BURROW
‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand, I thought that you were defending the comics, that you were lecturing on them because you . . . ’
MACDUFF
‘Exactly. And why did I do that? I did that so that I would end up here. So that I would get an audience. Why did you want me here? Shall I tell you? I’ll tell you the reason why you invited me here. You don’t really give a damn one way or the other. You’re not really interested in this at all, are you? You put me on the box because you thought I was going to be sensational, didn’t you? That I would be entertaining. What the hell do you care about culture or about anything else? What do you care about all those people who have died in order to produce a poem or a symphony? You don’t give a damn, do you? What can your friend Mallow say? He doesn’t know enough about literature or about anything else to answer me. Does he even know enough about the comics? Does he know when the comic first started? Of course he doesn’t. He’s just a shallow nincompoop.’
BURROW
‘Well, Mr Mallow?’
MALLOW
‘I was just about to say that this trick is what one would expect of one who is trying to defend the élite and élitism. What has Professor MacDuff ever done except to stay in his ivory tower? Can he tell us if he has in fact gone out to the people? Can he tell us that he is not defending the rotting bastions of capitalism and that in order to do that he must defend the élitism of Shakespeare and the rest?’
MACDUFF
‘You asked me whether I have done anything for the working man. Yes, shall I tell you what I’ve done for the working man? I’ve spent fifty years reading books and lecturing on them. I have spent fifty years trying to separate the false from the true. I have spent fifty years trying to nurse in people’s minds that love of excellence which prevents us from being animals. You may call it an ivory tower if you like. I say that I’ve been protecting your civilisation, the civilisation of all men. I’ve been trying to keep us all from being yahoos. I’m not saying that I did it alone. But I helped to do it. I’m proud of doing it. Listen to this. This is Hamlet again speaking to Horatio his friend. Hamlet is concerned about his honour and he says:
Absent thee from felicity awhile
and in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain
to tell my story.
Listen to this line:
The still sad music of humanity.
‘I could go on all night. When did Mallow or any of his kind ever write anything like that? Is that élitism? Shall I tell you about Mr Mallow and the rest of them? They think they know everything and they know nothing. Michelangelo and the other great painters didn’t think it odd or wrong to be apprentices to painters lesser than themselves. This is the first generation we have had who think they have nothing to learn. I shall challenge Mr Mallow now. I shall ask him who wrote some great lines that I will quote. And to be perfectly fair if he can’t answer these questions – since I am sure he cannot – I further challenge him to produce his alternatives.’
BURROW
‘Mr Mallow?’
MALLOW
‘I haven’t been a professor in an ivory tower for fifty years so I haven’t got the Professor’s useless learning. It would be easy for me to ask him . . . ’
MACDUFF
‘Please let him ask me to identify any lines that he can produce that the listeners will be able to call great. For after all I believe in the audience out there. I believe they want the best. I don’t believe they are content with bingo and dominoes or whatever Mr Mallow wants them to play. I don’t believe they want to read comics. I don’t believe they want to be like everyone else. Even on this medium which tries to make them so I still believe with Blake and all the great writers in their potential and their individuality. I believe that they can tell which writers will set down their joys and their sufferings. I believe that they can love the best and the excellent. I do not believe in the “working man” I believe in individual men. And I say that people like our friend here are practical illiterates who wouldn’t know a line of poetry if it hit them between the eyes. Our universities are full of them. But they have to make the choice whether they want to go back to the world of the comics with their grunts or forward to the best that man has ever thought. I shall be retiring after this programme is over. I am not ashamed of my lifetime’s work and I want to be clear about this. I’m not ashamed of my ivory tower if that is what you call it. I have been in the firing line and a much more complex one than most. It’s true I haven’t fought in wars with bullets but this is another war, and I am suggesting that those great writers as in any other war should not have died in vain. Listen:
The woods are lovely dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep
and miles to go before I sleep.
And miles to go before I sleep.
I don’t give a damn for this medium. And I recognise that I have to use a medium which I despise in order to say the things I have to say. I regret that I had to use subterfuge in order to get on it at all. But someone has to say the things I have said. I’m not ashamed of my life. I have done what I set out to do. And I shall continue doing it too.
‘And I should like to say this to you. Always try to tell the best from the trashy. You’d try to do it when you’re shopping, wouldn’t you? Why shouldn’t you do it for your minds? The mind surely is as important as the body. I’m not waiting for our friend to sum up. I’m leaving now. I’m leaving because I’m not going to allow them to package all this up very neatly. I say, to hell with their medium. I can step out of the box any time.’
