Mr Trill was quite happy to sit in the stern and now and again like a boy dip his hand in the quiet waves. Nevertheless he was quite excited and asked the boatman a few questions.
‘Did you have many going over this morning?’
‘No, not many to speak of,’ said the boatman.
Mr Trill was silent for a while wondering what sort of life this was, ferrying people from one side of a river to another, and perhaps not even having a holiday in one’s whole life.
As if the boatman had understood what he was thinking he said helpfully.
‘It’s in the family, you see.’
In the family? Did that mean that the job passed down from father to son, or did it mean that the whole family took alternate turns at the job? He imagined a great number of ferrymen, each wearing a cap like this and each smoking a black pipe, unless of course there were women who could also, he assumed, be able to carry out the task of being a ferryman.
‘The class of passenger has gone down,’ said the ferryman. ‘You don’t get the same type now.’
‘I can believe that,’ said Mr Trill and in fact he did believe it.
Even in his own school since comprehensive education the quality had deteriorated, and he hadn’t been very fond of the last headmaster who was a large bearish barbaric man, a comedian among the dignified photographs of his renowned predecessors.
‘I can tell the intelligent ones from the unintelligent ones,’ said the boatman pulling steadily at the oars. ‘You’re one of the intelligent ones. You turned the board over so that I could see the white side, according to instructions. Some of the other ones wait there all day not knowing what to do. How am I supposed to know that they are there if they don’t turn the board over? That is what I would like to know.’
‘That’s very true,’ said Mr Trill. ‘That’s very true,’ he muttered again.
‘One of them,’ said the boatman, ‘stayed there all day and he hadn’t the gumption to turn the board over though our instructions were staring him in the face. When I crossed over – because my son who has sharper eyes than I have saw him – do you know what he said?’
‘No,’ said Mr Trill, ‘what did he say?’
‘He said it was my job to make sure that he was there. You should be reported, he said to me. But I knew he didn’t have any class. His suitcase had an old belt round it.’
He was silent for a while and then added, ‘He was going to report me. You’re all the same, he said, you ferrymen, lazy good for nothings. All you want is your obols and you don’t care about the passengers. I suppose you’ll be putting in for a rise next. I nearly told him to go to hell . . . but it didn’t matter as he was going there anyway.’
‘I can see that,’ said Mr Trill who hadn’t laughed, since he didn’t have much sense of humour. When he was teaching he would stride into the classroom, the Vergil open in front of him, and without raising his eye from the book ask someone to read. Sometimes there might be a long silence and only then would Mr Trill know that the person whom he had asked to read was absent. He had a long Roman nose and a shock of gingery hair and the energy of a dynamo. His landlady thought he was crazy and he himself didn’t like women or bingo. He had never married. His father had also been a classics master who had married a girl employed in the school canteen. She had taught him about carpets, curtains, furniture and paint.
‘Well, here we are,’ said the boatman, ‘and there’s your case.’
Trill felt in his pocket but found he had no money for the trip.
‘That’s all right,’ said the boatman. ‘We’re all on fixed rates now. Cheers.’
He turned back to the opposite bank and Mr Trill stood on the one where he had landed and looked about him.
There was a lot of mist and he couldn’t see clearly where he was but the air was mild and gentle.
He didn’t feel at all hungry after his trip and it occurred to him that he wouldn’t feel any hunger as long as he . . . as long as he was in the place where he was.
‘Well, well,’ he said to himself, ‘this is very nice. Very nice indeed and I don’t feel at all afraid as I did when I left for the first time to go to university.’ He walked forward and saw beneath him a valley in which he thought he could make out dim shapes here and there lolling about, some of them gazing into space.
He descended into it and found himself beside a number of people who were sitting talking to each other but who immediately stopped when they saw him.
One man with a red nose who seemed to be their leader asked.
‘You new?’
‘Yes,’ said Mr Trill, thinking of the boarding school of many years before, the dormitory, the cricket matches, the basins with cold water.
