The Red Door (59 page)

‘But can’t you invent them?’

‘I don’t work like that,’ I said.

‘I only thought,’ said the ghost sadly. In fact the longer it talked to me the sadder it seemed to get.

‘I mean, let’s face it,’ it began again. ‘The past is past, isn’t it? We need something more cheerful. I like a lot of colour myself. I get on best with children. I
have a lot of friends who are children. We go about together in the spring, dancing about. I suppose people must think we are clouds.’

‘I suppose they must,’ I said grimly. ‘Especially Wordsworth. I’m very glad you have brought me those interesting ideas . . . ’

‘Oh, I’ve got more, I’ve got lots more. For instance,’ the ghost said, sitting or seeming to sit on a stone, ‘this man gets a wife after all from the Marriage
Bureau and it turns out she’s got a wooden leg. You could make something funny out of that.’

‘That would be possible,’ I said carefully. ‘On the other hand, where is the moral in it?’

‘But would it need to have a moral?’

‘As a ghost born and bred in the Highlands you ought to know better than that,’ I said. ‘Really, I’m ashamed of you. Or rather, I’m ashamed that you haven’t
worked that out for yourself. I think that your literary standards are very low. Why, if we had been writing about Marriage Bureaux and wooden legs we would be back where we were before.’

‘Where were we before then?’ said the ghost which now appeared to be smoking a pipe.

‘I mean,’ I said, ‘the very fact that you are here suggests that there is more to life than materialism and humour and wooden legs.’

‘Is that so, now? I wonder why you should believe that. Still, I suppose, having seen a ghost, you will believe anything.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘we’d be back to the primitive silly work which no one could take seriously.’

‘I took it seriously,’ said the ghost. ‘And many people like me took it seriously. And after all I do exist though you didn’t believe so before, did you?’

‘I certainly didn’t,’ I answered, feeling my head spinning a little for I wasn’t quite sure what the appearance of the ghost meant. ‘I certainly
didn’t,’ I repeated. ‘Nor do I believe in astrology and seances and other things like that.’

‘There you are, then,’ said the ghost cheerfully as if it had proved something of importance. ‘And here I am waiting to be cheered up and you are depressing me with your
morality. You should have a look round you at the world as it is. It is quite beautiful, isn’t it? Look at that moon for instance and the stars. And do you hear that stream running along the
ditch? Why don’t you pay attention to things like that?’

‘But I do notice them,’ I said. ‘And I don’t need you to remind me of them. So why don’t you just go away?’

‘I was only trying to help,’ said the ghost. ‘I was only trying to give you ideas. For instance, I have another idea at this moment. Why don’t you write a story about a
man who inherits a piece of land and it turns into . . . ’

‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘I don’t like any of your ideas. You don’t seem to me to be very serious for a ghost. I thought ghosts were always very serious.’

‘I don’t see why ghosts would be any more serious than other people,’ said the ghost. ‘It all depends on your taste.’

‘You know what you like, I suppose,’ I said contemptuously.

‘Exactly,’ said the ghost. ‘I couldn’t have put it better myself.’

‘Hm.’

‘And to tell you the truth I used to write plays myself. One was called
Hector’s Wedding
. Have you ever heard of it?’

‘I’m afraid I . . . ’

‘Well, what about
Where There’s a Will There’s a Way
? That was about a crofter and his land. It was very funny. The villagers used to split their sides watching that
one.’

‘I am sure they did,’ I said. ‘But to be quite honest with you, I never . . . ’

‘Never mind. It doesn’t matter . . . ’ But the ghost looked a bit crestfallen just the same.

‘It’s a great pity,’ I said. ‘I’m sure they were very amusing.’

‘As a matter of fact I believed a lot in inspiration,’ said the ghost, cheering up again. ‘Whenever I was scything or doing some work around the house I would be visited by
inspiration and I would come in at once and put pen to paper. Everyone was amazed by my gift.’

‘That’s very interesting,’ I said.

