The Red Door (39 page)

A train seems to move much more slowly than one thinks. I could hear the pounding of the wheels but I was still seeing the same fields. After a while the others curled up and went to sleep. But
I didn’t sleep. Sometimes I read Homer to the thunder of the wheels. It’s strange how unprotected people look when they are asleep.

At ten o’clock we entered the station, but before that I could see the lights of a great city. George and I went out together into the confusion. I was going to order a taxi but George
would not hear of it. We climbed the steps into the glare of the light and went in search of a bus. After dashing across the street – or rather after I had dashed across the street – we
found ourselves at a big cinema – much bigger than the one in T—— with winking lights of different colours, some violet, some purple.

Sitting on the stone pavement with his back against the wall was a beggar, his cap – containing a few pennies – beside him, and he himself staring blankly into space. At that moment
I was terrified. I put my hands into my pockets as if to steady myself and would have given him a pound if George hadn’t said:

‘Don’t be a fool. He’s better off than you are. He’s not blind at all.’ But George put a two-shilling piece in his cap: I didn’t give him anything – I
don’t like people who lie.

When we arrived at the house the landlady came to the door. She is smallish, plump, with a Roman nose. She is said to be greedy for money but perhaps that is scandal. She looks very inquisitive
and it is said that her favourite words are: ‘Youse students with all the money.’ She has a husband who works on the taxis and two children. I saw one of them. He was plump and dressed
in white shorts, white socks and a white blouse. He looked at me without speaking, his thumb in his mouth.

Last night, as I was lying in bed watching the lights of cars traverse the walls and the ceiling and listening to the patter of footsteps on the street, I thought I heard someone whistling a
Gaelic tune. But it wasn’t a Gaelic tune at all.

Your loving son,

K
ENNETH

Yesterday was my first day at the University. I travel by bus leaving at 8.30 a.m. The distance is about three miles.

The University – a place of bells and ivy – fronts a rough road, curiously enough in one of the ugliest parts of the city, so that it appears like an oasis. There are many notice
boards with green baize and notices all of which I have read. Some of them are announcements of prizes, others of the formation of societies (I doubt whether I shall have time to take part in any
of these). There is of course a large library with ladders, and a librarian so tall that she doesn’t need a ladder.

My first lecture was Greek. I climbed the wide stairs, my nostrils quivering to a strange smell. It was in fact the smell of varnish, and I later saw the typical watery waxy yellow. I sat at the
back during the lecture – we are studying Sophocles – feeling the sun warm on my neck and watching the shadows of the leaves dancing on my desk. However, I didn’t have time to do
that for long.

Our lecturer is a rather small man with a half-open mouth like that of a fish and he seemed to me to be in some vague way untidy. (I don’t know quite what I expected – perhaps a
flourish of trumpets and a great man in red robes, but that wasn’t what came.) He kept saying: ‘Now this may be Greek to you, gentlemen . . . ’ Sometimes after saying this he
would look out of the window and stand thus as if he had forgotten us. I noticed a curious smile on his face, like water round a stone. He speaks rather slowly – his hands behind his back
– and I found it quite easy to write down everything he said. In the shops there is quite a large variety of notebooks and I have bought half-a-dozen, as I foresee much writing. There are
thirty students in the class, more men than girls as one would expect. Many of them spend much time taking coffee in the Union and talking intensely. I go to the library. Most of them are far ahead
of me at the moment.

There is one thing. For some reason I feel freer here. At home somehow or other I felt constricted. Do you remember how old Angus used to ask me those pointless riddles?

I am sorry to hear about the squabbles in the church. This money-grabbing is distasteful, and black. I think you should go out more.

Please don’t talk about me to people so much. One doesn’t know what might happen.

My second lecture was Latin – here we are doing Catullus and my lecturer is called Ormond. He is different altogether from Mulgrew – the Greek one – Ormond is more like a
businessman, with bright fresh cheeks, a successful-looking man who sways back and forward on his heels when he is talking. He looks kind and self-possessed. Curiously enough, he wears a waistcoat,
but on him it doesn’t look old-fashioned. He talks quite fast and it takes me all my time to keep up with him.

