The Red Door (77 page)

She still remembered with sudden recoiling pain the stumpy way in which he had stood on his flannelled legs like a kind of adult clown. His fogged glassy eyes had stared at the map with an
illusion of intellectuality. Despairingly, in the end, he had pointed into the middle of Russia.

His glasses, she thought, had looked appealingly at her. His eyes, she wondered, must be vein-twisted under a flat stone. Then knowing he had been wrong, he returned to his seat.

‘Thank you, Margaret,’ said Miss Helen Hope, ‘and now, Mary, will you please tell me where . . . ’

We were on a touring bus one morning and it stopped at a shed by the side of the road. A hermit lived there. The shed was made of tin and had a long chimney sticking out of it.
The ’bus driver, very upright behind the wheel, tooted the horn a few times and then stopped. We were looking out the window at the hut. After the driver had stopped tooting a man came out.
He was very thin, and white, bristly hair was seen not only on his head but on on his cheeks as well. His trousers were held up by braces. He was carrying a chanter. He scratched his head and then
came over to the ’bus. He stood on the step and said, ‘Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, I’m afraid I was late getting up.’ He spoke in a sort of educated voice.

He looked down at the ground and then up again and, laughing a little, said, ‘Would you like if I played you some tunes to speed you on your way?’

He took out his chanter and blew through it. Then he took out a dirty white handkerchief and wiped it. He played ‘Loch Lomond’ very badly, and put the chanter on a case beside him, a
case belonging to one of the passengers.

‘This is the day I go for my pension,’ he said, and someone laughed.

‘I go down the road there to the Post Office.’ He pointed into the slight mist ahead of us.

The driver said, ‘He’s been on TV, haven’t you?’

The hermit scratched his head again, looking down at the floor, and then, looking up again with an alert bright look on his unshaven ravaged face,

‘Yes, I was on TV,’ he said.

‘What programme were you on?’ someone shouted from the back, greatly daring. It was a woman’s voice.

‘It was called “Interesting People”. I was interviewed, I played the chanter.’

‘Will you be on again?’ someone asked.

‘I don’t know. I may be. Depends if they like me.’

Everyone laughed, and he grinned impudently.

‘I was late getting up,’ he said to the driver.‘ I was washing my clothes last night.’

‘You should get married,’ another woman shouted out.

‘It’s too late now,’ he said perkily. ‘Would you like to hear another tune? I must play for my money.’

This time he played ‘Scotland the Brave’. He put the chanter down and said – ‘It’s too early to play.’ He had played it very badly. In fact, his playing was
so bad it was embarrassing.

He handed his cap round. When it came to my turn I debated whether to put threepence or sixpence in. After all, even though he was a hermit, he did play very badly.

As the cap was being handed round he stood on the steps and said – ‘No, I don’t have a gun. Anyway, there’s nothing here to kill, madam. I get my cheese and bread from
down the road, and that’s all I need.’

When the cap was handed back to him he took out his chanter again and said – ‘I hope it’ll behave better this time. I’ll play you one for the road if my chanter
behaves.’ He played ‘I’m no’ awa’ tae bide awa’.’ ‘I’m afraid my chanter is playing up on me today,’ he said, laughing. He got down from
the step on to the road. The driver let in the clutch just as the hermit was saying, ‘I hope you have a pleasant day.’ The ’bus picked up speed. I saw him turning away and going
into his hut. He didn’t wave or even look back, though some people in the ’bus were waving.

I didn’t know whether I hoped he got on TV or not. Playing like that he didn’t deserve to.

I heard a woman behind me saying: ‘Such an educated voice.’

And another one: ‘Perhaps he’s got a tragedy in his life. He sounded an intelligent sort of man.’

If I’d had the courage I would have spat on them. Who was he, anyway, making money from us just because he was a hermit? Anyone could be a hermit. It didn’t take courage to be a
hermit. It only took despair. Anyway, he was one of the worst instrumentalists I had ever heard. I’d have given the money to Bob Dylan if he’d stood there singing ‘Don’t
Think Twice, It’s All Right’, but not to that faker.

