The Red Door (68 page)

I will tell you what happened. Yesterday they were singing a hymn and I was watching and listening, and I had a vision. The vision was so deadly that I know that I shall not recover from it. It
is the death blow. As I looked at them singing from their hymn books I saw them all as children of their mothers and fathers. I saw them as what they would become and I knew that they would become
like their mothers and fathers. I could see it in the turn of their heads, in their petulant or absorbed pose. I knew not only that I personally had failed them but that anyone would have failed
them. I knew that there is a spirit of the universe which is plotting to make us as like each other as possible. I knew that there is no heaven and that my vision for twenty-five years had been a
fake. I knew that the tree produces the leaf and the fish produces the fish, that the corruption has been there from the beginning, and that the teacher also is the corrupter. No one is free from
the plague. Christ was the man or god whom they thought would uncorruptedly break the ring, but in order to do that he had to remain a virgin and be crucified. We are producing each other endlessly
and corruptedly. There is no Eden and no heaven. At that moment I looked into hell. For in one girl in particular I saw already forming the fat jowls of her mother. I saw that clearly and without
evasion. And when I saw the one I saw all the others. I cannot bear to be part of this conspiracy. I cannot bear to see the old emerging from the young. I cannot bear not to believe in my vision.
For this reason, when you find this letter I shall be dead. I have to withdraw myself, this instrument of corruption, from the world. I now believe that we have been visited by some original sin of
the most immense magnitude and that there is no way of cleansing this sin. And I cannot live with this experience since it negates the whole idea of my life. I am a warder who wished to throw
prisons open, while all the time I was creating them. Because of my egotism I thought that I was a saviour but I was not. To be a saviour one must have blood that is not human. There is nothing any
of you can do about this. I wish it to be clear that it is not your fault. So goodbye, my fellow human beings in trouble. You can do none other than you do. Neither can I. I have no message for you
and without a message what am I? Nothing. And to nothing I go back.

There was once in our village an unpopular policeman and a pickpocket. When I say that the policeman was unpopular I mean that he was far too energetic to be a good village
policeman and he was also too thin. Most village policemen are fat large men with red faces who usually have their tunics open and pace steadfastly like comics from a film. They will pass the time
of day with the locals, pretend that the bar has actually shut at ten o’clock on the dot, discuss gardening, lean over fences and generally leave the villagers to mind their own business.
This particular policeman wasn’t like that at all. First of all he was, as I have said, very thin, and secondly he was determined to clamp down on all crime and thirdly he didn’t want
to be outwitted by anyone.

He would call at the bar at ten o’clock to make sure that everyone had stopped drinking. He interfered in the Case of the Missing Cow, and made a mess of things. After all, if he had left
the affair alone, everyone would have been quite happy but he had to stir things up. And in any case the cow hadn’t been stolen at all. He even bothered the children and there was the case of
the Green and Red Marbles which I shall not trouble you with because it was so trivial. Thus it was decided that since in a village everyone must make allowances for everyone else, he should be
taught a lesson. And the instrument which destiny chose was Jimmy Smith, a pickpocket. But again let me qualify this. Jimmy was not a criminal, he was a joker. He had quick hands but he used them
to entertain people. He was an independent little man with a great dislike for authority of any kind. There was an element of the child in his nature and he liked best to play with the children
with whom he would make balloons disappear, handkerchiefs end up in the wrong pockets, and marbles change colour like those sweets they used to call bull’s eyes.

Now the policeman took an instinctive dislike to him because I suppose he puzzled him. Jimmy had no interest in money or getting on in the world. He did odd jobs for people but otherwise seemed
perfectly happy where he was, puffing at his pipe all day. He had a small black pipe with a silver lid on it which was his most precious possession. Most of the day he would sit in front of the
door, playing with pebbles which he had picked up, or sitting in his room reading a book. He was a great reader and was never more content than when he was immersed in an old Western or a ragged
detective story that had gone the rounds of the village. Nevertheless, though he was harmless, the policeman was suspicious of him partly I think because he was so indolent and there was no way in
which power could be exerted over him and partly because there was a peculiar creative streak in his nature which the policeman found disturbing. Once he tried to get him for drinking but in some
unaccountable manner Jimmy disappeared and the policeman couldn’t nail him at all.

