Goodbye, Mr Dixon

by Iain Crichton Smith

  There was Richardson transmitting his knowledge, forming minds, gaining glory from the word and there was his father, sheltering in his shed, running away, a dreamer. Could that be it? Richardson my father … RICHARDSON MY FATHER. The three words seemed to be a detonator, he could feel the small tremors and the explosions but they didn’t mean anything to him. After all Richardson hadn’t been all that much older than him, not that much. He hadn’t been old at all, why think of him as of a father? Surely that was nonsense. Was there something else then? His father had simply read books, had written little notes about their plots, but he had been really an ignorant man. But why had he and the other pupils thought of Richardson as different from the other teachers? He had spoken with authority. Where had he come from? Who was he? Tom stopped on the pavement and stared restlessly about him. He hardly recognised where he was. Something about Richardson, about his father perhaps …

  And these poems he had written for the school magazine. Could he remember them, any of them? One of them had been entitled “Love”. Something about, “Betrayal comes down in clouds of gold …”

  Now what the devil did that mean? The usual sordid unhappy schoolboyish image? Perhaps. Perhaps that was all it was. But his mind was simmering. He knew it was close to something important, some boiling point, but he couldn’t focus on it. The best thing would be to leave it. The puzzle might open itself out voluntarily. He stared up and found that his feet had brought him on to his own house.

  23

  OR RATHER TO his father’s and mother’s house. It was strange to be looking at it. To think that he had lived there, that he had slept there. It was a most peculiar sensation like standing in the street staring up at himself. But the curtains on the living room windows were different. In the old days they had been red, now they were green. That made him uneasy, for his mother had disliked green. “It’s a colour for Catholics,” she used to say. The gate too had been painted green. It was all very odd. It made him feel slightly at the edge of the world.

  He went to the door and rang the bell which also was a different one. It made a chiming, falling sound when he pressed it. Just after he had rung the bell he saw that the name on the door wasn’t Spence at all, it was Docherty. He stood there shaken, for he had expected that his mother would still be there. What had happened to her? A youngish plump woman with slightly deranged black hair stood looking at him. She looked as if she had just got out of bed, there was an aura of sleepy warmth about her.

  He said, “I’m sorry. I seem to have made a mistake. I used to live here. I didn’t realise. I’ve been away …”

  “I beg your pardon?” she said smoothing her hair. He noticed that she spoke in a slightly affected voice.

  He repeated what he had said.

  “Oh,” she said at last, intelligence dawning in her eyes. “I suppose your name must be Spence. We heard about you.”

  He felt suddenly angry that she should know about him, that they had been gossiping about him, that his name had been bandied about without his knowledge.

  “If you would care to come in,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’ve just got up. I’ll make you a cup of tea.” He hesitated and then followed her. The hall was utterly different. The wall-paper, once dark brown, was now a bright yellow. There was a hallstand and a large oval mirror above it. He had the impression that the whole house was brighter, alive with colour. He was baffled and at odds with himself.

  “I don’t suppose you’ll recognise the place,” she said. And he didn’t. Furniture seemed to be in different places and was of a different kind, lighter, sunnier. As he walked along the lobby he thought for a frantic moment that even his own bedroom had disappeared. But certainly the door was still there though it was painted in a light grey colour. He could hear a child crying somewhere. The whole place hurt him. It was too brash, too colourful.

  “My husband’s just gone off to work,” she said. “He’s in insurance. You can have a look at the rooms if you like while I make a cup of tea,” she said comfortably. She seemed to have no fear of him and to have accepted his story, and this angered him slightly. It was as if she didn’t think much of him, as if she could afford to ignore him.

  He went to his own bedroom and looked inside. That place too he couldn’t recognise. The red armchair was gone and in its place was a smooth leather-covered contraption all in black. There were some bright paintings on the walls, one showing what appeared to be an Italian scene. There was a picture of the Virgin Mary holding a greenish Jesus in her arms. There were no books at all in the room, only a record player in the corner. The counterpane on the bed was a bright yellow: his own had been blue.