And now we arrive at the island of Raws, well known in legend and in song. To this island, rich in peat and some deposits of iron, there came St Murriman, clad in monk’s
habit and hairshirt. A great man, he is said to have baptised in his old age a number of seals which he thought to be children as they rolled by the shore in their innocent gambols. (And indeed
seals do have a peculiar childlike appearance if you scrutinise them carefully enough.) This island too is famous for the story of the Two Bodachs, one of these stories in which our history is
perennially rich. But perhaps the most famous story of all is that of Murdina the Maid. (I speak under correction but I believe that a monograph has been written on this story and that a paper was
once delivered on it at a Celtic Congress.)

Murdina the Maid was born of good-living parents, the father a blacksmith and the mother a herdsgirl. They lived together in harmony for many years till the mother, whose name was Marian (a
relation it is said on the distaff side to the MacLennans of Cule), delivered a fine girl. She grew up, as Wordsworth says, in ‘sun and in shower’ till she attained the age of seventeen
years. We may think of her as apple-cheeked, dewy-eyed, with sloe-black eyes and a skin as white as the bogcotton. However, matters were not allowed to remain like that.

This poor innocent girl one night was attending what we call in the vernacular a dance (though different indeed were the dances of those days from the dances of our degenerate time) and there
she met a man, let us call him a man for want of a better name, though he was more like a beast in human form. He was a Southron man, and he was addicted to the music of the melodeon, an instrument
which in those days provided our people with much innocent amusement.

We have no record of their dalliance and of his wicked wiles but sufficient to say that he persuaded her to run away with him to Glassgreen, the great metropolis, albeit she went home for her
wardrobe (poor as it was) first. One may imagine what such a wardrobe would consist of, two long skirts, a coiffed headdress, two pairs of stockings woven at home, one pair of shoes and one pair of
tackety boots, with, of course, some underclothes of the colour pink.

Compare with this the wardrobe of her seducer which would contain brightly painted ties (all bought in a shop), trousers of an alien style, shirts of a sordid cut, and shoes of a hitherto unseen
mode. The man’s name was Horace.

Thus it was that playing his melodeon and providing her with deceitful music he led her like the Pied Piper to Glassgreen.

Imagine, however, the consternation of the blacksmith and his spouse. Day after day he would lift his hammer and not even hit the anvil with it. Sunk into depression, his stalwart arms rapidly
losing their strength, he sank into an early grave and his wife did not outlive him long. O Murdina, how hapless your expedition to the metropolis! Hapless indeed our lives unless we obey our
parents. Where she expected a mansion she was led at last into a small room which contained one bed, a gas cooker, a cupboard and not much more. But the tears she shed that evening were more than
compensated for by the dallyings of her lover, whose moustache brushed her mouth as he yawned copiously through the long night.

So she began to visit dens of iniquity. Psychedelic were her days and drugged her evenings. The water of the earth did not suffice her but she must be stayed by beverages unknown to her parents.
Ravaged by music which stole her soul away she would sing in these same dens of iniquity intertwined with her lover. But sorrowful too were her thoughts for her lover had not as much money as would
sustain her wicked delights, such as splendid clothes and furniture of a rare ilk. Thus one night when he was sleeping the sleep of the sinful, she stole from his small den taking with her his
pocket book, a number of his ties (which she hoped to sell) and a diamond necklace which he said he had got from his mother, long under the sod in his native Donegal.

With these, she found herself another protector who was in the habit of giving room to a number of girls who had nowhere else to go. Laudable and charitable as this was, we must however
acknowledge that his mode of living was not what one would require from a godly man, for he was not above sending these girls out into the cold to hold converse with strangers such as seamen,
foreigners, and persons of diverse vices.

Thus passed her nights and her days, yearning as she said for the innocent pleasures of Raws, with its limpid streams, and its snow-covered bens.

One night the island came to her as in a vision. She saw it, as it were, clearly delineated on the walls of her luxurious room, and she heard in her ears the sound of its innumerable waves. In
the morning she arose, put on her new-bought furs, and set off to find the mode of transport which would take her to her home. In the carriage were many young men who (on hearing of her adventures)
were desirous to approach with many friendly overtures and those she was not loathe to deny, only saying that she would bring them to her house. She handed out to them with much magniloquence cards
which showed both her own and the name of her house.

