The Black Halo

by Iain Crichton Smith

  But of course that had been a different manager from the one they now had. ‘Another time,’ he said, ‘he made an awful speech on the retiral of a lady member of staff and I was the only one who clapped. He stared at me, I remember, as if he couldn’t make up his mind whether I was laughing at him or not. His speeches were terrible.’

  According to himself he had been a ball of fire in those days, fiery with wit and inventiveness. And he had told her the same stories over and over so much that she sometimes wondered whether her boredom was becoming unbearable. Still he had taken his illness with admirable stoicism, not complaining much, accepting his destiny with dignity.

  But in a country like this one saw only the healthy ones, especially in summer and they all looked so beautiful and tanned beside Paul.

  They bloomed with luminous health, they seemed to have the sheen of animals: while all the time the sun was a fierce bristly animal in a sky of unchanging blue.

  As well as being a civil servant, Paul also umpired cricket matches on Sundays and she knew that he missed the cool green misty afternoons when in his white surgical coat he would stand there making decisions. He himself believed that umpiring was his real vocation: it certainly gave him more scope for decision-making than the Civil Service did.

  A youth walked along in front of her. He looked dark and Italian and had the most beautiful arrogant buttocks. How self-confident he was, how extraordinarily alive and lovely. At that very moment she would have gone with him to a dance, a gipsy dance, to drink wine, to make love. She couldn’t imagine him in the Civil Service sitting down at a desk day after day, picking up a phone and saying to a caller who perhaps had an upper-class accent:

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, but we don’t keep a record of that,’ and the man with the upper-class accent saying contemptuously:

  ‘But aren’t you a clerk or something? Shouldn’t you know that sort of thing?’

  No, that youth would never be servile or slavish, he would never reach that stage in his life when he would become so depressingly proud and say, ‘And Spence took up the phone and said, “No damn nonsense about half-pay. Mason’s been with us for thirty years.” ’

  She could imagine Paul leaning forward obediently, subserviently, the manager swivelling arrogantly in his chair in a careless arc as if he were on a machine at a fairground.

  So many of these youths, so beautiful, so young, and herself growing old, and into her menopause. She dragged Paul along like a chain behind her: he clanked in the hot day of her mind.

  Conscience-stricken that she had almost thought of him like a slave she pointed out a wallet to him in a window that they were passing and asked him if he wanted it but he didn’t, he considered it too cheap and tawdry. He seemed to evaluate it with agonising slowness as if deciding whether it was like a cricketer who should be given out.

  Finally, he said, ‘It’s not worth the money.’ He was very good at converting lire and dinars into English money, far quicker than she was. But these days there was a faraway look in his eyes as if he was staring at the green ring of a damp cricket field.

  No, he had never been a flashing batsman or a demon bowler, only a very calm considering umpire, one who was weighty and careful in his decisions: and perhaps he would never be an umpire again. Perhaps he would never stand in his white coat under an amateur sky.

  Her body boiled with the heat and, she was ashamed to admit, desire. The two of them hadn’t had sex for the last three months. Funny expression that, ‘had sex’ or ‘made love’ when what she really meant was what she imagined these foreigners as doing, devouring each other’s bodies in the sun. Images of bodies clawed and mated and fought in her mind. They leaped ravenously out of dark secret corners into the arena of her sunlight. They were strong and powerful and had nothing at all to do with the calm fields over which her husband had presided in the intervals of his dedicated work for the Civil Service.

  ‘Are you all right?’ said Paul curiously. ‘You seem to be sweating a lot.’

  ‘It’s very hot,’ she said.

  Her body seethed with the heat, she almost fainted with the savagery of the images that leaped about in her mind, no, not in her mind, in the secret caverns and hollows of her body. And she was ashamed of them as Paul slowly paced beside her.

