The Red Door (8 page)

‘Good afternoon, Mr Capaldi,’ he said as he was going out, but the florid proprietor, who was engaged in composing a slider, didn’t answer: perhaps he hadn’t heard. In
the far corner the coffee machine was hammering away.

It was now quarter to five. He walked down slowly to the pub, making his way along the crowded pavement. He bought an evening paper at the corner from a man with a green bag, and opened it out.
The headlines were still about the fire, though it mentioned the visit of the Prince to the Fleet. It now looked as if some people had been burned in the fire; the shop was about three hundred
yards from where they used to live. He remembered going past it often when Sarah was in hospital having Helen. As he stood there among the drifting crowd studying the photographs, the area they
represented seemed to be more real to him than the town in which he was staying now. It symbolised his youth when he was whole both in body and mind.

At five o’clock the rating rushed up. He had a girl with him; he had picked her up somewhere. She wore thick violet lipstick and smoked glasses, and she went careering on, giggling,
hanging on to his hand.

‘Will you slow doon?’ she shouted in a young gale of laughter.

‘Come on,’ he said, ‘I promised this gentleman we’d take him out to the ship. What time is it? Is that clock slow?’ he asked Harry.

‘I don’t know,’ said Harry.

‘Have you got a watch?’

‘No, I’m sorry . . . ’ He wished he had more time to invent an explanation as to why he had no watch, but the rating was already in motion.

He rushed them down to the pier. They had to cross the road, and there was a big traffic jam with a policeman, in white gloves, standing there directing operations. Car after car passed, loaded
to the gunwales with luggage or trailing caravans.

‘It’s always like this,’ said Harry.

The girl regarded him curiously though he couldn’t see her eyes because of the glasses. Her face was very white and she was wearing a necklace of big stones shaped like miniature
loaves.

‘Could we no get across noo?’ she said. The rating looked down at her as if not understanding what she was saying, but then tightened his grip as if in compensation. They got across
and rushed down to the wooden pier where the boat was lying. Her heels made a staccato beat on the wood as she went flying along, clinging to the sailor’s hand, Harry panting gamely behind
the two of them. They passed the lavatories and reached the end of the pier. The launch was just about ready to go.

‘Thank God,’ thought Harry. ‘Thank God we’re here in time.’ The girl stood at the edge of the pier, looking down at her shiny black shoes; she seemed like a
figurehead staring out across the glittering water.

from the boat below they heard a voice: ‘Where the f—— hell do you think you’ve been, Green?’

‘I’m sorry, Petty Officer, there’s something wrong with that clock.’

‘Come on then. Hurry up.’

The rating looked at the two of them, swallowed, and said,

‘He seems to be in a bad mood today. It doesn’t look as if . . . ’

‘Who are these people, Green? You’re not going off to Vietnam you know. Get a f —— move on.’

Green looked at the two of them and then at the boat, and then said,

‘Sorry, I’m afraid it’s no go.’ Then he was gone, dwindling down the ladder, leaving the girl in the smoked glasses and Harry staring after him.

The girl leaned over the edge, tottering slightly, and said,

‘You bastard,’ watching behind her smoked glasses her spit floating towards him.

Then she turned away and said to Harry,

‘The bastard. I was in the flicks with him all afternoon, and he was all over me, and he promised that he’d take me out to the ship. The bastard.’ Her heels clicked decisively
back down the wooden pier. Harry saw the people at the pier staring at him, and he waved feebly out to sea.

Then he trudged away from the pier towards home.

At eight o’clock, three hours or so after he had destroyed the note, Sarah came back. She laid her bag down on the table in the hall and went into the room, collapsing in a chair and
passing her hand over her brow.

‘Made any tea?’ she said at last.

‘Yes, I’ve made tea.’ She looked at him, sensing something in his voice, but then swept on. ‘The day I’ve had. Have you been telephoning again?’

‘No, not today.’

‘I should hope not. The bill will be coming soon. That Fête. So many people. And there was nothing one could buy. Even if I had the money. Just mouldy old stuff.’

He put the cups down on the table quietly, almost said something but then didn’t. He lay in the chair like an exhausted boxer.

‘Was Milne there?’ he asked in the same chastened voice.

