The Red Door

by Iain Crichton Smith

  The thin woman continued remorselessly as if she were pecking away at something she had pecked at for many years. ‘The teacher told me to send Iain to University. He came to see me. I had no thought of sending him before he came. “Send your son to university,” he said to me. “He’s got a good head on him.” And I’ll tell you, Sarah, I had to save every penny. Ten shillings isn’t much. When did you see me with good clothes in the church?’

  ‘That’s true,’ said the fat woman absently. ‘We have to make sacrifices.’ It was difficult to know what she was thinking of – the whale meat or the saccharines? Or the lack of clothes? Her mind was vague and diffused except when she was thinking about herself.

  The thin woman continued: ‘Many’s the night I used to sit here in this room and knit clothes for him when he was young. I even knitted trousers for him. And for all I know he may marry an English girl and where will I be? He might go and work in England. He was staying in a house there at Christmas. He met a girl at a dance and he found out later that her father was a mayor. I’m sure she smokes and drinks. And he might not give me anything after all I’ve done for him.’

  ‘Donald spends all his money,’ said the fat woman. ‘He never sends me anything. When he comes home on leave he’s never in the house. But I don’t mind. He was always like that. Meeting strange people and buying them drinks. It’s his nature and he can’t go against his nature. He’s passed the Smiths. That means Tommy’s all right.’

  There were only another three houses before he would reach her own, and then the last one was the one where she was sitting.

  ‘I think I’ll take a cup of tea,’ she said. And then, ‘I’m sorry about the cow.’ But no matter how you tried you never could like the thin woman. She was always putting on airs. Mayor indeed. Sending her son to university. Why did she want to be better than anyone else? Saving and scrimping all the time. And everybody said that her son wasn’t as clever as all that. He had failed some of his exams too. Her own Donald was just as clever and could have gone to university but he was too fond of fishing and being out with the boys.

  As she drank her tea her heart was beating and she was frightened and she didn’t know what to talk about and yet she wanted to talk. She liked talking, after all what else was there to do? But the thin woman didn’t gossip much. You couldn’t feel at ease with her, you had the idea all the time that she was thinking about something else.

  The thin woman came and sat down beside her.

  ‘Did you hear,’ said the fat woman, ‘that Malcolm Mackay was up on a drunken charge? He smashed his car, so they say. It was in the black-out.’

  ‘I didn’t hear that,’ said the thin woman.

  ‘It was coming home last night with the meat. He had it in the van and he smashed it at the burn. But they say he’s all right. I don’t know how they kept him out of the war. They said it was his heart but there was nothing wrong with his heart. Everyone knows it was influence. What’s wrong with his heart if he can drink and smash a car?’

  The thin woman drank her tea very delicately. She used to be away on service a long time before she was married and she had a dainty way of doing things. She sipped her tea, her little finger elegantly curled in an irritating way.

  ‘Why do you keep your finger like that?’ said the fat woman suddenly.

  ‘Like what?’

  The fat woman demonstrated.

  ‘Oh, it was the way I saw the guests drinking tea in the hotels when I was on service. They always drank like that.’

  ‘He’s passed the Stewarts,’ said the fat woman. Two houses to go. They looked at each other wildly. It must be one of them. Surely. They could see the elder quite clearly now, walking very stiff, very upright, wearing his black hat. He walked in a stately dignified manner, eyes straight ahead of him.

  ‘He’s proud of what he’s doing,’ said the fat woman suddenly. ‘You’d think he was proud of it. Knowing before anyone else. And he himself was never in the war.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the thin woman, ‘it gives him a position.’ They watched him. They both knew him well. He was a stiff, quiet man who kept himself to himself, more than ever now. He didn’t mix with people and he always carried the Bible into the pulpit for the minister.

