The Red Door

by Iain Crichton Smith

  The Conversation

  ‘Thank you for coming, Iain. Pain? No, he wasn’t in pain. He got quieter and quieter. You wouldn’t have known him, he got so quiet. You see, the minister used to come a lot. He is a very kind man really though he is strict and he helped him a great deal. Norman gave up all his nonsense and became very calm.

  ‘The minister used to sit by the bed and read passages to him from the Bible even on the hottest days. I admired him for that. I will always remember him for that. Not many ministers would do it but this one is a good visitor.

  ‘At first before the minister came Norman would talk about the tricks he used to play on the village people, like the time he put a crab on Roddy’s chair. These were the vain things he would talk about but of course he didn’t know then that he was dying. We should always remember, Iain, that we are going to die. Joking is all very well, but life is a serious thing.

  ‘And he would talk about his school-days and about football games and things like that. After all, he was only sixteen.

  ‘But then the minister came and he changed for the better. He would lie in his bed and listen to the Bible and ask questions. I once heard him asking why Abraham was ready to sacrifice Isaac and the minister told him the reason. The minister said that he had a natural spirit of inquiry which was a good thing if it was steered in the right direction. He said that his questions were those of the natural man but that later they would lead to the calmness of the spiritual man.

  ‘And the minister would pray with him for a long time. He would ask for God’s help because we are all sinners and if God won’t help us who will? We must all remember that we are in the hands of God.

  ‘One day I went in and Norman screamed at me that the minister had told him he was dying. There were tears running down his cheek. I took his hand in mine and I said, “We are all dying. That is what the minister meant.” “That is not what he meant,” he said weakly as he lay back on the pillow. It was a great struggle for him to fight against the natural man; after all what can you expect of a boy of sixteen? It was warm in the room; a summer dying is the worst. I used to bring him in cups of milk and he would drink them propped up on his pillow. Sometimes he would look very beautiful, like an angel, he was so thin and white. The minister would never take anything. Perhaps he thought that as we are very poor we needed all our food for ourselves.

  ‘One night Norman had a nightmare and he shouted to me to put the minister away because he was killing him but I knew that was just the devil trying to master him. And so I hushed him to sleep.

  ‘But the minister was attentive, I must say that for him. He is a real minister, a real compassionate man. He wished to save Norman’s soul before he died, and he wrestled with the devil on his behalf, and sought to take his thoughts away from the vain things of this world to the eternal treasures of the next world which moths will not corrupt. The doctor asked me if anyone was visiting Norman and I told him about the minister. He didn’t say anything but he is not really a good doctor anyway, he bounces into the room joking all the time as if he was a clown. Sometimes he will even dance, he has no dignity at all. I’ve even heard him singing a song. Imagine a professional man acting like that. That’s all he is, an actor. A lot of people like him, but I don’t think a man as undignified as that can be a good doctor. Professional people should be more serious and not allow themselves to be laughed at. Norman liked him well enough. Indeed he looked forward to his visits.

  ‘One afternoon on a hot day – it was a Wednesday – I went into the bedroom and it was very quiet. The curtains were blowing gently in the breeze. I was carrying a cup with some milk in it and when I looked at the bed I thought at first that Norman was asleep. He lay so still and his hair was over his brow. He looked like a statue. I put the milk down beside the bed on a small table and I touched his forehead. It was cold. I knew then that he had died. I picked the Bible up from the floor where it had dropped from his hand as he fell asleep. The Bible was cold but underneath it the floor was warm. I remember that very well, the black leather of the Bible, and the warmth of the floor round about it. That was a week last Wednesday. He was buried on the following Friday. He was sixteen years old and three days when he died.

  ‘Are you going then? Are you sure you won’t have a cup of tea? No? Well, thank you for coming, Iain. You and he were great friends in the old days, I know that; he often used to talk about you. But as I told you he became very quiet and serious at the end. He put away the natural man and became more spiritual and I am very glad of that. For if we aren’t spiritual, if we do not lean on the mercy of God, what are we? What are we indeed?’