  He felt shattered as if some demon had come in the night and changed his world around. When he heard her busy with a kettle in the kitchenette he thought for a moment it was his mother and he almost shouted automatically in an angry preoccupied voice that he wouldn’t be long. For a moment he felt so tired that he nearly lay down on the bed in order to sleep.

  When he went out again she was sitting in the living room with cups of tea on a tray. The living room too had been changed. There was a large electric fire, the carpet was a pale green (instead of flowery), there were more pictures on the walls (mostly of landscapes) and there was a vase on the shining table with paper flowers in it.

  “You’ll find a big difference,” she said. She had combed her hair and looked fresher. He didn’t look on her as a person at all, he regarded her as a stranger who would give him information.

  She offered him the tea. She had already put sugar in it and it was very sweet.

  “We moved in four months ago,” she said. “Charles was working very hard on it but it’s all right now. Not that it wasn’t in good condition,” she added hastily.

  “No,” Tom said automatically, sipping his tea.

  “I’m afraid,” she said looking at him rather sharply, “your mother’s no longer here.” He thought at first that she was saying that his mother had moved somewhere else, but realised by the way that she took her eyes from him and looked down at the floor that his mother had died.

  “But the neighbours could tell you more,” she added. “The Robertsons and Thomsons are still here. They’ll be able to tell you.”

  Suddenly he said, as if it was the most important thing of all, “What happened to the shed?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The shed in the garden. Is it still there? At the back?”

  “Oh, the shed,” she said. “I couldn’t think for a moment. Yes, the shed’s still there. Charles keeps his tools there. He makes things, you know. Furniture. Shelves. Things like that. He spends a lot of his time there. He works in insurance you know. But he likes working with his hands. Would you like to see it?”

  “What?”

  “The shed. Would you like to see it?”

  “No, no, it’s all right. I don’t want to see it.”

  “You could if you wanted to. I know what it must be like for you. I’m very sorry. Would you like some more tea?”

  “No thanks. Thank you very much. It was very good of you to ask me in.”

  “Not at all. You must find this place very strange.”

  “Yes, I do. I do rather.”

  “I’m sure. Would you like a biscuit?”

  “No thanks. I’ll have to be going.”

  “Yes of course. If you want to be going.”

  Tom could almost hear echoing through the house his mother’s stormy voice. He himself was running in from somewhere panting, sweating. She was telling him that he was late as usual for his dinner.

  He got up feeling slightly dizzy, his eyes wet. The curtains were billowing greenly in a fresh breeze, the incomprehensible curtains. Beyond the window he could see the blue sky with the nameless clouds passing across it. How much of pain there was in the world. How much one had to learn and suffer. To see one’s house being transformed was like changing one’s nature.

  “I’ll go next door,” he said. “I’ll ask the Rob
ertsons. It was kind of you to give me the tea.”

  “Not at all,” she said again. “I’m only sorry I had to give you such bad news.” He felt ill and unshaven and had another fantasy of himself sitting up in his bed in his own old room as the grandmother while the wolf entered, tall and elegant and suave. The wolf had the face of Dixon, witty and debonair.

  She saw him to the door and he hesitated a moment before going up to the Robertsons’ house. At the back of his own old home he could see the shed. It also had been painted green. The door was open and he could see the tools quite clearly. Well perhaps it was more suitable for tools anyway. And why not? That was what people usually kept in sheds.

  As he walked up to the Robertsons’ house a picture of Ann came into his mind and he gritted his teeth lest he should scream. She was lying down among trees, legs spread apart, and above her was the head of a man with blond hair. Suddenly she rose and began to limp away crying to him for help but he did not answer. He stopped at the gate, gazing into space, his face working convulsively.

