The Red Door

by Iain Crichton Smith

  She doesn’t like me. I know that for a fact. I can tell when people don’t like me. I have antennae. She thinks I’m some kind of queer because I’m fifty and not married, and because I’m always going to the library for books. And because I wear gloves. But why shouldn’t one wear gloves? Just because young girls wear mini-skirts up to their waists doesn’t mean that all the decencies should be abandoned, that the old elegancies should go. I like wearing gloves and I like carrying an umbrella. Why shouldn’t I?

  That day – as so often before – I got into conversation with the Lady while he hovered round me, and we came round to education.

  ‘They’re doing nothing in those schools these days,’ I said, and I know it’s the truth. ‘Expressionism, that’s what they call it. I call it idleness.’

  He looked at me with his crucified expression and said,

  ‘Do you really believe that?’ He had a great capacity for listening, he would never volunteer anything. Some people are like that, they hoard everything, not only books, not only money, but conversation itself. Still, I don’t mind as I like talking.

  ‘In our days we had to work hard,’ I continued. ‘We had to get our noses to the grindstone. Arithmetic, grammar and Latin. Now they write wee poems and plays. And what use are they? Nothing. How many of them will ever write anything of any value? It’s all a con game. Trying to make people believe that Jack is as good as his master. I’m afraid education is going down the drain like everything else. They can’t even spell, let alone write.’

  Suddenly he burst out – rather unusual for him –

  ‘She doesn’t want to go to university.’ Then he stopped as if he hadn’t meant to say so much, and actually wrung his hands in front of me.

  ‘You mean Diane?’ I said eagerly.

  ‘Yes. I’m so . . . confused. I wouldn’t have said it only I have to talk to someone. You know that I don’t have many friends. I can count on you as my friend, can’t I?’

  As far as you can count on anyone, I thought. As far as anyone can count on anyone.

  ‘She says to me, “I can’t stand the books”. That’s what she says. What do you think of that? “I can’t stand the books,” she says. She says a haze comes over her mind when she is asked to study. She says that she has read all the books she wants to read. “What is the good of education anyway?” she asks. “All that’s over. We don’t need education any more and anyway”, she says, “we’re not poor”. What do you make of that?’

  ‘Oh, that’s what it’s come to,’ I answered. ‘There was Mr Logan died the other day. Now he spent all his years teaching in that school. He read and read. You won’t find many like him any more. Nobody needs him. Nobody wants him.’

  He wasn’t listening. All he said was,

  ‘After what I did for her too. I used to go with her to get dresses fitted and her shoes and everything, and I’m not a woman you know.’

  There might be two opinions about that, I thought to myself. ‘I don’t understand it,’ he said, wringing his hands. ‘What’s wrong with them? She wanted a guitar. I gave her a guitar. She used to go to the folk club Thursday nights and play it. Then she grew tired of that. She wanted to go to France for her holidays and I let her do that. Do you think it’s a phase?’ he asked eagerly, his face shining with innocence and agony, the crucified man.

  I thought of the little white-headed bitch and said,

  ‘No, it’s not a phase.’

  ‘I was afraid it might not be. I don’t know what I’m going to do.’ He was almost crying, such a helpless little man that you couldn’t help but despise him.

  ‘I think you should beat some sense into her,’ I said suddenly. He looked horrified. ‘I didn’t know you believed in corporal punishment,’ he said.

  ‘In extreme cases I do,’ I answered, ‘and this seems to be an extreme case. If it was my daughter, that’s what I’d do.’

  I took my umbrella in my hands, sighting along it like a gun, and said,

  ‘She’s betrayed you, kicked you in the teeth. But that’s the younger generation for you. They’re like bonbons, mealy on the outside but hard on the inside.’

  He smiled, for I had used a simile which he would understand. Deliberately.

