The Red Door (16 page)

‘What’s that to do with Christianity?’ said Chrissie fiercely, feeling the pain in her legs again. ‘Films and Sunday picnics. What’s that got to do with
God?’

‘I didn’t know he was going to be there, you see,’ said Bella. ‘And instead of the minister you saw this wee man – he was so wee, you understand, you could have
lifted him up and put him in the pulpit – and he walked along in his gown very dignified. And, I tell you, Mr Mason went up to the pulpit with the Bible same as he does before Mr Gunn comes
in, and you know that he can’t abide blacks, and this wee man stood up there and looked at us. Honestly, I nearly burst out laughing. He was so black, you see. He was as black as boot
polish.’

‘I wouldn’t have believed it,’ said Chrissie. ‘When you think of the old days the ministers would stand up there and tell you that you were a sinner and that you would go
to hell. They had spunk.’

Bella broke in eagerly.

‘And do you remember Maclachlan saying to them one day, “You come here and you read the Bible as if it was a catalogue. You send away for your wardrobes and your dressing tables and
your mirrors, but I am telling you that there will come a day when you will go to a place that will have no wardrobes and no dressing tables and no hairbrushes and no mirrors.” Oh, he was a
terrible man.’

‘He told them the truth,’ said Chrissie sharply, ‘and they deserved it too. Every word of it. I heard him once. He was a great preacher. Black men!’

Bella said in her giggling voice, ‘The funny thing was that he was so black, you know, and it was as if he was imitating what the minister does. You wanted to burst out laughing. You
can’t tell with their faces, you know, what they’re thinking. You can’t see anything on their faces, they’re so black.’

And Chrissie thought: It was the devil, of course. God has sent the devil into the churches to deceive the people: that’s what’s happening. The devil is imitating the preachers and
laughing at them with his black face and white collar. She imagined the black neck ringed with the white collar.

Oh, she could see him there all right. Wasn’t it him who was tempting her to blaspheme, to say that God had left the world for ever, and nothing was left but the television sets and the
radios and the dance halls and people swearing as they came up the road at night at twelve and one o’clock?

Wasn’t it him who spoke to her in the silence of the night, who spoke to her when the light was blue and the lights spun round the ceiling, in the night when she had to get up to take
aspirins to dull the pain, and she could see herself in the long mirror in the long lobby?

Wasn’t it the devil who was black as night, who spoke to her out of the black night and said to her, ‘Come with me. Abandon yourself. Curse God. Speak the terrible words.’

‘He was so funny,’ said Bella, ‘honestly you couldn’t help smiling. What did the doctor say about your legs?’

‘He said I wouldn’t be able to walk down the stairs. That’s what he said. I don’t know what I’m going to do.’ Her whole body seemed suddenly to be full of
tears and she repeated, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do.’

As she said this she hoped that Bella would respond in some way, that she would realise that she had opened herself out, that she was asking for help; that Bella would sense in that dim mind the
true voice of feeling, that she would know that God had spoken.

‘It is hard. Everything is hard these days,’ said Bella.

And the moment passed.

Devil, devil, devil, thought Chrissie. You too are a devil. And you laugh at the devil in the pulpit, when he has come to tell us of the end of the world when no one will be able to walk about
the streets as it tells us in the Bible, when the world will be abandoned to the night.

‘And he told us about the Indian babies. That was nice. That part. He’s a clever man though he’s black, give him that.’

‘Indian babies,’ said Chrissie vehemently. ‘What are you talking about Indian babies for? He should have been talking about God and his hand upon us. He should have been
talking about our sins and our lusts. He should have stood up and denounced you all, that’s what he should have done. And you watch his films about Indian babies and you think: It’s
like the TV. He should have told you the truth about yourselves.’

‘Well, Chrissie, there are Indian babies and if you had seen them . . . ’

‘And I’m telling you that we need God more with our black hearts. That’s what I’m saying. And he stands there as black as boot polish when he should be white. Oh, Bella,
Bella, how much we need him to be white.’

