The Red Door

by Iain Crichton Smith

  He shifted over to light a cigarette, a Sterling. The transistor fell down and he couldn’t hear it so well. He set it on its base again and raised the aerial.

  ‘Well, I must say this is really becoming very tense now. That’s twice Illingworth has beaten Redpath in the same over. And there are about ten minutes to go on my watch. Illingworth, of course, gets through his overs fairly quickly, so there’ll be a few yet. He is an interesting bowler to watch. He doesn’t waste much effort and he seems completely unflappable. He shows a lot of intelligence. In fact, both the batsman and bowler are showing a great deal of intelligence. Redpath is waiting for the loose ball and defending stubbornly against the others. But Illingworth, of course, is not likely to bowl a loose ball.’

  Poor old England! Up against it again. Here the Australians were, 88 for 9, and yet the English couldn’t bowl them out. There had certainly been ups and downs in this match, let alone the series. In the first innings there was old Dexter walking on, everybody expecting him to hit the Australians into the next county. And what had happened? He had made six runs. You couldn’t depend on these people: the more they were built up, the more they fell down like a lot of sandcastles. When you came down to it, all these so-called giants were very ordinary people. They had been built into a legend over the years, but there was nothing to them really. He flicked some ash into the ashtray. Look at Cowdrey: just the same. Probably if you had gone along to see Hobbs, he would have been out first ball as well. Years from now they would say, ‘Oh, if only you had seen Cowdrey that day at Lord’s. Great. That drive to leg! That four to the boundary! Sweet! Exquisite!’ But when you came down to it, he took six hours to make a century. What sort of cricket was that?

  He took out a penny and tossed it. Tails for ‘I try Latin again’ and heads, ‘I go to London’. It came down heads. He tossed it three times, and three times it came down heads.

  ‘If Illingworth bowls him out I’ll go to university,’ he said. ‘If England wins I’ll go to university. I swear it. I’ll read Latin every night. I’ll dig into old Lucretius. I’ll lap up the ablative absolute. I won’t go swimming. I’ll put away my motor cycle. I won’t borrow off my brother to go to the pub. Just let Illingworth bowl him out, that’s all. I’ll accept that as an omen from above. I’ll take it as a fiat from the Delphic oracle. I’ll know there’s someone rooting for me up there, someone who knows that I exist, someone to whom it matters whether I go to some crummy job in London or to university, someone who cares!’ He glued his ear to the transistor.

  ‘Seven minutes left now, and Illingworth is bowling to Walters. Walters is standing there, very composed, very sure of himself. He’s a young man, but he isn’t letting the tension of the occasion wear him down. He doesn’t mind whether it’s twenty-three minutes past six or twenty minutes past twelve. He plays every ball on its merits. That one Illingworth bowled Walters tried to swing at it. It hit his pad and skidded down to Graveney for one run. This brings Redpath up again to face Illingworth.’

  ‘Come on,’ said Neil, muttering fiercely into the transistor as if he were speaking to someone who could actually hear him, ‘come on. I want to see you bowl him out. For Ovid, for Lucretius, for Virgil, for the ablative absolute. For my future. For my career. Bowl the bastard out. Hit the stumps. The Australians can’t face spin. Laker proved that. Go on.’

  ‘Illingworth is now going over the wicket to Redpath. There’s a bit of dust on the wicket but of course, it’s not really in the best position for Illingworth to make use of it. Illingworth’s coming in now. He bowls. And Redpath flicks it off his legs. What do you think, John, I’m sure the Australians who are staying up to listen must be pleased with this stand by these youngsters.’

  ‘Yes, I agree. Redpath is playing very intelligently. As you say, he’s picking the loose ball to hit and defending against the other ones. He reminds me rather a lot of . . . Oh, sorry.’

  ‘It’s all right, John. Illingworth coming up for the last ball of this over. And Redpath is quite determined to last out the evening and the match. So he meets him with a dead bat. You were going to say, John?’