And at that precise moment he did. He walked off down the steps, and after a long time onto the street, which was sunny and warm. He walked briskly along, meditating on how he should word his letter of resignation. He thought about his wife and felt her closer to him than ever before. She had worn out her days on Greek scholarship, practising the discrimination without which we are animals, he thought. There can be no doubt that whatever happens, we are right, he said to himself. The signs glittered all round him, the signs of supermarkets and cinemas. He felt happy and free and gay, as if new creative life had been given to him. Already he could hear the phone ringing or its meaningful silence. It was necessary to shed that load, to go to Spain at last . . .
from
THE VILLAGE
Easter Sunday
It was Easter Sunday and the women were all in church. They were wearing red hats and yellow hats and pink hats with flowers on them. On the blue velvet cloth that hung down in front of the pulpit there was a yellow cross. The pews were varnished and the light reflected from them. In one window there was a picture of a thinnish yellow Christ surrounded by a lot of weak-looking sheep.
Mrs Maclean was thinking, ‘What I can’t stand is the noise they both make in the morning, and their moods. If it isn’t one then it is the other. Depressions and moods. Sometimes I feel that I shan’t be able to go on. I thought they would like the school but neither of them does, and on holiday they are unbearable. What I would like to do is sit by the fire and read a thriller but I never have the time. Some day I shall manage that when they leave me and marry. That will be heaven.’
The minister said, ‘I have a friend who once visited Yarmouth and he saw some fishermen there and he asked them, “Do you know about Christ? He also was a fisherman.” And one of them said, “But did he go deep sea?” Still, it’s not a joke really . . . ’
The minister was thinking, ‘I am wasting my time here. True, there is the picnic and the Guild but they don’t really listen. I feel uncomfortable trying to get down to their level. I’m sure Christ wasn’t like that. I am a scholar really. I should be writing theology but I haven’t the time. I never have the time, though I have all the time in the world. They think I’m eccentric. That was the mistake I made from the beginning when I came here. I should have appeared jovial among them and the thing is I don’t know anything about farming. It is difficult for me to find the simple ima
ges that Christ used. Still, I shall have to continue. If only I took more joy in the baptisms.’
Outside the window there were the tombstones, some dating back two hundred years. Sometimes the children hand in hand in their little gaily-coloured frocks ran between them, playing games. At Easter time the light shone on their polished surfaces.
Mrs Milne thought, ‘If he wants to leave me he can. I suppose everybody in the village knows that we don’t get on. We even sleep in separate rooms. I said that the black eye had come from my falling downstairs. And they know perfectly well I don’t polish the stairs, so how could I slip on them? I know he took her to the dance. He didn’t make any attempt to disguise it. He shouts at me, “I hate you, I hate you.” Though why he should I don’t know since I do everything I can for him. Maybe I should have married Alasdair when he asked me. But that was a long time ago. I find this sermon silly. I wonder what he does with himself for the rest of the week. I wonder if he believes all this rubbish. Perhaps he does. But he’s no good at funerals or visiting people, so they say. He’s never visited me. He only goes to the houses where he’ll get good food. I wouldn’t have come, except this morning being Easter I felt so happy. I woke up and felt happy and I hadn’t felt so happy for such a long time.’
The church was cool and there were lots of flowers in vases. The congregation sang Abide with Me and the minister gazed around him with satisfaction.
‘That was the hymn they sang on the Titanic,’ thought Mrs Gray. ‘I remember hearing about that, or did I see a film? There was a pianist up to his knees in water. And they showed a shot of ice cubes in glasses while the ship was sinking. I thought that was clever. I wish I was in the city, this place is so boring. Last holidays I nearly didn’t come back. I lay on my bed the last night while Jimmy snored and I nearly ran away. I could hear the traffic, I could imagine them coming out of the theatres and the cinemas. I could imagine the night clubs, women in furs getting into taxis, the glitter of the light on the street. We even went to the zoo which I love. There is nothing here, just those bloody hills with hardly any human beings about. One of these days I’ll get a gun and shoot rabbits and hare. I might even shoot some sheep. I get up every morning and there’s nothing to do. I’m sick of saying good morning to people I don’t care for. The minister will be standing at the door as usual, bowing and scraping, oily little man. But I’m getting too old now to leave and Jimmy’s job is here. I suppose that’s life. I’m glad I didn’t wear my flowered hat. Everyone else is wearing one, like schoolgirls.’
The collectors dressed in their best suits walked down the aisle looking dignified and important. One was the local joiner and the other the local painter. They smiled at everybody and passed the cloth bag along.
‘How shall I tell my mother,’ thought Mary, ‘that I’m pregnant? I’ll have to tell her soon. It’s a wonder she doesn’t know already. And he won’t marry me, I know that. I could tell it from the beginning almost, but I lived in hope. He’s a Sagittarius and I’m a Capricorn. Capricorn and Taurus get on all right but not Sagittarius and Capricorn. It said in my horoscope today that relationships this weekend would be tricky. Actually it was that particular night. I don’t know what came over me, it must have been the Bloody Maries. It was like something you’d read in a woman’s magazine. We were coming home from the dance and suddenly we were in a field. I didn’t even know how we’d got there, perhaps we had wings. That’s a laugh. Anyway he began to stroke me and talk to me and he said how touch was so important, I remember that. He stroked me and his talk went on and on, and there was a stream that I could hear flowing at the edge of the field. She’ll throw me out. If it was the city it would be different but in a village everybody knows. Perhaps some of them know already. They’ll sit in church but that’s as far as it’ll go. When it comes to helping there’ll be a different story. It’s going to be pretty tough and he won’t help. They told me he has started going out with Susan. They were seen at a hotel last Friday. There are always spies who tell you these things. It might be better not to know, the pain’s so great. The only problem is I don’t know what to tell my mother. It’ll break her heart, or so she’ll say. But she won’t think about me. She’ll think about all those bitches with their flowery hats.’
