The Red Door

by Iain Crichton Smith

  Read these stories because they are stylistically diverse – variously realistic and hallucinatory, humorous and philosophical, formally complex and naturally, unadornedly simple.

  Read these stories because they were created by one of the most humane, eloquent, humorous, productive, scrupulous, lyrical, and uniquely imaginative literary minds of our times.

  KEVIN MACNEIL

  Summer 2001

  Colombia-Malta-Isle of Skye

  from

  SURVIVAL WITHOUT ERROR

  and other stories

  The Ships

  The grey ships on the far horizon loomed out of the early morning haze, bastions of our lost Empire, the aircraft carrier pregnant with missiles, the other lesser ships receding from her towards the open sea. The foreshore was deserted except for one man who was making little forays into the water, salvaging planks and broken boxes, and stacking them carefully against the sea wall which edged the long strip of green where, later on, the wasp-coloured deck-chairs would be set. Now and again he would stop and look out towards the massive ships whose combined destructive power could blast the small town out of existence in one blistering microsecond.

  As he walked, one could see that he was lame in the right leg and, when he bent down, the stiffness of his body was evident. He had rolled his trousers up to his knees which gave him the look of a small boy hunting for crabs or fish. But he moved very warily, stretching out his hands towards the dripping wood, sometimes using a grappling iron which he had with him.

  It was not the best time of year for wood. Better would be the winter, when the storm had lashed the foreshore, ascending in white spray and hitting the glass doors and windows of the shops, when the waves were slate grey and looked as dense as geological strata, and the stubby trawlers puffed out thick black smoke as they drove onward into the crashing water.

  There was not much wood that morning, and eventually he sat down against the sea wall and took out his pipe. He cut up a piece of small black twist, placed it in the pipe, took out a match and, after some time, succeeded in striking it and lighting the tobacco. He puffed steadily, looking out towards the ships. They were too far out for him to see their names, but their shapes looked formidable, high in the water.

  Above him, another oldish man passed, a tall man with a stick and white hair on his face.

  ‘Not much wood today, Harry,’ he shouted down.

  Harry laughed, exposing slightly yellow teeth between thick lips.

  ‘Didn’t expect much, Sonny,’ he answered. ‘Not with this weather. You’re early up.’

  ‘My daughter’s coming today,’ said Sonny proudly. ‘With her man. He’s a manager in the SCWS. Mind I telt you of him. Coming up for the day they are. In the car.’

  He stood there above Harry on the pavement, looking military in a phantasmal and rather decrepit way with his stick and his white hair.

  ‘Ay. Good for you,’ said Harry. ‘You’ll be going out to dinner with them, shouldn’t wonder.’

  Sonny gazed unfathomably out to sea. ‘Shouldn’t wonder,’ he agreed.

  ‘Last time it was the Grant. Though it’s gone down. Do a lot of fish now. Wee bits of fish.’

  Harry’s mouth watered. ‘And you’ll have trifle and the wee oranges. Mandarins. Mind you watch the trifles. Ask for them fresh. They keep them overnight sometimes.’

  ‘You should know, Harry. You were a cook, weren’t you?’

  ‘Ay,’ sighing, ‘I was that. Shouldn’t wonder if you get braised steak. And a fag after it. Take a fag after it. With your coffee in the wee cups. Make sure you get the coffee in the wee cups and the brown sugar. The brown sugar’s for coffee. White’s for tea. Is it a big branch he’s manager of?’

  ‘George Street branch,’ said Sonny with vague pride, confronting the haze.

  ‘They look big, don’t they?’

  ‘Ay, the ships. I was on one of they.’

  ‘Yes, Harry.’

  Harry climbed up with the wood in his arms, taking his time, very careful. Puffing. His pipe back in his pocket. ‘God dammit,’ he said, ‘getting steeper every month.’

  ‘Ay, a big one she was. In the war, you know.’

  ‘Yes, Harry.’

  ‘You should have seen the food on you. Used to throw it over the side. Buckets of it. Swill. In the Med. it was.’

  ‘I’m sure, Harry.’

  Harry put down the wood carefully and leaned down stiffly to unroll his trouser legs. Sonny gazed outwards, posed on his stick, thinking of his daughter and his son-in-law. It would make his day. One up for him. Talk about it later in the shelter when they were watching the pipe band, the old men.

