The Black Halo

by Iain Crichton Smith

  One of their lines was ‘the poof of the pudding is in the eating’. For the two guards were intellectuals too, clever, cunning, able to switch from viciousness to calm collected discussion especially when the Governor appeared, the Governor, tortured by moral doubts, whom they despised. After all what was a prison for but to convert criminals to goodness by torture?

  Jeff Coates was changed by the play. At first he had not liked it very much. He thought the dialogue at times brittle, its poeticisms brilliant but perhaps esoteric. But gradually it took a grip of him, he felt himself inside a world of almost total evil. At coffee breaks he would speak only to the Governor and never to the guards. In the crucial scene he screamed a high piercing scream though of course it was only a pretence of torture he was suffering. At times however he felt he was being really tortured.

  The trouble was that he was really a homosexual and that made it worse – or did it? He couldn’t make up his mind. Was it indeed worse to be a real homosexual in that scene? (Also in the play he was attacked by prisoners.) He sometimes felt that the two guards really hated him, for neither was a homosexual. They made comments about his walk and these comments he accepted as belonging to the play. The women in the cast befriended him more than the men did, though of course he was not interested in them sexually. In the scene where he was being tortured he felt real hatred emanating from the two guards as if they were his most bitter enemies. Of course he had experience of being beaten up in real life, particularly in a public convenience in London, about two years before.

  His scream was real, he thought, because it came from the centre of his being. And yet it was happening in a play. These men didn’t really hate him, he told himself, they were merely acting, they obviously had to act as if they hated him. The Governor too in real life was stingy, sarcastic, embittered, not at all attractive. The two guards in real life were not at all intellectual: in fact he despised them. For he himself had read Artaud on the Theatre of Cruelty. The stage became very small each night. It shrank. Every night he waited to be tortured. It was almost as if that was the reason for his existence.

  As time passed he became more and more solitary, arriving late, leaving early. He didn’t want to see these contemptuous eyes nor did he wish to listen to the banal conversation of the guards. The scream was taking a lot out of him, he had to prepare himself for it, it shattered his whole being so that if there had been glass near him it would have cracked. He didn’t wish to discuss the play with the others since in his opinion they didn’t really know what it was about, they did not know what suffering was. Of course none of them had ever suffered except in fantasy. That at any rate was what he thought. He himself had suffered, especially on the day that his mother had discovered him in bed with a male friend of his. That was the worst. Her whole face had disintegrated: he would always remember that moment.

  O none of them had really suffered. He himself had suffered, however. He was the one who was in the prison. The suffering was disguised by talk about morality, about Marx, but nothing could disguise the torture. And his scream, was it real or not? For after all he wasn’t really being tortured. In fact the two guards used to make a point of asking him over to take coffee with them He was probably making a mistake in thinking that they hated him.

  And he loved acting. He had acted many other parts as well as the part he was acting in this play. That was the awful and marvellous thing about actors, that they took on themselves the pains and sufferings of others. They brought to audiences the calmness of art at the expense of their own tortured spirits. He had acted kings, drunks, and most especially the dark blind figure in The Room, by Pinter. And in all these instances he had sought determinedly for the meaning of the text. When he was acting the part of Creon, he had thought, This city of Edinburgh is Thebes, we shall show it its plague, though there was in fact no appearance of plague in Edinburgh’s theatrical façade, with its green light shining about the castle at night

  To be an actor was to be a healer, a doctor. And the scream waited for him every night. In fact he had become obsessed by it.

  He stayed in lodgings on his own. Every night he left the theatre and walked to them through the throbbing festival city, through the slums of the High St. After the scream he strolled through the streets, emptied of emotion, solitary. And he thought, the guards are at least uncomplicated. They are brutal, they have assessed the world as it really is. They had no imagination, they could not put themselves in the position of the weak, nor did they want to. He found himself hating them in return. Why had they taken these parts unless they were in a deep way suited to them? And this in spite of the fact that such an idea was stupid.

