The Black Halo

by Iain Crichton Smith

  They walked along the corridor as far as the Maths room into which they looked at the crummy equations which were still on the blackboard. The Maths room was not their target but nevertheless Terry urinated all over the boxes full of exercise books in the corner. He did this patiently and steadily, playing arcs of water up as high as the desk and then onwards as far as the door.

  ‘Hey,’ he shouted to Frankie, ‘you get along to the Art room and get paper. We need paper for the fire. Piles of the stuff.’

  Frankie turned and went, for he was used to acting as Terry’s message boy, he was like a legate sent to the provinces by his commander. The last they saw of him was when he swaggered through the door of the Maths room on his way upstairs.

  After he had urinated Terry got a piece of chalk and first rubbing the equations off the board began to draw what purported to be the teacher’s sexual organs in considerable detail. He spent the whole fifteen minutes on this, his tongue stuck out, absolutely concentrated on his task, as if he were an artist who had forgotten where he was. At times not happy with what he had done, he rubbed it all out, and began again. After a while he drew back from his masterpiece, studying it with an appraising scrutiny as if he were in an art gallery and said, ‘Hey, that’s great, Rod, ain’t it? Ain’t that great?’ Roddy nodded for unlike Terry he believed that too much talking was sissy and he modelled himself on Clint Eastwood. ‘Ain’t that great,’ Terry said again and began to dance up and down among the boxes of books like a Zulu. Sometimes Roddy thought Terry was crazy, like the time he had jumped off the bus which was going at thirty miles an hour so that he wouldn’t have to pay his fare, and he had rolled over and over on the street like a cat. In his phantom Mexican hat and lethal black uniform, Roddy wondered whether Terry would have done the same thing if a car had been coming, and concluded that he probably would have.

  They left the Maths room, Terry giving a final look at his masterpiece as if reluctant to leave it, since no one would see it till the school started again after the holidays. The school was ominously quiet and it bothered Roddy though it didn’t seem to bother Terry at all. Like Terry, Roddy was used to noise and movement, either the movement of the world outside – traffic, shouting, fighting – or the noise of the family in the crowded tenement where he lived. He hated total silence about him though he himself never talked much. He hated those periods of silent reading when that bag Simmons made them read Kidnapped or Treasure Island and you felt as if you could scream, the room was so quiet. The tension built up inside you so that you had to clench your teeth to prevent yourself from howling like a wolf. He wanted to stand up and throw a brick at Simmons, to kick her in, to flatten her long quivering nose. Sometimes she would look up from her own reading – for she read with them, ‘to set a good example’ – and a stare of naked hatred – the more bitter for being unseen by anyone except themselves – would pass between them across the room. Oh, he knew she hated him all right and she knew that he hated her. She didn’t want people like him, she wanted people who were interested in books, who did what they were told, who sucked up to her in their new uniforms. Who cared about books anyway, the letters of the words were so hard to focus on. It was like trying to see the number of a bus on a wet day when the streets were glistening and your shoes and socks were soaking. The letters danced about in front of his eyes, like that red cloak he had seen them passing in front of the bulls on the telly, he would like to batter them stupid so that they would stay still. He identified himself with the bull, not the toreador, he would have liked to sink his horns into that dancing poof.

  They stopped, this time outside the gym, and as they did so Terry suddenly said, ‘Frankie’s taking a long time. What the hell’s happened to him?’ And Roddy felt again that strange ominous silence of the school He suddenly had the weird thought, Why don’t they protect it, defend it? It must be because of something that he didn’t know about. The entry had been too easy, the silence too prolonged. The school looked so defenceless, there had been no obvious attempt to keep people like him and Terry out. It was odd. They listened but they could hear nothing, not Frankie, not anybody. The stillness was appalling and the school was so clean, the floors were newly washed and there was a smell of disinfectant everywhere. The two of them stood there in the middle of the silence.