Arrived in Raws, she was welcomed with open arms by those who saw in her the penitent returned with her spiritual gains. This gave no small encouragement to the indigenous folk for it showed
them that they themselves might do what she had done. She set up house in Raws and many were the guests who came to her house. Indeed it can safely be said that hers was the most popular house in
the island, and not until the early hours of the morning did her visitors depart, fortified by her conversation and her kindly dalliance.

Often with tears she would lay a wreath of orchids on the graves of her parents and caused a marble monument to be built to them on which she had carved these words: ‘Gone Before, But not
much Before.’

So she lived to a good old age, providing pleasure and benefit to all and had no cause to regret the day she had left Glassgreen for as she herself once remarked in one of her more serious
moments, ‘The competition here is not so fierce as in the wicked world of the south.’

Thus, therefore, is told the legend of Murdina who from being an apple-cheeked girl became a dowager of the neighbourhood, contributing much tablet to the local sale of work as well as many
cast-off dresses some of which are to be seen to this day in colours like purple and pink.

It is easy to see therefore that those who leave these beautiful islands with their lovely airs and golden sands always have the urge to return as she did, happy in that they have abandoned the
snares and competition of the metropolis.

What does he require of me? Does he himself know? One moment I am odious, the next eloquent. One moment I am standing in a courtroom defending myself, the next attacking my
accusers with words I did not know I possessed, words so violent and so lovely that I satiate myself on them and wish them back again. But the next moment I am barren and grey, an old monk in an
alien world. Who am I? I say to him. I clutch my Bible but it is like a stone, there is no answer. My heart beats dully. Where am I going, now without progeny? Where am I, beaten and poor, to go? I
ask for new words but he gives none. He is entirely unfair to me, a miser with his vocabulary. One moment I am perfect and happy, executing the exact motions of my being, a self-admirer, the next
he removes the harmony from me. My friends secretly laugh at me. I am betrayed by justice and by language together. They listen to the young and beautiful but not to the old. They do not know me.
No one here knows me and he makes no attempt to let them know me. How could they, revolving in their frivolous circles, recognise this grey man at the centre who is not me and whom he will only
permit to speak in broken tones? What does he know about me? Has he suffered? What right does he have to pass judgment on me from his bountiful universe, I who am compelled to perpetual silence and
meagreness once I leave the room that he has placed me in at the end? He has removed language from me but that does not mean that I do not exist. I pray for better words, any words, but he does not
give them to me. He has his favourites and they are the beautiful and the plausible and the negligent and the unprincipled. They have their music without morality or meaning, their fine tinkling
idiocies, but he does not speak for me. Once or twice he did but then he forgets me, seduced by them, their apparent immortality. I understand that but I cannot forgive it.

He has taken everything away from me and he has not even given me myself, for I sway as in water between the tragic and the comic. Ah, but he says, I must not make you wholly tragic nor must I
make you wholly comic. But what about the others? He has made them wholly careless. How does he know what I feel when I look at those others, single in themselves, elegant and exact and
insensitive? Does he not see that I require a clearer future if I am to keep faith with the simplicities of justice? Does he care for justice at all or is he enchanted by the corrupt music of the
nightingale?

What am I to do in this harmonious city – this city of false and base symmetry whose salons are built on stones? How am I to endure the merciless azure of its amoral sky, the perpetual
flowering of its golden suns, breeding their perpetual rays? How am I to endure the music of careless youth when they return to their houses in the moonlight, she in her false black clothes
(imitating the tranquil self-possession of a false law) and he in his large bluff insincerities? Their heaven appears so perfect and so false and I, a shadow, watching them, clutching my Bible, as
if I were in the wrong, as if I were an irrelevant disturbance, I to whom so much has been done of injustice. They do not even see me. He has given them the true music of his heart, his genius is
in the voice of their nightingales, in their voices, he attributes to them the legends of Rome, its sensuous paganisms. Am I an idiot therefore, a barren man? Or is it luck after all? Has he
abolished merit and principle? Is that what the flat distant mellow moonlight means, the acres of luck? Is it luck that condemns me and fructifies them? Clutching my Bible I must bear in my single
hell their voices singing so melodiously, their casual frivolities and gestures, as they pass the shrubbery where I stand grey and unappeased, not even a margin to their illuminated book.