  And as for the Governor, he despised him. The Governor had never protected him. There he was tortured every day while the Governor stood around like a moral priggish Brutus and the guards like Mark Antonies ran rings round him. They would spring to attention while prisoners bled in the cells. O how they laughed at that poor tortured libertarian in the burnt prison under the open sky! Who had burnt the prison? Was it perhaps the Governor himself? Or his wife? Or the cleaner who could discuss Marx.

  And every night his own high scream was the peak point of the play. It rose to a crescendo, then died away to a whisper, to exhaustion. And the audience winced (or perhaps they loved it. Who could tell?) But none of them was unaffected. He saw to that. And when the play was over and the audience had left, he and the other actors would have their coffee and discuss the effectiveness of the night’s work. And it became more and more demanding to create the scream. It wasn’t easy to scream like that every night.

  One night he waited behind till the others had gone. Then he went out into the street. It was a Saturday night and the air was mild. All round him he sensed the delirium of the Festival. There were lovers strolling hand in hand, there were men in strange colourful costumes, the world itself was a theatre. It was Romeo and Juliet he saw sitting on a bench, it was the old woman from Crime and Punishment who staggered drunkenly down the street. The city was a theatre at which the plague had not struck.

  He walked with his usual mincing walk. He had never been conscious of it himself but he had been told of it. Actually he was still wearing his prison clothes for he hadn’t bothered changing. Well, why shouldn’t he? One night he had seen a tall man in a black gown walking towards him on stilts, with a skull instead of a face.

  He now entered a street which was quite dark. The council was dimming its lamps in certain areas even during the Festival.

  And then they were there. There must have been about six of them. They were wearing green scarves and they were shouting. They owned the street. They were like members of a crowd in one of Shakespeare’s plays, perhaps Julius Caesar: but they were really vicious. It might be that their team had lost. Who knew? He and they were in the dim street together and they were marching towards him. Perhaps he should run? He thought about it but he didn’t run. They were chanting. Their heads were shaved.

  Poof, they shouted, poof they shouted again. They danced around him. Poof in his theatrical clothes. And they with their shaved heads on which Union Jacks had been painted. (One light in the alley like a spot light showed this to him.)

  It had happened before. It would happen again. Those without imagination were upon him. The animals with their teeth.

  Poof, they shouted, bloody poof. And then they were on him and beat him to the ground and trampled on him. And his glasses fell off and cracked, he could feel that. He looked upwards but he could hardly see them. All he could see was a kaleidoscope of colour. And he could smell the smell of alcohol. And then he screamed. And as he screamed the high piercing scream they ran away and left him in a quick scurry.

  And he lay there on the street alone, listening to the noise they made as they left, and he thought, That scream, was it different? Was it different from the one in the play? Which was the real scream and which was the unreal one? The prepared or the unprepared? The, as it were, artistic one or the real one? And he
thought, the artistic one was the real one. This was only an accidental one. This was not the scream of art, this was the one he had attracted by walking like a poof and taking that lane which he should not have taken and continuing to walk towards them as perhaps he should not have done. Had he been trying to learn more about the artistic scream by this one? He felt naked in the dim street without his glasses.

  He would have to make his way back to his real landlady. And with his real face. And put ointment on his real bruises.

  He staggered a little as he stood up, coming out of the scream. Everything was silent around him. No one had heard him. There had been no audience. How therefore could his scream have been more real than the theatrical one?

  How?

  The Old Woman, the Baby and Terry

  The fact was that the old woman wanted to live. All her faculties, her energies, were shrunken down to that desire. She drew everything into herself so that she could live, survive. It was obscene, it was a naked obscenity.

  ‘Do you know what she’s doing now?’ said Harry to his wife Eileen. ‘She keeps every cent. She hoards her pension, she’s taken to hiding her money in the pillow slips, under blankets. She reminds me of someone, I can’t think who.’

