The Red Door (28 page)

He stood on the deck of the ship looking towards the approaching island. He was a tall man who wore brownish clothes: and beside him were two matching brown cases. As he stood
on the deck he could hear Gaelic singing coming from the saloon which wasn’t all that crowded but had a few people in it, mostly coming home for a holiday from Glasgow. The large ship moved
steadily through the water and when he looked over the side he could see thin spitlike foam travelling alongside. The island presented itself as long and green and bare with villages scattered
along the coast. Ahead of him was the westering sun which cast long red rays across the water.

He felt both excited and nervous as if he were returning to a wife or sweetheart whom he had not seen for a long time and was wondering whether she had changed much in the interval, whether she
had left him for someone else or whether she had remained obstinately true. It was strange, he thought, that though he was sixty years old he should feel like this. The journey from America had
been a nostalgic one, first the plane, then the train, then the ship. It was almost a perfect circle, a return to the womb. A womb with a view, he thought and smiled.

He hadn’t spoken to many people on the ship. Most of the time he had been on deck watching the large areas of sea streaming past, now and again passing large islands with mountain peaks,
at other times out in the middle of an empty sea where the restless gulls scavenged, turning their yellow gaunt beaks towards the ship.

The harbour was now approaching and people were beginning to come up on deck with their cases. A woman beside him was buttoning up her small son’s coat. Already he could see red buses and
a knot of people waiting at the pier. It had always been like that, people meeting the ship when it arrived at about eight, some not even welcoming anyone in particular but just standing there
watching. He noticed a squat man in fisherman’s clothes doing something to a rope. Behind him there was a boat under green canvas.

The ship swung in towards the harbour. Now he could see the people more clearly and behind them the harbour buildings. When he looked over the side he noticed that the water was dirty with bits
of wooden boxes floating about in an oily rainbowed scum.

After some manœuvring the gangway was eventually laid. He picked up his cases and walked down it behind a girl in yellow slacks whose transistor was playing in her left hand. Ahead of her
was a man in glasses who had a BEA case with, stamped on it, the names of various foreign cities. There were some oldish women in dark clothes among the crowd and also some girls and boys in
brightly coloured clothes. A large fat slow man stood to the side of the gangway where it touched the quay, legs spread apart, as if he had something to do with the ship, though he wasn’t
actually doing anything. Now and again he scratched a red nose.

He reached the shore and felt as if the contact with land was an emotionally charged moment. He didn’t quite know how he felt, slightly empty, slightly excited. He walked away from the
ship with his two cases and made his way along the main street. It had changed, no doubt about it. There seemed to be a lot of cafés, from one of which he heard the blare of a jukebox. In a
bookseller’s window he saw
From Russia with Love
side by side with a book about the Highlands called
The Misty Hebrides
. Nevertheless the place appeared smaller, though it
was much more modern than he could remember, with large windows of plate glass, a jeweller’s with Iona stone, a very fashionable-looking ladies’ hairdressers. He also passed a
supermarket and another bookseller’s. Red lights from one of the cafés streamed into the bay. At the back of the jeweller’s shop he saw a church spire rising into the sky. He
came to a cinema which advertised Bingo on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Dispirited trailers for a Western filled the panels.

He came to a Chinese restaurant and climbed the steps, carrying his two cases. The place was nearly empty and seemed mostly purplish with, near the ceiling, a frieze showing red dragons. Vague
music – he thought it might be Chinese – leaked from the walls. He sat down and, drawing the huge menu towards him, began to read it. In one corner of the large room an unsmiling
Chinaman with a moustache was standing by an old-fashioned black telephone and at another table a young Chinese girl was reading what might have been a Chinese newspaper. A little bare-bottomed
Chinese boy ran out of the kitchen, was briefly chased back with much giggling, and the silence descended again.