  ‘They say his wife had one of her fits again,’ said the fat woman viciously. He had passed the Murrays. The next house was her own. She sat perfectly still. Oh, pray God it wasn’t hers. And yet it must be hers. Surely it must be hers. She had dreamt of this happening, her son drowning in the Atlantic ocean, her own child whom she had reared, whom she had seen going to play football in his green jersey and white shorts, whom she had seen running home from school. She could see him drowning but she couldn’t make out the name of the ship. She had never seen a really big ship and what she imagined was more like the mailboat than a cruiser. Her son couldn’t drown out there for no reason that she could understand. God couldn’t do that to people. It was impossible. God was kinder than that. God helped you in your sore trouble. She began to mutter a prayer over and over. She said it quickly like the Catholics, O God save my son O God save my son O God save my son. She was ashamed of prattling in that way as if she was counting beads but she couldn’t stop herself, and on top of that she would soon cry. She knew it and she didn’t want to cry in front of that woman, that foreigner. It would be weakness. She felt the arm of the thin woman around her shoulders, the thin arm, and it was like first love, it was like the time Murdo had taken her hand in his when they were coming home from the dance, such an innocent gesture, such a spontaneous gesture. So unexpected, so strange, so much a gift. She was crying and she couldn’t look . . .

  ‘He has passed your house,’ said the thin woman in a distant firm voice, and she looked up. He was walking along and he had indeed passed her house. She wanted to stand up and dance all round the kitchen, all fifteen stone of her, and shout and cry and sing a song but then she stopped. She couldn’t do that. How could she do that when it must be the thin woman’s son? There was no other house. The thin woman was looking out at the elder, her lips pressed closely together, white and bloodless. Where had she learnt that self-control? She wasn’t crying or shaking. She was looking out at something she had always dreaded but she wasn’t going to cry or surrender or give herself away to anyone.

  And at that moment the fat woman saw. She saw the years of discipline, she remembered how thin and unfed and pale the thin woman had always looked, how sometimes she had had to borrow money, even a shilling to buy food. She saw what it must have been like to be a widow bringing up a son in a village not her own. She saw it so clearly that she was astounded. It was as if she had an extra vision, as if the air itself brought the past with all its details nearer. The number of times the thin woman had been ill and people had said that she was weak and useless. She looked down at the thin woman’s arm. It was so shrivelled, and dry.

  And the elder walked on. A few yards now till he reached the plank. But the thin woman hadn’t cried. She was steady and still, her lips still compressed, sitting upright in her chair. And, miracle of miracles, the elder passed the plank and walked straight on.

  They looked at each other. What did it all mean? Where was the elder going, clutching his telegram in his hand, walking like a man in a daze? There were no other houses so where was he going? They drank their tea in silence, turning away from each other. The fat woman said, ‘I must be going.’ They parted for the moment without speaking. The thin woman still sat at the window looking out. Once or twice the fat woman made as if to turn back as if she had something to say, some message to pass on, but she didn’t. She walked away.

  It wasn’t till later that night that they discovered what had happened. The elder had a telegram directed to himself, to tell him of the drowning of his own son. He should never have seen it just like that, but there had been a mistake at the post office, owing to the fact that there were two boys in the village with the same name. His walk through the village was a somnambulistic wandering. He didn�
�t want to go home and tell his wife what had happened. He was walking along not knowing where he was going when later he was stopped half way to the next village. Perhaps he was going in search of his son. Altogether he had walked six miles. The telegram was crushed in his fingers and so sweaty that they could hardly make out the writing.

  The Wedding

  It was a fine, blowy, sunshiny day as I stood outside the church on the fringe of the small groups who were waiting for the bride to arrive. I didn’t know anybody there, I was just a very distant relative, and I didn’t feel very comfortable in my dark suit, the trousers of which were rather short. There were a lot of young girls from the Highlands (though the wedding was taking place in the city) all dressed in bright summery clothes and many of them wearing corsages of red flowers. Some wore white hats which cast intricate shadows on their faces. They all looked very much at ease in the city and perhaps most of them were working there, in hotels and offices. I heard one of them saying something about a Cortina and another one saying it had been a Ford. They all seemed to know each other and one of them said in her slow soft Highland voice, ‘Do you think Murdina will be wearing her beads today?’ They all laughed. I wondered if some of them were university students.

