The Red Door by Iain Crichton Smith Page A

bus stops, bought sweets for the
family when they ought to buy sustaining food, and went about with scarves on their heads.
    She herself was seventy years old. She didn’t go out much now. For one thing, there was the stair which was steep and narrow and not meant for an old person at all. For another, there
weren’t many places she could go to. Of course, for a young person there were plenty of places, the cinema, the dance-hall, the skating rink and so on. But not for her. She did sometimes
attend the church though she disapproved of it: the minister was a bit too radical, leaving too many things in the hands of women, and there was too much of this catering for young people with
societies and groups. That wasn’t the job of the church. In any case, it should be left in the hands of the men.
    She didn’t go to church very often in the winter. The fact was that it would be lonely coming home at night up that road with all these hooligans about. They would stab you as soon as look
at you. You could see them hanging about at windows waiting to burgle the shops: a lot of that went on. She herself often put a chain on the door and wouldn’t open it till she found out who
was behind it. Not that very many people called except the rent man, the insurance man (she was paying an insurance of two shillings a week, which would bury her when she passed on), the milkman,
and, occasionally, the postman. She would get an airmail letter now and again from her sister in Canada telling her all about her daughters who were being married off one after the other. There
were six, including Marian the eldest. Her sister would send her photographs of the weddings showing coarse-looking, winking Americans sitting around a table with a white cloth and loaded with
drinks of all kinds, the bride standing there with the knife in her hand as she prepared to cut the multi-storey cake. The men looked like boxers and were always laughing.
    In any case, it wasn’t easy for her to get down the stair now. Perhaps it would have been better if she had never come to the Lowlands, but then it was her son who had taken her out, and
the house had been sold, and then he had got married and she was left alone. And it was pretty grim. Not that she idealised the Highlands either, don’t think that. People there would talk
behind your back and let you down in all sorts of ways, and you couldn’t tell what they were thinking half the time. Out here they left you alone, perhaps too much alone. So far she
hadn’t had any serious illness, which was lucky as she didn’t get on well with the neighbours who were young women of about thirty, all with platoons of children who looked like pieces
of dirt, with thumbs in their mouths.
    Most days she sat at the wide window watching the street below her. Off to the right, she could see the main road down which the great red buses careered at such terrifying speed, rocking from
side to side. They would hardly stop for you. One of those days she would fall as she was boarding one. The conductors pressed the bell before you were hardly on, and the conductresses were even
worse, very impudent if you said anything to them.
    Down below on the road she could see the children playing. She couldn’t say that she was very fond of children after what had happened with her son: leaving her like that after what she
had done for him. Not that some of the children weren’t nice. They would come to the door in their stiff staring masks at Hallowe’en, and she would give pennies to the politest amongst
them. They were much more forward than the children at home and they had no nervousness. They would stand there and sing their songs, take their pennies and run downstairs again. Late at night, in
summer, the boys and girls would be going past the houses singing and shouting; half drunk, she shouldn’t wonder. And their language. You could hear every word as plain as could be. And there
were no policemen where they were.