  ‘But what can we do?’ said Eileen, who was expecting a baby.

  Harry worked with a Youth Organisation. He earned £7,000 a year. There was one member of the organisation called Terry MacCallum who, he thought, was insane. Terry had tried to rape one of the girls on the snooker table one night. He was a psychopath. Yet Harry wanted to save him. He hated it when he felt that a case was hopeless.

  ‘She won’t even pay for a newspaper,’ said Harry.

  ‘I know,’ said Eileen. ‘This morning I found her taking the cigarette stubs from the bucket.’

  The child jumped in her womb. She loved Harry more than ever: he was patient and kind. But he grew paler every day: his work was so demanding and Terry MacCallum was so mad and selfish.

  ‘I’ve never met anyone like him,’ said Harry. ‘His selfishness is a talent, a genius. It’s diamond hard, it shines. I should get rid of him, I know that. Also he’s drunk a lot of the time. He said to me yesterday, “I don’t care for anyone. I’m a bastard you know that. I’m a scrounger, I hate everyone.” ’

  Harry couldn’t understand Terry. Everything that was done for him he accepted and then kicked you in the teeth. He was a monster. He haunted his dreams.

  The child kicked in Eileen’s womb. She wanted it badly. She had a hunger for it. She wanted it to suck her breasts, she wanted it to crawl about the room, she wanted it to make her alive again.

  And all the time the old lady hoarded her banknotes. One day Eileen mentioned to her that they needed bread but she ignored hints of any kind. She even hoarded the bread down the sides of her chair. She tried to borrow money from Eileen. She sang to herself. She gathered her arms around herself, she was like a plant that wouldn’t die. Eileen shuddered when she looked at her. She thought that she was sucking her life from her but not like the baby. The baby throve, it milked her, it grew and grew. She was like a balloon, she thrust herself forward like a ship. Her body was like a ship’s prow.

  ‘I tried talking to him,’ said Harry. ‘I can’t talk to him at all. He doesn’t understand. I can’t communicate. He admits everything, he thinks that the world should look after him. He wants everything, he has never grown up. I have never in my life met such selfishness. If he feels sexy he thinks that a woman should put out for him immediately. If he feels hungry he thinks that other people should feed him. I am kind to him but he hates me. What can you do with those who don’t see? Is there a penance for people like that? What do you do with those who can’t understand?’

  The baby moved blindly in her womb, instinctively, strategically. She said to Harry, ‘I’m frightened. Today I thought that the ferns were gathering round the house, that they wanted to eat me. I think we should cut the ferns down.’

  ‘Not in your condition,’ said Harry. He looked thin, besieged.

  The old lady said, ‘I don’t know why you married him. He doesn’t make much money, does he? Why doesn’t he move to the city? He could make more money there.’ She hid a tea bag in her purse. And a biscuit.

  The child moved in the womb. It was a single mouth that sucked. Blood, milk, it sucked. It grew to be like its mother. It sang a song of pure selfishness. It had stalks like fern. The stars at night sucked dew from the earth. The sun dried the soil. Harry had the beak of a seagull.

  ‘Last night he wouldn’t get off the snooker table,’ said Harry. ‘There are others who want to play, I said to him. This is my snooker table, he said. It isn’t, I said. It is, he said. You try and take it off me. And then he said, Lend me five pounds. No, I said. Why, he said. Because you’re selfish, I said. I’m not, he said. I’m a nice fellow, everyone says so. I’ve got a great sense of humour. What do you do with someone like that? I can’t get through to him at all. And yet I must.’

  ‘What for?’ said Eileen.

  ‘I just have to.’

  ‘You never will,’ said Eileen.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Just because. Nature is like that. I don’t want the child.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I know what I mean. Nature is like that. I don’t want the child.’

  Harry had nightmares. He was on an operating table. A doctor was introducing leeches into his veins. The operating table was actually for playing snooker on. It had a green velvet surface. He played with a baby’s small head for a ball.