For a moment he thought that the music was Gaelic, and was lost in his dreams. The Chinese girl seemed to turn into Mary who was doing her homework in the small thatched house years and years
before. She was asking their father about some arithmetic but he, stroking his beard, was not able to answer. At another table an old couple were solidly munching rice, their heads bowed.

The music swirled about him. The Chinese girl read on. Why was it that these people never laughed? He had noticed that. Also that Chinese restaurants were hushed like churches. A crowd of young
people came in laughing and talking, their Highland accents quite distinct though they were speaking English. He felt suddenly afraid and alone and slightly disorientated as if he had come to the
wrong place at the wrong time. The telephone rang harshly and the Chinaman answered it in guttural English. Perhaps he was the only one who could speak English. Perhaps that was his job, just to
answer the phone. He had another look at the menu, suddenly put it down and walked out just as a Chinese waitress came across with a notebook and pencil in her hand. He hurried downstairs and
walked along the street.

Eventually he found a hotel and stood at the reception desk. A young blonde girl was painting her nails and reading a book. She said to the girl behind her, ‘What does
“impunity” mean?’ The other girl stopped chewing and said, ‘Where does it say that?’ The first girl looked at him coolly and said, ‘Yes, Sir?’ Her voice
also was Highland.

‘I should like a room,’ he said. ‘A single room.’

She leafed rapidly through a book and said at last, ‘We can give you 101, Sir. Shall I get the porter to carry your bags?’

‘It’s not necessary.’

‘That will be all right then, Sir.’

He waited for a moment and then remembered what he was waiting for. ‘Could I please have my key?’ he asked.

She looked at him in amazement and said, ‘You don’t need a key here, Sir. Nobody steals anything. Room 101 is on the first floor. You can’t miss it.’ He took his cases
and walked up the stairs. He heard them discussing a dance as he left.

He opened the door and put the cases down and went to the window. In front of him he could see the ship and the bay with the red lights on it and the fishing boats and the large clock with the
greenish face.

As he turned away from the window he saw the Gideon Bible, picked it up, half smiling, and then put it down again. He took off his clothes slowly, feeling very tired, and went to bed. He fell
asleep very quickly while in front of his eyes he could see Bingo signs, advertisements for Russian watches, and seagulls flying about with open gluttonous beaks. The last thought he had was that
he had forgotten to ask when breakfast was in the morning.

2

The following day at two o’clock in the afternoon he took the bus to the village that he had left so many years before. There were few people on the bus which had a
conductress as well as a driver, both dressed in uniform. He thought wryly of the gig in which he had been driven to the town the night he had left; the horse was dead long ago and so was his own
father, the driver.

On the seat opposite him there was sitting a large fat tourist who had a camera and field-glasses slung over his shoulder and was wearing dark glasses and a light greyish hat.

The driver was a sturdy young man of about twenty or so. He whistled a good deal of the time and for the rest exchanged badinage with the conductress who, it emerged, wanted to become an air
stewardess. She wore a black uniform, was pretty in a thin, sallow way, and had a turned-up nose and black hair.

After a while he offered a cigarette to the driver who took it. ‘Fine day, Sir,’ he said and then, ‘Are you home on holiday?’

‘Yes. From America.’

‘Lots of tourists here just now. I was in America myself once. I was in the Merchant Navy. Saw a baseball team last night on TV.’

The bus was passing along the sparkling sea and the cemetery which stood on one side of the road behind a grey wall. The marble of the gravestones glittered in the sun. Now and again he could
see caravans parked just off the road and on the beach men and children in striped clothing playing with large coloured balls or throwing sticks for dogs to retrieve. Once they passed a large block
of what appeared to be council houses, all yellow.

‘You’ll see many changes,’ said the driver. ‘Hey, bring us some of that orangeade,’ he shouted to the conductress.

‘I suppose so.’

But there didn’t seem all that many in the wide glittering day. The sea, of course, hadn’t changed, the cemetery looked brighter in the sun perhaps, and there were more houses. But
people waved at them from the fields, shielding their eyes with their hands. The road certainly was better.