‘All my work was done like that. All my best work, that is. I was never one for sitting down and chewing my pen. I don’t suppose you would write a preface to my plays, would you? I
would like to see myself in print,’ it said wistfully.

‘I don’t even know where they are,’ I said firmly. ‘And in any case plays are not my line.’

‘Just a thought,’ said the ghost. ‘I would like to make people happy and my plays went down very well.’

‘But how did they use language?’ I said. ‘That’s very important, you know.’

‘Language? The words came to my lips and I wrote them down.’

‘I see,’ I said. ‘In that case you’ve never heard of Henry James.’

‘No I haven’t. Not at all. And I would like very much if you didn’t make fun of me.’

‘I’m not making fun of you,’ I said. ‘And you must remember that it was you who stopped me, not the other way round.’

‘I was just giving you suggestions,’ said the ghost who seemed to have gone into a huff. ‘After all it is very terrible when you are visited by inspiration and you have no pen
and can’t write anything.’

‘Yes,’ I said with sudden pity. ‘It must be like these writers in Russia.’

‘I don’t know about that but it is very uncomfortable.’

‘I’ll tell you what,’ I said, ‘you just stop me now and again and you can give me more ideas for plays and things like that. Mind you, there’s no guarantee that
I’ll use any of them. But I’ll think about them. And the happier they are the better, since we are in a happy phase.’

‘I shall certainly do that,’ said the ghost happily. ‘I’m really glad I met you. I thought you would be very gloomy but you aren’t like that at all. You are really
quite sensitive and kind.’

‘I try to be,’ I said. ‘After all, your work is older than mine, closer to the people.’

‘That’s very true,’ said the ghost contentedly.

‘And now I’ll have to be going,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a lot of things to do.’

‘I won’t keep you any longer,’ said the ghost getting up rapidly from the stone on which it seemed to be sitting. ‘You are, I am sure, a very busy man. And I have a lot
of time on my hands. But now that you have given me a purpose I shall get to work immediately.’

‘You do that,’ I said. ‘After all if I’m a man of the world you are a man of the next world.’

He laughed very heartily at this joke which I remembered from a book called
The Best Hundred Ghost Jokes
. He laughed so much that I thought he would never be able to resume his fairly
upright shape again but he did and still laughing he waved and disappeared. I walked on under the moon and the stars thinking that no matter where you went there were always funny stories to be got
and I must learn about them somehow. A light anecdote or two might distract my two or three agonised readers wherever they are, scattered on the surface of this hilarious tortured globe. Even the
one who reads my work back to front in Cambodia.

When Murdo woke up after Hallowe’en and went out into the cold air to see whether anything was stirring in the world around him, he discovered that his door which had
formerly been painted green was now painted red. He stared at it for a long time, scratching his head slowly as if at first he didn’t believe that it was his own door. In fact he went into
the house again and had a look at his frugally prepared breakfast – porridge, scones and tea – and even studied the damp patch on the wall before he convinced himself that it was his
own house.

Now Murdo was a bachelor who had never brought himself to propose marriage to anyone. He lived by himself, prepared his own food, darned his own socks, washed his own clothes and cultivated his
own small piece of ground. He was liked by everybody since he didn’t offend anyone by gossiping and maintained a long silence unless he had something of importance to say.

The previous night children had knocked on his door and sung songs to him. He had given them apples, oranges, and nuts which he had bought specially from a shop. He had gazed in amazement at the
mask of senility on one face, at the mask of a wildcat on another and at the mask of a spaceman on the face of a little boy whom he could swear he knew.

Having made sure that he was in his own house again he went out and studied the door for a second time. When he touched the red paint he found that it was quite dry. He had no feeling of anger
at all, only puzzlement. After all, no one in his experience had had a red door in the village before. Green doors, yellow doors, and even blue doors, but never a red door. It certainly singled him
out. The door was as red as the winter sun he saw in the sky.

Murdo had never in his life done anything unusual. Indeed because he was a bachelor he felt it necessary that he should be as like the other villagers as possible. He read the
Daily
Record
as they did, after dinner he slept by the fire as they did, he would converse with his neighbour while hammering a post into the ground. He would even play draughts with one of them
sometimes.