  Mrs Robertson on her way to do her shopping, scarfed and carrying a purse, was about to push him aside when she stopped, recognising him.

  “Tom Spence,” she said loudly, as if she had made a great discovery. “Tom Spence. What are you doing here?”

  He looked at her, vaguely struggling out of his dream, and muttered, “I’m sorry, I …”

  “You don’t look well, boy. Would you like to come in for a moment? I expect you’ve been told about your mother. Is that it?”

  “Yes,” he said, “I …”

  “Come inside. The shopping will stay till later.”

  But even as she brought him in she was thinking what she would have to tell her friends later on. “Betty’s son, that one she said was going to be a bank manager, he came to the house this morning. Looked like a ghost too.”

  A large fat man who nodded to him but did not speak and thereafter retired behind a large newspaper was sitting in a chair beside the fire in the living room.

  “I’ll make you a cup of tea,” said Mrs Robertson briskly. “I won’t be long. Not a jiffy. You wait there.”

  Tom stared dully at the large mirror above the mantelpiece, the china cats, the flickering of the fire.

  Eventually Mrs Robertson came in with the tea and some cakes which she laid down on a small table in front of him. He drank some of the tea but did not eat any of the cakes.

  “You know of course that your mother passed away,” said Mrs Robertson, looking at him keenly. “Not very long ago. They tried to find you but they couldn’t. There was a notice in the paper.”

  “I don’t read the papers,” he said.

  “I see,” she said disapprovingly as if this confirmed her worst forebodings. “Anyway she had a good end.” Might as well tell him that though she had been going about with that man, that unsuitable working class fellow. “Let’s see now,” she said. “It’s some years since you left home, isn’t it? I remember it very well. You didn’t think I saw you, did you? You left with your books. I remember it very well. It was on a summer’s morning. Must have been in your last term at school. That’s right, isn’t it?” A shudder shook him again, chill and menacing. “I remember it was a very fine summer’s morning. The blinds were still down on your house. I didn’t know you were leaving home of course, though I thought it was funny. You looked very secretive.”

  “What did my mother die of?” he asked.

  “She was ill. Pneumonia I think. She didn’t suffer much. The neighbours were good to her but in the end they had to take her to the hospital.”

  So she was lying in hospital while he was working on his book, while he was perhaps at that party. No, that couldn’t be, that other woman had said four months ago. Yet he didn’t care for her very much. Why therefore did he feel so sad? He thought of her desperate attempt to make something of both her husband and himself, and of the wedding he had seen. She too had once been young and perhaps beautiful. Later she had become embittered and nagging. When he was a child she would buy him presents. He remembered a small cart and a small white horse which he would trundle across the floor, pulling at the golden harness.

  “Where is she buried?” he said.

  “In Larkhill Cemetery,” she said. “Your aunt put up a stone I believe. You’ll find it easily enough.”

  Miles and miles of headstones, how could he find it easily enough?

  “When she was in hospital she sold the house, so I’ve heard. You should go and see the lawyer.” He knew the lawyer’s name but he didn’t know whether he would go. She liked having a lawyer, she would say things like, “My lawyer told me that I should sell the house and buy another one.” Now she was dead; she must have known that she would never leave the hospital. She and his father had been married when they were quite young. He had started in the bank and together at dinner time they must have walked down the street hand in hand, years ago. She would have predicted a great future for him then, and perhaps he did for himself too. But the future hadn’t happened. She had been quite an ordinary girl, the kind who goes to dances and thinks of having children. She had two sisters who never came to visit and she hadn’t encouraged her mother and father to come to the house. Perhaps she was ashamed of them.

  He stood up suddenly, his eyes smarting. “I’ll go and see the lawyer,” he said though he had no intention of doing so. “And I’ll go to the cemetery.”

