The Red Door by Iain Crichton Smith Page B

Not that the housing scheme she was in was the worst. There was another one where none of the tenants could do anything to their gardens because the others would
tear them all up. You got some people these days!
    Really, sometimes she thought that if she had enough money she would go back to the Highlands: but she didn’t have enough money, she had only the pension, and the fares were going up all
the time. In any event, she wouldn’t recognise the Highlands now. She had heard that the people had changed and were just as bad as the Lowlanders. You even had to lock the door now, an
unheard-of thing in the past. Why, in the past, you could go away anywhere you liked for weeks, leaving the door unlocked, and, when you came back, the house would be exactly as you had left it,
apart from the dust, of course.
    It was hard just the same, being on your own all the time. All you got nowadays was closed curtains and the blue light of TV. It was just like a desert. Sitting there at the window all day was
not a life for anyone. But what could she do about it? She must put up with it. She had been the fool and now she must put up with it. No use crying.
    So she rose late in the morning, for time was her enemy, and took in the milk and made the breakfast (she always had porridge) and then went down to the shop in the council house scheme, for
bread, meat and vegetables. In the adjacent newspaper shop she bought the
Daily Express
. When she had had her dinner she sat at the window until it was time for tea. After that she sat at
the window again unless it was a Wednesday or a Sunday for on these evenings she went to church. She used the light sparingly in order to save electricity, and sometimes she would walk about in the
dark; she was afraid that the lights would fuse and she would be unable to repair them. Her son had left her a small radio to which she listened now and again. What she listened to was the news and
the Gaelic programmes and the sermons. The sermons were becoming very strange nowadays: sometimes, instead of a sermon, they had inexplicable discussions about all sorts of abstruse things. Trying
to get down to the juvenile delinquents, that’s all they were doing. Another programme she sometimes listened to was called
The Silver Lining
. She only used the one station, the
Home: she never turned to the Light at all. She was frightened if she moved the hand that she would never get back to the Home again.
    But the worst was the lack of visitors. Once or twice the Matron would come in, the minister now and again, and apart from that, no one except the rent man, the milkman and the electric man. But
the only thing the last three came for was money. No one ever came to talk to her as a human being. And so the days passed. Endlessly. But it was surprising how quickly they passed just the
same.
    It was a Tuesday afternoon, on a fine summer’s day (that morning she had been to the Post Office to collect her pension as she always did on a Tuesday). She was sitting
by the window knitting: she had got into the habit of knitting many years ago and she couldn’t stop even though she had no one to knit for. The sideboard was full of socks – all
different colours of wool – and jerseys. Everyone said that she was good at knitting and that she should go in for prizes, but who wanted to do that? It was really a bright hot day, with the
sun reflected back in a glitter from the windows of the houses opposite. Most of them were open to let in the air, and you could see the curtains drifting a little and bulging.
    Looking downwards like a raven from its perch, she saw him trudging from house to house. He was pressing the bell of the door opposite, his old case laid down beside him, dilapidated and brown,
with a strap across it. She saw him take a big red handkerchief out of his trouser pocket and wipe his face with it. The turban wound round his head, he stood at the door leaning a little against
the stone beside it,