  Suddenly Terry followed by Roddy turned into the gym and that too was silent. From the stage end they looked down the length of the polished floor, at the tiers of slats which climbed the wall like a weir, at the ropes which were tied together, at the horse and the buck, at the box with the yellow footballs, at the roof with its acreage of glass.

  Terry put down the can of petrol and said, ‘Let’s have a game. One against one.’ And with his usual vividness and mad spontaneity he stripped off his jacket and shirt to make two goalposts at one end of the gym while Roddy had to do the same. Then they got a yellow ball out of the box and they began to play in the vast gym all by themselves on that summer evening. Terry did things like that – he sometimes forgot what he had come to do – but you couldn’t cross him, he might turn on you and beat you up, out of the blue, or even knife you. You didn’t know what he might do next, he was like a spark carried on a strange wind of his own.

  Terry played like a madman with ferocious energy. He believed that he was a great footballer, though he wasn’t, for he was too unco-ordinated. He believed that he was playing in the World Cup and that thousands of voices, like one, were applauding in an untranslatable language of their own. He pushed Roddy away with all his strength, committing every foul that was possible, at one time tripping him up as he was about to score.

  ‘That was a penalty,’ said Roddy.

  ‘Penalty my arse,’ said Terry, ‘you don’t have penalties in a one to one, you stupid bugger.’ And the two of them stared into each other’s eyes, but it was Roddy’s eyes that fell first, confronted by the savage undeviating glare that shone out of Terry’s gaze. At moments like these Terry seemed to forget who you were, that you were his mate, and he would be ready to do you. His whole body and his whole mind were concentrated on winning. He hacked at Roddy’s feet when he had the ball, he elbowed him fiercely, at one stage he nearly bit him, and all the time he would be weaving up and down as he had seen players do in the World Cup.

  Then after he was winning two-one he flopped down on the floor of the gym, and said, ‘That’s enough. I’m shagged out.’ And he stayed there for a while, staring up at the glass roof where there was a small bird flying about, after coming in through a broken pane. It beat at the glass but it couldn’t get out.

  ‘Stupid bastard,’ said Terry, looking up at it. Roddy lay down beside him and thought that once he had lain like that in the past when his family had gone for a day to Loch Lomondside: and he had a memory of water flowing, and a few white clouds floating about like ice-cream. Suddenly as they lay on the wooden floor Terry began to punch him and then the two of them were rolling over and over, kicking and gouging, till finally Terry was on top, his mad eyes glaring into Roddy’s and it seemed for a moment as if he would choke him to death. Then the craziness drained out of his eyes and he got to his feet, put on his shirt and jacket and prepared to leave the room.

  Roddy did the same. On their way out Terry retrieved the petrol can.

  And then Roddy said, ‘Where’s Frankie got to? Where the hell . . . ’ The silence enfolded them again, the eerie silence.

  ‘Maybe the wee bugger’s gone home,’ said Terry. ‘Maybe he didn’t have the guts for it.’

  But Roddy wasn’t sure about that. For a strange moment he thought he saw out of the corner of his eye a flash of black like a bird’s wing passing, but that was impossible. That must surely be impossible.

  ‘You go and have a dekko,’ said Terry. ‘You go. See if Frankie’s there.’ No no no something deep in Roddy said. No no no and it was like the voice of a bird, a big black bird.

  ‘Come on, Terry,’ he said, ‘let’s get it finished with. Get the petrol on and let’s get
out of here. Frankie’s gone home, that’s what it is.’

  But Terry was adamant. ‘No, you go and have a dekko.’ And he stood there solidly, the can still in his hand. ‘I’ll be in Grotty’s room. That’s where we start it. Bring the paper. Bring Frankie and the paper. I’ll be there. Right?’ He was like a commander giving orders to his staff or to the troops. ‘You get along there.’

  And all the time the voice was telling Roddy not to go. The place was too quiet. There was something funny about it. There was no noise anywhere, not even a tiny creak. Even the slats in the gym, climbing up to the roof, had looked oddly still, and the ropes hanging down like snakes. And the buck standing in the centre on its own. Everything looked unprotected and waiting. There had been no real smell there as there used to be from the boys as they waited to start their exercises. There had been no human stink of dirty socks. There was only the neutral smell of disinfectant everywhere.