  I’ll Remember You

  Life is very strange and we never know when we are young how things will turn out. I had bitter thoughts about life this evening when my grandchild Robert told me his story. Like his mother he is fair-haired and blue-eyed and looks as if butter would not melt in his mouth though in fact like most children he is cunning, watchful and various.

  Robert as I have said came rushing in to tell his story, very frightened indeed. There is in the village an old fat woman with red legs and a large red face and a moustache who stays by herself in a thatched house and is the butt of the village boys. They knock on the door of her house and run away as she comes out, staring angrily round her and swearing in a loud voice. Her name is Murdina and she has been alone now for many years after her aged parents, whom she looked after, died. Those who out of compassion have visited her house say that it is extremely dirty and smelly and infested with cats which she feeds haphazardly from saucers which litter the floor.

  This particular summer’s day Robert (whom I have often belted for playing pranks of this nature) and some of his friends knocked on the door as usual and waited for the fat woman to come out, trembling with rage, her red cheeks inflated and turning a deep purple, and her knickers as usual half down her ankles. This time, however, no one appeared and out of the bravado created by a summer’s day (having tired of the tent choked with smoke) they crept up to the door again, feeling cheated by her failure to appear, and fearfully crept inside. They came face to face with a number of half-wild cats with green eyes and nearly ran back into the hot sunlight again where the corn and grass were fiercely growing by the well not far from the thatched house. But feeling that it would be cowardly to run away after coming so far, they crawled into the main room. They saw her lying asleep there, her head leaning against the back of the chair, her arms sprawled in front of her like those of a boxer who has gone back to his corner after a particularly fierce round and leans exhausted against the ropes, his legs spread out.

  The house was very silent and the only sound to be heard was the buzz of a fly which finally as they watched settled on her almost bald head and stayed there, vibrating. What frightened them was that she made no move to swat at the fly and displace it from her head. There was no fuel in the fireplace and on the floor was a saucer which the cats had licked of all the milk that it had contained. For a long time they stayed there in the silence watching the large black fly settled on her bald head. Then with one accord, knowing that there was something wrong, they all rushed out into the hot sunlight and ran home to tell their story. Robert told me. I leathered him and told my wife who immediately with some women went to the house. They found her lying dead in the chair.

  We lay in the corn on that autumn night while the autumn moon shone overhead. I kissed her and touched her breasts. She closed her eyes and the moon lighted the small blue veins. Her face was small and white and fragile, her outspread legs luminous in the moonlight. There was no sound to be heard but that of the sea in the distance, resonant and nostalgic. The tides of her blood seemed to move with the salty tides. It was barely possible to feel such tenderness and not have one’s heart broken. It was not possible to see any other face in the harmony of the universe in that harvest time. As her arms encircled me she looked vulnerable, desirable and precious. I kissed her, holding her tight in my arms. She moved a little, sighi
ng with either contentment or sorrow. We would not marry because of her aged parents as she had a great sense of responsibility. The sea roared in our blood and beyond us, heavy with its burden of the dead and the resurrected. I touched her cheeks and they were wet with brine.

  I woke up and there was a fly on her bald head. Large and fat she swam towards me across the water, a porpoise that had come to grief, a whale of that terrifying sea with its many currents. There was a child somewhere crying. I brushed the fly away hearing his nightmare cry in the cool room with the moonlight on his brow. My aged wife was telling me about the ring that had been found in a drawer in a piece of aged blue cloth. I didn’t say anything, but the brine sprang from my eyes as I thought of how we live, tethered and roped, by that well which once contained the freshest of waters and now will hardly show us even our own reflections without comedy and bitterness.

  The Ghost

  One night I met the ghost at the corner of the road and it looked exactly like a spook I had seen in a small book of paintings by Miro.

