The Red Door (42 page)

I don’t know why I thought of that but it came back to me very clearly, and especially the last thing she told me. They told him he was going to die and the minister was always there.
Strangely enough he wanted the minister to be with him and he was already reading the Bible. She said however that he was always following her about with his eyes as if he were asking her something
and she couldn’t think what it was. The moment he died she was sitting in a chair knitting. The Bible fell out of his hand and she went to give it back to him but he was dead. She told me
that when she bent down she remembered that the Bible itself was cold but the sun on the floor below was warm. For some reason she remembered this.

I hate the deaths of our island. There are too many. There are far too many deaths.

Your loving son,

K
ENNETH

I do not understand your letter. Why this attack on Fiona? No, I haven’t seen her since that day but that is no reason for your letter. I don’t understand it. I
begin to think you are not trying to understand me, though I am trying to understand you. You are not even trying. I know what you have done for me, believe me. I appreciate it. But at the same
time it is clear that you are not trying to understand me. That is terrifying. I hadn’t realised it before. Fiona is not like that at all. You say she has no right to meddle with these
things, that it’s not woman’s work. What do you expect her to do? Go to the well for pails of water? You say that the government know best. I don’t agree. What have they done for
us? I’m beginning to see a lot of things. Hell paralyses the will. I don’t agree with her, but I don’t see why she shouldn’t go to meetings if she wishes to. I am not under
bad influence. I work hard. I drive myself far into the night. But sometimes I wonder why I do it. At home one doesn’t question these things, but I can’t prevent my mind from
developing.

I will tell you something. I have a picture of an island. It is bleak but the people are gentle. Oh they are gentle enough and polite and well mannered . . . But it may be the gentility of the
dead. I see them sitting by their TV sets as here and not walking casually into each other’s houses as before without knocking. There is nothing we can do against that, but prepare ourselves.
Gentility is not enough in the world we’re born into. It is a weakness. To break the will of the children is wrong.

What have I seen in the city since I came? I have seen beggars and lonely men, I have seen the yellow lights of the mind, and the crooked shadows. Yet we must learn to live with it. I know we
must. You should not have written that letter. Children should be able to respect their parents. You must try to learn to understand. I know it is difficult but you must learn to try. There is
nothing else for you to do,
nothing else
.

Sometimes I get terrified. In this house there are seven or eight people. The landlady – what does she live for, but the making of money? And what will she do with it? She will leave it to
her children. And her husband who smokes his pipe and watches films twice or thrice a week? Were the two of them always like that? Or were they once like Jake and Joan? How have they been cheated?
And this lady lecturer, who spends her evenings sewing or visiting her friend, the other lady lecturer, what has she to look forward to? These things
have to be answered
. I sometimes
wonder: Might they not as well be dead? Perhaps that’s what happened to man: he was unfortunate enough to be able to prolong his life. For most people might as well be dead at thirty. And yet
. . . I feel that’s wrong. There is some meaning if one can find it – a precarious balance somewhere. One looks out and sees, like the Lady of Shalott. But one day the mirror breaks.
One should not think like this. Or is it that others don’t see it, the abyss?

Jake and Joan are happy. They will be married. They follow each other with their eyes and to others appear silly: but they are precious to each other. And perhaps that is enough: even for a
short while. I don’t know. Today I got a wedding invitation from Norman, Norman Morrison. He knows I can’t go to the wedding but he sent me the invitation and a flattering letter
calling me his dearest friend. And it’s true I suppose. We went to school together. We used to be sent out gardening together by the head-master. We ate the stolen strawberries with their
almost unbearable tartness together. We studied for our bursaries and read the crates of books from the library, surreptitiously checking over our answers to arithmetic problems. And I am glad he
is to be married, but I know that we will never speak to each other again in the same way.

I am sick of our melancholy, sick of it. I want to see things as they are. It is necessary. I am sick and tired of people saying No. It is necessary to stop saying No.

