The Black Halo (81 page)

In a short while I shall be out of here. And I shall see Diana again. For a moment there one of the men seemed to be staring straight at me as he stood upright with the fork in his hand. It was
as if he was looking through perfect blankness, like gazing at an animal perhaps, a cow that had casually raised its head, a forgotten blade of grass in its mouth. I am attracted by that other
ward.

The one these two come from, the one which is as blank as an autumn day, the one that I cannot leave without seeing, for that is my destiny. How else can I be a novelist? I have had to come
here, I have had to see these two faces, I have had to come to that door beyond which there is unreason, tumult, terror. For how can I leave without seeing it? That would be dishonesty.

The animal faces are raised towards me, they are hungering for me, they know I am of their kind. I cannot avoid them. I shall have to walk into that room, like an expected guest, where the
telephone book has been torn into pieces, where the pages of the unfinished novel have been scattered. And there I shall meet the loaf-headed man who turns his eyes on me and says, ‘Who are
you?’ And he will be placing the leaves in my wheelbarrow, and they are the pages, the leaves, of my torn telephone book, my novel.

In the middle of the night in her sleep he heard her say, ‘Keep away, black halo. You are not going to put out my music. Keep away from me, keep away.’ He stared
into the darkness.

She had become a Catholic after their marriage because she loved music and colour and they had many quarrels over religion. He belonged to the dour hard church of his fathers. She had also begun
to suffer from heart trouble and her nightmares exhausted her. They never kissed when he went off to work because he didn’t like to be touched. Nevertheless he worried about her and sometimes
phoned home during the day. He was a tax inspector.

‘Am I the black halo?’ he asked her at breakfast but she didn’t answer except to ask what he was referring to.

‘No, of course not,’ she said after a long time.

He looked round the untidy room and wished to put the rose petals, which had fallen from the vase onto the table, into the bucket. But he refrained by an effort of the will.

By the time he got into the car he was a tax inspector again.

Everyone was deceiving everyone else, he thought, as he sat at his desk. In the old days people paid their taxes because it was the ethical thing to do, and they had some consideration for
society. Now I am caught in a wave of deceit, I am like Canute trying to halt the flow of the water. And he felt on his head a phantom crown of paper.

The sherry bottle had been opened, he saw, as he looked into the cupboard. But he couldn’t speak to her about it as her heart was bad. When his tea was over he began to work on his papers.
She sat reading a woman’s magazine and studying diamond rings.

‘They get accountants now,’ he said. ‘Everyone has an account and we can’t nail them though they’re cheating.’ He was the hunter with the sword in a forest of
paper sniffing and searching for theft. ‘I think,’ he considered, ‘that I am beginning to lose my sense of smell. And what will happen to me then?’

They had fought over religion but that was long ago. At night he heard her tossing in her sleep, meeting the man with the black halo again. He wondered if she had found someone else and listened
for the name, but no name was ever pronounced. Her hand searched blindly for his in the dark. The night seethed with malpractice and secret, deceitful people. ‘Are you, too, deceitful?’
he asked her in the dark, but she didn’t answer.

‘My rainbow is going out,’ she said.

One day he decided that he had had enough. He wrote out his resignation. After all he was fifty-five now and without children and they had enough to live on. He would tidy the house and look
after her. He drove home joyfully through the calm day among the autumn leaves. He was like a father returning to his daughter, for he was older than her.

She lay on the bed, not breathing. He panicked and phoned for the doctor who came and pronounced her dead. The bottle empty of pills lay at her side, the sherry had all been drunk. He stood
there in his dark suit while the doctor spoke some words that he couldn’t understand. ‘I am alone,’ he thought. ‘And outside in the darkness the thieves are
prospering.’ That night he took out a blank form and filled it in. Where it said ‘Name’, he wrote, ‘Black Halo’. Where it said ‘Income’, he wrote, ‘I
only want justice.’ His face fixed as a stone, he sat by the fire. ‘My God,’ he thought. ‘What have I done?’

The cathedral didn’t have many mourners for the two of them hardly ever went out and they had few friends. The coffin lay surrounded by four candles. The priest was dressed in purple and
there were two boys with bells in red and white gowns. He had come in from a strong wind and there was rain on his face.

A wooden carving on the wall near him showed Christ carrying his cross. Here there were no thieves, he thought. A hidden organ played. After all, one of the apostles was a tax collector. They
are looking at me, he thought, but I shall not cry. It seemed to him that she was whimpering in the church, crying his name. ‘Black Halo,’ she was saying, ‘black halo.’ He
sat, stiff and unmoving. Once the priest turned his back on him and then faced him with the bread and wine in his hand, and in that sudden flash and turn he thought he saw the black halo, the
face.

The incense scattered on the coffin stung his eyes. The pale boys rang their bells. The voice had said,

It seemed to him that he had eaten her flesh and drunk her blood and there was no one in the coffin at all.

I demand justice of these thieves, he said to himself. They have no concern for society, they care only for themselves. But he was confused by the music, the beautiful words and dresses, the
incense.

At the end he walked out alone, letting the gale pull at his coat and watching the sea hitting the rocks. He opened the door of his car to enter its dry glass case and was desolated by sobs. He
shut the door and covered his face with his hands and the water poured out of his eyes. It was as if the pain was like another being inside him, wrenching him apart. In the east towards the sea he
could see the rainbow, arched and colourful, a frail beautiful bridge. He stared at it as if he had not seen a rainbow before. It was not justice, it was mercy, it was a bonus, a concession made by
the tax man. Above the waste of sea, raging and white, it curved. ‘My love, my love,’ he cried, ‘how can I sleep tonight without hearing your voice talking to the black
halo?’ My hunting is over, he thought. I shall have to learn to live on my own. Others can search out the thieves. In the mirror he caught a glimpse of his face. It was set and fixed, a prow
cutting the day. The rainbow had gone, the house was tidier than it had ever been. The women’s magazines were neatly piled at the bottom of the bookcase. He stood there as if in a flood of
water now and again touching his head absently. Then he lay down on the bed fully clothed and slept. In his dreams he saw the priest in his purple robes and behind him the rainbow. It throbbed
above the altar.