I haven’t been out at night since I came. Apart from George there are three other lodgers, a lady lecturer at the training college, a young girl who works in a shop, and a man of about
twenty-eight who’s very keen on motor-cycles. The landlady doesn’t like him much as his hands are very oily most of the time. However he has the most cheerful face imaginable and he
talks in a very quaint slow way except when he’s speaking about motor-cycles.

As for me I work at night sitting by the electric fire. Sometimes the landlady comes in, rather unnecessarily I think, and looks at me as if she were going to say something about working too
hard but she doesn’t actually say anything. Once however she did say that I ought to go out more. George says this work and close-sitting by the fire are not good for me, and not profitable
for my landlady! He is a very pleasant person, George.

The landlady can’t be so bad after all. She took us in to see TV night before last. It was the first time I had seen TV and she was very surprised by this as also by my answers to her
questions on life at home. George however looked more serious.

It is now 10.30 p.m. and I have to translate some Sophocles.

By the way I don’t know whether George drinks or not. I have never seen him drunk if that’s what you mean.

Your loving son,

K
ENNETH

This afternoon George and I went for a long walk and this in fact is probably the first time that I’ve been out since I came. After leaving the house we turned left down
the street with its silvery tram rails. It was a fine warm afternoon and we saw many people strolling, some with dogs. After a while we turned left again towards Hutton Park. At the entrance to
this park are great wrought iron gates and flowers of many colours arranged very cleverly to read Welcome. I wondered how this was done but George wouldn’t tell me, and didn’t appear to
be interested. He was telling me a story of a visit to the mortuary recently. The body of a young boy of nineteen had been found drowned in the River Lee. In his cigarette case they found a note
which read: ‘I am tired of being drained of my blood.’ That was all. Yet he apparently had adoring parents.

This park is near a cemetery which is orderly and has some green glass urns containing paper flowers. It is almost too orderly, like streets.

When we entered the park I saw that it had swings on which children were playing. In other parts of the park fathers were playing football with their sons, teaching them. One of them was showing
his little son how to kick a ball, and though he appeared amiable seemed to me to be exasperated. Many of the balls were rainbow-coloured. We also passed a great startling peacock with purplish
plumage like a bride’s train. He was superb and alone and, I thought, completely out of place, unable even to fly.

We lay down on the grass (having removed our jackets) in the warm day. For the first time in three weeks I was completely relaxed. I had taken a book with me – about Catullus – but I
didn’t read it. I watched small white clouds passing over me and heard birds singing in the trees (for there are many trees in the park). Our white shirts were dazzling in the light. George
went for some ice-cream and we ate it and talked.

He doesn’t write home much. ‘After all,’ he says, ‘they know I am here.’ He often gets letters but hardly ever answers them. He told me of his father who seems a
good man, not able to spell well, for example ‘colledge’ for ‘college’. I would have been ashamed to admit this: George isn’t. He invited me to their house for part of
the holidays. What do you think? He is going with a girl called Fiona. I gather that she is very intelligent, and sometimes he talks as if he were her (at least that’s what I think) about the
nuclear bomb. I think we need it. What else have we got? To defend our religion with. He smiled when I said this, clapped me on the knee, and told me to get up. We walked along the bank of the
river (it was here that that boy was drowned) and saw a fisherman wearing thigh-length leathers, patiently casting in the middle. I thought for one horrible moment that we might find a body. Later
we saw swans. They have a curious blunt blindness when seen close up. After a while I found I had forgotten my book and we went back to the park to collect it. We talked to two little boys. They
were both very grave and very polite and told us all about themselves. They were dressed exactly alike in blue tunics and shorts, white shirts and blue ties. They were like echoes of each other.
Eventually their nurse or whatever she was came to collect them. She frowned a little and I think they were very sorry to go, for George at any rate has the gift of friendliness. He makes fun of me
sometimes – says I’m too serious. And I argue, he says, too self-righteously, especially with that college lecturer. My views on education are absolutely incomprehensible to him.
Sometimes he asks me questions about home and confesses himself utterly perplexed. That people should be talked about for being out on a Sunday!