  ‘It’s a fine night,’ it said, wavering in front of me, just like a sheet such as my mother used to wash in the spring.

  ‘It is that,’ I said, not very frightened, for this ghost looked quite comic and friendly and not at all intimidating. There was something even cosy about it.

  ‘Of course you have to believe in my existence now,’ it went on. ‘Not many people believe in ghosts but I must admit that I like to be believed in. I like to be friendly. I miss my conversations with people, about the weather and so on.’

  ‘I do,’ I said, ‘believe in you. After all, you are there, aren’t you?’

  ‘I am indeed,’ it said. ‘And another thing, ghosts aren’t always gloomy. For instance, I come back regularly to be among people. I miss them a lot. Most people are really quite kind and interesting. You don’t particularly care for people, do you?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t say that at all.’

  ‘I see. It’s just all that stuff you write about the Clearances and old women. It’s all very gloomy really. I used to write little plays myself but they were usually very comic. Most people thought they were amusing and said that they cheered them up. I keep up, you know. I visit houses now and again after midnight and I keep up with the magazines.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear that,’ I said. ‘They’ll need your subscriptions the way things are going.’ I was beginning to think that this was really rather a shallow ghost.

  The ghost laughed a little but I don’t think it quite saw the point of my joke.

  ‘After all,’ it continued, ‘isn’t it time you wrote something cheerful and happy? On the spur of the moment as it were. Have you ever seen a cockerel for instance crowing in the early morning? I have had occasion to. It looks very beautiful, its claws thrust into the ground. You should have a look at animals, for instance. Or don’t you agree?’

  ‘Oh, I do agree. Only it troubles me to see you out here on such a fine night. Has it ever occurred to you that you might frighten people? You don’t frighten me but that’s because you talk in such a literary manner and are obviously interested in my work. But other people might not be so calm.’

  ‘To tell you the truth,’ said the ghost, ‘no one has ever had a heart attack because of me. Anyway I thought I’d give you some advice. When you think of it there are a lot of comic people in the village, and there have been a lot of funny incidents. Now I’ve got an idea for you. Why don’t you write a play about two sisters who fall in love with a poacher? They are always cooking the fish he brings back but they don’t know it’s been stolen. And you could have a fat policeman in it.’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t think that would suit me at all. Not at all.’

  ‘Well, then,’ said the ghost, ‘what about a story about an oldish man who lives with his mother and sends off a letter to a Marriage Bureau? There’s plenty of comic material in that.’

  ‘True,’ I said and there was a long silence.

  ‘On the other hand,’ I said speaking with difficulty, because of my boredom, ‘I have been brought up on Kafka and Kierkegaard and I don’t think I would like to write that sort of stuff at all. Where is the art in that? Anyway I don’t know two such sisters.’

  ‘But can’t you invent them?’

  ‘I don’t work like that,’ I said.

  ‘I only thought,’ said the ghost sadly. In fact the longer it talked to me the sadder it seemed to get.

  ‘I mean, let’s face it,’ it began again. ‘The past is past, isn’t it? We need something more cheerful. I like a lot of colour myself. I get on best with children. I have a lot of friends who are children. We go about together in the spring, dancing about. I suppose people must think we are clouds.’

  ‘I suppose they must,’ I said grimly. ‘Especially Wordsworth. I’m very glad you have brought me those interesting ideas . . . ’

  ‘Oh, I’ve got more, I’ve got lots more. For instance,’ the ghost said, sitting or seeming to sit on a stone, ‘this man gets a wife after all from the Marriage Bureau and it turns out she’s got a wooden leg. You could make something funny out of that.’

  ‘That would be possible,’ I said carefully. ‘On the other hand, where is the moral in it?’

  ‘But would it need to have a moral?’