I am sorry about your letter. I am very sorry and shocked. I do not think you should have written it. I think it’s time you went out amongst people more. I think it is time you depended
less on me, although I shall never abandon you. It is time you looked at the facts. I do not want this burden of guilt. It is time we laughed more – high time.

Your loving son,

K
ENNETH

2

Yesterday quite by chance I ran into Fiona. I went into the café in front of the reading room – where I sometimes study – and there she was. After my ten
days at home I had completely forgotten about her. She was sitting by herself in a corner seat drinking coffee. At first she didn’t see me, and I watched her. She was idly stirring the coffee
with a spoon – her brown and white leather bag was slung over a chair: and she was staring into the cup as if it was – well, perhaps something nuclear! Then she saw me, her face
brightened and we began to talk.

I have this bad Highland manner of wanting to know about people – all about them. I pointed to her CND badge and asked her about it. She also showed me the card they are given with its
peculiar biblical message. I think she intends going to Aldermarston for the march.

‘I’m tired of studying,’ she said, ‘I feel suffocated. Honestly I do. Suffocated. As if I can’t get enough air. Sometimes I walk down to the quay and watch the
ships. That helps a little but not much.’

I found it strange listening to her because that was how I felt when I was home – as if I were being strangled to death by invisible hands. However I don’t feel so bad now.

She talked fairly freely about her parents after a while: ‘My mother’s dead,’ she said, ‘my father’s alive. He’s a lawyer. He’s a fairly successful
lawyer – here. Once he had a chance to try for a bigger job in England: but my mother was ill at the time, with her nerves, and he couldn’t go.’

She twisted her fingers on the table and I’m sure she didn’t notice.

‘They used to have the most terrible rows at first. He used to blame her for holding him back. He drinks a lot. Families are like that,’ she said, looking out into the street where
the large statue of Sir Walter Scott confronted us. ‘They fight each other and kill each other and feed off each other.’

I told her a little about George.

‘That’s different,’ she maintained, ‘that’s honest. My father wasn’t like that. His hatred at the end was a cold hatred. Eventually he wouldn’t speak to
my mother at all. It’s strange that. Sometimes I saw him actually grit his teeth. She was one of these defenceless people who invited bullying. But he didn’t bully her. He would simply
get drunk and ignore her. Once I saw her pouring tea into his cup. It was late, I remember, and he had just come in. The hot tea spilt over her hand. She didn’t scream and I saw the red
coming up on her hand. But he did nothing. He carried on drinking his tea, as if he hadn’t noticed. But I saw that he had noticed, and yet he pretended that he hadn’t.

‘When my mother died two years ago I left him. That was all. One afternoon when he was at the office I simply packed a bag and left the house. I left a note. I remember I had difficulty
with the key. First of all I locked the door and then I had the key in my hand. So I threw it in through the window and walked away. He didn’t ask for me back. It was as if he was tired of
the lot of us. He tried to give me money (it’s very easy to give people money) but I didn’t take it. I had some from my mother. She was saving up in a bank for me. She was all I had you
see. Anyway he didn’t really bother about me much. I can imagine him in the morning shaving and sitting down to have his breakfast and getting the car out, but it’s as if I was thinking
of a stranger. I have no sympathy for him. I don’t hate him, I have no feeling for him. That’s all.’

She added, ‘I think that was why I joined the CND.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘I don’t know. It’s something to do with that pressure. Do you think about it like that?’ I didn’t understand. Sometimes I’m quite stupid.

‘Well, the pressure builds up and you get a nuclear bomb, that’s all. But I don’t want it to be like that – that would be like my father you see. Something went wrong in
his ambitions and the pressure built up. It would have been more honest if he had left my mother. But in his position, you know, that would never do. Like a lawyer I heard of recently. His girl
friend wanted to be married in a registry office. But no – not him. He wanted a church wedding: and he’s an atheist too.’ Looking out of the window she suddenly burst out
laughing, a pure bell-like laugh. It’s difficult to describe it. It’s not the laugh of innocence. It’s the laugh which has gone beyond pretensions, it’s the pure laugh of
comedy which almost for a moment accepts the universe as it is.