  The minister who was wearing dark clothes but no gown stood in the doorway chatting to the photographer who was carrying an old-fashioned black camera. They seemed to be savouring the sun as if neither of them was used to it. The doors had been open for some time as I well knew since I had turned up rather early. A number of sightseers were standing outside the railings taking photographs and admiring the young girls who looked fresh and gay in their creamy dresses.

  I looked at the big clock which I could see beyond the church. The bride was late though the groom had already arrived and was talking to his brother. He didn’t look at all nervous. I had an idea that he was an electrician somewhere and his suit didn’t seem to fit him very well. He was a small person with a happy, rather uninteresting face, his black hair combed back sleekly and plastered with what was, I imagined, fairly cheap oil.

  After a while the minister told us we could go in if we wanted to, and we entered. There were two young men, one in a lightish suit and another in a dark suit, waiting to direct us to our seats. We were asked which of the two we were related to, the bride or the groom, and seated accordingly, either on the left or the right of the aisle facing the minister. There seemed to be more of the groom’s relatives than there were of the bride’s and I wondered idly whether the whole thing was an exercise in psychological warfare, a primitive pre-marital battle. I sat in my seat and picked up a copy of a church magazine which I leafed through while I waited: it included an attack on Prince Philip for encouraging Sunday sport. In front of me a young girl who appeared to be a foreigner was talking to an older companion in broken English.

  The groom and the best man stood beside each other at the front facing the minister. After a while the bride came in with her bridesmaids, all dressed in blue, and they took their positions to the left of the groom. The bride was wearing a long white dress and looked pale and nervous and almost somnambulant under the white headdress. We all stood up and sang a psalm. Then the minister said that if there was anyone in the church who knew of any impediment to the marriage they should speak out now or forever hold their peace. No one said anything (one wondered if anyone ever stood up and accused either the bride or groom of some terrible crime): and he then spoke the marriage vows, asking the usual questions which were answered inaudibly. He told them to clasp each other by the right hand and murmured something about one flesh. The groom slipped the ring onto the bride’s finger and there was silence in the church for a long time because the event seemed to last interminably. At last the ring was safely fixed and we sang another hymn and the minister read passages appropriate to the occasion, mostly from St Paul. When it was all over we went outside and watched the photographs being taken.

  Now and again the bride’s dress would sway in the breeze and a woman dressed in red would run forward to arrange it properly, or at least to her own satisfaction. The bride stood gazing at the camera with a fixed smile. A little boy in a grey suit was pushed forward to hand the bride a horseshoe after which he ran back to his mother, looking as if he was about to cry. The bride and groom stood beside each other facing into the sun. One couldn’t tell what they were thinking of or if they were thinking of anything. I suddenly thought that this must be the greatest day in the bride’s life and that never again would a thing so public, so marvellous, so hallowed, happen to her. She smiled all the time but didn’t speak. Perhaps she was lost in a pure joy of her own. Her mother took her side, and her father. Her mother was a calm, stout, smiling woman who looked at the ground most of the time. Her father twisted his neck about as if he were being chafed by his collar and shifted his feet now and again. His strawy dry hair receded from his lined forehead and his large reddish hands stuck out of his white cuffs.

  Eventually the whole affair was over and people piled into the taxis which would take them to the reception. I didn’t know what to make of it all. It had not quite had that solemnity which I had expected and I felt that I was missing or had missed something important considering that a woman to the right of me in church had been dabbing her eyes with a small flowered handkerchief all through the ceremony. Both bride and groom seemed very ordinary and had not been transfigured in any way. It was like any other wedding one might see in the city, there didn’t seem to be anything Highland about it at all. And the bits of conversation that I had overheard might have been spoken by city people. I heard no Gaelic.