  ‘As a ghost born and bred in the Highlands you ought to know better than that,’ I said. ‘Really, I’m ashamed of you. Or rather, I’m ashamed that you haven’t worked that out for yourself. I think that your literary standards are very low. Why, if we had been writing about Marriage Bureaux and wooden legs we would be back where we were before.’

  ‘Where were we before then?’ said the ghost which now appeared to be smoking a pipe.

  ‘I mean,’ I said, ‘the very fact that you are here suggests that there is more to life than materialism and humour and wooden legs.’

  ‘Is that so, now? I wonder why you should believe that. Still, I suppose, having seen a ghost, you will believe anything.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘we’d be back to the primitive silly work which no one could take seriously.’

  ‘I took it seriously,’ said the ghost. ‘And many people like me took it seriously. And after all I do exist though you didn’t believe so before, did you?’

  ‘I certainly didn’t,’ I answered, feeling my head spinning a little for I wasn’t quite sure what the appearance of the ghost meant. ‘I certainly didn’t,’ I repeated. ‘Nor do I believe in astrology and seances and other things like that.’

  ‘There you are, then,’ said the ghost cheerfully as if it had proved something of importance. ‘And here I am waiting to be cheered up and you are depressing me with your morality. You should have a look round you at the world as it is. It is quite beautiful, isn’t it? Look at that moon for instance and the stars. And do you hear that stream running along the ditch? Why don’t you pay attention to things like that?’

  ‘But I do notice them,’ I said. ‘And I don’t need you to remind me of them. So why don’t you just go away?’

  ‘I was only trying to help,’ said the ghost. ‘I was only trying to give you ideas. For instance, I have another idea at this moment. Why don’t you write a story about a man who inherits a piece of land and it turns into . . . ’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘I don’t like any of your ideas. You don’t seem to me to be very serious for a ghost. I thought ghosts were always very serious.’

  ‘I don’t see why ghosts would be any more serious than other people,’ said the ghost. ‘It all depends on your taste.’

  ‘You know what you like, I suppose,’ I said contemptuously.

  ‘Exactly,’ said the ghost. ‘I couldn’t have put it better myself.’

  ‘Hm.’

  ‘And to tell you the truth I used to write plays myself. One was called Hector’s Wedding. Have you ever heard of it?’

  ‘I’m afraid I . . . ’

  ‘Well, what about Where There’s a Will There’s a Way?
That was about a crofter and his land. It was very funny. The villagers used to split their sides watching that one.’

  ‘I am sure they did,’ I said. ‘But to be quite honest with you, I never . . . ’

  ‘Never mind. It doesn’t matter . . . ’ But the ghost looked a bit crestfallen just the same.

  ‘It’s a great pity,’ I said. ‘I’m sure they were very amusing.’

  ‘As a matter of fact I believed a lot in inspiration,’ said the ghost, cheering up again. ‘Whenever I was scything or doing some work around the house I would be visited by inspiration and I would come in at once and put pen to paper. Everyone was amazed by my gift.’

  ‘That’s very interesting,’ I said.

  ‘All my work was done like that. All my best work, that is. I was never one for sitting down and chewing my pen. I don’t suppose you would write a preface to my plays, would you? I would like to see myself in print,’ it said wistfully.

  ‘I don’t even know where they are,’ I said firmly. ‘And in any case plays are not my line.’

  ‘Just a thought,’ said the ghost. ‘I would like to make people happy and my plays went down very well.’

  ‘But how did they use language?’ I said. ‘That’s very important, you know.’

  ‘Language? The words came to my lips and I wrote them down.’

  ‘I see,’ I said. ‘In that case you’ve never heard of Henry James.’

  ‘No I haven’t. Not at all. And I would like very much if you didn’t make fun of me.’

  ‘I’m not making fun of you,’ I said. ‘And you must remember that it was you who stopped me, not the other way round.’

  ‘I was just giving you suggestions,’ said the ghost who seemed to have gone into a huff. ‘After all it is very terrible when you are visited by inspiration and you have no pen and can’t write anything.’