Nevertheless there were times when he felt that there was more to life than that. He would feel this especially on summer nights when the harvest moon was in the sky – the moon that
ripened the barley – and the earth was painted with an unearthly glow and the sea was like a strange volume which none could read except by means of the imagination.

At times too he would find it difficult to get up in the morning but would lie in a pleasant half dream looking up at the ceiling. He would say to himself, ‘After all, I have nothing to
get up for really. I could if I liked stay in bed all day and all night and none would notice the difference. I used to do this when I was a child. Why can’t I do it now?’

For he had been a very serious child who found it difficult to talk to children even of his own age. Only once had he shown enthusiasm and that was when in a school playground he had seen in the
sky an aeroplane and had lisped excitedly, ‘Thee, an aeroplane’, a rather ambiguous not to say almost unintelligible exclamation which had been repeated as a sign of his foolishness. He
had never taken part in the school sports because he was rather clumsy: and his accomplishments in mathematics were meagre. When he became an adolescent he had taken a job as cook on board a
fishing boat but had lost the job because he had put sugar instead of salt into the soup thus causing much diarrhoea.

Most of the time – while his father and mother dreamed their way towards death – he spent working on the land in a dull concentrated manner. In summer and autumn he would be seen
with a scythe in the fields, the sunlight sparkling from the blade while he himself, squat and dull, swung it remorselessly. There had in fact been one romance in his life. He had made overtures
– if such tentative motions might even be called that – to a spinster in the village who lived with her grossly religious mother in the house opposite him and who was very stout.
However he had ceased to visit her when once she had provided him with cocoa and salt herring for his supper, a diet so ferocious that even he could not look forward to its repetition with
tranquillity.

There was another spinster in the village who wrote poetry and who lived by herself and he had certain feelings too tenuous to be called love towards her. Her name was Mary and she had inherited
from her mother a large number of books in brown leather covers. She dressed in red clothes and was seen pottering vaguely about during the day and sometimes during the night as well. But she was
more good looking than the first though she neglected herself in the service of books and poetry and was considered slightly odd by the villagers. Murdo thought that anybody who read a lot of books
and wrote poetry must be very clever.

As he stared at the door he felt strange flutterings within him. First of all the door had been painted very lovingly so that it shone with a deep inward shine such as one might find in
pictures. And indeed it looked like a picture against the rest of the house which wasn’t at all modern but on the contrary was old and intertwined with all sorts of rusty pipes like
snakes.

He went back from the door and looked at it from a distance as people in art galleries have to do when studying an oil painting. The more he regarded it the more he liked it. It certainly stood
out against the drab landscape as if it were a work of art. On the other hand the more he looked at it the more it seemed to express something in himself which had been deeply buried for years.
After a while there was something boring about green and as for blue it wouldn’t have suited the door at all. Blue would have been too blatant in a cold way. And anyway the sky was already
blue.

But mixed with his satisfaction he felt what could only be described as puzzlement, a slight deviation from the normal as if his head were spinning and he were going round in circles. What would
the neighbours say about it, he wondered. Never in the history of the village had there been a red door before. For that matter he couldn’t remember seeing even a blue door himself, though he
had heard of the existence of one.

The morning was breaking all over the village as he looked. Blue smoke was ascending from chimneys, a cock was crowing, belligerent and heraldic, its red claws sunk into the earth, its metallic
breast oriental and strange. There was a dew all about him and lying on the fences ahead of him. He recognised that the village would wake to a new morning, for the red door would gather attention
to itself.

And he thought to himself, ‘I have always sought to hide among other people. I agree to whatever anybody tells me to do. If they think I should go to church, I go to church. If they want
me to cut peats for them, I do. I have never,’ he thought with wonder, ‘been myself.’ He looked down at his grey fisherman’s jersey and his wellingtons and he thought,
‘I have always worn these things because everybody else does. I have never had the courage to wear what I wanted to wear, for example a coloured waistcoat and a coloured jacket.’