‘Well, I don’t know,’ said Bella hesitantly, ‘I thought he . . . ’

‘He should be white. It’s we who are black. But he should be white. That’s what it is, Bella. That’s what it should be like. And I’ll never see it again. The church
will be standing there and I’ll never enter it again, I’ll never sit in my pew again and listen to the psalms. I’m so tired of the blackness, Bella, and you come along and tell me
that it’s got into the church.’

Bella looked at her in amazement. She must be going out of her mind. This was the last time she’d come here, that was sure. You paid her a nice visit and she was at your throat.

‘It should all be white. Everything should be white. Tell the minister to get rid of him at nights when the light is blue. Or he’ll be wandering round the rooms laughing, looking at
himself in the mirror and admiring himself and trying on the minister’s collar for size. Tell him that. Tell him that our hearts are black enough already. Time is so long and there should be
more whiteness and not blackness. Time is so long . . . ’

When I went into the shop next door that day, I heard them quarrelling, I mean Diane and her father, Mason, or the Lady, as we called him. Perhaps they hadn’t heard the
tinkle of the bell or he had forgotten that I often came in at that time.

‘And I’m telling you that university is crap. I’m not going and that’s the end of it.’

That was beautiful baby-faced Diane with the peroxide, white hair and the heart-shaped ruthless face.

I heard him murmuring and she began again:

‘I’m telling you, you can shove these books. And all that stuff about sacrificing yourself for me is a lot of . . . ’

At that point I went back to the door, opened it and let it slam as if I had just come in. The voices ceased and the Lady came into the shop.

He looked tired and pale, but his sweet angelic smile was in evidence as usual. I heard a far door slam and judged that it must be his daughter leaving.

‘Marzipan?’ he said. I agreed. I like sweets and I eat a lot of them.

Mason is the kind of man who was born to serve, and not simply because it is his trade but because his whole nature is servile. I mean, one has seen shopkeepers who are brisk and obliging, but
this is something else again, this is obsequiousness, an eagerness to please that is almost unpleasantly oriental. It makes one feel uncomfortable, but it must please a certain type since his shop
does a good trade and, in fact, the rumour is that he is thinking of expanding.

I return to his servility. It isn’t that he is insincere or anything like that. It is as if deep in his soul he has decided that he really is the servant, that you are a different order of
being, an aristocrat, and he lower than a peasant. He gives the impression of finding himself in you. If it weren’t for you he wouldn’t exist. Frankly, if you haven’t met that
kind of person, it is difficult to explain it. I hope I won’t be accused of anti-semitism if I say that he reminds me of a Jew, and yet he isn’t a Jew, he belongs to this small town and
was born and bred here. I suppose there is something about that kind of person which brings out the fascist in one, a desire to kick him as if he were a dog, he looks so eager to please, hanging on
your every word, on your every order, as if a few ounces of sweets is more important to him than anything else you can conceive of. (Some day, if I have the time, I shall write a paper about the
psychology of service. I think it’s important, I imagine a shopkeeper who screams at you because you don’t buy anything from his shop as if ‘you had something against him’.)
The Lady will even cross his hands and stare at you like a lover till you decide what you want, and then he will sigh as if an accomplishment had taken place.

I come here fairly often, and I know his daughter reasonably well. He has only the one daughter and no sons, his wife is dead. They say that he treated her badly. I don’t know about that,
but I’m sure that he loved his jars of sweets more than her. Imagine living among sweets all day: one would have to be sour when one had left them surely. Is that not right? He wants Diane to
go to university since somewhere buried beneath that servility is ambition. I know her, and she is a bitch. Anyone with half an eye could see that, but she’s sweet in public, dewy-eyed and
cool above the mini-skirt. One of these peroxide blondes and the kind of nutty mind that may get her yet into a students’ riot in our modern educational system.

He has brought her up himself, of course. I have played chess with him in the local chess club; I always win, naturally. After all, would he want to lose a customer? But sometimes, I have seen
him looking at me . . . He thinks the world of his daughter. You know the kind of thing; if she’s first in Domestic Science, he’ll give her a bicycle. As a matter of fact, I know that
she goes with this fellow Marsh, who’s at least ten years older than her, and he takes her out to the beach at night on his motor-cycle. His father owns a hotel in the town, and he’s
got quite a reputation with the ladies. You’re not going to tell me that they are innocently watching the sea and the stars.