  No, she must confront the question: what would she do if Paul died? Would she marry again? Could she bear to be alone? She had never been alone in her life, she had come from a large noisy family, animated with anecdote and discussion, and she didn’t really know what solitude was. Also, she had never been a reader, she had always been happier with physical things, the confused chatter of kids in the school canteen where she served. But the question nevertheless had to be faced. When they returned to England and he had his operation he might die and what would she do then? Could she stay alone in the house after the day’s work was over, could she watch television endlessly? Not that she had anyone in mind to replace Paul, nor had she ever been intimate with anyone but him. She smiled to herself at the archaic oddity of the expression.

  Could she perhaps fling up her job and do what she had always wanted to do, that is wander about like a gipsy? But that would be impossible, an idle dream. Even gipsies didn’t live on air, they too needed food, drink, a bed. No she couldn’t leave the little terraced house bought with Paul’s blood and the garden which he kept so tidy. Nor could she abandon her job. Paul wouldn’t have much money to leave, though he had now stopped drinking and smoking.

  Did she love him? Did she truly love him? The question struck at her like a blow from the sun. She thought she loved him and was sure that he loved her. But what was real love like? Had she ever truly experienced it? Was love involved with sex? Could she love someone without having sex with them?

  It was odd how grey his hair was becoming, she hadn’t noticed the greyness so clearly before. And how dependent he was growing on her, he who had always planned the details of their holidays so meticulously, taking a pride in doing so. She did not like his new passiveness: it was significant and ominous. In the past he used to love working out itineraries, even keeping a diary. And now he had given all that up. It was as if he was sensing an eternity which had no need of notes.

  And another thing, he never told her what happened in the office. In the old days he used to bring home a hoard of stories like the one for instance about the tramp who used to come to the office to collect his social security and say, ‘You think I’m going to die and save you money but I’m not.’ And he would glare fiercely around him, unshaven, gaunt, indomitable. She could imagine him, obstinate in his determination to stay alive.

  Or he might tell her about Miss Collins and Mr White who hadn’t spoken to each other for years because Miss Collins had arranged the chairs for a meeting without telling him about it beforehand.

  Oh God, this tremendous heat, this desire, this unfocused lust. Did others suffer from this? Did others appear to walk calmly along while raging inwardly like beasts within their pale pelts? And why was she feeling that desire now, was it the heat that was causing it, or the threat of death, or was it that she was simply ageing?

  ‘Are you feeling all right?’ she asked. She was always asking the same question as if out of a sense of profound guilt that followed both of them like shadows. Paul was sweating, not her brimming natural sweat but a grey chilly sweat. Her sweat on the other hand was the bloom on the fruit about to burst, before it hangs and shrivels like a rag on a tree.

  When Paul wore his umpire’s coat he looked like a doctor or a waiter. Not that she had seen him umpiring for many years. He stood there in the green light and a man would be out - his wickets sent flying – or a catch would be granted. As an umpire, Paul had a certain power. But she didn’t like cricket, it was very slow, it was so slow that it felt like an eternity happening in front of her eyes. All you could hear was sporadic clapping as if from a grave and then silence.

  But that didn’t disguise the question she had to face. Did she love Paul? And the m
ost tremendous question of all was, would she be glad when he died? Would she be glad when she heard no more about the Civil Service or cricket? Would she be glad when she was no longer in the presence of his greyness?

  ‘There it is,’ said Paul suddenly.

  ‘What?’ she asked as if emerging from a dream.

  ‘The amphitheatre,’ he said.

  And she saw it then, a big circular stone building with rows of arches and window spaces.

  ‘Do you want to go in?’ he asked.

  Seeing that he was tired she was not sure what she should say, but he added, ‘I think we should see it. It’s the only worthwhile thing in Pula.’

  Of course he would have read about it, of course he would know its history. If he had nothing else he had information.

  As they paid and entered, the heat was appalling.

  ‘Do you know the story about it?’ Paul asked. ‘Why it doesn’t have a roof ?’

  ‘No,’ she said.

