The Black Halo (37 page)

But how to tell Ralph all this?

That night she said to Jim in bed,

‘What are we going to do about Ralph?’

‘What now?’

‘You’ve seen his report card? He used to be a bright boy. I’m not just saying that. His marks are quite ridiculous. Can’t you give him some help in the evenings? English
used to be his best subject. In primary school he was always top.’

‘I can help him if he’ll take it. But he won’t take it. His English is ludicrous.’

‘Ludicrous? What do you mean?’

‘What I said. Ludicrous.’ And then, of course, she had defended Ralph. No one was going to say to her that her son’s intellect was ludicrous which she knew it wasn’t. And
so it all began again, the argument that never ended, that wasn’t the fault of anyone in particular, but only of the situation that seemed to be insoluble, for Ralph was the thorn at their
side, sullen, implacable, unreachable.

‘I’m afraid he hates me and that’s it,’ said Jim. ‘To tell you the truth, I think he has been very ungrateful.’

She could see that herself, but at the same time she could see Ralph’s side of it too.

‘Ungrateful?’ she said.

‘Yes. Ungrateful. You remember the time I got so angry that I told him I had after all brought him a television set and he shouted, “You’re a bloody fool then.”
’

‘You have to try and understand him,’ she said.

‘It’s always the same. He won’t make the effort to understand. His father’s the demi-god, the hero. If he only knew what a bastard he really was.’ Always making fun
of him with his quick tongue, always taking girls away from him, always lying to his distant father about him, always making him appear the slow resentful one.

That night she slept fitfully. She had the feeling that something terrible was happening, that something even more terrible was about to happen. And always Ralph sat in his room playing his
barbarous music very loudly. His stepfather would mark his eternal essays in his meticulous red writing, she would sew, and together they sat in the living-room hearing the music till eventually he
would tell her to go and ask Ralph to turn it down. She it was who was always the messenger between them, the ambassador trying hopelessly to reconcile but never succeeding. For Ralph resented her
now as much as he resented Jim.

She couldn’t believe that this could go on.

Ralph sat at the back of his stepfather’s class, contemptuous, remote, miserable. Quite apart from the fact that he thought him boring, he was always being teased by the other pupils about
him. His nickname was Sniffy, for he had a curious habit of sniffing now and again as if there was a bad smell in the room. But, to be fair to him, he was a good, conscientious teacher: he set
homework and marked it and it really seemed as if he wanted them all to pass. But there was a curious remoteness to him, as if he loved his subject more than he loved them. Nevertheless, he was
diligent and he loved literature.

‘This, of course, was the worst of crimes,’ he was saying, sitting at his desk in his chalky gown. ‘We have to remember that this was a brother who killed another one, like
Cain killing Abel. Then again there is the murder in the Garden, as if it were the garden of Eden. There is so much religion in the play. Hamlet himself was religious; that, after all, was the
reason he didn’t commit suicide. Now, there is a very curious question posed by the play, and it is this’ (he sniffed again),

‘What was going on between Gertrude and Claudius even while the latter’s brother Hamlet was alive? This king about whom we know so little. Here’s the relevant speech:

The point was, had any of this happened in Hamlet’s lifetime? He meant, of course, King Hamlet’s. Had there been a liaison between Gertrude and Claudius even then?
One got the impression of Claudius being a ladies’ man, while Hamlet perhaps was the soldier who blossomed in action, and who was not much concerned with the boudoir. After all, he was a
public figure, he perhaps took Gertrude for granted. On their answer to that question would depend their attitude to Gertrude.

The voice droned on, but it was as if a small red window had opened in Ralph’s mind. He had never thought before that his mother had known his stepfather before the marriage which had
taken place so suddenly. What if in fact there had been something going on between them while his father was still alive? He shivered as if he had been infected by a fever. He couldn’t bring
himself to think of his mother and stepfather in bed together, which was why he had asked for his own bedroom to be changed, so that he would be as far away from them as possible.

