‘One of these days I’ll get a lorry of my own,’ he said. ‘I can’t stand that bastard Adams. One day he’ll go too far and I’ll do him, the dwarf.’
‘You get good pay,’ she said evenly, putting the sausages on his plate. He seemed about to spit on the floor, and then recollected himself.
‘One of these days I’ll smash his lorry for him. Stood there today checking the time I came in, to the minute. The wee man with his book. What I’d really like is a taxi. I could run a taxi, couldn’t I? Hey, I could bring your visitors up from the station. I’d go there in my cap, and I’d bow and I’d see them into the taxi and I’d shut the door for them and everything. “Yes, madam,” I’d say, “44 Grosvenor Road. Yes, I know it well. I know it like the back of my hand. The house with the green gate. You couldn’t get better chips anywhere, madam,” I’d say. “And the salt herring are out of this world and into the next one. Yes, madam, they make the best porridge in town with treacle in it.” ’
He laughed aloud in sheer jollity thinking of himself in his peaked cap bowing to the visitors like a wee Jap and saying to them, ‘That house over there. That belongs to the famous comedian, the Scottish Secretary of State. That statue? That’s of the man who invented the Scottish propelling pencil which works on a new principle. You have lead in it for the first time. Yes, madam, he made millions on that.’
He laughed aloud again; he had a great life force, much more than she had. She laughed, too, knowing his ideas of old. Nothing would come of them. There was the time when he wanted to start a shop; nothing came of that. The time he wanted to invest money in a pub. She couldn’t let her money go into that; he’d be drunk all day and night. She knew what would happen if he got a taxi. He’d get drunk and wreck it. And of course, he’d never be obsequious to anyone: she couldn’t imagine him carrying the cases of some old wizened hag who was only held together by the wrinkles. Even now, he got angry if a visitor got to the bathroom in front of him in the morning. Suddenly he got tired of the play-acting and shouted,
‘Grace. What are you doing there? Come over here.’
He bounced her on his knee and rubbed his face against hers. She twisted away from the bristles of his beard.
‘Getting too snobbish for your daddy;’ he said, joyously, ‘now that you’re going to the secondary. Eh?’
She climbed down from his knee and began to run madly about the house shouting, ‘Je t’aime, je t’aime’.
His wife put down the plate of sausages.
‘What in God’s name is that?’ he shouted in the direction of his daughter, his face going red.
‘It’s nothing,’ she said.
‘It must be something,’ he said, speaking through a mouthful of sausage. ‘What in God’s . . . ’ Then he stopped. A queer expression came over his face, composed of rage and anguish. It frightened her. It was as if he were staring into some other room.
‘Come here,’ he said to Grace who was abandoned to her wheeling, her blonde pigtails bouncing up and down.
‘What was that you were saying just now?’
‘I was just saying, “je t’aime”,’ said Grace, standing looking at him, thumb in mouth.
He turned to his wife. ‘That’s French,’ he said accusingly. ‘She’s learning French.’
‘And what if it is? What’s wrong with that?’ she answered, still at the cooker. ‘They all learn French nowadays in the secondary school.’
‘That’s a lie,’ he said. ‘I was talking to the headmaster, and he said you could take French or Gaelic.’ She knew that he had never talked to the headmaster in his life (firstly because he did not take the slightest interest in education, and secondly because deep down he was convinced that he was as good as the headmaster any day and therefore wouldn’t talk to him), but she also knew that, however he had heard it, what he said was true; there was a choice between French and Gaelic.
‘What do you think I am, an idiot like your daughter,’ he went on, his face darkening. ‘And you didn’t put on enough sausages. You were supposed to train as a hotel maid and you don’t know anything.’
She ignored this and said,
‘French is more useful to her. She can go to . . . ’ She was going to say ‘University’, but she stopped, saying instead, ‘Domestic College. She can help me here.’
‘Her? Domestic College? Don’t make me laugh. I’m brighter than her myself and I wouldn’t go to a college.’