  The ferns closed in. In the ferns she might find pound notes. She began to eat bits of coal, stones, crusts. She gnawed at them hungrily. The old lady wouldn’t sleep at night. She took to locking her door. What if something happened? They would have to break the door down.

  The baby sucked and sucked. Its strategies were imperative. It was like a bee sucking at a flower with frantic hairy legs, its head buried in the blossom, its legs working.

  Terry stole some money after the disco. He insisted it was his.

  ‘You lied to me,’ said Harry.

  ‘I didn’t lie.’

  ‘You said you were at home. I phoned your parents. They said you were out. You lied to me.’

  ‘I didn’t lie.’

  ‘But can’t you see you said one thing and it wasn’t the truth. Can you not see that you lied?’

  ‘I didn’t lie.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake are you mad. You did lie. What do you think a lie is? Can’t you see it?’

  ‘I didn’t lie.’

  ‘You’ll have to go.’

  The old lady had a pile of teabags, quarter pounds of butter, cheese, in a bag under the bed.

  ‘You owe me,’ she said to Eileen. ‘For all those years you owe me. I saw in the paper today that it takes ten thousand pounds to rear a child. You owe me ten thousand pounds. It said that in the paper.’

  ‘You haven’t paid for that paper,’ said Eileen. ‘I’ve tried my best, don’t you understand? How can you be so thick?’

  ‘You owe me ten thousand pounds,’ said the old lady in the same monotonous grudging voice. ‘It said in the paper. I read it.’

  ‘You are taking my beauty away from me,’ said Eileen to the baby. ‘You are sucking me dry. You are a leech. You are Dracula. You have blood on your lips. And you don’t care.’

  She carried the globe in front of her. It had teeth painted all over it.

  Harry became thinner and thinner. I must make Terry understand, he kept saying. He must be made to understand, he has never in his whole life given anything to anyone. I won’t let him go till I have made him understand. It would be too easy to get rid of him.

  ‘Put him out,’ said Eileen, ‘abort him.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Abort him.’

  ‘You said abort. I’m frightened.’

  ‘Can’t you see,’ said Eileen. ‘That’s what it is. People feed and feed. Cows feed on grass, grass feeds on bon
es, bones feed on other bones. It’s a system. The whole world is like a mouth. Blake was wrong. It’s not a green and pleasant land at all. The rivers are mouths. The sun is the biggest mouth of all.’

  ‘Are you all right, Eileen? Oh hold me,’ said Harry.

  And they clung together in the night. But Eileen said, ‘Look at the ceiling. Do you see it? It’s a spider.’ It hung like a black pendant. A moth swam towards the light from the darkness outside. The spider was a patient engineer. Suddenly Eileen stood on top of the bed and ripped the web apart. ‘Bastard,’ she said. ‘Go and find something else to do.’ The spider had chubby fists. It was a motheaten pendant.

  Terry the psychopath smiled and smiled. He bubbled with laughter.

  ‘Give me,’ he said to his mother, ‘ten pounds of my birthday money in advance.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not? You were going to give it to me anyway.’

  ‘And what are you going to give me for my birthday?’

  ‘I’ll think of something.’

  ‘You won’t give me anything, will you? Not a thing will you give me!’

  The old woman stole sausages from the fridge, matches from the cupboard. She borrowed cigarettes from Eileen. The latter gazed at her in wonderment, testing how far she would go. The old woman began to wear three coats all at the one time. She tried to go to the bathroom as little as possible: she was hoarding her pee.

  ‘The old woman will live forever,’ Eileen screamed. ‘She will never die. She will take me with her to the grave. She will hoard me. She will tie string round me, and take me with her to the grave. And the innocent selfish ferns will spring from me. And the baby will feed head down in it, its legs working.’

  ‘No,’ she said to Harry, ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘Why not? What’s wrong with you?’