  His gaunt face softened. ‘It’s a charming story. It is said that fairies built the amphitheatre with big stones they carted from all over Istria. They began building it at night. However at cockcrow the fairies ran away and left the building without a roof on it.’

  ‘How beautiful,’ she said. In her mind’s eye she saw bronze cocks crowing, pulsing throats outstretched, wings clapping. Paul had become animated for a moment: he was like a pupil showing off to a teacher. The cocks crew and the fairies flew away and there was no roof on the amphitheatre. The fairies like gipsies departed in the night, in their irresponsible glamour. If it had been Paul he would definitely have completed the roof, for he always finished what he began.

  The stone around her was intensely hot. In front of her she saw the young men and women from all over Asia and Europe with their vibrant fragrant impudent bodies. The throbbing heat pulsed from the stone, from her body.

  ‘Listen,’ said Paul, ‘to the right and left there were areas where wild animals were kept. They were released into the arena.’

  ‘Did they fight each other?’

  ‘They fought with the gladiators and the slaves. The front seats in the gallery were reserved for the important people, the patricians. There used to be a lot of women spectators. Some of them were the worst.’

  ‘The worst?’ she said.

  ‘The most cruel.’

  And the Civil Servants, she thought, where were they? And the cool umpires? She had a dim memory that there used to be someone important who raised or lowered his thumb, as the gladiator turned and looked up into the blinding sunlight, foreshortened, waiting for his doom to be signalled, his fortune to be told.

  And at that moment she felt a storm of sound around her. The arena was a writhing medley of legs, arms, torsos, swords: the lithe lions eeled forward like cats stalking birds. Then they leaped in an arc of claws and teeth. She saw a gladiator on the ground and another one standing above him, his legs spread wide in an arrogant posture.

  The one on the ground was Paul and his face was throbbing in the sun, especially a big blue vein in his forehead, and there were rays of blood across his cheek. The other one – but who was the other one? She couldn’t see his face but his private parts were massive, his penis throbbed like a hammer between the two big bells, the colour of flesh. Far away was the green field and the cloudy sky. There was a man in a white uniform in the middle of the arena turning his thumb down over Paul. There was a chaos of gnawing beasts, jaws, teeth, and in the centre of it all a cockerel crowing. Her whole body throbbed with fire: she was a womb that burned and flamed. Her eyes were blind and hollow and made of stone, as she turned them on Paul. She was an empress, a sleek lioness. Somewhere in a stony room underground a man was scribbling furiously with a stony pen forever and forever, his brow wrinkled as if with puzzlement. He was bent over, keeping records of all the animals, he was making sure that the timetable of furious deaths was adhered to. Then she saw him rising slowly and ascending into the arena. A lioness, tawny and almost loving, was waiting for him. She sniffed and her eyes were golden and lazy and calm. Her mane was like a circlet of fire around her. She trotted towards him easily and he waited there quite tranquilly, his hands loose at his sides. He was scrutinising the lioness silently as if asking her a question.

  Do you want me? Do you love me?

  And the lioness trotted towards him. The empress was standing up. In a short while she would turn her thumb down or up. The crowd was roaring, itself like a wild beast, and the sun was a torrent of fire.

  The man was looking into the eyes of the lioness. He was wearing a white coat, he was standing in the middle of the stone field.

  Her loins shuddered and dampened.

  Paul was leaning out of the sun and was saying to her, ‘Are you all right? Are you frightened or something?’

  She felt the tears streaming down her face.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he was saying over and over in a concerned voice. The lioness had shrunk back to its den. The fairies had flown away. The cockerel had started flapping its wings.

  ‘Come on,’ she said, ‘let’s go.’

  It was too late. It was not a question of loving or being loved. The last blood had been and gone. This had been a country of the sun, merciless and hot, and she had missed it. In this country one didn’t ask about love, one either loved or one didn’t. The ring of stone which encircled her wasn’t hers.