She leaned against the cooker praying, ‘Please God, not another quarrel. I’m tired, tired, tired . . .’
But he continued relentlessly.
‘She should be doing Gaelic. That’s the language of her forefathers. My mother spoke Gaelic. So did your mother. What does she want with French. She should stand up for Scotland. I was in a Highland regiment and I’m proud of it. What business has she got with French? She can’t even speak English. I’m going to see the headmaster and tell him she’s going to change.’
He cut himself a slice of bread, buttering it lavishly.
She held on.
‘She’s going to do French not Gaelic. No one speaks Gaelic now. It’s finished. I want her to learn French: it’s more useful to her. She could be a help to me. She can’t do anything with Gaelic.’
As he munched the bread he seemed to be muttering, ‘Je t’aime, je t’aime’, over and over to himself.
‘He can say it right, mammy,’ shouted Grace suddenly. ‘He can say it better than you.’
‘Be quiet. Go and do your lesson.’
‘She’ll never learn French in a month of Sundays. She’s too stupid. It takes a long time to learn French. I’m telling you, I know.’
She summoned all her strength.
‘And I’m telling you she’s going to learn French. You can clear out if you want. We’ve got enough to live on without you. We can do without you. All her friends are learning French. She would feel out of it if she wasn’t with her friends.’
‘Yah, the Andersons. You want to keep up with the Andersons. You’ll soon be teaching her horse-riding. She’ll be a debutante, that’s what.’
‘And what’s wrong with horse-riding?’
‘Horse-riding?’ He laughed, then his face darkened again. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘I might just clear out. I might just do that.’ He put on his jacket, leaving his food unfinished, and went towards the door looking down grimly at Grace and saying in a mocking voice, ‘Je t’aime’.
‘You don’t know what it means,’ said his wife suddenly. ‘You talk big, but you don’t know what it means.’
He stared into her almost dead, slate-grey eyes for a long time and then said, controlling himself with an effort,
‘It’s you who don’t know what it means.’ Then he walked out.
When he slammed the door she began to think: perhaps this time he will really leave, and in a way she didn’t want him to leave. He wasn’t a good provider but he had been her only lover, brutal though he was. Not always brutal too, for he could be tender when he remembered. And once he had been dashing and young. She ran to the window and saw him walking down the road, the bullet head and the powerful torso thrust forward as if he were fighting a high wind.
‘Get on with your book,’ she shouted at Grace, screaming in a voice that she hardly recognised.
He sat in the pub in a corner by himself drinking a big pint of draught. He never drank anything but draught and whisky: he had no time for highfaluting effeminate French wines and that sort of drink. In front of him and behind the counter there was a twisted bottle and above it were written the words: ‘WHEN YOU SEE THIS STRAIGHT YOU KNOW YOU’RE DRUNK.’
The barman was tall and had a stringy neck. A lot of the time he would talk about the farm his family owned on the Borders quite near to the Douglas-Homes, but tonight there was no conversation, the lorry driver staring moodily at the bottle and drinking his beer from time to time, thinking. His eye was caught by a bottle which said Burgundy on it. He stared at it as into a mirror, and through the glass he saw her st
anding at the door of the café, very petite, very thin, very pale, with curly hair. A thin face: the word ‘gamin’ returned to him over the years. Sitting at the table in the café in 1945, he put down the roll he was eating and looked brazenly at her, letting his eyes run down from the blonde hair to her feet. He seemed to straighten up in his uniform feeling his thighs, covered in their khaki, heavy and solid.
She caught his eye and he deliberately put the roll back to his mouth again, savouring it; she watching hungrily as he chewed, her eyes damned and burning in the white face. He raised the glass of milk to his lips, his eyes still locked with hers. She walked over towards him as if in a dream, her eyes, her whole body, fascinated by the roll and the milk, by their whiteness and their sustenance. He twisted his neck against the rub of the uniform.