I hope this confusion of the church accounts will be sorted out. I’ve seen it reported even in the newspapers here. That’s what comes of living in a small village.

Don’t think I’m wasting my time. I’m working very hard and I know what has been done for me. I study for about seven hours a day. There is so much to be done. Recently my eye
was caught by a book in the library by a man called Camus. It’s very strange but interesting.

I go to church here, but the minister Mr Wood isn’t very impressive. He is a small stout man who seems to me to have nothing to say. The church itself is small and quite pretty and fresh.
But it’s his voice that I find peculiar . . . as if he could be thinking of something else when he’s preaching. He is not in his voice. It’s difficult to explain this. The flowers
are beautiful, there are fine texts, fresh varnished tables, but he himself – he doesn’t bring these things together. All is forced somehow. I sometimes think we should have more sense
of humour. George is very humorous. He kept us in stitches last night composing a romance between the shopgirl and our cyclist friend – the third in the eternal triangle was the motor bike.
Actually however Joan and Jake quite liked it, I think, and apart from their being lodgers (whom I suppose she can easily replace) the landlady’s romantic soul appears to be touched. She
seats them together at meals! And one day Jake took Joan to the shop on his motor bike. The trouble is he blushes too easily.

I’ve been invited to Mr Mulgrew’s house and I think I might go on Wednesday. George’s girl friend is coming for dinner soon.

It’s very late – 11.30 – and I must finish – I shall post this at 8.30: there’s a pillar box quite near.

I think I shall sleep better tonight: I feel much fresher.

Please remember that as I say again I know all that you have done for me.

Your loving son,

K
ENNETH

Last night I called on Mr Mulgrew our Greek lecturer. It was 7.30 when I arrived at the door of his house which lies in a quiet area about five hundred yards past a busy blue
crossroads. There were two bells, one a white one set in the stone at the side of the door, and the other a black one set in the middle of the door itself. First, I pressed the white one but sensed
by the lack of pressure that it wasn’t working. Then I pressed the black one which also did not appear to be working. Finally I knocked on the door. There was no light in the hall. Then I
knocked again more loudly.

I saw a light flash on – rather a dim one – and Mr Mulgrew himself came to the door wearing no jacket, but a blackish pullover and reddish slippers. Eventually he recognised me, his
mouth closing as he did so and a light being switched on in his eyes. I have heard that he is very lonely and that he goes to the cinema regularly once a week no matter what the film is and that he
prefers to sit in the same seat each time.

He seemed glad to see me and shepherded me into a room on the right which contained a lot of books, an electric fire (with the two bars on), two easy-chairs (both green), an electric lamp (lit),
one table (heavy mahogany), and a smaller, flimsier one. He sat me down in the armchair opposite his own. Beside him on the floor was an open book.

We sat for some moments in silence, he with his legs crossed, dangling one red slipper uneasily, then he took out a packet of cigarettes which he offered me. He seemed surprised when I did not
take a cigarette and returned the packet to his pocket. I have the impression that he bought that packet just for me! At the same time he said:

‘Very few young people don’t smoke nowadays, isn’t that right? You’re not afraid of cancer, are you?’ He looked at me steadily as if he himself was. I said No I
wasn’t.

‘That’s a mistake,’ he continued. ‘We should be. I am. Very much. I find the thought unbearable. Of course it’s psychological.’ I didn’t say
anything.

‘The reason I asked you here is that your work is good, you know, good. Honest. Yes I think honest is the word. Not slick. So little honesty now, don’t you agree. I mean real
honesty.’

His eyes seemed to look at me then flicker away again so that I was uneasy.

‘Do you know that Wittgenstein used to read Black Mask?’ he asked suddenly.

I said I didn’t know anything about Wittgenstein (though I’ve found out a little since).