

‘It is that,’ I said, not very frightened, for this ghost looked quite comic and friendly and not at all intimidating. There was something even cosy about it.

‘Of course you have to believe in my existence now,’ it went on. ‘Not many people believe in ghosts but I must admit that I like to be believed in. I like to be friendly. I
miss my conversations with people, about the weather and so on.’

‘I do,’ I said, ‘believe in you. After all, you are there, aren’t you?’

‘I am indeed,’ it said. ‘And another thing, ghosts aren’t always gloomy. For instance, I come back regularly to be among people. I miss them a lot. Most people are really
quite kind and interesting. You don’t particularly care for people, do you?’

‘I wouldn’t say that,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t say that at all.’

‘I see. It’s just all that stuff you write about the Clearances and old women. It’s all very gloomy really. I used to write little plays myself but they were usually very
comic. Most people thought they were amusing and said that they cheered them up. I keep up, you know. I visit houses now and again after midnight and I keep up with the magazines.’

‘I’m glad to hear that,’ I said. ‘They’ll need your subscriptions the way things are going.’ I was beginning to think that this was really rather a shallow
ghost.

The ghost laughed a little but I don’t think it quite saw the point of my joke.

‘After all,’ it continued, ‘isn’t it time you wrote something cheerful and happy? On the spur of the moment as it were. Have you ever seen a cockerel for instance crowing
in the early morning? I have had occasion to. It looks very beautiful, its claws thrust into the ground. You should have a look at animals, for instance. Or don’t you agree?’

‘Oh, I do agree. Only it troubles me to see you out here on such a fine night. Has it ever occurred to you that you might frighten people? You don’t frighten me but that’s
because you talk in such a literary manner and are obviously interested in my work. But other people might not be so calm.’

‘To tell you the truth,’ said the ghost, ‘no one has ever had a heart attack because of me. Anyway I thought I’d give you some advice. When you think of it there are a
lot of comic people in the village, and there have been a lot of funny incidents. Now I’ve got an idea for you. Why don’t you write a play about two sisters who fall in love with a
poacher? They are always cooking the fish he brings back but they don’t know it’s been stolen. And you could have a fat policeman in it.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t think that would suit me at all. Not at all.’

‘Well, then,’ said the ghost, ‘what about a story about an oldish man who lives with his mother and sends off a letter to a Marriage Bureau? There’s plenty of comic
material in that.’

‘True,’ I said and there was a long silence.

‘On the other hand,’ I said speaking with difficulty, because of my boredom, ‘I have been brought up on Kafka and Kierkegaard and I don’t think I would like to write that
sort of stuff at all. Where is the art in that? Anyway I don’t know two such sisters.’