  ‘Do you really think so?’ he said at last, almost in tears, his lips trembling. ‘But it’s true, you give them everything and they throw it back in your teeth. I slaved to make this shop what it is and it was all for her and she doesn’t care. She’s never served a customer and I, I have to do it all. I’ve even got books to study so that I can help her with her lessons. I’ve got the whole Encyclopaedia Britannica. What will I do? She says she’s going abroad. I gave her everything and her mother too, for five years when she was dying, I’m tired, so tired.’

  Aren’t we all, I thought, aren’t we all.

  Anyway, that was the last glimpse I had of him, his wet tremulous lips, his doglike expression, his low emotional voice.

  The next part of this story is rather undignified, but I must tell it just the same, and the more so because it is undignified. I am not the sort of person who hides things just because they are unpleasant. On the contrary, I feel that the unpleasant things must be told. And I must justify myself too, especially in this situation, in this unprecedented situation.

  I have lived in this town for many years now and people are always hiding their little pseudo-tragedies in holes and corners when, if they only knew it, their tragedies are comedies to the rest of us, and as clear as glass doors, too. But I know all about them. I could blackmail the lot of them if I wished, even the most important people in our town, though they sit at their dinners and lunches, among their glasses and champagne. Walking about the town – stopping here, stopping there, speaking to one person at one corner and to another at another corner – I hear many things. I am one of the sights of the town with my kid gloves and my hat. They all know me, but they don’t know how dangerous I am. After all Socrates told the truth and he was put to death.

  However, let me continue, though it should rend me. One night, not long after my talk with the Lady, I was taking my walk out to the bay in the moonlight. I like the evening. Everything is so apparently innocent, the stars are beginning to shine, you can see the boats in the water lying on their own reflections, and you can hear the gentle movement of the sea. All is cool and gentle and without intrigue. Now and again as you pass some trees you may hear a rustle in the undergrowth, a desperate movement and perhaps a squeal, but that’s only rarely. The thing about animals is that they don’t wear gloves or hats, and they don’t gossip about each other.

  Sometimes, as I walk along, I think of people and sometimes of books. I doff my hat carefully to people I know and glance equally carefully at people I don’t know.

  Of course, things are noisier now than they used to be. Cars race past, youths craning their heads out of windows and shouting at the passers-by. And they are crammed full of girls, these sports cars. But I ignore them. I walk past the trees which line the road, and I glance now and again at the sea with its lights. I think of . . . Well, what does one think of?

  Anyway, this evening I was walking along slowly, feeling benign and calm, and eventually I came to the bay. The sun was setting in its splendour of gold and red, and I sat down on a seat near the water. What is more beautiful and peaceful than that, watching the purple clouds and the pale moon, and the sun setting in barbaric splendour? The world was calm except for the twittering of birds. All round me was desolate and I was staring out towards the horizon where the sunset was turning the sky into, as they say, technicolour.

  What beautiful thoughts we have at such moments! How good and guiltless we appear to ourselves, sitting there as if on thrones, hat on head, gloves on hands, and umbrella in case of a shower! We feel like gods, clean, urbane, without sorrow or guilt.

  And as I was sitting there that evening, surrounded by rocks and sand, in the strange music of the sea birds, and confronting a sky of scarlet and purple, who should materialise
– and I use the word advisedly – but Diane herself.

  How beautiful she was, how young! I cannot describe it. Her face at first looked more peaceful and calm than I had ever seen it.

  She spoke.

  ‘You told my father to beat me,’ she said, ‘didn’t you?’

  Her voice was musical and low (where did I hear that before?).

  Her eyes were green and she wore this mini-skirt of pure gold.

  I tried to stand up in confusion, clutching my umbrella.

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘stay where you are. You look like a king sitting there.’ I can swear those were her exact words. But it was like a dream. You must remember the atmosphere: you have to remember that, the colours, the dreams.