At one point the tourist asked to be allowed out with his camera so that he could take a photograph of a cow which was staring vaguely over a fence.

If the weather was always like this, he thought, there wouldn’t be any problem . . . but of course the weather did change . . . The familiar feeling of excitement and apprehension flooded
him again.

After a while they stopped at the road end and he got off with his two cases. The driver wished him good luck. He stood staring at the bus as it diminished into the distance and then taking his
case began to walk along the road. He came to the ruins of a thatched house, stopped and went inside. As he did so he disturbed a swarm of birds which flew out of the space all round him and
fluttered out towards the sky which he could see quite clearly as there was no roof. The ruined house was full of stones and bits of wood and in the middle of it an old-fashioned iron range which
he stroked absently, making his fingers black and dusty. For a moment the picture returned to him of his mother in a white apron cooking at such a stove, in a smell of flour. He turned away and saw
carved in the wooden door the words M
ARY
L
OVES
N
ORMAN
. The hinges creaked in the quiet day.

He walked along till he came to a large white house at which he stopped. He opened the gate and there, waiting about ten yards in front of him, were his brother, his brother’s
daughter-in-law, and her two children, one a boy of about seventeen and the other a girl of about fifteen. They all seemed to be dressed in their best clothes and stood there as if in a picture.
His brother somehow seemed dimmer than he remembered, as if he were being seen in a bad light. An observer would have noticed that though the two brothers looked alike the visitor seemed a more
vivid version of the other. The family waited for him as if he were a photographer and he moved forward. As he did so his brother walked quickly towards him, holding out his hand.

‘John,’ he said. They looked at each other as they shook hands. His niece came forward and introduced herself and the children. They all appeared well dressed and prosperous.

The boy took his cases and they walked towards the house. It was of course a new house, not the thatched one he had left. It had a porch and a small garden and large windows which looked out
towards the road.

He suddenly said to this brother, ‘Let’s stay out here for a while.’ They stood together at the fence gazing at the corn which swayed slightly in the breeze. His brother did
not seem to know what to say and neither did he. They stood there in silence.

After a while John said, ‘Come on, Murdo, let’s look at the barn.’ They went into it together. John stood for a while inhaling the smell of hay mixed with the smell of manure.
He picked up a book which had fallen to the floor and looked inside it. On the fly-leaf was written:

The book itself in an antique and slightly stained greenish cover was called
Robin Hood and His Merry Men
. His brother looked embarrassed and said, ‘Malcolm must have taken it off
the shelf in the house and left it here.’ John didn’t say anything. He looked idly at the pictures. Some had been torn and many of the pages were brown with age. His eye was caught by a
passage which read, ‘Honour is the greatest virtue of all. Without it a man is nothing.’ He let the book drop to the floor.

‘We used to fight in that hayloft,’ he said at last with a smile, ‘and I think you used to win,’ he added, punching his brother slightly in the chest. His brother smiled
with pleasure. ‘I’m not sure about that,’ he answered.

‘How many cows have you got?’ said John looking out through the dusty window.

‘Only one, I’m afraid,’ said his brother. ‘Since James died . . . ’ Of course. James was his son and the husband of the woman he had met. She had looked placid and
mild, the kind of wife who would have been suited to him. James had been killed in an accident on a ship: no one knew very much about it. Perhaps he had been drunk, perhaps not.

He was reluctant for some reason to leave the barn. It seemed to remind him of horses and bridles and bits, and in fact fragments of corroded leather still hung here and there on the walls. He
had seen no horses anywhere: there would be no need for them now. Near the door he noticed a washing machine which looked quite new.

His brother said, ‘The dinner will be ready, if it’s your pleasure.’ John looked at him in surprise, the invitation sounded so feudal and respectful. His brother talked as if
he were John’s servant.

‘Thank you.’ And again for a moment he heard his mother’s voice as she called them in to dinner when they were out playing.