But suppose there had been a liaison between them. After all, they had both been teachers and they must have met. True, they had been at different schools but it was inconceivable that they
hadn’t met.

O God, how dull his stepfather was, in his cloud of chalk. How different from his father who inhabited the large air of the theatre. What a poor ghostly fellow he was in his white dust.

But the idea that his mother had known his stepfather would not leave his mind. How had he never thought of it before?

That night, his stepfather being at a meeting at the school, he said to his mother,

‘Did you know . . . your husband . . . before you married him?’

‘I wish you could call him your stepfather, or even refer to him by his first name. Of course I knew him. I knew the family.’

‘But you married my father?’

‘Yes. And listen, Ralph, I have never said this to you before. I made a great mistake in marrying your father.’

He was about to rise and leave the room when she said vehemently, ‘No, it’s time you listened. You sit down there and listen for a change. Did you know that your father was a drunk?
Do you know that he twice gave me a black eye? The time I told everybody I had cut myself on the edge of the wardrobe during the power cut, and the time I said I had fallen on the ice? Did you know
where he was coming from when his car crashed?’

‘I don’t want to hear any more,’ Ralph shouted. ‘If you say any more I’ll kill you. It’s not true. You’re lying.’

For a moment there he might have attacked her, he looked so white and vicious. It was the first time he had thought of hitting her; he came very close.

Her face was as pale as his and she was almost swaying on her feet but she was shouting at him,

‘He was coming from one of his innumerable lady friends. I didn’t tell you that, did I? I got a message from the police and I went along there. He had told me he was going to be
working late at the theatre but he was coming from the opposite direction. He was a stupid man. At least Jim is not stupid.’

He raised his fist as if to hit her, but she didn’t shrink away.

‘Go on, hit me,’ she shouted. ‘Hit me because you can’t stand the truth any more than your father could. He was vulgar, not worth your stepfather’s little
finger.’

He turned and ran out of the house.

Of course it wasn’t true. That story was not the one his mother had told him before. And for all he knew the two of them might have killed his father, they might have tampered with the
brakes or the engine. After all, a car crash was always suspicious, and his father had been a good if fast driver. His stepfather couldn’t even drive.

He went to the Nightspot where some boys from the school were playing snooker, and older ones drinking at the bar. He stood for a while watching Harry and Jimmy playing. Harry had been to
college but had given it up and was now on the dole. Jimmy had never left town at all. He watched as Harry hit the assembled balls and sent them flying across the table. After a while he went and
sat down by himself. He felt as if he had run away from home, as if he wanted to kill himself. He was tired of always being in the same room by himself playing records. And yet he couldn’t
bring himself to talk to his stepfather. The two of them were together, had shut him out, he was like a refugee in the house. He hated to watch his stepfather eating, and above all he hated to see
him kissing his mother before he set off for school with his briefcase under his arm. But then if he himself left home where could he go? He had no money. He loathed being dependent on them for
pocket money, which he used buying records.

He hated his mother as much as he hated his stepfather. At other times he thought that they might have been able to live together, just the two of them, if his stepfather had not appeared. Why,
he had loved her in the past and she had loved him, but now she had shut him out because she thought he was being unfair to her husband. He was such a drip: he couldn’t play snooker, and all
he did was mark essays every night. The house felt cold now, he was rejected, the other two were drawing closer and closer together.

‘How’s old Sniffy,’ said Terry as he sat down at the same table, Frank beside him. They, of course, were unemployed and Terry had been inside for nicking stuff and also for
nearly killing a fellow at a dance.

Then they began to talk about school and he had to sit and listen. Terry had once punched Caney and had been dragged away by the police. No one could control him at all. Frank was just as
dangerous, but brighter, more cunning.

‘Have a whisky,’ said Terry. ‘Go on. I bet you’ve never had a whisky before. I’ll buy it for you.’

The snooker table with the green baize brought unbearable memories back to him, and he said,

‘Right. Right then.’

