The Black Halo (5 page)

It was strange to be up and about at that hour in the morning. It almost gave one a feeling of power as if one held the destiny of the village in one’s hands, in one’s mind. People
are so helpless when they are asleep, so defenceless. I felt like a burglar creeping about the night. What treasure was I seeking, what golden hoard? I kept on the grass verge of the road as if it
was necessary for me to make as little noise as possible. I wondered what I would say if I met anyone. Perhaps I might say that I couldn’t sleep. And that was true. I didn’t sleep well.
After my wife died I didn’t sleep for a month though I took sleeping pills every night. Still, it was unlikely that I would meet anyone.

The village itself looked strange in the moonlight as if it had been painted in yellow. I hated yellow. It reminded me of sickness and of old faces and of autumn and of the neon lights of the
city. I felt as if I myself were coloured a sickly yellow, as if I were suffering from some sickness such as jaundice.

Eventually I reached the hut and slowly went up to it. As I have said I didn’t know what I was doing. I peered through the window but there was complete darkness. I put my ear to the door
as if I were a doctor sounding someone’s chest, someone who was dying of an incurable disease. As I did so I saw in the light of the moon that there were names and drawings on the door. The
drawings were of naked women and of Cupids and hearts with arrows stuck in them. I tried to imagine those airmen going up into the sky in their planes, all rushing out from the hut and setting off
into the blue sky at the time of the Battle of Britain. Of course none of them had done that at all. I was only remembering old films. And on the door too someone had carved the name of Vera Lynn.
It was strange to think of the hermit lying in such a hut, as if at any moment he might take wings and set off into the sky, masked and helmeted. Into that freedom, that false freedom.
Per
ardua ad astra
. Beyond that hut I could see the Standing Stones shadowy in the moonlight, ancient and undecipherable. The tinny hut looked like an accordion, yellow and black. I wondered
whether the hermit was lying there asleep in a bed or on the floor in a blanket. I nearly knocked on the door as if I wanted to ask him a question though I didn’t know what I should ask him.
Perhaps I should ask him, What is the meaning of the world?

Perhaps in fact he was one of those airmen returned again to the huts out of nostalgia. But I knew this wasn’t true. I knew that he had nothing to do with planes or the war. His war was a
different one. He had perhaps been wounded in some irretrievable way and that was why he didn’t speak. It would be so easy to take a plane up from that hut and set off into the illimitable
blue, it would be too easy. All the time I stood there I didn’t hear a sound. For all I knew there was no one there at all. For all I knew the hermit was sleeping outside and watching me at
that very moment.

I turned away from the door and made my way home quickly as if someone was after me, as if I was being hunted. I actually began to run, looking behind me to see if anyone was following me, but I
didn’t see anyone. All there was was the moon high in the sky like a big stone and the shadows and yellowness. When I got to my room I was panting as if I had committed some terrible crime. I
lay in my bed sleeplessly thinking of him lying in bed, not realising that a stranger had been looking at him through the window, listening at his door. I was ashamed of myself. I was frightened of
something that was happening to me that I did not understand.

9

I don’t think I have yet mentioned Kenneth John, though I did intend to, since he becomes important later. Kenneth John is older than me and has been married in the
village for many years to a woman he met after he had given up sailing, late in life. He says himself that he has been everywhere, China, Australia, New Zealand, South America. ‘In
China,’ he once told me, ‘they leave food for the dead people. They think they will rise again and eat it.’ And he looked at me with his small wrinkled face. ‘That’s
right,’ he would add, ‘they do that. And they leave drink for them as well at the graves. Would you believe that?’ And I would pretend that I hadn’t heard any of this, since
he clearly enjoyed telling an ‘educated’ man something new.

‘Women,’ he would say, ‘they’re no use on board ship. What use are they to any man? Wasn’t it a woman who ate the apple? Doesn’t it say that in the Bible? And
it was because of them that sin came into the world.’ At other times he would tell me that Edgar Wallace was the best writer in the world. According to him, he had read all his books.

‘But there’s nothing in the world like being on a ship on a fine day with the water stretching away from you on all sides, no land to be seen anywhere. In my youth I used to climb up
into the sails. Up the masts. And I would look up and the sea was miles below. And sometimes you would see porpoises playing in the water.