  If you had been umpire here, she nearly said to him, if you had been umpire here what would you have done? This was no amateurish play on a Sunday, this had been an affair of life and death, of real claws, real teeth.

  She looked down at her damp green dress, and nearly wept with the pity of it. She would stay with him till morning, till the roof of stone went on. She would not leave at cockcrow or in the middle of the night. She would not fly away on negligent wings.

  The apples that moved ahead of her, these round buttocks were distant and belonged to another country. She dare not touch them, not in this ring of stone, in this arena from which the blood had departed.

  The Tour

  Daphne hadn’t thought that she would enjoy herself so much, though at first she had been rather stiff and formal, finding it difficult to break the shell of her English private school upbringing, which had been followed by her marriage to Geoffrey, a captain in the British army who was now in Australia, posted there for a year. But as the bus tour progressed she found that it was impossible to keep herself apart from the rest of the passengers, however she might try to do so. And it really wasn’t arrogance that was the armour that stood between her and the others, not at all, it was, she knew, her accent that separated them and made them suspicious of her. Her martial stiffness was odd and imperial and very British and they resented it in their inner being.

  Yet it was odd how, unlike Geoffrey, she had liked Australia from the beginning, though it was in its dusty acreages so different from the green fields of England. She belonged, she thought, with a wry smile, to the world of that school in the film Picnic at Hanging Rock with its iron grey mistresses.

  Geoffrey didn’t like Australia, he thought of it as a country of beer-swilling yobs, of undisciplined soldiers. He had once related to her a story of what had happened during the war to an officer much older than himself, who had told him of it.

  ‘He was standing at this railway station,’ he said, ‘waiting for a train, and he saw this mob of Australian soldiers walking up and down. None of them saluted him. So he gave them a bollocking. And do you know what they did? They marched up and down for the rest of the time, very stiff and proper, saluting him every time they passed him.’

  She had tried not to laugh but she couldn’t help it.

  ‘What the hell are you laughing at?’ Geoffrey had said in his stiff upright manner.

  ‘Nothing, nothing,’ she had replied between giggles. ‘Nothing at all.’ And Geoffrey had fumed at her, angry as if she were a green silly schoolgirl.

  But she loved Australia. She loved its mystery, sh
e imagined it as a childish book illustrated with pictures of dingoes, kookaburras, emus. The centre of it was an echo that wished to become a voice, that wished to say, ‘I am me.’ It had no ranks, no orders, it was an efflorescence of wild spiky flowers, and lonely marvellous deserts.

  It was the retired schoolmistress whom she liked best of all. Whenever the bus stopped at a hotel she was the first to rush to the gambling machines – the one-armed bandits – that were to be found everywhere: and with the curious careless innocence of a seventy-year-old who no longer cared for convention, she would plunge her hand in among a cascade of coins. Her name was Casey and she belonged originally to Sydney where she had taught for forty years.

  ‘Didn’t you know that we Australians are a nation of gamblers?’ she said to Daphne. ‘Everywhere you go there are these machines.’ Her hair was cropped and grey and she moved with great rapidity and animation like a little very positive animal.

  ‘No, I didn’t know,’ said Daphne. Neither she nor Geoffrey had gambled in their lives. She knew that in any battle, if there was a battle, he would prepare for every contingency, he wouldn’t make a move without checking and cross checking; she thought of him as a machine in a tight uniform, like one of those early redcoats.

  And so she watched Miss Casey, who had never married, plunging her hands among the coins as if she were a virgin immersing herself in a waterfall in a land that was brilliant with sunshine.

  ‘Luck is everything,’ said Miss Casey, ‘I have been lucky all my life. I loved my children,’ as she called her pupils, ‘and now I am enjoying myself. What is the point of not?’ And she gazed at Daphne with a bland guileless eye, the eye of one who has transcended it with inward bubbling joy. She was the first to get up in the morning and was to be found exploring among the woods and the dew.