The minister made the sign of the cross and hurried to the door to talk to them before they left. He hated that. The fact was he could hardly ever think of anything to say and they knew it. They knew that he didn’t like them. They stood in the way of his ideal sermon which would be delivered to empty pews. He held out his hand, bowing slightly. They murmured some words which he could hardly hear. The children ran down to the road between the gravestones. They would turn out more or less exactly like their mothers. Sometimes he had terrible dreams of a figure in a huge office with a stamping machine which duplicated people. Transparencies. Once he thought he saw Christ himself turning his back on the village and setting off into the wilderness among the deer. Not even He could take them all the time. He would sometimes prefer the wastes and the innocent beasts. That was why he often went out on boats, to get away from them.
He watched with relief the last one leaving in the sparkling sunshine. The coloured hats bobbed down the road. He turned away and thought of his study where he could involve himself in the labyrinthine delights of theology. Thank God Christianity wasn’t simple, there was so much to reconcile. If it had been simple it would have died long ago.
Sunday
I sat in the tall chair, my feet not quite touching the floor. It was a Sunday afternoon and I was visiting the unmarried fat girl who was called Rhoda and who seemed to me to be quite old, though perhaps she was about thirty-five. Her mother, a sharp-edged woman in black and with a perpetual drop at her nose, was in church as she so unfailingly was. I never knew what to say, but to be in another house was at least a change. I picked up a magazine called Woman’s Own and looked through it. Rhoda was talking to the other fat girl from the village, a friend of hers also unmarried whose name was Annie. They were whispering and giggling – both fat girls together – and I turned the pages of the magazine. My attention was caught by a story which described how a nurse in a hospital stabbed her rival to death with a pair of scissors. I shook with fear and disgust. The two of them in front of me wavered like glazed dolls, their red faces gleaming.
Rhoda was saying, ‘There was this Pole I met and he took me to the cinema. It was in the blackout.’ There was much secretive giggling and I heard the last words, ‘and I said I don’t take Woodbines.’ I felt hot and flustered and I thought of the scissors. Such an ordinary evil. Outside the window I could see the bare landscape, entombed in Sunday. A seagull was perched on the earthen wall staring stonily around it, its head moving in quick jerks as if it were on strings. I hated seagulls, they were so blank-eyed and voracious. There was nothing that they wouldn’t eat.
Having nothing to do on Sundays I just went to people’s houses and sat there, sometimes not speaking. I would often get a piece and jam. Annie was sitting opposite me, her huge red legs spread so that I could see her large green bloomers. I was thinking that the following morning I would have to explain to the teacher why there was a large blot of ink on my exercise book. I knew she would belt me. She had thin glasses above a narrow nose and she would sometimes belt people for no reason. The composition was called, ‘A Day in the Life of a Postman’. I had written a story about an old woman who never got any letters from anyone and would stand in the lobby watching the letter box all day. It wasn’t really about the postman at all and that was another reason why I would get the belt. I had spent three hours on it because I liked writing but I was miserable thinking how I would be belted.
Rhoda had a bicycle pump which she had taken over from the bed on which it had been lying. I knew that she didn’t have a bicycle. They were talking about something and Rhoda was stroking the pump in her lap. They were both laughing and then Annie began to stroke it as well. I could’t imagine either of them on a bicycle, they were so fat.
I knew that both of them had been in England and sometimes they talked in English thinking that I was too young to understand. But I read a lot of English books and I could write good English.
Annie was saying, ‘He took me to his flat. He had everything there. Everything.’ They looked directly in each other’s eyes and laughed in a high hysterical manner. Sometimes they stared at me sideways and seemed to be whispering about me. I could feel my knees flushing below the woollen shorts which my mother had knitted for me as she had also knitted the stockings with the diamond tops. The clock ticked heavily. Sunday was heavy on the village. It was like a huge dull suety pudding with dull heavy raisins in it. The ditch outside the window was full of dirty old cans and there were little yellow primroses lodged in the bank above it.
I felt uncomfortable as if there was something going on that I didn’t understand. I wanted to leave but I couldn’t think how I could manage it. Sometimes I went to a house and I couldn’t get up to go because I was too shy. I felt that perhaps they wanted me, for some reason, to go. One of them looked at me and said, ‘Too small,’ and they giggled again. I felt my face redden and grow hot. I didn’t want to be belted but there was no way round it. It was unjust but that was how things were. I hated the teacher. I hated her thin glasses and her sarcastic voice. I hated the dusty globe which lay on her desk. But I would have to go to school anyway since this time I didn’t feel sick.
The Red Door Page 43