He thought of razor-suited Jamieson setting out on a Friday night in his lone battle with the Catholics. Where was he now? Used to be a boiler-man or something. By God, he would have sorted them out. And his wife used to clean the cinema steps on those big draughty winter days.
‘So you admit you were wrong,’ said his wife.
He drove on, accelerating past a smaller car and blaring his horn savagely. There was no space in this bloody country. Everybody crowded together like rats.
‘Here, look at that,’ he said, ‘that didn’t use to be there.’ It was a big building, probably a hospital.
‘Remember we used to come down here on the bus,’ he said.
‘That didn’t use to be there.’
He drove into the small town and got out of the car to stretch. The yellow lights rayed the road and the cafés had red globes above them. He could hardly recognise the place.
‘We’d better find a hotel,’ he said. His wife’s face brightened.
They stopped at the Admiral and were back home when the boy in the blue uniform with the yellow edgings took their rich brown leather cases. People could be seen drinking in the bar which faced directly on to the street. They were standing about with globes of whisky in their hands. He recognised who they were. They had red faces and red necks, and they stood there decisively as if they belonged there. Their wives wore cool gowns and looked haggard and dissipated.
His own wife put her hand in his as they got out of the car. Now she was smiling and trailing her fur coat. She walked with a certain exaggerated delicacy. It looked as if it might be a good evening after all. He could tell the boys about his sentimental journey, it would make a good talking point, they would get some laughs from it. No, on second thoughts perhaps not. He’d say something about Scotland anyway, and not forget to make sure that they got to know how well he had done.
The two of them walked in. ‘Waiter,’ he said loudly, ‘two whiskies with ice.’ Some of them looked at him, then turned away again. That waiter should have his hair cut. After a few whiskies they would gravitate into the neighbourhood of the others, those men who ran Scotland, the backbone of the nation. People like himself. By God, less than him. He had had the guts to travel.
Outside it was quite dark. Difficult to get used to this climate.
His wife was smiling as if she expected someone to photograph her.
Now she was home. In a place much like Africa, the bar of a first class hotel.
He took out a cigar to show who he was, and began to cut it.
In the lights pouring out from the hotel he could see his car bulging like a black wave.
He placed his hand over his wife’s and said, ‘Well, dear, it’s been a tiring day.’
With a piercing stab of pain he recalled Africa, the drinkers on the verandah, the sky large and open and protective, the place where one knew where one was, among Europeans like oneself.
To have found one’s true home was important after all. He sniffed his whisky, swirling it around in the goblet, golden and clear and thin and burningly pure.
The Red Door
When Murdo woke up after Hallowe’en and went out into the cold air to see whether anything was stirring in the world around him, he discovered that his door which had formerly been painted green was now painted red. He stared at it for a long time, scratching his head slowly as if at first he didn’t believe that it was his own door. In fact he went into the house again and had a look at his frugally prepared breakfast – porridge, scones and tea – and even studied the damp patch on the wall before he convinced himself that it was his own house.
Now Murdo was a bachelor who had never brought himself to propose marriage to anyone. He lived by himself, prepared his own food, darned his own socks, washed his own clothes and cultivated his own small piece of ground. He was liked by everybody since he didn’t offend anyone by gossiping and maintained a long silence unless he had something of importance to say.
The previous night children had knocked on his door and sung songs to him. He had given them apples, oranges, and nuts which he had bought specially from a shop. He had gazed in amazement at the mask of senility on one face, at the mask of a wildcat on another and at the mask of a spaceman on the face of a little boy whom he could swear he knew.
Having made sure that he was in his own house again he went out and studied the door for a second time. When he touched the red paint he found that it was quite dry. He had no feeling of anger at all, only puzzlement. After all, no one in his experience had had a red door in the village before. Green doors, yellow doors, and even blue doors, but never a red door. It certainly singled him out. The door was as red as the winter sun he saw in the sky.
Murdo had never in his life done anything unusual. Indeed because he was a bachelor he felt it necessary that he should be as like the other villagers as possible. He read the Daily Record as they did, after dinner he slept by the fire as they did, he would converse with his neighbour while hammering a post into the ground. He would even play draughts with one of them sometimes.
Nevertheless there were times when he felt that there was more to life than that. He would feel this especially on summer nights when the harvest moon was in the sky