‘Thought I hadn’t seen you before. My name is Aphareus. Served in the Trojan War . . . And my comrades here. The same.’
‘Course,’ he added, ‘we’re on our own here. The officers don’t mix with the privates . . . ’
‘What do you do with yourselves then?’ said Trill.
‘Do with ourselves? There’s no need to do anything with ourselves. We’re quite happy here aren’t we, old pals?’
Seated on the grass the others looked at him calmly.
Mr Trill inhaled deeply and said, ‘You were in the Trojan War?’
‘We were that, weren’t we, old pals. We always stick together. Lived and died together. From Greece we all are.’
Naturally.
Achilles, Agamemnon, Hector, Ajax, those marvellous heroes, they had seen them all.
‘Course we saw them. Served under Agamemnon. Didn’t know his arse from his elbow. And we got news what happened to him. Took ten years to get into that bloody town. Course we died before that, most of us.’
What had it been like?
‘To tell you the truth, they used to come out and we used to get out and fight them. There were as many gods there as soldiers, some taking one side, some the other. Most of the time we were pretty bored. Fighting, lying in bed, watching that wall for years, knew every stone of it. Course we had our own wall, too, all round the ships. All we wanted was to go home. But that was not to be. They had to make a wooden horse to get in there. I call that cheating but that was Ulysses for you. All he was interested in was himself. Bright as a needle, mind you, stocky little man. And there was old Agamemnon fighting with Achilles all the time, and bringing his own daughter out for sacrifice so that the ships could move. I’d have told the gods to stuff themselves ’fore I would do that.’
‘But . . . ’ said Mr Trill.
‘Look around you, friend, whoever you are. Do you see that hill up there? That’s where the officers are. They never mix with us, never talk to us. Have you had your entry noted yet?’
‘No.’
‘They’ll do that right enough. They know all about us. Amazing how they didn’t put the tags on you. We think it’s something to do with that castle but no one’s ever been in it, no one we know anyway. Do you see it over there?’
When Mr Trill looked in the direction the man was pointing he saw a big shape swirling indecisively in the mist.
‘There’s a river there,’ said Aphareus. ‘People have tried to cross it. But they never make it. No one knows what’s in there. They say they have hounds patrolling all the time. Anyway, who cares? We’re quite happy here. But to get back to that lot, they were pretty punk, acting like women all the time. Like little girls. Imagine taking all that time to a siege. And all done by a trick in the end, not good honest fighting, spear against spear, but a trick. It makes me puke to think of it. No strategy, just stand there and slog it out all the time, or retreat to the ships, our side, or to the town, their side. Agamemnon didn’t know how to handle Achilles, that was the trouble. If it had been me I would have sent him home with his tail between his legs, like a dog. Year after year we sat staring at that wall and year after year our children grew up and we never saw them. And the officers divided the women among themselves whenever they got any. And when did we privates get
women or wine, I ask you. I remember when I got killed I didn’t mind it, the time had felt so long. I didn’t care when I saw the spear coming at me, it went right through my shield, of course I didn’t have a shield with ten layers as Ajax had. And the Big Boss himself had ten strips of enamel on his with a snake on it. Isn’t that right, fellows, I didn’t care?’
They all nodded their heads as if they had heard the story over and over again and would never grow tired of it.