  He stood at one end of the corridor glancing back at Terry and at that moment Terry looked like an ape swinging the can of petrol in his hand. Christ, what were they doing there, as if they had all the time in the world, as if they were on a visit or a tour of the place? Why hadn’t they just put it on fire as they had meant to do? But this place was like a church, as silent as a church, but instead of incense there was only the smell of polish and disinfectant.

  He was frightened. He should just turn and run but he couldn’t because Terry was there and Terry would get him later, there was no escape from him. You couldn’t get away from Terry. You hated and admired him at the same time. He himself hated Terry but in a different way from that in which the teachers hated him. He hated him because he had never beaten him. Even in the gym Terry had cheated and he had to take it because there was nothing else he could do. Terry made his own rules: for instance he had decided to stop playing when he was leading two-one.

  Oh, bugger it, he must go and get the paper and if Frankie had been playing about, then he would do him. If he couldn’t do Terry then he would do Frankie. He turned abruptly away. Terry was laughing like a maniac at the far end of the corridor with the can in his hand.

  Terry watched Roddy go. He would wait there till the two of them came back, he couldn’t do anything without the paper. He stood against the wall and laid the petrol can down in front of him. He stared along the corridor and could see nothing, just the wall painted a bilious green. It was like the wall of a prison he had once seen in a film, blotched and patchy. He waited. He wished he had a watch but he didn’t have one – he’d lost the one he had nicked from the jeweller’s – other people had watches but he had none. Other people had football strips but he had none. Other people had hi-fis but he had none. He waited. And up above there was silence. He fancied for a moment that there were guards up there as there were in prisons on the films. No Frankie, no Roddy. For a second he thought he saw something flicker but no that couldn’t be right. He waited and they didn’t come. He knew that they could have gone along the top and down another stair and out of the school that way: perhaps the two of them had got the shakes and run home.

  The buggers. Everyone left you in the end, even your mother and father. Everyone looked out for himself. If it hadn’t been for his fire of hatred and strength he would have been ground down to the earth long ago. If it hadn’t been for the rage that smouldered inside him and never went out, ready at any moment to burst into flame, he would have been finished.

  You had to fight for yourself or people would get you. Or if they didn’t get you they would betray you. You couldn’t trust anyone. You had to fight for everything, for every scrap of property. Like that headmaster: he thought he was up there with Jesus and you were down here with the fishermen. They all thought you were stupid but it didn’t seem to occur to them that you thought they were stupid. He himself wasn’t stupid, he knew he wasn’t stupid, not deep down inside himself. It was the stuff you had to do that didn’t make sense. It made you scream with rage keeping you here doing things like maths and English which didn’t have anything to do with anything. He’d never heard anyone speak like they spoke in the books. His father and mother never spoke like that. And what were these triangles in aid of. He’d never seen one outside school in his whole life. Anyway he could sort his father out now. One night he had held a knife at his throat when he was lying in bed. He had asked him for money and his father had whispered, ‘You’ll find it in my jacket.’ He wouldn’t have been able to do that if his father didn’t have a bad back.

  He passed his hands over his eyes. He couldn’t allow himself to do that when the other two were there. They would think you were weak if you told them you got headaches now and then. You always had to show that you weren’t weak, you had to keep it up all the time. Bugger them. They must have gone home. He’d just have to go to Grotty’s room himself and hope that there was paper there. Because they had betrayed him he felt bitter: he felt as if he wanted to burn them down as well as the school. He wanted to see them running like rats among the flames like in that warehouse they had broken into one Sunday and set on fire. There was nothing like a fire, it was so really powerful, nothing could stand against it, it was great when you made it yourself and you saw it coming into action like a servant, especially in those old buildings when the rats ran about in the flame and the smoke, and the little buggers didn’t know where they were going.

