The Red Door (15 page)

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?

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 desert ‘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.

I went to see him on his death bed. His head rested on a very white pillow showing the hair still black. His face brightened when he saw me, and I tried to suppress my shock at what the disease
was doing to him.

I said, ‘How are you, John?’

And he said, ‘You’re a doctor, Colin, you should know.’

I knew of course.

‘And how are you keeping yourself?’

‘Oh, fine,’ said I.

A nurse walked past, airy and light, with the dry starchy competent clothes all blue.

What was he thinking of?

‘How’s Mary?’ I said.

He didn’t blink.

‘Fine,’ he said.

Someone had once said of him, ‘He’s the kind of man who wants to be in on everything. He would read a paper on Urdu if you asked him. He knows nothing about science, especially the
recent stuff, but he would lecture you on it. He gives the illusion of knowledge, but he doesn’t care about anything really. Except himself.’

‘Do you remember,’ I said to him, ‘the night Miller played the bagpipes on the bus coming home from the “picnic”?’

I could see him trying to remember Miller. Finally he said, ‘ “The Barren Rocks of Aden”, wasn’t it?’

And he was right too. Absolutely.

‘And the woman who lectured us on zoology,’ I pursued. ‘Her mother died and she died a year later.’

He thought again and then he said, ‘Yes, I remember her. Her name was Green, wasn’t it?’

Of course.

He had been a good headmaster or so they said. He had been as you would have expected: competent and, to a certain extent, an innovator. He had kept up with things, no one could say he
hadn’t. He was willing to do all that was required of him. He would speak well about a departing colleague. He would give a kind reference. He would tell a good joke at the club. He would
speak at a Conservative conference.

And I wondered: Did he really like doing thus? Was this really what he wanted to do?

For I remember him one midnight talking about Spain and saying that he wished he could go. And he was horrified by Guernica (or said he was).

He married well, a girl about two years younger than himself who introduced him to the gentry. Sometimes she looked puzzled, but she always supported him and could be humorous about him too.

What I want to know is: What is he? Have I ever known him? I mean was all that stuff about Spain put on because he knew that I was going (as indeed I did, serving in an ambulance unit)? Was he
even then saying what he wanted me to believe? Was he building up his image with me as early as this? Was he much cleverer than I ever realised? Did he think even then that a reference to Spain
would look bad in his education reports? All those Commies.

What I want to know is: When he was drinking his glass of wine in the light of the flashbulb, when he was delivering his little speech to the local ladies on the atom, was he bored to
distraction behind the smiling confident face?

Or was that really his world? Was it sufficient to him? And if so, what can one say about Man?

And was even his Christianity a pose?

The obituaries were all very favourable. His friends were all respectful. All that was in order. I watched the coffin as if I expected him momently to emerge from it like a Houdini. But he did
not emerge. Naturally not.

Everyone had something good to say about him. He had helped so many causes, being chairman and vice-chairman of this and of that. Never had he been called upon in vain. He had given so much of
his time to the community.

One day I went to the office to see him. He spoke to me very pleasantly, smiled, and then tactfully got rid of me. He was expecting a phone call. Lord Coulter, I believe. Some committee on which
he served anyway. Very poised he was, very competent, very cool as always.

But I knew, as he gaily turned away, that he was dying.

So I suppose he was everything they say. Except . . .

When we were in university we were both in love with the one girl. Her name was Lorna. She was a lovably stupid girl, the kind of girl who is always breaking valuable vases, and who rides motor
bikes. Full of life, gaiety, and so on. In any case, she contracted TB (there was a lot of that in the forties). The point, however, is this: one night he came to see me and told me that after much
conflict he was letting me have the first choice with her. He looked pale and worn as if after a sleepless night. I can’t remember exactly how he put it: one can’t really remember the
words he used. Perhaps that’s why it’s so difficult to make up one’s mind about him.

I married her, of course. But that’s not the point: the point is, did he know the night he came to see me that she had TB? I can’t for the life of me work out how he could have
known.

I keep trying to remember what he said, but all I can remember is him standing by the mantelpiece looking very pale but distinguished.

I mean, perhaps he did think of me as a friend. Perhaps he did really make a sacrifice; but why is it that his sacrifices turned out so well for him and mine so badly for me?

That is why I wonder whether I should say something about him. That he was in fact a bastard of the first order. That he would sell his own mother for an ounce of power. That he conned everybody
into believing that he was ‘good’.

Or is this what in our society goodness means?

Now if he is a real Christian he may meet Lorna. I wonder what plausible story he will have concocted by then. For I’m sure he’ll think of something. And even there one would never
be entirely sure of him.

Or is this what Christianity is all about, that there the conning is over and the double-dealing is at peace?

Goodbye, John Summers. The fact is, I don’t know what I would put on your tomb and I’m sure you would say the same about me.

‘But you should have seen him,’ said Bella out of her fat, white, constipated face. ‘I mean,’ she said, collapsing into a series of small giggles.

‘What was it?’ said Chrissie sternly, sitting bitterly by the fire, unable to go to church any more because of her legs which couldn’t even take her out of the house.

Speaking through her giggles, Bella continued,

‘I mean he was just like the minister, like Mr Gunn. The sermon and everything. How are you feeling?’

‘I’m just the same,’ said Chrissie, regarding with secret rancour the jar of home-made marmalade which Bella had brought.

‘It’s not good to be in the house all the time,’ said Bella, her face crinkling. ‘If you could only get out even for a breath of fresh air.’

Chrissie looked enviously at Bella’s legs, large and red. Perhaps she would get varicose veins soon, what with all the walking she did in aid of her Bed and Breakfast.

There was a silence through which she could only hear the ticking of the clock. Nowadays her hearing was so acute that she could hear it when it was about to stop. Life, what was it? Long ago
she was young and able and could go to church. There was a calm then and peace and a sense of green. The church was a hollow well, cool as summer water. The silence before the sermon began was the
kind of silence that you could get nowhere else, not when you were alone, not even in the midst of mountains. It slowly unwrinkled your mind.

Bella burst out sniggering. ‘And he had a collar just like the minister. And he showed us films.’

‘They shouldn’t be showing films in a church,’ said Chrissie decisively. Why should she have been struck down? She had done nothing wrong. She had been a good attender, but God
had abandoned her.

‘And he gave the blessing at the end just like the minister,’ said Bella. ‘He raised his arms at the end and he gave the blessing. It was like . . . ’ She paused, her
brow wrinkling. She’s such a stupid woman, Chrissie thought. Why am I talking to her at all? She’s got all these silly girls, delinquents the whole lot of them.

‘Like what?’ she said aloud.

‘It was like . . . he was imitating him. That’s what it was like. It would have made you laugh, though you shouldn’t laugh in church. I know that. And he told us all about
India and how the people were dying. And they had leprosy and how their arms weren’t fleshy enough to put the injection in.’

What do I care about that? thought Chrissie. A long time ago I might have cared. But then God left me here alone and I became bitter. I get headaches all the time.

‘He said there was millions of them. Millions. And that they looked on their women folk like dirt. He said a man would have four wives. Imagine that,’ she continued, sniggering
helplessly, ‘four wives.’