‘Yes. And his wife too. Wearing lemon.’

‘What happened?’

‘Let me tell you. First of all I met Miss Melon and her friend. This was a big bony woman. By the way, all the people at the Fête were asking for you. They were all saying,
“Where’s Harry?”, and asking about Helen, of course, and Robin. I couldn’t very well tell them that we didn’t know, that we never heard from them. Once I was standing
there looking at a book and this snooty woman came round and said, “That’s my book, you know. Do you mind? I’ve just bought it.” So I gave her a piece of my mind. Anyway, I
went for lunch with Miss Melon and her friend, and Miss Melon was talking about Robin and how clever he was with his job in Africa an’ all. And we had lunch. We had chicken soup and braised
steak and trifle and coffee with Danish cheese. And by the way, Sonny was in, with a wee woman and a bald man and a very badly behaved child. They had a look at the menu, and then they went out
again. Perhaps the place was too crowded or perhaps the food was too expensive.’ By this time she had removed her stockings, and he had handed her the cup of tea. She looked very old and
tired by the fire, wearing her glasses with the blue demon frames.

‘And, Harry, that Miss Melon, she was called out. It was a phone call. And so I was left with that big-boned woman who hardly spoke all the time we were there. As well as being a teacher,
she owns a block of tenements, you know. And the long and the short of it was that I had to pay for the whole dinner. Two pounds, ten shillings and sixpence. This woman, Harry, she had eyes like
stones, and what she was doing at a Conservative fête I don’t know, what with her tenements and all. She looked half Russian and the only thing she bought all day was a bunch of
violets. Anyway, I had to pay for everything. And Miss Melon came back full of apologies, and she kept on talking about Robin. She set my teeth on edge. So I just left them there. I couldn’t
stand them talking about Robin.’

‘Why not?’

‘Why not, Harry, why not? That’s all Robin’s been to us, an expense. And Helen too. We brought them up and they forgot us. They don’t think about us any more. It’s
high time we thought about that, it’s high time we realised it, Harry. And Helen’s just as bad as Robin. She’s probably as bad as that slab-faced woman now. She never was a
beauty. I saw someone like Robin today. He was walking along with Milne, he had bright eyes and glasses that glitter, and he was talking to people but he wasn’t really listening. I’ve
seen that with Robin too. I’ve seen the day I would talk to Robin and he would bend down, but he wasn’t really listening. I’ve seen it, Harry.’

‘What do you mean, you’ve seen that with Robin?’ Harry shouted angrily.

‘You know what I mean,’ she said. ‘You know it. He doesn’t care. If we still had the shop he might recognise us. But not now. Not Robin.’

‘He’s away in Africa. You know that.’

‘I know, but does he ever send me a present at Christmas, does he, Harry? Don’t think I don’t feel that. He sends a Christmas card, and it’s written by his wife. But does
he send me a present? No, he doesn’t and he never will. Robin only thinks about himself. We’ve bred two monsters, Harry. He sends us a card, when he’s away on holiday somewhere,
with a lot of Xs. What’s the use of that? But does he ever spend any money on us? Does he ask us out? We’ve never seen his children. He sends us photographs and tells us about their
IQs, Harry, and how much they weigh, and he tells us about the house and the new gadgets, but that’s all, Harry. He doesn’t give us anything of himself. We came up the hard way, Harry,
but he doesn’t care. We’re on our own, Harry, that’s what we are. We’re on our own.’

He looked down at her and shouted in an unreasoning frenzy as if part of him were being squeezed to death.

‘What are you talking about? We’ll see him again. He won’t stay in Africa forever.’

‘Why not, Harry?’

There was a silence. ‘What happened today?’ she asked him. ‘I know something happened. I can tell. We’ve been too long together for me not to know.’

So he told her about the lieutenant he’d met.

‘Are you sure he was a lieutenant, Harry?’

‘Of course he was a lieutenant. I saw the pips, didn’t I? And he invited me to the ship but I couldn’t manage. I had to come back, all because of you.’

‘Is that true, Harry?’

‘It’s as true as anything you’ve been saying about Robin,’ he shouted.

‘No, Harry, it’s not. What I’ve said about Robin is true. If you’d been going out to the ship, you’d have gone, only you’d have left a note, because you want
to do what’s right. Do you think I don’t know you after forty years?’