As if in a dream she sat down on the chair in front of him, sitting half frightened on the edge, at the same time unable to help herself.
He put down the glass of milk. He looked into her eyes, and she nodded very slightly with despair.
He got up, rolling slightly at the hips like a cowboy, went over to the counter and got another roll and a glass of milk. He brought them over and put them in front of her looking down at her legs as he did so. These thin French tarts, he thought. Not much flesh, but a man couldn’t be choosy: it wasn’t easy.
Her head bowed like the stalk of a flower, she bit into the roll almost with agony, absorbed in it as a child might be in something it had never seen before, or seen only rarely. He himself stopped eating and watched her. She stopped eating at once, and he looked away. He could see in the mirror that his cap was on at the right rakish angle. When she had finished he got her another roll and some milk: after all, she would be no use otherwise. She looked to see if he had got one for himself, but he hadn’t and her eyes darkened again.
During the time she was eating she made once or twice as if to speak, but then looking at him checked herself. Once he looked at his watch which had a leather strap about the hairy flesh. When she was finished she got up slowly and he followed her, putting on his belt, then taking it off again and putting it across the shoulder under the strap. These Redcaps could go to hell as far as he was concerned. He’d beaten up one or two of them already on his way across Europe: they’d remember him, no doubt of that.
They walked silently down the street, meeting other soldiers and French girls on their way. It was a balmy evening and there was a faint moon low in the sky showing the slummy buildings towards which they were heading. She was like a wraith drifting beside him, the only sound being that made by his tackety boots on the roadway. Eventually, they reached a tenement and began to climb some steps, she going ahead. When she was high enough up, he could see that she was wearing a white slip.
There were little sounds in the tenement as if it were inhabited by animals and by people who never ventured out. The walls were scribbled on and there was urine on the stairs. Once a cat with startled green eyes ran down the stairs past them, pausing at the bottom to look up at him before running off. They came to a door which was painted a cracked green. She opened it with a key which she found under the mat, and they went inside. The curtains were all drawn and there was a smell of used air. Under the bed he saw the edge of a chamber pot. Again she made as if to speak but didn’t. She sat down on the bed while he studied a photograph on the sideboard marked with cigarette ends. The photograph showed a man in a hat like a drum. When he turned round she was in bed staring up at the ceiling.
He took off his jacket and his tie and then his boots and trousers, leaving his socks on. He climbed into bed. The sheets were more grey than white. Her helplessness released him. Afterwards he fell into a deep sleep in which he saw some deer which reminded him of home.
He woke at seven in the morning and took a while to discover where he was, the room was so dark. Outside he heard the traffic. Inside there was silence apart from the creakings of the old house. The girl was still sleeping on her side, away from him. As he got up he noticed that there were delicate blue veins on her forehead. He tried to orientate himself. Where am I? he thought, where in hell in Europe am I? What country is this? What have I been doing for the past four years? There had been border after border, faces cheering and faces sullen, wet weather and fine, strange faces; strange languages. He sat on the edge of the bed, took off his socks, scratched the soles of his feet, and then put the socks on again. He felt dirty and was about to waken her to ask for some soap and water when something stopped him. His foot accidentally hit the chamber pot: he had forgotten it was there.
He put on his clothes quietly, feeling absolutely lost. He drew the curtains aside and looked down into a back court full of overflowing bins. She turned away from the light, groaning a little. He shook his head to clear it, for he had been drinking before he met her. He felt a desire to urinate and decided that he would go down to the court.
He was dressed now. He went over and looked down at her before he left. He felt terribly lonely as if he was in the wrong place, in the wrong air, as if he was slightly askew to the universe. He took out a wad of paper money and without counting it laid it on the bed. As he was doing this, he was leaning down close and could hear the words she was whispering. They sounded like, ‘Je t’aime’, but he knew they weren’t for him. Perhaps it was a formula she spoke to many men or perhaps she was really dreaming of someone whom she loved. He thought angrily: Perhaps I could make her say it to me if I showed her the money, but the demands of his body didn’t leave him time. He walked quietly down the stairs into the morning and urinated near the bins in a corner against the wall. He looked up once and saw directly above him the face of an old man who was staring at him without surprise or fear. He then made his way down the street: he would get drunk as soon as the pubs opened.