  ‘They were in Italy,’ he offered.

  ‘Who, Sonny?’ looking up.

  ‘My daughter and her man. For their holidays, you know. They took the car. Wrote us postcards.’

  ‘Is that right, Sonny? Which part?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What part? Italy’s a big place, you know, Sonny. There’s Venice. And Rome. Where they Catholic bastards hang out. Went on leave there once. Bologna, it was.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t any o’ they. Posh place it was. It had towers, see. Castles.’ The air began to grow warm, and the ships came clearer out of the water. So huge they were, massive. With steel grey sides.

  ‘Got to go now, Harry. They’ll be along any minute, and I’ve got to change my clothes, the wife says.’ He pointed to his red bow-tie. ‘Got to take this off. There’ll be the nipper as well.’

  ‘Have a good time, Sonny,’ said Harry watching his stiff back receding. ‘Stuck up bastard. Anyone would think he was an exmajor. Manager of the Co-op! Have a good time,’ he shouted bitterly.

  He picked up his armful of wood, limping, grinning with his teeth bared.

  He walked slowly along the pavement waiting to cross. The shop opposite sold morning rolls and he smelt them in the clear briny air.

  ‘Could you tell me the way to Smith Street?’ said an earnest, bespectacled little man who was carrying a copy of Time Magazine under his right arm.

  ‘Smith Street?’ said Harry. ‘You see that newsagent? There, beside the barber’s pole? You go up the street there. At the corner. That’s Smith Street.’

  ‘Thank you. Thank you very much,’ said the little man gently, looking at the wood cradled in Harry’s arms.

  ‘I was just speaking to a friend of mine,’ said Harry. ‘His son-in-law is manager of the Co-op.’

  ‘Oh? That’s interesting. Of the Co-op?’ said the little man quickly before darting across the road just in front of a big red bus.

  Harry waited and finally crossed, the wood in his arms, not going as far as the zebra crossing which was down the road a bit.

  ‘Getting old,’ he thought. ‘Not as supple as I used to be. Not so many out yet.’

  He walked along the pavement. ‘Fine day,’ he offered the local bank manager who was staring seawards, his black hair carefully combed into shining black waves.

  ‘What? Yes, isn’t it?’ said the bank manager withdrawing his small eyes from immense distances.

  A shopkeeper was bending over a crate of oranges, revealing a large bottom. ‘Fine day,’ said Harry.

  ‘Ay, it’s that,’ said the shopkeeper, laughing. ‘Ay, it’s that.’

  Harry looked at the box of oranges as if he knew about oranges.

  ‘Fine crop,’ he conceded.

  ‘Yes, Harry, aren’t they?’ said the shopkeeper, going into the shop with the box.

  Harry’s thick lips came together, and he looked into the shop for a moment before turning the corner up to his house.

  ‘Hi, Harry,’ said a boy going past on a bicycle and waving one hand while keeping a grip on the handle-bars.

  ‘Hi, son,’ said Harry to the disappearing whirring wheels and the diminishing whistle.

  ‘Not much wood,’ he said, coming into the kitchen.

  ‘Your breakfast’s on the table,’ said Sarah, lips pursed, flicking at something on the
table-cloth.

  He eased himself slowly into the leather chair. ‘Any mail?’

  ‘The electric.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Two pounds and sixpence.’ She sat down opposite him and poured out the tea from a teapot cocooned in a red woollen cosy.

  He crammed soft white bread into his mouth.

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t do that, Harry.’ Her voice had a gravelly whine.

  ‘Wha?’ mouth full.

  ‘Stuff your mouth with bread. I wish you wouldn’t do it, Harry.’

  He decapitated an egg with his knife.

  ‘Nothing from them, then?’ he asked slowly and almost shyly.

  ‘No, and you know as well as I do that there won’t be. They’ve forgotten us. Our children have forgotten us.’

  ‘Mm,’ chewing.

  ‘Saw Sonny this morning.’

  No answer.

  ‘Said his son-in-law was coming. Manager of the Co-op, he said, in Glasgow.’

  Snort.

  ‘Paper come?’

  Nod.