  Neil switched off the transistor angrily. ‘Damn and blast the lot of you,’ he shouted fiercely, banging the transistor with his fist. ‘What the hell are you playing at, you useless pimps? You bowl there all day, and you can’t get these people out. Tail-enders, and you can’t get rid of them. All your days you’ve been learning to bowl, year after year, decade after decade, and, when it comes to the point, to the critical point, you can’t win a match. What sort of people are you anyway? What’s wrong with you? Illingworth, the darling of Yorkshire, the demon bowler. My demon backside. Look, Illingworth, can’t you see you’re bowling for me, me, Neil Brown. Not anybody from Ilkley Moor baht at, but Neil Brown, failed MA. You’ve got my future in your hands. Can’t you hear me? If you bowl him out, I’ll write that letter and then I’ll go to university. It depends on you. I don’t know why I should have picked on you, but you happened to be here. Let’s see if you’re as good as they say. Go on, bowl him out. Bowl him out, you stupid nit. You’ve only got five minutes left. Five minutes. Get some urgency into your work. Look, I’m depending on you, it’s not England, it’s Neil Brown unemployed. His life’s ahead of him, can’t you see that, you nit? Can’t you spin that ball so I can go to university, so I can have a reason for studying that useless trash? Can’t you hear me? Look, I’ve got an hour before the post goes. I should have written it weeks ago, but I’m a lazy bum and I lie in bed and I let my mother work in a shoe shop, the ever glorious Huttons, and sometimes I make the tea for her when she comes home, same as George Bernard Shaw used to do. And I don’t get up till about four in the afternoon. And I don’t shave till six when I go out and I come in at two in the morning, and I’ve got this pile of Latin books lying about the house along with T. S. Eliot and W. H. Auden and Dylan Thomas and Seferis.’

  He rolled over on his back and looked up at the ceiling.

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘make some sign. That’s all I ask. One sign. Look, if Illingworth gets him out I’ll go to university, I’ll work like a slave, I’ll do my Latin. I’ll get the old lady some money. Do you get that? Do you understand? Is that clear?’ He noticed a large stain on the ceiling shaped like Africa, and then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the clock.

  ‘Twenty-five minutes past six.’ He put his hand on the transistor. God, if he’s already out. Please make him be out when I switch on the transistor. That bastard, Redpath, defending there so stubbornly. And these Australians from the outback. What did they want to come here for anyway, Arthur Upfield and the rest of them? The Australians for cricket, the New Zealanders for rugby. And poor old Scotland for what? Shinty? He laughed dryly. Each country had its own death sting except poor old Scotland, dead old Caledonia, weird and wild, meek and mild, piqued and piled.

  He clicked the transistor and knew that the two batsmen were still there because the crowd were making no noise.

  If they had been out – or if one of them had been out – there would have been a change in the atmosphere.

  ‘ . . . be surely the second last over. Underwood coming in and bowling to Walters. And that beat him. That certainly beat him. It spun quite sharply and Walters did well to keep the ball out of his wicket. He’s going out to give the pitch a prod. Then he takes up his stance and Underwood runs up again. This one he meets with a dead bat and watches the ball trickle to a stop in front of him. Very placid, this man. Very calm. Doesn’t seem to be moved by anything much. But I don’t think he’s reading Underwood very well at this moment. A wicket now would swing the match England’s way. However, we must remember that Australia have won the first Test . . . ’

