The Black Halo (47 page)

‘I just told you. And anyway it’s a long time ago. Why should you keep those grudges going? I bet you ended up as a teacher yourself. I can imagine you in the staff-room with your
pipe in your mouth marking your exercise books and having a quiet look in class up the girls’ legs. You were a bit of a sissy really. No offence. We always thought that.’

‘Who did? Who always thought that?’ said Mr Trill, his voice rising to a scream. ‘Tell me that.’

‘Oh, if you want to know there was Ormond and Pacey and Mason, they all thought that. As a matter of fact, I saw Mason not so long ago. He’s a brigadier now. But I haven’t seen
any of the others. I must say it’s very lonely.’

‘Mason always said you were an old liar,’ shouted Trill, the blood mounting to his face. ‘He caught you out time and time again. He said that you would become a commercial
traveller. You mark my words, he used to say, that stinker Harris will end up as a commercial traveller. And that was when Mason was in the Cadets. You were always trying to get out of them,
weren’t you?’

‘They were so boring, old chap, so boring, all that dreary marching. So Mason said that, did he? What else did he say?’

‘He said he thought your parents lived in the slums. He often told us that because he said why otherwise did your parents never visit the school?’

‘Did he now?’

‘Yes, and there were other things too. We once saw your underpants and they were full of holes. Did you know that we called you Holy Harris? We never told you that ’cos you were a
bully.’

‘Well, well,’ said Harris his face fading and solidifying. ‘Isn’t that interesting? You certainly find out things in Hades that you didn’t know before. It’s
worth the visit. But surely after all those years you’ll have forgotten about all that. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll introduce you to some of the bigwigs. I’ve got
a ticket here which allows you to see them. I can give it to you if you like. Would you like that?’

‘No I wouldn’t,’ screamed Trill. ‘I wouldn’t. I don’t want your ticket. You can keep your rotten ticket. You’re a great big bully and you won’t
change and that’s a fact.’ And as he looked Harris’s face changed and wavered and the tears started to pour out of his eyes and his hands began to tremble and his whole body which
had looked so imposing became small and withered, and even the striped tie which he still wore began to disappear.

‘Please, please,’ said Harris holding his hands out in entreaty.

‘No,’ said the implacable Trill, ‘no, no, no. I don’t want to have anything to do with you. You’re a bully and a cheat and a liar. And I can see your pants. Holy
Harris, Holy Harris,’ he chanted, and the bony knees of Harris disappeared and there was no one left in the wavering mist but Mr Trill himself who groped about as if looking for his own body
while the fog swirled around him and in the distance he could vaguely make out the lowering castle with its towers and battlements.

He looked down at his body to see if his own knees were still there or if he was still wearing his navy blue uniform with the badge of the red lion at the breast and the word sequamur written on
it, but no, he was wearing his adult clothes – his suit greyed a little by the ashes of his pipe – and he was himself again, just as if he were the old Mr Trill sitting in a chair in
the staff-room filling in the Ximenes crossword or interlacing essays with red marks as if they were bars of blood across the page.

At that moment he saw a tall figure looming towards him out of the mist, and he started.

‘Who are you?’ he shouted. ‘Do I know you?’ But the figure passed on with a silent dignified walk. Mr Trill ran after it. ‘Who are you?’ he shouted again and
though he didn’t realise it he looked silly running about with his case as if he were a business man whose train had left without his knowing it and who was scurrying about in search of the
stationmaster.

The figure stopped and looked at him. It was tall and imposing and as its lineaments solidified Mr Trill saw that it was a woman, majestic, implacable. He went down slowly on his knees and heard
himself asking, ‘Are you a goddess then? You are not Athene, are you? Or even Juno?’

‘No, I am none of these,’ said the figure. ‘My name is Dido, and who are you?’

‘My name is Mr Trill and I used to be a classics master at Eastborough Grammar, Dido,’ and he was almost overwhelmed that he had spoken her name but he began to speak again quickly
and nervously. ‘I used to read poetry about you. “And I shall know it even from among the shades.” You said that didn’t you?’

‘I can’t remember. I suppose I might have done. I said many things.’ And the lips twitched with a brief pain.