  Then she leaned down towards my right ear and she said, still in that dreamy voice,

  ‘Beat me then. You can if you want. My father never beats me, that’s why I despise him. Don’t you do the same? Don’t you despise these weaklings, these sellers of goods? Can’t you imagine a world beautiful and strong and young? I think that you’re young. I was afraid of you at first, but now I realise what you are, what you truly are. You are aloof as if you had a destiny of your own. You watch everyone. Not everyone can do what you do, live in freedom.’

  What was I to say? She had a whip in her hand. She handed it to me there in that confusion of red and gold.

  And stood there waiting like a little girl.

  ‘I followed you, you know,’ she said. ‘I know you always take your constitutional and think your great thoughts while you do so. My father told me what you said. I made a great mistake in you. You always looked so mealy-mouthed. But then, when you said that, I knew you were not like my father, that you would not bow and scrape to anyone.’

  And all this time, I must have been peeling off my gloves very slowly. I couldn’t help myself, I tell you. I was taking the whip into my hands. Was I not right? Had she herself not asked me to?

  ‘You have a shop too,’ she said, ‘but you don’t bother to serve in it. You get others to do that.’ (Actually, it is a jeweller’s and my sister serves in it. A long time ago I left it. I couldn’t bring myself to serve people.)

  She kept saying, ‘I know now you couldn’t do that. Your nature isn’t like that, is it? You can’t bear to serve, you want to dominate.’

  By this time darkness was coming down. She bent over and I raised the whip, and as I did so I knew that this was what I was meant to do, to dominate and not to serve, to impose my will on others, to cleanse the sins of the world. And I knew that volunteers would come to me because they recognised who I really was, the jewel hardness of my will.

  She was so beautiful, so submissive. I raised the whip, and as I did so lights flashed all round me, and there was her boyfriend, and she was laughing and giggling and almost rolling on the sand in ecstasy. Naturally, he used a flashlight. And naturally . . . But this I won’t go over. The devil, that’s what she was, the snake with the green eyes. And so beautiful, wriggling like a fish on the sand. If he hadn’t taken the whip from my hands, I would have lashed her and lashed her. I had to wipe the blood from my face with the gloves.

  Naturally, my sister left the shop and left the town and naturally . . . Well, naturally, my bowing friend put in for the shop and got it fairly cheap. Who else would buy? Not that he put a direct bid in himself, he did it through intermediaries. It was next door to his sweet shop.

  He never came to see me. I never saw him again.

  They tell me she’s going to university after all, to study psychology. A soft option, if ever there was one.

  It was funny though. That moment was the most intense of my life. I’ll never forget it. I keep going over and over it in my mind, that duel in scarlet and red. Who would have believed evil would be so beautiful and young? And him so servile too. No wonder we get fascists in the world, fascists with blue eyes like mine.

  They deceive you and then turn nasty.

  But these green eyes, these . . . sweets.

  Murder without Pain

  At one end of the vast hall was the platform, colourful with masses of red and white flowers. Seated beyond them (as seen from the back) were the twenty or so usual guests (including three or four ministers, the town clerk, the provost, ex-teachers, all with their wives if they had them, and all serious and childlike in their genial and compassionate gaze). The speeches had been made (‘ . . . as you go out into the world . . . ’), the praises had been, as usual, fulsome, as in every other school in the whole country at that particular moment, the applause from the scholars had been wild and undiscriminating, the prayers had been listened to with a reluctant cessation of whispering, and now the climax of the whole ceremony had been reached. As the people in the hall rose to their feet to the sound of massive chords on the organ, the dux was being presented with his huge silver cup by Mr Andrew Trill, MA, who was ending his last year in school as principal Classics master. The Press photographer (a youth with a round face which yet gave an impression of cynicism) knelt down on one knee, camera aimed, one minister looked up at the scrolled roof where God apparently was, the town clerk stood almost to attention (as he had been taught in the HLI in those glorious military days) and Mr Andrew Trill carefully picked up the cup and . . .