  He walked along the corridor carrying the can in his hand and arrived at the Latin room. He never took Latin, they said he was too stupid, but one day when he was making a noise in the room next to it, jumping up and down on one of the desks, the Latin teacher, Grotty, had come in and taken him out and given him six. He hadn’t forgotten that, especially as the Latin teacher didn’t have people like him in his class, and he only took the best, though he had belted him just the same after he had made sarcastic remarks about him first in front of the class, using long words that he didn’t understand. Barbaric it was, he wouldn’t forget that.

  He arrived at Grotty’s room and looked round it. The desks here were clean with no names carved on them, there were pictures of temples and people with skirts on the walls, and on the board were words which he didn’t understand. He went up and looked at them.

  INSULA he spelt out aloud and then he spat at the word. What the hell sort of word was that? Who wanted to know about these bloody words, the other ones were bad enough. He spat again and again and then finding a black gown hanging on a nail pussy-footed about in it for a while like a poof or a ballet dancer, before finally tearing it into ribbons, sometimes using his teeth. He found a piece of chalk and scrawled stuff all over the desks and sometimes there were not only single words but sentences, almost the beginning of a story, his story. The only Roman he had ever heard of was Julius Caesar and he wrote on one desk JULIUS CAESAR WAS A POOF and burst out laughing crazily. It never occurred to him that no one would see what he had written.

  Then in a frenzy of activity he began to gather desks together. He pulled at the handle of the weakest-looking cupboard till he opened it and a pile of old dusty papers – examination papers – came pouring out. He picked them from the floor and then put them inside the desks and prepared to pour petrol over them, but then a thought struck him and he got the wastepaper basket which was made of wicker, and put that in the desk as well, among the papers, standing out of them.

  As he was doing this he thought he saw a black flicker again but paid no attention as he was too busy with what he was doing. The familiar lust was growing in him like sex. Sometimes the fire as it swirled and grew and changed shape was like a bint’s body moving and curvaceous. It was like one of those bints you saw on the TV sometimes, advertising chocolate or a drink. He bent over the desk as if over an experiment and his mind was totally focussed on what he was doing. He was like a Frankenstein, he suddenly thought, and he flashed two of his teeth like fangs at the desk piled with papers. For the moment he had forgotten about Roddy and Frankie, he would sort them out later anyway. He would put the boot in. He was
like a mad scientist bowed over the desk. He raised the can. And at that moment a movement flickered at the corner of his eye and he looked up. He turned and stared at the door and he saw him standing at the door in his black gown.

  The man in the black gown was looking at him and the man in the black gown had no face, and the gown was dusty and had holes in it. Terry screamed and threw the petrol can straight at him as he ran for the door. He went through the dusty gown, right through it, and the can rolled along the corridor spilling the petrol as it went. It rolled along the polished floor. Terry ran along the corridor at full speed as if he were making for an invisible tape, his tongue hanging out, his eyes rolling in his head. Then at the end of the corridor he saw another man and he had no face either. Terry turned back and the other man, the one from the Latin room, was walking towards him. Terry stood in the middle of the corridor not knowing where to go. Then he saw more and more of them. They were coming out of the classrooms, out of the walls, like huge black insects. All of them were in dusty black gowns and they had no faces or if they had they were the colour of chalk. Terry stood there and watched them, his breath going in and out. Steadily and unhurriedly at a grave pace they came towards him. He cowered down on his knees in the corridor. They made a ring round him and they looked down at him. He stared at his own hands which were beating like a fish against the floor. They stared down at him and they had no faces. He looked up and he screamed and he screamed and he screamed.

  And his hands beat against the floor with all the life that was in them.

  His hands beat on the floor in the silence.

  Mr Trill in Hades

  One afternoon Mr Trill, dead classics master of Eastborough Grammar School, found himself in Hades.

  The journey across the river had been a pleasant one, for the boatman had been fairly communicative though he had a small stubby black pipe in his mouth from which he exhaled meditative smoke rings across the water.