One day he came to Jimmy’s house and spoke to him in the following terms.

‘Jimmy,’ he said, ‘I’m the policeman in this village and I want you to understand this. I’m determined to be a good one. That is to say, no crime will be permitted
here while I am the policeman. I have the feeling that you are secretly laughing at me and I won’t have it. I have heard certain things you have said about me, joking references, and I
won’t put up with them.’

‘Oh, excuse me a moment,’ said Jimmy who seemed hardly to be listening, ‘while I make a cup of tea. I wonder if perhaps you would like one.’

‘I . . . ’ Now, it happened that it was rather a hot day and the policeman was feeling sticky in his warm blue uniform so thinking that he would make himself look human – for
he wasn’t a complete fool – he agreed to accept a cup of tea. Another reason why he accepted the tea was that he wished to have more time to look at Jimmy and study him. Jimmy was
apparently unconcerned but bustled about with cups and saucers. The policeman gazed idly round the room, which was neat and tidy and small. There didn’t seem to be enough space, as they say,
to swing a cat. There was a sink at which Jimmy was busy, there were two chairs, a fireplace which was completely bare, a small cooker, a table and nothing else. Jimmy, it seemed, was a spiritual
monk as far as possessions were concerned. There was however a big red balloon hanging from the middle of the ceiling and a guitar in one corner. All the time, Jimmy bustled about with his pipe in
his mouth. It was noticeable that sometimes he didn’t smoke at all, though he still kept the pipe between his teeth.

When the tea was ready Jimmy took the cups over and laid them down on – oh, yes, I forgot there was a stool. All the time, he had been talking in some mysterious way, for he still had the
pipe in his mouth, saying that he had nothing against the policeman, that all he wanted was to be left alone, that he wished he could play the guitar better, that it was a fine day, that
someone’s cow had been eating his washing, that he had just finished a comic song which . . . But the funny thing was that when he laid the cups down, somehow or other, either by accident or
design, the tea from one of the cups was spilt over the policeman. The latter got up in a rage while Jimmy dabbed at him with a cloth which he had taken over from the sink, his hands flying hither
and thither, faster it seemed than lightning and at one time whipping out the policeman’s handkerchief to help repair the damage. All this time he kept up a running fire of apologies while
the policeman’s face reddened and reddened. Eventually the trousers were dried out by means of the cloth and the handkerchief, and the policeman was about to storm out still swearing
vengeance against Jimmy who appeared entirely anguished and staggered by what had happened and was suggesting that the policeman should have another cup of tea. However, the latter, not to be
mollified, prepared to leave, renewing his pose, ready to confront the world again, dry and complete.

However, just as he was leaving, Jimmy said quietly, ‘I wonder if you have still got the five pound note you keep in your wallet.’ The policeman looked at him, saw some dancing
glitter of comedy in his eyes, took out his wallet and sure enough there was a five pound note missing.

There was a long silence in the room interrupted only by the frantic buzzing of a bluebottle against dim panes. The two men gazed at each other. The balloon swung gently between them and the
guitar leaned back in its corner.

‘So,’ said the policeman at last, ‘this is a challenge.’ He brooded for a moment, thought that beating Jimmy up was not on, that pure deduction must be the answer, that
if he didn’t come up with the answer he was finished in the village, and then proceeded to think. Jimmy glanced at him mockingly. For the first time the policeman realised that there was an
elfin quality about Jimmy, in the thin ironic face, and the playful smile, that too he had what could only be called an implacable cheek. He said, ‘First of all I have to search you. Come
here.’

Jimmy submitted to the search in a good-humoured manner, but there was no five pound note on him. There was no money on him at all.

The policeman took a walk over to the sink. There was nothing there either. It was neat and tidy and white. The policeman examined himself. There were no five pound notes in his pockets and
nothing in his turn-ups. He opened the wallet again to make sure that the money hadn’t been returned there in some mysterious manner, but it hadn’t. He looked in the fireplace but that
was bare. He tried the top of the stool but it remained fixed. He made Jimmy stand naked while he examined all his clothes. For one terrifying moment he thought that perhaps Jimmy had gambled on
this, that he would have arranged for someone to be watching, and that he, the policeman, would be accused of sodomy. He made Jimmy put on his clothes again. Jimmy sat back in the chair puffing at
his pipe contentedly. The policeman gazed at him. He said at last, ‘I am really a very good policeman, you know. It would be a tragedy for you if I were to leave. Who else would you get in my
place but some idiot who would be unable to solve any of your crimes? I believe in what I am doing. I was born to be a policeman. You think your idyllic existence will go on forever, that there
will never be any serious crime or murder. But how do you know that? All you have to do is read the papers.’