  For some reason I kept thinking of the father, perhaps because he had seemed to be the most uncomfortable of the lot. Everyone else looked so assured as if they had always been doing this or something like this and none of it came as a surprise to them. I got into a taxi with some people and without being spoken to arrived at the hotel which was a very good one, large and roomy, and charging, as I could see from a ticket at the desk, very high prices.

  We picked up either a sherry or whisky as we went in the door and I stood about again. A girl in a white blouse was saying to her friend dressed in creamy jacket and suit, ‘It was in Luigi’s you see and this chap said to me out of the blue, “I like you but I don’t know if I could afford you”.’ She giggled and repeated the story a few times. Her friend said: ‘You meet queer people in Italian restaurants. I was in an Indian restaurant last week with Colin. It doesn’t shut till midnight you know . . . ’ I moved away to where another group of girls was talking and one of them saying: ‘Did you hear the story about the aspirin?’ They gathered closely together and when the story was finished there was much laughter.

  After a while we sat down at the table and watched the wedding party coming in and sitting down. We ate our food and the girl on my left spoke to another girl on her left and to a boy sitting opposite her. She said: ‘This chap came into the hotel one night very angry. He had been walking down the street and there was this girl in a blue cap dishing out Barclay cards or something. Well, she never approached him at all though she picked out other people younger than him. He was furious about it, absolutely furious. Couldn’t she see that he was a business man, he kept saying. He was actually working in insurance and when we offered him a room with a shower he wouldn’t take it because it was too expensive.’

  The other girl, younger and round-faced, said: ‘There was an old woman caught in the lift the other day. You should have heard the screaming . . . ’ I turned away and watched the bride who was sitting at the table with a fixed smile on her face. Her father, twisting his neck about, was drinking whisky rapidly as if he was running out of time. Her mother smiled complacently but wasn’t speaking to anyone. The minister sat at the head of the table eating his chicken with grave deliberation.

  ‘Did you hear that Lindy has a girl?’ said the boy in front of me to the girls. ‘And she’s thinking of going back home.’

  They all laughed. ‘I wouldn’t
go back home now. They’ll be at the peats,’ said the girl on my left.

  ‘Well,’ said the boy, ‘I don’t know about that. There was a student from America up there and he wanted to work at the peats to see what it was like. He’s learned to speak Gaelic too.’

  ‘How did he like it?’ said the girl at my left.

  ‘He enjoyed it,’ said the boy. ‘He said he’d never enjoyed anything so much. He said they’d nothing like that in America.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ said the small girl and they laughed again.

  ‘Wouldn’t go back for anything anyway,’ said the girl to my left. ‘They’re all so square up there.’

  When we had all finished eating, the Master of Ceremonies said that the groom would make a speech which he did very rapidly and incoherently. He was followed by the best man who also spoke very briefly and with incomprehensible references to one of the bridesmaids who blushed deeply as he spoke. There were cheers whenever an opportunity arose such as, for instance, when the groom referred for the first time to his wife and when there was a reference to someone called Tommy.

  After that the telegrams were read out. Most of them were quite short and almost formal, ‘Congratulations and much happiness’ and so on. A number, however, were rather bawdy, such as, for instance, one which mentioned a chimney and a fire and another which suggested that both the bride and groom should watch the honey on their honeymoon. While the telegrams were being read some of the audience whispered to each other, ‘That will be Lachy’, and ‘That will be Mary Anne’. I thought of those telegrams coming from the Highlands to this hotel where waitresses went round the tables with drinks and there were modernistic pictures, swirls of blue and red paint, on the walls. One or two of the telegrams were in Gaelic and in some strange way they made the wedding both more authentic and false. I didn’t know what the bride thought as she sat there, as if entranced and distant. Everything seemed so formal, so fixed and monotonous, as if the participants were trying to avoid errors, which the sharpwitted city-bred waitresses might pick up.