The Black Halo (91 page)

‘You’d better get yourself a teacher’s certificate,’ I would say to him. ‘If you don’t succeed as an artist you will always have teaching to fall back
on.’ But he wouldn’t become a teacher, as all teachers in his judgement were middle-class. He hated us for being middle-class. At one time he had been rebellious.

Once we had some friends in the house, and a woman had said, while were having drinks, ‘I suppose Gerald here will have Coca-Cola.’

‘Not at all,’ he had said, ‘Coca-Cola makes me fart.’

Sheila had hidden her laughter, but I was really angry. In short, I don’t get on well with Gerald and I am sure he despises me.

Sheila turned away from the phone. ‘I can’t get hold of him. He must be out.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ I said.

Suddenly she burst out, ‘Why did you say that? You didn’t have to say that. I come all the way up here, but you don’t want to make any concessions, do you? I
like
his
paintings.’

I kept silent. I didn’t want us to quarrel before these people came. I have, I think, much greater self-control than Sheila: it is only very rarely that I lose my temper.

The posters on the walls of Gerald’s room are highly political.

‘What’s this one about Nicaragua?’ I once asked him.

‘What do you mean, what’s this one about Nicaragua?’

‘I just don’t understand what you have to do with Nicaragua,’ I said.

‘Really?’

And when he’s at home he plays his music very loudly. I have often told him to turn the volume down but as soon as I leave his room he turns the volume up again. Also he has to help me
with the video and he makes sarcastic comments about my intelligence.

I wonder how Norman and he would have got on: he did at one time talk about him and suggest that he might take a croft on the island. I discouraged that.

‘I should have taken these curtains down and replaced them,’ Sheila said.

‘Why?’

‘Well, these people may be talking about them. They don’t look very clean.’

‘It’s fine,’ I said, ‘the house is fine and tidy.’

‘It’s tidy enough,’ she agreed. ‘I can’t understand why he didn’t buy some decent furniture.’

‘Perhaps he gave most of his money to the church.’

‘That’s possible,’ she said seriously.

At least not to Nicaragua, I thought. If it was to the woman next door that would make sense, but why Nicaragua?

And in any case Gerald never had any money. He had left a good job in a supermarket because it sold South African oranges.

‘Look,’ I told him, ‘in my youth we couldn’t pick and choose like that.’ I myself had once worked on a fishing boat. I remembered that Norman never took a job: he
had spent his time studying. I supposed he had been a good teacher, though I had never met anyone who had been taught by him. If he had brought his religion into the classroom he would have been a
conservative unimaginative one. Then again, since he hadn’t any children himself, how could he understand children.

In the early days, for instance, he would never play with Gerald, or lift him up in his arms. He obviously felt uncomfortable with him, while Gerald stared at him, his thumb in his mouth.

‘Here they come,’ said my wife, and we saw the first visitors at the gate. I went to the door and shook hands with them and looked suitably grave. They seemed sad and said very little.
They were in fact two women, and when they came into the house they sat down on chairs in the bedroom facing the sea. They wore coats even though the evening was warm. They also wore hats.

My wife glanced at me, raising her eyebrows. She had offered them tea but they refused. They sat perfectly still on their chairs like polite children.

After their arrival more and more people started to come. I shook hands with all of them. My cousin also came and told me that I should keep the front seats for the elders. However, one
doddering old woman took one of them and I didn’t have the heart to move her.

The rooms became very crowded. There were even people sitting on the beds of the upstairs bedrooms. They talked quietly among each other.

The sturdy-looking elders introduced themselves, and one of them said, ‘Would you like the service in English or in Gaelic?’

‘English,’ I said.

Suddenly Sheila said, ‘Could we have it in both English and Gaelic?’

‘Whatever you want.’ said the elder.

He seemed pleased with the decision and visibly brightened.

‘I think he would have preferred that himself, if I may say so,’ he said.

We all sat down.

Many people stood up and prayed. I needn’t describe what they said since it was the usual thing. Then they began to sing the beautiful Gaelic psalms whose music rose and fell like the sea.
I hadn’t realised how moving and aesthetically satisfying they were.