‘But your story,’ said Mr Trill, ‘can I not hear your story? Look, we are alone. We will not be interrupted. I’ve been told so much that I feel is wrong, and perhaps you
could tell me the truth about yourself and Aeneas. Is it true that he left you and sailed to Italy? Is it true about the cave where you met?’

‘Yes, it is true, it is all true. But what use is it to talk of it now? In his own mind he had his duty to do, he had to sail away and found Rome. That, he said, was his destiny. Who can
resist the will of the gods? I thought we might,’ and her voice faded away. ‘It was possible that my love might, but it didn’t. He sailed away secretly in his boats. Perhaps that
was the worst of all. He should have told me.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Mr Trill daringly, ‘he could not bring himself to meet you again in case he could not continue with his destiny.’

‘Perhaps. What does it matter now? He has sought me here, I have seen him hesitantly lingering as if he wished to speak to me, but I, what should I have to say to him?’

‘But the founding of a new city, of a civilisation,’ said Mr Trill, ‘is that not more important than a private love? Rome became a great empire: it spread its power all over
the world.’

‘Is that true?’ said Dido in an uninterested voice. ‘Perhaps that is important.’

‘And then,’ said Mr Trill, ‘it produced a great poet who wrote about you. I think his sympathies were with you.’

‘With me? A Roman?’

‘Yes.’

As if talking to herself Dido said, ‘He charmed me with his stories. All the time that he was telling me of the fall of Troy, Carthage was being built. There was the sound of hammers
everywhere. It was like a new beginning. I thought it would be a new beginning for us. But even while he was talking to me, even in the deepest moments of our love I knew that he was thinking of
Rome.’

‘The poet says,’ Mr Trill persisted, ‘that it was with a heavy heart Aeneas left Phoenicia, though he was filled with love and longing.’

‘And I,’ said Dido, ‘was on fire when I saw his sails fading into the distance. It was as if I was burning. As a queen what should I do but kill myself? I had my own dignity
too. Everyone has his dignity.’

‘Yes,’ said Mr Trill. And he was filled with hatred for that obstinate, god-obeying man who had set off in search of his own fame, leaving behind him a pyre that blazed on an
abandoned headland. Was the creation of a new land, the pursuit of fame, narrow obedience to the gods, indeed greater than the love such a woman as this could give?

‘There were some other words that the poet wrote,’ said Mr Trill, quoting from memory. ‘He wrote that you said,

‘ “If that wicked being must surely sail to land and come to harbour because such is the fixed and destined ending required by Jupiter’s own ordinances, yet let him afterwards
suffer affliction in war through the arms of a daring foe, let him be banished from his own territory and torn from the embraces of Iulus, imploring aid as he sees his innocent friends die and then
after surrendering to a humiliating peace may he not live to enjoy his kingdom in happiness: and may he lie fallen before his time, unburied on a lonely strand.” ’

‘I said that?’ said Dido laughing. ‘When did I say that? How could I speak like that? No, that was not how I felt. How should love speak like that? How should I wish such
things for him? I thought you said that that poet spoke well of me? What I felt was not that. When I saw those ships sailing away and I heard around me the sounds of the hammers as Carthage was
being built, it was not vengeance I felt, rather it was hopelessness, as if my world was coming to an end. Have you not loved? Do you not know what love is?’

‘Yes,’ said Mr Trill, ‘I have loved.’

‘If that is so then you must know that it is not anger one feels at such a moment.’ She paused and then began again as if she were back in Carthage, ‘It was a clear day and his
men were pulling at the oars. Men were working around me excavating a harbour and others raising a temple and a theatre. The sea was so calm: it was the calmness of the sea that tormented me. He
was sailing into the future and I was remaining there. Yet it was not anger I felt, it was the indifference of the day that tormented me. The sea was so calm, the day was so clear and pure and the
ship was sailing away from me forever. Forever. And then I turned to the pyre and stabbed myself with my dagger.’

Men and women, thought Mr Trill, the ambition of men, their daily task, and the love of women. The one who hunts and the one who remains behind. It has always been like that. There has been the
searcher for new horizons and the one who keeps the horizons stable. Dido’s foreign black face blazed out of the dimness and he was struck for the first time by the knowledge that this was a
clash between civilisations. How had he never thought of it before? The fixed seeker after knowledge, the sensuous one who in spite of protestations did not care for destiny, for the unsleeping
arrow of fame.

