The Black Halo (69 page)

‘I know,’ said Eileen. ‘This morning I found her taking the cigarette stubs from the bucket.’

The child jumped in her womb. She loved Harry more than ever: he was patient and kind. But he grew paler every day: his work was so demanding and Terry MacCallum was so mad and selfish.

‘I’ve never met anyone like him,’ said Harry. ‘His selfishness is a talent, a genius. It’s diamond hard, it shines. I should get rid of him, I know that. Also
he’s drunk a lot of the time. He said to me yesterday, “I don’t care for anyone. I’m a bastard you know that. I’m a scrounger, I hate everyone.” ’

Harry couldn’t understand Terry. Everything that was done for him he accepted and then kicked you in the teeth. He was a monster. He haunted his dreams.

The child kicked in Eileen’s womb. She wanted it badly. She had a hunger for it. She wanted it to suck her breasts, she wanted it to crawl about the room, she wanted it to make her alive
again.

And all the time the old lady hoarded her banknotes. One day Eileen mentioned to her that they needed bread but she ignored hints of any kind. She even hoarded the bread down
the sides of her chair. She tried to borrow money from Eileen. She sang to herself. She gathered her arms around herself, she was like a plant that wouldn’t die. Eileen shuddered when she
looked at her. She thought that she was sucking her life from her but not like the baby. The baby throve, it milked her, it grew and grew. She was like a balloon, she thrust herself forward like a
ship. Her body was like a ship’s prow.

‘I tried talking to him,’ said Harry. ‘I can’t talk to him at all. He doesn’t understand. I can’t communicate. He admits everything, he thinks that the world
should look after him. He wants everything, he has never grown up. I have never in my life met such selfishness. If he feels sexy he thinks that a woman should put out for him immediately. If he
feels hungry he thinks that other people should feed him. I am kind to him but he hates me. What can you do with those who don’t see? Is there a penance for people like that? What do you do
with those who can’t understand?’

The baby moved blindly in her womb, instinctively, strategically. She said to Harry, ‘I’m frightened. Today I thought that the ferns were gathering round the house, that they wanted
to eat me. I think we should cut the ferns down.’

‘Not in your condition,’ said Harry. He looked thin, besieged.

The old lady said, ‘I don’t know why you married him. He doesn’t make much money, does he? Why doesn’t he move to the city? He could make more money there.’ She hid
a tea bag in her purse. And a biscuit.

The child moved in the womb. It was a single mouth that sucked. Blood, milk, it sucked. It grew to be like its mother. It sang a song of pure selfishness. It had stalks like fern. The stars at
night sucked dew from the earth. The sun dried the soil. Harry had the beak of a seagull.

‘Last night he wouldn’t get off the snooker table,’ said Harry. ‘There are others who want to play, I said to him. This is my snooker table, he said. It
isn’t, I said. It is, he said. You try and take it off me. And then he said, Lend me five pounds. No, I said. Why, he said. Because you’re selfish, I said. I’m not, he said.
I’m a nice fellow, everyone says so. I’ve got a great sense of humour. What do you do with someone like that? I can’t get through to him at all. And yet I must.’

‘What for?’ said Eileen.

‘I just have to.’

‘You never will,’ said Eileen.

‘Why not?’

‘Just because. Nature is like that. I don’t want the child.’

‘What?’

‘I know what I mean. Nature is like that. I don’t want the child.’

Harry had nightmares. He was on an operating table. A doctor was introducing leeches into his veins. The operating table was actually for playing snooker on. It had a green velvet surface. He
played with a baby’s small head for a ball.

The ferns closed in. In the ferns she might find pound notes. She began to eat bits of coal, stones, crusts. She gnawed at them hungrily. The old lady wouldn’t sleep at night. She took to
locking her door. What if something happened? They would have to break the door down.

The baby sucked and sucked. Its strategies were imperative. It was like a bee sucking at a flower with frantic hairy legs, its head buried in the blossom, its legs working.

Terry stole some money after the disco. He insisted it was his.

‘You lied to me,’ said Harry.

‘I didn’t lie.’

‘You said you were at home. I phoned your parents. They said you were out. You lied to me.’

‘I didn’t lie.’

‘But can’t you see you said one thing and it wasn’t the truth. Can you not see that you lied?’

‘I didn’t lie.’