When it was all over Sheila said to me, ‘Do you know that one of the elders winked at me?’

‘He was probably trying to put you at your ease,’ I said.

The service had lasted about an hour and finished about nine o’clock. Then they all left and we were alone again.

‘We will leave the chairs here till tomorrow,’ my cousin had said. ‘There will be another service before the funeral.’ The house was quiet after the visitors had gone. I
could hear the clock ticking.

‘They all look very strong physically,’ my wife suddenly said. ‘I mean the elders.’

‘Yes,’ I said absently.

I wondered why my brother himself hadn’t become an elder. Perhaps he hadn’t felt holy enough: he had always been a bit hesitant about his own abilities.

I remembered one night when I had come home late from town and he was lying in his bed wheezing because of his bronchitis. I had brought him a chocolate. I gave him some squares of it as I got
into bed.

‘Did you enjoy yourself?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ I said, but I didn’t tell him about red-haired Peggy whom I had kissed after the dance was over.

‘My mother is very angry that you were so late,’ he told me.

‘I know.’

He wheezed heavily during the night and I was kept awake for a while, for we slept in the same bed. In the morning I would have to face my mother, and she would say to me, ‘after all
I’ve done for you, you keep defying me.’

When Sheila and I were in bed together I could hear the sound of the sea, and I could see the moonlight on the walls.

‘Look,’ I said, ‘he even left the electric flex bare. A lot will have to be done to the house.’

‘I suppose,’ she said, ‘he would have slept in the bedroom downstairs.’

Directly in front of me was a photograph of our mother. In my mind the music of the psalms rose and fell. Below us the coffin rested. His face had become stern as my mother’s had been,
purified of emotion, severe and in a strange way beautiful.

We slept well and did not get up till nine in the morning. I could hear the cries of the seagulls all around the house and felt suddenly at home.

When we were having breakfast, I looked at the blue vase. It was plain and very clear with a sea-blue glaze. I thought it was very beautiful.

‘Don’t you think it’s lovely?’ I said to Sheila.

‘What is?’

‘The vase,’ I said, ‘the vase on the mantelpiece.’

She studied it for a while. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I suppose it is. It’s the most beautiful thing in the house.’

‘We won’t have time to go down town,’ I said.

‘Did you wish to go?’

‘Oh, just to see it again. I remember it from my youth as being very pretty. There were trees round the castle.’

‘It is very pretty here too,’ said Sheila.

And indeed it was. It was going to be a fine day, though still rather hazy. I saw a white ship sailing into the bay. It looked foreign.

Pictures floated into my head. Norman and I were at the pier climbing seaweed-entangled steps. He was trembling beside me, looking out at the brine where the almost transparent jelly fish
floated.

Abstractedly I arranged the chairs.

There was a knock on the door and my cousin came in.

‘I thought I’d see if you were all right,’ she said.

‘We’re fine,’ I said.

‘One thing I forgot to mention,’ she said, ‘you as next of kin have to walk at the head of the coffin. The coffin is carried for about a hundred yards to the hearse. You
don’t have to carry it though.’

‘Do they still carry the coffin?’ I said.

‘Here they do. My husband arranged the cord holders,’ she said. ‘You will be one of them yourself. But that will be arranged at the graveside. Is that all right?’

‘That will be fine,’ said Sheila, ‘and thanks for all your help. We want to do what’s right.’

My cousin looked harassed, as if she had too much on her mind.

‘You visited him a lot?’ I asked her.

‘Yes.’

‘What was he like?’

‘He was very happy since he was converted. He went to church regularly. It was his life.’

There was something about a vase that returned to me. It was a poem I had once read in school and which Norman had been very fond of. I don’t remember much poetry but that poem stayed with
me. It told of a vase which had pictures on it: I think one of the pictures had to do with a sacrifice. The details were very vague in my mind but I remember that Norman liked it. When he liked a
poem he would go about the house reciting verses and lines from it for days. I recalled his thin animated face as if it belonged to a different world, a different person even.

‘That’s it then,’ said my cousin. ‘There will be a service before the funeral. The minister himself will be there.’