  “Yes, you do that,” said Mrs Robertson. “You do that.” She thought he looked sickly and not very well dressed but it wasn’t her business. Serve him right in a way for going away like that and causing his mother heartbreak. After all mothers were mothers, they shouldn’t be treated like that. She was glad to see him go, he looked too broken and over-dignified. She had seen that kind of dignity before in those men who had little else left. She looked thankfully around her room and at her husband who was still hidden behind his newspaper.

  Tom didn’t think he would go to the lawyer after all, it would be too complicated. And in any case he didn’t want the money from the house even if it had been left him. Perhaps it had been left to the little man, whoever he was. And as he thought about that he realised that he wanted to see the little man to see what he was like. So he returned and asked Mrs Robertson and she looked at him oddly as if she hadn’t realised that he hadn’t known, but she gave him the address and he went there as the cold morning blossomed about the tenements and the ugly streets.

  It was funny how he had found out about the little man. It was in fact Crawford who had told him, for Crawford kept up his connection with the place from which he had come, perhaps because he had read somewhere that one of the great dangers for the academic was contempt for his origins, a schizophrenia of the spirit. One night he had told Tom that he was making a great mistake in cutting himself off from his roots. “A writer can’t do without his roots,” he had said. “No writer has ever written well when he has cut himself off from his roots.” And it was then that he had let the information slip out. And it was only another reason then why Tom felt that he couldn’t go back. But now he desperately wanted to see the little man, he wanted to talk to him, since there was no one else to talk to.

  But as he walked along there was eating at him Mrs Robertson’s remark about his departure on that summer morning “in his last term”. It was these words which disturbed him for some particular reason and which made him feel so chilly. Not simply the fact that it had been a summer’s morning but that it had been his last term. Why had he left? He stopped in the middle of the road and swayed, just about to cross. A car swished past him and he heard a distant shout and realised what had almost happened. He ran quickly away from any trouble that might have ensued. The name Richardson was beating about in his head. At first he had confused it with Robertson but he knew that the name he was looking for was really Richardson. And he knew it had something to do with a girl, not Ann, not Sheila, but Jean. She had been trim and attractive, not very clever, but reasonably bright. But he
couldn’t remember whether they had meant anything to each other.

  So lost was he in his thoughts that he passed the address which had been given to him and came back slowly again, searching the numbers till eventually he found the right one, 42.43 Somerville Street.

  The name, he had been told disapprovingly by Mrs Robertson, was Niven. On the other hand Fred Niven might not be at home. After all it was after ten o’clock, nearly eleven, and if he was working he would be at work. Perhaps Tom’s mother had left the money from the house to this Fred Niven. Tom found it strange to be climbing this dark staircase to meet a complete stranger who had apparently been something to his mother. The name was on a nameplate at the very top: the stair had spiralled round a dark, deep well which had made Tom slightly dizzy. When he reached the door he pressed the yellow bell and waited. For a while there was silence and then some scramblings and mutterings. After what seemed a long time a small bald man with a wrinkled brow came to the door, rubbing his eyes. He was wearing a blue shirt but no jacket and his trousers seemed to be held up by what looked like a pyjama cord. He looked vaguely at Tom as if he thought he might be the rent or the electricity man. For a long moment they looked at each other.

  “My name is Tom Spence,” said Tom.

  Niven stared at him uncomprehendingly. It occurred to Tom that he might be recovering from a hangover. “My mother …” he began.

  Light dawned in the washed blue eyes, secretive and hostile and defensive.

  “Come in, come in,” said Niven and Tom walked into the half darkness. The curtains of the kitchen were still drawn and he had an impression of full ashtrays and bottles lying on the floor beside a phantom armchair islanded in the half light.

  Niven pulled the curtains aside and revealed what Tom had half seen, an armchair covered with a blue cloth, empty beer bottles on the floor, a sink full of dishes.

  “I havena been to work for a few days,” said Niven dusting off a chair for Tom to sit on. “Ever since … It’s not a few days. It’s weeks,” he added. “Would ye like a beer?” he asked almost slyly, “or a nip?”