‘I’ll tell you something, we could have finished the war for them ourselves but who listens to the likes of us? Tell you about Agamemnon. He used to come round and speak to us now and again. You could tell he didn’t have a clue, a big red-faced fellow, very hearty but false. Ulysses and Nestor, they were the ones who were really running the show. But Agamemnon, he was always smiling and waving from his chariot but he didn’t have a clue. ‘You’ll be home for the festivities,’ he’d say, ‘you trust me, lads.’ And we didn’t trust him at all. And who stood there year after year though it had nothing to do with them? Us. What did it have to do with us, tell me that. A whore and a man who couldn’t keep his wife. Paris, you know, was always firing arrows, you hardly ever saw him with a sword in his hand. I’m telling you I would have knocked Agamemnon off and gone home, only I didn’t think of it at the time. But then Menelaus was his brother, it was all in the family, not that Agamemnon ever thought much of Menelaus, about as much as Hector thought of Paris. They told us it was a patriotic war, patriotic my arse, and then they told us that it would make us all richer with all the plunder we would get. But who got all the plunder? I’ll tell you, it was the officers, and who got a spear in his guts if he fell asleep on watch? I’ll tell you, we did. But how could it make us richer, I ask you? I had a little piece of ground and a wife and children. What did I want with Troy? Nothing. And when I saw that man with the spear I was so bored . . . I didn’t mind. I wasn’t at all frightened. And yet to die like that so far from home, with all these dogs feeding off you . . . But the thing is that I didn’t have any respect for Agamemnon. There he is up on that hill and Achilles sits on another hill. They hold court there and they never speak to each other except on a Friday. Hector and Achilles will speak to each other, funnily enough, but not the other two. And as for his daughter she’s never approached him since he came here, though he was looking out for that. She’s never forgiven him, he believed too much in the gods, you see. Rest of us didn’t give a bugger. We’re quite happy here, though, we don’t mind. You tell him your story, Patroclus.’
‘Not the . . . ?’
‘No, no, this is a different Patroclus.’ And they all laughed as if they had made a good joke.
‘It was like this,’ said Patroclus, a tall young fellow with glimmering fair hair. ‘One day I seen her standing at a little window which was in the wall. I don’t know what I was doing there on my own.’
‘Picking daisies more than likely,’ said one of his friends and there was more laughter.
‘Anyway I seen her and I knew her. I don’t know how I knew but I did. She wasn’t what I would call beautiful. She had a sort of thin face with high cheekbones and a cropped head. Not much flesh to her. But they say that she must have had it somewhere else, if you understand me . . . Anyway she had Paris in a net. So I spoke to her. It was evening, late like. I just saw her there and everything was peaceful like, I went up to her same as I would go up to you and I said to her, Why don’t you go back to Greece, just like that, I said to her. Why don’t you go back to Greece? And all she said was, I wouldn’t go back for all the world. And you could see she was enjoying herself. I wouldn’t go back for all the world, that was what she said. Didn’t I tell you that when I came back, lads?’
They all nodded their heads again, having heard the same story with avid hunger for century after century.
‘I saw her plain as plain can be and she was standing looking out that little window and there was no blood in her cheeks at all, dead white she was, and I, thinking of all the lads here, said, Why don’t you go back to Greece? And all she said was, I wouldn’t go back for the whole world. And she was smiling all the time and she spoke in that upper class accent. And then, do you know it came to me, I was telling the lads about it, I knew then that they was all enjoying the war, all these officers and captains, they was enjoying the war, the war was passing the time for them, and they was making names for themselves . . . It was a short time after that that I was killed.’
Amazed by what he had heard, Trill rose to his feet and left the soldiers. Was that then what the Trojan War had been like? Had Agamemnon known nothing of strategy? Had he just been a big red-faced fellow who was telling the soldiers that they would be home in time for the festivities? Surely not. Surely that was not what Trill had read in the big Latin and Greek translations when he was still young and his parents were as usual quarrelling.
‘What is that boy doing sitting there day after day?’ his mother would say. ‘And why is he letting all the other boys walk all over him?’ Her beak snapped at him all the time while his father crept into his study for peace but even then she would put her snout round the corner and peck at him.
‘And you too sitting in there reading and marking when there’s painting to be done. When are you going to do something about the lawn and the garage?’ And so he and his father would try to hide together in the study while the merciless fusillade stormed on. Carpets, curtains, ornaments, that was all his mother was interested in.
‘All that rubbish that happened long ago, what is that to you? You don’t go out and meet people, that’s what’s wrong with you. You’re living in the past.’