  He dried the yellow of the egg with his bread, gulping, chewing. She looked down at her plate.

  God, how ugly she was getting with that white hair, grumpy stony face, the dry waspish eyes behind the glasses.

  ‘Going to the Fête today?’ He pronounced it as if it rhymed with ‘set’.

  ‘You know very well I am, Harry.’

  ‘Only asked. Think Mr Milne will be there?’

  No answer.

  ‘He should be there. He’s the Tory MP isn’t he?’

  No answer.

  ‘When are you going?’

  ‘Twelve o’clock. I’ll leave your dinner for you. I’ll have lunch with the girls.’

  ‘Where?’ picking his teeth.

  ‘Clark’s. Or the Grant.’

  ‘Upstairs?’

  ‘Where else. They don’t do lunches downstairs. You know that, Harry.’

  Yes, he knew that.

  ‘Who’s paying?’

  ‘Miss Melon will be there.’

  ‘That the schoolteacher?’

  No answer.

  He buttered his fourth piece of bread, his red cheeks bulging.

  ‘How’s your leg today?’

  ‘The same.’

  ‘Going about like a tramp. That wood will finish you.’

  ‘Someone might as well take it. It’d be left there else.’

  Grunt.

  He wiped his mouth, sat back, reached for the paper.

  The phone rang. He went to it, but it wasn’t for him.

  ‘Be for me I expect,’ she said.

  He lifted it. ‘Harry Millar here. Who? Oh. For you, Sarah.’ His mouth puckered and he sat down to read the paper, half listening.

  ‘You don’t say? She’s going to be there herself?’

  He put on his glasses and read, moving his lips slightly, pouting.

  ‘Hey, Sarah,’ he said. She hushed him furiously with her hand.

  ‘Yes, of course, bring your friend. What did you say she did? I know it’s the vacation. Yes, of course . . . ’

  Imagine that. A big fire in Clarewood’s. He studied the photographs – the ladders, the window marked with a cross, the two policemen standing talking, hands behind their backs. What had started the fire? His blubbery lips moved.

  The receiver was replaced. ‘She’s bringing a friend. A friend! Why she couldn’t have told me before! School-teachers!’

  ‘You’ve got one in the family yourself,’ pacifically.

  ‘Have we? Have we, Harry?’

  ‘Big fire in Clarewood’s, Sarah. Three dead.’

  ‘Wish they’d tell you these things beforehand,’ she complained, sweeping plates on to a tray.

  ‘They wouldn’t know, Sarah. It was a surprise.’ He laughed, showing his teeth.

  She put the dishes in the sink, running water over the tinny interior through the red rubbery tube. A little water got on to the formica. She wiped it dry.

  ‘There’s a photo, Sarah.’

  She didn’t want to look at it.

  ‘How old do you think I am, Harry? I’m an old woman. I’ve got to take my time. I can’t do everything at once. I’m an old woman, Harry.’

  ‘Just showing you the photo, Sarah, that was all.’

  ‘I haven’t got time, Harry.’

  ‘Oh, all right, I’ll go into the other room, Sarah.’

  He rose and, limping, went.

  He sat down in a chair beside the piano with the photographs on top, Helen’s photograph and Robin’s. His daughter and his son. No letters from them today either. Music on top of the piano, ‘The Rowan Tree’.

  He sat down in the sun that was shining through the window. Fancy the fire at Clarewood’s. Used to live there when we were young, he thought, that area. When we were just married. In a room and kitchen, with a window overlooking the back. Used to be washing hung out there at the back: they called it the green. Just after the war it was. In those days they had the trams. They had to take six wall-papers off the walls when they went in, because the previous tenant had been an old woman who had lived by herself. The two of them used to dance in there, the room still bare, when they worked on it till midnight and after. Sundays, they’d go for a walk by the river, hand in hand. Lie down on the grass and look across the river, shining it was, and the cranes very tall above the water. Always liked a bit of country. Had a moustache too in those days, you could see it in the army picture with the boys all in it. Turning a bit brown now.

  To be young . . . Then he had his job at the shipyard, clocked in with his lunch in his tin box. Tin Box Harry. Just a labourer, of course, though he could have been a foreman if he’d wanted. Could’ve. Sundays, her brother and family would come over from Greendale. Great fun, lots of laughter and jollity. Come to think of it, his brother worked in the Co-op too. Something to do with the bottle department. High up in bottles. Very complicated it was, you wouldn’t think there’d be much to bottles, but the way he spoke it was a very responsible job. Pity about Clarewood’s.