  Mr Andrew Trill, MA, was a small man with trenched cheeks rather like those of Dante (as seen in some of his portraits) or a Free Church minister. He had silvery hair and small ears. He wore his university tie for the occasion and a dark blue suit. Forty-four years before, he had graduated with honours in Greek and Latin from his university; he had spent two years in Cambridge, had taught for seven years as an assistant, and then in the tenth year of his career had become Principal at the school where he had remained for the rest of his days.

  Unmarried, he stayed with his landlady Mrs Sharpe at a flat one stair up in a tenement near the school. His interests were narrow and were confined mainly to Classics and to his workshop, where he made furniture for his own amusement and occasionally for his landlady’s profit. He read nothing modern, believing that all important literature had ceased with the fall of Rome. He idolised Homer, Virgil he admired, Lucretius he respected, Catullus he thought lacking in gravitas, Ovid he thought scurrilous and banal, Sophocles he revered as he also did Aeschylus, and Petronius he laughed at. He had once been persuaded by an English master to look at some of Pound’s translations, but had considered them so inaccurate and ridiculous that he could never be persuaded to read paraphrases again. One exception he did make among the ‘moderns’ and that was Samuel Johnson whom he considered grave, moral, massive, and accurate – in short, Roman. He thought highly of his adaptation of Juvenal and would read with delight his essays from The Rambler, The Idler, and The Adventurer.

  Though he believed that all literature should serve a moral purpose, he never went to church. This was commented on by some of the local people but, as he had always made it a rule never to defend himself against criticism which he hadn’t actually heard, he himself said nothing and left his position unclarified. If he had been asked directly, he might have replied that the quality of the sermons was low or that the clergy were pandering too much to a permissive society or that morality could be divorced from Christian dogma. In this he would have parted company with Johnson. What he admired Johnson for was his steady allegiance to commonsense and truth, and above all, his massive intelligence which was not to be confused with smartness, and which was shown not only in his analysis of books, but in his examination of processes and the routine of ordinary life.

  He would quote sentences like the following:

  There have been men indeed splendidly wicked, whose endowments threw a brightness on their crimes and whom scarce any villainy made perfectly detestable because they could never be wholly divested of their excellencies but such have been in all ages the great corrupters of the world and their resemblance ought no more to be preserved than the art of murdering without pain.

  When school was over for the day, he would come
home with a briefcase full of Latin exercises which he would spend two hours correcting. After that he might go down to his workshop which he had made from a washhouse at the back (since Mrs Sharpe had bought herself a spindryer). Or he might read the daily paper or an educational journal or some Latin or Greek poet. He hardly ever went out. An educational meeting might attract him but it did so less and less as he grew older, or very rarely a visiting orchestra. He never went to the cinema, though in his youth he was a constant attender and might still surprise by a comic reference to the Keystone Cops. He shuddered when he passed a café and heard a juke box playing sounds closely akin to the gibberish of mentally deficient apes.

  In philosophical discussion he would be gloomy about the present, comparing it to the last days of the Roman Empire. He had read Muggeridge of whom he approved, though he considered him grossly inferior to the Johnson he seemed to be imitating. He defended his withdrawal from the world by a quotation from The Adventurer:

  As Socrates was passing through the fair at Athens and cast his eyes over the shops and customers, ‘how many things are here’, says he, ‘that I do not want’.

  As a matter of fact, he made some of these things himself. His workshop was well-equipped with lathes, planes, chisels, hammers, the latter neatly hanging in their proper places and meticulously ticketed. He had once invited a member of the Technical Department to have a look at the workshop, and the latter had been amazed by the quality of the tools and the precise and competent way in which they were handled and cared for. For his landlady he had made two chairs which she showed off to the visitors, and a table with folding wings which she kept in her bedroom. He had also done work in steel and aluminium and even in silver. He had made a silver plate for Mrs Sharpe on the twentieth anniversary of the death of her husband who had had a minor job in the Civil Service.