Yet I didn’t laugh like that. I believe these lies and hypocrisies are evil. They are the greatest evil. And they are within the church too. I dream of another church, a more precarious
one, and that laughter will be its bell . . .

I didn’t know what else to say except:

‘It’s the same everywhere. Because people refuse to look. They’ve got to protect themselves.’

‘I suppose so,’ she said. ‘Can I get you a coffee?’

Instinctively I said ‘No’ (By the way that’s a very funny thing about me which I thought of recently. If anyone asks me a question and I haven’t been listening but I
pretend that I have I always say ‘No’; I never say ‘Yes’) because I don’t like women buying anything for men, and because she can’t have much money. Then I
changed my mind for some reason and said ‘Yes’.

For a long time we said nothing and then we went out and walked along the street in the cool of the evening. We said nothing at all. When we parted I simply said ‘Goodnight Fiona’
and she said ‘Goodnight Kenneth’ – she had asked me no questions about myself or my home – and I walked home. That was all. The sky was green above the tram rails.

When I got home George was not yet in. At ten o’clock he came in slightly drunk. I had never seen him drunk before. I think it’s a bad sign. I managed to keep him from stumbling over
anything and from getting himself entangled with one of the stair rails which is slightly loose and got him to bed. He slept almost as soon as his head hit the pillow. His red hair was sweating and
his face was white. I don’t know what’s wrong with him.

This is quite a long letter. I shall write again soon. I hope you are well.

Goodnight,

Your loving son,

K
ENNETH

Tonight at seven I put down my books and I thought I’d write to you. I kept finding there was something I ought to explain but I couldn’t think what it was. Then
George came in and we played some records. He lay on the bed with his hands behind his head looking up at the ceiling and saying nothing. Sometimes I caught him looking at me as if he wished to say
something but he didn’t. (By the way Jean and Jake have announced their engagement. When Jake told us about it he was grinning and there was oil on his face: I thought that was very
endearing.) I nearly asked George what was the matter with him but I didn’t. I just sat and listened, or rather at first I wasn’t listening at all. Then it came into my consciousness
that this was a woman singing and there was a kind of catch in her voice. It was the Blues – a sort of jazz – and a spiritual. For some strange reason this made me think of our church.
I think it must have been the black disc spinning. (All this time George was lying on the bed looking up at the ceiling, perfectly motionless.) Then it struck me. This was the sort of church I
wanted. This woman had more faith and more depth and more sheer melody of life than our Minister.

I remembered an incident which took place at home. You know Mrs McInnes the widow, the one with a son in Australia. I was in her house one night and Mrs MacLeod was there. They were talking
about how her son had sent money home by a local sailor and they had never seen it. He must have spent it. This Mrs MacLeod – she’s got a sort of moustache and I remember she was
wearing a sort of rabbit collar – she suddenly said:

‘He will pay for his sins. There’s one thing I always believe in. People must be made to pay for their sins.’

I looked at her and there was hate in her face. Her lips were tight. And yet really it had nothing to do with her. She wasn’t even concerned. Listening to that record I thought of that and
I realised something which I suppose I must have known for a long time.

WE ARE A NEW GENERATION. WE ARE DIFFERENT FROM YOU.

I remember too when you were reminiscing with some of your friends. I didn’t understand you. You told each other your jokes but they had no meaning for me. They were past. They were
finished.

And I think I know why George started drinking. The reason is he is supposed to cure people, but he doesn’t know W
HAT
F
OR
. That is why he
listens to the music. He wants to find out why he should cure people. That’s all. I watched him. His eyes were open at first and I could see him studying the light bulb. Then slowly they shut
but he wasn’t sleeping. It was as if he were really listening. I heard a trumpet, one clear note – a single pure note like water – no, George said it was like a drink of cool milk
during fever or after a hangover, the very cold milk you get in cartons from these machines – this single note held perfectly steady – like a guarantee of something – rising out
of the wrestlings of the music, out of the sweat of billiard rooms and men with green eyeshades – this single pure note, and then George opened his eyes, and that was all. The record ended
then.