‘For Christ’s sake are you mad. You did lie. What do you think a lie is? Can’t you see it?’

‘I didn’t lie.’

‘You’ll have to go.’

The old lady had a pile of teabags, quarter pounds of butter, cheese, in a bag under the bed.

‘You owe me,’ she said to Eileen. ‘For all those years you owe me. I saw in the paper today that it takes ten thousand pounds to rear a child. You owe me ten thousand pounds.
It said that in the paper.’

‘You haven’t paid for that paper,’ said Eileen. ‘I’ve tried my best, don’t you understand? How can you be so thick?’

‘You owe me ten thousand pounds,’ said the old lady in the same monotonous grudging voice. ‘It said in the paper. I read it.’

‘You are taking my beauty away from me,’ said Eileen to the baby. ‘You are sucking me dry. You are a leech. You are Dracula. You have blood on your lips. And
you don’t care.’

She carried the globe in front of her. It had teeth painted all over it.

Harry became thinner and thinner. I must make Terry understand, he kept saying. He must be made to understand, he has never in his whole life given anything to anyone. I
won’t let him go till I have made him understand. It would be too easy to get rid of him.

‘Put him out,’ said Eileen, ‘abort him.’

‘What did you say?’

‘Abort him.’

‘You said abort. I’m frightened.’

‘Can’t you see,’ said Eileen. ‘That’s what it is. People feed and feed. Cows feed on grass, grass feeds on bones, bones feed on other bones.
It’s a system. The whole world is like a mouth. Blake was wrong. It’s not a green and pleasant land at all. The rivers are mouths. The sun is the biggest mouth of all.’

‘Are you all right, Eileen? Oh hold me,’ said Harry.

And they clung together in the night. But Eileen said, ‘Look at the ceiling. Do you see it? It’s a spider.’ It hung like a black pendant. A moth swam towards the light from the
darkness outside. The spider was a patient engineer. Suddenly Eileen stood on top of the bed and ripped the web apart. ‘Bastard,’ she said. ‘Go and find something else to
do.’ The spider had chubby fists. It was a motheaten pendant.

Terry the psychopath smiled and smiled. He bubbled with laughter.

‘Give me,’ he said to his mother, ‘ten pounds of my birthday money in advance.’

‘No.’

‘Why not? You were going to give it to me anyway.’

‘And what are you going to give me for my birthday?’

‘I’ll think of something.’

‘You won’t give me anything, will you? Not a thing will you give me!’

The old woman stole sausages from the fridge, matches from the cupboard. She borrowed cigarettes from Eileen. The latter gazed at her in wonderment, testing how far she would
go. The old woman began to wear three coats all at the one time. She tried to go to the bathroom as little as possible: she was hoarding her pee.

‘The old woman will live forever,’ Eileen screamed. ‘She will never die. She will take me with her to the grave. She will hoard me. She will tie string round me, and take me
with her to the grave. And the innocent selfish ferns will spring from me. And the baby will feed head down in it, its legs working.’

‘No,’ she said to Harry, ‘I don’t want to.’

‘Why not? What’s wrong with you?’

‘I don’t want to. It’s like the bee.’

‘What bee?’

‘The bee, I tell you.’

‘For Christ’s sake,’ he said. The bee sucked at her body. It sucked her breasts in a huge wandering fragrance.

‘I don’t know you,’ said her mother. ‘Who are you? Are you the insurance lady? I’m not giving you any more money. You’re after all my money.
Are you the coalman? Eileen should pay for that. She owes me ten thousand pounds. I saw that in the paper.’

‘It will cost ten thousand pounds,’ Eileen said to Harry.

‘What will?’

‘The baby. To bring it up. It was in the paper. I don’t want to have it. It will want its own snooker table. It will smile and smile and be a villain.’

‘You will have to go,’ Harry told Terry.

‘What for?’

‘Because I can’t do anything with you.’

‘What do you mean? You’ll be sorry.’

‘Are you threatening me?’

‘No, I’m not threatening you. But you’ll be sorry. You’ll wake up one day and say to yourself: Did I destroy that boy?’ And Terry began to cry.

‘You won’t get anything out of me that way,’ said Harry. ‘I can see through your tricks. You will have to go.’

‘All right. But you’ll be sorry. You’ll hate yourself.’