  ‘How are you, Harry?’ That was Ronny, her brother.

  ‘Brought some fish and chips. Thought you’d be hungry, you newly weds.’ Wolfish smile, slap on the back, smell of stew. ‘And a bottle of beer, Harry. Couldn’t afford the champagne. Said in our family we stick to beer. Beer runs in our family. How’s that, Harry? “Beer runs in our family”.’ Roar. Everybody sweaty, full of food, happy. Appetite never so good as in those days.

  ‘And I’ve got a screwtap, Harry. All the home comforts. A screwtap and fish and chips. On top of the world, eh, Harry? Everyone’s got a job. Everyone happy. Eh, Sarah?’ And Sarah beginning to smile mirthlessly, beginning to get a little grim. Well, he did have a job, didn’t he? But Sarah a bit mirthless just the same.

  Ronny flicking his hands at the papers. ‘The ruinators after us again, Harry. Mark my words, they’ll get us yet. Less we stand up for ourselves. Ach, to hell, let’s have some beer.’

  Ronny, big, fat, moving out of the door now, to his grave.

  ‘Harry, have you seen my brooch?’ He jerked his head to attention: Sarah was ready to go out. ‘The one in the shape of an eagle, Harry. Have you seen it?’

  No, he hadn’t seen it. What had she said about the electric? Two pounds and sixpence. And they hardly used any in summer either.

  After she’d gone out, he sat in the room for a while. His eyes wandered over the photographs, the one of Helen, now in Canada, and the one of Robin, in Africa. Sometimes they’d send a postcard. The one from Cape Town, where Robin was on holiday with his English wife, said, ‘Wish you were here’ (among tall affluent skyscrapers) and then a lot of Xs from the unseen children.

  He sat down at the piano for a bit, but he couldn’t play. Only Helen and Sarah could play, and Sarah never played now. In the old days she used to play when the house seemed full of children. There was one called ‘The Anniversary Waltz’ and another called ‘Apple Blossom Time’. Robin wasn’t interested in m
usic, he was more practical.

  Harry decided he wouldn’t have any dinner, he’d go out instead. He looked at what was in the oven. Mince pie. He took it out. Perhaps later on tonight he might cook it. No use wasting electricity till then, if he felt hungry then. He turned out his pockets and found he had exactly fifteen shillings left over from the pension. He would go down and have a look at these ships through the shore telescope for a start: his own field-glasses were broken. If he could only get out to the ships and see them close to, that would be something he could tell the boys!

  He went over to the phone and looked up a number. It was that of a lawyer’s office. He dialled and heard a girl’s cool voice like waterdrops saying,

  ‘Who’s speaking?’

  ‘Mr Outerson in?’

  ‘Who’s speaking, please?’

  ‘Just a matter of business I had with him. I just came in on the plane today. Is he in?’

  ‘No, he’s out at the moment. I’m sorry. He’s gone to the bank. Who’s speaking, please?’

  ‘Tell him Mr Clifton-Baddeley called. From Zurich.’

  There was a long respectful silence. He said,

  ‘Which bank is he in?’

  ‘The Bank of Scotland, sir. I’ll make a note of the name. Shall I tell him you’re calling back?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. I’ve only a quarter of an hour or so. Sorry I missed him.’

  ‘We could always go and get him for you.’

  ‘No, no, don’t bother. It can’t be helped,’ said Harry charitably. ‘I can wait.’

  He replaced the receiver, thanking her. So Mr Outerson was in the Bank of Scotland. He clocked the time. Interesting the bits of information you could pick up by using the telephone.

  He went out, making sure that he had his Yale key tied round his neck as usual. The house seemed too empty to stay in on such a sunny day. He had a look in the woodshed on the way out, noting that the stool he was making was coming along nicely. He made his way out on to the dazzling street. It was really going to be a fine day, a good day for Sonny to feed on his wee mandarin oranges. His son-in-law might even run to a cigar for him. That would be a blow to the rest of them if he brought a cigar along.