When she came down the stony path to the shore the boatman was waiting for her. He didn’t speak and neither did she at first.

There was a mist over the water and no other boats on the river.

Finally the boatman said, ‘What was it like, then?’ His cap was low over his forehead and she could’t make out his face.

‘It was a life,’ she said.

‘And is that all?’

‘I was teaching in a school for thirty years. That is what it was.’

The mist was beginning to rise from the river. And in the distance she could see the long bare outline of the opposite shore.

‘Some say one thing, some say another,’ said the boatman.

‘There wasn’t on the whole much to it,’ she said. ‘It was often the same, day after day.’

‘And you never married,’ he said.

‘No.’

There was a silence and then the boatman said, ‘I suppose marriage has its advantages and disadvantages. I always know those who are married and those who are not.’

‘How?’ she asked, trailing her hand in the water.

‘The unmarried ones do what you are doing now. They put their hands in the water.’

As soon as he said these words she drew her hand out of the water and sat again silently watching as the boat moved along, its engine making a clear sound in the morning.

‘In the old days we didn’t have an engine,’ said the boatman, as if he knew what she was thinking.

‘I imagine not,’ she replied. She was wearing a grey costume and in the dawn it appeared pearly and appropriate. She was as calm and composed as she had always been. In her hand she
held a small gift.

‘Some ask about the loneliness of it,’ said the boatman. ‘But you didn’t ask. That is another reason why I thought you were unmarried. And also because you have no ring
on your finger.’

‘I was married to the school,’ she said. ‘That was my wedding day - the day I started there. And the pupils were my children.’

‘I see,’ said the boatman. ‘I can understand that.’ But she still could not see his face. Perhaps he was young, perhaps he was old. But if he had been young he
wouldn’t have understood what she had been saying.

‘Some have gifts with them,’ he said. ‘Rings, bracelets. Others have nothing. Of these there are few, I mean of those who have nothing. But some there have been.’

‘It’s possible,’ she said. But she could imagine what it would be like to have nothing. They were now more than halfway across the river which was calm and clear though there
was a strong current running through it like a muscle.

‘You will be quite happy where you are going,’ said the boatman. ‘I know. You are one of the people who don’t expect much.

‘Of course.’ She had never expected much and she had received what she had expected, except for the gift which she held in her hand. That, she had not foreseen for she had always
been strict and severe.

‘It won’t be long now,’ said the boatman. ‘Most people ask me about the other side, but you ask me nothing.’

‘I take things as they come.’

The boatman puffed smoke from his pipe. The smoke rose like a snake into the sky which was slowly beginning to brighten with a rose of fire.

She could hear quite clearly in her mind the din from the playground, she could see the children, running, playing football, chasing each other, laughing. That ring of stone in which they moved
had been her ring. And yet she wasn’t regretful, not at all. There comes a time when one must have an end to it, and the end has come. She hadn’t been unprepared. In her own way she had
been well prepared.

‘Well,’ said the boatman. ‘Another two minutes should see us there.’

‘Yes,’ she said. The only thing was that she didn’t want to wet her shoes but she presumed she wouldn’t have to do that. She trusted the boatman as she had trusted the
headmaster.

The mist had cleared away and all was serene.

‘May I ask,’ said the boatman politely, ‘what have you in your hand?’

‘An apple,’ she said. ‘A little girl brought it to me on the last day.’

‘Is that the gift then?’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘that is the gift. It is enough.’ In the reddening light the apple seemed to redden even more.

‘It is what I got. I am content.’

The boat reached the shore and she stepped out of it without wetting her feet. The boatman looked after her for a long time as she strode into the mist of the other land, composed and neat in
her grey costume.

When their father and mother adopted an orphan child, Ben and Robert were pleased at first. The child’s name was Joe and he was quiet, respectful and undernourished.
Because he owned nothing he was given everything new including shoes, shirts, coats, jackets and a brand new case for school; and this was the beginning of the trouble. For Ben and Robert began to
think that their parents loved Joe more than they loved them.

One day Robert, who was twelve, said to his brother Ben, who was ten, ‘Joe got a new dressing gown today. It’s made of silk. And it’s got pictures of animals on it.’

Ben, whose own dressing gown was two years old, didn’t say anything but looked at his big brother whom he considered his leader.

Robert continued, ‘He gets everything new. Mummy and Daddy say that’s because he’s got nothing. But now he’s got everything.’

Ben waited. His brother always had a plan; he was the one who was always making up new games.

At that moment Joe passed them in his shimmering gown coming from the bathroom. It glittered and seemed as if it were alive, with its golden lions and its striped tigers and its huge elephants.
Joe said good morning in his polite way but they didn’t answer him.

‘We must do something,’ said Robert, ‘we must do something.’ His eyes were angry. Ben didn’t like it when Robert became angry, and he remained quiet.

‘We must have a plan,’ said Robert. He didn’t say anything more that day but he brooded. Who was this intruder in their house? They had got on so well with their parents but
now Joe was the centre of attention. Their mother even told him longer bedtime stories than she told them. She said that no one had told him stories before and that he was very clever. He listened
quietly and absorbed everything. Robert in particular seethed with anger but smiled openly. He thought of Joe as a stranger who wandered about the house in his dressing gown like a king.

One day, Robert said to Ben, ‘I know what I’m going to do.’