And then she had started going to Bingo and he and his father had been left in peace, till she came home at night and then she would start again. ‘I met the headmaster’s wife and she wouldn’t speak to me. Who does she think she is? Just because I used to work in the school canteen she thinks she won’t speak to me. I can tell her that I did a good day’s work with the best of them instead of sitting on my bum as she does, drinking coffee all day. I had to work for my living and I’ll have you know that. I didn’t sit in my room all day reading about the past. Tell me, what are you going to do about the car? Are you going to trade it in or not? That’s what I want to know and that’s what you’ve got to tell me.’
And her voice droned on and on and his father would look at Trill as if he was begging forgiveness for bringing his mother into the house in the first place. And Mr Trill would sit with his father as if he was his companion for he preferred to be with him than to be out playing with the rough boys who were always going on about sex and how long their things were.
That was at the beginning before he was sent to boarding school, but even then Mr Trill liked to haul out his big books from his father’s shelves and try to read them.
‘Why don’t you get a proper big house?’ his mother would say to his father. ‘You’ve been in this house for years. I thought when we got married we would have a bigger house but no, not you. You just want to stay in this old house till they put you in a box and I’m ashamed in front of all the other teachers’ wives. Why have they all got bigger houses than you? And why don’t you put in for the headmaster’s job? You’ve as much right to it as anyone else, isn’t that true? You’ve worked hard enough. You slave there every night and no one can speak to you.’
And the voice would continue, the beak would clack and the two, father and son, would huddle together in the study. And sometimes his father would tell him stories such as the one about Orpheus and Eurydice, and Mr Trill would listen with bated breath. What a tragic beautiful story, that lady moving about Hades in white while Orpheus played his lyre to the cruel god.
And there he was . . . For Mr Trill had wandered till he came to a sunny glade in which there were flowers growing and trees like the rowans that he had seen in the country when he and his father had gone for runs in the car. The berries were blood-red too and the tree leaned over Orpheus with all its pliant branches, and he
was idly strumming his lyre.
No longer could Mr Trill see the soldiers, talking to each other, it was as if they had receded into the mist and left him alone in the sunlight with the singer. His heart nearly burst with joy as he thought of his father telling him that famous story when he was a child, allowing him to enter that golden kingdom for a while, evading his mother’s sharp beak.
And here he was beside the singer in Hades, on a sunny hill with a river flowing past, black and complex as if it were a telephone talking endlessly to itself.
Orpheus, the sad singer, who had been so badly treated by Pluto, here he was in the . . . no, in the spirit, and Mr Trill could ask him questions, and talk to him. How astonishing that was, when he remembered the cutting voice of his mother who thought that history was finished with, and whose whole concern was whether a certain painting matched the paper on the wall, and who didn’t believe in the existence of heroes like Orpheus. No, on the contrary, she thought that all history was a dream, that everybody had his weakness which she would find out in order to bring him down to the level of everybody else, including her own. She would pick holes in him, who did he think he was anyway? She wouldn’t like to see anyone putting on airs and graces in her presence. For she was as good as Trill’s father any day, and don’t let either of them forget that fact or think they were any different just because she had worked in a canteen. She knew the world just the same and knew what people were like and she was more practical than his father in spite of all his degrees. Let them both put that in their pipes and smoke it . . . And Mr Trill stood and watched Orpheus who was idly strumming on his lyre till the latter turned towards him a head which streamed with golden hair. How girlish the face looked, how white the skin. Mr Trill felt uncomfortable in the presence of the singer.
‘I suppose you’re another newcomer and you want to hear the story as well,’ said Orpheus petulantly. ‘Everyone wants to hear my story. It’s part of the tour. Well, I suppose we might as well get it over with . . . What do you know of it already? Some of them know a little and some a lot. And then there are all those old fat sweaty woman who go on and on saying, “Poor boy, poor boy.” If only they knew how ugly I thought they were . . . ’
The Black Halo Page 35