She looked in the wastepaper basket and there, sure enough, was the note, crumpled up.

‘Why didn’t you go, Harry? Was it really a lieutenant? It was a rating, wasn’t it? If he had been a lieutenant, you’d have made him a commodore. It was really a rating.
Tell me, Harry.’

So he told her, half rending himself in the process. He hadn’t realised how hard it was to tell the truth. She had to prompt him over silences and direct him away from lies.

When he had finished, she said,

‘I see. It was very bad of him, wasn’t it? Just to get a beer and a whisky. It was very mean. That’s why we’ve got to realise we’re on our own, Harry. No
one’s going to fly in from Africa or from Canada. Do you see that, Harry? We were young once, and now we’re old and we’re on our own. We’ve got to muddle through somehow and
be as humble and as proud as our circumstances permit. Have you had any tea?’

‘No.’

‘Drink it now, then, while it’s still warm. We’re still thinking of ourselves as boys and girls. I’m an old woman and you’re an old man, Harry. And there I am just
as bad as you, going to a Conservative fête.’

He drank his tea. She went next door and he followed her. She took down the photographs of her son and daughter from the top of the piano and put them in a drawer. She put all the music away
into a drawer. The last one he saw was ‘Silver Threads among the Gold’.

Then she drew him over to the window. It was getting dark, and she didn’t put the light out. Out in the bay they could see the lights of the ships, very bright, twinkling like a bracelet,
the lights of the British Navy. Not really all that many, he thought, when you came to think of it. And after all they couldn’t beat the Americans and the Russians, and these were the
countries that mattered. In the half light he could imagine Sarah as young again. His voice became tender when he spoke to her. Sensing this she went over and switched on the lights. The room was
now so bright he could see her, loved and pitiless, but he couldn’t see the lights of the ships so well. So he thought he might as well draw the curtains. So that the two of them could learn
to be alone, for that was the way it was going to be.

I don’t often think about that period in my life. After all, when one comes down to it, it was pretty wasteful.

And, in fact, it wasn’t thought that brought it back to me: it was a smell. To be exact, the smell of after-shave lotion. I was standing in front of the bathroom mirror – as I do
every morning at about half past eight, for I am a creature of habit – and I don’t know how it was, but that small bottle of Imperial after-shave lotion – yellowish golden stuff
it is – brought it all back. Or, to be more exact, it was the scent of the lotion on my cheeks after I had shaved, not the colour. I think I once read something in a
Reader’s
Digest
about an author – a Frenchman or a German – who wrote a whole book after smelling or tasting something. I can’t remember what it was exactly: I don’t read much,
especially not fiction, you can’t afford to when you’re a lawyer.

So there I was in the bathroom on that July morning preparing to go to the office – which is actually only about five hundred yards or so away, so that I don’t even need to take the
car – and instead of being in the bathroom waiting to go in to breakfast with Sheila, there I was in England fifteen years ago. Yes, fifteen years ago. Exactly. For it was July then too.

And all that day, even in court, I was thinking about it. I even missed one or two cues, though the sheriff himself does that, for he’s a bit deaf. I don’t often do court work:
there’s no money in it and I don’t particularly care for it anyway. To tell the truth, I’m no orator, no Perry Mason. I prefer dealing with cases I can handle in my office,
solicitor’s work mainly. I have a certain head for detail but not for the big work.

I suppose if I hadn’t put this shaving lotion on I wouldn’t have remembered it again. I don’t even know why I used that lotion today: perhaps it was because it was a beautiful
summer morning and I felt rather lighthearted and gay. I don’t use lotions much though I do make use of Vaseline hair tonic as I’m getting a bit bald. I blame that on the caps we had to
wear all the time during those two years of National Service in the army. Navy-blue berets they were. And that’s what the shaving lotion brought back.

Now I come to think of them, those years were full of things like boots, belts and uniforms. We had two sets of boots – second best boots and (if that makes any sense) first best boots.
(Strictly speaking, it seems to be wrong to use the word ‘best’ about two objects, but this is the first time I’ve located the error.) Then again we had best battle dress and
second best battle dress. (Again, there were only two lots.)