‘I’ll tell you another thing,’ said Terry. ‘Old Sniffy’s a poof. I always thought he was a poof. What age was the bugger when he got married? Where was he getting
it before that?’

Frank didn’t say anything at all, but watched Ralph. He had never liked him. He had belonged to the academic stream while he himself was always in one of the bottom classes, though he was
much brighter.

‘A poof,’ Terry repeated. ‘But he’s having it off now, eh, Frank?’ And winked at Frank. Ralph drank the whisky in one gulp, and tears burned his eyes.

‘Old bastard,’ said Terry. ‘He belted me a few times and I wasn’t even in his class.’

The two of them took Ralph back to his house. Then they stood around it for a while shouting at the lighted window, ‘Sniffy the Poof, Sniffy the Poof.’ And then ran
away into the darkness. Ralph staggered to his room.

‘What was that? Who was shouting there?’ said his mother. ‘Some of your friends. You’re drunk. You’re disgustingly drunk.’

But he pushed her away and went to his bed while the walls and ceiling spun about him and the bed moved up and down like a boat beneath him.

He heard his mother shouting at his stepfather, ‘What are you going to do about it then? You can’t sit here and do nothing. He’s drunk, I’m telling you. Will you give up
those exercise books and do something?’

Later he heard his mother slamming the door and heard the car engine start, then he fell into a deep sleep.

At breakfast no one spoke. It was like a funeral. He himself had a terrible headache, like a drill behind his right eye, and he felt awful. His mother stared down at the table. His stepfather
didn’t kiss her when he left for school: he seemed preoccupied and pale. It was as if the house had come to a complete stop, as if it had crashed.

‘You have to remember,’ said his stepfather when talking about
Hamlet
that morning, ‘you have to remember that this was a drunken court. Hamlet comments on the general
drunkenness. Even at the end it is drink that kills Hamlet and Claudius and Gertrude. Hamlet is at the centre of this corruption and is infected by it.’

His voice seemed quieter, more reflective, as if he was thinking of something else. Once he glanced across to Ralph but said nothing. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said at the end of the
period, ‘I meant to return your essays but I didn’t finish correcting them.’ A vein in his forehead throbbed. Ralph knew that he was remembering the voices that had shouted from
the depths of the night, and he was wondering why they had been so unfair.

‘Something’s wrong with old Sniffy,’ said Pongo at the interval. Ralph couldn’t stand the amused contempt the pupils had for his stepfather and the way in which he had to
suffer it. After all, he had not chosen him. His stepfather never organised games, there was nothing memorable about him.

When he went home after four, the door was unlocked but he couldn’t find his mother. She was neither in the living-room nor in the kitchen, which was odd since she usually had their meal
ready for them when they returned from the school.

He shouted to her but there was no answer. After a while he knocked on her bedroom door and when there was no response he went in. She was lying flat out on the bed, face down, and was quite
still. For a moment his heart leapt with the fear that she might be dead and he turned her over quickly. She was breathing but there was a smell of drink from her. She had never drunk much in her
life as far as he knew. There was a bottle of sherry, with a little drink at the bottom of it, beside her on the floor. He slapped her face but she only grunted and didn’t waken.

He didn’t know what to do. He ran to the bathroom and filled a glass with water and threw it in her face. She shook and coughed while water streamed down her face, then opened her eyes.
When she saw him she shut them again.

‘Go way,’ she said in a slurred voice. ‘Go way.’

He stood for a while at the door looking at her. It seemed to him that this was the very end. It had happened because of the events of the previous night. Maybe he should kill himself. Maybe he
should hang or drown himself. Or take pills. And then he thought that his mother might have done that. He ran to her bedroom and checked the bottle with the sleeping tablets, but it seemed quite
full. He noticed for the first time his own picture on the sideboard opposite the bed where his mother was still sleeping. He picked it up and looked at it: there was no picture of his father there
at all.