‘Have you noticed,’ he would say earnestly, looking into my face, his thin red nose almost quivering and his teeth, discoloured by tobacco, clearly visible. ‘Have you
noticed,’ he would say, ‘that women never play? They’re so serious all the time. That’s the thing I have against them. Women,’ and he would spit on the ground,
‘what use are they to man or beast?

‘When I came home first I wouldn’t have anything to do with the land. I would go up to the town and I would watch the ships coming in and going away. I would stand there for hours
and think of all the places the ships might be going to. And it took me all my time not to go on board one of them and sail away in it. But I was married then and I couldn’t do
that.’

He had pictures of sailing ships in his house and he and his wife would sit by the fire and he would tell me stories and his wife would say nothing much except that at intervals she might sigh
heavily and murmur, ‘He could have been a captain. He could have been a captain.’ They said that she was very hard on him and made sure that he kept the house clean. One day I went in
and found that all the pictures of sailing ships had been taken down and new wallpaper put up. I never saw them again. In the East, he would say, the women went about with veils on their faces and
they would look down at the ground. They would never look up at you at all. They were very obedient in the East. ‘But when I got married first I didn’t want to stay in the house at all.
I would walk about the village and sometimes I would go out fishing on a boat that I had. But it was like being on a pond and I gave it up. There was no excitement at all, no excitement.

‘But I’ll tell you about women. They have no humour in them. The things they worry about, like whether you are wearing a good suit or not, things like that, and whether the floor is
clean. And one day I broke an ornament and she went on about it for months.

‘And why do we settle down? Let me ask you that. You’re an educated man. You tell me that.’

‘I don’t know,’ I said.

‘Well, I’ll tell you,’ he said, his little rusty moustache quivering. ‘It’s because we’re frightened. That’s the reason. And don’t let anyone tell
you different. That’s the reason and the only one. There was a boy once who went up to the top of the mast and he started screaming. He was frightened, you see, looking down into the water.
That’s the way we are. But I was never frightened up in the mast. Never.

‘We’re frightened, that’s why we take up with women. I used to go into port and enjoy myself and get drunk. There was a lot of fighting and drinking in those days. But I would
have ended up as a drunkard, you see. But in those days I didn’t care. And so, I thought to myself, do I want my freedom so that I’ll be a drunkard? And what do you think is the best
thing?’ he asked.

‘To have your freedom and not be a drunkard,’ I said.

‘You can’t have the two of them,’ he said. ‘Not at all. You can’t have the two of them. Women. They’ve caused all the trouble in the world. We’re
frightened and we don’t know what the world is about. That’s the truth. No one knows what’s right and what’s wrong. You read books and you find that out. When I came home
first I didn’t want to have anything to do with the land. I was like a man in a cage. I used to go up and down the village as if I was on the deck of the ship. Why can’t we have a house
on water, on the sea? They have that in some countries. That’s what I would like, a house on the sea. They have that in China and some places.’ And he would spit in the fire. And then
he would say, for his stories were always the same, ‘Do you know the strangest thing that ever happened to me? One night I went into this bar in Australia. Myself and some of the boys from
the ship. And do you know who I saw there sitting in the bar? It was Squinty. You remember Squinty, he had a squint eye. Well, he saw me and I was going over to speak to him but he turned away from
me. He wouldn’t even recognise me. He was playing dominoes with some people and he was wearing an old ragged coat. And he came from the same village as me. He didn’t want the people at
home to know what he had become. He had gone to the dogs, you see. To the dogs. He must have been drinking hard. A lot of these boys never write home, you know. No one hears of them, they go to the
dogs and they drink. Well, he didn’t speak to me and he had been brought up with me. And he was drinking wine. Imagine. He was like a Frenchman, drinking wine. And he just turned away from
me. It was a queer thing.