  He clicked the transistor off again, not able to bear it. About ten balls to go and he couldn’t bear the suspense. Perhaps that was what was wrong with him. If he weren’t a coward he would be able to sit through the whole thing. Think of those wives who sat through their husbands’ horrible speeches. Think o
f the dreadful routine of the day, the week, the year. Think of the terrible ennui. ‘Mr Macaskill took as his theme, “The Mackellars of Struth”. He dealt at length with Edward Struth, who bought Struth House in the sixteenth century, and steadily worked his way towards John Struth, who died of apoplexy in 1947.’ Or, ‘Mrs Innes, who accompanied her husband, presented a bouquet of flowers, and was in turn presented with a bouquet of flowers by little Ann Capewell.’ Think of Dexter going back to the dressing room after that six. Graft. That was what was wanted. Like whether England could beat Australia, or whether Australia would dig themselves in and survive. Look at these West Indians: they were pretty temperamental. The flash of genius and talent but no ‘bottom’. Like whether these tough Australian provincials – land of Melba and the flood – were going to beat sophisticated England, dying of civilisation and ennui, not able to bring themselves to believe that cricket was of importance in the age of Wittgenstein, England with their rotting empire-less souls, dying on the trees. Like whether he should get up and shave.

  Like whether he could switch on that transistor again and wait for the last over, and listen to it through the bitter six to the equally bitter end. Why, there were old men who would go to cricket matches, be-scarfed and be-false-teethed, their heads nodding in the midday sun, and they would watch them through, or die of heart failure in the process. And think of all those people batting and bowling who had sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, and all other combinations of kith and kin, watching them being bowled for nought after they had walked so proud and tall to the wicket.

  He clicked the transistor on and leaned forward, his mouth almost touching the switches.

  ‘This is the last over now, and Illingworth is just running up to bowl the first ball to Redpath. Mm. I’m afraid that won’t get him out. It was a very cosy, not to say mild, ball which Redpath had no difficulty in keeping out of his wicket. Graveney is throwing the ball back to him now. Illingworth catches it and goes back very thoughtfully to begin his short run. Here he is now, and, by gosh, that one nearly got through. I suppose you would have heard the OOH from the crowd, some of whom are now leaving for their transportation. I wouldn’t myself like to be leaving at this stage in the game.’

  ‘Shut your stupid mouth or gob,’ said Neil, viciously stabbing his cigarette into the scarred ashtray. ‘Or whatever word they use in Australia. Back to your boomerang or your walkabout. Come on, Illingworth, you bastard, get him out, can’t you see I’m waiting for you? I’m depending on you. Look, if you get him out, I’ll send a letter to thank you. I’ll send my first pay packet achieved through my Ovid to you, care of the MCC.’

  ‘And now for the third ball of the over. Illingworth runs up and bowls. Redpath shapes to glance, changes his mind and then lets it go safely past his wicket.’

  ‘Illingworth, I’m praying to you. Can’t you hear me? My future depends on you. Do you want me to be a down-and-out in Soho, do you? Don’t you want me to be a good little bourgeois with a nice family spawned by my conjugations, kept in clothes by my talent for Ovid? Listen, come on, get him out.’

  ‘ . . . oh, that was another tricky ball, a really wicked ball. That hit the spot in the wicket there and spun quite a bit. Redpath jabbed his bat down just in time. I bet he heaved a sigh of relief after that.’

  ‘Come on,’ Neil breathed, half in entreaty, half in imprecation, ‘come on, get him out. I’ve got my fingers in my mouth, I’ve got my nails between my teeth. I’m praying to you. Oh God.’ He couldn’t stay on the bed any longer. It really seemed to him as if his future were being decided on that baked cricket field hundreds of miles away, by people whom he had never seen, who had never heard of him. He started to pace about the room clutching his trousers with both hands, and taking deep breaths one after the other as he looked out at the back court with the bins all standing beside each other in their repeated grooves.

  ‘And I think this must be . . . Is this the second last ball of the day, Trevor? I’ve lost count in the excitement. It is? Good. Well, as Trevor says, the second last ball is being bowled now, and here is Illingworth and a tricky ball it was too, which Redpath did well to stop. However, all’s well that ends well, and I don’t suppose Redpath is going to lose any sleep over it at this stage. The clock is creeping round to the half hour now, and the ground just below is bathed in sunlight as Illingworth runs up to take the last ball of the day and the last ball of this match.’

  Neil was kneeling over the transistor listening to it as a doctor listens to a patient’s heart to discover if there are signs of imminent death there or not. He suddenly saw that the switches of the transistor were wet with his tears.