‘Was I not married to him,’ said Dido, ‘if not in name then in love?’

So many shades flickered around them, hungry, unappeased, and Mr Trill could imagine Aeneas hesitating, trying to summon up courage to speak to her, ready to explain with quick words. But deeper
than any words was this woman’s knowledge: she knew that when the choice came he had chosen the abstract not the concrete, and nothing he could say would make her believe otherwise.

This queen, this marvellous queen, who blazed out of this dimness!

‘I will tell you really what I felt,’ said Dido at last. ‘When I struck myself with that dagger I felt, Even if he should come back now, I would be dead and he would perhaps be
sorry. I killed myself like any ordinary girl whose lover has left her: and I had thought I was a queen.’

And she interrogated Trill with her marvellous eyes which shone like torches. ‘Imagine it, I had thought a queen would die differently from the rest of the women of the world. But no, it
was just the same. His kingdom was to me a trivial thing, and his gods unimportant. When I thought, Perhaps he will see my pyre and know it for what it is, it was then my heart broke. Do you
understand that?’

‘I think I do,’ said Mr Trill.

‘And do you understand, too, that that is why I do not speak to him. Words to him were everything. It seemed to me that I had listened forever to his words, and then it seemed to me that I
had burned forever in that silence into which he sailed. I have thought much of that, that silence. It is now my weapon, as once it was his, on that day.’

There was a calmness and Mr Trill gazed into the heart of it and it was as if in the very heart of it he saw a wound opening wide, and enlarging itself slowly and inexorably. Yes, he thought, it
must have been like that, that is exactly how it must have been. On the fine clear warm morning, apparently full of hope, that is how it must have been. Her loved one left her, and she was alone,
while all around her the city was being steadily built by workmen who whistled and sang as they worked. In the city that was being built Dido killed herself. And Mr Trill was filled with hatred for
Aeneas, as if he were his own most bitter enemy, so that he could almost have shouted out to the departing ships, Don’t you know what you are doing? Can’t you see the heartache you are
causing? What are you trying to do to this woman? Is Rome a sufficient prize for a broken heart?

But even as he looked Dido had faded away and in her place was . . . Grace.

For ten years they had been going together, ten years during which he had taken her now to a classical concert, now to a theatre.

‘Is it your night for going out then?’ his landlady would say, her avid eyes fixed on him.

‘Yes, Mrs Begg,’ he would answer.

And so he would put on his coat, take his umbrella and set off down the stairs past the window which showed the tiny green on which washing was drying in the evening light.

And Grace would be waiting for him outside the door of the theatre or the concert hall, for she always arrived first. She was not at all pretty, he didn’t expect that good fortune –
nor indeed did he desire it – but she was pleasant, even-tempered, and always neatly but not showily dressed.

He would always buy her a box of chocolates though he himself wouldn’t eat any, and after the play or concert was over they would go to a restaurant for their coffee and discuss the
entertainment they had just seen.

‘I didn’t like his interpretation of Prospero,’ or ‘I felt that Miranda was just right,’ Grace would say, for she taught English. And Mr Trill, whose knowledge of
English literature was not great, would listen to her, puffing at his pipe and feeling amiable and contented.

He was not allowed to go to Grace’s home, for her mother, who was still alive though old, had, according to her daughter, a nasty habit of insulting any men she brought to the house,
especially one in the far past who had ridden a motor bike and worn a helmet which he laid down negligently on the sofa when he entered the room. Though a clerk he had a careless taste for
adventure.

Mr Trill never kissed Grace, for he regarded his friendship with her as belonging to an equable maturity without emotional storms or tantrums. He was glad in a way that her mother existed for
she would save him from having to confront the problem of marriage to her daughter. Now and again Grace would refer to a house as if it were quite settled in her mind that the two of them would one
day live together, but Mr Trill would pretend not to hear such remarks. Their friendship, he believed, belonged to the world of the mind, and he was happy that it should remain there, and that her
mother should like Cerberus guard her house so that he would be unable to enter it.