‘Well, that night, I went into the lavatory in that pub and I looked in the mirror that was there. I had been drinking, you see, and my face was red and my eyes were red. And I said to
myself, “Where are you heading for, boy? Where are you sailing your ship?” That was what I said, “Where are you heading for, boy?” And that was why I got married. My wife is
older than me and she had been looking after her parents, that was why she didn’t marry before. She was very sweet to me at first, she wouldn’t say anything about my suit then. Nothing
but, “You do what you like, Kenneth John, you always do that anyway.” That’s what she used to say. But then she began to buy things for me, handkerchiefs and things like that.
Then she would buy shirts and at last she bought me a suit. And ever since then I’ve been in a cage. Women. What can you say about them? They brought sin into the world. The Bible teaches you
that. But you’ve never seen a woman on board ship, have you? They would be no good. They would be putting on their lipstick while water was coming in in a storm. You have to have some give
and take on board a ship if you don’t want a fight. That’s what I say.’

And his wife would murmur, as she sat by the fire, ‘He could have been a captain, you know. He could have been a captain.’

10

On a fine day our village looks very peaceful and lovely. The blue sea is in the distance, with perhaps a ship passing by, smoke coming out of its funnel, and behind us there
is the moor which is wine-red with heather. In the early morning you can hear cockerels crowing from here and there, their red claws sunk in the earth, their coloured brassy heads extended.
Sometimes too you hear a dog barking. The Clamhan, in front of the house, may be hammering a post into the ground or mending a net in front of his door. Or at this time of year you may see people
going down to the corn which is yellow in the sunlight. As the sun comes up, small boys start running about. As the day passes and it gets hotter, you may see them building tents. I don’t
know why they do it, but on the very hottest days you will find them sitting inside these tents and trying to make fires just like Red Indians.

And beside me Murdo sits regarding his unfinished house.

Practically every morning I go over and talk to him after I have got up and have had my breakfast (which usually consists of a cup of tea and a slice of bread). I don’t eat much for
breakfast. I offer as usual to help him but he says as usual that he doesn’t need any help. His two daughters who have now left school are usually going about the outside of the house with
pails and pans. They are not pretty, are in fact spotty with very thin legs.

Today he tells me about a big stone that he has taken home on his barrow the day before.

‘There were hundreds of worms below it,’ he tells me. ‘Hundreds of them. All so red. I could have killed them all but I left them for the birds.’

I thought: the birds will make songs from them. There are in fact few animals to be found around here. No foxes, rabbits, weasels. Hardly any wild life at all. And no trees. I miss the trees.
That is why I often think of Edinburgh. For some reason I specially associate trees with university days. But this is a bare bleak island especially in winter when it’s wet and misty.

‘What are you doing today?’ Murdo asks.

‘Oh, I’ve got a few letters to answer,’ I say. I have no croft and this means that time passes very slowly for me. I am driven to reading and writing, since I don’t visit
many houses in the village apart from Dougie’s. As I’m talking to Murdo the idea comes to me that I could buy milk from Janet’s parents. They sell milk and are one of the few
families in the village that have a cow. It strikes me as a good idea. In the distance I see a cow eating some clothes on a clothes line at the far end of the village: that was what brought the
idea into my mind. I can’t make out whether it is Stork’s house or that of the two sisters Maclean, one of whom has been lame all her life, practically, from polio. Sometimes I find the
mornings here exhilarating and most beautiful; other times I find them boring. There is a rhythm about the place, a slow deep sometimes exasperating rhythm. People talk slowly, chewing every word
and releasing it as if it were a precious possession whose extinction in air is to be mourned. Language almost becomes like tobacco which is as much chewed as smoked.

‘Ah, well,’ says Murdo, ‘it’s going to be another fine day.’ And I say that in my opinion it probably almost certainly will be. And I know that all we are doing is
making sounds, that silence embarrasses us after a while, and we are not using language at all but making comforting motions. I look down at Murdo as he sits on his stone: there are red hairs in
his nostrils. He looks like a large plump red animal. He is, as I have said before, like a man surrounded by tombstones. And I try to penetrate his mind but I often feel that he has no mind to
penetrate. He has never thought about the world, about its meaning. He is, it seems to me, perfectly suited to his environment in a way that I shall never be. His environment makes on him the few
demands that he can easily cope with. Day after day he rises from his bed and day after day he takes out his barrow and brings his stones home. It is almost as if he has forgotten what the stones
are for, as if the house itself which is his ultimate aim has receded into the distance and it is only now and again that he recalls that the purpose of gathering the stones is for building the
house. A slight breeze ruffles his canvas jersey which moves slightly about his big belly.