The silent guitar leaned back in the corner. The balloon drifted a little, like someone breathing. Jimmy said nothing but smiled. The policeman knew that if Jimmy told the story of the Locked
Room he would never recover from it. In a sudden rage he pulled down the balloon and burst it as if he thought the money might be inside it, but it wasn’t, and the deflated balloon lay on the
floor. He searched in the teapot and the kettle, but there was nothing there. He looked in the tin where the tea had been.

‘I’ve got it!’ he said at last. ‘I know what you’ve done. I know exactly what you’ve done. You’ve rolled the money up and put it in your pipe
bowl.’ Jimmy looked at him in wonderment and slightly fearfully. He mimicked alarm and despondency. He seemed to protest as he handed the pipe over. The policeman looked into the bowl. There
was nothing there.

He sat and looked at Jimmy in despair. He had tried everything and he hadn’t found the solution. The room was small and bare. There were no other hiding-places.

For the first time however he realised that there was a clock and that it was ticking rather loudly. He felt that it was ticking away his career. He remembered the stories about Jimmy, how once
at Hallowe’en he had made a cart disappear, how he could do weird things with telephones . . . As he sat there in amazement and bafflement, Jimmy said, ‘You’re a good policeman.
You’re really very good. But what you haven’t realised is that if you go on the way you are going you will increase and not decrease the amount of crime in the village. You will have to
learn to leave people alone unless there is something really serious. Look at me. I leave people alone. I’m cleverer than you. I’ve just proved it. My mind works faster. If I wanted to
commit a serious crime I could get away with it. You have forced me to take a five pound note from you. That is a crime you are directly responsible for. Do you understand? Now I am a law-abiding
person and if the law were just I should be able to sue you for serious temptation but I am not going to sue you. I’m letting you off. Do you realise that I have put you in prison? This room
is a prison for you. You can’t leave it because I have wound round you a net of the mind. For years, for the rest of your life, if you leave now with the mystery unsolved, you will be
wondering about it. It will cause self-doubt. You will never be the policeman you were. I hope you understand that clearly.’

The policeman looked at him for a long time and then said, ‘You are saying that you are offering me a bargain.’

‘Yes. The fact that you thought of my pipe suggests that you are clever. You will have to learn to be tolerant. Will you do that if I tell you the solution?’

‘Yes,’ said the policeman at long last. ‘I’ll do that. I have understood everything you have said.’

‘Good,’ said Jimmy springing up. ‘The five pound note is pinned to the back of your tunic. If you had gone out of this house swearing vengeance on me with the five pound note
pinned to your tunic, what do you think would have happened?’

The policeman shivered as if in a cold wind.

‘Now,’ said Jimmy, ‘I think we’ll have a proper cup of tea. Or rather whisky. I make it myself, you know. After all we have something to celebrate. The return of a
policeman to ordinary humanity.’

Murdo came out of the village hall in a daze after seeing the Western. The shapeless night was all about him and the moon a cold stone in the sky. He stopped and looked up at
it. Its gaze reminded him of the professional killer in the film, cold, inhuman. The killer clad in black had ridden out of the mountains, guns slung low, hat casting a black shadow over the rough
rocky ground. There had been a saloon full of people dancing, whirling about, shouting, drinking: of girls with frilly dresses which ballooned over their heads: of comic finished men with large
drooping moustaches. And into this place the killer had come, professional, remote, always standing on the edge of things, watching. Murdo lowered his eyes from the moon. There was the village with
its huddle of houses, its unfinished fences, its holed walls. There were the peatstacks, black in the moonlight. For a moment he had a vision of the village as unprotected, untidy, dull. He peopled
it with the villagers standing in their braces outside the houses, harvesting, stacking corn. There was one thing about Westerns, however, you never saw the sea in them. Plains, rocks, canyons, but
never the sea.