She doesn’t like me. I know that for a fact. I can tell when people don’t like me. I have antennae. She thinks I’m some kind of queer because I’m fifty and not married,
and because I’m always going to the library for books. And because I wear gloves. But why shouldn’t one wear gloves? Just because young girls wear mini-skirts up to their waists
doesn’t mean that all the decencies should be abandoned, that the old elegancies should go. I like wearing gloves and I like carrying an umbrella. Why shouldn’t I?

That day – as so often before – I got into conversation with the Lady while he hovered round me, and we came round to education.

‘They’re doing nothing in those schools these days,’ I said, and I know it’s the truth. ‘Expressionism, that’s what they call it. I call it
idleness.’

He looked at me with his crucified expression and said,

‘Do you really believe that?’ He had a great capacity for listening, he would never volunteer anything. Some people are like that, they hoard everything, not only books, not only
money, but conversation itself. Still, I don’t mind as I like talking.

‘In our days we had to work hard,’ I continued. ‘We had to get our noses to the grindstone. Arithmetic, grammar and Latin. Now they write wee poems and plays. And what use are
they? Nothing. How many of them will ever write anything of any value? It’s all a con game. Trying to make people believe that Jack is as good as his master. I’m afraid education is
going down the drain like everything else. They can’t even spell, let alone write.’

Suddenly he burst out – rather unusual for him –

‘She doesn’t want to go to university.’ Then he stopped as if he hadn’t meant to say so much, and actually wrung his hands in front of me.

‘You mean Diane?’ I said eagerly.

‘Yes. I’m so . . . confused. I wouldn’t have said it only I have to talk to someone. You know that I don’t have many friends. I can count on you as my friend, can’t
I?’

As far as you can count on anyone, I thought. As far as anyone can count on anyone.

‘She says to me, “I can’t stand the books”. That’s what she says. What do you think of that? “I can’t stand the books,” she says. She says a haze
comes over her mind when she is asked to study. She says that she has read all the books she wants to read. “What is the good of education anyway?” she asks. “All that’s
over. We don’t need education any more and anyway”, she says, “we’re not poor”. What do you make of that?’

‘Oh, that’s what it’s come to,’ I answered. ‘There was Mr Logan died the other day. Now he spent all his years teaching in that school. He read and read. You
won’t find many like him any more. Nobody needs him. Nobody wants him.’

He wasn’t listening. All he said was,

‘After what I did for her too. I used to go with her to get dresses fitted and her shoes and everything, and I’m not a woman you know.’

There might be two opinions about that, I thought to myself. ‘I don’t understand it,’ he said, wringing his hands. ‘What’s wrong with them? She wanted a guitar. I
gave her a guitar. She used to go to the folk club Thursday nights and play it. Then she grew tired of that. She wanted to go to France for her holidays and I let her do that. Do you think
it’s a phase?’ he asked eagerly, his face shining with innocence and agony, the crucified man.

I thought of the little white-headed bitch and said,

‘No, it’s not a phase.’

‘I was afraid it might not be. I don’t know what I’m going to do.’ He was almost crying, such a helpless little man that you couldn’t help but despise him.

‘I think you should beat some sense into her,’ I said suddenly. He looked horrified. ‘I didn’t know you believed in corporal punishment,’ he said.

‘In extreme cases I do,’ I answered, ‘and this seems to be an extreme case. If it was my daughter, that’s what I’d do.’

I took my umbrella in my hands, sighting along it like a gun, and said,

‘She’s betrayed you, kicked you in the teeth. But that’s the younger generation for you. They’re like bonbons, mealy on the outside but hard on the inside.’

He smiled, for I had used a simile which he would understand. Deliberately.

‘Do you really think so?’ he said at last, almost in tears, his lips trembling. ‘But it’s true, you give them everything and they throw it back in your teeth. I slaved to
make this shop what it is and it was all for her and she doesn’t care. She’s never served a customer and I, I have to do it all. I’ve even got books to study so that I can help
her with her lessons. I’ve got the whole Encyclopaedia Britannica. What will I do? She says she’s going abroad. I gave her everything and her mother too, for five years when she was
dying, I’m tired, so tired.’