‘I failed but he went,’ said Harry to Eileen. ‘And he started to cry before he went. Oh he’s so cunning. But there comes a time.’

‘A time?’

‘Yes, a time to save oneself. It’s a duty. I see that now. She will have to go.’

‘She?’

‘Yes. She’ll have to go. There comes a time. I made a mistake. I shall have to act.’

‘Act?’

‘That’s it. Act. She will simply have to go. We can’t afford her.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘What I say. You’ve done enough. This is not asked of us. I can see that now. Tell her she will have to go.’

‘You tell her.’

‘Right. I’ll tell her.’

The two of them were alone. The house seemed to close in on them.

‘What’s that?’ she said.

‘What?’

‘The phone,’ she said.

‘It isn’t the phone. You’re imagining things. The phone isn’t ringing.’

‘Yes it is.’

‘No, it isn’t.’

The ferns shut off the light. The floor was a huge beach of sand. She saw the child crossing it towards her. It smiled.

‘I love you,’ she said.

‘I love you,’ she repeated.

‘The Club is quieter now,’ he said. ‘Ever since he left. We know where we are. I’m putting on weight.’

‘Yes, I see that.’

‘It’s much quieter. He kept us on our toes. Everyone is obedient.’

‘Yes.’

The child cried.

‘I love you,’ she said. The circle closed again. The baby smiled and smiled and laughed and laughed. It wobbled on unsteady legs among the ferns.

‘I’m wounded,’ she said, ‘between the legs. Between the legs.’ And its hairy head blossomed there. ‘Between the legs. I’m wounded,’ she said.

In the operating theatre on the snooker table its wild cry came towards her. She cradled the globe of its wet head, which had streamed out of the earth. Her hands closed,
opened.

‘I love you,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing else for it.’

The phone rang. There was heavy breathing. ‘You’ll be sorry,’ said a voice.

‘He never gives up,’ said Harry. ‘But I don’t care.’

He has become remorseless, she thought. We have been infected. And she clutched the baby’s head to her breast. We inherit the disease, she thought. The baby warbled in its own kingdom.
‘Isn’t he beautiful?’ she said.

‘Yes.’

And the baby burbled like an unintelligible phone.

It was late at night when the train stopped at the platform and he boarded it. It seemed to be crowded with people of different races and colours, but there wasn’t much
noise or din. On the wall of his carriage was a painting by Constable, and on the other was a flyblown mirror. It was as if he had been waiting for this train for most of his life, though its
destination was unknown.

As time passed, the light brightened the countryside through which the train was passing. Cows could be seen chewing grass in the fields, smoke rose from the houses straight into the sky. The
train stopped at a station called Descartes, at one called Hume, and at another called Locke. Sometimes the stations appeared bright and colourful with little gardens, and on the platforms stood
small pompous stationmasters with brightly polished buttons, and large watches in the fobs of their jackets. At other times the stations were striped with shade and light.

Now and again he would stroll down the corridor and look in through the doors of carriages. He would see men and women locked in each other’s arms, or a man seated silently by his wife,
staring ahead of him, or another reading a book quietly as if there were no one in the whole world but himself. Sometimes there was music on the train, sometimes not. Rabbis, ministers, gurus, many
of them with beards, inhabited some of the carriages. He clutched his ticket as the train raced on through the bright sunlight.

For most of the journey the land looked clean and tidy, divided up into small farms and crofts. A reasonable sun shone on it. People sometimes waved at them from the fields, women with
kerchiefs, many of them red or green, the men wearing caps. Once he thought he saw a man and woman in a glade and he could have sworn they were naked. At another time he saw a man wearing only a
pair of bright yellow wellingtons fishing in a stream.

He thought of Death as a man with a scythe strolling among the land, perfectly natural, perfectly happy and contented. He would knock on a door and be welcomed like a long-lost exile. He would
sit down at a table and be offered food. But later he became dim and smoky and his face could not be distinguished. And people would not let him into the house at all, as if he were a being from
another planet, a hated stranger.

More stations passed, one called Leibnitz, then two called Kafka and Kierkegaard respectively. On the tops of hills he could see castles with parks winding around them; mornings sang and
sparkled and so did afternoons. Children played and at other times carried huge books about with them like gravestones. They gazed at the smoke which was like transient breath.