When he got out about ten, he was swaying. He walked down the road past his wife’s house. A man with a dog on a lead came out of the house two doors down and waited for his dog to pee against a lamp-post. He said, ‘Good evening’ politely, but the lorry driver said, ‘Shut up, you silly bugger’, and continued to walk past the wee houses with their beautiful lawns and their TV aerials. People would be preparing to go to bed in the moonlight. The lawn-mowers were in their sheds. The gates were all shut. The windows were all closed. The little dogs with their bellies touching the ground had all been walked. He gave a furious kick at the low stone wall and stubbed his toes and hopped up and down. He could have raised his head into the air and howled like a wolf out of his rage.
Who could one say, ‘Je t’aime’ to? Who could say it to you?
Goodbye John Summers
Should I speak or not? And if I did would anyone listen? I have seen the burial and I have read the obituaries, but I cannot make up my mind. It was a fine bright glittery day when they buried him. I stood at the graveside and stared at the coffin as if I wished to make it transparent, but I was confronted by an opaque yellow hexagon. There were a lot of wreaths, tulips, carnations and roses, and little pink ribbons intertwined among them. The wind moved vaguely among hair and along sombre trousers. The tombstones of black granite were like mirrors in which you could see your face.
I was at the service and I heard what they said about him. They said he was a good man; that he was intelligent, industrious and compassionate. All this was in a sense true.
In fact, we were classmates once.
A very cool person was John Summers. Have you ever read what it says in Shakespeare about people ‘moving others who are themselves as stone’? But I must say that he was a Christian too, and he probably believed what he acted as if he believed in. He looked cool too, a very pale broad face and a neat dark suit and dark neat hair. Competent looking fellow. He was all of that, the kind of person you wouldn’t have to say anything twice to. He was a good listener as well and made you feel important, so total was his commitment to what you were saying.
His parents weren’t rich. He went to university and he studied science and did well. Nor did he dese
rt ‘the boys’ in those days. No, he was one of them. If we had a drinking party he was with us. If we went on one of our ‘picnics’ he was there, singing songs with the rest. I remember our talks together in that tree-shaded university town. It was the time of Bertrand Russell. (Later I read some Wittgenstein: I don’t think he did.) We would discuss Russell’s illustration of the penny. It was in connection with sense data, if you remember. I never liked Russell’s work. I thought him a bit of a fake, and still think so now. Not John though. Not him.
Then he joined the army and became a captain in the Engineers. I was a private in the Infantry. We didn’t see much of each other till the war was over. I found it interesting that he began to vote Tory. I, of course, have always voted Socialist.
He went into teaching and did not choose a scientific career after all. I now begin to feel that this was because, though he had a good mind, he had no creativity. Yet men cannot be blamed for that.
Yesterday as a headmaster he died.
And then there was the service and the burial.
And all his cronies were there, all those who had surrounded him at the local Rotary Club, all those to whom he had read his ‘papers’, all those to whom he had read the lessons, in his characteristic humble manner. And some sniffling women who weren’t even related to him.
What happened to John Summers? What epitaph shall I write for him? What trap was he trapped in? What lies did he believe in?
For there we were together in the early days – at sixteen or so – playing football together. He was a good footballer, quick, clever, and opportunist. He was the sort of player who is always hanging around near goal when the ball comes over. No one remembers how he got there or whether his goal is the result of inspiration or luck. He was ‘with’ me in those days. I remember him sweating like the rest of us, wearing his red strip and white shorts, eating his orange, not weighing things up, just being there.
The Red Door Page 11