  ‘And that is the end of play for the day, and Trevor Bailey will now give a summary of the full day’s play.’

  Soundlessly, he began to beat on the transistor with his fists as if he had rediscovered that fate itself was against him, that there was no assistance from the heavens, that there was no answer except the statistics being repeated in that rich voice.

  He switched the transistor off and went back to bed. He lay back in the sunlight which came through the window flooding the Latin books shut on top of the bookcase and illuminating as well the copy of Ulysses lying open half way through.

  He muttered to himself, with his eyes shut,

  ‘That bastard Illingworth, that layabout of the first order. Of the first water. Of the last water.’

  ‘Je t’aime’

  One day in late August their little daughter ran home from secondary school saying that she had begun to learn French. She was eleven years old and rather backward, and even at the age of eleven had a habit of putting her thumb in her mouth. Her mother, who was standing by the cooker when she came in, told her to take off her school clothes immediately. She did this, and when she was dressed in the black skirt and red jersey which she wore when not in school, she started to run about the room shouting, ‘Je t’aime, je t’aime’. Finally, she spun to a stop with her head buried in her mother’s waist.

  ‘What does that mean?’ said her mother, turning the sausages over in the frying pan. She was a tall woman, rather aloof, and pale as if she were in the habit of not putting too much into life lest she should be hurt.

  ‘It means “I love you”. Teacher told us that. But we only learned one or two words today.’ She laughed, peeked up, and then looked down at the floor.

  ‘That’s good,’ said her mother absently. She was secretly pleased that her daughter was learning French. French might be useful in running the boarding house: people might be impressed. She might even run to menus in the future. Her husband was a long-distance lorry driver, and the responsibility for running the boarding house devolved on her, for her husband wasn’t interested (though he took the money if she gave it to him). But she had been advised by her mother to have a banking account of her own, and she had done this. Again, it was possible that Grace might go to university in about seven years time. Lots of people went to university now who didn’t go in the past. Things were easier now and they got grants.

  Running a boarding house wasn’t an easy job. She was sometimes fed up with making food and watching it being shovelled down other people’s throats, she was tired of the heat and the stuffiness of the kitchen, she was bored telling a new set of people every fortnight what that castle was, who had built that road, what that statue represented, and hearing exactly the same comments as if they were mint-new. Thank God, they had gone by August.

  She looked down at the top of her daughter’s head and thought vaguely of the past. She had certainly trained for running a boarding house for she had been a maid in a hotel before she got married. It was watching all these rich people that had made her envious and want to make money for herself. For that reason she was now pleased that her daughter was learning French. She had no feeling for the language itself but to her it represented a weapon for survival, for advancement. If you worked in a boarding house you began to think like that. You studied people to make sure that they di
dn’t cheat you, you had to be a good judge of character. You couldn’t afford to let anyone sidle into your affections for they might take advantage of you.

  In fact, she might have been better if she had known more about her husband before she married him. To be drunk in youth might be considered bravado: in middle years it was something else again, especially when it included unpredictable violence. She had seen nights when he had hit her in the face and about the body. One night she had pleaded with him not to hit her on the face: it was the explaining to others of the outward stigmata that was difficult and shaming. You couldn’t get away from the fact that he was brutal.

  ‘Did you get any homework?’ she asked.

  ‘We got some English homework. Sentences.’

  ‘Get out your jotter and do it then,’ she said, turning back to the cooker. ‘Sit over there on that chair and do it.’

  Grace got her bag, took out her jotter and her pencil case, and began to work, chewing gravely at the pencil, dangling her legs and knitting her brows.

  Her mother sighed for a moment and then turned back to the cooker.

  When her husband came home he threw his bag on the floor into the corner, went to the cupboard, took out a can of beer, opened it and began to drink. He sat down at the table stretching his legs out. He was a big man with a bullet head set on a rather low thick neck, and the shoulders of a boxer. His eyes were small and mocking.