She referred to the minister as if he were some god.

‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘for everything, and for the food.’ I saw her to the door. Her harassed face looked back at me.

‘He was a good man,’ she said, ‘a good man.’

The service brought a large number of people as before. I noticed a little old woman in the corner near the fire who was weeping uncontrollably.

‘Who is that?’ I whispered to my cousin.

‘She is an old relative of your own. On your father’s side.’

It was amazing how little I knew of my relatives: but then I hadn’t wanted to be involved in genealogy or history. The woman was weeping bitterly and I saw Sheila trying to comfort
her.

When the service was over the coffin was carried out of the house into the bright sunshine. The women remained behind: only the men went to the cemetery.

I walked behind the coffin, at the head. Because of the weight of it the men had an intricate way of changing places, and then moving out from under the burden. I saw an eighty-year-old man bent
under its considerable weight.

When we arrived at the cemetery in the hearse, the coffin was taken up some steps. We all gathered round to listen to a short service. There was a slight breeze blowing from the sea as we took
the cords in our hands and lowered the coffin slowly into the ground.

This is my brother, I thought, this is the last I will ever see of him. I found myself weeping as I looked down at the coffin, and then I wiped my eyes shamefacedly.

He who had been a vivid excited young man had declined into a religious hermit. I could hardly bear the thought.

Again, however, when I looked out at the sea, the image of the vase, tall and slender and plain, rose up in front of me. What is happening to me, I thought. I am a chartered accountant, that is
all I am. This that I see around me is all there is.

There came into my mind the picture of an old farmer who was very rich and who had tried to persuade me to declare only a fraction of his true earnings. He was a fat red-faced gross man.

‘You can arrange this,’ he kept saying to me.

‘No,’ I said, ‘I can’t. You don’t seem to understand. I am not here to cheat the tax man.’

‘Why not?’ he said innocently, leaning back, his legs spread.

‘Because,’ I said, ‘that is not my job. My job is to tell you what you can legally claim. We must work within the rules.’

The farmer’s face suddenly became swollen and enraged.

‘I bet you cheat the tax man yourself,’ he shouted, the veins on his neck standing out. ‘You’re no use to me.’

And that was how I lost another customer.

My son of course despised me for being a chartered accountant. He despised the fairly prosperous life I offered him. Maybe he would prefer living among the starving peasants in Nicaragua.

Standing at the graveside I felt very confused.

I had never been pierced by such pure pain as I felt then.

When the funeral was over a small man came over to me hesitantly.

‘My name is Duncan Macleod,’ he said. ‘I was in the same class as you at school. Do you remember me?’

‘I can’t say that I do,’ I said pleasantly.

‘We sat in the same seat,’ he said. ‘Do you remember Miss Gracie?’

‘Vaguely,’ I said.

‘She taught French,’ he said. ‘Anyway, I thought I’d introduce myself.’

‘That was very nice of you,’ I said.

And then suddenly I did remember Miss Gracie.

‘Was Miss Gracie a thin grey-haired woman?’ I said.

‘Yes, that’s her.’

For some reason I had hated French in school, but I loved mathematics and its indisputable naked logic. In French we concentrated eternally on grammar, and the thin grey-haired woman became the
emblem for boredom. I don’t think she had been married. I couldn’t remember the boy who had turned into this small stout man.

‘How are you doing now?’ I said.

‘I’m a headmaster,’ he said. ‘As a matter of fact I took the afternoon off to come to your brother’s funeral. We used to exchange books and he would show me some of
his poems. He loved spy stories. He was off school a lot as I remember.’

‘Yes,’ I said. This person in the coffin had been off school a lot. I remembered the two of us putting on our bags as we left for school. The smell of the leather returned to me
agonisingly fresh. It was so clear and distinct that I nearly fainted with the unutterable pathos of it. I felt naked and vulnerable in the sea air.

‘Glad to have met you,’ the small stout man said.

When I returned to the house, Sheila was there alone.

‘Listen,’ she said eagerly, ‘do you remember that woman who was weeping all the time? Someone said she was a relative of yours.’